This isn’t really a complaint post. I know it’s already getting nerfed next patch. I just wanted to share. Since I was getting impatient, I decided to do a character found run before the new patch comes out. I picked Warlock since I hadn’t played that yet. It was genuinely the easiest time I’ve had with the game. I basically only died a handful of times and some of those were to me looking at my skill tree while I was in a dangerous area lol.
My gear was pretty trash most of the way through endgame. I was running yellow and blue gear up until near the end and I actually still have a yellow belt. My resists and crit reduction weren’t quite capped. I got unlucky on blessings and didn’t have the good ones for my build until I did a roundup of ones I missed at the very end before Abberoth.
I went to do Abberoth last night and I beat him on my first try while I was a bit distracted chatting with friends. Before this I only beat Abberoth once before and it was on a character I spent considerably longer gearing out the waazoo and I just barely got it down after a lot of attempts. This wasn’t quite delete him in seconds or face tank everything, but I was pretty sloppy with the fight. I placed the void beams really carelessly, I got hit by some telegraphed attacks, I even stood in some DoTs at some point for long enough that I should have just been dead. I was tanky enough that the fact that I also killed him in a fraction of the time as my first character is absurd.
That’s all. I’m gonna take my break for now while I wait for the patch. I’m looking forward to getting to try some new things and hopefully the endgame and crafting improvements make the grind more interesting. I’m hoping we get patch notes soon so I can start thinking about stuff to try. I’m not quite sure what I want to do yet. The Sentinel Rework is certainly tempting, but it’s also probably the class I’ve played the most of so far and there are still some I’ve basically not given a try. I’ve got some potentially silly ideas depending on if the set crafting makes the build more reasonable.
While waiting for S02, I’m doing a few ‘speedruns’ of hardcore character-found characters, level 1 to empowered monos. I’m not good at it but I find it quite fun.
I’ve done marksman in around 8 hours, void knight in 7… and now you makes me want to try warlock but I’ve very limited experience with it (played it only once).
Care to share some tips ? I guess it’s a dot build, probably bleed ?
Do you have advice for early campaign ? And for regular monos ? What are the key skills / nodes / passives do you recommend ? Of course, I can’t rely on uniques for this kind of challenge since I have no idea what will drops. I don’t want to switch build mid-run too much either, or it needs to be a simple pivot with already useful affixes. I usually take time twice for gearing (once mid campaign, and once mid regular monos) but not much more.
Thanks for sharing!
Always cool to see posts that are not like “ummm, actually, you’re WRONG and EHG is WRONG and in this essay I’ll explain why I’m always right”.
I just followed the maxroll leveling and torment guide. It’s fairly straightforward.
A lot of work just gets done for you by Cthonic Fissure while you run around and avoid stuff. And Profane Veil makes you invincible to hits as long as you use it at the right times. I guess one piece of advice is to try to avoid spamming the Fissures. You can only put down one at a time, they last a while and hit things surprisingly far away, and once you get one of the skill upgrades it costs a lot of mana which could drain you if you’re being too careless with it.
As far as uniques go, I think the only one that’s truly core is the Boneclamor Barbute helmet that gives you ward/sec based on your necrotic res. I got it pretty easily just by running prophecies and using runes of ascendance. I’d be surprised if you didn’t get it by the time you needed it in empowered monos. But like I said, the build is pretty strong with crap gear. I was banking on hitting a woven flesh for crit avoid cap until later but I somehow managed to not get it after like 3 tries at Abomination. Which is crazy because normally that’s like the first thing you get lol. But I just moved on without it and it turned out fine.
As far as pivoting, it looks worse than it is. The leveling build is bleed based so you want a lot of DoT and Phys damage and then the torment build wants necrotic damage, crit multi, and necrotic resist primarily. But there is still the overlap of int and generic stats like resists. But the build is so strong even on bad gear that I pivoted while still wearing a lot of my old gear with useless affixes and it was fine in unempowered monos.
Beyond that, it was my first time playing it, so I don’t know enough about the mastery to say any other potential directions you could take if you found some stuff. There’s also a guide for a bleed endgame build, but that one looks more unique heavy. I also got a Stygian Coal which I know has a build, but I didn’t look into it because I figured it would probably take a lot more to make work than the one I was already following.
Yeah, Terek leveling guides are great. I miss the guy and hope he will come back for S02. His videos about current bugs were soooo valuable, like this one . He was also great at speedrunning and I know people like Lizard (and now Raxx) learned a lot from him.
Good to know for Barbute but it’s a lvl 65 item (and I don’t see why it’s relevant for this particular build?). Since my goal is only to get to empowered (and stopping there), I’ll probably not use it for long. For ‘speedrunning’, I think it’s better to use the few ascendance runes on boots, since there is many good usable boots with good movement speed. I find it easier to just ascend boots and not care with MS boots for the rest of the run. Quickly scrolling through phys / bleed uniques, I guess I should use RoA on belts first since Thorn Slinger would be best in slot for the entirety of the run. And maybe on wand for an Alchemist / Mad alchemist laddle ?
By the way, about the Stygian Coal, it’s used in Lich builds with good success. If you’re interested in the machine-gun Lich build, I suggest to learn from the expert that pretty much only play it, do variants ot if each cycle, is probably crying right now in the waiting room for S03 (when they will change Lich ) : Maomaox !
Ah I didn’t realize your plan was just to get to empowered and stop. Then yeah I guess the helmet isn’t likely to matter too much. As for it’s relevance to the build in general though: There’s a node in Fissure that makes torment deal more damage based on your uncapped necrotic res. There’s also a threshold passive Imperishable that gives ward decay threshold for necrotic res. So since you’re already going to want to stack it for those, the ward from the boneclamor is mostly free. You just miss out on getting to run a less damage taken from crits helmet base. Which admittedly would be kinds scary if this wasn’t as strong as it is.
You say it was the easiest time you had, so I’m curious, did your previous characters have any sources of passive Health Regeneration or Ward per Second?
I suppose not for the most part, at least of the characters I actually played for long. Shield Bash and Erasing Strike were leech based. Healing Hands was Healing Hands. The squirrel BM was minion leech, but that’s a bit like passive health sustain, just one that sucks when your minions die in a void puddle. I did some mage builds but those had to generate their ward for the most part.
Maybe the closest was an Aura of Decay Lich a long time ago. I don’t actually remember if that was health regen or some weird leeching off yourself or something, but it could sustain itself without directly hitting stuff which I guess is the point. But that build also did like no damage.
I did briefly try to give that Shattered Lance regen werebear build a try, but I didn’t really get past the part that I sometimes struggle with which is transitioning to empowered monos with enough proper defenses so I don’t just die to random stuff. Also, I’m not exactly sure what it was, but it felt a bit clunky. Sometimes my attacks would just stop or something. idk, I was trying it near the end of one of my seasonal stretches, so I wasn’t that invested in making it work.
Yes, fissure does far too much (basically automating everything else) which limits design space and makes other skills feel bad. It needs to be nerfed (e.g., lower procs, or reduces the damage of anything applied by it etc.).
