Just curious. If not, then IMO it needs to be tuned down a bit.
I’ve beat it with pblades, quick jacks, callidor’s tempest, forcewave, dual pistol firestrike, sword & board cadence and Valdun’s Cadence. None used deathmarked or ultos.
Do you really think builds not using those sets are that bad? 
I am paused at 140 with a Myrmidon Set Witchblade. This is my second attempt. I will eventually get it. (Takes for fucking-ever to 100-140 with my gear.)
Player Skill >> Gear.
I’ve beat it with pblades, quick jacks, callidor’s tempest, forcewave, dual pistol firestrike, sword & board cadence and Valdun’s Cadence. None used deathmarked or ultos.
Did you use buffs/shrines?
I made it to wave 108 in gladiator with a CT sorcerer, and I don’t see me ever getting past that on that particular build.
I’m gonna go ahead and say it right now, I think the shit is way too hard. To the point where I’m not even motivated to continue playing crucible any longer. As soon as I heard about multiple nemesis mobs spawning in some of the higher waves, I lost any interest I had of continuing to play it. None of my builds are equipped to win that. And as a player, I don’t have the patience to kite around the arena for 10+ minutes to chip multiple nemesis mobs to death. I could do it if I wanted to, but that’s not my idea of fun.
I got several people on my friends list I used to team with for BoC runs, and the like. I bring up crucible, and they’re like “Why?” its pointless. I think the vast majority of players who purchased crucible played it till they hit a wall and gave up on it. If it was just a time dump that gave a viable alternative to farm loot efficiently, more people would be playing it. That’s not what we got though.
Of course I did. Why wouldn’t I?
Was just wondering if it was possible without them.
With very tanky characters it most likely is possible. Not using them is basically choosing to make it unnecessarily difficult though since gladiator’s higher waves are designed around using the defenses and blessings.
So a build like a 5pc Markovian’s Witchblade could tank its way through crucible?
Yes, long as you have adequate recovery you can even tank a couple nemeses at once.
Retaliation tanks are quite effective as well.
I think “sword & board cadence” he metioned is exactly that, it’s one of his build after all… Edit: ninjaed, orz
Nine, may I ask is that “quick jacks” a elemental one or chaos one?
It’s a lightning elementalist build.
So place some stonewall banners and call it a day? Grab the offensive blessing?
I use a mix of the stonewall and vanguard banners since when fully upgraded their radius will overlap quite easily. All the blessings are quite good but getting the offensive and defensive ones are the most important.
Thank you, I’m thinking about a Blood orb jacks build, and glad to see quick jacks is still a thing in GD.
5 pc marco’s witchblade isn’t tanky enough for this. Even with blessings & buffs. I still got oneshotted for 21k HP by Zantarin. Died once before 100 waves, and couldn’t even figure out what hit me. Died another time at wave 110, again, don’t even know what hit me, and died again to Zantarin at wave 130. Ran out of tribute to continue. This isn’t gonna cut it. I’m going from full HP to dead in like 0.2 secs when I die. There is like no consistency in the damage being taken at all. Its 2 sides of the extreme, either my HP bar doesn’t move, or all of it moves to 0 in 0.2 secs. Nothing in between. There is nothing I did wrong that resulted in me getting killed. Its just random ass burst/shotgun damage. Its impossible for me to gauge the fight for this reason. Because of this, I have literally no clue as to which actions are going to get me killed and which aren’t. Its pure random/luck. I guess its possibly I could win with this, but I’d have to get really lucky.
You can’t even really kite in Crucible either. Every swarm has mobs that can slow or immobilize you. So you pretty much have to be able to stand still and face tank.
If Zantarin spawns, you need to stay relatively in his face. Otherwise he’ll use his vitality-barrage attack which has both shotgun and crit-spike potential. Try to lure the Death Revenants Zantarin spawns closer to him as well.
Hell I’m struggling to make it past 140 on Aspirant. But I also don’t use as many buffs as I should because I only have so many tokens.
I intend to buy the crucible dlc but only one question retain me from doing it:
can all classes theoretically beat gladiator 150 SOLO while not being “frustrating” ?
What i mean by “frustrating” is not “too difficult” but in some survival/arena i played on other games (borderland for example), it is clearly visible that the difficulty is set for multiplayer play and it’s really fastidious to beat it without teamplay and allies resurrecting each others.