Hey all, I currently have 3 builds I’m playing with which are all pretty awesome where they are but I don’t have a colossal amount of playtime to sink into each one and while they are all in Epic somewhere, getting each to Level 100 is going to be a bitch.
So I want to know which build is the most viable for Ultimate.
Build 1: Aether Spellbinder (Arcanist/Necromance)
This build’s entire focus is on Aether damage and kiting with Panettis.
Currently at level 71 he does about 20-30k per second and aether ray is somewhere in the 40-50 region but he has a severe case of brittle bones and things like Flesh hulks eat him for breakfast due to their aether resistance.
He’s great, but dies a lot and I’m not sure what other directions I can take with him.
Build 2: Chaos/Poison/Vitality WitchBlade
This build was made cos every legendary I found was an occultist buff, like Fiend’s Resolve. His general premise is debuffing and lowering resistances with Curse of Frailty and Veil of Shadows and using Phantasmal blades from a distance before Scythe of Tenebris up close.
Build 3: Cold/Vitality/Life leech Reaper
This build is my current one and he is amazing with the amount of life he leeches and the sheer damage he outputs when certain abilities proc. He has a handy 1>2>3 hat trick of Lethal strike>Amarastas>Bone harvest which stacks buffs until Bone harvest unleashes 15-30k damage on anything in front of me.
The only issue I have found is enemies that 1 shot him. If they take off most of my health I can stay alive with Ghoulish hunger and blade barrier as a last result, but I find some of the big guys in Crucible will 1 shot him before I get a chance.
Currently I’m throwing everything I can into Physique, but for now I rely on my mate’s ritualist with his health auro and Wendigo to keep me alive in some situations.
From the opinion of more experiences people, which would you say is the most viable Ultimate build?
My experience is Ultimate AoM is going to require a lot of tanking no matter what you build. There are a number of fights which prevent you from dealing with them any other way, except maybe DoT’s would allow some kiting on a few of the mobs, which are everywhere.
My offensive oriented Apostate with defensive possibilities, had to scrap the offense in order to reach 39% physical resists, max every other resist on front page, and high all other crowd control resists, and 11K HP. He even had the Inquisitor seal to soak up 350 damage from every hit, and 24% ADCTH. That was about the minimum for him to survive through a few of those fights.
You may just find it more fun to play up until AoM Ultimate, and save that for a time when you have awesome gear to choose from.
Yeah I agree, I’m confident once I hit level 75 I should be much better off as I can max my resistances and start grinding for some really solid gear that will at least serve as a base level for endgame.
Here’s a Grimtools spec up of what I can hopefully expect at that point for my Spellbinder who is the closest.
I’ve really only used Necromancer for the additional stats and Aether buff.
Ravenous earth is helpful as an AOE and debuff though.
Resistances are amazing, especially in the case of Aether which is 174% over limit xD
Yeah, I’ve decided to completely re-spec my Arcanist build, go with a Mage Hunter and run Aura of Censure, Inquisitor’s Seal and Word of Renewal with Panetti’s.
Managed to get most things to a very solid resistance level, although a lot of this is relying on procs, however at least there is enough stun resist to go with the likely ridiculous damage output.
But I think when standing in the Seal with Maiven’s up this guy should be pretty tanky, especially if tortoise procs and I have mirror as a fallback.
I ended up running AOM once i got decent gear too. my original builds that were good for vanilla got stomped in AoM Ult. But once I started getting mythic versions of said gear, using the new Components and augments, and building for tankyness first, my toons started progressing through Ult AoM.
My easiest build that I ran was a Vitality based melee/Dot hybrid. DW vitality stacked damage, with tons of life leech. health bar bounces like a basketball at a professional league game. but I never really die. I built that toon due to all the vitality gear I was getting as well. for some reason vitality gear is the new thing. probably a result of the influx of new class gear.
But yes, to summarize, AoM Ult is much more doable when you have the new gear to go with it. It’s till overtuned IMO, but it’s pretty obvious that they intended people to be using the new gear with much better stats. I find that a balance of phys reduction, ADCtH, and damage is needed to survive (along with maxed resists of course…overcapped resists are even better).
From the two builds you linked you seem to have a serious case of undervaluing resists and health. Also you said tortoise as if that is supposed to be a good thing when it is usually a red flag for poorly designed defense.
For ult i find anything sub 12k health and any front page resist below 80 to be very uncomfortable against even trash. Keep in mind too that frequently your best avaliabe item will be a good high health green - purple doesn’t always mean better (or,even worth anything, case in point fiends resolve is worth less than the dynamite you should use to explode it)
You’re probably right, I think I get too absorbed trying to spec for damage but I probably need to spec for more resistances and health over trying to get as much damage as possible.
I’m working on a FoI build at the moment but I think I’ll try and focus on resists and health as a focus as getting to the torch devotion tree is surprisingly easy and grants pretty easy access to behemoth. But I appreciate the input, this will be the biggest factor for me to work on I think with these builds
I think it’s funny a few weeks later and more time in the expansion how much my builds have changed xD I re-read your post today and laughed cos my current build has much more focus on Health and resistances and is cruising through Ultimate without a care. All the above builds are trash and I was stupid when speccing them cos they all crashed and burned around Elite AoM. Guess it shows the difference between an inexperienced player assuming DPS is everything against a bit more time and knowledge about defense and the wonders of RR.
My 2h Pyromancer is crushing everything and tanking most bosses cept Mad Queen and Nemesis where I can kite with Obsidian Tremor. Retrospectively, thank you for the advise lol
Of the builds you listed I think the witchblade might be the most satisfying to play and also one of the easiest to get resists and tankiness out of. You have three skills that are pretty much essential to the build that will boost resistances nicely without losing anything. You get some of the best DoTs and AoE’s. You have three damage types that are heavily supported by both skills and constellations that will give you versatility and options against most enemy types even if they are resistant to one of your damage types. Gearing witchblade builds is quite easy (in my opinion) as I’ve had no end of gear drop that seemed almost tailored to my build. This is my build. It is not gear optimised at the moment as I am still trying to get gear but it does the content in Ult without much difficulty except a few instances. I am also still optimising where the build is going but it might give you a general idea;
The damage in the tooltip isn’t even close to how much this build is capable of kicking out. I think I’m going to change dying god for abomination for that amazing AoE proc but I already have another build that uses that so I am in two minds about it. The other nice thing about witchblade is if you get bored with bashing things in the face you can easily change it to ranged or caster with some minimal changes. Also that mythical amulet is hilarious in my opinion, especially when you put eldritch fire on war cry. Debuff all the enemies in a radius and then auto damage from the amulet
That’s actually not far off my current build which is a Pyromancer running converted fire strike. Using Darkblaze set and considering swapping ruby of gar’dal for Darkblaze source. I’ve put eldritch fire on obsidian Tremor cos I alt between that and firestrike which is 100% chaos after conversion
