Just started playing this game recently. I have a pet build, a witchblade, and a retaliation build. The pet build and retaliation build is hell to play with other people with because of how touchy aggro is in this game, and the witchblade just feels too white bread.
I’d like to play a build that is pretty glass-cannon, active to the point of it not being boring (but not to the point of having to switch skill bars in the middle of combat), and levels smoothly without hitting the normal -> elite sag.
A point in the right direction would be appreciated.
If you’ve got good(I daresay ‘great’) gear, some person(people?) in the Chinese community did Gladiator Crucible with an AAR build with all attribute points put into Spirit.
Generally, any “glassy” build is viable, as long as it can survive being hit by Iron Maiden stun-charge and Fabius invisishank. The rest is intelligent kiting.
Personally, the strongest glass build I played was a poison Witch Hunter. A stack of critted poison DoTs reached in excess of 200k damage per second, and it has 3 herd clearing attacks with decent CC/mobility (Dreeg Eye, Dreeg Spines, Tainted Eruption). I killed ultimate Nemesis in 2 rotations with it while running away the whole time.
Very fun play style too, felt like a good spellcastery rogue hybrid as a lot of the attacks need you to get close and personal and then GTFO.
Levels very easily as well. Max the first 2 nodes of Dreeg’s Eye with the transmuter, then go to Nightblade and max Justifiable Ends from the Shadowstrike line. Rush abomination for Tainted Eruption devotion wise (I attach it to Shadowstrike). The rest is just flavor.
Everything you said is truth about play stile etc, but I don’t see WH poison build as a glass cannon. With high HP regeneration from BD/PB, high evasion, blade barrier, possession and dps that don’t depends of you nuking or hitting the target all the time its one of safest builds to play. Just run around and spam skills, you don’t even need to get to mele range to apply huge dmg dots.
Glassiest build I played is dual wielding pyromancer, obliterates whole screen in second but can die in second also.
Do yourself a favor and attach it to dreeg’s infinite gaze
@JoV just cause you can safely/easily kite doesn’t make you not glass. That being said witch hunter’s being glass is entirely dependent on your build. My hunter can still hit ~200k dots, but I can facetank sharzul while doing it. Some other variations would get dropped like flies.
Oh, no, WHs can have some of the best defensive stats if you go the acid route (Blade burst with a ton of attack speed, 80% wps and Venomblade set), because you don’t need to stack poison devotions and can just go balls-out on health/DA/regeneration. 2300 DA, 11k health and 1200 base regen which goes up to 2000 with procs is quite sick. You can kill any non-nemesis enemy just by standing next to him, even enraged Shar’Zul can’t out-dps your regeneration.
As for glass cannon, I just tried to run my BoC-farming Blademaster setup trough Crucible. Not fun. Seriously though, make a Blademaster if you haven’t already, by far the most fun character in the game. And I don’t mean the lame 15k health Cadence builds I see popping out, a proper 50+ points in cunning dual sword piercing damage Blademaster.
I feel like I’d have the same problem with Blademaster as I did with Witchblade. There’s no finesse involved. Just buff yourself up, run in, and smash your face off of things.
Caster or melee? There isn’t one for melee afaik, but I could link a thread with a few discussed caster setups. There’s only one recent/popular caster thread, but he chooses shit items for it
Well just cause the X% chance is lower, doesn’t mean it’s actually lower. It shoots a ton of projectiles it is more or less guaranteed to proc vs mobs and it can shotgun on single targets at close range. If you take nightfall for SS though they’re probably pretty similar, but it’d still be worse since it’s a smaller aoe and less targets to hit
Also there is always the off chance you use SS when eruption is still on cd
Oh, no, WHs can have some of the best defensive stats if you go the acid route (Blade burst with a ton of attack speed, 80% wps and Venomblade set), because you don’t need to stack poison devotions and can just go balls-out on health/DA/regeneration. 2300 DA, 11k health and 1200 base regen which goes up to 2000 with procs is quite sick. You can kill any non-nemesis enemy just by standing next to him, even enraged Shar’Zul can’t out-dps your regeneration.
Same class, completely different items/builds. I am sure that basically any class combination in this game has a way to make a facetanking DPS brick.
Actually, I think I’m pretty set on an Aether Ray build. I don’t like the idea of tossing a bunch of stuff out before every engage, so I was thinking Occultist for a second class. Gets more spirit per level than demo. Plus Curse of Frailty and Vulnerability is a nice AoE debuff. Blood of Dreeg would make for a nice secondary “oh shit” button. Possession would be amazing for chaos damage if I modify the Aether Ray, especially with the +100% energy regen. Pets to proc devotion. Doom Bolt to cut through super-tanks for % health, especially because I’d be stacking chaos damage anyway. I don’t really know what I’m talking about though . . . think a AAE Warlock would work?
Well, some Chinese genius beat gladiator crucible with an aether ray warlock that went full spirit investment. So it definitely works. I just don’t see how its enjoyable because ather ray is an awful spell to play with when you can’t face tank with it.
I mean, not that it is an issue. Devastation does absurd damage even after the nerfs, it will have no problems wiping out trash mob crowds even with half of its damage boosted.
Does that factor in before or after the elemental damage equation though. Like say I leave the ray as aether and fire, if I get aether and fire damage amp, will it amp the damage then convert it, or will it convert it before the aether and fire bonuses are added?
