It’s not a glamorous build. It is my first shield build ever, and didn’t turn out quite how I expected, but the character is a tank. The problem isn’t that she took too much damage, it’s that the Kubra’s force you to kite in order to not let them heal, and with 2, the whole battlefield was covered in bleed. Mixed into that, you have Zantarin who can shotgun you, and the battlefield had only 4 pillars which you could stand out of their line of sight.
It was an exercise of futility. After 5 mins, I just stood there and let them kill me. I had enough of that. Though to be fair, I did get one Kubra down 25% health, but with 3 massive beasts all running in circles around me, as they ran at mach 5, it was hard to even keep track of which one I was after.
Edit: I’m working on a Blademaster which will have Blitz and Shadow Strike to possibly kill a bit faster and kite better. I haven’t decided on whether to go shield or dual wield. At level 80, she’s dual wielding, and killing fast, but I feel a bit naked now that I’ve played with a shield.
I am no s&b expert but shouldn’t you choose like one set and stick with it? Like Octavius or Warborn or Markovian? Or have you just not found all items yet (or maybe you are playing self-found)? S&B experts here will surely guide you into right directions.
I don’t have a full set of anything, I have at best 2 from any soldier set. The only set I have completed for level 94 is for Necro pet builds and I don’t play pet builds. I’ve pieced together a solid setup without a set.
Anyway, the problem isn’t survivability. It’s simply a crappy encounter. You get 2 high HP, highly life leaching nemesis together, with another dangerous nemesis shooting waves of bolts at you, with another boss mixed in.
As everyone who has commented on the new waves, wave 160 is harder than 150 on the next difficulty up. That’s just too much of a step up for 10 more waves.
So IOW if you cash out at 150 you get the same tribute reward as before. But if you continue to 151 you’ll have less from 150 bc you have not cashed out yet.
Personally I like it, tho they (probably) pigeonholed builds that can do it to casters and hybrids (Im talking w/o buffs and banners, didnt tried new cruci with buffs and banners) and made it next to impossible for melee, but at least its challenging enough.
Also I have a feeling that they made it that hard on purpose to give some ultimate challenge to cruci comparable to celestial fights in main game.
Even with buffs and banners, melee will still have it very tough because there’s a lot of slows than it used to be. And Kupa being kupa healing everyone in the pools. Even non-arcanist casters (i think, haven’t tried them yet) will struggle even getting to 170 because nullification and mirror has become so important. Hell, I even put Nullification at 10/10 and then specced to Hourglass on a BWC Sorc to make it comfortable for me to make a run.
Also (this is for Zantai), I don’t know if I got short term memory loss but I started at 150 with 100 tributes, spent 61 (3 buffs x 12 + 25 for 150 start) so I had 39 tributes remaining when I started. After I cleared wave 170, my tributes went up to 70, for a total of 31 tribute increase. Is this intentional? Cause this means that Crucible isn’t an efficient farming route anymore, which I’m totally fine about.
It’s always been double buff (+ banner) for sustainable farming.
If you go triple buff + skip to 150, starting with 100 tributes
end of first run: 70 tributes
spend 5 to reset
end of second: 96
spend 15 to reset
end of third: 100 (12 overflow)
spend 30 to reset
end of fourth: 100 (1 overflow)
so you can spend 49 on buffs and break even on tributes for a rotation of four resets (though if you don’t have buffs to make the third reset you could just reload and save 5 tributes making this 48 worth of buffs over three runs). Depends on how fast clear speeds are. As ever slow clearing builds aren’t optimal.
Apologies for my ignorance but you guys are saying “triple buff”? If there are 4 possible which one do I leave out? In other words, what is the order of importance of these?
To play Lokarr’s advocate here for a moment (see what I did there? :P) this is exactly what the gladiator farmers were asking for by saying gladiator was too easy and Crate has complied with the request to make it harder but now that you have what you asked for it is a problem? You can’t have it both ways. Either they make it harder or they don’t. They have made it harder and now your previous builds that could do it easily are getting smashed which means you get to use this as a learning experience, no?
As to the complaints of not being able to farm it as easily, was that ever the purpose of crucible? To be an easy farm? I wouldn’t think it was. More as supplementary content that rewards the player at the end for time spent.
How long did it take the first builds to be able to conquer gladiator pre AoM? How long did it take before it could be beaten without buffs? It’s like taking the crucible experience back to scratch so you can learn about it as new and learn how to overcome the challenges. I would think you’d be rejoicing at the changes?
I actually like it now after getting a few runs done. It feels like my purpose of running crucible now is for self satisfaction instead of farming, which is why I originally played the mode in the first place. But there’s no denying that it’s freakishly hard.
So I don’t feel like this needs an entirely new thread, but I’m curious…what are the actual monster buffs and/or additional player debuffs as you step up to challenger, and then gladiator? Ie, is it just the typical elite and ultimate buffs of player resist penalties and more oa/da for monsters? Do they have more x% more hp? etc etc.
The problem is that you can’t really “learn to play better” when Reaper hits you for like 13k dmg in one hit and there are 2 of them and a whole bunch of other stuff and then mutators on top of that.
Or you’re a kiting char but Valdaran swaps you in the middle of everything with an unavoidable ability.
Or you get rooted in place by something unavoidable while Grava’Thul or Reaper maul you in a second.
Or you just don’t have opportunity to attack because of blood pools and other things.
Difficulty is good but the current Crucible reminds me of old D3 Inferno where the player simply isn’t given the tools he needs to deal with the situation.
Damage is much higher than you can mitigate unless you go specific tank builds.
Resist overcap is more important than ever but you can’t overcap everything at once, which forces the player toward unattainable double rare MIs.
My preliminary opinion is that the new Crucible levels pigeonhole the player even more into specific builds than before.
You either need a tanky build with high sustainability or a build that can do damage while running away without really needing to aim. Or preferably a combo of both.
DW or some normal build where you have to stand still to do damage without either of the above? Don’t even think about it.
Or you have high uptime on invulnerability to bypass the damage piled on you, which is pretty much the same thing as that D3 where Monks or Wizards had specific skill rotations where they could become immune to damage, because the alternatives were slim.
This is just the first release of the new waves so I don’t think it’s necessary to get super worked up about it, but it’s a good idea if people post their experiences with the Crucible (as with AoM on release) so the devs can readjust the difficulty to reasonable levels.
150+ should be hard but the way it’s currently done is not fun since it’s too restrictive.
The item wall is higher than ever and going away from player skill related checks makes it so high that it’s insurmountable for most builds right now.
Pretty much this. I believe Zhuuge said that many gladi farmers were dissatisfied with Crucible being too easy now to the point where even “creative” builds could do it. Sorry, but changelog explicitly states that 150-170 is the challenge. It’s not supposed to be easy, balanced or possible for a wide range of builds, at least not at the moment.
50-150 should had became more difficult as well, but since noone complains about it then it’s ok.
It’s easier right now than it was when it first came out, there are already plenty of people doing gladiator 170. I think that it’s kind of cool that they gave us an expansion to the step goal from the kickstarter campaign all those years ago, they could have just ignored crucible and let it become an afterthought b/c it was too easy. And fwiw, I think that if anything it could do with even more difficulty, so many people are still grinding out that gear and figuring out new/different strategies…it will certainly get easier as people become more accustomed to it.