Beaten the game twice on Normal now (full credit to the Lazy Pokemon Master and Cadence Witchblade builds respectively) and before I start tackling Elite, I wanted to pick a build to really focus on. And the obvious choice (in my opinion, at least) would be something both:
a) easy to play self-found, and
b) good at farming for gearing later characters.
Now, the Lazy Pokemon Master would be phenomenal for this… but what are some other options? That build is a ton of fun, but sometimes I just wanna get my hands a little dirtier myself, y’know?
Which ever build you have that you find the funnest to play and that can handle the area’s you plan of farming. But that’s just my opinion.
Edit** Just realized you hadn’t got a max level character yet
I say A Pyromancer that uses Sigil/Destruction, BWC High Potency & Thermite Mines. You will have easy life steal from Sigil, easy access to solid Health Regen with Blood of Dreeg & Vindictive Flame, pretty good resist reduction from Agonizing Flames Vulnerability & Thermite Mines. You also will get good Flat Offensive ABility from Flamed Touch and Blood of Dreeg.
That sounds like a LOT of fun. Any build guides lying around along those lines that you know of? Or a grimcalc link? I can try to toss something together myself if not, but I doubt it’ll come out as good.
I highly recommend a cooldown poison character for a first farmer. Kills trash and bosses with equal ease and can take down most Nem’s with vendor/epic gear plus random crap you find lying around - no legendaries to get up and running.
There haven’t been any really good builds posted for it that I’ve seen in awhile, but a grimcalc along the lines of this buildshould get you going. Rovers will be your most important rep as their poison gear is awesome. Dreeg spam is similar - just remove the transmuter and max out Vile Eruption. Also a great build.
Note on that build - tweak as needed. I’ve been doing playing Cornacopia so I’m not entirely sure the devotion route such a build would take outside Corn…
Also things to note:
-The poison damage from two Mark of Dreeg skills will stack with each other. Ditto things like multiple items with the poison bolt proc (or any proc). The poison bolt proc from the ‘of blight’ suffix is surprisingly effective at killing bosses (well aiding boss kills, don’t try to kill them with just the proc). I’d dare say a (useful prefix) Gollus ring of Blight is the best poison ring.
-A good poison skill relic is invaluable - the top mythic one does more poison than shadow strike in an AoE.
-The poison melee skills aren’t worth it - unless you are going acid melee which has a much steeper gear requirement. Their ability to stack poison is almost non-existant. If dual wielding the poison from main-hand and off-hand will NOT stack with each other. Same for DW skills like shadowstrike.
Are you sure about the two mark of Dreeg stacking? I know they are diferentes skills, but they have the same attack and two weapons with the same skills dont usually stack. Can you confirm it please?
It’s basically built around using Meteor Shower, Abominable Might, Fissure, Eldritch Fire as massive damage boosts with Giant’s Blood, Blast Shield, Revenant life steal, 12% Damage Absorption and Sigil keeping you alive. 9% of attack damage converted to health is an absolute ton when you’re pouring meteors and volcanoes everywhere! The skellies are just icing on top of the cake. Plus they slow and do vitality damage.
Throw in the minimum of ~35% of physical damage converted to Chaos and your meteors are doing even more damage (and healing). Basically, your DPS keeps you alive. The more you do, the more you blow up and set on Chaotic fire, the tankier you are. Only thing I’m thinking about changing is taking out the 3/3 in Consecrated Blade (for the synergy with the Physical damage of Meteor Shower) and putting it in Thermite Mine for 16/16 instead of 13/16.
It’s a great build!
Edit: As pointed out below, I was under the mistaken impression that Revenant was applying to all my damage. That was erroneous. Change Revenant to Turtle and put the extra point into Ulzuin’s for the +100% Fire damage. Works out very nicely.
You actually don’t have ANY attack that can benefit from that Revenant life steal. It only applies to weapon damage, of which you have none on any skills. All your life steal is coming from Sigil.
Well, shoot. The build does fine on Ultimate as well with a ton of life steal so I assumed Revenant was adding to it. Ah well. Time to rearrange the devotions. Luckily, I didn’t need Revenant for Meteor or Abomination so I can just take the points out and place them elsewhere.
Edit: Added Turtle for the shield. Works out nicely.
I wouldn’t suggest using the Pokemon Master for it, actually. He was my first character (I only use SF gear), and there are places you have a lot of
difficulty farming. He’s really great outside of those areas, though.
I’ll limit my build suggestions to “builds that you don’t need any specific pieces of equipment to be viable (though not optimal) in ultimate”. Most of these builds can go all the way through aspirant with that same level of gear, as well. Gearing completely through crucible beyond aspirant is probably not a great route right now.
So, to begin:
It depends on how you’re going to go about farming. Fabius runs or Crucible on a SF character prefer survivability over damage, Twin Falls or Undercity wants high ST and some AOE damage, stash runs want speed and a little survivability. Having done all three, I’ll give my three cents.
Fabius, Crucible
You need to survive as long as possible. I REALLY like witchblade, but with a first-timer’s gear, I doubt it’s tenable in ultimate. Fabius will be able to crit you down, and Crucible throws enough stuff at you to overwhelm you.
Instead, I built a retaliation warder. It is sometimes the most boring build possible, but you just… can’t die. It takes down Fabius (and most of the other nemeses) with ease, and it requires no gear (Sure, there are optimal choices, but as far as a minimum? pffft).
(I have +3 soldier, which makes it much, much better).
That build isn’t very good, and I feel bad posting it here, but I was looking for something that kept the best of the ret warder, maxxed resistances, while adding just enough damage and OA that you can take down ranged/caster enemies (even nemesis) under the worst mutators (anything + regen for this build).
Best of all, you can respec between the two pretty easily, and respec to a more active warder after having geared up some.
Twin Falls, Undercity
You need a character with good AOE and decent single-target damage.
Here, I suggest a vitality caster
That build is optimal, but you don’t need anything outside “How much +vit damage can I stack?” It tears through clumped enemies very quickly, and will start tearing through heroes after a few seconds of setup (positioning, dropping your totems, debuffing).
(I can’t find a reasonable blademaster with SF gear).
Speed mostly comes from two things: run speed and a closer. Blademaster has Oleron’s Rage, Pneumatic Burst, on top of gear, and both blitz and shadow strike as closers. You, uh, can get around on the battlefield. Burst is also a heal, barrier is 3 seconds of invulnerability. Best of all, the character gears up instead of respeccing at some point.
2H warder: You lose some speed, but gain survivability. You can also respec between the 2H and ret warder, so if you find you don’t like one style (or you just want to change things up), go for it. The only real gear requirements are “big two handed thing”, and you’ll almost certainly get a stonefist rebuke or 10 very quickly. I’m using this, and while it’s not perfect, it definitely gets the job done.
Saboteur: Use jajaja’s guide, use two elite legion firestarters, and don’t worry about the purples, just use whatever you find. They nerfed it in the last patch, but it’s still pretty capable with just greens: you lose a lot of damage without them, but the mobility is still good, and you’ll still be able to handle most things you’ll run across while getting WAY away from the rest. It’s also quite fun to play.
Choosing
Okay, so you want to know how each one plays and the style of play instead of “what they’re good for”?
Retaliation warder is boring if you want to actively do stuff. It’s also probably the best thing on here for farming. I sometimes farm Fabius and forget to put my buffs up, only noticing when my HP goes down farther than usual. I’ve quite literally killed him without noticing he was there. The build I posted is a lot more active, but it introduces some nasty weaknesses (You have no AOE being a pretty big one), too, and is better for the crucible (high density, usually only a few things you have to work on to take down) than game clearing.
Vitality Caster is fun and active, but you do run into a “gear check” in mid-late ultimate. At least I did, ymmv. And I don’t think I could do Crucible with it ungeared: you’re squishy when you do make a mistake and the mob density is high. Rotation can also be unwieldy at first.
Blademaster is, outside of some testing, theorycrafting to me, so I can’t reasonably discuss it. I can see why it works, I watch videos… but it seems to require a lot of gear to play actively. Still, in testing, it was mobile and sturdy, which is what you care about when doing stash runs.
2H Warder is weirdly fun. You have few things on rotation, but there’s just something satisfying about running into a group of things, swinging a big stick at them, watching them fall apart, and running to the next group of things. Especially skeletons, Cronley’s men, or wasps, who clump together. The major weakness is the AOE, which, while it works, isn’t as consistent as some of the other classes.
Saboteur was probably my favorite class to level, but not to play end-game. You get to run into groups, swing at things, and they all die, but when you see things that have fire resist, you DO need some of the gear jajaja suggests.
