This is my first playthrough so bear with me please and do not get mad at all these noob(ish) questions.
I just hit clvl 22 with my DW (physical / pierce) Nightblade and killed Warden twice without major hassle. Second mastery most probably would be Arcanist.
to the point now - how the heck do I get all this pierce dmg? from where? Is for example “20% armour piercing” listed on swords pierce dmg? Or I have to look for flat “3 pierce dmg” for example, like on this low level relic you can socket weapon with? And later will there be weapon with a stat like “converts x physical dmg to pierce dmg”?
Currently my pierce dmg is very low. I can bump it up a little as this relic I socket my weapon with grants me aura that adds smallish pierce dmg. But still my physical to pierce dmg ratio is approx 10 : 1…
I would like to have more pierce since from what I read it is resisted only by a single res and physiucal also by armour.
Or should I just go physical / pierce without paying much attention to the ratio between the two? and try to get as high overall dmg as possible? :undecided:
At this level simply go with what gives you more damage. Once you get to Homestead, simply farm a bit the Royal Hive to get a pair of decent Dermapteran Claws (55% piercing conversion). Make sure to reach the Blades of Nadaan constelation for the node that increases armor piercing by 100%. With this all your physical damage will be converted to piercing (including flat physical damage boosts from items, constellations and procs).
Keep updating the Dermapteran Claws at level 35, 52, 70 (by going back to the Royal Hive) until you get your desired end game weapons (though the Dermapteran is better than all of them for a piercing build, except the Deathmarked set weapons). And welcome to the world of piercing Blademasters where there is no weapon choice at all.
20% armor piercing on a sword means that 20% of all of your physical damage is converted to piercing damage. Swords with the highest armor piercing value will be your weapon of choice if you’re looking to make a piercing build.
I wouldn’t worry too much about the specifics, though. Just learn the basic mechanics, remember what armor piercing means, and get lots of survivability and hp as well.
I just checked out this dermapteran slicer. Its base dmg is relly low, so overall pierce dmg will be low too. On maces or axes with physical dmg the damege is way higher and the weapons are lower level then dermapterans…this confuses me a little as it looks like I will end up with almost all pierce dmg but the dmg will be much lower than overall physical / pierce dmg from other weapon…
Would it be viable to stick to mixed dmg - physical / pierce? Atm, I just want to finish Normal and Elite. Not too much bent on playing on Ultimate.
@egho - “And welcome to the world of piercing Blademasters where there is no weapon choice at all.” that is really comforting and it really lifts my spirits
And is it ok to chose Arcanist for the second mastery instead of Soldier? I want Arcanist for inner focus and off. But I just fooled a little with Blade Trap an it IS good for cc. RoS + RoF is also a nice to have cc 2-point wonder. So I think these 2 might be enough for cc purposes. adding OFF might prove an overkill, might it not?
and if I wanted to take an unorthdox (yet viable) approach to my DW (physical) pierce Nightblade what second class would u recommend? or just flip a coin an chose between soldier and arcanist as I am still on the fence as to what second class to choose. Yet with all the nightblade skills second class will not be heavily invested in.
I took blade spirit as atm it helps a lot. I am doing warden coins and equipment runs (2 so far actually) and BS is a really significant part of the dmg and it does speed things up big time. When it loses its offensive power I can respec of it and leave it at 1 for the devotion procs only and maybe invest more in RoS…
Even if the damage on the weapons seams lower, due to the additional flat damage that Dual Blades, piercing oriented constelations (harpy, assassin, unknown soldier) and gear the dps (damage per second) will be higher. And keep in mind that physical damage is also reduced by the mobs armor, while piercing bypasses it.
For Normal and Elite mixing physical/pierce is good enough. You may also want to take the Bull constellation while leveling and link Bull Rush to your main attack.
Personally I would aim for something like this http://grimcalc.com/build/4PkQcx (skills and devotions) in case I wouldn’t want to pick a secondary mastery yet. And I would stick to Dermapteran (piercing). If +skills items are available simply deduct the points from the correspondent skills. Also farm a bit (easy to get) for a Mistborne Talisman and use the skill given as main attack. Then bind Assasin’s Mark to it.
But I will recommend dual mastery. If going for piercing/physical then Soldier, if going for piercing/cold then Arcanist.
The thing about Nightblade is that with end game gear you will end up with +5 skill from gear. For Soldier you will put 50 points in the mastery for Oleron’s Rage, for Arcanist you will also go 50 for Star Pact.
For a piercing build, Soldier is a vastly superior secondary mastery. Arcanist opens up a mostly cold-based build that focuses on Shadow strike spam, if you are into that.
Don’t overthink weapon choices. Most of your piercing damage will not come from the base weapon damage converted, but from flat piercing damage found on items (Blackwatch seal ring and later Right had of carnage if you have them, for start run shops to find Cutthroat’s rare medals and rings), Constellations (Gargoyle, Assassin and later Unknown soldier) and skills (Dual blades, obviously, but also the rest of the tree). With this in mind, you want attack speed more than anything else on weapons. Ideally, you want to use 2x (Empowered) Duelist sabre, because they give massive amounts of attack speed, as well as a lot of flat piercing damage)
Bull Rush is just an addition to regular auto attacks, right? I will be doing normal auto attacking and every 0.5 second I will get additional attack (like a bonus) from Bull rush, or will it replace my autoattack? Will it interfere with procs from Dual Blades?
Troll Rage - does it replace autoattack? Does it affect procs from DB line? How do I charge it? I hit 7 times and then on the 8th strike it is autoreleased and again charging…?
And Amaratsa and Whirling Death? are they for the flat pierce dmg bonus? Whirling Death seriously cripple the dmg although it affects more targets.
Only RoS for CC? No blade Trap?
What would be some low level devotion to tie to Blade spirit?
And I saw you can respec devotion points, but I also remember reading someplace that under some circumstances you actually cannot respec them ? Is it true - I wouldn’t like to learn it the hard way as now I am fooling around with my whooping 7 or 8 devotion points, going all defensive (and chaotic at the same time).
And where can I get Blackwatch seal ring, Right had of carnage and Empowered Duelist sabre- shop farm or monster farm (monster infrequent, what monsters and where)?
Thanks guys!
EDIT: Shall I chose soldier maybe I could replace Whirling Death with Zoltan at 5 / 12? Looks better on paper to me.
Devotions work as a proc additional to the regular attack.
Troll Rage replaces the normal attack. You simply build charges with each attack and they last for a bit.
The line from dual blades and Markovian/Zoltan are weapon pool skills (WPS). Basically they replace your normal attack when it happens. If all their % chance adds to 100 you will no longer use normal attacks and each attack will be a WPS. Read the description of each skill to see what they do. For example amarasta at 1 point does 3 hits for one attack each for 65% weapon damage (total of 195% weapon damage compared with a normal 100%). In addition, all Nightblade WPS and Markovian Advantage from soldier, hit with both weapons (you can see it if you hover your mouse in game over your skills).
Ideally you want to reach (with bonus points) 20% for each of the 4 Nightblade WPS and 20% for Markovian. With end game gear you only need 1 point in each of the Nightblade WPS as they are upped by the +skill items. Markovian is also good single target as it decreases the defense of the mob, making you hit/crit more often.
You can always respec Devotion points. People who reported otherwise, simply try to remove a constellation that is a dependency of another (for example constellation A gives 5 yellow and constellation B needs 5 yellow; you can’t remove points straight from A, as B is dependent on the 5 yellow; you will have to first remove the complete B and then you can remove A).
For items it is simply a matter of chance for epics (especially until farming elite). Disregarding the fact that there are better than the Duelist Sabre, decent Dermapteran Claws (I think GenralCash hates them ) are easy to farm; any yellow/green “of Alacrity” will do the job, and “Superior” “of Alacrity” can be farmed in less then 2 hours in the Royal Hive (which is also a good farming spot for items/exp, with 3-5 heroes and 2 bosses in a quite small space).
As far as developing soldier, you’ll want to reach at minimum http://grimcalc.com/build/iD2tc8 including +skills. More point in Fighting Spirit are welcomed. At start, simply having 5 points in Mastery and using Markovian, Fighting Spirit and Military Conditioning will be enough, though pumping Mastery has it’s advantage (more raw stats and hp and the movement speed from Oleron).
As a general rule, do not pump blindly points in one skill except if you have nothing else you want. Most skills have diminishing return: For example, at first Squad Tactics give 1% attack speed per rank, but after several ranks is only 1% per 2 ranks. The only skill that is worth getting to max faster is Dual Blades.
Yes, attacks/WPS and procs occur simultaneously. Troll rage will improve your attack/WPS, as it sets the base damage to 135% weapon damage. It behaves like you will normally attack with 135% weapon damage; the WPS will still happen and will use this 135% as a base.
) are easy to farm; any yellow/green “of Alacrity” will do the job, and “Superior” “of Alacrity” can be farmed in less then 2 hours in the Royal Hive (which is also a good farming spot for items/exp, with 3-5 heroes and 2 bosses in a quite small space).