Mythical Alladrah's Spellblade feedback

When I was leveling my Archon, I got a level 84 legendary drop: the Mythical Alladrah’s Spellblade. Eye of Reckoning is all the rage these days, but I prefer auto-attacking so I decided to give it a try for Savagery. It was fun during the campaign and I started looking into options to dual-wield with it for endgame. There I had nothing but very poor performance; I’ll explain why below and give suggestions to improve the weapon so that fire Savagery could actually be a viable way to play endgame. One or more of these would go a long way towards supporting a new viable archetype.

  1. This is most important: Add Physical to Fire conversion to Savagery (and maybe Fire Strike also). Both % universal and as a skill mod to fully convert physical damage on Savagery. Because the weapon only converts lightning damage to fire, there is no way to use a good solid mace or axe with high DPS in the offhand because you cannot convert the physical damage, and the slot that does that function is blocked. This means your only choices for the offhand are another dagger, scepter or a shield, all of which will have lower damage. We already have to make big sacrifices to play 1H Shaman since we are locked out of no less than 5 different abilities with strong offensive and defensive benefits.
  • Shaman even has access to flat physical damage in the form of Mogdrogen’s Pact, but cannot use it because there is no way to fully convert it. Meanwhile, all I have to do is put on a Servitor’s Cleaver or a Soulblade and all physical damage is converted on Righteous Fervor - the performance is massively superior on the exact same class combination, and with practically the same gearing, compared with fire Savagery. If Alladrah’s dagger had physical conversion, then I could try for a fire roll on Barrog’s MI mace and pick up some %weapon damage, or use it together with a Soulblade and tradeoff Savagery and RF. Currently neither option is supported by the weapon without conversion. That Soulblade also has an attack speed mod and ADCTH for RF further exacerbates the gulf in power.
  1. Add 2 skill points for Savagery. Unlike Fire Strike, it is extremely difficult to get points in Savagery while supporting a fire build. At least if the weapon itself has some Savagery points then there is a useful increase in power. As it is, reaching that extra charge level at 24/16 is almost out of the question, let alone reaching the 26/16 cap. You would have to use completely unsuitable items that hamper your performance overall.

  2. Change the burn mods to have flat fire, maybe 50/50 fire and burn. Even when using another suitable fire weapon such as Blazeheart in the offhand, Savagery’s mix comes out as nearly 50% burn because of the converted electrocute from Storm Touched. Burn damage cannot heal you and its duration gets overwritten with the next strike anyway. So you have massive issues with health sustain even with 20% life steal, while also suffering from mediocre damage.

Thanks for reading.

Items mentioned for readers’ reference:

Mythical Alladrah’s Spellblade: https://www.grimtools.com/db/items/12554
Barrog’s Bloody Arm: https://www.grimtools.com/db/items/14056
Servitor’s Cleaver: https://www.grimtools.com/db/items/11769
Mythical Soulblade: https://www.grimtools.com/db/items/12755
Blazeheart: https://www.grimtools.com/db/items/11200

Best version I managed of the Alladrah Archon, which still could not complete SR 65 no matter what the affixes due to terminally low sustain: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/DV9RdoxZ

4 Likes

I’d say that lighnting to fire conversion via direct mod is competely reduntant, since you already have global conversion and because fire savagery has like about… 0 gear support, obvious choise for second hand is another dagger. Thus, you end up with 300% lightning to fire conversion.

1 Like

If it had +2 to Savagery, then with the Korvaak helm I could make a build out of it. With physical conversion it could even be good. As it is, I can’t hope to reach 24/16 for the last % charge so I just went for 4 piece Justice and hoped all the burn procs and hardcapped Judgment would help. They didn’t.

I also think the savagery modifier on the weapon is useless, it’s a meme at most. Improving it might be a solution by changing burn damage into flat fire to savagery and adding some weapon damage/or degree based attack to it maybe with +3 targets etc(if it’s possible ofc). Since there is also no gear support that kind of combination; a player must use justicar set or shattered guardian set for both archon and elementalist classes. And the build would have already low damage output, SR set should even make it worse since it has no fire flat damage.

Completely deleting the savagery modifier and adding something else is also another option here; maybe fire primal strike? Another one hand weapon that activates primal strike make things really cool. Though it will also be a meme, but a rightful one! :rofl:

Another option here could be fire storm totem not sure there is another modifier with that though.

My understanding of the item’s design is that Savagery is supposed to be used as a supporting skill with its second and third nodes, considering the focus on burn and Storm Touched.

It’s possible, but then the mods to Fire Strike are exactly the same, and Fire Strike is no supporting ability. If it had been intended by the developers that the ability would be used solely for the Tenacity stacks, then the dagger would have points to Tenacity instead of Storm Touched. For a fire conversion build ST only provides burn damage and attack speed… and what else are you going to use attack speed on if not attacking?

I think the potential is there for fire Savagery to be good simply with physical to fire conversion and some points to Savagery. That would enable a build like this to work: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/a2E6gGbV

Well I thought EoR would be the main skill so the attack speed would make sense.
But yeah FS support looks really unappealing.

It would be possible to stack up Savagery to get the attack speed to spin for a while, but the stacks decay every 2 seconds, and it doesn’t provide any help buffing fire damage so that sounds like more trouble than it’s worth. Better to get enough attack speed and stats so you can spin without it, even if that means you’re probably rerolling a Shieldbreaker instead.

To me, if you’re going to put in 16+ points in Savagery to get the 8 charges, all those points in Tenacity, and pump Storm Touched in addition then that becomes the main event, not a supporting ability.

I’m a simple man… I just want a straightforward build that works. :slight_smile: It felt like fire Savagery with support from Divine Mandate would be strong. But the lack of conversion (like there is on 2 different weapons for RF) and the lack of skill points means it underperforms severely compared to using RF with similar gear. If their answer to that is “just use RF,” then I live with it, but I can still miss the potential.

LoL and AA skill as supporting role? with conversion modifier? Along with other AA skill? Nope. That’s dps loss, it only works with 2h primal strike to get bonusses from savagery line. Stopping EoR to hit savagery every 2 sec? That’s not gonna work. Using RF and hitting savagery once in a while? That might have a chance though if you focus on RF with dual soulblades or blazehearts you’ll get better results and then no need for shaman class. And if you make a burn build that hit&runs, judgment might be your main skill but still it won’t be enough damage output, hit savagery+ judgment then run? lol there are better alternatives. If you can get savagery to retaliation damage to attack modifier from somewhere else(but is there? except dawnbreaker mace…), then a fire retaliation archon you can use savagery as support role.

Even there, Storm Touched gives % lightning retaliation, not fire. Practically any potential synergy here is not even possible.

Again, if you have physical to fire conversion to Savagery, it opens up new possibilities. You could do Alladrah + Soulblade or Servitor, and have Savagery and RF sharing WPS and buffing each other. You could do Alladrah + shield and benefit from the flat on Shield Training (and Shattering Smash too I think?). Or you could use Alladrah + Barrog’s with a fire roll and push Savagery DPS much higher. That’s already three new build ideas that would work at endgame that aren’t viable now, not counting the fact that even double Alladrah’s is terrible right now because of not being able to get points in Savagery or utilize the physical damage in Mogdrogen’s. You can use the flat from Stormcaller’s Pact, but for this build that’s suboptimal.

For reference, I took this Archon build to SR 70 with very little trouble (considering that I’m a dumbass who can’t play). The weapons were literally just the first two cleavers that dropped, one does not even have any flat on it. It doesn’t look like anything special on paper, but it does about twice the damage overall compared with the double-dagger setup: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/xZym7pnZ

@fordprefect You’re contradicting yourself and not making sense. Help me understand.
EoR isn’t even an AA skill.
What makes Primal Strike unique for using Savagery compared to other attack speed-based abilities? Savagery can be used for the buff even on casters.
I know that EoR has a windup, but you’re dooming yourself if you’re not stopping to cast Wind Devil anyway. And that’s even slower on an attack speed-based build than stacking up Savagery. EoR even works with e.g. Doom Bolt or Word of Pain support for chaos damage.

Btw I’m not conviced the conversion would solve/greatly help the problem. Daggers and Scepters can work exceptionally well for autoattackers (Fang of Ch’thon, Blazeheart, Chillheart, Heart of Theodin). And the damage on Mog’s Pact is so low I doubt it’s worth taking.

EoR isn’t a default attack skill, though it’s an auto attack skill since you spam them but ofc technically game don’t describe it like that since it’s also channelling. But when you look closely all spam skills are kinda channeling without interruption because if you stop pushing the lmb/rmb weapons won’t hit either. Channel ones just has more consequence for stopping since you start slow. So I’m not conradicting myself, though you’re right about wind devil which I didn’t think of that since it’s all fire shaman class is like a ghost but that makes it worst since you have to use Savagery, Wind Devil, Judgment, too much rotation for my melee spam attack concept and it’s worse with eor.

Well, usually “auto attack” is used as “default weapon attack” among players, so there’s the confusion. Channeling skills are still different enough from others. I see what you mean that using all those would be too clunky, and people often complain about Savagery feeling like that, so hopefully the skill itself can be changed.

The contradiction was that Savagery can’t work at all as support for an AA skill, but after you said it had a chance with RF.

I helped @Tarazet to make a fire savagery build because I also find it interesting, it is not possible, not even with hit&run build; with EoR? you don’t need the shaman class, there are better alternatives, It’s already has too much interruption from monsters, extra two skill to hit less? with RF? again no need for shaman, shieldbreaker or paladin would be much better, even sentinel. It’s just that so burn modifier to savagery is useless, using savagery as a support skill is not suitable for my play style, I don’t like Wind Devil either; I have a 100 level druid which I had fun while leveling but it’s just Pita to play so I only use it like bank.

The actual damage numbers on Savagery and Righteous Fervor aren’t that different. They should be able to perform the same, and Savagery maybe even a little better because Tenacity grants you OA, at the expense of not having the armor bonus. Instead RF has double the sheet damage in a similar build because it’s actually supported by the gear; I can get it to 26/16 and I can use axes with more inherent DPS. And that’s with some pretty crappy green weapons, not even optimal ones or Soulblades which would be even stronger. And the flat damage on Mogdrogen’s Pact, when it gets added to RF, adds about 5% to each base hit, multiplied by the RF charges; that is not a small amount. Plus that also pulls in the flat Internal Trauma from Divine Mandate and converts that to burn too.

Daggers can work for AA if the class has really excellent synergy and support for it. They have lower damage so they need to make up for that. The synergy is missing here; it’s like they designed it for EoR and then said “as long as we’re doing this, let’s add lightning to fire conversion on fire strike and savagery and let the players figure it out.” Well, I tried it and the results were abysmal. On a Fire Strike build it might be better, but I suspect not.

There are plenty of 2H builds that use Savagery that are absolute DPS monsters. None of the changes I’m asking for would impact those builds at all. It needs some help to work for 1H. It could also make for interesting possibilities for Vindicator, Elementalist, Conjurer, Druid in addition to Archon, but Archon is where I see the most potential for synergy.


lol.

1 Like

@fordprefect I like Shaman class, matter of preference. Wind Devil and Wendigo Totem are both great for devotion procs in melee and Blood Pact gives you an ADCTH boost. So it can support a melee AA style very nicely if you’re willing to play the piano. Obviously it offers more for 2H but it is not hopeless for 1H.

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/p25k9XmZ This is probably to only way to play fire savagery. You basically hit&run, wait till Ascension, then go use judgment, spam savagery, hit brutal slam when active; when ascension over use absolution keep hitting&throwing, then run :rofl: use judgment and throw shield once in a while and spam Wind Devil while running, ascension up, go tank again. Good burn stack. Though it will slow…

That build has extremely low OA. Otherwise neat concept.