I know runemaster isn’t very popular this season, but I didn’t play 1.0
Playing HC this time around and just wanted to discuss some builds ideas. Not playing Frost Claw as I already have a Sorc for that.
Campaign felt pretty slow compared to other classes. Doing normal mono’s ATM and damage doesn’t feel great yet but survivability seems decent. So far, I’ve been playing around with invocations Igneous Rain, Hydrahedron and Reowyn’s Frostguard.
Flame Ward and Lightning Aegis from Static orb seem solid for defence, but i’m considering swapping Static Orb for Frost Wall for cleanse/haste/dmg.
What do you think the best damage options are without sacrificing too much defense? Plasma orb build looks alright for HC for clear but dno about single target. And it looks like a pain to gear properly with Reowyn’s Fortress (I play SCF).
Also with igneous rain, would it be better to gear around dot/ignite? or hit based with crit? Currently running dot, which is why hydra isn’t feeling strong, so maybe hit would be better. I like Hydra for single target if I need to move a lot, but I prefer igneous rain for clear.
Interesting mastery so far, loads of options. The invocations are cool but a bit underwhelming in terms of damage.
I would say yeah ignite is probably the way for igneous rain with its multi hits and increased ignite duration. Would combo well with the Flame burst from Enchant weapon and probably Fireball (with its own flame burst nodes for more hits/ignites). Flame rush and Frost wall have good synergies with both Invocation and Fireball also then.
Although if you decide to go hit based then Runebolt becomes more appealing due to Runeweave and its Armor shred.
Mirror Bolt is the best Invocation right now IMO. I have a very solid setup and reached 1000 corruption without even using Red rings or Reowyn’s Fortress or even Flame Ward. Stacking armor and ward feels very tanky on its own. I am planning to make a showcase video of the character as it uses some pretty neat interactions.
The main problem with invocations IMO is they all boil down to Fundamental Criterion and off stat stacking. This is particularly worse for Rah(Att) and Heo(Str) invocations because for some weird reason you cannot slam T7 Strength/Attunement on a Fundamental Criterion but you can slam T7 Dexterity because Dexterity(and Vitality) is not a class specific affix but all the other attributes are.
All classes have at least one skill that scales with dexterity. But Strength and Attunement scaling is not available on all classes.
These attribute limitations are very old and predate basically almost any attribute stacking uniques.
I think there is a good chance we get a overhaul/rework of what and how attributes work some day and which classes can utilize which ones.
But yeah, on a baseline level it makes sense which attributes are available to which classes. And for the most part it doesn’t matter. There are only these few outliers that require getting off theme with these stacks.
You could argue to change the limitations or change some of the uniques that require this off theme attribute stacking.
Thanks for your input, I may give that one a go. The single target damage didn’t look great on it due to the amount of hits. But I like the ward aspect. Would be good to see your showcase.
Off the thread’s topic but that’s also weird (IMO), every class (Primalist/ Mage/ Sentinel/ Rogue/ Acolyte) has some dexterity scaling mechanic within its skill and/or passives.
Rogue is based around Dex
Sentinel: Forge guard scales Throwing crit based off dex as well as a node in Rive
Mage: Spellblade scales crit chance off dex and Shatter strike inherently scales flat damage off dex
Primalist: Okay this one maybe more of a stretch but both Serpent Strike and Sabretooth have Dex scaling nodes in their tree (although both are pretty bad IMO)
Acolyte: both Chaos bolts and Profane Veil have some Dex scaling nodes in their tree
Now don’t get me wrong I think these are cool interactions BUT it feels like the Devs are definitely giving Dexterity some preferential treatment. Like where’s my Attunement stacking Acolyte skill or Strength stacking Rogue skill.
I think the only outlier is Dexterity. But I would heavily prefer if all Attributes were not class specific as this would promote more diversity. Of course this would also probably cause some annoyance as it would dilute the mod pool.
Fundamental Criterion is a Mage class specific body armor, the Legendary system does not allow to slam a class specific item with a body armor that is not of the same class. I have been dissapointed by this system twice at the Julra Altar, First rejected trying to slam a perfect T7 Strength (Sentinel chest) on Fundamental criterion then it rejected me from slamming a T7 Dex Acolyte chest as well even though all the mods on the item (Intelligence, Dexterity, % Health, Poison res) are valid for a mage. You can only slam a Mage armor on the item (Mage armor can only have Dexterity and not Strength/Attunement).
Now for an additional bit of weirdness, Although Strength is a Class specific modifier(limited to Sentinel and Primalist), if you slam it on a non-class specific Armor (like Titan heart) you CAN still use it on a mage.
So I think this means it is definitely some kinda bug in the code or an oversight that we can’t slam Strength/ Attunement on a Fundamental Criterion.
