My first game, I started elite at level 70 after completing all the missions. I wanted to create a character that would not die easily and have high area attack. I’m open to your suggestions, I forgot to print the additional speed skill attached to the medal hahah.
Welcome to the grim forum!
what do you mean by this?
Have you read this guide? [1.2.1.6] Hardcore Beginner Lightning Cooldown Primal Strike Warder SR26
Welcome.
Your build looks like a solid start, in a pretty good place for levelling. Not a lot of obvious mistakes.
In general, I would like to make two points about it:
1] You lack a source of “flat” resistance reduction.
Resistance reduction is a complex topic, but there are 3 types, 2 of which are important. You have skills that say -x% lightning resistance, like the aura on your Wind Devils or the arcane bombs generated by your Widow devotion. These stack.
And you have the type that says “X reduced target’s lightning/elemental/whatever resistances”. That type does not stack, so you want to have exactly 1 source of it.
(The third type, “X% reduced target’s Y resistance”, is not as important because of math reasons.)
Anyway, you lack a source of the second resistance reduction type, and you really want it to improve DPS.
The obvious way to get it for a lightning damage character is to take “Rowan’s Crown” devotion for its elemental storm skill. I’d probably give up the Crab and Lion to get it.
2] Your attack speed is very low.
Attack speed is probably the biggest damage multiplier of all on a spam melee character like this. And increasing it will make life drain much more effective.
I wouldn’t worry about it too much right now, but for the level 100 version you definitely want attack speed to be as close to 200% as possible.
Best ways:
- Farm a halberd with +attack speed affixes, like “Of alacrity.”
- Get gloves with a lot of attack speed and put in an attack speed augment. (Easiest way is to craft Plagueguard Grips later on once you find the blueprint and get high enough level.)
- You can get a bit more from jewelry affixes and augments, but the above two are the biggest contributors.
Again though, it’s not worth spending a ton of time farming right now, wait until you hit level 94+.
And some minor points:
Since you’re a regen build, you could swap some of those soul shard components in your jewelry for corpsedust. Also gives vit res, but additionally boosts health and regen by a nice amount.
You should probably also swap the weapon component for something more useful, like Haunted Steel for extra life drain/panic button,
Oh, and you could try looking for the Hidden Path quest (it’s a secret quest, start searching near Devil’s Crossing, or google it if you don’t mind spoilers) to get some much nicer green pants. (There are 3 hidden path trousers, the first boosts offense and regen, the second boosts life steal, and those would both be excellent for your build.)
edit: And don’t forget armour absorption. You want to use a second scaled hide in your shoulders to reduce the amount of physical damage you take from small attacks. Or just invest more points in Decorated Soldier, that also works.
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Thank you, yes I’ve reviewed this guide, I just wanted some advice based on my current progress.
This is very valuable informations, I’ll try to pay attention to all of it. Will giving up on the lion and crab cause me difficulties in the ultimate or upcoming difficulty mode?
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Will giving up on the lion and crab cause me difficulties in the ultimate or upcoming difficulty mode?
Nah. Lion is… meh. Very skippable.
Crab is quite nice. It boosts your damage and gives you a damage shield (effectively more hitpoints) against various types of magic damage.
However, for a high-health regen & lifesteal build like this one, a couple thousand magic damage absorption isn’t going to make a huge difference. And elemental storm gives about equal damage bonuses. I’d say you’re fine.
(In fact, you could skip elite and go straight to Ultimate right now if you find a bit more elemental resistance, your build should be plenty strong enough at level 70.)
Incidentally, I see you copied your devotion map from the linked build. The reason that build does not include Elemental Storm is that instead it uses Warcry with the “Terrify” mutator, and the Fleshwarped Casque helm to give warcry 100% uptime. That skill also gives flat reduction, and as I said it doesn’t stack.
Since you don’t have warcry, you do need the elemental storm. Alternatively, you could take Warcry and farm that helm.
Personally I would recommend using Elemental Storm, since the endgame version of the build drops the helmet and so had bad warcry uptime. Elemental Storm also has a much stronger RR effect (32 vs. 21) and terrify makes enemies run away which can be annoying when you want to hit them with your axe.
Warcry also provides the linked build with the “reduced target’s damage” effect, which is a very potent defense in end-game modes like Shattered Realm. Your build is missing that too.
Not a concern for now, but once you move to endgame content you should try to fix that problem. These boots used by the endgame version of the linked build also provide a weaker version of the effect, so keep an eye out for those.
Anyway, you don’t really need to worry about it during the campaign.
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Thank you so much for your helpful response.
For now, I’ll drop the Lion and Crab and get “Rowan’s Crown.”
I’ll pay more attention to attack speed (although it’s not critical right now, as you said).
Since this is my first time playing, I want to complete every difficulty level at least once.
I’ll pay attention to armor absorption and the attachments I use on my weapon, making sure not to reduce my resistances. If the Corpe Dust on the rings doesn’t reduce my resistances, I’ll change them immediately.
I completed the Hidden Path quest in normal mode; I’ll pay attention to those pants in elite mode as well. It’s best to do this quest on every difficulty level to gain +1 skill point.
The game has some QoL features here: if you complete it on Ultimate, you also get the rewards for doing it on lower difficulties if you haven’t completed those yet.
Still, by all means explore and try out elite to get a better feel for the difficulty. This game is lots of fun, but it has a steep learning curve and weird mechanics, so take your time.
And have fun!