Fox's SHARPshooter Valdun Build 1.0.7.1

>>> GrimTools Build <<<
>>> GrimTools Non-Titan Plate Build <<< (WARNING: No Reflected Damage Reduction)

After months of working on and off with this build, I have finally optimized Valdun’s set in the best way possible. I have always wanted to play with Valdun’s set and the changes done to the set in V1.0.7.0 had improved upon the set and gave one of the finest marksmen turned assassin some tasty flavor. The build focuses on Soldier/Inquisitor for the fact that it provides ample pierce bonuses, only to be amplified further by the 75% Elemental > Pierce conversion, allowing Inquisitor rounds to scale much more off piercing alone). The build also provides about 2700 OA (3300 with procs) and 3000 DA which gives ample crit chance for your devotions and survivability from crits, allowing you to live longer and blast hard.

Furthering survivability, resistances have been overcapped by or over 20% except for aether and chaos, which Word of Renewal covers with 20% so long as you keep it up. Acid Spray + Assassin’s Mark + Mark of the Blade gives you -70% Pierce RR on your autoattacks, and an additional -25% from Death Sentence for a total of -95% Pierce RR, which is excellent for dishing out that high damage. Attack speed is about a baseline of 189%, but can cap out easily at 200% when Quickdraw or Battle Cry procs. The build itself has 5 WPS that deal high amounts of Pierce Damage, with the Inquisitor’s three rounds proccing at 20% chance and Vandun’s Clip and Treachery proccing 25% of the time, coming out to 110% with no recharge time, meaning you will proc a WPS with every attack. Since most of the WPS are projectile and AoEs, they have a bigger chance of proccing devotions, and the devotions themselves have either no recharge or a 1-2 second recharge (with the exception of Living Shadow), which means you will be proccing WPS and devotions consistently with every attack. So far, I have been able to hit over 200k DPS in my testing and will only get even higher once it is fine tweaked.

Assassin’s Mark is tied to Cadence as a form of solid Pierce RR every autoattack. The reason for this despite people setting Acid Spray to their autoattacks is because you can proc it so frequently without a recharge which Acid Spray has, and on top of that Cadence allows your shots to pass through enemies, so you can potentially proc assassin’s mark more than once on each shot so long as it crits.

Blades of Wrath of Valdun’s Clip provides you with some AoE damage around your centered body just incase you get surrounded by enemies, providing high pierce damage through 16 projectiles and passing through all enemies assuring most, if not all, take some damage. Valdun’s Clip also has 5-7 fragments and each fragment has a chance of proccing Blades of Wrath, but the only limiter is that the skill has a 2 seconds cooldown.

Acid Spray has been tied to Storm Spread due to the fact that Acid Spray is the only devotion we have that procs only 15% on attack (the others proccing 100% on crit strike), and storm spread has the highest spread of projectiles out of our other skills, being that of 4x2, equaling out to 8 projectiles. In a group of monsters, or even a single monster in closer range, you can assure that you apply acid spray on something every time it activates.

And finally, our feature of the build that makes this very interesting, Living Shadow. I find this skill to be amazing for multiple reasons, so I will break this down here. The skill produces a pet that deals piercing damage and converts 25% of attack damage to health. Due to the high amount of piercing damage scaling you possess, this scales Living Shadow’s piercing damage to high amounts as well, which transitions into an excellent amount of healing for you every time it autoattacks a creature. Not only does it provide you with healing, but it also serves as a distraction for your enemies and can even shadow step to enemies, placing Living Shadow right on top of them in an instant. Due to your high attack speed and crit chance, you even have a chance of summoning a second living shadow, which nets you even greater healing in combat. There is literally nothing negative about this devotion.

If you have any questions about this build, or even suggestions, I will be more than happy to hear them and answer to the best of my ability.

BUILD UPDATED: Due to the nature of ‘reflection’ on mobs, this build can potentially kill you if you are not careful. I have thus altered the build to include a Titan Plate for 15% Reflected Damage Reduction to help cushion the returned damage (not saying it still wont kill you, just not as fast). As an added bonus this has increased OA by 18, DA by 35, and Armor by 266… for a minor 112 reduction to weapon damage and some aether resistance loss (which can be mostly covered up by Word of Renewal so long as you keep it up.) But to keep options on the playing field, I have included both builds to the guide incase no one wished to deal with trying to tweak the Aether Resistance back up somehow. Cheers!

TO BE ADDED:

(CRUCIBLE PERFORMANCE)
(RAW STAT IMAGES)

I made such build some time ago:
http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=76313

And particularly this variant as a Tactician:
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/bVAODalN

It works pretty crappy. Capable to deal with 170 but overall there are so many good builds to assemble.

How does your build perform in Crucible in few words?

So far I have taken Crucible all the way to round 100 on Ultimate with no issues (no pots used), I plan on picking it back up again soon to see how far this build can push it.

This here is a current screenshot taken from my screen of the stats in combat. I have yet to tweak it further (and this is without Living Shadow up as well), but I can guarantee I can push even more DPS out of it once I get a few more MI pieces.

Even with all those GDstashed items build won’t work well. I have tried so many Pierce builds, but outside of Belgothian they all suck. Damage for ranged pierce is just not there.

I disagree. While perhaps pierce alone may fall off a little, what makes this build shine is the 130% armor piercing, meaning it is converting 130% of your physical damage into piercing damage. Literally everything that is physical in the soldier tree, inquisitor tree, and devos, are all being converted entirely into pierce damage. Also 75% of anything elemental in either tree and the devos are being converted 75% into pierce, and 50% of acid is also being converted to pierce (basically half of the damage dealt by The Manticore is being converted into Pierce damage), and the piercing scaling only enhances all of that damage. This build proves that it can work.

AP value describes the multiplier of current AP.
20% armor piercing on weapon and 100% armor piercing on Blades of Nadaan (for swords) means that 20% AP turns into 40%.

Then I suppose someone described it wrongly to me in how it worked.

So, by that calculation… Rifle has 50% AP, belt increases it by 50% and Valdun’s set itself increases it by 30%. So 50 + 80%= 90% AP?

UPDATE:

Though a bit of research seems to state otherwise by this individual:

"armor penetration is essentially the same as damage conversion from physical to pierce. not exactly the same, but for the most part you can treat it like a simple physical to pierce conversion effect.

a rifle with 30% penetration will convert 30% of your physical damage to pierce damage which means that part of the damage is no longer subject to armor mitigation and physical damage resistance, but it is now subject to piercing damage resistance.

and it doesn’t scale with your % physical damage bonus but rather uses your piercing damage % bonus."

SOOOO… if my brain is working correctly, 90% of my physical damage is being converted into piercing damage?

Yes, 50% + 80% = 90%.
Currently I see no ways to increase AP to 100%. If you check your damage sheet in 2nd tab, you’ll see remaining physical damage there

I am curious, how much time this build need to kill a dummy?

I have experimented with valdun’s tactician in 1.0.6.1, and it’s really weird. I build one that can achieve 170k sheet DPS in game, but dummy killing is so so slow and I can’t feel any damage at all. I think it’s the weird performance of 2H cadence itself or Pierce damage is the problem, idk.

I have even tried this by switching the rifle with Gildor’s pulverizer for 100% armor piercing, but the damage is still not there.
Knowing this, I scrap valdun and 2H ranged cadence at general and never tried it again.

Sent from my Redmi Note 3 using Tapatalk

Man, I am not just talking out of my ass. I have tested Valdun’s Blademaster and Shapshooter’s Purifier. Both have better RR than your Tactician. Sharpshooter’s Purifier had some dps but it wasn’t enough and build was paper thin. Valdun’s Blademaster was just miserable experience. I had even better numbers in second tab then you. None of it helped. I guess you have to see for yourself and test it. I will be only happy if you make it work in 150-170.

Also, don’t take Bursting Round on Valdun’s setup.

This looks like a fun build, I might try this once FG drops and I am done with the 1200 Oathkeeper variations I wanna try. :stuck_out_tongue:

Who cares how it performs in Crucible.

Yawn.

Post your build here and actual screenshots of your numbers, otherwise you are basically doing what you stated you weren’t. If you have better RR than this build, then you must be hitting -100%, so I will be interested to see how you are accomplishing it. Over the past few days, testing for the build has shown to be successful. I will let you know how far I get on Ultimate when I get the chance to do it.

Also, what is wrong with Bursting Round?

I can’t see a problem with investing 1 point in Bursting Round for an extra 20 % chance at a >100% wpn dmg proc…

I feel you , sometimes i would like to have a time machine to stop crate from releasing crucible. It was a virus that infected people’s minds.

This is a rough sketch that I had saved in my tabs. Obviously forgot to include Death Sentence, but when I tested this build I felt like the damage just wasn’t there and Death Sentence wouldn’t help it. And I am not even talking about survivability which was complete trash. Although in latter Tactician might and should surpass Purifier.

You have 90% wps chance with two wps that have pure pierce damage component (and quite big one too, 30x3 in Chilling Rounds and 22x4 in Storm Spread) and two amazing wps from the set. By adding Bursting Round, a wps with quite a bit of unconverted damage you are messing up the chances of your good wps. Pretty simple if you think about it.

But anyway, even with all the green items of GD stashing I don’t think this build is gonna cut it. Sure, campaign farm, whatever, but it won’t even come close to top ranged Purifiers and Vindicators (my bet is that it’s gonna really struggle in 150-170).

Am I missing something in my GD understanding?

Each proc chance on each default attack:

20% SS
20% CR
20% BR
25% VC
5% QD

etc.

the total odds of getting one random proc on each default is 1-(proc1 * proc2*…)

So having another 20% chance proc doesn’t actually reduce your chances, it statistically increases your chances of a random proc.

  • Unless the procs are mutually exclusive? And if this is the case: over the long haul, [I suspect] the odds are still in favor of adding the extra 20% chance for overall damage.

yes, you are missing a simple fact that Valdun’s set has two wps and not one.

So… you are saying that the procs are mutually exclusive? (ie, only one can ever proc with a single default attack?)

If they are not exclusive, then that extra proc can not impact the % chances of the others for any particular single default attack.

And that exclusive idea makes no sense to me as that would be the case with every other skill and devotion proc for a defaut attack.

If your total WPS chance is over 100% it means chance for every particular wps becomes smaller so their total is still 100%. Let’s say you have 100% wps chance with 4 wps skills each with 25% chance to proc. If you squeeze in fifth wps with 25% chance, now you gonna have 5 wps, but each wps will have a 20% chance to proc. So by squeezing in Bursting Round you are lowering every other “good” wps chance. Man, I thought it was obvious, sorry.