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
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.
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.
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…
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.
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.
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.
Can understand this being a problem, I’ve had OA problems on Inquisitors before too where I’ve had to use Storm Box/Biting Cold DA shred or Deadly Aim as a bandaid. Have you thought about squeezing some more OA in devotion somewhere? Maybe dropping Seru in favour of Blind Sage + Ulzuin’s Torch path or something similar.
Is the SR set usable here at all? Or is that going to just be too much of a damage/OA loss?
Agreed. As thepowerofmediocirty pointed out in the other topic, the Soulfire bonuses also seem weird and could be removed when Empyrion’s Mercy exists. Overload could also be changed as well to something that helps Elemental melee more like IEE. I think it makes sense for Malakor to solely be a Soldier/Inquisitor/Arcanist melee weapon.
This build kills a dummy in 7 secs so the dmg output for a target is very good. But the leech is almost non-existent. I can’t even facetank a solo Kuba with it. And mind you this build worked quite well with half-converted Bat bound to Jacks. HALF, Carl.
Suggestion: multiply all new leech sources for Jacks by 3 or even 4. I’m not joking, it’s that bad.
Spam Jacks will never break any records because you need to focus all your dmg on solo bosses. Even if the build listed above could survive it would’ve barely crossed 5 min mark. So i’d say it’s very safe to give spam jacks almost infinite leech. The playstyle is fun, skill demanding, doesn’t break the game but rn it just doesn’t work.
The problem havocs is crazy OA and very small crit damage. I think that very specific relic such as Azrakaas Epoch can get 5-10% crit damage. Also It would also be nice to increase radius to 5 meter (possible with reduced summon limit)
I continue to talk about ranged cadence.
I tested Valdun Tactician https://www.grimtools.com/calc/4VxrMEEN and have only 2 problems.
Amulet - when the most items fire/cold/lightning resist change to elemental resist this amulet not changed.
And…110 piercing damage to cadence…this is terrible. Change this to some % weapon damage.
I also found a possible bug. The devotion Crab have only 40% phys/IT damage that a small for T2 devotion.
Basically any augments that don’t have OA or DA, that are not pet or retaliation focused, needs to be looked at and receive much better stats to compensate for the lack of OA/DA. Or simply just slap OA/DA on them.
A few others, like Ateph’s Promise, should get buffed as well because they don’t provide any substantial benefit over something like Arcanum Dust. In that particular example Typhoon Powder is just straight up better.
