I’ve played around with devotions and looked for gear with DA (along with Health and keeping resistances at 80% of course). How do these guys get 4k-6k DA? I’m not seeing gear that can push it that high.
Freakin Reaper in crucible 160 always gets me in solo and I’m looking for legs, feet, something that I can farm that has really high DA to increase my survivability in solo crucible 160-170.
Just stuff every possible armor piece with Ugdenbog Leaether and jewelry with Runebound Topaz. Stalwart Rylok Crest of Protection medal can give an insane amount (i have one and it gives 100 flat DA and 11% DA).
The “stalwart” prefix on greens drops quite often and shouldn’t be ignored.
3K to 3500K should be what you should aim for on non-tank builds. 4K+ just isn’t feasible without very specific rolls and a lot of compromising
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/d2j0lvmZ
Personally, i think 4.5k+ DA mechanics is rather a some sort of “cheating”. Just like CDR builds, that permanently hold strong defesive skills like Mirror of Ereoctres and Mark of Torment.
I don’t think it’s fair to call it “cheating”. I would say it’s exploiting the game mechanics. Faced with unrealistic (for most builds) dificulty of waves 150-170 Gladiator players are forced to find other ways then conventional builds that are optimised for Main Campaign. There is not a skilled based game, so when developer rolls out new challenge players have to think of mechanics/builds to counter it.
Spellbinders are absurdly strong tho compared to other mastery combos, that I agree with.
You could always try to roll the dice with one of the smiths. I just had to resort to that to buff up two resistances, and got more than what I needed from that exercise. The smiths have different bonuses too, so pick the right one for the job. It’s not overly expensive either and I manged the two rings in the build below in around 20 rolls, so about 100k iron and some scrap.
Seriously?! I consider one of my witchblades very tanky and she only has 2900 (which I thought was a lot).
And would you say about MY witchblade, who feels quite tanky despite having 2500-2600 DA?
DA isnt the only factor, that affects tankiness. I’d say, unless we talk about REALLY high values (4k+ or so), DA cant be considered a critical factor for tankiness, and rather serves to prevent being critically hit occasionally while affected by “+75% crit damage” mutator in Crucible, which can possibly be a oneshot. I mean, sure, enemies will miss some attacks here and there, but it’s all RNG, which wont work well with slight value changes.
2600 DA and I really love to know how that fares against Reaper when his -425 DA proc onto you, not to mention the stackable -RR from him and his illusions (and that dude has +12% OA and +24% crit chance for his basic attacks). Especially so in the environment of Crucible 150-170. It’s no coincidence that people aim for at least 3k5 DA if the builds don’t have circuit breaker.
Feeling tanky in main campain is the deed almost all end game builds can achieve, because the bosses have no friends around. Feeling tanky in Crucible is a completely different story because the bosses have friends, and the Crucible itself has debuffs.
In a sense, ultra DA build is somewhat similar to permanent circuit breaker (aka CDR) build. While CDR build requires you to have Nightblade or Arcanist, DA build requires you to have non-%weapon damage and non-DOT (poison, bleed, IT…; DPS from skills such as Storm Box are not counted) for the obvious reason that you cannot sacrifice too many sources of flat damage or DoT in exchange for more DA (well in theory you can, but it’s not worth it because the overall DPS will drop like crazy). This is largely true for main game however.
In Crucible, it is more or less OK to make this DPS->DA sacrifice because the loss in DPS is made up by the amount of time not kiting around otherwise.
Not all players have the will and the focus to play a game where you need to be constantly watching out when you are on the brink of death to use the circuit breaker (or HP pot, or whatever). Most just want a more casual playstyle and DA builds fit this purpose perfectly. Casual players like me want to watch the world burns, not my own HP burns.
Having said that, DA builds is more of a Crucible setup. In main game, all you need are basic survivability and some good DPS to kill the bosses (with no friends), because you want to kill things fast and efficiently.
Last but not least, DA build is not that high and mighty because RNG god is watching you all the time. I have a 5k1 DA Infiltrator (with 26% dodge chance and 56% deflection chance, not counting the -130 OA from Veil of Shadow), yet in a certain Crucible 170 run, 2 Alek showed up and to my awe, 2 big meteors actually hit me. I was shredded to dust of course. Remember, RNG god is always watching.
Agree man, with 2k5 DA fabius has 83% chance to hit, couple with some mutators nemesis have slightly chance to crit you, ~5%. With 4k5 DA+ only 18-20% chance to hit, so unless kupa or alex hit you with their high RR/DAR spells you will be safe. Btw the cost of huge DA is 3-400 OA too.
Yes, to obtain high DA, DPS and DA losses are inevitable. That’s why there should be a separate mechanism to increase OA such as Lethal Assault, or you must have some sort of -DA skills such as Flashbang. In my Infiltrator build, my main damage dealer is Rune of Hagarrad and at 21/12, it can -340 DA to all enemies affected. Therefore, while my Infiltrator constantly maintains DA at around 5k1-5k3, effective OA is around 3k2 also, which is decent enough to land some crit hits.
It’s basically a new meta for Crucible (or old meta already) along with CDR spellbinders and s&b Death knights. You play traps with Mage Hunter or Infiltratior (or even Vindicator) and you can forget about weapon damage/casting speed/attack speed, becase you don’t need them. So you just focus on having enough defense to survive most awkward waves and Runes will do work for you.
I don’t completely agree with this part. The first high DA build that became popular here was that 6k bleed warder that had Blade Arc as the main skill (both wd and dot). It sacrificed bleed duration and % modifier, though so you’re still kinda right. I think the reason why high DA builds mostly are non WD builds is because most WD builds can afford to finish crucible without getting that much DA. Physical s&b can, coldbreakers go cdr, korba can, fire strike can in some builds, krieg can. I agree with the rest, though.
Agree too. High DA works best with close range casters/melee, others can beat cru well with lower DA/CDR style, such as Spellbinder or Sorceress. But if we want to farm crucible effectively, high DA builds are recommended.
Sorry, but only very few “selected” builds can do 151-170 waves on Gladiator. Yes, my build isnt tanky enough for that, sadly.
On challenger, i dont experience any troubles with those waves.
Or reaper or WH