V1.1.9.1 Discussion

[Gnomish_Inquisition]

from the steam forum

[quote=midori;4925219329796341340]So, on ULTIMATE, I’m farming Barthollem’s Warmaul. It has a chance to drop a lvl 94 or lvl 92. Huge difference in DPS. It also has a chance to drop the Gavel. And it has a low chance of dropping with affixes I want.

For the love of GOD please make it so at level 100 on ultimate it ONLY drops the level 94 version.
[/quote]

^i think this makes a good point for regular farming.
Having (all) monsters scale on ultimate, when you are lvl 100, to a minimum level of where they will only drop their base 94 item variant doesn’t seem like unreasonable levels of RNG reduction

as an extra note, it also feels “weird” some monsters doesn’t scale higher on Ulti when you are already max level yourself, and running into bosses merely lvl 104, (which according to GT is also only 2lvls from the “removal” of 84base item loot pool in ex Barthollem sake)’
would it be an overall terrible thing to have Ultimate monster base scaling notched up a few levels once player is lvl 100?

[lMarcusl]

The removal of retaliation damage on Terrifying Gaze is honestly terrifying for my Acid Retal Sentinel There goes my whole build with the loss of its main spammable attack…

One thing I would like to see before GD patching is put to bed is if it would be possible to add some two-handed Fire support for EoR. I’ve always liked the idea of whirlwind effects with a big stonking two-handed weapon to combine the damage of the weapon with the speed of the whirlwind, so I created a Shieldbreaker with that idea in mind. But when it comes to playing the actual character, pretty much all of the fire support for EoR is on one-handers, whereas two-handers seem to support various sorts of conversion. Just slapping some nice EoR modifier on Infernal Brimstone plus some phys-to-fire conversion or something would be very welcome

And once again, I would like to mention the speech audio for Theodin Marcell being way too quiet. Doesn’t make much of an intimidating boss encounter when all his taunts and threats are essentially mumbled to himself I would love that to be changed to levels similar to Korvaak for the proper boss fight atmosphere.

[tqFan]

One thing I would like to see before GD patching is put to bed is if it would be possible to add some two-handed Fire support for EoR.

You could try EoR / Guardian hybrid with this weapon

[Gnomish_Inquisition]

i’m guessing the overall “aim”/attempt is to (try & fail ) make DEE more universally viable, than only applying to RATA “exploit” approaches, and then perhaps the perceived changes would be too strong for still including RATA builds ?

+1 to 2h EoR buff,
if possible to also add/include on MIs so viable for leveling even more gravy - twohander EoR seems very “dedicated”, which is kinda a shame, specially since needing global conversion to benefit from Soulfire
i think someone mentioned adding +attack speed to Dregalnore?, which would also ex help something like 2h acid EoR be tried

[lMarcusl]

You could try EoR / Guardian hybrid with this weapon

I’ve tried various combinations and generally arrived at the same conclusion. Regardless of whether I was attempting a fire/phys or a pure fire version, getting sufficient skill bonuses on EoR and Soulfire on two-handers is a bitch and even if you do get your EoR and Soulfire maxed out to get that juicy flat damage, you’re kneecapped by low attack speed (even perfectly rolled Gavel struggles to crest 150 % with max Vindictive Flame and best possible Embergrip Handguards, which I think are BiS). Then, after all that, you’re still losing damage compared to dual-wielded Alladrah’s Spellblades because you have no room to convert the lightning from Soulfire, you don’t have any added flat fire damage to the skill on two-handers, and if you’re trying for a pure fire version you don’t even get 100 % phys to fire conversion. Meanwhile, Alladrah’s Spellblades boost both EoR and Soulfire and provide full lightning-to-fire and phys-to-fire conversion in one item. So, ironically, the class combination that IMO would make the most sense to just play a straight Fire or Phys/Fire EoR with a big weapon is better off finding a way to dual-wield what is primarily a Shaman/Oathkeeper weapon than something like Infernal Brimstone or Blazerush or something.

I’m not saying two-handed EoR Shieldbreaker is unplayable or anything, but in the end what should theoretically be the most straighforward way to build an EoR character (EoR deals phys, fire and lightning, Demo supports all three, has the necessary elemental resist reductions and auras to quietly do work behind the scenes while you’re spinning) ends up grasping at straws to find a big meaty two-handed weapon that actually makes any sense for the build. Switching from any of the two-handers I mentioned to Alladrah’s Spellblades on this build boosted my damage output by over 50 %.

[thepowerofmediocrity]

Cataclysm set feedback

I just wanted to say that I also attempted a full Cold Cataclysm set and completely agree with Valinov. I did it with Sorcerer instead of Purifier and it felt entirely too squishy to complete SR75 as well. It would be nice to see Cataclysm as the more offensive version of the SR set in giving +2 to all skills, especially as you can’t really abuse the +all skills as the offhand + amulet + belt are all places where you’d normally hunt for +skills in the first place.

I think non Mirror or Mark of Torment casters got hit really hard with the SR changes, as I’ve tried multiple caster builds that use either Health Regen or multiple sources of damage absorption (Seal of Ancestry, Runegreave Boots, Crab devotion, Phoenix Fire, the works), and if everything’s not perfectly in sync, I’m prone to more one-shots than ever before. It sucks that things go really smoothly and then you get hit during the one time multiple absorption procs aren’t up and you end up dead. It’d be nice for more defensive measures that aren’t ADCTH to be more consistent in their uptime; the buff to Turtle was a nice start.

[hammyhamster1]

I’d post the 2H builds that you tried. One of the problems with EoR’s unconverted base physical damage is that armor eats some of it. So Alladrah’s not only converts it, but also 2x give big skill points/speed/conversion. 2H typical advantage is on the %WD side…

Unless an item gives big EoR skill points, such as Gutsmasher, you are not going to max EoR, and even with that - unlikely to max Soulfire, as well. So are you asking for extra %WD to EoR?

Edit: Extra %WD to EoR on the 2H weapon.

[lMarcusl]

Unfortunately don’t have those saved anywhere anymore, it’s been over a year since I called it quits on trying to force a 2-hand EoR on Shieldbreaker. Essentially take the build I posted, switch the medal to Cyclone Mark and then pick your poison. Whichever two-handed fire/fire&physical weapon you try, it will be lackluster. Blazerush, Infernal Brimstone, Barthollem’s Gavel, even the new Sunherald’s Claymore. None of them really offer anything to EoR. No item skill modifiers to push the skill to its limit, insufficient damage conversions for Soulfire, lacking skill bonuses, like you mentioned.

Obviously adding extra %WD to EoR is out of the question. It wouldn’t really do anything to address two-handed fire EoR specifically and would supercharge literally every EoR build regardless of whether they struggle or not. Unless the extra %WD were tied specifically to a weapon, that would be a bad route to take. What I’d like to see is just one or two 2-handed weapons with relevant item skill modifiers to add some lightning-to-fire or lightning-to-phys conversion plus maybe some flat damage to EoR. Simply something to incentivise playing a straightforward two-handed EoR build without going into massive skill conversions like full Vit or full Chaos. There is currently nothing in the two-handed pool to reward such a build and there are instead multiple obstacles standing in its way (again, lacking skill bonuses, lacking conversions from lightning, lacking attack speeds). Hell, it wouldn’t even necessarily have to be directly related to EoR. Make a two-handed weapon with lightning-to-fire and/or phys-to-fire conversions plus some added damage to Flame Touched and Shieldbreaker specifically could use that to convert EoR through that. Obviously the lack of skill bonuses would still be a problem so making a weapon specifically for fire EoR or Shieldbreaker in particular would be perferrable.

EDIT: Like Gnomish_Inquisitor said, two-handed EoR is very specialised, very dedicated to a handful of items and nothing beyond that. If you were to take another route with two-handed EoR, made use of the available conversions on the Cyclone Mask and Cindertouch to go full lightning instead of fire or fire/phys, you run into the same issue. Take a look at all the lightning, EoR or Oathkeeper-based two-handed weapons. About the best weapon you can come up with for that build would be Temporal Arcblade, cause that at least has bonuses to Soulfire. Other than that…Infernal Brimstone doesn’t support lightning, Gutsmasher actively converts away your lightning damage to phys. That’s not accounting for the fact that going lightning takes away your RR from Guardian of Empyrion, of course. Two-handed EoR is just not in a good place in general barring like 3 legendary items (Gutsmasher, Wrath of Tenebris, Death’s Reach). You don’t have to be Shieldbreaker specifically to struggle with making a 2-handed EoR build.

[eardianm]

I went down the 2 hander EoR road as well and ran into the same problems you did. Outside of the dedicated 2 hander EoR weapons, it’s very hard to get the + skills and attack speed and conversion to take advantage of the bigger weapon damage pool, regardless of damage type. My hunch was this was on purpose to prevent some runaway scaling, although it doesn’t appear broken even on chaos sentinel. The change to reaper pants helped some on skills, but a ton of conversion is tied to specific 1 handers

[hammyhamster1]

I took a quick assemble around that suggested Barthollem’s Gravel (2x fairly simple magic affixes) and it looks pretty similar to your posted DW build for damage. You have to change focus from all regen to some %WD healing, though. Barthollem Fire EoR.. You could compare something like it?

Edit: Sunherald’s Claymore with similar affixes looks pretty juicy on this combo. It has a nice proc and fits in well for shieldbreaker. It really cranks up the absorb on Blast Shield.

[RektbyProtoss]

https://www.grimtools.com/monsterdb/270/items

Gollus’ ring’s dropchance is imo too low and has no affix preferences (“smart loot”) afaik. Either increase the dropchance or add “smart loot” to make it drop preferably with HP regen affixes.

[Shadowpast]

This. On a side note, there is a blue ring, Obliti something or other, could we get a mythical version? Pretty sure there isn’t one but it is one of the few rings that has regen outside of the judgment rings and mi’s

[Ulvar1]

Oblitorix

[lMarcusl]

I’ll have to get back to you on this with some exact math when I have the time tomorrow. All I can say for now is from my experience Barthollem’s Gavel (and to that extent Sunherald’s Claymore, though I haven’t tested that one at the time since it didn’t exist) essentially come out to a generic two-handed fire weapon with no real support for EoR or the Shieldbreaker class beyond that. They boast higher flat weapon damage, which makes up the minority of EoR’s damage. The majority comes from flat damage on the skill (skill bonuses, full conversions on phys/lightning, item skill modifiers) and from attack speed, both of which these items are short on compared to dual-wield versions with Alladrah’s Spellbades or even Riftclaw Slicers. Again, gonna have to do some napkin math on that the demonstrate the difference since I currently don’t have these greens on me to test with in game.

[AdequateSubject]

I think the Canister Bomb part of Korvan Storm Halberd needs an update https://www.grimtools.com/db/items/12672

Now that the mutator for CB no longer converts pierce to lightning, this weapon could use some additional modifier to CB. If anything, a better fit would be points to Improved Casing instead since that’s where the physical damage that the mutator converts to lightning comes from.

Primal Strike + Canister Bomb Elementalist with a 2-hander would be interesting to try, but it’s not a very exciting prospect the way things are at the moment.

[Valinov]

Could this amulet https://www.grimtools.com/db/items/8971 have attack speed added instead of casting speed or in addition to it? I found it a bit strange that an item supporting an autoattack replacer has cs instead of as. It would be nice for numerous melee fire OK builds.

[lMarcusl]

Aight, so the math is done. My secondary school teacher would have a heart attack if she saw how long it took me to do the percentages and calculate the attack speed. Always sucked at math Rest assured, if I made any mistakes in the calculation, I made the same mistake both times at the very least

Anyway, this math compares your setup to my setup (I added the same components and augments you used since those are missing on the build I linked), and was done from the raw numbers on grimtools, not factoring in any RR, only flat damage numbers, conversions, item skill modifiers, percentage damage increases and attack speeds. I wasn’t factoring in Proc Buffs, only permanent and temporary buffs. Your setup - 165697 EoR dps. My setup - 248336 dps.

The math if you want to check it out:

DW EoR

Weapon damage with bonuses 8326

Flat damage on EoR 38 %WD, 172 phys, 154 fire, 167 phys, 192 lightning, 60 burn per second

Conversions 100 % lightning and phys to fire

Damage bonuses Fire: 2837% Burn 2741 %

Attack speed 182 % (-1 % attack speed from max = 0.0008 s attack time increase)

(WD + phys + fire + lightning) x attack speed + burn

23282 x 10.5932 + burn

248336 dps

2H EoR

Weapon damage with bonuses 15949

Flat damage on EoR 38 %WD, 172 phys, 138 fire, 99 phys, 117 lightning

Conversions 78 % phys to fire

Damage bonuses Fire 2404% Phys 683% Lightning 1458 %

Attack speed 171 %

WD + phys + fire + lightning x attack speed

6061 + 467 + 8749 + 1823

17100 x 9.6899

165697

Surprisingly on point for the 50 % dps increase I ballparked from my prior experience switching from two-handed to dual-wield. As you can see, the two-handed setup with the right Gavel affixes doesn’t even come near DW working off of pre-rolled weapons. And again, this is not factoring in RR, which would go further in the DW build’s favour as it converts all damage to fire, where the two-handed setup has some lingering physical that doesn’t get RR benefits from Thermite Mine. Two-handed EoR could definitely use some love IMO.

[Archmagister]

not sure, if this belongshere, but I have an issue with the Black Hand of Sanar’Siin Mace.

When I play Bloody Pox Occultist and wield this thingy, the devourers keep popping out of the ground after every second tick of the skill… funny sight but nit intentional, I take it?

[Monceaux]

and maybe better stats than 420% fire resist

[Weyu]

Terrifying Gaze: increased Vitality damage scaling with rank. Replaced % Retaliation added to Attack with % Crit damage, 50% by rank 12, 65% by max ultimate rank.

Could something else be changed for the Crit damage instead of the RATA?
I (and probably others) have a build designed around the RATA on the skill for extra damage output and losing it would change the build significantly.

Example (not a Top Build™; half the items are still a WIP, etc.)