Help with deadend builds

Feedback and Suggestions
1

Hi guys, i have a proposal to help each other. Deadend builds are a common frustrating thing for players, i propose that we post here builds that seemed to have support on the game but at the end of the day they were nothing.
So lets just make a list of builds that we copy and paste adding new builds or adding links to the build in case there is something interesting, for instance, if a write maelstrom totem build and somebody has done a good maelstrom totem build then he can put a link to the build (better if there is a video or one line with the key thing that makes it viable)
Builds listed MUST have some support on the game, meaning the build has to make you think developers wanted to do something with it. Also this maybe inspires developers to quit catfishing us.

  1. Maelstrom on totem
  2. Maelstrom twister or tsunami
  3. Channeled Avalanche. PAIN
  4. Elemental minion avalanche.
  5. Bear companion.
  6. Spriggan as main companion dmg dealer.
  7. Entangling roots as dmg dealer
  8. Abyssal echoes caster dmg dealer
  9. Void cleave ravaging aura as dmg dealer(they added an item… for what). PAIN
  10. Shield Throw dmg dealer (same, they added and item… for what)
  11. Lethal mirage (black blade) as flicker strike, all the hype and then just doestn work. PAIN
  12. Detonating arrow as ranged dmg dealer.
  13. Puncture as main dmg dealer.
  14. Black Hole dmg dealer for real.
  15. Gathering storm as main dmg dealer and not a meme. PAIN
  16. Channeled healing hands beam. WHAT THE H*** IS EVEN THAT.
  17. Maelstrom stacker.
  18. Mana strike as main dmg dealer.

Of course there are many many more, but i dont want to make this as a hating post.
You guys might say: <<hey mate! this skills u mention were ment to be used as support not as main dmg!>> just know i will respond to that: then why they have damage nodes or items that make it seem like they tried to make them do real dmg.
Of course i will love to be proven wrong in everything i say.
In fact i double, triple dare guys a make a viable builds out of this.
Viable build means killing aberroth, but under 10 minutes BUT also must be able to run monoliths.

2

About 16. I made skybeam paladin. Quite fun and one of my stronger builds. Skybeam activation is way too slow and usually HH alone does the trick for trash mobs.
That said, none of my builds can even touch Aberroth, so i will just watch this thread from now on. :smiley:

3

https://old.reddit.com/r/LastEpoch/comments/1eoyxx7/fire_shield_throw_forge_guard/
Seems like a VERY solid build IMO.

Good attempt by Trikster but I’ve tried out some DA and its very awkward and clunky IMO even his seems to have its problems.

I actually did this one but its not a viable build (IMO)

Falconer IS a major upgrade for this playstyle(as the falcon provides armor shred and a MAJOR damage buff with falconers mark) but general boss health and enemy damage power creep makes it even worse than before. I didn’t make any videos for my Falconer testing in 1.0 because it didn’t feel worth it(and I also didn’t have good gear). But I got some better Rogue gear from pushing Chakram Falconer and Blast Rain Marksman so maybe I will revisit and try some other tricks.

Old video by Dr3ad for Ignite Black hole https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgKeGD4xh_Q
I dunno how it holds up with all the boss health creep tho(doubt its good).

Recently done by Dr3ad (Physical damage) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ex1adnJHdcU
There’s also this attempt by PerrythePig (Cold Frostbite) but looks kinda weak IMO https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8nrwHnyaS4

Wait there’s tons of this one Wudijo did one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_5XXLOpD4Q
But there’s also others I’ll add if I find it but Perry also did a video on it and the most popular was one that swapped Black blade to Event Horizon(only for bossing) to oneshot Aberroth.

4

I think Dr3ad also made something with this one.

Technically Cold DoT Werebear should satisfy these two but I doubt that build has kept up in terms of damage (due to the boss and corruption scaling changes) as well as survivability (from losing consistent Boar DR). But I think there’s lots of new tech that could work for the build too.

5

thanks for the effort mate! unfortunatly they are all suboptimal at best, actually most of the videos you posted i had already seen. In the videos the youtuber say themselves the build sucks or its suboptimal.
Not the shieldthrow one, that one works! thanks!

6

What does suboptimal mean though? Can do 1,000 corruption but can’t do 1,500? Can’t do 500? Can’t do Abby? Can do abby but doesn’t one shot it?

3 Likes
7

Which is why we as players finally need to get a clear cut distinct baseline on what EHG wants.

Kinda hard to argue about ‘viable’ or ‘non viable’ or ‘good’ and ‘bad’ if everyone has another personal baseline and no official stance (outside of Mike’s olden 300c comments) are standing. We need a bit more and it’s far overdue to do that.

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8

Given that they’ve always said that they view 300c as a reasonable value for a decent build, I’m not quite sure what you’re expecting them to say now that’s different to what they’ve siad before.

Why? People will always have their own baselines. EHG’s stance of 300c as reasonable (& 1,000 as unreasonable) isn’t going to change that. Also, it’s hardly an “olden stance”, Mike’s been consistently saying it for a very long time.

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9

Why? It’s players that decide what’s viable or not. Usually it just means "can do all content (possibly barring pinnacle bosses).
AFAIK, GGG has never issued a stance on what they consider viable builds, but that never stopped the community from collectively labeling them as such (or not).

So any build that can do all content (except the uber bosses, as mentioned, because those usually require more specialized builds) is considered viable in PoE. And even specialized builds that focus on a single type of content (like delve builds or bossers) can be considered viable.

So why should it be any different in LE? If a build can do all content (barring Aby), it’s viable. This means 300c monos, base arena (if you want to) and t4 dungeons.
Likewise, if you make a specialized build for arena, that would also be viable.
Conversely, if a build can’t do 300c, it isn’t viable.

The 300c that Mike has said a few times is their guideline is exactly because 300c is the highest requirement to unlock/achieve something in the game.

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10

The answer is simple: The baseline of power level has fairly drastically changed with factions, the 300c argument was before Aberroth and it was never even mentioned then besides a singular side-comment.

It simply doesn’t align with the current state of the game anymore, the baseline has changed, and argumenting around it hence is nonsensical. So… is a ‘viable’ build - given the low amount of end-content goals - now Aberroth?

If so… what does that mean? Is any build unable to kill Aberroth in a manner which doesn’t need hefty effort from both the character side and player-side (skill) ‘non-viable’ now? The fight being challenging is a given being it’s ‘supposed’ (for reasons not written normally) a pinnacle boss… but to be fair, he’s also the only proper boss we have that’s actually solely a part of the end-game (meaning empowered monoliths) rather then the pure progression stage. (everything before).

In PoE it was quite the different baseline since since ages the viability aspect was about doing something specifically well… which in LE doesn’t exist. We don’t have clear builds and we don’t have bossing builds. We also don’t have builds focused on specific content. We have… ‘builds’, so they’re all on an equiavlent comparison standing. Every single one compares to corruption level and Aberroth… hence the balancing is expected to be a lot tighter by default, which is why I’ve mentioned regularly that 1.2 is an important milestone and a do-or-die situation for EHG by providing either the necessary tight balancing or the necessary content to avoid the need for said strict balancing.

Also, 300c nowadays is not the highest unlock anymore. I’ve seen prophecies going beyond, and Aberroth gets unlocked - not beaten - with 300c. A baseline build which barely survives 300c won’t handle Aberroth at all.

11

No. For the same reason that a build can be viable in PoE and not be able to do Uber Maven.

Sure it does. In PoE the base was always doing red maps. That’s because you could get everything you might want at that point and there was nothing left to unlock. Any build that didn’t achieve that goal wasn’t viable.
In LE it’s doing 300c corruption monos. You don’t get anything more from doing 500c than you do with 300c other than “numbers go up”. The last unlock is at 300c. Just like the last unlocks in PoE came from completing red corrupted maps (not sure if there’s some other stuff to unlock now that requires higher content).

That is not an unlock. Unlock is where you get some permanent benefit. A faction rank, an idol slot, etc. In LE, that’s 300c for the last rank of the harbingers faction.
Also, the highest requirement a prophecy can have (for now anyway) is 320c, so that’s just splitting hairs.

So? A viable build in PoE was always viable even if it just did red maps and was never able to kill Sirus (in the days when conquerors and Sirus were the pinnacle). Pinnacle boss content was never a guideline to any player regarding the viability of a build.
Even now you have builds that are 100% viable but can’t kill uber maven.

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12

No, because that reason doesn’t exist in LE, as mentioned. We don’t have content variety, we have one line of content. There is no ‘bossing build’ and there is no ‘farming build’ or ‘heist build’ or ‘delve build’ or whatever. There is a ‘build’ and nothing else.

A bossing build which can’t do uber-maven is a shit boss build in PoE, hence if we go by the same baseline used there then any build unable to kill Aberroth well is a shit build. So we got tons of shit builds… not good I would argue. Or if your clear-speed is low then you’re a awful ‘clear build’ in PoE, but since that’s mandatory to do non-stop in LE that means every build not being very good at it is also a ‘shit build’. Since you need both if a build can easily kill Aberroth but not handle clearing well… shit. The other way around… shit.

That’s an issue.

And every single build without being badly personally designed can do that. Even a friggin ‘Chain hook’ build which nobody sane ever dares to even look at. The items will be really expensive but it does easily handle red-maps. There exists not a single build which can’t do red maps. People get stuck in yellow maps because they don’t know how to build their characters and the non-sufficient methods of GGG to provide a proper guideline to make that happen with in-game measures only. That’s a shortcoming of PoE, not of the systems PoE has available.

A straightforward Detonate Arrow build in LE without using traps (the non straight-forward way, but the best) can’t. The basis for ‘viability’ in LE is vastly higher then the comparative viability for PoE because of the lack of diversity in game mechanics available. That’ll - hopefully - over time change, but it’s an issue now still.

Yes, so you say the ability to pick 100% of available provided Prophecies is ‘not an Unlock’ hence? Sure, not in the traditional way, but it sure as hell is a distinct permanent thing which allows you to actually use the offered mechanics. Much like formerly in PoE was the master system and leveling it up. Or being forced to do Betrayal every darn league (which people complain about for a very viable reason) to get the recipes for your likely needed crafted items there. It’s been eased up substantially to allow every second-bit player with barely any knowledge or time to achieve it for a reason… because those things need to be achievable by everyone given a modicum of time investment which the designers work around to keep their audience engaged. Does EHG have that measurement there? Because GGG sure as hell does, if you really wanna compare it.

The whole argumentation line is based upon ignoring the aspect that ‘a build’ in LE means something else then in poE because there is no meaningful diversity in content available yet. Dungeons are outright worse then running Monoliths, outside of the boss-uniques if your build needs them… and they’re worth so little in MG that they are utterly worthless hence outside of the really really rare drops achieved after thousands of runs… which you can get hundreds of times more in Monoliths during the same time. Arena is the same, utterly worthless for rewards, great for the leveling process. So that only leaves Monoliths. Sorry, nothing else provides any unique viable outcomes which are meaningful enough to engage with.

So no, you can’t compare a clear-speed char in PoE with any random character in LE and say ‘they’re equivalent’ because in PoE I get my 10+ divines per hour when I know what I’m doing compared to my 10+ divines with bossing if I know what I’m doing or my 6+ divines in delve or my 4+ divines in Heist or…
In LE I get jack shit when I don’t do Monoliths, and that’s the core issue, value dispersion of content is not there yet and won’t be for a long time. But EHG gives their players the characterization nonetheless like if it were… which it isn’t.

13

You’re talking about specialized builds. Specialized builds are viable if they can do the content they aim for. You can have the same thing in LE, especially because you don’t even need to farm harbinger eyes with that build. You can use another to farm them and then switch to your boss build to kill Aby. Same for Julra.

Your analogy would work better if you said that a mapping build can’t kill the map bosses. And you would be correct there. If a mapping build in PoE can clear the map in 5 seconds but then dies all the time to the map boss, then it’s not viable.
Likewise, if a build in LE can clear echoes in 5 seconds but can’t kill the mono boss, it’s not viable.

Now, with the power creep. It didn’t use to be the case before Harvest, for example. There were plenty of builds that couldn’t do red maps properly. Many because of the aforementioned problem of not being able to kill the map bosses. But due to power creep, everything up to T16, including the map bosses, are pushovers even if you randomly put things together (obvious exaggeration to get the point across).
There were plenty of very underperforming skills back then who couldn’t handle it properly, and thus weren’t viable.

Likewise, due to nerfs or changes to mechanics, there were builds that were effectively killed and aren’t used anymore by anyone. They aren’t viable anymore either. Like the VD/DD archmage build that ruled PoE before they decided to change both archmage itself and the trigger socketed spells on cast affix.

It can reach 300c, if built properly, so what can’t it?

Yes. Like was mentioned before, 300c is the highest requirement to unlock something. 320c if you want to split hairs and include the highest prophecy requirement into it.

Sure you can. Any build that can do red maps comfortably is a viable build in PoE. You can spend the whole season doing only maps and nothing else. And you need to do maps to be able to do any of the other endgame mechanics as well.
So the baseline in PoE is that a build that does red maps is viable. Any build that can’t do red maps isn’t.
For LE, that’s 300c monos. Any build that can do it is viable. Any that can’t isn’t.

Then you have specializations. You can make a build just for delve. If it can successfully farm delve, then it’s viable, otherwise it’s not. You can make a bossing build. If it can kill ubers it’s viable, otherwise it’s not.
In LE you don’t have as much content, but you can already do this. You can make a boss build simply to kill Aby. Or even include Julra in it. So if you want to make a bossing build and it can kill Aby, then it’s viable, otherwise it’s not.

I don’t understand what your argument even is. If a player goes to the PoE forum and ask what are the viable builds, the most likely answer is that pretty much any build is viable to do maps (and even some side mechanics to boot, most likely). And then if he wants to do some other content, like killing ubers or doing delve, only some builds are viable for that.

Likewise, if a player wants to know what a viable build in LE is, the most likely answer is that most of them are because they can do 300c monos. And then if he wants to do some other content, like killing Aby/Julra or doing arena, only some builds are viable for that.

Baseline farming: PoE map farming = 300c mono farming.
Boss killing: Uber killing = Aby killing.
Specialized builds: Most endgame mechanics like Sanctum or Ultimatum = Arena (the only one so far)

I really don’t understand your disagreement at this point. The only difference between PoE and LE in this regard, at this point, is simply the amount of different endgame mechanics and the fact that power creep has trivialized the base endgame mechanic in PoE.

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14

Able to farm c500 with str based vk mage

Able to kill Abb with speardancer thx to high aspd and shadow daggers

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15

I’ll try to keep it short this time.

Yes, which is the main premise of PoE nowadays, which allows it to get away with the clear difference in power level of builds.
In comparison Grim Dawn (SP game though) has a far tighter balancing compared to LE, even Torchlight Infinite has. That’s because they don’t offer this type of variety and hence have not that leeway.

And formerly their balancing was also ‘more tight’ in older days. Yes, you had outliers, but not only is it a decade ago since there was massive issues… but I would say since Harbinger League the general player power has been at a tipping point where it became viable for every build to do top-end content without major issues. Major issues the point.

With or without explosion timer? Without it’s a darn chore. It’s definitely not a comfortable build at all and you’ll lie as often in the dirt as you actually finish a Monolith or boss.

Not since Aberroth, and every build could kill the Shaper in PoE when no Elder was introduced yet. Literally every build with some effort. It had other issues, but not the baseline power level of builds.

‘A’ viable mapping build. The issue is… in PoE since years that’s the norm even for builds like ‘Fireball’… and a basic Fireball build sucks a lot.
In LE we don’t have that, reaching 300c in misery is doable, comfortable is quite another topic. I can die myself forward in LE easily with enough time investment and ignoring frustration, but it’ll be an awful experience. I’ll sometimes finish stuff though and progress.

Yeah, but in LE you need to go to ask ‘What build is even viable to deal with Aberroth’ as that is the game-stage which PoE was in when only Shaper existed. And every build could deal with Shaper with a modicum of dedication, in LE, no.

That’s the current argument about Dead-end builds. They don’t feel ‘right’ for the state the game is in now. Not with 1.2 (might change) or in the far future. It’s stuff which needs to be pointed out so they can work on it. Not sticking the head in the sand and saying ‘Nah, all’s fine, no need to handle anything!’

Because plain and simple… something is ‘off’ with the game for longer-term players, majorly even for some… and that’s important to deal with going forward as that is the potential core audience which keeps a game like this with the depth it has alive long-term. Not the pure ‘look at peak players for the release and bye after 1 week!’ ones.

16

I think they mean Puncture itself doing the damage rather than Shadow daggers.

I think 2h Shadow daggers is really slept on(particularly with Sierpin’s), I always wanted to play that but have been messing around with other builds.

17

That’s crap. Mike has mentioned 300c frequently over a sustained period of time, not once. If you want to ignore what the devs say when they say a thing, why would you pay attention to them saying a slightly different thing?

Why? Does anything need more than 300c to do?

So if there were prophecies that required 10,000c would that mean that anything that can’t do that is non-viable? I’m pretty sure you’ve said that prophecies aren’t content, but if you haven’t, many have. Also, if Abby unlocks at 300c, i guess that means you could do it at 300c & that’s the lowest requirement for content so probably a reasonable basis for “viable”?

Additionally, why shouldn’t the devs give us prophecies that require higher corruption given some/many builds can go so much higher? Why is that a bad thing?

That I’d probably disagree with. I suspect there’s plenty of players who require pinnacle bosses to be do-able on a build for that build to be “viable”.

See, the post below yours says this!!

Possibly, but given SD is now easily available from the Puncture tree, is that a reasonable distinction? I tried a spear SD build but was a bit sad that the spear bonuses for Puncture from the Falconer passive tree were AoE rather than attack speed.

1 Like
18

Yes
https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/owjG82RB
And I have to admit, that puncture as bleed to kill - not even close to shadow daggers

19

I would say yes (IMO of course), because in such case you are just scaling Shadow Daggers and Puncture is just an applicator. It becomes like Firebrand in a Flame Reave build where its just a generator and another skill does the main damage. Whereas Bleed/ Poison/ Hit puncture will actually scale off the skill’s own damage.
A better comparion for this would be the Explosive Trap/Acid Flask setup where Acid flask does all the damage and Explosive trap is a trigger skill I would say that’s an Acid Flask build rather than an Explosive trap build. Another would be Bone curse build using Chaos bolts/ shotgun Hungering souls to proc bone curse, I would call it a bone curse build using CB/HS as a trigger. Puncture SD is just using puncture as a trigger skill and therefore I wouldn’t call it a true ‘Puncture’ build.

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20

The same could be said for a bleed-focussed Puntire build then, or frostbite with the conversion quiver. Apart from any bleed nodes, SD will scale with all of the same nodes in Puncture as Puncture’s hit damage will.

Yeah, I kinda get that though SD isn’t a skill like Firebrand & Flame Reave are. Flame Reave isn’t going to be scaling off any of the nodes in Firebrand (apart from Incineration & Illuminating Fire).