I think the thing that most consistently makes me get frustrated and stop with a character or even sometimes the game for a while is the experience I have when I first get to empowered monoliths. I find it really hard to find a way to juggle all my necessary defenses on gear while still having some semblance of damage. This is even in Legacy where I just have hoards of random exalted items but still manage to discover that the few that work with my build leave big gaps in resists, crit avoid, or leave me without much HP. Then it becomes hard to move to different gear because Iāll have some load bearing item with like all the resists for one or two damage types. And as far as saving gear to swap to later when I get other things to fill in the gaps, Iām at my hoarding limit in practical terms. My stash is a nightmare.
The result is that really the only characters Iāve successfully played past initial empowered monos have been the ones that mostly focus on being tanky, which of course ends up meaning theyāre really slow. Iād love to play a build that kills things faster than tickling them to death, but it always kind of ends the same way.
A great deal of your damage and HP should come from your skills and passives, although some classes lack HP passive nodes. So I focus on putting defences on my gear.
When I get to empowered monoliths I focus on capping my resistances to 75% and getting HP affixes on my gear.
In general, anything under 2000 HP is very low. But I donāt play ward builds, so there are caveats. I generally aim for 3500+ HP on most builds that I play.
Damage affixes on gear are helpful, but I consider them secondary in priority, defences are my first priority when i get to empowered.
Varies greatly, because of the layers and layers of RNG involved with both shard drops, and drops of uniques, and rares in the campaign / monolith, your looking at drastically different power level between runs, [a major problem i spoken about before]
I think if your a ranged caster, or using throwing, having low life and maxed damage with over heal from a specific body piece can be enough for emp 100. Main thing is to run exp affix for stun immunity on traversal since those will get you killed most [from undodgable hits]. And then maxing as much health as you can so that you stay around 4000 ward constant.
If your a martial build, your going to want to have max health and endurance, and endurance threshold. Ignore damage entirely on all gear except wand, and use the turtle shield with retaliation on damage taken, and the affix on your gear max mana with [damage to mana before hp affix] as you can convert your offense based slots to defense this way, and then stack armor and %dot resistance from the amulet.
Main things are going to be total HP, crit avoidance (alternatively reduced damage taken from crits, theyāre effectively the same at 100%), and capping resistances. After that, itās super class/mastery/build dependent. For example, generally sentinels are better at building total HP, block chance, armor, while rogues are better at dodge, glancing blow, damage reduction from moving, and ailment cleanse.
Lots of various defensive nodes from passive trees depending on your mastery. HP, armor, crit avoidance, resistances. Lots of resistance and defensive buffs from monos. You can get substantial amounts of many resistances, crit avoidance, armor, dodge, etc.
Start from your passives, and then get some of what your build is lacking from blessings. Idols are an easy way to finish up capping your resistances. From there, aim to patch those remaining holes with your gear. E.g. missing a bit of crit avoidance, prioritize crafting a piece of gear to max it out.
Check out the various nodes in your skills to see if they increase defenses in any way. For example, Rogueās shruikens can significantly increase armor, adding a low-investment defensive layer that isnāt usually as strong on a rogue without it. On my rogue I actually replaced crit strike avoidance affixes with the āarmor and reduced damage taken from critsā affixes to scale with shruikens. I didnāt lose any defenses against crits and at the same time I gained some damage reduction from armor.
All else fails, try to follow a thorough build guide that describes defenses in detail. Having a well thought out path to follow for your first character or two can help show you some defensive techniques that you might not have found on your own.
I donāt really have this experience. Of needing to solve my survivability I mean. I played other ARPGs in the past, so maxing out my resistances was an automatic thing for me. Other than that, I just went with the flow of my chosen build.
In Cycle 1.0 I started with a Sorcerer.
It was my first time playing the game, and I created my own build using Lightning Blast LB, Flame Ward, Ascendance, Teleport and Static to be precise. None of the OP builds. Just chain lightning and max cast speed
Found a random screenshot before empowered (Last Ruin quest active), I had 1146 HP and 1995 Ward. Screenshots from 11 levels later show I cleared the Last Ruin quest, screenshot now shows 1882 HP and 3656 Ward, but Iām pretty sure I could reach up to 6k Ward. My upgrade path was stacking HP for Heart of Uhkeiros. This was before I knew how good Reactive Ward was, and before I understood some other complex mechanics. I remember the clear speed was very good. Bossing was okay too, bosses definitely died around the 1-2 min mark. I definitely died a few times too, but I was new to the game. The only time I hit a roadblock was when I tried T4 Julra (which is like the dungeon equivalent of endgame), and after I learned to not touch the lasers, I beat her too. I checked and the current version has 3140 HP, but still less than 30% Armor, so pretty much a beefy ~10k total HP glass cannon
In Cycle 1.1, I play a Smite/Healing Hands Paladin, which has both good DPS and survivability, so thereās not much to talk about. Random screenshot from lvl 73 shows me at 1260 HP and 3011 Ward.
Thatās most likely a build issue and not a balance issue. Switching from lvl90 monos to 100corruption lvl 100 monos barely makes a difference in my experience. Make sure you have all the possible and viable layers of defence covered.
