If this is true, what makes you rate this build as ‘S’? No offence here, but 150 waves in the Arena is not a big deal. I am genuinely curious. I don’t rate the ability to clear Monos a big deal compared to say 400 Arena waves (and I much prefer Arena to Mono anyway), so inquiring minds need to know what makes an ‘S’ build an ‘S’ build?
You should only use Glyph of Stability for the first few crafts where fracturing chance is negligible. After a few crafts you should switch to Glyph of Guardian.
Arena is only 20% of a tiers grade.
- Defense - 10/10
- Offense - 10/10
- Empowered Bosses - 10\10
- Speed Running Echoes - 7/10
- Arena - 6/10
Average 8.6
S - Tier is 8.5+
A - Tier is 7-8.499
B - Tier is 5.5-6.99
C - Tier is 4-5.499
D - Tier is 2.5-3.99
F - Tier is 2.499 and less
Interesting. So what would make Offence 10/10? Is that pure subjective opinion?
Personally I feel Arena performance should carry considerably more weight. Wave 300+ Arena is much more difficult than Mono bosses for example. I spent the night levelling this Sorc build as it rated ‘S’ and seemed pretty cool and I don’t have a Lightning Sorc yet, but now I see 6/10 Arena - which could mean only wave 150 from what you said - I’m having some regrets. It’s some fun to play though.
I challenge you to unsubjectively find a non subjective aspect of an arpg
Im working out the breakdown points for each category to reduce confusing, but this will be based on fast it can take down an empowered abomination. 10 seconds or less is a 10/10
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so what class or build is all 10/10 ??? as a starter build and doesnt depend on an item that i can only get at like lvl 75+ unique
most of ur builds are items dependent ?
- Defense - 10/10
- Offense - 10/10
- Empowered Bosses - 10\10
- Speed Running Echoes - 7/10
- Arena - 6/10
Welcome to the community!
The only builds id Rate close to 10/10 in all categories and it would still be subjective as it requires unique weapons is the Earthquake druid.
And i will would only give it 9/10 in a couple of categories due to it having target issues with bosses like against Lagon.
Personally, I’d rate builds on what Arena wave they can comfortably push and that’s it - and yes I am bias towards Arena as I don’t find Monolith very interesting as end-game. Things like killing a boss in 10 seconds, or finishing an echo in under some time limit are rather irrelevant (to me) as long as you can indeed kill that boss or echo. If one build kills a specific boss in 10 seconds where another takes a minute, that doesn’t necessarily say to me that the first build is strongest - it could be an absolute glass cannon in the hands of a skilled player, and in fact still be the weaker build of the two.
Arena wave is non-subjective and gives a very useful and absolute comparison of one build’s strength over another’s. There is nowhere to hide with that info. Also - and this is pure speculation on my part - a build that can push very far in Arena will have no problem with end-game bosses, whereas the reverse is absolutely not true.
Anyways, transparency in your future ratings would be absolutely amazing and I appreciate your answers to this.
I’ll finish by asking which build you think currently can push farthest in Arena, other than the EQ one, which I think you said in the video is almost certainly going to get nerfed?
Anyways, back to the (fun) Lightning Mage, sorry for interrupting his thread.
I’d agree that Arena & monolith are sufficiently different to warrant separate ratings.
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Monolith is seeing some intense changes next patch. I would expect these rating to hold more water then.
I have to disagree with this and say arena is very subjective to a players skill level, over a build itself.
Ive seen players push builds that are to their likely further than anyone else can.
@FoE pushed sorcer to 600+ waves (no one even comes close to this but if i now rate Sorcerer builds S tier Just because of this imagine the frustration saying its S tier, but only if your as good as foe
There is now a drop down text in my most recent post (trundlegod’s judgement) that explains everything. I might nit pick this as time passes but it will be in Post from this point out.
As i stated above, foe pushed a 600+ wave lightning nova sorcerer o.0
Edit:
I should add that:
Basing OFFENSE rating off killing empowered abomination is more about finding a common denominator for DPS than just saying hey i can kill him this fast. I would use the training dummy but it doesnt really work here for a true DPS number output and tooltip dps is… well… Dependant on variables.
Having multiple ratings on a builds is just to help people get a more generalized ideal of how the build performs. There are builds that perform well in arena but are just plain dumb to use to farm more gear as there painfully slow (which isnt a problem in arena where mobs come to you)
TLDR - Ignore the Tier rating and just looking at Arena rating if you want an ARENA only build. a 9/10 or 10/10 arena pusher will do ya just fine even if its B Tier overall 
I actually meant that a good indicator would be how far YOU personally pushed it (because it’s your gear I can see). At least the results would be consistent.
Still subjective to various outlying variables such as:
Did i push just once and die to a dumb mistake or bad RNG spawn group?
Did i do several pushes and average the results>
Did i push Dead tired after a 12 hour shift or after a good 8 hours sleep?
Was FPS on my side? Is FPS on your side?
Did i spin 3 circles and rub my tommy pat my head before entering the arena…
Its really hard to replicate consistent results for comparable measure in a complete RNG based genre
I believe offering the most uniquely different ratings will offer the most consistent average for a player to look at and decide.
You only know you do that for crafting…
I’d hope for nothing less than the average of at least 5 attempts, where you played as well as you could (i.e. not tired or drunk etc). Or you could “employ” a small staff to run it for you and average all the results. I’m sure there’d be plenty of volunteers. 
Back on target with this Mage…
Are you sure the skill interactions work as intended? I have Disintegrate with 100% chance to cast Lightning Blast, but I can see no evidence that this is actually happening except for the odd crit appearing, which cannot be the Disintegrate. However my Lightning Blast is still specced to fork 6 times against different targets (will change that soon). I was expecting to see it chaining across multiple enemies every second it procs, but nope.
If you have 4 points in chance to proc it Should proc 1x Per Second that your Hitting Enemies Per Beam you have. There’s been several hotfixes since i ran it so it could have possibly gotten corrupted, but in 0.8.1c it was definitely working.
Edit:
Waiting on multiple people to get exactly the same gear and push it while possibly have to pay them if they dont volunteer seems very counterintuitive when i could just Replace the entire rating system with a simple headline of “Go play for heavens sake and figure it out”
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Question: Are Damage While Channelling, Lightning Damage and Spell Damage equivalent for this build? Are their tier ranges the same etc? Any point in picking one over another?
Yes they are all equivalent with the same ranges on affixes.
I am currently just arriving at Lagon’s island with this build, around level 50. I have to say the moment I took the Laser Focus node for Disintegrate, the build felt like its strength took a nose dive. It was melting everything up till then (albeit with Mana Issues on bosses, forcing me to run Focus on my skill bar), but now it feel weak as a kitten. 
Persevere? Did anyone else feel this way?