Seems like the most enjoyable skills/weapons in this game for me are not so efficient at upper game levels. I absolutely love how Forcewave plays. It’s very fun to throw a wave of damage around…however, I always read how terrible it is, and haven’t even seen a build with it since B29 from Zars, which had to be supplemented with Phantasmal Blades.
I had the same issue with Xbows in older builds…but I seem to be making that work with Primal Strike (sweet sweet AOE) and some B31 changes.
But I’d love to use Forcewave, with a shield if possible, to get through elite (I know almost anything can make it through normal). It really feels like the devs don’t even want it to be an option, which is weird as it’s so much more interesting than a snooze-fest Cadence build.
I haven’t tried it, but with a shield I assume your build would utilize Menhir’s passive or the aura, so the survivability would be better even without PB. That enables you to pick a different setup to use with a shield.
theoretizing
Basically you want a physical damage skill or weapon damage skill, so you could use different options. The idea is to spam forcewave while pressing another skill on cooldown, right?
Then sticking with Nightblade, there’s the new Amarasta’s Blade Burst skill that would deal double weapon damage of PB with Cold and Frostburn, so you could try a Physical/Cold hybrid instead of Physical/Bleed from Phantasmal. The new passive Lethal Assault gives a 4 second buff that improves your OA, adds flat Acid damage to your mix and boosts Cold, Frostburn and Poison.
If you want to use another class, then Commando comes with Temper for Physical/Internal Trauma, which can also be a part of Forcewave if you spec into it. You could use Menhir’s Will for survivability, keep Oleron’s Rage for Internal Trauma and %OA, add Temper and with the bonuses from Devotions, your Internal Trauma should be over 4k per hit. Another complementing skill would be Grenado, which has really high Physical damage component along with some Pierce and Fire.
Third option would be Warder, using Primal Bond aura for extra Physical/Bleed and Mogdrogen’s Pact for HP + HP regen. Then again you max the final skill in Forcewave, this time for the Bleeding component, you pop Devouring Swarm under your feet to reduce enemy Bleed resistance, pop Wendigo totem with passive to boost your Bleeding damage even more.
Thanks man, a lot of food for thought! Just have to figure out if Tremor is worth it to spam Forcewave or stay with the cooldown and use something in between. Seems like a huge loss of damage with Tremor.
Well if you don’t spam forcewave, then you need an alternate main attack skill. But then comes the question, if you want to use Forcewave at all?
I mean, it has really nice stun duration, but then again cooldown is 2.8 seconds, so it takes only about 4 points to keep stuff stunned and with that, the damage is low so the passive that reduces armor also becomes kinda meh.
The fun factor is telling me to spam FW for sure…just feels like they are being a little too harsh with Tremor’s damage reduction.
That’s awesome! Wanted to go shield as I just leveled a 2H warder to 65, but always a possible motivator with a weapon like that. The reason I got interested in Forcewave is because I’m using an Arbiter for the warder which has a similar attack in Gavel of Justice. But another 50-85 levels of 2H might be too much right now, haha.
I have a Black Water Cocktail/Forcewave 1H and Shield Commando that has beaten Ultimate Hardcore.
Also have an Elemental Tremor Battlemage that I’m leveling in Elite now, It has no issues so far.
What are people’s thoughts on using transmuted Forcrwave as a primary attack supported by the Acid Splash devotion skill?
Is the double armor reduction worth it? The physical resist reduction a good multiplier? Or is the base damage so low I’d be better off with Blade Arc?
Alright finally got level 58 and I can just cruise through elite, damage is very high, just needed caster gear in the head and torso slot for eregen.
The skill looks amazing and procs devotion skills really well.
So it is definitely a viable alternative. Have to admit my char is heavily twinked, since my other ult builds did all the farming for him.
If you really want to use Forcewave go 2H and get the transmuter.
The thing about Forcewave is you can alternate a weapon attack and forcewave without losing speed on either one. I have a Warder and a Battlemage that do this with Savagery/Cadence respectively. Forcewave will never do good damage on its own, but if you put a low cooldown Devotion on it then it will proc it constantly.
You end up doing decent damage, but it’s definitely not the best setup. Personally I think it’s cool to alternate between a weapon attack and Forcewave.