Survival question

Hi everyone, it’s me the fresh meet again.
Now I am using the lightning blast surge build,the damage is perfect,
but I start to got sudden death at the empowered monolith,
its a terrible experience. Before the second empowered monolith everything was so fine.
I just got all resistance near 75%,and all rest damage to me count on ward.
Should I store some other type attribute like dodge?
I think endure is not worth the investment, just dodge?

It’s very hard to give specific advise, without the details of the build.

If you play a ward based build and have capped resistances already dodge, armour or block would be the most reasonable secondary defenses.

Block is probably only worth using as a mage, if you play with at least a shield, since you have no easy access to block chance.

What exactly do you play? Spellblade? Sorcerer?

Generally iwould say for spellblade dodge is a very good defense, since you can use dexterity to scale some of your damage, which also gives a bit flat dodge.

If you are sorcerer dodge would be still and option but armour is also possible.

The most important thing will be focusing on one of these and not mix and match many different ones.

So try to devote all suffix slots, that you don’t need for resistances for either dodge or armour.

If you are speaking of endurance: Endurance does only protect health and not ward, so if you are a ward build endurance does have little to no value for you.

If you use Dammitt’s build planner, you can upload your character to it & we can see what’s happening.

please help me
actually I got 71 Intelligence
Fire Resistance 121% Cold Resistance 58% Lightning Resistance 82%
Physical Resistance 79% Void Resistance 75% Necrotic Resistance 68%
Poison Resistance 41%
Other defences are close.
I wonder if I go to extremes about the damage stats.

If you’re not dieing, it’s ok. Spellblades tend to go for as much ward on hit & attack speed as they can get, so I’d probably pick up Essence Duel. I’d also drop 4 points from Warden’s Echo since the Burst doesn’t do a huge amount of damage. I’d also take 5 points in Shattered Aegis as well which will increase the buffs you get when you have max stacks of Arcane Shielding.

So i quickly watched over it.

One major thing:
You only have 7% Critical Strike Avoidance, this will lead to some huge incoming damage spikes. You definitely want to get this to 100%, not 99% oder lower, but 100%.

You need 3 decently rolled T5 suffixes (or the Blessing from the Reign Of Dragons Timeline + 2 suffixes). If you later get access to the Grand Blessing from the empwoered timeline you only need 1 T5 affix, if affix and blessing are decently rolled.

A few other small suggesting for overall defense:
Armour:

  • Get rid of all the dodge and try to get armour on it instead.
  • Invest more passive points in “Mana Shell” in the Sorcerer Tree and 5 points into “Shattered Aegis” in the Spellblade Tree (this alone will give you 80% increased armour with almost 100% uptime)
  • Get a Plated Belt or a Bronze Belt for up to 100 flat base armour.

Ward:

  • You need more ward retention. You can invest more points in “Warden” in the Base Mage Passive Tree.
  • Replace your Relics with a more usefull relic. I think “Scrivening Quill” would be the best choice defensively, especially when you get more ward retention.
  • Redistrubute a few passive points into “Mental Fortitude” and “Prodigy”. Especially the 3 passive points for Fire Aura seem wasted (“Flame Walker”, “Incinerating Aura”, "Crackling Aura), since you haven’t invested into Fire Aura much.

I know you need to stay above the max mana threshold, but “Mana Shell” will definitely counteract the Belt swap and you will get more max mana through level ups and when you get the “Grand Light Of The Moon Blessing” from the ending the storm timeline.

Thanks, I was totally confused about the choice of Warden’s Echo line and Arua line.
Yesterday I put the points in the Aura line.
But seems the same, I think my damage mostly from the surge castting lightning blast,
and mana strike just getting me through the cooldown time.So, I don’t see the passive have any big influence. and those points do not help me survive.

Thank you advice, I’ll take it.
Critical Strike Avoidance maybe the main reason I got sudden death.
When I was lower level days ago, I used the Woven Flesh unique to get 100%.
But after I adjustment my build, I causes hugh damage with surge, that made my play easy so far. So I did ignore it.
Its hard to get enough Critical Strike Avoidance since its hard to make a 4 tier 5 item.sad:(

You only need 3 decently rolled T5 affixes, not 4.

He means an item with 4x t5 affixes.

Oh yeah.

@augusto422 the thing with affixes like CSA is, you have a hard goal to reach, while all the other stuff like damage, crit etc, are just incrementally increases .

It all comes down to priorities. I would priotize getting T5 CSA on items and keep the damage and crit affixes on lower tiers. Of course you will lose some damage, but having your defense that have a hard cap maxed is a big power spike.

Sorry as a non native english speaker, its hard to express clear my thoughts.
Now its time for farming, maybe the unique clothes with 100% CSA could help me through this period.
Thanks you two a lot.

You cna definitely use the unique that gives 100% CSA.

But you should aim to repalce it, since well crafted rares are definitely stronger and give you more defenses overall.

Much better now, I just finish the second monolith.
But with low armour, ward used up quickly.

Great to hear! Just keep playing and you will further improve your char.

Not sure what you mean?

I mean I use flame ward, or mana strike to get maybe 1000 ward,
its consuming very fast, maybe because I do’nt have enough armour?

The ward will decay by itself, as well as when mobs hit you.

Just died once again by range lightning balls, I was stunned.
I know ward retention effect how fast ward decay, but I am not sure if it consumes effecting by all my defenses multiple?
BTW, should I get some stun avoidance?
And about my build, I started to consider it was heresy.
First, I am fragile and easily died,
then, most of the damages come from spells, not melee.
yeah, diffident now

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