I think even if you put both DA and Physical resist on Temper Elementalists or Defilers still won’t touch Vindicators. I tried making Lightning caster Elementalist, but it’s such a clunky awkward build with no Heal button or any cc-resists to kite or basically anything especially sustain, after few iterations I gave up. While Defilers are barely a class.
I’d just like to say that i’m all for %phys res on Temper. It’s a universally helpful stat for both melee and casters. The DA is nice but that is just how I feel based on experience when the game scales the monsters really high.
i’d leave DA for Vindictive flame on mods.
Agreed. Elementalist has no support for setting up a single damage type, and also lacks healing potential while being squishy.
A few ways to address this
1: Damage Conversion, Fire -> Lightning on Ulzuin’s Wrath (vindictive flame skill mod, in case I missed the name). While Vindictive Flame is active, your fire damage is converted to lightning. 40% at 12/12, 60% at 22/12
2: with DA coming on Temper, a fair chunk of armor absorption on Vindictive Flame can even the odds.
3: Since Ulzuin’s Wrath, with damage conversion will be something not for soldiers primarily (and giving it 25% and 50% physical->lightning conversion too would make commandos rethink taking it twice), adding physical resistance, or offensive ability to it won’t hurt balance as much as it would otherwise.
4: if physical -> lightning is not in the works for Ulzuin’s Wrath, Physical -> Lightning could become (50% at 12/12, 100% at 22/12) part of Heavy Ordnance. With the abysmal flat damage on that skill, adding a little more reason to take it is not all that bad.
Yeah, I’ve been trying to crack those new Barrelsmiths for 2 days. Both with Elementalist and Purifier. Can’t crack it. I might be doing something wrong, ofc, but still… this mastery is just too damn weak.
DA on temper won’t solve anything. Only phys commandos are gonna be able to afford it. Just like now with armor. Unless it’s 20+ da per point, who’s gonna invest as there’s nothing else there for non-phys. % phys could be changed to %all dmg.
Most casters or ranged builds have less than 2k armor, unless soldier-based. Giving some absorbtion will not help much, imo.
Changing mines to drop in triangles is a GREAT idea, that would make them at least semi-predictable. This + making them immortal would make me somewhat happy.
Vindictive flames are not in the best shape as of now, ppl mostly go for 11/16. Buffing it to give something useful defensively with decent scaling is a good idea. I would suggest adding % chance to avoid melee attack that would scale to 20%+ when topped. That may actually resurrect saboteurs as a side effect, which is great.
I have a feeling you might be pursuing Dagalon concepts for lightning mortars. That indeed looks great in theory. But in my experience the only gear that makes mortars viable (by viable I mean c+) is fire gear namely Justice set and other pieces that are conflicting with lightning solutions.
Mines already drop in a very predictable line but they bounce off of everything (including monsters) and that’s why you never know where they’ll end up. Changing them to drop in a triangle without changing the bouncing won’t help at all.
Vindictive flames are not in the best shape as of now, ppl mostly go for 11/16. Buffing it to give something useful defensively with decent scaling is a good idea. I would suggest adding % chance to avoid melee attack that would scale to 20%+ when topped. That may actually resurrect saboteurs as a side effect, which is great.
This seems pretty unlikely what with the procs on Searing Light. And because VF is toggled rather than recast like Pneumatic Burst.
I’d like to see Vindictive Flame get its regeneration bonus increased.
Currently it gives 46 at 16/16 and 108 at 26, neither is particularly attractive and it doesn’t urge the player to overcap the skill for it.
Comparatively, 16 and 26 Blood of Dreeg gives 106 and 198 and does a load of other things along with having a better skill modifier.
Veterancy gives 115 flat and 25% regen at 26.
It would be nice if VF could serve as a decent source of sustainability, so you could combine it with other sources of regen/heal as an alternative to life steal (improves options for builds with little access to WD%).
That way the players have another decent option to try out the Increased Healing Effects modifier too.
I’m thinking rank 16 should give at least 100 to match BoD, with +10 for every rank after that, and the final rank giving 30-40, for a total of 220-230 at rank 26.
This would buff the Agrivix set too, so that should probably get the VF skill bonuses changed to something else.
The buff would effectively make Demo builds a mastery with relatively low HP, but have above average sustainability from regen and have other layers of defense from BS and Temper.
Think a short health bar but with options to keep it topped up.
And to Weyu above, yeah buffing the health regen is a good idea. Lots of sources of hp regen could use a buff so it becomes a relevant stat without having to wear Avenger set or nuking your dps into the floor.
%crit damage is huge.
Stormcaller’s Pact + Mythical Celestial Stone of Halakor is enough to make lightning Mortars work.
In Dagalon armor and zero defense from demo and (except some health) shaman you die in 3-4 hits from Reaper. 2 Reapers are unbeatable. With mortars you can’t really kite or the mortars miss. You’d have to kite for 10 seconds dealing almost no dmg every Blast Shield cooldown. It’s yet another example of clunkemolist skill with hardly any practical application due to how badly it functions.
You’d be stuck with 4 mortars and 70% unconverted fire (assuming you’re using cinder gloves). 20% total dmg kinda makes up for the loss of the 5th (but not 6th) mortar.
But I guess it might be possible with 3pc Light’s Defender, Dagalon helmet and one Barrelsmith gun. But I doubt it would get a C+. I’d love to be proved wrong though.
Well, I never mentioned defense. Offense-wise the damage output of lightning mortar blasts is fine. Elementalists specially take a lot of damage if you took Stormcaller’s.
Demo reminds me of old-school “Chaos” trees. Where your attacks and defense are based on chance. Look at flashbang, Ulzuin’s chosen.
Actually, I think I’ll check that out…
Also, I have another idea for a meaningful change regarding demolitionists: pls include “Undo Mastery” so that beginning players can rescue their first chars from oblivion after they realize what mistake they’ve made… :D:D:D (joking)
Demo reminds me of old-school “Chaos” trees. Where your attacks and defense are based on chance. Look at flashbang, Ulzuin’s chosen.
I think this is fairly insightful. I also have the impression that GD started with this philosophy: high RNG on everything. Eventually it moved further away from that mentality in combat (but not in other aspects).
On a different note, I just shrugged and assumed it was known that Ulzin’s Wrath was not particularly good (with limited skill juggling), but the name was cool in the lore and thus justified the more common nature of this skill’s item support. People sometimes get attached to names they create. Just as builders get sensitive about builds. shrug
I actually did do that Barrelsmith Purifier in GT and Safarel from Russian discord tested it. He said damage is fine but survivability is a pain. And I did it with like 2600 armor and all kind of cc res and bat devotion.
Not sure how Crate expected us to make this Demolitionist set work.
Barrelsmiths
Sounds like the one I was making. I gave up. It’s hardly possible to make anything viable with demolitionist anymore. You might try to inject some formidable green power of GDStashing. My mortar build that used to do 9 min no banner is also dead.
It’s not the problem of barrelsmiths. Thing is they buffed nemeses like crazy. Now to survive you either need really insane defense and kiting or be able to kill nems in seconds (preferably both). Demo = zero res and defense (except blast shield - you can survive two reapers for 6 seconds instead of 2). As for killing in seconds, it takes 2 seconds for all his skills to even activate. Demo is mostly obsolete in crucible 7.1.
I tried to prove myself wrong with the new barelsmiths but I failed. It’s a fine main game stroll build.
Ironically I made a barrelsmith purifier but treat is as fire strike weapon, focusing on all lightning WPS and static strike. It’s doing fine in crucible (9.5 min clear with 4 buff) with LD set but I don’t use grenado or canister bomb because I don’t have enough points and the set doesn’t gives any points to Fire strike. Also because I refuse to use anything clunky.
The build just feels boring because it’s purely fire strike build and kinda cookie cutter. But maybe because I really like hybrid build playstyle for now.
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LD is a must. Ulzuin set can’t survive. At least not in my hands. Anyways it must feels like a gimmicky Justicar with lightning for a change. What did you do about phys res? I die to 3-4 Reaper hits regardless of armor/seal.
I tried Grenado/half-assed Firestrike hybrid as well as Grenado/Canister. They could clear 170 with some luck but what’s the point of making a build that relies on hoping Reapers won’t show up…?
I stacked armor like a mad man 
. I got like more than 3k armor on that build.
The build feels boring though. So I scrap it. I prefer more damaging build with enough defenses. With that build, I was forced to invest more in armor and defenses because the offense cannot go further, else the build will be dead in trash wave 
.
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I tried arcaneweaver + the two MIs that convert chaos to fire on a purifier and 170 was easy. I actually only died to MQ lmao.