Finally found this thread 
keep it up dragon!
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Back on the feet.
Optimized my early forcewave skillpoint distribution.
| Level | |
|---|---|
| 2, 3 | 2 point into Soldier Mastery Bar, 1 into Forcewave |
| 4 | 1 points into Soldier Mastery Bar, 1 into Forcewave, 1 into Tremor |
| 5 to 9 | 2 point into Soldier Mastery Bar, 1 into Forcewave |
| Kasparov | Blitz |
| 10 to 15 | 1 point into Forcewave, 2 points into Rending Force |
| 17 to 19 | 3 points into Soldier |
| 20 | 1 point into Internal Trauma, 2 points into Soldier |
Previously Tremor was taken with Kasparov quest under premise that you’re not guaranteed to get a 2H and worst case will have to buy it from the shop. This is suboptimal, the optimal way is to get Hevill’s Greatsword and take Tremor ASAP.
Warden Krieg timer was give or take the same.
Improved my Darius timer a bit
Homestead in around 2 hours
Fort Ikon in 2:45
Loghorrean down in 3:08
Character GT:
Beginner’s Lazy Battlemage, level 35 Snapshot
Bonus action:
3 Likes
So I managed to clear veteran AoM.
Ulgrim was by 4:00, yeah I really took my time with Ugdenbog quests. Theodin fell in around 4:40
Now’s the switch…I got my hands on the nice Warped Fleshwarped Core of Shattered Reality and my DPS from 15k of Forcewave turned into…8k of Callidor’s Tempest?!
Well, few tweaks later I managed to squeeze 11.8k which is good enough for this point into the game I guess, but honestly I expected to have 15-20k because that’s give or take how much I had on my CT Spellbinder:
By level 50 your Greater Fireblast should have around 5k sheet DPS. If you do all of the stuff above, your Callidor’s Tempest DPS would be a whooping 15-20k – abnormally high for level 50. Have fun crushing everything.
Well, looking into it the “stuff above” pretty much meant pushing CT a couple skill levels higher, %aether by another 150-200% as well as having 177% casting speed instead of 158%, so I guess it’s not terribad and there’s some hope I’ll be able to fix it reasonably soon.
At least the durability didn’t disappoint me so far.
Beginner’s Lazy Battlemage, level 50 Snapshot
I guess I’ll just have to cope with the fact that Forcewave is a tad bit broken af levelling skill (and now even more than ever) and I shouldn’t use it as a role model for how levelling works in GD 
The close-term goal is to craft Haunt. I have everything but the Corruption blueprint for it…totem farming it is then…
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So I got this baby.
You’ve already realized what I’m going to try, right?
This is Callidor’s Tempest.
And this is Forcewave with 98% phys to aether
Guess grey-maybe wasn’t jokin when he said that it’s a 2H for aether Tactician and Commando
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I can most definitely confirm this. 
I honestly cannot determine if this is meant to be serious, or it’s all a (truly) elaborate trolling effort. Not trying to be a smartass, just genuinely can’t determine for this one.
If it’s the latter, congrats and kudos to StupidDragon, it worked on at least one person (right here).
If the former, however…
Everything about the concept is somewhat wrong (with some things being completely wrong).
For leveling as a Soldier Forcewave is a fine choice. Personally I’d craft the Tremor two-hander as soon as available and use the skill points elsewhere, but to each their own.
On Arcanist side however, I’m… well, let’s just say both eyebrows are somewhere on the ceiling level. There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of what the mastery is and how it’s supposed to work. (Again, not trying to be a smartass, and also not casting aspersions on anyone’s approach to the game. Just my view.)
If you’re getting energy problems with CT, that means things aren’t dying fast enough. Which then also means the nasties are getting too many chances to clobber you over the head before they keel over, which is a pretty blatant giveaway that you’re doing something wrong as an Arcanist.
Your choices of MIs are another blunt giveaway on what the real path is to making you properly murdery.
Damage
Get Overload maxed as soon as you can.
Put two Attuned Lodestones to amulet and medal (stuns will also be a general help).
Other gearing should prioritize resists and flat OA, nothing else is really important (though the OA can be entirely covered with one good Agressive…Of Attack yellow, on something minor like boots or gloves or even medal).
I’m not sure why you don’t go for Inferno, as it would be such a damage boost to you on it’s own, plus it’s a great boss killer (and, as all dots, it will pair exceptionally well with other choices here). Elemental Balance is then another obvious piece of the puzzle (and I would take it eventually even without Inferno).
As for the hallowed resistance reduction, if you still feel you need it / want it / can’t live without it, I’d put a Mark of Dreeg on the weapon (or even a nice Blessed Steel to open bosses with Sacred Strike, but that kinda goes against the lazyness concept). Also Widow is a waste of time and points this early, it’s only useful on bosses as everything else should be dead by the time you proc and prime it (but we’ll get to devotions later).
Armor
The armor bonuses from Soldier mean there’s leeway here, you don’t need to keep armor pieces constantly updated with every new “tier” opening up as you progress. So you can afford to keep pieces with good resist stats for longer.
Attributes
I’d put the distribution the other way around, with 30 on Spirit and 20 on Physique. You are plenty enough of a beefcake from the Soldier mastery alone (and your choice of the Exclusive), so focusing on HP and DA here incurs too much opportunity cost on the murderiness side of things.
Also if one sticks with so many items that give +1 to Soldier skills, not using Soldier’s excellent passives is really puzzling (even a single point investment per passive is well worth it here, especially when playing hardcore).
Two things to especially point out with regards to this are Fighting Spirit and Arcane Will, both are great here and you can finely tune the points investment as you go (no need for all-in on either, for quite a long time). The same goes for Blidside if you’re Blitz-ing into crowds and bosses, the DA reduction does amazing things for you.
Relic
Your goal should be Fervor if you got the recipe (also experiment with Zeal if you get it).
Haunt as an alternative is maybe-fine, I personally never tried it (and also you’re not really using enough Arcanist skills to properly utilize it’s +1 to skills).
Devotions
Um… To put it in a word, no.
(Except for going into Kraken because obvious thing is, indeed, obvious.)
Spider, Eel, Kraken, Panther, remove Eel, Phoenix.
After this a lot of paths are open, depends on affinity and playstyle. Personally at this exact points count I’d go for Red crossroads, three points in Behemoth, then two points in Hawk for the damage bonus.
Alternatively Jackal then Behemoth 3pts to proc is the usual good choice.
Either way, I’d also take Behemoth’s left leg with the next available devotion point, as it gives even more flexibility in choosing armor pieces for good res stats.
Other alternatives are, for example, Vulture (which is generally amazing for this, especially since the last patch), and from there either going for again Behemoth, or for Ghoul and his circuit breaker.
One can also try going purple with Owl, and then filling either Chariot or Harp.
Or, if you feel your beefcake is not thick and oily enough, go for Eel and start filling Solemn Watcher.
Personally on other similar concepts but without Arcanist (and if Giant’s Blood is not needed), I usually go Lion, Ulo, remove Lion for the Cleansing Waters proc. However if lazyness in play is an absolute requirement, that one additional button for something to proc Waters is a blocker (and on Battlemage specifically, obv Nullification).
I’m guessing the same lazyness requirement is why you didn’t take the Mirror… But I’d still maintain that is a weird choice, given that with CT Battlemage you are routinely getting into your victims’ faces (and that includes bosses as well).
Anyway, again, if you are trolling here - it worked on me, congrats.
If not, I hope the above is useful.
Either way, sorry for the wall of text, enjoy your Battlemage!
EDIT: some grammar, and I kept misnaming Behemoth as Giant.
It’s not a trolling attempt, and I’m incredibly baffled that one could see it as such, as well as you would call your wall of text as “worked” if that was the case. If I really wanted to troll anyone I would expect people to at least play it and get angry over betrayed expectations.
If you can’t spell out what this fundamental misunderstanding is then I’m not taking that seriously.
The concept that you need damage to kill things fast enough isn’t wrong and that’s how a lot of endgame caster builds work, both optimized for crucible and deep SR. But that’s some crazy logic leap you’re doing here.
While in general Arcanist does want to squeeze more damage the approach differs from skill to skill. What you say sounds like AAR - high damage, very high energy consumption and vulnerable in close range. CT is nothing like that - meh damage, somewhat high energy consumption, but the whole point of the skill is it has weapon damage part I can sustain from. The meh damage part is going to be partially compensated with procs, while energy consumption just has to be dealt with by stacking -% energy cost and later on adding energy leech on top. The simply kill them before you run out of mana approach just wouldn’t work because there’s no damage potential for in it the skill, that’s just how CT is. If you play CT you need to be prepaired for prolonged fights.
Also it’s kind of ridiculous that you point out what I said about CT’s energy cost when I specified in plain english that I’m talking about the most early levels possible, like from 1 to 20. I have means of dealing with energy issues later on.
Very low priority skill to max.
The amulet gets Arcane Lens for DA and -% energy cost, the medal is discussable but no, definitely not Attuned Lodestone on this build.
You’re lionizing OA too much. For builds that don’t have crapload of built-in crit damage OA is a shit investment that would result in boosting damage output by smth like 2-4% per 100 OA. It’s possible to find a bigger scale damage increase via %damage, casting speed, RR or racials, especially if we’re talking about levelling when I haven’t exhaused my options yet.
Because it’s an aether damage build. Picking up Inferno would certainly bloat my dps value since it has burn, but the actual impact of that burn will be fairly minimal. I’ll be picking Inferno later in the game when I’d be able to convert lightning damage on it to aether, which won’t happen before level 94.
Elemental Balance is a fairly poor investment of skillpoints these days, literally any other passive in Arcanist would be a better DPS increase.
That cracked me up, lol.
Thank you, but I’m using Warcry for this already.
It is a common sense to get procs early if you want to have them levelled up by high levels. Moreover I’m not getting Widow just for the proc, I’m getting Widow for relatively high %damage too.
Also bosses are, like, my primary concern here. Since with 2H I can’t nuke them with Devastation.
Yes, I said the very same thing in the guide somewhere.
the end plan is smth like 45 physique and 75 spirit, I invested into physique first because Forcewave doesn’t benefit from Spirit. Now I’m going to catch up with spirit.
The only one I might had found useful is Scars of Battle, the rest are safe to ignore until later.
Also these +soldier items are largely temporary and I’ll be getting +arcanist items instead past level 50.
Yet again with this crit damage lionization…
Callidor’s Tempest is going to be my main skill from now on and I need to push it as high as possible to squeeze enough damage out of it. Also, I currently have plenty of passives in Arcanist, like Inner Focus, Mental Alacrity and Fabric of Reality. All for the sake of squeezing even more damage. So yes, an Arcanist relic is totally justified, even if I don’t count RR on it’s skill.
Phoenix is…an interesting idea, but it doesn’t really fit standard aether damage setups well. Ot at least I haven’t seen many.
Don’t need Behemoth on a build with this much built-in durability.
Vulture doesn’t really bring anything unique to the table, typical way to ramp up red points on aether builds is Ghoul + Jackal + Viper/Kraken.
Why would you need…oh right, they give OA.
facepalm
Shouldn’t be surprised by your fetish by now.
Just because I’m not taking them ASAP doesn’t mean I’m not going to take them later on. I focus on things that are important first. Which is securing damage output. No point in being 3 sec immortal if I’m not killing jackshit during that time.
It really isn’t, and I shouldn’t have even replied to your post, especially since for whatever arcane reason you seem to think you know how the game works better than me and is trying to rub your assumed superiority on multiple occasions in the text. But since you spent time writing all that essay I felt like it would be a common courtesy to at least give you a proper response, instead of just “you have no idea what you’re talking about”.
9 Likes
It’s what I was afraid of, that my feeble attempts at humour will be interpreted as some kind of smugness or implying that I know something / anything better then OP or anyone else. This is not the case, really, and I apologize for the tone and implication.
I didn’t explicitly point out the alternative damage path because I assumed it obvious, which was a mistake, so let’s correct that.
One can legitimately build via the path of “huge” OA + crits, and this is not some kind of lionizing or a fetish of mine. Crits are not a supplement or some minor addition to a build’s “default” damage setup but a true, full-on alternative to the RR path of damage multiplication, and this remains true for a long time while leveling. As RR becomes needed later on its options will open up via skills and devotions (this is actually most apparent precisely on the Battlemage… or at least it is to me. It’s also why I initially suspected the presented setup to be some kind of trolling or joking effort).
OP’s description and outline of the Callidor’s Tempest skill tree shows one reasoning about it and, respectfully (I mean that, no snideness or tongue-in-cheek here) I must pretty strongly disagree with it. The same can be said for the setup’s insistance on a single damage type this early (and on Arcanist, of all things), and the (again, in my view) fundamental misunderstanding of the skill supplement Inferno’s role on the skill.
To put it somewhat bluntly, I believe the presented setup is leaving an x1.6 to x1.9 multiplier on the table, in favour of going for average x1.25 multiplier.
The focus or “fetishization” of OA with devotions is to allow greater flexibility with gearing, as more OA from stars means one can taper off the OA burden on gear without losing too much of the crits consistency.
The rest of my suggestions flow from what’s outlined above, so I won’t go into it point by point. Well, except for just two notes:
- two attuned lodestones mean an additional 10% to overall damage, and most everything else on them also synergizes with the concept
- the presented link for level 50 setup doesn’t include any War Cry use at all (also, if one desires another RR alternative this early, I think going for Manticore would also work for this build… but I suppose this makes me a lunatic in OP’s view)
One more time, I’m not claiming any supposed superiority or greater understanding of the game, toward or over anyone. My goal in this is to present an alternative, and (again, respectfully) ask that OP and anyone else reading this at least consider it.
Check these sample numbers: 2000 OA vs 1500 OA
Look at average damage - 113% vs 122% from a whooping 500 OA gain,
which is only 8% relative gain.
OA is really not that great when you’re already capable of hitting your enemies / don’t have tons of Crit / don’t have devotions on Crit / other exceptions. Prioritizing it over RR (and 120% Aether Damage on Widow) on a Battle Mage without native RR and also leveling (which means low %Damage) is not worth it imo.
How? You mean 10% Crit damage? If he’s already Criting for 170% then 10% more means 180% / 170% - 1 ~ 6% more damage only Crits. And Crits are rare you know which further lowers the gain in this example to let’s say 2% relative gain which would be equivalent to something like 20% more Aether Damage providing we have 700%. Flat OA bonuses don’t change the situation. Yes, there’s is synergy but between not very significant factors.
It seems to me that players often have a tendency (from other games) to only look at Crits / big orange numbers when evaluating their DPS. Sometimes it can be useful but other times very misleading.
I may be wrong because I haven’t analyzed the numbers we have here but please show (preferably using the calculator) that you can really boost your DPS with your chosen OA investments. I’d surprised if they can cause change of a great magnitude like 0% crit chance to 30% chance for 1.9 Crits (and even if they did that temporarily due to I don’t know low OA for a current level or something they’d need to be much better to warrant temporary non-endgame devotions setup).
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Great read and like that you’ve selected the Battlemage class for your journey!
I saw the question of which is better Agrivix vs Haunt for relic slot. I did try it on my Lucius BM and Agrivix was visibly faster, probably around 15-20 seconds in Crucible. It’s also great way to clear trash. With Albrecht’s ring proc is pretty potent. Defensively though Haunt - life leech RR helps with sustain.
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Now who is trolling?
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If you were afraid of it then shouldn’t have done it. There was nothing that suggested it was a humor to me.
Ok, let’s put it to the test.
This is what my current character looks like:
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/mN49yWx2
Dummy kill time is around 37 seconds:
This is me remaking the character in accordance with your building tips:
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/a2EM8Gj2
Overload, Inferno, Elemental Balance, Phoenix, Chariot, two Lodestones, Fervor - just the way you told me.
Dummy kill time - N/A, ran out of energy halfway. Apparently I just don’t have enough damage.
If it wasn’t running out of energy it would probably come on top. In fact I tried to stabilize it a bit with Mental Alacrity:
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/YZeE7vEZ
And I had ALMOST killed it, in fact if I didn’t ran out of energy it would be something like 34-35 seconds. The whole issue with me not “understanding the fundamentals” is just this much of a difference. Except that to achieve such result I’m:
- Hitting a dummy with 0% resistances on normal, so OFCOURSE Inferno is good in such situation. It’s very much an artifical test that rules out the effect of enemy’s high resistances, especially since crit damage is straight up a multiplier to that burn. But fire damage is one of the most resisted by enemies damage types in the game, so essentially this test gives you a remarkable handicap.
- Not levelling all the procs I want to have by endgame - Widow’s and Imp’s
- Still running with a shitty T1 placeholder relic instead of Haunt.
But congratz - I more or less understood what you meant. It is an interesting idea to augment skill’s damage output via burn by stacking crit damage without actually taking the transmuter (which would be down to luck if it crits or you’ll have to wait another 5 secods), if it was a class with RR I’d at least partially agree with you, but not in this case. And it isn’t the “fundamentals of arcanist”, it’s just how people usually build fire damage builds, they just don’t normally consider spammable CT for that.
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Inferno is seems to be good here because your %Aether damage is low and %Fire damage is not tiny in comparison (I mean just %100 Fire / 100% Aether are doing a lot I think but also flat Lightning). Of course later when you’re more Aether focused it’s not that valuable if you’re not converting Lightning when %Aether is %2500 for example and you’re less multi damage type character then now.
What I’m getting into is for me it would be interesting to see your character with just Inferno added to check if @casedeck other recommendations may cause more noticeable drops in DPS then (for example weird devo).
You can also use the DPS window from the trick / GDHacker
(I haven’t measured DPS with GI so don’t know how it works).
Yes, but he did made a point that I should not focus on single damage type during levelling. Which I’m not arguing against but I have a centerpiece MI that gives me 100% Fire to Aether global. Which is the reason I insist on Imp too.
In theory this helps with lack of RR, in practice damage type aren’t equivalent in terms how much they are resisted by enemies.
No problem I guess. Will take points out of Field Command for the test.
Oh sorry, I missed that. Also I was thinking you have let’s say 700% Aether damage but I didn’t notice your huge 400% Magical damage from Aether. Testing it definitely make less sense with all these and Infero less valuable than I thought before. In this case I don’t think I would take it either but still Fire is kinda high here so on this 50 level is probably still doing something (the difference would be far less with 3000% Aether damage) and also that 100% Aether when you have about %1200 damage is a bit better.
I made a wrong assumption here assuming 700% Aether but we have far more thanks to %Magical damage.
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Elite builders optimizes builds around level 50 for Elite playthrough. Did I get this right?
Actually I imagine myself doing something like this (change something just to change it back a few levels later) because I like slow leveling and wasting my time but I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone 
Not implying I’m an elite builder btw.
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Fully agree.
These are the calculations that served me well on the last dozen or so builds (it’s a rather old thing, and has actually been derived from something even older):
one fool’s views, and probably rather imprecise
And I’m definitely ready to be wrong here. Only saying that it worked for me so far.
Yes, correct, I meant the multiplier, not damage.
I believe I know what you mean. Also, again, I’m perfectly ready to be wrong on this whole thing.
Perhaps my perception is skewed by not usually playing the “endgame”; one gets bored with a class after respeccing it through a few concepts and tries something else (for this altoholic here, usually around level 70-75). Having only pushed a few chars through to end of Ultimate and level 100, I suppose in some ways it follows that “I don’t know what I’m talking about”. My only defence is, the presented idea has worked for me so far (and it was rather smooth with all various classes, as far as I recall), so I would maintain the position that it’s a viable alternative.
(Hm, for leveling only, I guess? But looking at Dmt’s excellent Druid recently, I’m not sure. Others will know better.)
One additional thing, personally I didn’t really notice that devotions need to be kicked into play ASAP to get them leveled up fast enough. Anything I’d start using later would rather quickly catch up to older, longer in use devotions (normally everything gets to levels 9-12 across the board, by the time I’m done with a class). But, as before, willing to be completely wrong here.
It actually happens rather often to me… No proper filters, I guess. Anyways, once more, the whole thing wasn’t intended in the tone that it was percieved in.
Kudos. That would definitely have been a better initial approach, but honestly I couldn’t be arsed with it… My apologies again.
Respectfully, this seems to be confirming my point?
Personally never really understood the dummy-kill-time-as-a-metric, doesn’t seem practical or properly indicative of real performance to me (also, CT or especially something like AAR are a bad fit for it in my view).
I really never meant to imply this, or anything similar. Was only talking about this particular setup you had going.
Yes, obviously, very much this. Transmuted CT is a whole another story.
Fully agree, having also personally tried it a few times (the high numbers on Inferno are a lure, but ultimately the whole thing is a trap).
EDIT: some clarifications and grammar.
Yes, my view exactly. The whole setup is not really single-damage-type, nor is really anything Arcanist-focused this early (but again, only a personal view).