so far i’ve only played one character above normal difficulty, a PS warder which was my first character, and when it came to picking my devotions i basically stuck to things that would buff my lightning damage (or reduce enemy resists)
however, as i was checking out some fire EoR builds i saw people picking devotions like bat and ultos, which i would have never chosen due to a lack of buffs to fire damage. so i then started to question what the thought-process behind devotions is… should i think of them more as a way to patch holes in my builds (like bat increasing survivability), should i pay more attention to the red stars, even if the other bonuses don’t synergyse with my build?
any tips are welcome, i’m thinking of leveling multiple characters after the next update and being able to map my own devotions without an internet guide would be very convenient
I try to avoid “foreign” damage types, as much as possible. 100% of the time to be honest. And most of the time, if the devotion skills dont fit damage type, the nodes dont also. Still there is room for a lot different ways to setup the devotions and i always find a really smooth fitting setup for a specific build which is mostly one damage type. I put hours in Grim Tool to try the devotion minigame.
But at some point i am not so sure. Like for example my fire Paladin: In my actual devotion setup i avoided Eldritch Fire because its Chaos too. But think its bad to avoid fire RR. If you are interested in my pure damage type devotion setups as example i would like to recieve comments. So please feel free to ask and to challenge the setup.
Avoid dryad. It’s awful. Ghoul is vastly superior.
You didn’t take assassin’s mark on your warlord, nor viper for your elemental builds.
Abomination is vastly superior to yuugol’s for your acid set up.
P.S: What do you mean by…
If you mean damage types which aren’t used by your class, I actually think you shouldn’t avoid them 100% of the time, especially if you have the conversion to support it.
For example, guardian’s gaze is the best offensive vitality devotion out there if you can convert 100% of the acid/chaos damage to vit.
Thanks for responding.
I use always Ghoul on those melee builds, Dryad is just on top. I didnt find a better spending. Because its just the last points i put there after i am ready with the core damage devotions which inlcude Ghoul always. I agree Ghoul being superior. The only thing why i see them closer each other is the CD. I like the short CD on Dryad and dont like the rather long CD on Ghoul.
About Assassin’s mark, i am still not ready for that at the OA side. Then i will consider it seriously.
About Abomination vs Yugol, i was considering the secondary (cold) %damage stats on Yugol at a higher priority, because i use Rumor too, and as a Nightblade with alot of cold/frostburn which i cannot convert fully afaik for now, i choosed Yugol. Its more fitting in regards of Rumor and Veil of Shadow. I think and hope that makes some sense.
And to precise the thing about “foreign”: i only meant % damage. Flat damage as you put it is really interesting if you convert it.
I like to ask you a question if you dont mind. Do you think that Wayward Soul is wasted if i assign it to Resilience? Its 100% proc chance if i do, but the CDs are not matching perfectly, if you know what i mean. Only if i am really lucky then it will be used everytime when Resilience triggers. At least theoretically. Could be wrong here. Or in other words: It wont be used every time Resilience triggers, that could be mostly the case. So it seams to be bad to assign them?
Forgot to mention the missing Viper.
I was avoiding Viper because i thought that it will be only worth if i dont have enough RR. I dont see the point if i have like 3x -%RR. I read alot about it worht if you have rather low -% RR. But i could be wrong there too.
I would really like to read your insights. Even though i have around 500 hours into it, i still feel the learning curve is going and going and going.
Go for it. I never can get enough input.
You deal vastly more poison damage than cold damage, and yugol doesn’t give %poison. So you are hindering your DPS significantly.
Regarding your WL:
Physical damage is seriously gimped by enemy armor. Seeing that you’re using a 1H weapon, and seeing that enemies have 70% armor absorption, chances are only 30% of your sheet DPS is actually being used.
This is especially true for harder enemies like maiden.
Currently in your set up you have a measly 60% phys rr.
On someone like kaisan with 50% phys res and 3.7mil hp, this amounts to fuck all basically.
Taking assassin’s mark increases your RR from 60% to 92% which is tantamount to a 30% DPS gain on an enemy like kaisan.
Thanks again.
About Viper, does that mean its viable even if i have a good amount of the “strong” RR?
About Yugol vs Abomination, yes, posion is missing, but is the acid damage and the ADctH of Yugol, and the fact that my secondary damage is cold and not chaos not enough to compensate? This is really hard to see for me atm. But i will give it a serious try.
And about armor on enemy. I was reading a couple of contrary things. For example that Physical Resistance is rather low in comparison to other enemy resistances. Dam. I am confused now. But i believe what youre saying. There is not only Phys Res, which could be rather low, BUT there is armor too. Makes sense.
Edit: Oh dear, if the pools dont stack, its bad. I will change this.
Wow thanks for the quick ellaborate respond. I admit that i didnt get to think about using grim tools to read out damage that way. Thank you very much.
I am so excited to work around my builds again.
