Trying to make use of the Explorer set I wanted them to be a 2h ranged Physical damage based hero but i can’t really see a set of skills to support it. Most of the good kinetic energy based skills are concentrated in the soldier set, and most of those require a melee weapon except for Cadence. The chance to pass through helps but it is still insufficient and painfully slow for large mobs.
Taking a ranged weapon practically forces you to take Arcanist, Occultist or Demolition, but none support a purely physical damage based skill set. By Physical I mean all the physical types, not the type physical.(ambiguous much?). Demolition could almost work but you can’t do it pure physical as you have to take that point in fire in flamed touched in order to get the physical type bonuses. And an archer would require some kind of aoe stun blast, but again the physical one is in soldier and requires a melee weapon. Grenado perhaps, but again it forces you to demolition to be viable. And really the only reason it works for demolition is not the flame touched bonus but the explosion and knock back and fragmentation on fire strike that gets applied to the long gun or crossbow.
Any suggestions for this? I just don’t see it. Maybe i am overlooking something.
Cadence DOES work, and work well… IF you play around it. Generally it works best when you’re standing in a doorway or a similar bottleneck. Most builds specifically SUFFER for standing in those places, so it takes some retraining to use Ranged Cadence properly.
I could buy that for narrow dungeouns, but the rest of the time you are out in the open surrounded by mobs. Stun Jacks or a well invested replicating missile are about the only options then, but they are not physical. Even something to quickly re-position would be helpful
The range of doable builds just seems narrow. Soldier clearly has a link to Arcanist for battle mage with a skill set that compounds on itself to be absurdly powerful. Demolition and Occultist as well, but I can’t say the same for an Occultist Soldier. If Elite is as brutal as it is made out to be, some combinations are going to require a very select set of items to get certain skill sets to sync and become as powerful as Soldier/Arcanist Demo/occultist. And a physical damage focused hero seems out of the question long term, at least not without items possibly. The overlap seems to me that it was well considered with some clases, and then the rest were just “put a bunch of skills in and get this thing going”. Arcanist for instance, seems terribly gimpled as a stand alone class. The main damage dealer deals no damage for a long long time and really has no way to boost it except %damage item bonuses(which really negates the idea of a 2h ranged Arcanist as she needs that offhand %damage boost)
Shaman Soldier might work with Vines and Birarthrne. Seems that is the only other place to get purely physical damage without magical taint. Nightblade would if all its damage multipliers weren’t locked up under dual wield.
You can now convert elemental damage into physical with “Beronath, Reforged” legendary sword. With it, you can make physical caster actually.
As for ranged - all ranged weapon have armour piercing, sadly, so they will inflict partially pierce damage anyway (which is detrimental for physical).
Why is that detrimental for physical? Seems like having a portion of my damage always bypass armor would be a good thing. How does it hinder physical damage?
Just to note when i say all physical I mean all physical based damage. Physical, Pierce, Trauma, Bleed. Another tongue twister of terms the game uses. All of those are listed as Physical, with a sub-type Physical under Physical… So im not quite sure…is +%physical damage, all Physical Category or all Physical type. Probably type as i have never seen a +%Magical.
Just because the mobs are in the open, doesn’t mean you have to fight them there. Also… Surrounded? If you are getting surrounded, on ANY build that isn’t a Callidor’s Tempest build… You are being incredibly dense and should expect to end up dying for it. They are monsters, they want you dead… And you decide to charge into the middle of them? Especially on a RANGED character. SMH.
It hinders you because you’re buffing Physical, not Pierce. So that 20% conversion or whatever it is on each weapon, it differs… Is removing that amount of damage from the weapon’s Physical. Instead of buffing that damage by, say 1000% or whatever you have… You’re buffing it by 0%, and thus it’s really tiny.
% Physical is only Physical damage, yes. It might affect Trauma, but I’m not 100% clear on that, I don’t do many DOT builds so I haven’t really checked.
Yeah, not sure about the DOTs. It nearly always says 1-2 or zero. Whatever effects from the weapon im sure, but Im always doing much more DOT than that. I was using Elemental Exchange and I noticed some numbers toggling on Burn, but direct burn is not listed on the spell or its buff, Only burn and not Electrocute or Frostbite get added. It has a chance for all three from Overload but no flat buff. Its repeatable though, i just checked, 19 burn damage toggles on and off with elemental exchange.
It’s 100% expected, even on a ranged character, that the monsters will get into melee range of you. What isn’t expected is that you allow them to surround you, or run into the middle of them. They should never be surrounding you, on any non CT character. Even on CT characters, you need to be careful about being surrounded.
I promise it has never happened on purpose Sometimes with 120% move speed, about where i like to keep it, I tend to accidentally move into them faster than I expect.
With explorers set you get 20% just from the boots plus one other. For the most basic set it has alot of buffs that are easy to overlook because they arent damage. Resist to just about everything, dodge projectiles, slow and stun reduction, and a +80-90 physique buff for the whole thing sending Defense through the roof. Good set.
It is probably not ultimate viable but ABB has pretty good weapon damage, so a cadence + ABB rifle blademaster could do something, I imagine at least until somewhere in elite.
Maybe the several thousand hour guys can help you^^
Sometimes with 120% move speed, about where i like to keep it, I tend to accidentally move into them faster than I expect.