V1.1.9.2 Discussion

I made a full thread for that idea :bulb:

I’m currently playing a S&B Vitality Savagery Ritualist : https://www.grimtools.com/calc/JVlj5dbN

build_vita

The build is good enough for the main campaign and the RL dungeons. It is a fun build to play, but its overall efficiency is limited, maybe by the lack of support of the Shaman mastery by vitality-melee related items. Such items usually only support Devouring Swarm (e.g. M. Boneshatter Treads and M. String of Maggots). Of note, M. Wendigomane Leggings does support Blood Pact, but I went for M. Dread Knight’s Legplates for its support to Reaping Strike.

I had to resort using both the Nightshard and the relic Eye of the Storm to only get a meager +2 to all skills in Shaman. In order to further boost its survivability I also had to resort using both the Shieldmaiden and Obelisk of Menhir constellations to buff my shield-based defense.

Moreover, as @fordprefect noted, we don’t have access to a good pair of gloves combining both flat vitality damage and AS.

2 Likes

more non-combat pets/limit :pray:

increase movespeed on pseudo pets, or make them partially scale with player bonus (move)speed - feels weird constantly outrunning them still…


  • increase % reflect reduct on titan plating and/or Owl+Solemn Watcher constellation

  • change Conduit of Night’s Whisper’s Chaos Phantasmal Blades prefix to be spam blades

now we have so much conversion avail on items it’s simpler to make things work. But the baked in Vitality transmuter on PB means either you sacrifice a ton of native dmg going out of your way to make diff dmg type PB’s work, or you go no transmuter and nuke with a bit of CDR
However, it’s basically impossible to stack CDR on chaos PB, as all other mods give cold transmuting aside from groble offhand.
Removing vit transmuter on Frenetic Throw i understand could open up spamPB too easily to too many dmg types/being a balance overhaul nightmare
But since there are 0 items with chaos dmg and PBline support, means you not only do you have to go out of your way to get conversion, you also have to sacrifice +%bonus dmg for PB+skills;
^while still ending up with less than meh cdr-less “nuke” or lackluster spam blades https://www.grimtools.com/calc/62aalqO2



0.01% is an increase :smirk:

2 Likes

I’d like to see a Mythical version of Circlet of Burning Rage and the cooldown on this item lowered into the 1-1.5s area, or lower if daring :smile:.

1 Like

I think it’s time to mention one of the classes that has fallen off the meta long ago and, unfortunately, never returned to it. The Tactician.

so, Tactician could be built in several different ways, like

  • elemental (dw Cadence with Malakors or FW with Arcanor)
  • pierce (dw with Reavers or 2H with Nadaan)
  • phys (Octavius)

but all of these concepts are struggling to be good. the reasons are:

  • for elemental - Inq has 0 flat in mastery, elemental flat is also almost non-present in Devos or has very low values to be significant. Also both ele Cadence and FW has very poor itemisation support (and FW is a weak skill iself) which results in poor performance. The last vid of Malakors I saw was like 5:48 or sth like that. And another big (not saying HUGE) problem is that Tactician is a 1-RR-mastery, which is especially crucial when talking about ele damage.

  • for pierce - Tactician is just a beta-version of Blademaster. Less AS, less flat, less mobility, more buttons to press.

  • for phys - so, one day Octavius tactician was one of the best phys builds but since then both he and IT damage lost their power.
    I specially made a build to see how the original concept performs now: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/lNkG4MQN
    as you can see, there are some issues with build and set itself:

  • very low OA for phys build, and set lacks flat or % OA bonuses terribly.

  • no phys RR except conduit

  • also resists are modest, something like ele/poison resists could be added to helm/shoulders.

  • rune gameplay is very cancerous and unpleasant. it requires super-positioning and predicting, the charge time is too long.

  • fw part is extremely weak and does almost nothing.

crucible video:

usual runs are about 6:30 which is very long. Even Spellscourge is faster despite having 0 phys RR.

8 Likes

I’ll be useful and add in Havoc physical tactician on the mildly underperforming train

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/qNYpna7Z

This isn’t super optimized I spose.

Can do SR75-76 safely but slowly, but was a non-starter in crucible when @romanN1 tried it, couldn’t finish because you get overwhelmed and damage isn’t there. Arguable if it needs a buff, but I would never purposefully play this for physical cadence when deathdealer is sitting out there now (which performs well but not over the top imo). Non passthrough, elemental damage unconverted inquisitor wps just don’t provide any AoE clearing. Maybe part octavious set for some conversion would help?

[1.1.7.1] Let's Get Physical, Physical: 5:45m Crucible Gladiator 150-170, SR 85, "naked" Crucible Octavius caster Tactician [sr+][cr+][vid] same tactician?

My suggestion - as stated many times before (in a now closed threat)-

Get us an Poison and/or Acid-Albrecht’s-Aether-Ray to diversify all the different types of rays around the game.

What would it accomplish: More diversity for AAR-lovers, creative builds (Poison Arca - Occultist // Arca - Nightblade // Arca - Oathkeeper with Acid and Posion-damage) and to distribute power between the rays in general.

How could it be accomplished: By adding a suffix on an item, for instance a special "CONDUIT-"stuff, (C. o. acidious deeds) / (C. o. poisonous desires) which converts the types as stated down below. Should not be that difficult for our lovely mods.

Converting details: It could be stated that on said item with a suffix or a newly generated one “100% Aether Damage is converted to Acid”, or “100% Aether damage is converted to Poison, 100% Fire damage is converted to Acid” or something in between those lines. I would go with Aether-Acid / Fire-Poison, since it is a unique and interesting conversion for this niche-build.

Difficulty in making this change: Absolutely no difficulty involved. In fact, Stupid_Dragon has created such an item and even a graphic-update in a closed thread regarding Acid-AAR and / or Bleeding-AAR, but bleeding is off-topic and too difficult for now.

Also suggesting: Of course you can do this with the one, I think, Basilisk-Amulett that lets you convert damage via Dreegs Blood, I know. But this has much more flavor with an actual item, the Devo-Paths would be super-unique and we NEED this graphics-update with a spicy acid-green-toxic-looking aether ray. I can’t stress it enough, so please - Dreeg would be so proud. Zantai, I besiege you - let this wish be granted by thy eternal grace. And with the help of this wonderful community. :slight_smile:

Edit: changed threat to thread - I am sorry, this is meant to be a constructive post and not something that urgently pressed. :smiley:

Here comes the split. Nice keep the heat on guys… So people can focus on this thread(not threat) instead my fiery mistake of doing 3x 75-76 runs without augments with Fire Saboteur :rofl:

Though for the real purpose of posting; https://www.grimtools.com/calc/RVvD9vkN Fire Sabo in Ember’s Calling set;

This set definitely need some health on shoulder and medal pieces.

1 Like

“This is a buff.”
-GGG

4 Likes

In my opinion, Tactician has the same problems that Mage Hunter has: Soldier, Inquisitor, and Arcanist all have a truckload of good skills to invest in, but it’s extremely difficult to get all the skill points necessary to invest in all of them, leaving to very unoptimized builds compared to other more synergistic classes.

I created a Ranged Cold Cadence build during 1.1.9.0 here:

That uses the older stalwart of 22/12 Seal, 21/12 Censure, large life-steal and Ghoul. It attacks fast and does the job, but straight Cadence - even Ranged Cadence which pierces enemies - can’t carry a build on its own. Yes, build standards have changed, but a lot of other classes got a huge buff to either passive damage or can activate multiple procs which dish out a lot of supplementary damage.

Can’t say for sure whether it’s the weakness of Ranged Cadence, weakness of Inquisitor ranged WPS when not paired with Fire Strike, or Seal + Censure just needs to do more offensively than what it does now - which is basically 36 points for some flat absorption + damage reduction, negligible amount of flat damage, and RR.

Since it’s a confirmed change, may I suggest that instead of buffing AS by 6% and CS by 2% it instead put 5% total speed on the first Kraken node. That way non Oleron Soldier, Demo, NB, or Inquis 2h build also enjoy a 5% movement speed increase. The casting speed from the 2 node will be reduced from 4% to 3% both, so:

  • current Kraken have 20% AS, 8% CS, 5% MS
  • planned Kraken will have 26% AS, 10% CS, 5% MS
  • my suggestion Kraken will have 25% AS, 11% CS, 10% MS
5 Likes

I have a suggestion. Would it be possible to give an upgrading system for un-mythical items. So if you had a regular legendary maybe you could pay some iron to have it upgraded to mythical. I do not know if it is too late into the game for this, just thought it would be a nice option.

This has been my primary experience when talking cadence, with the main example of it working is when hard capped smite and 2x deathdealer procs are firing on your white shots. The inquisitor WPS just don’t bring enough damage to cover up those peashooter non-passthrough shots and often require multiple conversions to get them closer to that status.

Firestrike - Inquisitor WPS are golden due to explosive and brimstone mechanics. Shotguns are ace. Single target WPS don’t bring nearly the party, which is why you don’t see dreadscorcher lighting up the world despite having impressive sheet damage. Passthrough is lolscaling tool

RF, Savagery - Inquisitor WPS generally fall short unless 1) you have passthrough, or 2) you are fully converting/supporting the damage types (sand spitter physical performs well and can get full elemental and pierce conversion; Rutnick pally works, has multiple additional shotgun wps, converts/supports damage types. savagery is super painful, generally no passthrough and uncapped attack speed to boot, no great conversion gear on WPS)

Cadence - yolo. As mentioned best results I’ve had was from using the biggest weapon damage WPS procs to smooth out the cadence to white shot issue. Full time passthrough helps as usual, ala elemental with phasebreakers, but that needs some damage help outside of cadence. Best tactician results I’ve had were with goredrinker adding a bunch of flat pierce to cadence and unified WoP damage type for trash clearing that cadence can’t do otherwise. Then you just have WPS for single targets where it is more effective as leech filler.

2 Likes

also, I have another suggestion - to increase LL on SK to 6-8%, add extra LL on LD set or on supporting items.
if the LL gets halved by transmuter, it will help Quick Jacks.
If it doesn’t, it will still improve sustain as current values are not enough.
@Nery tested ny SJ Purifier and the results were really bad.
and I also died a couple of times from solo IM in buffed crucible as I just wasn’t able to outheal the damage.

3 Likes

I find it so funny that the best range savagery inquisitor weapon isn’t even shaman or inquisitor set. Barrelsmiths somehow perform better then any native weapon for AA. Its relatively easy to reroll smiths constantly untill you get 100% fire to lightning and as a result - lightning bursting rounds and even lightning censure…

in reply to @thepowerofmediocrity and with some of my thoughts and tests.

so, I really went for testing Malakor tactician and made this build:
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/d2jRdRj2

my results were 5:11 (the best one), 5:23, 6+ and … that’s all. Out of more than 20+ runs, I completed only 3.
as you can see, the build has a few serious problems.

  • very hard to gather all stats, mostly OA. Despite having 2 green items with HUGE bonuses to it, I barely reach 2700 with perma buffs.
  • low phys resist, and if we take some legendary shoulders with it, we lose stats again.
  • most gear is kinda meh in terms of bonuses/resists, and it’s impossible to get high ranks in, say, DM and in Soldier in general.

what could be done?

  • rework the gloves (as they’re the only gloves with ele flat that support mele builds). Mods to PB and Guardians are redundant (never seeen them being used, actually). They can be replaced with extra targets to Cadence and/or sth that useful. Pierce resist can be replaced with vitality/poison, or at least one of them should be added, as well as some % or flat OA. Adding bonuses to Cadence/DM also would help.
  • maybe rework Malakor into scepter, or at least change its base from phys to elemental. Replace +1 to Demo with +1 to Soldier/Inq as Demo makes to sense here.
  • Speaking about Boots of Primordial Rage, stun resist could be replaced with slow, and some phys res (like 3%) could be added. Proc on boots can be buffed too as it’s almost inconsiderable now.
  • Speaking about Seal of Resonance, I think it’s time to replace 15% sleep resist with slow. Sleep is sth that almost non-exists in the game now, and slow is incredibly valuable.
4 Likes

I agree the Nightblade / Pneumatic Burst bonuses don’t make sense, but I do use the gloves in my Fire Rune of Hagarrad + Guardians build. You can laugh at my 6:30 time all you want, but outside of Lost Souls with the newly buffed Skeletons, this is the fastest I’ve ever done Crucible. If someone can find a way to fit the amulet that gives RR to Censure and Guardians while keeping the survivability, it could be a reasonably competitive (as in sub-5:30 Crucible time) build in the hands of someone with a good set-up who actually likes rune play.

Glad you tried this out, I actually didn’t bother making in game when I saw how low base OA was (like 2400-2500 range without of attack greens). Sounds like if you get it, damage isn’t mega awful? I run into this a bunch when I’ve plugged in ranged elemental tacticians as well.

DM ranks I flagged in the elemental witchblade as well. It’s basically kuba pants and then some soldier +1s, can’t get the skill elsewhere on that damage type.

2 Likes

The damage is not that bad as I expected, though still not super-great. Stats and sustain are a huge problem.
Also, we have limited DW enablers as well.