that’s my sentiment too. It feels like it has a bad rep, because it has a bigger “requirement”/stat check, than other skills, again ie either needing a specific MI or something, ex stacking attack speed etc
but when that threshold then is met, it feels fairly awesome even for leveling imo
i think that’s my point, it’s a skill as mentioned here “only” useful on a select pair of classes, and with certain (strong) MIs
whereas most other comparative skills feels fine “as is”.
i mean, 160WD and 80flat phys dmg on 28pts investment, savagery/RF almost gets better stats than that
like, why would i take BA spam, when almost any other skill would do more dmg for the same skill points, and not requiring a certain class/MI to boot
If FW feels dull; spam BA to me feels straight up tedious
I’m just triggered that Occultist and Nightblade is… witch hunter? Makes no sense. Nightblades worked for the empire. Same for the Inquisitors. While occultists were outcasts. So if someone is a NB and Occ both, the occultist side should take precedence.
Witch hunter implies someone that hunts witches. A witch hunting witches? WHAT?
From a RP perspective this class name makes the least sense imo. It should be something like… Venomancer, Heretic, Shadowblade, Doom Herald, Basilisk, Gorgon, Betrayer, just anything but witch hunter. If you are an assassin type person dabbling in the occult that doesn’t make you anyone who HUNTS WITCHES >.<
Witch Hunter in this sense probably just means someone who uses powers granted by the Witch Gods; that’s all, in the same way a Witchblade does. Not necessarily hunting witches.
Hmm maybe it does make sense and I’m just missing it then. Not a native english speaker but Witch Hunter as a class name gives me connotations to a benevolent person, someone hunting down witches and those who practice the occult. For a combination of Nightblade and Occultist, I was hoping for a more sinister title. Or at least a neutral one.
Mage Hunter is also a mage though. Kind of a Luminari special devision that hunts down rogue mages and practicioners of the occult, or something. Same for Infiltrators and Spellbreakers.
Generally speaking, most of GD’s class names are pretty badass. Like Defiler - ooh yeah, tell me about it! Or Oppressor. Or Apostate!
at least gd’s soldier is not as mind numbing as levelling defense focused builds in titan quest… that mastery feels so slow and cumbersome to play (unless you pair it with offense oriented mastery).
witch hunter is a very broad term in gd universe, where skilled people with/without magic can hunt witches. even the luminari inquisition are all basically witch hunters, who uses whatever tools and means they have to hunt heretical cults and otherworldly abomination.
we haven’t even talked about mage hunter. i think discussion about accuracies of gd class title wouldn’t go far because many of them overlap each other in terms of their profession/skills. just choose whatever class titles you like and don’t think too much on it.
as for soldier’s effectiveness, i believe it depends on the build and how the players play them. with so many options to design your builds, its hard to find classes that totally suck at everything. unless you’re going for deep diving into the shattered realm, which is very selective on which builds can survive it.
To be fair, it always made sense to me that a person best equipped to hunt Mages is someone trained as a Mage themselves which shows in some of Arcanist’s skills at a gameplay level, e.g. Nullification and the massive Energy Leech on Iskandra’s Elemental Exchange. Like you mentioned, some of the other Arcanist combos like Spellbreaker show this as well.
Witch Hunter always struck me as a Hunter who is also a Witch or makes use of their powers rather than someone who hunts Witches specifically, which is pretty backwards. But it also makes sense for Witchblade as well being a Blade user with Witch-granted powers.
I think I saw a discussion about Witch Hunter being a “hunting witch or vice versa?”. Or was it about Mage Hunter? Both are the same argument… So, the way I see it, Witch Hunter is one of the Nightblade orders that tap into occult magic and devote themselves to either Dreeg or Solael, to improve their “elimination capabilites”.
And when dealing with witches and cultists, it would definitely help to know the enemy from “within”. Pretty much what @Gnomish_Inquisition said.
From the soldier class I have both a blade arc physical tactician and a death knight physical cadence build. They play very smooth however when it comes to damage it is not that they do so much damage but the ability to stand on the toes of the enemy while being completely fine, is the essence of the success of these builds.
I have a druid that has incredible damage potential with 4 shards that can be thrown at any distance hitting single or multiple targets. In that sense the text of the soldier is accurate and in general in grim dawn there is sometimes a effect to the damage you do due to the fact you can apply it constantly do to the property of being tanky with or without a shield.
This (together with other comments below) actually made me build and try it for a while…
TLDR: seems fine to me, didn’t encounter any issues so far. Currently I’m at Act 2 on Veteran after about 3-4h of play, going strong… (yes, even against the dreaded Undeads and their bleed res).
Yup, true for me as well.
Um… what’s the problem with stacking trauma? It can be got pretty fast, methinks.
Points-wise the most efficient tool here is Blindside from Blitz… the DA debuff works wonders on anything stubborn.
Also, Fighting Spirit… I don’t know why, but it seems like people often forget about FS (or discount it’s utility).
Well, I don’t know for sure, early leveling yet…but to me this setup (untransmuted Blade Arc) seems to perform similarly to untransmuted CT (another “weird” leveling option that I tried recently). It behaves and plays similarly as well, big boomy circles of destruction and melting everything with critted-up DoT damage.
So then, why focus on that part of the skill?
Have you tried it? I mean, actually tried it?
My path for very early leveling was to pump mastery until Laceration is properly available, and just use component skills for damage abilities (cracked lodestone etc.). It makes you into such a beefcake that nothing else is really necessary, so you can search for only gear which gives you flat OA.
Also, for stats, I pushed almost everything into Cunning. But I don’t think the gain was that significant… probably it wouldn’t lose much from pumping Physique for even more beef.
Well, yes. So go for bleed, max your OA and Blindside into anything which remains standing for over a second after first contact.
Well the MI sticks are available in Forgotten Gods areas (IIRC), but even without them the item support is pretty good?
There’s a good chance of finding (or buying) items with “Soldier’s” prefix which boost Blade Arc specifically, that Brutal Great Axe thing is rather good and usually available early (I think you get the crafting option immediately by choosing Angrim?), or even superb if you spend some scrap and craft a good-prefixed one like “Officer’s”.
Also there are Epic items that support the build well: Gutwrench, that Lacerator axe, the Bonecrusher 2h mace MIs… the Bloodreaper set is also good early on with only 2-3 pieces if you have it (though not the weapons).
On the early Relics, Rampage is probably the only damage-specific one that’s better for DoTters that just taking Fervor.
For constellations, one can stick with the usual Owl or go for Fox immediately (which is also nicely affinity-efficient). Panther is very good also, even from the start. I tried Falcon, didn’t impress me much. If sustain is lacking (or you like to feel extra-safe), go for Bat’s skill on Blade Arc.
Once you have 8+ points it’s pretty clear, respec to fill out Eel+Fox and get started on Kraken.
I believe this statement indicates that you are concentrating on the wrong half of the skill, at least early on. Here’s a good question to get one started with builds like these: “what is the purpose of re-applying the DoT activator on the same enemy?”
Yup, 1-handed is an interesting puzzle, def needs testing. I believe nothing fundamental changes, the same principle still stands (go for OA), but it might be necessary to stack more sources of bleed earlier (Fox+Owl into Berserker? Or maybe Panther & Hawk will be needed for boosting crit multiplier). Having the off-hand will be very nice though; with cooldown reduction, physical resist, all that good stuff.
Here’s my rule of thumb for DoT builds of this kind while leveling: trash should die immediately on first contact, or after 2nd swing max. Bosses after 5-6 seconds max… If you are slower than that, something’s wrong.
i mean nothing you’re gonna say is gonna change my own experience/how it felt to me leveling or using, or my perception of blade arc thereof
you mention dots as a counter to my mention of BA WD and flat, yet compared to other dot levelings, BA feels way worse. It’s a cheaper dot investment than other skills sure, but that doesn’t make it good or great, and for me it’s not fun to wait around an hour waiting for things to die, when 98 other skills could kill things immediately or in half the time
as far as crit goes to benefit of laceration, i usually go for a fairly high OA approach which results in me on avg having like 20%+ crit chance during the leveling phase, and still BA/Laceration felt entirely “bleh”, compared to almost anything else - most regular/avg players probably don’t stack that much OA during leveling.
Like i said, even FW feels better to me, which doesn’t feel awesome, which means BA dot leveling is just mindnumbingly tedious
i can give it a spin with FG Mis for sure, but imo MIs shouldnt’ be necessary for a skill to feel tolerable, see FW, but make it even more awesome, if not “OP”
oh and last i leveled with BA it was with a witchblade, which gets like the highest bleed RR and phys RR tossed in the same debuff, and still it overall ended up as one of my least liked skills leveling. Not panetti territory bad, but still not enjoyable
