I’ve been playing around with two Reapers lately, one in the Chaos RE and Cold DE. in the This is a request based on my playing with these.
Replace the Phys resist in Dual Blade with the flat armor in Phantsmal Armor.
Reapers that are not DW will have a hard time building up physical resistance. The Cold DE in the example above used to wear a Chillwhisper, in which case his durability worsened and he could not survive. Changing to Morgoneths and shields improved things, but still struggled against some high cold resistance Nemesis opponents, taking more damage than LS. The example Chaos RE is an even worse failure than that. It might work in the defiler, but I haven’t tried it.
The mods for Ilgorr’s Eternal Vigil aren’t very good.
The DE mod is good, but I personally like the extra LS or dmg more than the extra targets, and the PB mod is honestly garbage. It’s not the total amount of instant heal you need, it’s the sustained durability.
Please consider an Acid/Cold Legendary set.
So far, there is no legend set that supports these two. This can be played with a new build based on NB.
Oh, you’re absolutely right. I hadn’t taken that into account. Do you think there’s anything wrong with Chillwhisper and Embercolling getting a slight phys resist instead?
This has been suggested before and Zantai has said he doesn’t want to give a blanket buff to all Nightblade builds. Hence why only Dual Blades got it since at the time people were complaining that DW Nightblade were too squishy.
Easier said than done.
Most reason to use item X then item Y, cause there is no item Y, or it broke build concept.
I’m on vacation now and haven’t access to game, so I try some mind experiment. Lets take Myrmidon I noted above.
TL DR
Build concept is Myrmidon set, all in WPS and maximum shield bonus. This all determine build gear.
Myrmidon set block 4 gear slots so I can’t equip other torso, helm, shield and medal.
Weapon: totally normal shield grants main damage type (Physical), Block chance , AS and +1 to Soldier.
I don’t use:
-Mythical Agony – conversion to poison
-Targo’s Mallet – no block
-Mythical Edge of Death – conversion to vitality for WPS, no block
-Mythical Reaver’s Claw – armor piercing (Build haven’t enough pierce bonus), no block
-Witch moon – conversion to cold
-Mythical Decree of the Circle of Five – aether damage
-Judgement of the Three – acid and chaos damage
-Mythical Dreadweaver – cold and vitality damage, in spite of +1 to Necro
any other weapon doesn’t provide enough bonuses.
Pants: Dread knight’s legplates grants main damage type (Physical), +3 to Reaping strike, +2 to Overguard
I don’t use:
-Thornhide Legguards – no damage, retaliation I don’t use in build, in spite of +2 to Menhir’s Bulwark
-Chausses of Barbaross – no any usable build skill bonuses
-Demonbone Legplates – only overguard bonus
-Legplates of valor – no damage, in spite of some skill bonuses
any other pants doesn’t provide enough bonuses.
Belt: Gladiator Distinction grants main damage type, convert vitality to physical and add 2 +3 WPS bonuses
any other belt doesn’t provide enough bonuses.
Boots: Boneshtter Threads grants main damage type, 2 +2 skill bonuses and general good stats combo
any other boots doesn’t provide enough bonuses.
Gloves: Colossal grasp is BiS for physical S&B solder builds ever: damage, DA, regen, shield passive and overguard modifier.
any other gloves doesn’t provide enough bonuses.
Shoulders: Bonewraith pauldrons grants main damage type, 2 +3 WPS bonuses
I don’t use:
-Dread knight’s guard – WPS bonus have priority for this build
-Fabius’ pauldron – only one really good alternative with good affix roll
any other shoulders doesn’t provide enough bonuses.
Amulet: Dread Wrath grants +1 to both Soldier and Necro, HP, resistances and granted skill.
I don’t use any other amulet cause it add all skills only to 1 mastery.
Only one alternative I’d been considered is Conduit of whisper, but his affix to WPS was replaced before I made real build.
Rings: Anchorite seal grants 2 +2 skill bonus, HP, Block bonus and resistances
Lifegiver signet grants ADCtH, +2 to Necrotic Edge and resistance.
I coldn’t say there is no better rings, but in total, with other slots they close resistances.
Relic: Menhir Bastion is my personal soldier S&B choise.
Moreover, not only single gear piece, but also it combo grants stats that I not mention.
Finally, even if I select better alternatives, build will move away from the original idea.
I think its more about items that should be used for something but does not able to pull its weight to do it or over-centralize certain play-styles. Like Ludrigan set I mentioned before that has a lot of Chilling round bonus on set, but barely able to pull itself as AA set. Or on other side - Reaping Arc that is pretty much THE way to play 2h characters now.
The moment it face a reflect mob, the amount of damage reflect will easily outheal the ADCtH despite it have 48% Reflected damage reduction (15% from Owl devo, 33% from Titan Plating).
Belt can’t be changed to other despite Guthook seems a better and direct upgrade, reasons being the item combination does not provide any bleed duration reduction, and only Dryad and Hourglass devotion that provide it, but both are not on the Bleed route.
Low movement speed if not using the Oleron Rage. Bad mutator can reduce it to 95% before I change the devotion to Harvestmen Scythe + Hawk (used to be Ghoul + Fox which is better for Bleed build).
Suggested solution:
Add % Reflected damage reduction on the Bloodrager set as 2 set bonus. The right value I think would be 20-25%.
Add Bleed duration reduction to other complimentary items, 30% on Guillotine and/or 40-50% on 2 set Wanton Carnage bonus.
Add movement speed spread out in this 3 devotion: Mog the Wolf, Huntress, and Fox. The total value I think should between 12-15%.
Nemesis I have problem facing is Fabius and Reaper, but that’s more in the SR situation. Highest shard tried is SR80 (with dead vs Reaper 3x), and best tried crucible is Gladiator 170 in 7m against Fabius, Valdaran, 2 Reaper (I’m not the best pilot).
Speaking of Bloodrager set, I think adding pierce damage support to this set can help pierce/bleed Blademaster wth Blade Arc and Ring of Steel.
That will be a huge improvement for tricksters and limit the building freedom. Bloodrager already is the best bleeding gear no matter your secondary damage type is. Combine it with Wildblood, combine it with pierce items etc. The biggest problem is even though you wanna not using it, the helmet’s %20 WD on Savagery outperforms any other gear even if you don’t focus on bleeding.(especially in 2H’s but I also tried it with pierce focused dw trickster). So I wanna play 2H vitality Ritualist with savagery? oh ‘‘I must use Bloodrager helm’’ that idea steals my mind right away.
I agree Bloodrager should have some reflected damage reduction bonus but bleeding archetype already depends on this set, we need more gears to be alternative of bloodrager, not adding everything on bloodrager.
Remove pet skill bonuses from non-pet Occultist relics. Move BA knockback effect to the transmuted version, increase the transmuted version range and remove target requirement for it.
I don’t think that any special builds are needed in this particular case.
The reason behind the suggestions is very simple:
non-pet Occ builds benefit nothing from these pet bonuses on relics, and pet Occ builds have their relics.
knockback on BA is incredibly annoying. Less on 2H, where the damage is way greater, more on 1h when you often have to chase every single knocked mob to finish him.
The perfect “brother” of BA is RA that has no knockdown which is great.
Also knockdown could be moved to transmuter, it would fit in thematically.
And witchblade prefix, have we ever seen a pet build wb for over centuries? I think some affixes should be tweaked so they can be used again.
For examples, Glacial/Resonant/Rimefrost, of the grove, of the voidfire etc…
There’s a more complex problem that so-called “class affixes” are incredibly numerous, provide very little damage bonus, give points to very different skills sometimes and are mostly trash, just blocking better affixes.
But man when you roll class affixes on an MI that also boosts a skill in your class, holy hell is that exciting! I remember i got like a +5 Warcry on something once, and I think I got a Steward’s Halberd that gave like +8 to Cadence, something insane like that. Only happened to me those 2 times in all my 3k hours of gameplay but, as you can see, I never forgot about it!
Rimetongue was changed in 1.1.9.1 to revert the conversions, meaning that this build can get 100% Pierce Grenado with the full set. Observations with the build:
Even with 2 T3 Devotions, Kraken, Hydra & Harp, I cannot break 2,000% Pierce Damage with this build. Maybe the whole “let’s give Pierce damage less values than everything else” has gone a little too far, especially now that we have Kaisan and his 97% Pierce resistance.
Even with +2 to Nightblade, +1 skills with the helmet and Serenity, I don’t have enough points to get Blade Trap while accounting for getting Ulzuin’s Chosen + Blade Spirits. Yes, you need that damage because you’re super frail and Blade Spirits + Unknown Soldier are the only good source of passive damage when Grenado’s on cooldown.
The Physical Resistance on Blast Shield is a very nice touch, but it’s only a short duration and against enemies like Fabius who constantly hone in on you, it’s not enough to shake them off.
My suggestions:
Give Mythical Amatok’s Step %Pierce Damage in addition to the %Cold damage.
Buff Bladetwister Signet with another resistance; I know other Pierce builds, particularly AA ones, would get buffed by this, but in my event, this is the only way to get 100% Elemental to Piercing conversion.
Buff Temper’s offensive stats, like maybe 125% Physical and Pierce damage at 12/12. I know it’s fairly early in the tree, but since there’s no RR in either damage type, Temper needs the offensive boost it could muster OR
3a) Give non-DW melee Nightblades a way to increase it’s Pierce damage. Most likely to Anatomy of Murder, as it’s very hard to hardcap the skill anyway.
