Even without leaderboards/online, people have various reasons to play “the best” builds, such as ease of use, saving time, fun, etc. It doesn’t have to be motivated by other people, some could just want the available options to be relatively balanced.
Ever since say 2005ish or even earlier, balance discussions have been increasingly available and there was definitely a general shift from playing however to playing “the right way”.
This is a part of the online / live game trend I've never understood. Peoples constant need for non-competitive aspects of a game to be balanced. Who really cares if Jane Q Warlock is too powerful for a cycle?
It is competitive. It's not PvP, but being 'the best' is obviously a competition.
People take ladders / leader boards, one of the most easily cheesable things in all of online gaming, that seriously?
Build/theorycrafters absolutely do compete for each other. And build videos/streams are a thing so having builds dominant due to bugs does impact a number of things, not least of which is the perception of people on the fence about the game. If they keep seeing content about bugged builds, it can easily put them off from making the purchase.
Even without leaderboards/online, people have various reasons to play “the best” builds, such as ease of use, saving time, fun, etc. It doesn’t have to be motivated by other people, some could just want the available options to be relatively balanced.
Ever since say 2005ish or even earlier, balance discussions have been increasingly available and there was definitely a general shift from playing however to playing “the right way”.
A big factor for me is that, if I've recently used a build that works smoothly, building something clunky or low damage feels bad. If my current build explodes 1000 enemies per second, I want my next build to explode 2000 enemies per second. If the new build is worse on all content than my current build that step backward makes the time investment feel misplaced. So I naturally ratchet my way toward more meta builds.
On the LE front, I'm using a scorpion beastmaster, and it's a great time. The Scorpion is like a permanent frozen orb that turns enemies into green mush. It's a five-button build with interactions between the different skills but doesn't feel overwhelming to operate. Scorpion damage is easy to boost (Minion, damage over time, and poison all work) so gearing is smooth. Would recommend.
The one downside - or another upside depending how you look at it - is that there isn't much room for experimentation in terms of passives and skills. You take the skills/nodes that boost poison and avoid the skills/nodes that boost other things like physical damage. Since primalist/beastmaster covers so many different build types, you often find yourself with only one viable choice for where to put points.
GoodKingJayIIIThey wanna get mygold on the ceilingRegistered Userregular
I went ahead and started an acolyte to keep things fresh and try some different play styles. Went with Lich.
Oh man... I can tell this has a lot of potential. Right now I'm kinda just doing whatever, but I can see this cycle in my head where you Bone Curse (Illusion of Pain) -> Reap -> Bone Curse (Illusion of Pain) -> Reap -> Repeat. There's probably another skill worked into the cycle so that the cooldowns line up a little better, but in my head it's just huge swaths of monsters just exploding.
I went ahead and started an acolyte to keep things fresh and try some different play styles. Went with Lich.
Oh man... I can tell this has a lot of potential. Right now I'm kinda just doing whatever, but I can see this cycle in my head where you Bone Curse (Illusion of Pain) -> Reap -> Bone Curse (Illusion of Pain) -> Reap -> Repeat. There's probably another skill worked into the cycle so that the cooldowns line up a little better, but in my head it's just huge swaths of monsters just exploding.
Might be worth it to spec into Transplant and take the node that makes it cast Bone Curse. Apparently since you cast Bone Curse at your destination rather than applying it on hit, Illusion of Pain applies to it. Whether it's still limited by the cooldown, I'm not certain.
Having Transplant as a huge nuke that also applies a Curse adds a lot of the fun to my Warlock, anyway.
I decided to work on David Harbour build alt last night a little bit while I was steam linking the game in bed. Low levels so not particularly close to being able to use the wraithlord unique, but happy about the mileage I'm getting out of that legendary firestarter's torch. It's great even for non-fire skills at low levels, and has made hungering souls a bunch of fun. First time I've really specced hard into that skill and it's a lot of fun with the "lots of projectiles" stuff -- I didn't expect them to be so willing to loop back around and attack stuff behind me.
That unique staff for them at level 20 is going to make it tough to switch away, but I've already picked Necro so I'm going to force myself to do it at some point.
I'm pretty sure wraithlord is super bugged. I happened to see a streamer with one doing 800k a hit with no gear on, so something is messed up in its damage calculation somewhere.
0
GoodKingJayIIIThey wanna get mygold on the ceilingRegistered Userregular
Anyone else have experience with Lich? There are a number of passive nodes that provide some pretty significant damage increases and bonuses to Int, at the expensive of % life draining over time. There are some other nodes that reduce the impact of this drain, but it seems like you could still easily lose 10-15% of your life every second if you invest in these.
Anyone else have experience with Lich? There are a number of passive nodes that provide some pretty significant damage increases and bonuses to Int, at the expensive of % life draining over time. There are some other nodes that reduce the impact of this drain, but it seems like you could still easily lose 10-15% of your life every second if you invest in these.
Are they worth it?
Lich has various mechanics that play around with health loss and low health in such as way as to make it more manageable. Like Death Seal, which can set you to low life and give you a lot of defenses scaling with missing life then popping you back to full when it runs out, and the Reaper form that degens your health until it hits 0 (though you can extend the form by leeching health) and then sends you back to full health, etc.
If you're not using Death Seal and losing access to ward, low life with ward is also an option.
I'm pretty sure wraithlord is super bugged. I happened to see a streamer with one doing 800k a hit with no gear on, so something is messed up in its damage calculation somewhere.
The general consensus I've seen is that it's not bugged in a way that it's getting fixed this cycle, but it will probably get nerfed for the next cycle. Not bugged, just overtuned, which is the key distinction in their survey. It also has dumb AI and isn't particularly good at clearing relative to most skills.
They've commented that they actually will be fixing a bug with it in the upcoming patch, but it's the bug that causes it to try to eat the minions of your party members if you're in a party.
Basically contains the stuff expected -- profane veil, sanguine runestones, and cloudgatherer fixed/nerfed. Wraithlord "try to eat your party member's pets" bug fixed, but no nerfs. If you were dying to do a wandering spirits build, that was actually buffed!
Pretty massive reduction to stash tab costs (about 50%), which makes me very happy. I am still very bad at throwing out exalted items and uniques, even with a pretty aggressive loot filter and multiple passes to get rid of the bad stuff. The only answer is more, cheaper, hoarding.
Fiatil on
0
GoodKingJayIIIThey wanna get mygold on the ceilingRegistered Userregular
Anyone else have experience with Lich? There are a number of passive nodes that provide some pretty significant damage increases and bonuses to Int, at the expensive of % life draining over time. There are some other nodes that reduce the impact of this drain, but it seems like you could still easily lose 10-15% of your life every second if you invest in these.
Are they worth it?
Lich has various mechanics that play around with health loss and low health in such as way as to make it more manageable. Like Death Seal, which can set you to low life and give you a lot of defenses scaling with missing life then popping you back to full when it runs out, and the Reaper form that degens your health until it hits 0 (though you can extend the form by leeching health) and then sends you back to full health, etc.
If you're not using Death Seal and losing access to ward, low life with ward is also an option.
I think my concern is that I'll end up just standing around in a zone looking at gear while my life slowly ticks down.
I'm guessing % life regen counteracts this? So if I have 10% life loss, and 50% life regen, my actual life regen is 40%?
I have been playing this so much that this is my first time actually coming here to read. I also haven't joined the official discord.
I think that's some of the highest praise I could give any game, much less a relatively complex ARPG. I literally haven't had a need to go ask the community anything, because the game makes so much sense and explains so much and has systems that work the way the say they do on the tin.
I did start with Warlock, and I did see the official note about the ward bug, so I put that aside. I'm excited to go back to it now. In the meantime I played Earthquake Beastmaster, which played like what I wish Barbarian played like in that other game, and am now playing a Runemaster which is really fun and reminds me of Death Knight in WoW.
Reduced cost of Stash Tabs
Stash tabs beyond the first 6 previously cost 10000 more than the previous tab. Now stash tabs 7 to 16 cost 2500 more than the previous tab, and stash tabs beyond the first 16 cost 5000 more than the previous tab. This results in the cost of large numbers of stash tabs being reduced by around 50%.
I keep spending all my gold on stash tabs so this is nice... So I assume they didn't refund you gold and its just going forward?
Although with COF is there anything to spend gold on other than stash tabs?
Edit: Yeah new stash tab is 90k gold instead of 180-200k for me now which is sweet. No refund of gold previously spent though.
I kicked off yet another alt, this time grabbing a Sentinel with Rive and....it just clicks. Thinking Void Knight for Mastery, but between Rive and Lunge, something just feels better than all the casters I've been playing. Might have to stick this character out and actually try to level over 40 with this one.
I kicked off yet another alt, this time grabbing a Sentinel with Rive and....it just clicks. Thinking Void Knight for Mastery, but between Rive and Lunge, something just feels better than all the casters I've been playing. Might have to stick this character out and actually try to level over 40 with this one.
I just finished the campaign on one of these, playing a Rive+Healing Hands Paladin. I was able to stand and face tank everything, even stuff like Lagon's laser and all of Majasa's mechanics, while having good clear and passable DPS.
For that build, Rive is just an engine to cast Healing Hands (which you convert first into a fire spell and then into a wave of fire damage melee via specialization nodes, but always still healing you/generating ward) with a trait early in the Healing Hands tree that gives you a 100% chance to cast on melee hit.
It was satisfying in its way, I continue to really like how even straightforward melee feels in this, but I think I like the more active gameplay I got out of my other two characters I've gotten through the campaign. Wonder if I could fit Judgement in as a nuke every few seconds or something?
At least at the time I played Lich, I followed a recommendation to stack healing effectiveness aaaaallll over the place
Then specialize that decaying skill into whatever node was like “just kidding, this heals you, actually”
^^^ Re: lich healing, though this time I bothered to look up the specifics…
It’s Aura of Decay, with nodes that reduce the damage you take, and especially “Absence of Life” causing you to heal for a % of your missing life, which you can pump up with healing effectiveness. Between that and some leech, you can sit in reaper form for a loooooong time, and/or reach a balance where you allow yourself to have low life for more damage.
Without using reaper, it would easily keep you alive. One nice thing about reaper though is that running out of health just ends reaper form and fully heals you.
Turning Fireball into a channeled skill rules. Now I have a Fireball machine gun and a Meteor orbital strike. And flame ward as a "run in and let myself get hit for huge retaliates" skill. I've specialized Teleport to give me a 100% mana refund on my next spell, which I think is worth the much longer cooldown. Not sure what to specialize as a 5th skill. Focus seems like a reasonable pick, I had it briefly before I switched to Teleport. It's just kind of boring. I had Elemental Nova before Meteor, the Fire tree lets you cast it at range rather than as a PBAOE. There are nodes on Teleport that cast Elemental Nova at the start and end and middle of your teleport, but I think I should devote Teleport to making Meteor good instead. Any other sorcerer buff/defense skills? Fireball and meteor have me set on offense, really.
Turning Fireball into a channeled skill rules. Now I have a Fireball machine gun and a Meteor orbital strike. And flame ward as a "run in and let myself get hit for huge retaliates" skill. I've specialized Teleport to give me a 100% mana refund on my next spell, which I think is worth the much longer cooldown. Not sure what to specialize as a 5th skill. Focus seems like a reasonable pick, I had it briefly before I switched to Teleport. It's just kind of boring. I had Elemental Nova before Meteor, the Fire tree lets you cast it at range rather than as a PBAOE. There are nodes on Teleport that cast Elemental Nova at the start and end and middle of your teleport, but I think I should devote Teleport to making Meteor good instead. Any other sorcerer buff/defense skills? Fireball and meteor have me set on offense, really.
I decided to advance a bit on the spellblade, and hm, as a starting spellblade, this feels a bit... clunky?
The shift when you unlock the mastery has a lot of growing pains. Like, the chassis is clearly still very much a wizard, but Flame Reave (and also the cold thing you get for specializing that seems to be slower than reave, do worse damage, and have worse range) wants you to use melee weapons and the spellblade skills gain scaling with dexterity (of which there is a single node in the entire tree and it's at like spellblade 30?), but everything else you have still goes off spell power, so it's like, I can use my two subclass skills, or I can use all the skills I already have. It feels like they stuck the subclass in the wrong base, kind of thing? I dunno.
I'm wondering if I should just have gone Sorcerer and kept shooting lightning at people.
I decided to advance a bit on the spellblade, and hm, as a starting spellblade, this feels a bit... clunky?
The shift when you unlock the mastery has a lot of growing pains. Like, the chassis is clearly still very much a wizard, but Flame Reave (and also the cold thing you get for specializing that seems to be slower than reave, do worse damage, and have worse range) wants you to use melee weapons and the spellblade skills gain scaling with dexterity (of which there is a single node in the entire tree and it's at like spellblade 30?), but everything else you have still goes off spell power, so it's like, I can use my two subclass skills, or I can use all the skills I already have. It feels like they stuck the subclass in the wrong base, kind of thing? I dunno.
I'm wondering if I should just have gone Sorcerer and kept shooting lightning at people.
They scale with Dexterity and Intelligence, at the same rate. So it would do the same damage at 100 Dex/0 Int or 0 Dex/100 Int, all else being equal. It really just gives you another stat you can pump, rather than one you have to. Dexterity also gives you dodge, Intelligence also gives you ward retention.
GoodKingJayIIIThey wanna get mygold on the ceilingRegistered Userregular
I think this game's accessibility means you have a lot of opportunities to feel smart, which is one of the things I love most about ARPGs.
After not really liking Glyph of Dominion, I decided to go in a slightly different direction for my lightning guy fantasy. Basically, I use Lightning Blast to proc tons of additional free Lightning Blasts to nuke entire screens, with extremely fast cast speed, and high crit chance/multiplier. It simultaneously generates tons of ward, and (eventually when I get more levels and gear) demolish bosses with shock stacking. Then I build up a bunch of Runic Energy stacks, then dump a 3-Gon Runic Invocation to create a giant lightning AOE AND generate tons of free Lightning Blasts. It's basically Emperor Palpatine on HGH and cocaine.
What I recently discovered is that the build I came up with is very similar to another posted on YouTube a few weeks ago. So I watched it, and I was pleasantly surprised that we had reached largely the same conclusions independently. The biggest differences were 1 skill, some passives, and most of all, gear and level (I'm 86, he was max). It gave me some other things to try but mostly all I need is more time. That felt really good.
I've got other ideas for other builds, and I feel confident enough to stay away from build guides, because the game has given me the transparency and tools to figure it out for myself.
I think this game's accessibility means you have a lot of opportunities to feel smart, which is one of the things I love most about ARPGs.
After not really liking Glyph of Dominion, I decided to go in a slightly different direction for my lightning guy fantasy. Basically, I use Lightning Blast to proc tons of additional free Lightning Blasts to nuke entire screens, with extremely fast cast speed, and high crit chance/multiplier. It simultaneously generates tons of ward, and (eventually when I get more levels and gear) demolish bosses with shock stacking. Then I build up a bunch of Runic Energy stacks, then dump a 3-Gon Runic Invocation to create a giant lightning AOE AND generate tons of free Lightning Blasts. It's basically Emperor Palpatine on HGH and cocaine.
What I recently discovered is that the build I came up with is very similar to another posted on YouTube a few weeks ago. So I watched it, and I was pleasantly surprised that we had reached largely the same conclusions independently. The biggest differences were 1 skill, some passives, and most of all, gear and level (I'm 86, he was max). It gave me some other things to try but mostly all I need is more time. That felt really good.
I've got other ideas for other builds, and I feel confident enough to stay away from build guides, because the game has given me the transparency and tools to figure it out for myself.
That sounds like a fun one, but as I get nearly migraine triggered by the short area leading up to Admiral Harton... I doubt I can actually play a big zots lightning build lol.
I think this game's accessibility means you have a lot of opportunities to feel smart, which is one of the things I love most about ARPGs.
After not really liking Glyph of Dominion, I decided to go in a slightly different direction for my lightning guy fantasy. Basically, I use Lightning Blast to proc tons of additional free Lightning Blasts to nuke entire screens, with extremely fast cast speed, and high crit chance/multiplier. It simultaneously generates tons of ward, and (eventually when I get more levels and gear) demolish bosses with shock stacking. Then I build up a bunch of Runic Energy stacks, then dump a 3-Gon Runic Invocation to create a giant lightning AOE AND generate tons of free Lightning Blasts. It's basically Emperor Palpatine on HGH and cocaine.
What I recently discovered is that the build I came up with is very similar to another posted on YouTube a few weeks ago. So I watched it, and I was pleasantly surprised that we had reached largely the same conclusions independently. The biggest differences were 1 skill, some passives, and most of all, gear and level (I'm 86, he was max). It gave me some other things to try but mostly all I need is more time. That felt really good.
I've got other ideas for other builds, and I feel confident enough to stay away from build guides, because the game has given me the transparency and tools to figure it out for myself.
That sounds like a fun one, but as I get nearly migraine triggered by the short area leading up to Admiral Harton... I doubt I can actually play a big zots lightning build lol.
It is fun! Sad about your migraines. hopefully there is something else you can enjoy in the game.
It is a bit one note, I will admit. I really wanted to try something that cycled through spells and took advantage of all the different invocations, but it is really awkward to do with KBAM.
I feel like with enough cast speed and a controller you could do some fun stuff. There is a kind of rhythm game aspect to it that I don't think is suited for a keyboard.
I piano-keyed it for a while, but combat overall (at least before all your defensive layers are online) was too… frenetic? Reactive? To be able to remember proper sequences for this or that spell.
I’m doing a Plasma Orb thing that uses Flame Rush/Volcanic Orb and also the Invocation node that locks your runes to a specific sequence no matter what order you press things.
It’s working ok, except for the flame dash getting hung up on every pebble or slight rise. That’s annoying.
Spellblade continues feeling a little silly in its simplicity. Where with the beastmaster I was using all five of my buttons all the time, if pretty relaxedly, with this guy it's basically just hold the Reave button until out of mana, use Mana Slice until mana is back up, goto 1. Definitely clearing areas faster nonetheless, though.
Also, funnily enough, the game seems to have decided I should have gone Runemaster instead. This character has found a Frey's Retreat, two Transcriber's Graver (at LPs 1 and 2!), and a Reowyn's Fortress in a span of... I dunno, fifteen levels? Since like 30 to 45. Well, the Gravers should still be pretty usable for a swordmage anyway! Maybe I should try to see how the dungeons work on the Beastmaster and see if I can turn one of them legendary.
GoodKingJayIIIThey wanna get mygold on the ceilingRegistered Userregular
The crafting system seems a lot more involved than I realized. I thought you were just trying to slap as many exalted affixes as possible onto a unique, but there's also sealing affixes, a weird formula for crafting your own experimental affixes, and probably a whole bunch of other stuff I don't know about.
I also did not realize we can put points into the masteries we don't choose. Which made me feel very silly because my build got a decent amount better with some sorcerer passives.
The crafting system seems a lot more involved than I realized. I thought you were just trying to slap as many exalted affixes as possible onto a unique, but there's also sealing affixes, a weird formula for crafting your own experimental affixes, and probably a whole bunch of other stuff I don't know about.
I also did not realize we can put points into the masteries we don't choose. Which made me feel very silly because my build got a decent amount better with some sorcerer passives.
Runes of Research let you "seal" an experimental affix, so you can then craft on that item more without the experimental affix taking a slot. Depending on your build there are some really really good experimental affixes.
The first time I get to the Guilds, I don't nearly have the favor to do anything
You gain favor as you gain xp, just keep playing. Also, you gain reputation by *spending* favor, don't horde it. Spend it so you can go up in rank and get the rank-based benefits.
PSN: Broodax- battle.net: broodax#1163
+1
GoodKingJayIIIThey wanna get mygold on the ceilingRegistered Userregular
A Dragorath's Claw dropped with 3 LP, and I just had an exalted dagger drop with 3 affixes, two of which are very good. I'm going to see if I can change the third one into something nice. If I wanted to spec into Frost Claw I'd have to redo basically all of my skills, but it's kinda tempting when something like that drops.
However, for my current build, I've been trying to get a Fragment of the Enigma to drop with more than a single LP for like an entire week. I am tempted to start using it but I lose so much damage on my Lightning Blast if I switch out my current catalyst. And the chances of bricking it with some shit suffix I don't want is a little too high for my liking.
A Dragorath's Claw dropped with 3 LP, and I just had an exalted dagger drop with 3 affixes, two of which are very good. I'm going to see if I can change the third one into something nice. If I wanted to spec into Frost Claw I'd have to redo basically all of my skills, but it's kinda tempting when something like that drops.
However, for my current build, I've been trying to get a Fragment of the Enigma to drop with more than a single LP for like an entire week. I am tempted to start using it but I lose so much damage on my Lightning Blast if I switch out my current catalyst. And the chances of bricking it with some shit suffix I don't want is a little too high for my liking.
Don't forget that you need to have 4 affixes on an Exalted to use for a Legendary so make sure you have enough forging left to put on at least a T1 of something useful for your build. Rune of Discovery costs 0 forging potential but you can't do it if the item has no forging potential left so keep that in mind as well.
0
GoodKingJayIIIThey wanna get mygold on the ceilingRegistered Userregular
Aw damn, I was wondering if that was the case. Well, good to know before I get into Temporal Sanctum without what I need.
Posts
Ever since say 2005ish or even earlier, balance discussions have been increasingly available and there was definitely a general shift from playing however to playing “the right way”.
Build/theorycrafters absolutely do compete for each other. And build videos/streams are a thing so having builds dominant due to bugs does impact a number of things, not least of which is the perception of people on the fence about the game. If they keep seeing content about bugged builds, it can easily put them off from making the purchase.
Steam Profile
3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
A big factor for me is that, if I've recently used a build that works smoothly, building something clunky or low damage feels bad. If my current build explodes 1000 enemies per second, I want my next build to explode 2000 enemies per second. If the new build is worse on all content than my current build that step backward makes the time investment feel misplaced. So I naturally ratchet my way toward more meta builds.
On the LE front, I'm using a scorpion beastmaster, and it's a great time. The Scorpion is like a permanent frozen orb that turns enemies into green mush. It's a five-button build with interactions between the different skills but doesn't feel overwhelming to operate. Scorpion damage is easy to boost (Minion, damage over time, and poison all work) so gearing is smooth. Would recommend.
The one downside - or another upside depending how you look at it - is that there isn't much room for experimentation in terms of passives and skills. You take the skills/nodes that boost poison and avoid the skills/nodes that boost other things like physical damage. Since primalist/beastmaster covers so many different build types, you often find yourself with only one viable choice for where to put points.
Oh man... I can tell this has a lot of potential. Right now I'm kinda just doing whatever, but I can see this cycle in my head where you Bone Curse (Illusion of Pain) -> Reap -> Bone Curse (Illusion of Pain) -> Reap -> Repeat. There's probably another skill worked into the cycle so that the cooldowns line up a little better, but in my head it's just huge swaths of monsters just exploding.
Might be worth it to spec into Transplant and take the node that makes it cast Bone Curse. Apparently since you cast Bone Curse at your destination rather than applying it on hit, Illusion of Pain applies to it. Whether it's still limited by the cooldown, I'm not certain.
Having Transplant as a huge nuke that also applies a Curse adds a lot of the fun to my Warlock, anyway.
That unique staff for them at level 20 is going to make it tough to switch away, but I've already picked Necro so I'm going to force myself to do it at some point.
Are they worth it?
Lich has various mechanics that play around with health loss and low health in such as way as to make it more manageable. Like Death Seal, which can set you to low life and give you a lot of defenses scaling with missing life then popping you back to full when it runs out, and the Reaper form that degens your health until it hits 0 (though you can extend the form by leeching health) and then sends you back to full health, etc.
If you're not using Death Seal and losing access to ward, low life with ward is also an option.
The general consensus I've seen is that it's not bugged in a way that it's getting fixed this cycle, but it will probably get nerfed for the next cycle. Not bugged, just overtuned, which is the key distinction in their survey. It also has dumb AI and isn't particularly good at clearing relative to most skills.
They've commented that they actually will be fixing a bug with it in the upcoming patch, but it's the bug that causes it to try to eat the minions of your party members if you're in a party.
Basically contains the stuff expected -- profane veil, sanguine runestones, and cloudgatherer fixed/nerfed. Wraithlord "try to eat your party member's pets" bug fixed, but no nerfs. If you were dying to do a wandering spirits build, that was actually buffed!
Pretty massive reduction to stash tab costs (about 50%), which makes me very happy. I am still very bad at throwing out exalted items and uniques, even with a pretty aggressive loot filter and multiple passes to get rid of the bad stuff. The only answer is more, cheaper, hoarding.
I think my concern is that I'll end up just standing around in a zone looking at gear while my life slowly ticks down.
I'm guessing % life regen counteracts this? So if I have 10% life loss, and 50% life regen, my actual life regen is 40%?
I think that's some of the highest praise I could give any game, much less a relatively complex ARPG. I literally haven't had a need to go ask the community anything, because the game makes so much sense and explains so much and has systems that work the way the say they do on the tin.
I did start with Warlock, and I did see the official note about the ward bug, so I put that aside. I'm excited to go back to it now. In the meantime I played Earthquake Beastmaster, which played like what I wish Barbarian played like in that other game, and am now playing a Runemaster which is really fun and reminds me of Death Knight in WoW.
I keep spending all my gold on stash tabs so this is nice... So I assume they didn't refund you gold and its just going forward?
Although with COF is there anything to spend gold on other than stash tabs?
Edit: Yeah new stash tab is 90k gold instead of 180-200k for me now which is sweet. No refund of gold previously spent though.
Nintendo ID: Incindium
PSN: IncindiumX
I just finished the campaign on one of these, playing a Rive+Healing Hands Paladin. I was able to stand and face tank everything, even stuff like Lagon's laser and all of Majasa's mechanics, while having good clear and passable DPS.
For that build, Rive is just an engine to cast Healing Hands (which you convert first into a fire spell and then into a wave of fire damage melee via specialization nodes, but always still healing you/generating ward) with a trait early in the Healing Hands tree that gives you a 100% chance to cast on melee hit.
It was satisfying in its way, I continue to really like how even straightforward melee feels in this, but I think I like the more active gameplay I got out of my other two characters I've gotten through the campaign. Wonder if I could fit Judgement in as a nuke every few seconds or something?
^^^ Re: lich healing, though this time I bothered to look up the specifics…
It’s Aura of Decay, with nodes that reduce the damage you take, and especially “Absence of Life” causing you to heal for a % of your missing life, which you can pump up with healing effectiveness. Between that and some leech, you can sit in reaper form for a loooooong time, and/or reach a balance where you allow yourself to have low life for more damage.
Without using reaper, it would easily keep you alive. One nice thing about reaper though is that running out of health just ends reaper form and fully heals you.
Snapfreeze is a good defensive skill
The shift when you unlock the mastery has a lot of growing pains. Like, the chassis is clearly still very much a wizard, but Flame Reave (and also the cold thing you get for specializing that seems to be slower than reave, do worse damage, and have worse range) wants you to use melee weapons and the spellblade skills gain scaling with dexterity (of which there is a single node in the entire tree and it's at like spellblade 30?), but everything else you have still goes off spell power, so it's like, I can use my two subclass skills, or I can use all the skills I already have. It feels like they stuck the subclass in the wrong base, kind of thing? I dunno.
I'm wondering if I should just have gone Sorcerer and kept shooting lightning at people.
They scale with Dexterity and Intelligence, at the same rate. So it would do the same damage at 100 Dex/0 Int or 0 Dex/100 Int, all else being equal. It really just gives you another stat you can pump, rather than one you have to. Dexterity also gives you dodge, Intelligence also gives you ward retention.
After not really liking Glyph of Dominion, I decided to go in a slightly different direction for my lightning guy fantasy. Basically, I use Lightning Blast to proc tons of additional free Lightning Blasts to nuke entire screens, with extremely fast cast speed, and high crit chance/multiplier. It simultaneously generates tons of ward, and (eventually when I get more levels and gear) demolish bosses with shock stacking. Then I build up a bunch of Runic Energy stacks, then dump a 3-Gon Runic Invocation to create a giant lightning AOE AND generate tons of free Lightning Blasts. It's basically Emperor Palpatine on HGH and cocaine.
What I recently discovered is that the build I came up with is very similar to another posted on YouTube a few weeks ago. So I watched it, and I was pleasantly surprised that we had reached largely the same conclusions independently. The biggest differences were 1 skill, some passives, and most of all, gear and level (I'm 86, he was max). It gave me some other things to try but mostly all I need is more time. That felt really good.
I've got other ideas for other builds, and I feel confident enough to stay away from build guides, because the game has given me the transparency and tools to figure it out for myself.
TL;DR -- bugs will be fixed mid-cycle, skills over performing due to anything other than bugs won't.
That sounds like a fun one, but as I get nearly migraine triggered by the short area leading up to Admiral Harton... I doubt I can actually play a big zots lightning build lol.
Twitch: akThera
Steam: Thera
It is fun! Sad about your migraines.
It is a bit one note, I will admit. I really wanted to try something that cycled through spells and took advantage of all the different invocations, but it is really awkward to do with KBAM.
I feel like with enough cast speed and a controller you could do some fun stuff. There is a kind of rhythm game aspect to it that I don't think is suited for a keyboard.
I’m doing a Plasma Orb thing that uses Flame Rush/Volcanic Orb and also the Invocation node that locks your runes to a specific sequence no matter what order you press things.
It’s working ok, except for the flame dash getting hung up on every pebble or slight rise. That’s annoying.
Twitch: akThera
Steam: Thera
It of course, got the 4th one...
Absolutely with you. I think I've had a half dozen now legendaries just tank. But I had 1 or 2 good ones before that, so... yep. RNG.
Also, funnily enough, the game seems to have decided I should have gone Runemaster instead. This character has found a Frey's Retreat, two Transcriber's Graver (at LPs 1 and 2!), and a Reowyn's Fortress in a span of... I dunno, fifteen levels? Since like 30 to 45. Well, the Gravers should still be pretty usable for a swordmage anyway! Maybe I should try to see how the dungeons work on the Beastmaster and see if I can turn one of them legendary.
I also did not realize we can put points into the masteries we don't choose. Which made me feel very silly because my build got a decent amount better with some sorcerer passives.
Runes of Research let you "seal" an experimental affix, so you can then craft on that item more without the experimental affix taking a slot. Depending on your build there are some really really good experimental affixes.
You gain favor as you gain xp, just keep playing. Also, you gain reputation by *spending* favor, don't horde it. Spend it so you can go up in rank and get the rank-based benefits.
However, for my current build, I've been trying to get a Fragment of the Enigma to drop with more than a single LP for like an entire week. I am tempted to start using it but I lose so much damage on my Lightning Blast if I switch out my current catalyst. And the chances of bricking it with some shit suffix I don't want is a little too high for my liking.
Don't forget that you need to have 4 affixes on an Exalted to use for a Legendary so make sure you have enough forging left to put on at least a T1 of something useful for your build. Rune of Discovery costs 0 forging potential but you can't do it if the item has no forging potential left so keep that in mind as well.
Twitch: akThera
Steam: Thera