Seems quite a lot of different takes on Phalanx here. I have been playing around with it myself and went a quite different route. IMO the meat of the item is the ‘more damage per block chance with Vengeance’ modifier. This actually works with overcapped block so Vengeance now has an uncapped damage scaling modifier (like Drain Life Stygian coal or Storm bolts with mana albeit much weaker than them).
Now ofc this is Vengeance so its not hitting like Echo Rive or Multistrike but its nice and I opted to go with 50 mana cost Javelin so it gets 25% more damage from Crushing blow passive.
Its pretty sweet, does 1000 corruption fairly easily, Facetanks almost anything, Kills harbingers with one hand, just move and thrust(vengeance) managed a 1000 corruption Fading Brink although it took like 30 minutes.
But there is a lot of Core problems with the archetype. First of all, Riposte is a subskill of Vengeance, yet doesn’t inherit any of its dmg multipliers (unlike say Fissure which is a subskill of smite and inherits all its damage multipliers, conversions, etc.). This is even worse when you consider that Riposte has a cooldown of 1-1.5 seconds and requires GETTING hit which is way more difficult(and requires taking dmg) than others like Fissure which has a 3 per second limit and procs on your hit.
The same applies to the Javelin proc, you need to get hit to riposte in order to proc it meaning it has a limit of 1 every 1.5 seconds meanwhile Smite proc on hit from Palarus for example gets 3 every second and you don’t need to get hit. Like if it has a difficult proc condition atleast it should get more damage or something.
Vengeance description:
A melee attack that also prepares you to riposte incoming hits.
If vengeance successfully hits an enemy and you take a hit in the next 2 seconds you will riposte, taking 25% less damage and striking at a nearby enemy.
Sometimes in practice it is even slower, so maybe that’s way they give huge dmg reduction in the Vengeance node to mitigate that time…
Nah, that’s the duration of the Riposte buff which gives DR & a free melee hit when it’s “consumed” by an incoming hit. So the effective rate limit for Ripost should be your attack speed multiplied by how many stacks of Riposte you get per hit.
If you hit once per second & gained 3 stacks (the max as far as I’m aware) then for the next 2 seconds you would, or should, get the DR on the first 3 hits within those 2 seconds. If you were getting hit 4 times every second & still hitting once per second with Vengeance to refresh the stacks, the first 3 hits in that 1s window would consume the Riposte buff & the 4th wouldn’t, as there would be no more stacks left to consume.
You can see it ingame yourself, it is not clearly stated anywhere. Even with 100% increased attack speed or 200% increased attack speed (meaning you hit 2-3 times per second) It does not change the amount of Riposte triggers even if you’re constantly hitting and getting hit.
I mean skill got reworked and still its subskills don’t scale properly(even Iron Blades) I dunno if its intentional or bugged at this point…
I briefly tried making Vengeance the damage dealer and I couldn’t make it do much. Although admittedly I didn’t put that much time into really gearing it out. I pretty much just got all the block chance and endurance for Face of the Mountain. How did you get it to work? Could you link the planner? Also didn’t know riposte was that limited. That’s so weird/lame.
Sorry missed it: https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/oRn7K35o
Will put out a vid also maybe.
I had started it early after the patch fixing the shield+2h node dropped and it was a bit meh. Then I tossed on the uber gloves and relic after farming it on my Shatter strike char and it played a lot better.
Keep in mind its still nowhere close to Echo rive or Bladestorm Multistrike but kinda servicable.
I’m thinking of going something like this: https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/BG8rKLno
like close to 180% block with good rolls(above 200% when riposting) and shred armor on the spear for more dmg, loss of attack speed could hurt tho unless I get 2LP gloves and the main problem with farming for a 3LP spear is getting good rolls as a low roll 3LP would be worse than a 2LP which is the most annoying thing in the game. Double T7 shield should be possible with lucky Havocs and Nemesis (although not really worked out for me yet).
It was perfect at the time when the more dmg/attack speed was fixed and the haste part was broken so you still had haste movement speed… Idk why EHG thinks that FG needs to not have haste even when the other masteries have More damage and % inc movement speed passives making them faster anyways.
Ah. I’m starting to see how I’ve been building the Vengeance tree wrong, or at least not damage focused enough for making it the star. I see the value in going for the fire conversion. Fire damage from both Symbols and Smite. I also didn’t take the throwing shred passives because I was tunnel visioned on melee, but that seems obvious now that I see it.
Btw, is there a reason you have Cloud Voyager in Healing Hands or is that a mistake? I don’t see any minions in your build. Or are you casting unspecced Ring of Shields or something?
This is still the thing that’s most putting a damper on my enjoyment of the game. It’s not as much balance (although obvious that’s a part of it) as it is the knee jerk reaction to making things needlessly lame… and then also being really inconsistent about it. There are classes that get to deal absurd damage and be super tanky without even really needing to invest a lot or do anything terribly clever, but then the potentially cool interesting stuff gets slapped with unnecessary downsides and hard limitations.
Although in this case I don’t think in principle having the big tanky knight character go slower is that much of a problem, it’s thematic, but the issue is not enough is done to compensate for that in other areas.
Also somewhat related: You know what I really want for FG? A taunt. I want some way to force enemies to attack me more often so retaliation builds can be more consistent. I actually took the node in the weaver tree that perma enrages rares and it still didn’t really help.
That’s not all I’d want for it, but just specifically for this build.
You’re right, its useless. Leftover from when I was trying RoS, I think smite ends up better.
This would be good but the current Taunt (for example from Warcry) would not help much for that as it doesn’t increase attack speed. It would need to be a new effect.
Another problem is that some enemies like Immortal Eye and Infernal Husk don’t hit at all.
I think reason it doesn’t help is because of Riposte’s internal cooldown thing, I tested it before standing in the pre bugfix Tangled web laser(which was a hit but had a DoTs tick rate and was actually easier for this build to tank then) even if you are constantly getting hit/hitting Riposte has something of an internal cooldown so it can only trigger every 1-1.5 seconds and that is the rate you should optimally be getting hit at.
Main two things I’d want:
Riposte should definitely scale with ALL of Vengeance’s modifiers both the tree and the spear mod. Additionally, I think it could get a damage buff too since it has a much more difficult proc condition and cooldown than say Fissure in smite which procs on hit, can proc 3 times every second and inherits Smite’s damage multipliers.
Like why is my Vengeance 200k but this is
and
Javelin portion of the Phalanx spear needs more synergy. Compare it to Palarus, that procs Smite 10 times every 2 seconds and is on your hits while Phalanx can proc once every 1.5 seconds and needs you to get hit(taking damage). If this kind of proc rate is there then it should get some damage multiplier to compensate. Let the damage per block chance apply to Javelin also or give it more damage per 100 block effectiveness. Additionally/Alternatively make it so the spear gives Javelin the Melee tag in addition to throwing tag (like shadow daggers) so it can have more synergy with the Vengeance part.
