I am fairly new to the game and would like a build where:
These are probably a long shot to get all in a single build but I would like something laid back that I can learn the game and just wipe the floor with mobs and bosses!
Edit: I am playing on SOFTCORE.
This is a “good, fast, cheap” scenario: Pick any two, you can’t have all 3.
I did mean survivability.
What would your top picks be for good damage/survivability?
Preferably easy enough to level with aswell if possible…
You can’t have gear independent and clear ultimate all in the same sentence, sorry mate. But it shouldn’t be a problem either way, it’s not that hard to acquire some form of gearing. You don’t need much to be able to start ultimate.
Good damage/survivability would probably be a generic Warder.
Then what are your picks for high damage/high survivability?
I’d start with a Soldier-based build using 2Handed Blade Arc for leveling. Warder or Witchblade both fine. Swap Blade Arc to Cadence for endgame boss farming.
Tankiest classes:
soldier
shaman
Classes with fantastic heals/lifesteal:
nightblade
occultist
soldier + nightblade or occultist will have great damage and still be tanky, plus they heal a ton
soldier + shaman is the tankiest possible class combo
You can’t have 100% gear independent ultimate runs because it is so hard you HAVE to have the right gear. If you hit a wall in ultimate, you can start up more guys and play them all until you get the right gear for someone to progress in ultimate
also arguably the most laid back character possible is a retaliation/reflect damage soldier + shaman (warder). I’ve seen some lv85 final boss fights on youtube where the guy gets up and goes afk in melee range of the thing for 10 minutes and it dies eventually
That’s not really true, though. All you need to do ult is enough resist to at least zero out the penalties from the difficulty, and a little bit of extra damage. As long as you haven’t been taking the absolute worst skills and devotions you’ll be fine.
As a fellow newcomer who just recently finished ultimate for the first time recently after hitting brick walls in ultimate with many of the other builds I tried (though the most epic fails were not from guides, I rolled them from my own ideas which turned out to suck), the easiest kind of well-rounded combo without requiring any specific combo of gear (maybe decent gear but nothing specific) in my personal opinion is a cadence witchblade.
He’s tanky with the shield and has amazing survivability, but also very respectable damage output – surprisingly good for one with a shield, and you don’t need some super awesome set and weapon to achieve the damage output and survivality. The flat physical damage combined with bonuses you get from skills and devotions alone will bring you above 10k DPS even with the crappiest weapon, and with even a “meh” kind of 1-handed sword like the one I’m using that I keep wanting to replace with something better, I get 28k with fighting spirit and deadly momentum kicked in. Unlike what jajaja originally did I pumped more points into cunning initially (without really knowing so much what I was doing) but managed to be less starved for OA in my case (over 2100 with only passives and over 2500 with fighting spirit). It didn’t seem to hurt survivaility too much with less physique/DA/HP so I’d recommend trying that since a lot of people point out OA as a potential problem for that build but I didn’t really feel like that was a problem with something like a 2:1 physique/cunning distribution.
This is the build I was looking for since I started the game as the one with which I can farm gear for himself and for other characters. I tried many others and the other two that were ultimate viable was Squib’s retaliation warder (but BORING as hell IMO – too boring for me to endure after getting him to act 2 in ultimate with no struggle at all but taking so, so long) and a poison witch hunter (totally fine on damage output but very, very squishy with my crap gear and I got bored with hit-n-run tactics all the time).
The occultist line to me combined with soldier (more soldier than occultist) is helpful mainly because of the resist debuffs from curse of frailty which is easy to spam (it makes a huge difference in how fast enemies die with the physical resistance debuff – I’d say I kill things two to three times faster with it) and the healing and super sexy health regen from blood of dreeg (which multiplies when overguard is active). Jajaja has a guide that I didn’t follow initially but later on to get the most out of the build – I kind of wish I knew about it sooner.
From a general standpoint, and just from what I’ve discovered so far (a seasoned player might point out cases where it’s not true), ultimate difficulty is the true and ultimate test of a build. Even the dumbest ideas I had for a build managed to clear veteran and elite quite easily and got either wrecked in ultimate or was killing stuff so slowly that I got so bored that I raged quit.
That brick wall for a more ranged/caster type is generally not doing enough damage – it’s not survivality as much (though that’s always nice) since you have the option to just kite a lot as long as you can kill things fast enough before they touch you much. Of course it’s better if you have some but you can get away with a ranged/caster type who is squishy in ultimate than one who is tanky but can’t deal much damage at all.
For a melee character, it’s both survivality and damage output, and in some ways it’s harder to balance such a build. I made a warder which was doing absolutely fine with damage output but suddenly just dying out of the blue with primal strike in ultimate and even on some stupid elite that spawned in lower crossing – ultimate can really put a spotlight on the weaknesses of your build. I felt invincible before with that character because the totem and life steal (ADCtH) was healing more than I was taking damage, but suddenly ultimate tipped the scales and my health went from like 100% to 0% in the blink of an eye with an enemy I didn’t think was even much of a threat. A similar thing happened to my blademaster.
With my cadence witchblade that never happened, and I never felt like he was killing things too slowly – and his gear is crap. It’s an eclectic mess of blues and greens and two legendaries I found on the way which don’t even coordinate well with each other or my build with components and augments to try to clean up the skewed mess of resists and balance them all out. Even then I feel more powerful than ever with it. Some of this might be a matter of preference and playstyle and what suits you, but the cadence witchblade was exactly what I was searching desperately to find as one lacking a collection of decent gear, and I’m thinking it might be a good one for you too.
Great post, very helpful and in depth. Thanks!
I took a look at jajaja’s build but as a complete nooby it is difficult for me to understand some of the lingo. I get that its high survivability but how’s the overall damage? What do I put my attribute points into while leveling? I know almost nothing about Devotion either 
man if you don’t even know whats a good balance of phys/cunning and devotions, just start a guy and get used to the game. Don’t worry about ultimate, just play any class and style at all through normal/veteran to learn the game. Then either keep going with that guy or start a new one with higher difficulties in mind. You really don’t need a top tier ultimate crushing build for your intro to the game, PLUS it can be quite hard to beat ult with your first guy anyways because sometimes you just get good gear for a totally different class
You can play literally any abilities and devotions through veteran. I beat the game with a stun jacks build, who just spammed them.
I’d echo Goat. It’s the most fun way to play. It’s hard not to face a brick wall in ultimate difficulty though if you don’t know what you are doing. It’s possible to even do that if you do know what you are doing. That brick wall is usually dying too easily or killing too slowly.
With a cadence witchblade like jajaja’s you have survivality hands down even with the most mediocre self-found gear. Wearing a shield with overguard and bulwark and shield training (provided you have reasonable resistances) is gonna make you as tanky as even some other masteries with BiS gear.
And you’ll get very respectable damage output purely from skills like deadly momentum that activate with cadence. The flat physical damage from that far exceeds what you find on any weapon, so you’ll be doing ultimate-viable damage often even with the crappiest weapon (a good one helps, of course, but you’ll be doing high enough damage even with total junk – pay attention to attack speed though because if your damage is coming more from deadly momentum than your weapon, you want to hit as fast as possible).
It’s why I personally think it’s the easiest one. It is not the most fun one to play early on IMO. I never liked blade arc that much when it starts failing to kill trash in one hit and knocking them down instead (so tedious to chase after them), and I didn’t even use blade arc personally with mine – I went cadence all the way. And that was dull until I got to near ultimate and started picking up devotions to do AoE like Oleron’s Blind Fury, and then suddenly I was clearing mobs faster than even my heavily AoE-oriented builds in ultimate.
2H melee warder is also fairly easy to play and primal strike is very rewarding early on in veteran and elite at just wiping out the entire screen but you tend to rely heavily on your wendigo totem for survivality. Fail to put the totem down and you might take too much damage all at once and die. I never liked tying my lifeline to the totem, so I got far with a warder initially but just didn’t care for it. The cadence witchblade can tank damage without relying on you and enemies being right next to a totem. He’s not scared of ranged enemies or casters or anything very much out of reach of the totem. Shield and proper training just tends to more than double your survivality right away.
What do I put my attribute points into while leveling? I know almost nothing about Devotion either
Devotions were really hard for me to understand at first but they start to become something you memorize over time. It’s easier if you focus on goals when doing devotions – like one of the big ones with jajaja’s is Oleron. Then you find a path in between to get there and you can follow his. Undoing a devotion mistake is dirt cheap (just hoarde some aether crystals – easiest way for me to collect them is right outside Warden’s laboratory, burial hill as the second choice) and the price doesn’t escalate, so you shouldn’t be afraid of making a mistake or even experimenting. Also sometimes undoing and refunding a devotion point is a necessity to spread your points around since constellations or combinations of them can become self-sustaining when completed.
It’s helpful to be patient and enjoy the process of geeking out and looking at every single constellation individually like having fun just browsing at a shop, getting excited about certain ones because their bonuses are exciting. You get impatient and frustrated if you don’t take some time to have fun doing that every once in a while. Check out this table:
… and take some time here and there to just look at it in the middle of gameplay and trying to understand, even when following a guide, why the author chose a certain set of constellations and how he made a nodal path towards them. Over time you will start formulating your own ideas and deviating even from the guides you follow a bit if you want a bit more resistance, damage output, a different proc, etc.
In my case when doing early leveling with almost any build, I think it’s easiest to err on the side of physique. It’s because physique requirements cover a lot of the most common gear you find, and few builds can go really wrong if you’re focusing predominantly on physique (only way to get screwed late game is if you don’t have enough spirit or something for some legendary accessory). So for like first ten levels I think you can’t go too far wrong to focus on physique. In my case I put physique/cunning with about a 2:1 ratio, but early on just physique. If you have early high energy requirements don’t get too tempted to pump points into spirit for that purpose, collect energy-regenerating gear and ectoplasms to stick into your accesories, e.g. Try not to let immediate temptations drive your attribute distribution – that can hurt you later on. Jajaja put all physique, I think, and you can do that too.