[WIP] Beginner's Lazy Battlemage Diary

[tqFan]

it’s just how people usually build fire damage builds, they just don’t normally consider spammable CT for that.

Btw anyone has good idea for 2h Fire CT Spam?
The best I’ve come up with (yesterday actually) is

• Scion of the

• Vanquisher amu / Anathema medal

• Infernal Knight / Champion set

It doesn’t convince me though.

[Stupid_Dragon]

I think you should ask banana peel since iirc he tried smth like that.

[Firegunz]

3 pieces of vanquisher ( except helm ) + Pyran’s helm + Worldeater on Sorcerer might be work

[Strannik]

You gave me an idea of fire battle mage - spam BA and CD CT …

[casedeck]

Elite builders optimizes builds around level 50 for Elite playthrough. Did I get this right?

If this was meant for me - um, no, don’t see myself as any kind of elite builder.
Also for the Elite difficulty, personally don’t play it, if I’m interested in Ultimate the Elite is just a blitz-through.

…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

Ditto.
Though it’s usually not particularly slow, and I consider this to be “the game” (as opposed to available endgame variants, which I guess most people here on the forum play).

Not implying I’m an elite builder btw.

Again ditto, me neither.

[Stupid_Dragon]

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.

Looks correct to me, albeit whether doing investments into OA and %crit to reach that 13% damage boost you’ve put as a landmark is still up to debate.

It worked well for Callidor because Inferno is a rather sizeable source of burn, and for DoTs the crit is a direct damage multiplier, rather than averaged one. Which is why OA and crits are considered to be valuable for builds that are more into DoTs and less important for flat damage builds.

(Hm, for leveling only, I guess? But looking at Dmt’s excellent Druid recently, I’m not sure. Others will know better.)

Dmt’s druid is more of an exception. Bi-damage builds can be competitive endgame under certain conditions but that concept isn’t extendable to the vast majority of builds.

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.

The early levels do catch up quick enough but usually procs I’m picking up fairly early into the game barely reach maximum level once I hit 100, sometimes some of them are even a bit short.

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.

Just keep in mind that it isn’t a good feeling to be told that you don’t understand something but at the same time only getting vague explanation of why.

Respectfully, this seems to be confirming my point?

Partially, yes. Since I expected the time to be lower than mine it’s my loss I guess.
But due to multiple reasons I still feel strongly about doing things my way, since following your tips step by step have lead me to running out of energy in smth like 15 seconds, which I find absolutely unacceptable. Part of the reason I treat Overload and Inferno as low priority is because I wanted to hit Mental Alacrity asap. Which I basically exposed as mandatory for energy management of CT with my tests.

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).

Yes, to begin with dummies don’t hit back, also it doesn’t reflect damage output of some classes because for example you can’t proc Spectral Wrath upon dummies.

But if not dummy then what else? Most other enemies have varying resistances so yet again it’s not a very clean build comparison. The only real upgrade of dps test over the dummy is crucible speedrunning.

[Stupid_Dragon]

Apparently 33% chaos resistance isn’t enough vs him on Elite either

[casedeck]

Looks correct to me, albeit whether doing investments into OA and %crit to reach that 13% damage boost you’ve put as a landmark is still up to debate.

I suppose so. My personal experience is that getting to 55% crit multiplier and 20% crit chance is doable reasonably early for everyone, and without particularly warping other stuff on the build. For Arcanist specifically it’s just Overload and Elemental Balance plus Panther or Hawk, which I’m usually taking regardless. And the 1.13x (worst-case, so usually even more) overall modifier to damage is about the same gain as a nice somewhat-leveled RR devotion proc.

The sheet is an aid originally intended to help determine breakpoints for when chasing multiplier vs increasing OA gives more overall damage. The green-marked pillars are where the path I am talking about starts properly, and then it’s just a matter of sticking to bluish-marked highlights and below. Some cell comments are there, though probably not very clear.

Another way to describe the thing is by looking at Fervor together with the sheet; the .25 to multiplier gives a nice nudge to the right, sure, but if everything else is set up properly it’s actually the boost to OA driving one’s position downward that gives a larger damage gain.

The same reasoning can be followed for my suggestions of Fighting Spirit and Blindside, or some of the mentioned devotions (like for example Vulture). Once the prerequisites are met, OA gain is the damage multiplier.

It worked well for Callidor because Inferno is a rather sizeable source of burn, and for DoTs the crit is a direct damage multiplier, rather than averaged one.

You debunked Inferno rather thoroughly for the build’s current state, it’s no longer properly boosting the damage (I mean to say, the build has moved past it).

Which is why OA and crits are considered to be valuable for builds that are more into DoTs and less important for flat damage builds.

I suppose I can’t really agree with this, for reasons outlined above. But yes, on DoT builds the effect is more readily apparent or “visible” in some sense.

The early levels do catch up quick enough but usually procs I’m picking up fairly early into the game barely reach maximum level once I hit 100, sometimes some of them are even a bit short.

So then if the catch-up is quick enough, the issue isn’t with taking the devotions earlier or later, but in the non-linear levels progression after some point? So taking a devotion from 10 to 20 (or maybe 15 to 20, whatever) will always be a “grind” and much slower than 1 to 10?
But you’re most probably right, as-early-as-possible is the correct strategy for targeting lvl 100 and endgame. I haven’t experienced it enough times first-hand to get a proper feel, so I should probably shut up about this.

But due to multiple reasons I still feel strongly about doing things my way, since following your tips step by step have lead me to running out of energy in smth like 15 seconds, which I find absolutely unacceptable. Part of the reason I treat Overload and Inferno as low priority is because I wanted to hit Mental Alacrity asap. Which I basically exposed as mandatory for energy management of CT with my tests.

I would put forward that the whole thing comes down to how fast things are dying.
Personally on Arcanist I’m not interested in prolonged fights with anything, but I must also confess to not building CT for a while (especially untransmuted).

Yes, to begin with dummies don’t hit back, also it doesn’t reflect damage output of some classes because for example you can’t proc Spectral Wrath upon dummies.

Exactly, properly examining a fair chunk of stuff isn’t really possible on the dummy.

But if not dummy then what else? Most other enemies have varying resistances so yet again it’s not a very clean build comparison. The only real upgrade of dps test over the dummy is crucible speedrunning.

I just use the leveling gameplay itself. it’s probably fair to say this is the game for me, trying stuff out and tweaking constantly. Also that bog kraken punching bag in Ugdenbog is a real gift from the devs.

[tqFan]

Apparently 33% chaos resistance isn’t enough vs him on Elite either

Well deserved. Speed levelers “I need to be 100 yesterday” that don’t care to farm rep and cap res early should suffer a great deal, even on normal

[Nery]

Well deserved. Speed levelers “I need to be 100 yesterday” that don’t care to farm rep and cap res early should suffer a great deal, even on normal

Slow and steady

But now I will have worries about normal as well.

[Stupid_Dragon]

I think I’ve discovered a viable CT levelling strategy.

The pic is level 20.

Basically:

1. 1/16 CT ASAP for Reincarnator boss fight.
2. It takes level 8 to reach Inferno and level 9 to have some points in it. Before this I was levelling with Fireblast as it became available.
3. Inferno is much less punishing when it comes to damage vs energy cost. Same principle of why you should onepoint Phantasmal Blades and max the Heart-Seeker instead, but it’s less obvious in this case. Specifically because AoE is tied to the main skill, so this levelling method means you’re stuck with minimal AoE.
4. It still doesn’t mean that you won’t be running of energy, 1/16 CT and 12/12 Inferno is 44 energy cost baseline, which is close to the upper threshold of what I feel is manageable for a spam skill that early into the game.
5. Still making a rush to Mental Alacrity so that I could start bumping the main skill for more AoE and better quality of life.
6. But at least it’s good enough to be called viable and it’s quite neat in terms of how you do with skillpoints.
7. Ofc worse than Forcewave
8. Time to Warden clear is smth like 1:15, even though I pretty much planned everything in advance.

[IraqiMaestro]

For HC mode , I always use Legion Head Guard , Legion Vestments and Legion Mantle. Gives me Aether and Chaos res for mid game (Level 50) and saves me alot of headache lol

[Firegunz]

1pt in IEE & arcane will is definitely help in early game ( not much but worth 1pt )

[Stupid_Dragon]

1pt in IEE & arcane will is definitely help in early game ( not much but worth 1pt )

Actually it won’t, I tried
1pt of them are hardly worth it, they have the price of delaying Mental Alacrity.

IEE won’t help you because actually you can’t steal energy from enemies that don’t have it, and with current UI you can’t even tell which enemies have it and which don’t. Moreover, that energy steal is scaled down by %WD, meaning that the impressive 56 energy/s at 12/12 IEE will be 40% of that value at best. Ideally you want to hit multiple energy-leechable targets, but that condition isn’t met more often than it is. And last but not least, such heavy skill investment would mean that you have low energy pool to serve as a buffer, and IEE’s energy reservation will chip at it even more.

This is what playing with 12/12 IEE and 16/16 CT at level 15 looks like:

ctbama ct levelling test

The only thing that really helps is Mental Alacrity, because not only it cuts the cost a great deal but in also increases your energy pool, meaning you’re less likely to run out of energy mid-fight and your energy potions are more efficient. Moreover, once Ectoplasm comes online the +20% energy pool bonus obviously synergizes remarkably well with Mental Alacrity. But that’s it – with Mental Alacrity requiring 32 points in Arcanist and Ectoplasm not dropping commonly before around level 18-20 the energy cost of CT isn’t something easily manageable. Not like the damage output was worth such hassles too.

[Stupid_Dragon]

Beginner’s Lazy Battlemage, level 20 Snapshot
Beginner’s Lazy Battlemage, level 35 Snapshot
Beginner’s Lazy Battlemage, level 50 Snapshot
Beginner’s Lazy Battlemage, level 65 Snapshot

In short, levelling with CT is a success. Not as fast as Forcewave, the time to Loghorrean was slightly above 4 hours and time to Theodin was yet again slightly above 6 hours (reminder that for Forcewave it was 4hr 38 minutes). There are two reasons for this:

1. Blitz comes quite late.
2. You have to play much more carefully with CT.

Mind that I didn’t bring up lower damage, I just think it’s good enough so shouldn’t be THAT much of a factor. Sometimes I even had an impression that it’s faster than what I could have had with Forcewave, but only sometimes.

As said above, a very major downside compared to Forcewave is that one has to play more carefully. It is because without levels CT is a very short ranged skill and Arcanist as a class has quite low health gain, to the point where I had to push mastery bars instead of picking up various goodies. For the most part of Veteran I was behind the recommended benchmark of 100 heath per level. Not quite a cakewalk but manageable.

The good thing is respec is much more fluent because you already have all the groundwork needed for CT, it’s simply a matter of sticking with Reckless Power (or Star Pact, if using Kymon’s medal) for a time until you’re able to get Menhir’s Bulwark.

Overall I like this levelling method more. Mostly because fuck Forcewave, I’ve levelled way to many builds with it.

[Firegunz]

100% fire > aether Fissure might be fun

[Ulvar1]

Chaos res is looking great! Now you wont RIP to Karroz

There is one point too many in CT btw

[Stupid_Dragon]

Chaos res is looking great! Now you wont RIP to Karroz

I had smth like 50% on elite when I hit him on Elite this time, but I drank a potion to secure it further.

There is one point too many in CT btw

Yeah, I know, a slight miscalculation. But uploading GTs from modding folder is a bit of a headache due to extra steps, so I fixed it in game and left GT as is.

[Stupid_Dragon]

Elite Theodin down, got a league token.

The plan is to get 75 now and farm Krieg set then.

[Ulvar1]

You don’t need to be level 75 yourself for Krieg set to drop, only requirement is if boss is level 75 or higher - right?