V1.1.8.0 Mastery Combo Discussion

Fire fervor on Shildbreaker without WPS? Damn that extreme.

It has WPS, you’ll see when he posts the build.

I think most of the problem is in soldier and demolitionist masteries. Demolitionist is tied for first place for my favorite mastery, but I feel certain other masteries do not pair well… saboteur, elementalist, deflier, commando… are either inherently not synergistic or are underwhelming for more obscure reasons. Soldier is not a mastery that I like very much, blademaster is good, bleed warder is fun, tactician… but the other combinations are not all that great.

With regards so soldier being pretty bad as a support mastery (and be extension, commando being a bad class), I think people overlook the amount of skill points it needs to make all that stats worth it.

Assuming you’re not playing something that’s too dependent on attack/cast speed and has no +soldier just for simplicity:

Military conditioning - 10, decoratied soldier 8, scars of battle 8, field cammand+squad tactics 13, warcry+break morale 13, menhir’s will 1, fighting spirit 1. 40 for mastery. That’s the minimum you want unless you got lots of bonuses on slow res via gear and devotions. Total of 96 skill points.

For arcanist: at least 13 for IEE line (1 IEE, 12 Overload, 1 balance is more common than others recently), inner focus 12, maiven+conversion, 17 (conversion needs 5 points to have the same slow res as 8/8 decorated soldier), arcane will, null, mental alacrity, fabric 1 each. 7 for mirror. 40 for mastery so total of 91 points. Gets up to 112 points if you’re going for 11/12 star pact.

This means that without accounting for exclusives arcanist as a around the same number of points needed to make work as a support mastery compared to soldier. And it boosts your offense just as much as your defense, while soldier only really gets one side of it.

With occultist, while it’s not the same gains as the previous 2 classes, you’ll only use at least 11+16+10+32 = 69 points for CoF, BoD and mastery which is all you need.

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The problem, beside no double RR and support same dmg type, is Soldier heavily based on % weapon dmg skills and physical, and Demo is all about pure spell dmg skills and fire/lightning, which make the combination is hard to handle. You want to use FW/BA as main skill? Fine, you have to use a 2handed weapon , in exchange no CDR and energy reg, also 1handed weapon + offhand gives more % dmg than 2handed weapon, and vice versa. My Commando has 180k dps (with proc ~190k), but its struggling with SR65 and Morgoneth dungeon (he has zero petrify res). This caster has to stand still to deal dmg and his instant lifeleech sucks, so when I ran out of protective skills I know I’m done.
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/p25k0EGZ
My suggestion is added %weapon dmg or fire/lightning conversions to physical to Demo skills through gears.

Although I agree that Commando need more buff to support playstyle others than fire forcewave, but please if there is a new set for this class dont take the weapon, off-hand/shield, glove, amulet slot. Make it as helm, torso, shoulder, and belt set. I’m thinking something like a Physical BWC or Fire BA support

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A decent phys bwc support does exist but it’s retal so it might not be for everyone’s tastes. Commando is the best class for it too but it got nerfed a few patches ago.

Some more thoughts about physical Battlemage https://www.grimtools.com/calc/1NXDEJkN (and how it can be improved).

  1. BM is a class w/o any native -%RR to phys so Deathstalker is needed for at least those sweet -10%.
    This leads us to the 2) Lack of skill points. BM is a skill-hungry class so sacrificing a relic with +1 to Soldier for extra RR shortens us even more. As you can see, most of Arcanist’s passives are 1-pointers and all Soldier’s skills are softcapped as I simply have nothing to invest into them.
  2. Also I can’t take Gladiator’s Belt for converting Scales as then I won’t have points even to max my 2 main skills.
  3. What can be done? Buff the set itself.
    The bonuses for 2-3-4 pieces are kinda meh (except the ones for Devastation) and skill bonuses are mediocre.
    Set lacks %phys and IT damage bonus (maybe add for 2 pieces instead of armor), OA for 3 pieces can be increased up to 110.
    Also, 1h BA is still very weak. Good for clearing trash, not more. Though flat RR mod is good, I suggest to increase the RR value up to 35 as you can’t afford investing that much in Break Morale. -30% manacost mod is redundant and should be replaced with, say, 50% total damage modifier to BA.
    Also, add 8-12% phys resist to the shield instead of vitality res. Most shields have it (like Voidsoul’s one).
    Skillpoints - add sth like +1 to all skills to the shield (as it would be used only with full set), or add more different +skills to items, as the bonuses now are pretty poor.

EDIT: adding a set proc with RR or some massive AoE is welcomed. It may look like injecting horse hormones in it but BM surely deserves it.

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Hi, do you have a link to said build? I’d like to take a look :grinning:

Here’s the topic. Build was nerfed, don’t know what current performance would be.

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Yeah, lack of skill points is the pain in the neck! Hope this issue will be addressed in the patch.

ranged >>>>>>> melee sounds exactly like every other LOOT RPG

9 posts were split to a new topic: Leveling Skill Viability Discussion

Current performance:

Turrion is still decent but imo commando still needs more retal support particularly fire.

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just some really quick thoughts:

-Necro-Arcanist: drain essence is way worse than aar and even needs more points invested, while both do aether damage.

-bleed based soldier occultist: could get some love, as a general rule I don’t see why occultist has bleed rr while having only a single low damage bleed damage skill.

-nightblade-demo: dw saboteur has to go full cold while using firestrike, to get viable. i have a ton of flat damage and conversions with blazeheart but the fire build is still awful…

-arcanist-soldier: oh well, lack of rr and mostly lack of any sinergy.

Speaking of Spellbinder, it always bugged me that the Uroboruuk set obligatorily converts all the Vit damage into Aether. One of the best devotion synergies for Drain Essence is Will of Rattosh for its life leech RR and hefty Vit RR, only for the vit RR to be completely wasted by the Uroboruuk Conversion. It’d be nice if the conversion were shifted to some other piece of gear so that it can be optional on the set.

Adding to the Commando discussion above, and to comment on a general issue I’ve noticed, I find that a lot of sets occupy slots that have other interesting options to them, while slots where you can’t really do much (medals, pants, chests, shoulders on some builds) are left empty. I think a good way to maybe give some underpowered class combinations a boost would be to fill out some of these less populated slots, give them something like a Chausses of Barbaros equivalent that just kicks them up a notch across the board. It would be a shame if Commando were given a set, for example around retailaiton because that is a good point of crossover between the two masteries, and the set occupied the few slots Retal Commando has pretty sorted. Case in point, Mythical Mask of Infernal Truth is a pretty nice piece of kit for a Fire Retal Commando with its active ability and relevant bonuses, so if a set were to be created for a Retal Commando, it’d be a shame of if one of the few well-occupied slots were to be taken up by it (though, of course, I’d be open to a non-retal Commando set to give the class some variety).

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Maybe it could get chaos RR instead of it…

yeah… occultist screams chaos rr since always :stuck_out_tongue: I just have a bleed witchblade since early access but there are no bleed damage sets that benefit both classes. I know it’s a secondary damage type for soldier but i really prefer curse of frailty as a rr skill over devouring swarm from shaman and nightblade has no bleed rr either.

Thank you all for participating in this discussion. At this time we are going to focus on fine tuning changes and taking feedback under consideration as we prepare to get v1.1.8.0 into testing.

As always, you can continue to post your feedback in this section of the forum.

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