I really want to make a build focusing on Piercing and Living Soldier. About the only good setup I can think of is using Cadence to proc Living Soldier because Nightblade’s melee attacks are weapon procs at 20% chance only.
I have a lvl 100 Whirlpool Nightblade and Whirlpool is AMAZING with Shadow Strike setup as it’s 100% proc with Shadow Strike and it’s a good, Stackable aoe.
Problems with Living Soldier:
I feel every skill that relies on Critical Chance is horrible because it is very hard to build Critical Rate up without heavy investment and Critical Rate seems to be severely REDUCED against Bosses or enemies with +3 levels. Typical skills that just have a fixed 10-20% don’t get hindered against bosses.
I can only proc ONE soldier at a time. This is stupid with 6s cool-down. This means I won’t have all 3 soldiers until after 12s assuming I critical at the right time.
Short duration. 24s is pretty short at level 15 especially when you have 6s CD.
Limited aggro range! Because I am ranged Cadence, the Solders sometimes don’t aggro if I stand far shooting. ugh.
Can we please get rid of this Resummoning procs? If the internal CD is too short, I end up resummoning. Perfect example is Raise the Dead with 2s CD and my Nightblade ends up resummoning all the time and the skeletons barely start attacking. So annoying.
Why can’t we just proc all 3 Soldiers at once with longer CD? That will make Living Soldier a whole lot better.
Living Soldier is really hard to build for because Piercing is not common build. Most range weapons have elemental in it.
I don’t think living shadow is bad.On my Witchblade I have three all time,cause sigil is excellent procer.I strongly recommend not to bind it to Cadence,this skill should proc assasin mark.For what I read your problem is low OA,cause with high you’re going to crit often enough.Also do you level Living shadow,cause all procs looks unimpressive at low levels?
Never used it, but whenever I see anyone using it there are always 3 of them on the screen and only disappear when the fight is over or the user dies. Also, they seem to have quite a sexy damage.
You can still take 5 points in the constellation, for the flat pierce and % crit, wholesale with Azrakaa and Ulzaad. It’ really pleasing to see how piercing devotions are now easier to manage and it really boils down to choose between unknown soldier and harp (even less of an incentive to get those 5 points). For me it’s more of a choice between Mantis (didn’t notice the % DA till now), Tower and Panther cause i still want to keep Hawk.
I got a ranged tactician (Valdun set) currently just lvl 88, but still…
1.)
Getting a decent crit chance is really not hard especially with the soldier mastery. Using Bard´s Harp devotion helps a lot with that too, it´s kinda a must have devotion for pierce builds anyways, i dare say.
2.)
I usually have no problems procing 2 Living Shadows, 3 if there are enough enemies around or I am fighting something that doesn´t gib very fast.
I guess the key is to bind the devotion to the “right” skill.
3.)
24 seconds duration is pretty rad imo, I guess it seems short to you, since you have problems proccing them.
4.)
They seem pretty agressive to me, they are fast and hostile and seek out targets. Then again, i don´t shoot at mobs 2 screens away. cough
Also, they can be send to specific locations/targets with the “Pet attack” command.
You can only proc one at a time? I can only proc one at a time and I can have 2 now but there is at least 6s CD gap.
I completely disagree with how this game treats Critical procs. That’s two requirements! Take Whirlpool for example. It has 33% chance to proc and only 3s cool-down and it does tons of aoe damage.
To proc Living Shadow, you need to critical first and then there is still cool-down. (CD in this case is good because you don’t want to resummoning them too often).
And huge problem is our Critical rate is SEVERELY reduced against bosses. Why is that? Against normal monster, I am at 20% and against a Name Boss, I drop down to 2.9%? WTF??? How is this fair for Critical proc builds? Other On Hit procs don’t suffer reduced proc rate against Bosses.
get one up - 6 seconds - get another one up - 6 seconds - get another one up (the first one we got has 12 seconds left to live when we get the third up)
Get higher OA and attach Living SHADOW on a skill that hits FAST/OFTEN … :rolleyes:
But Pierce damage will get devotion buffs in Forgotten Gods
I hate that 6s CD. Why don’t they just allow us to proc all 3 of them out at once? It’s not like they are overpowering - considering we need a critical to proce them. Most skills just need to land a hit or get hit.
But hey, I agree that Living Shadow probably is the least useful/powerful Tier-3 devotion skill proc. I do think it sucks for another reason than its proc mechanic. But on the other hand, we have FG soon.
Oh I know Whirlpool is cold damage. My point is comparing to other Tier 3, Living Shadow feels a lot weaker and mainly due to the ways they are procced. If they just change a bit, allowing us to summon all 3 of them with 6s CD, then I am okay with it.
Last night I was fighting a Named Boss and my critical dropped to ZERO. That’s ridiculous. Against normal enemies, I have about 15-20%, but against him I am zero???!!! WTF
