I’m starting my second character and not sure what I want to make. So thought I would make a thread and ask if anyone have tips on really strong classes with good builds available to them. So basically I just want a solid build for what ever I’m going to play since I just want to play fun with it while playing on my main. So I would prefer a melee class that can pass to ultimate easy. Really doesn’t mind which play style it has(Would love some dmg class if possible).
Not really, nothing that really will mather. Just if the class is strong and not to hard to clear ultimate and there is a solid online build I’m so much more than happy.
Make a Fire strike build. Sorcerer or Pyromancer for dual guns, Saboteur or Elemntalist for dual Stormheart (search the forums for the Diary quest line to learn how to find it).
Just max Static strike, Brimstone, Flame touched, Flashbang, Blast shield and get lvl 14-ish Vindictive flame. Use the secondary class for passive skills (Elemental balance, Inner focus and Sphere from Arcanist; dual wield techniques, Veil of shadows and Bneumatic burst from Nightblade; Vulnerability, Blood of dreeg, Possession and Solael’s witchfire from Occultist; Wendigo totem, Heart of the wild and Stormcaller’s pact from Shaman).
Your items should have as many bonuses to Static strike and Brimstone as possible, because those skills become insane at lvl 20+. Feel free to ignore the % weapon dmg skills (Fire strike, Explosive strike, because you won’t have very high weapon damage). Attack speed and resistance reduction are also high on your priority list. Blast shield, Flashbang and the support passives from the secondary class should make you pretty tanky on their own, but some regen and/or lifesteal is always nice. As for devotions, you want offensive ability and crit damage (Hawk, Hydra, Viper…), you want procs that reduce resistances (Widow is a must, Solael’s witchblade and Manticore are decent) and you want survivability (Behemoth, Tree of life, Solemn watcher, Obelisk…).
Make sure you pick Kymon as your faction and equip the fire damage + damage reduction ring/ammy augment from them as soon as posisble (lvl 60 and revered required). Also, their nemesis is incredibly easy to kill with a ranged weapon and Flashbang.
Once you farm some decent items with your fire/lightning cheese bullshit, you can make a Blademaster and join the big boys.
Here’s a guy i just finished leveling:
Look at the DPS! What is not shown is the 100% crit modifier on fire strike. 30k crits are quite common with this build, even on endgame bosses.
This setup is perfect for a new player because the encircled items can be acquired trough quests (the swords) or trough crafting (rest). Just gather the components, join a multiplayer game on ultimate and ask someone who has a recipe to craft them for you. The chest, shoulders and medal are important for the build, but there are replacements. You can use a relic to enable dual wield.
I’ve been having trouble picking a build and sticking with it, but this one is really different from any I have tried so far. Any chance you could grimcalc it?
You can transfer them, they are not bound to char. A lot of players have a ton of chars in ultimate already, and any of them can give you one if you don’t have a char in ultimate already.
@Sefk - no point in linking a grimcalc because I’m not done tweaking and the setup definitely depends on available items. There is a guide here that uses a similar setup, so you can follow that if you want. Aside from getting Static and Brimstone as close as possible to 22/12 and getting all the support skills to max (10/10 Heart of the wild etc.), there is a lot leeway.
@GeneralCash - I had a question about the build in general, I’m new to Demo and melee but have played around with Arcanist in a few builds and like the utility. Now why is it you opt for ranged Sorcerer over say x2 Stormheart, is the lack of Stormcaller’s Pact that big of a factor or is the loss of max health from Heart of the Wild the deciding factor in taking range over melee.
It’s mostly lack of health on Sorc. Even when Maiven’s sphere was much stronger, melee sorc was ill-advised. Another thing with sorc is that you actually accumulate a lot of base damage and conversion with sorc trough IEE (same thing on occultist with Solael’s/Possession), so you benefit from Explosive strike’s weapon damage aoe (and you have the spare points to max Fire/Explosive strike because you can skimp on Arcanist mastery).
Edit: it could also be that dual guns sorc was one of the best chars in earlier betas, so I’m just used to sorc being ranged and haven’t put in enough effort to make a good melee sorc build (never felt the need, the gunslinger version still owns).
For pyromancer would it make sense to run an offhand blood orb of cth’thon? So much flat elemental damage in demo: firestrike, static strike, brimstone, flame touched, vindictive flame, blast shield, etc. Consolidate the lightning and fire damage there with the demo and occ chaos damage, then put it all under the chaos damage type so it can be modified by Possession and chaos dmg gear?
I’m following the Tri-Elemental build at the moment (demolitionist/nightblade with firestrike), and I have to say it’s the most powerful build I’ve played so far by a large margin.
It’s amazing, when you think about it, I remember that demolitionist used to be regarded as a very weak class, and now it’s seems the most powerful one or at least among the most powerful ones.
Ha. Ha. Wait till you’re in ultimate–you’ll get crushed. I theory-crafted tri-elemental with 1400% average on EACH element, and the build still blows with all legendaries and near-max resists. Not sure why, but yeah… not viable and low DPS (like 20k or something, compared to my chaos build which gets nearly 50k).
I am in Ultimate / near the end of act IV. You must be doing something wrong. My char has 4 deaths total, and none of them happened after lvl 70 (once I could apply the anti-poison augments). I have over 30k dps even though I only have half of the recommended equipment, and resists are almost maxed. I did choose the defensive devotions, and in contrast to the guide, I put every single point into physique, though.
I honestly can’t understand why you think it’s not viable; I can stand in the middle of a huge pack of non-boss mobs and go afk, health doesn’t go below 75%. The only time you actually have to play and use your active skills are when engaging boss-mobs. Clear-speed during normal play is also so fast that more dps will not make much of a difference anymore, most of the time lost comes from wandering around, not from fighting.
I think because EVERY build I’ve ever made has failed. I’m treating this game like Diablo 2, and have the “Diablo 2” build mentality. Download my character and tell me what’s wrong with it because I was only focusing on tri-elemental damage, thinking I can make a glass cannon type of char that can depend on ADCTH, but it gets slaughtered anyway. This is a theory-crafted char using items from SST and some are found/crafted (it was leveled regularly, and I use this char as my main template). I’m planning to remake when I finally figure out what’s wrong with my builds.
Come to think of it, all of my builds pre-ultimate were successful. It’s when they into ultimate that they suffer. Not sure why. Funny thing is, the only viable char I ever made in ultimate was a soldier+shaman (phys based). It was the only char that wouldn’t get pounded into dust.
I tried your character and your main problem you focused a melee class on spirit which will already make you squisjy I re did devotions and some skills that didn’t make sense kinda made it work with iskandras set and lost 3k dps but greatly increased survivability ,2 BIG things I saw you made mistakes you did not max maivens sphere and extra % elem resist you didn’t need on skills so I changed the points to max pneumatic burst with modifier so you can spam it more often got you to 9k health but still the spirit focused build really killed it even like 700 or 800 physique would have been really good for your build but I recommend redoing it …the build is almost a lost cause.
At least in the current version of the game. Chaos dmg is the third most resisted dmg type in the end game, after bleeding and vitality, but unlike those it doesn’t get the crazy resistance reducton skills/items. In fact, it’s one of the hardest dmg type to stack resistance reductions for.
+dmg% is useless when everything has >80% resistance and you have no good way of debuffing it.
Elemetal, especially mixed elemental is awesome, because there will always be at least one elemental type not resisted by the current target and plenty of ways to debuff resistances.
If your build happens to do a bunch of chaos damage (Phantom blades for example), use Clairvoyant and Albrecht’s duality to convert it into aether. You should never actively try to convert into chaos!
I bet your amazing theorycraft didn’t include skill bonuses to brimstone/static and resistance reductions. Or at least OA and crit dmg for that matter. Stacking +dmg% is the dumbest way to boost your damage output.
