Hi, I’ve made a pretty decent savagery Vindicator. To give you an idea I beat crucible wave 150 without using buffs or banners just straight up out DPS’ed the content facetanking my way through with minimal kiting.
In the campaign only Grava Thul needs to be kited. Mad Queen can be facetanked with life reduction gear. The Ancient grove is a joke and so is the new Kraken boss. My life barely budges while facetanking Kupa.
But sadly my build falls apart on exactly crucible wave 160. Consistently every time. Even with 3 buffs and a vanguard banner. I’m looking for ideas how to raise my survivability while maintaing the DPS more less.
Interesting. I’ve just rerolled my lightning warder to bleeding one, thinking vindicator is a better combo both gear and skill-wise.
What I will write is more from common sense rather than experience, as I only finished 170 with friend. More experienced guys may prove me wrong.
From my experience with lightning warder, though, you have to decide whether you go for dots or direct damage and stick to one of those. Unfortunately, between WD, Storm Box, Totems and Seal you have too much things to cast. You’ll probably spend 70% of your fight casting, so investment into direct damage skills (e.g. brute force, savagery) makes little sense.
You also have 2 powerful sustain skills that require you to be stationary (wendigo totem and inq seal), but you seem not to have enough da and armor to do so.
Maybe it is a good idea to switch to hybrid electrocute caster in this case. Leave brute Force as one pointer, savagery at softcap, switch amulet to storm totem conduit (will give you significant durability through +% max resist), and drop free points to max lightning tether, seal and maelstorm.
Your stun res is quite low. I’d also switch pants, one of the rings and amulet to MIs to get resists and da. Should not be an issue if the current build does 150 w/o buffs.
I have a 2nd vindicator 1h + shield based around that concept (hybrid electrocute caster). It’s inferior in both survival and DPS. The Storm Totems maelstrom ect tickle the 150+ waves trash clearing is never an issue with Ultos
Stun resistance - I agree completely I need a godly pair of boots though. I have a vigorous stoneplate of Kings with 30% stun resist but that would trash my acid/poison bleed and pierce which are marginal as it is. I need Stonehide Stoneplate of kings but I’ve rolled like 100’s of pairs across many characters with out luck.
The rings have got to stay that massive flat lighting boost from the proc (they stack withc each other) and combined with brute force means I consistently get 200k damage in the campaign. and they give +2 to seal each which is beyond amazing.
the amulet and medal I might change but I’m not sure to what? a MoD maybe?
The pants might go as well but that proc with the extra armour and 10% AS… I don’t have any ridiculous pair of Aleksanders or Kupa’s to work with. I have a few thundersturck Solael sect but and maybe one thunderstuck Kupa but they give me resistances I’m already overcapped on (elemental and aether)
Skill wise I’m quite happy as is. I thought about dropping savagery a bit and upping wendigo totem but the problem in the crucible is massive burst damage from BS life reduction mechanics or shotguns (grava thul)
with the MI’s I currently have I can do this. I took some of your suggestions to heart does this look any better? More DA but my armour went down substantially
also any suggestions for a better amulet? I’d really like to have + max aether worked in somehow. but keep in mind it has to be worth 10% global DPS
I’ve also noticed I think that Ghoul isn’t working out as great as I’d hoped. I could put one point more into jackal and free up ghoul so I’d have 4 points to work with? Sailor’s guide?
I will level a similar Lightning Vindicator as a next/2nd next toon. I took your setup and modified it to my liking. Here it is: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/a2EA85J2
Not much changes, but I went for Electrocute. You can get points from tether and put them back into Brute Force. Gear changes are also small. Actually any Kuba’s Chausses with resists and oa will do, and the rest are usual legendaries.
If you compare:
Cons:
less armor (you’ll get close numbers if lucky with crafting bonus for Conduit)
slightly less damage (mine has more +%lightning, yours has more flat and 10% more RR)
weaker seal (though I firmly believe 50-70 absorbtion means nothing when red bosses crit for 5k+)
Pros:
83% all resists with respectable overcap (20%+ overcap for most).
better peak DA
more hp
much better CC resists all around
effectively 3 free devo points, which allow to change pants/boots/ring to something you like, and cover stun with Throne.
once again, pants, boots, medal and 1 ring are slots you can play with. Overcapped resists allow for quite some variations.
I’ve also recently just leveled a Vindicator (Thunderous Strike, not Savagery though) after randomly getting a well rolled Sparkthrower drop on another character farming Ancient Grove. I’ve cleared 160 on Gladiator and, whilst I was cutting it close at some points, it was doable with Vanguard Banner and Ulo/Amatok/Empyrion. Haven’t tried 170 yet as I had to cut the run short for a doctors appointment but this is what I went with for my build (there’s probably one similar/same in the Compendium no doubt):
I cannibalised all of the MI’s from what was my Ultos warder (now Phys Avenger Warder) so I had literally 0 farming to do for this build luckily, so the MI’s might be an issue.
I really would like to keep hungering void and both glyphs of Kelaph Zoth. (although your right and I wouldn’t mind losing a couple points in the seal) Your attack damage on paper is 14-19k @ 2.8 attacks per second mine is 17-24.5 @ 3 attacks per second. Not to mention the + 40% critical damage. Leeching is a core sustain here and single target DPS is also very important. I’m not sure tether is worth it.
Does the storm titan proc stack with aura of censure? I could lose 10% attack speed from the battlecry if it meant -10% enemy DPS that’s up nearly 100% of the time
Nexdoreum - That’s a sick build but I’d have to farm for 10 years 8 hours a day with my luck to get just 2 of those items.
Hungering void is ineffective with such a low OA. Tether is not worth if you’re going to focus on direct damage.
Solemn Watcher is a good shout.
Damage reduction does not stack.
Your conduit is useless as bosses are resistant to those kind of debuffs.
You can try things, I don’t, so I’ll not insist on my opinion. Will try it some time later.
guys I made the changes and tested it out. I lost about 10% of my DPS maybe less. It still wrecks things amazingly well in the campaign. I feel way more tanky though. - maximum crits seem to do 180k vs 200 before.
I have tested out Grava Thul and he still kills me when I face tank but my survival time is much improved (he kills me from removing my buffs when I face tank. I killed him with minimal kiting he has no chance as long as I can dodge whatever that OP doom spell is that strips all your auras)
I also tested mad queen. With no life resist gear I straight up facetanked her through her red aura and destroyed her in seconds. My life didn’t go below 50%
Overall I’m very happy with the changes. Now I just need to upgrade the Kupacabra pants to ones with a better affix and make another seal of annhialation. testing was done without the seal on.
I’m actually a few % overcapped on pierce. Got better rolls than grim tools suggests and 19k life.
That electrocute caster - yes I know the build very well I followed the guide to the letter he barely cleared 150 with buffs. I set out to do better and this build had both much superior DPS and much better survival. before my current changes.
Well after the changes I almost did it. I died on wave 170 with a from a reaper that was at 40% health and Ben Jahr who had like 10% health on him The final 2 enemies remaining on the map. I really should have kited a bit more. 1 tiny error cost me the grand chest.
Still need to get a few attuned loadstones for my seal that would have also helped.
But none the less I will call this build crucible 170 viable this is the first time I came this close. 3 buffs and a vanguard banner were used.
he barely cleared 150 with buffs. I set out to do better and this build had both much superior DPS and much better survival. before my current changes.
this is the first time I came this close. 3 buffs and a vanguard banner were used.