Fabius is a joke to retaliation. I’m still testing my auramancer retaliator, and he went down in like 5-8 seconds.
Also, since apparently Master’s Spellbalde is getting a tweak, I wouldn’t count it amongst items useful for retaliation anymore. I invested in Word of Pain and Assasin’s Mark, so far, everything goes down way faster then pure retaliation. Hybrid actually works better, apart from specific bosses like Ravager.
My only concern about RET is that we don’t have ranged and magic retaliation. I have to rely on things like RR, Targo’s Hammer and proc from Reign of Ice and Fire to mow them down. And even then, these rings are insanely buggy, so it doesn’t help that much.
The Assassin’s mark on Bloody Pox is absolutely logical and the only way to pull off reasonable clear times in the campaign since 70-80% retaliation damage is pierce and around 10% is physical - it goes without saying.
MQ, Fabius and all melee enemies that have inherently high attack speed will also kill themselves faster on a retaliation build - that also goes without saying. The Master’s Blade helps pet builds perhaps more than it does retaliation characters because you can easily get 18-22 pets at the same time. They also have a more varied damage spectrum than retaliation, viz. vitality, chaos, cold, physical, fire, acid/poison, bleed Vs. pierce, physical, lightning, bleed. With these being said it is true that the Master’s blade was a “niche” item…but IMO it is too powerful due to mainly three reasons:
The Plaguebearer variant - DaShiv reported a 55 flat one. It’s true that I have never seen such high values on the item, but I did manage to craft one with 47 and I don’t exclude the possibility of a 55 roll. 47 (!) is enormous - it is 3 times the value of Black Star and Valepiercer - the last being a quite rare mythical item that was specifically designed for pet builds. It is also 1.66 the value of Manticore.
The nullification of opportunity costs - what I mean by this is that it allows you to go another route instead of Manticore. Yes, there is indeed a big misconception that flat resistance reduction also targets Life Leech and most new players go for that devotion without realising it doesn’t affect ADctH. Flat resistance reduction, however, is massively important as a multiplicative damage amplification source. By allowing pet builds - who otherwise have 3 sources of multiplicative damage amplification (i.e. crit + attack speed + RR) to bypass Manticore it makes the characters very powerful because they can go to for another T3 devotion besides Dying God. In simple terms, they have the cake and eat it too.
It costs very little - the blade is craftable. This is very important, especially since the “rarest” material it requires is represented by Void-Touched ammo. If the blade required even 2-3 Wendigo Spirits, I would have no problem with this aspect, but it doesn’t…you can craft Void-Touched ammo ad nauseam due to how common roiling blood is.
In closing, 15-20 flat on the base item seems more appropriately. If I were in charge of balancing, I would rather buff the -%chaos on the Fang of Ch’thon to -25 in order not to hurt chaos builds too bad…
I’m very surprised on the 55 roll. Plaguebearer was nerfed long ago. Normally it shouldn’t be possible. I had one with 45 and managed 10 sec Fabius kill(before his first BB). Pretty weird and yes 55 is too much. 25-30 would prob be more within reason
I’m not sure where this is coming from - AFAIK the current max roll on a Plaguebearer Master’s Spellblade is 47 when crafted normally and 49 when crafted using a low-level mule as described in my guide. 50+ rolls were probably possible before one of the RR balancing passes a while back but that was before I ever attempted crafting them.
EDIT: Forgot to mention - for AoM Crate also added a massive RR bonus to the Mythical Mindwarp that provides stronger RR for melee builds than any spellblade: http://www.grimtools.com/db/items/9465
That’s true - and it is also one of the reasons one can solo the Ravager with a Haunt relic Death Knight even with less than 3k armour and 3k DA - which, IMO, shouldn’t be possible. On this issue I’ve expressed my opinion before - buff the LL reduction of Ratosh to -10% or -15% and decrease it on Haunt to -10% at most. The reduction, though, is probabilistic - meaning it is ultimately less useful for casters who have one, mostly two %Weapon Damage skills on cooldown than for cadence S&B characters who can stack AS to the cap and also benefit from a ton of flat reduction (Overguard + Stone Form), percentage reduction (Menhir) and block (Shield Wall).
Regarding the Master’s spellblade, the character sheet reports a 55 flat reduction one. This might be a mistake on the part of Grimtools - a case in which is should indeed be corrected. Personally, I don’t have the resources necessary in order to craft 500-1000 spellblades in order to see if it goes beyond 47. 47 is the most I’ve got and it is HUGE !
From the video I’ve seen of it - made by a member of this forum, actually - it seems to be the Ravager of Souls. The man never posted the build, but the video should be easily available on the internet.
From what I could gather, he used Krieg + Haunt + Mindwarp in order to decrease the LL resistance of the Ravager of Souls and life leech the s**t out of it. This might have to do with the Ravager than the build itself (i.e. only 2.9k armour without buffs) because the “of Souls” is mentally challenged. He never uses his %life reduction nuke if you are in melee range.
Grimtools erroneously lists Master’s Spellblade as having a base RR of 35, when in-game it’s actually 25 (and Zantai plans to reduce that to 15).
The reason I mentioned the Mythical Mindwarp is that the Plaguebearer’s Master’s Spellblade is even more niche than before, given that melee builds currently have a far superior flat RR option. And the only caster builds that have shown any willingness to give up tons of bonuses (including skill mods) on their weapons in exchange for flat RR are… pet builds. :rolleyes: Maybe even pet build, singular.
Right, seen the video. And remember that Ravager. It was my first encounter in testing and I remember and he throws a large purple ball or something.
Ravagers were also quite overtuned in testing and the of souls version did 14k dmg on my Spellbreaker:D My first kiill was over tuned “of minds” with commando and he rewarded me with a bugged blue helm for my efforts. At that time I couldn’t even conceive a Fevered Ravager.
Is it actually that good? I made a Battlemage, but trading for one and taking look at another I found their value about 30 flat, which isn’t even a possible value, according to grimtools.
