I am running mostly elite AoM to complete it. I can’t kill the last boss. And I get wrecked by a lot of packs so leveling takes a long time with about 15-20 deaths per level.
I even tried running the new FG Shattered Realm and got wrecked by the first group on Ultimate.
I seem to be hitting a hard gear wall right now and all the greens and blues that drop are downgrades to my overall DPS, OA, DA.
I wanted to ask for some help here in what gear options might be quick changes for me. Most guides I follow for Saboteur are not too clear on progression to 100 with the build.
Nope it’s not just gear wall, first welcome to the forum!
Second; the only way to play proper Saboteur is to focus on cold damage and as secondary fire damage, believe me I tried fire version, I made a cold saboteur recently but it’s with SR set so not suitable for first build. But I’ll post it in a few days so you can check atleast but it has a bit unusual build style.
Third; you don’t need canister bomb; find yourself some Cold damage weapons, or go to Arkovian Undercity and get two Kilrian Mace from the boss which can help you till you find these and you should use armor components and augments to balance your resistances because the most important thing in the game is resistances. Keep them atleast %80 + some overcap values. Since you probably use the gears you find, search Faction gears till you get proper ones. RR is the second most important thing in the game so you should read the skill explanations and learn to use them well. And also read game guides to learn mechanics. https://www.grimtools.com/db/itemsets/79 you gonna need these, check your blacksmith because they have blueprints. You need lifesteal to survive with melee builds. I don’t know which blueprints you have or don’t but here https://www.grimtools.com/calc/eZPqk3jN I changed your skills, devotions and items with some faction and farmable MI’s. You should change other parts too, helm is kinda best choice among greens and blues though. While changing things consider your resistances.
While talking about focus on cold damage, I didn’t mean that he should leave Fire Strike and use another skill. He just need to find cold gears to support his cold damage while using FS.
Check these, especially gears, skill points usage and devotions; this game requires some serious reading. My suggestion only for the save the day, when you find some gear and reached 100 things gonna change. I made some of the mistakes you did while playing my first character, like not taking RR etc @malawiglenn helped me a lot back then, so you’ll learn things in time, just have fun but if you want your build to finish ultimate and farm some items to your build and your next builds you need to play Cold damage. Amastra Blade Burst skill is for mainly his second node Lethal Assault’s buff, it gives OA, Cold damage and Acid damage, when you have the Nex & Ortus blades you will convert all the acid damage to cold and fire damage so don’t worry about it. If you somehow don’t like the ABB skill(like me but it’s a great boost ofc) you can check my build also https://www.grimtools.com/calc/4NOqE3oV but I really suggest you give it a try to ABB first.
Resistances. Keep them around 80 %. Except maybe stun, other crowd control resistances and physical resistance. Especially aether resistance is important if you’re fighting in Malmouth. Monsters sometimes reduce your resistances, so it won’t hurt to have more than 80 %.
Components and augments. Only your weapons and one ring have anything on them while at that point in game it should be everything. Especially when you say you don’t change your gear often. For example you can put 2 Aether Soul components (blueprint available at Devil’s Crossing) in your amulet and medal bumping your aether resistance by 32 %. These tiny items make a difference.
Relic. I don’t think Calamity does you much good now. No idea which blueprints you have available, but Inferno or Zeal should already be better.
Other items. I would try to replace your gloves, amulet and green ring first. They don’t seem to help your character much. Or in other words: I’m sure there are green items out there that will help you more.
Skills. I won’t go in-depth about them, but if you notice that you’re not using one of your skills (because it’s too weak or you don’t like it), then don’t let it waste your skill points. Re-spec out of it and recover the points.
Devotion. Also won’t go into details, but one constellation strikes me odd: Tempest. It increases your lightning damage which you don’t seem to deal much of. I would re-spec out of it.
Besides the resistance issue, the biggest thing you’re missing is a way to heal yourself. For an auto-attacker life leech is indispensible. Without changing your gear I was able to improve things quite a bit with cheap components. Went with a standard fire devo map with Revenant added for more healing. You still need to pick up more acid and pierce res from gear choices, and I couldn’t fit in armor absorb components because the resists on your gear were so bad, but this will be OK in main campaign even on Ultimate.
There’s nothing wrong with @fordprefect advice to focus on cold and ABB, but this is an option to keep a playstyle similar to yours but better. Improved resists (including 20% physical res now which is a reasonable target number for endgame), life steal, more damage, more survivability.
Yeah Resist Reduction makes sense for boss fights where I’m doing cold damage I need to have resist reduction for Cold to actually be able to damage them efficiently. Do you think adding Night’s Chill and staking more gear items with Cold RR be beneficial? I see you added Deathchill in there and some other things.
Some of the items can farmable from specific monsters and also there are faction gears that you can buy from vendors like the one in Coven’s Refuge; you can the item from grimtools, it show where can you get them. And yes, Night’s Chill is the reason that you can only play cold damage efficiently with Saboteur because you have extra Cold RR plus Thermite mine which all elemental damage RR.
Yeah makes sense. I actually found that 1.1.6.2 Return of the Rogue cold build as well. I think this will be my main focus after modifying what I have now to help set me up for long game in ultimate playthrough.
@Tarazet Also brought up a good point with my lack of life leech to help with healing while I am DPSing. My devotions are all out of sorts. It’ll take some time to get things switch over but this has been seriously enlightening. I should have posted sooner. Thanks all for your advice!
The problem with that thread and the my build is that you can only get those Shattered Guardian set by reaching SR 65, which is really hard for a first build. But you might achieve that with other cold damage gears and MI’s. Use grimtools to find more reachable items that supports your main skills like Night’s Chill, Lethal Assault, Execution, Fire Strike etc and main damage at the same time. There are acid damage items which supports Nightblade skill, they are useless for you, there are fire damage gears which supports Demolitionist skill, they are also useless for you. Keep these things in mind.
Shattered Guardian is just good neutral gear, it offers a lot of bonuses but it’s often worse than a dedicated set for your character. Fortunately farming Shattered Realm on normal is quite easy and time-efficient, and a good way to unlock the higher keystones so you can try to get lucky with mutators and get the full set on Ultimate.
LoL I didn’t know that you can buy SR set in normal SR 65… Now I wished someone mentioned that to me while I was playing with my first character… Anyway, @ChaseTheLumberjack if you check grimtools for the gears like I said, and farm them in Main Campaign or even normal SR, and combine them together with balanced resistances, armor(don’t forget armor absorption), damage etc, you can easily do SR 65 in normal.
Thanks for correction, I missed that part I guess. However then, without proper gear and balanced stats; passing 65 boss room with a saboteur(and with first build) would not be easy. He might need a very very lucky mutators and boss combinations, and lucky boss room; so the whole trial become massacre easily. chunks are certainly doable ofc.
I agree with melee it is challenging, however he is a Demolitionist also so there is some kiting capability with the bombs. It would still be wise to farm normal for gear first.
As far as iron bits, mats etc. it’s the same as Ultimate. You only get a slightly worse loot table. Most of my farming is SR 75-76 normal because it’s quick and painless.
