Early Impressions: Power sets

[Sky]

One suggestion: when we post a build, it might be useful to add things like the total AP spent on it, which once multiplied for 40k tells you roughly how many XP it costs.

I am gonna post my hammer and shotgun build later, which I am sure is far from great but it's giving me a very easy time in Savage Coast, and I am going to try to add those information. I think it's useful to give people an idea of how feasible it is given the AP they have, or how many they need in order to get there.

Well, I did mention it's only using inner circle AR/Blade :) I think it's maybe 29 AP worth, I've been running with most of it for a while now.

Decided to dump points into Survival for the self-heal while I ponder advancement. The dump for one skill (plus the two skills leading to it) cost about what my posted build cost  

[Lantyssa]

I'm currently running (Blade/Blood):

1 - Single target blade resource builder that exploits Afflicted state

Do you know which ability this is?  I run primarily an affliction build.  Since I only use one Fist consumer for my secondary weapon, this might give me another possibility.

[HaemishM]

Grass Cutter, I think. I'm horrible with the names. It's a 9AP ability on one of the outer circle of Blade abilities.

[Segoris]

Yeah, I do use the shotgun consumer when I can. It's just that a lot of bosses have melee-unfriendly phases that also happen to be shotgun-unfriendly (dat 6m range!), and in AE situations I typically want to ignite/electrical storm spam instead... so I weave in Raging Bullet at the tail end of electrical storms to add some damage to a target.

Okay that makes more sense, I thought you were just saying in general you don't use it unless needed which was just very odd to me. I agree about AE situations, I love electrical storm and generally only switch out for that in AE situations, though I'm trying out Inferno and enjoying that a bit more when I have a tank around since mobs will be centralized making the ground targeting easier to ensure hits as mobs won't be moving around as much.

I kind of dig the build (forgot about Chronicle site and just looked it up finally).

[Sky]

Grass Cutter, I think. I'm horrible with the names. It's a 9AP ability on one of the outer circle of Blade abilities.

Yep, that's going in the slot Delicate Strike is living in right now.

[jakonovski]

I went with Chaos/AR. The latter works just fine as a grenade pull, but the mitigation in the former just...isn't there. Really hard to build any meaningful synergies for Chaos.

[Segoris]

Chaos and AR I can't imagine doing well, but Chaos is actually really easy to syngerize with a number of other weapons (shotgun, hammer, blades, possibly fist and pistols)

[jakonovski]

Chaos and AR I can't imagine doing well, but Chaos is actually really easy to syngerize with a number of other weapons (shotgun, hammer, blades, possibly fist and pistols)

Yeah, I'm a bit annoyed at possibly having to respec so early just because the skill sets were so opaque in the beginning.

[Dark_MadMax]

Just completed 2 last bosses in NM (polaris and DW) , inferno is bugged to hell . Basically you need 3 dps who know what they doing  (1k+ dps)  plus good tank and healer and its faceroll. Any other scenario and its a horrible horrible wipefest :/

[Ard]

Segoris wants my impair/spike dps fist/elem dps build so he can tell me what I'm doing wrong:

Active:
Prey on the Weak
Savage
Go for the Throat
Ignition
Electrical Storm
Thor's Hammer
Anima Charge

Passive:
Renewal
Concussion
Elemental Force
Restraint
Killer Instinct
Brawler
Elemental Precision

I open with ignition and build elemental force charges until I'm at 7.  If the mob is in my face around 3-4, I do my go for the throat/savage/prey on the weak combo.  At 7, I anima charge into thor's hammer for a massive critical (2-3k).  I'll likely have impaired the mob by this point also through restraint.  I start building charges again, and if I haven't burned go for the throat, I use that as a follow up for another big hit (1-1.5k) plus impair.  When impaired, I blow my fist charges in a savage, then two prey on the weaks and another savage.  

Electrical storm is for when I need aoes, and I can build up 5 charges, toss one, throw an ignition, throw another storm, then anima charge into a third.  Savage anything that's still stnading.

Things are impaired enough that renewal keeps me in the green usually on single target.  I'm pondering replacing it with a more dps focused passive though, just not sure what.  I'm also pondering replacing prey on the weak with muzzle and removing a fist builder entirely, but this will make the post-impair burst slower.

For players, I just anima charge into thors hammer, then hope they're running at me so they can die to a go for the throat.  There's no real grace to how I kill people.

I'm also currently mostly in blue dps gear.  My health is shockingly low right now (below 2k), and this might be a problem.  Segoris suggested possibly slotting in some tank gear for health.

[Segoris]

OMG YOU'RE DOING THIS ALL WRONG!

I like the build. It's pretty interesting, and as we've figured out we've got some of the same ideas.

Your Build

The only changes I would do would be change to this.

The main changes are based on my not seeing the point of a 2nd builder, and ignition is fast enough (and ranged) that I've found no reason to use any other builder if using Ele. Also, TH has too long of a cooldown when you could add in Blaze (which crits 100% here) every couple seconds doing ~80% of the damage of Thor's (like I've said before - I've actually dropped Thor's and Anima entirely in most instances, but will pick it up for a burst build) and only costs 60% of the resources.

As for gear, Yokai's Blog has a great write up of talisman mechanics. Basically what I was saying before, is if you wanted more hp then you can lose 1 slot and almost double your hp (since you have less than 2k) at higher levels.


The main thing - you've been finding quite a bit of success by the sounds of it which is all that matters until you need to worry about doing more than just dps in dungeons (cleanse/purge etc).

[Ard]

Actually I mostly heal in dungeons.  When I dps, I tend to die because I'm not used to dodging at that position.  Just ask reborne, I noobed it up nice last night.  I do fine solo though.

[Ard]

Oh, and while I'm thinking about it, I never did explain why I've got the Prey on the Weak fist builder in there to begin with.  It has two major advantages over Ignition for a very specific purpose.  I use it to exploit the impaired state from Go for the Throat (or the incidental ones from restraint, but those are harder to work with).  For the duration of the GFTT impair, I can use exactly 4 instant cast abilities where I could only really get off maybe 2-3 ignitiions, which do nothing special to impaired targets.  

I almost always have a full load of fist charges built up, so I open with Savage, since it gets me feral regrowth during an impair (and also the renewal HoT), helping to keep me alive.  Then I pop two Prey on the Weaks, because while impaired, it builds double fist resources.  I then immediately follow up with a second, mostly charged Savage.  It gets a decent amount of burst that seems to add up to around the same amount as the GFTT.  At that point the impair is over and I'm back to doing things as normal.

The other potential benefit is that they can build restraint, elemental force, and killer instinct counters faster than anything with a cast time.  The downside is that due to being multi-hit, prey on the weak loves getting random glances, which kills the restraint counter.

Like I said though, I've been contemplating removing prey on the weak entirely, but this is at least an explanation of why it's there.

edit:  I did some testing tonight.  I was lying about the number of ignitions I can get off, I can still do the same number as the prey on the weak/savage combos, but for lower damage and none of the side effects.

[Segoris]

Even though I'm not a fan of 2x builders (or multi-hits even), it does make quite a bit of sense, with the only advantage and point of ignition now is for some range without a cooldown.

[Ard]

I use ignition to pull and kite.  It's also technically an aoe due to the elemental skill.  This is sometimes a bad thing though.

[Ghambit]

So I'm moving to a completely non-synergistic build now.  Elemental Chaos!  Designed around ranged DoT affliction with hindrance (ele) and then finishing off with mitigation, weakening, and impairment (chaos).  Thiscanwork, I know it.  Fuck synergy!  I wanna light shit on fire just before they eat my melee anima.

[Nonentity]

My decks that I have been using have all been template builds that I then gutted some abilities and replaced with others. On the Templar Paladin build I was using, I stripped out the Pistol and Focus abilities and replaced them with Assault Rifle abilities, and swapped out the Charge for the Sling Blade thrown sword ability that puts an Affliction on them. I also replaced the sword 45s cooldown Impair ability with the sword ability that gives you 30% of your health back.

It ends up being a beastly solo build, since most of the time you are in melee range anyways. It just involves you applying buckets of afflictions and penetrating a whole lot. I use penetration glyphs on both my weapons.

EDIT: here's the build: http://thesecretsandbox.com/Deck?abilities=,248,246,375,1012,1010,252,377,249,1015,1017,361,1013,1021,1009

Pretty expensive, as I bought the entire Paladin build, then the Illuminati Goon build (so I had Sling Blade already) then bought my way up through assault rifle for Red Mist. You could also not use Red Mist and just use the Master's House ability, also a pretty good one.

[Segoris]

I dig that affliction build more than the normal blood/ele ones that people haev been running. I've never seen Point of Harmony, sword may replace hammer for my tank build just for that ability alone, especially when combined with Karma from the Chaos line

[Lantyssa]

On Latency I'm going for a build such as:  Blood and Blade.

I have all the Blood abilities, but need to work on the Blade ones.

Stheno is going for a Chaos/Pistol build, but I'm choosing abilities as I go along.

[palmer_eldritch]

Just to report back, my hammer/shotgun build using elemental passives is working well.

I'm using the "strike" abilities from the two weapons, and passives based around improving the chance and power of critical hits (which come from hammer and elemental - shotgun has passives which boost penetration, but I am ignoring them). There's also an active skill which boosts penetration chance, but the build is really based around doing massive crit damage.

I am also using a passive which causes strike attacks to weaken opponents, lowering their damage output, and some hammer abilities which boost my "block" chance and mitigation. In other words, while it's a DPS build it has some survivability.

This has worked out fine, even for Blue Mountain at the appropriate level.

I'm looking now at building a shotgun/pistol setup using both crits and penetration, which I am hoping will be a high-DPS glass cannon build.

Actives:
Breaching shot (boosts penetration)
Trucker (boosts block)
Furnace (boosts mitigation & weakens)
Striker (strike builder)
Aftershock (strike finisher)
Raging bullet (strike finisher)
Point blank (elite damage ability)

Passives
Punisher (strike attacks weaken target)
Punishment (hitting a weakened target gives a buff increasing crit damage)
Brawler (increases crit damage)
Wrecking crew (increases crit damage of strike abilities)
Violent strikes (increases crit chance of strike abilities)
Social dynamo (every crit gives a buff increasing the chance of critting)
Violent strikes (elite, large extra damage on every fifth crit hit)

Needs crit chance gear as you can probably tell.

[jakonovski]

I finally discovered what seems like a good synergy in Chaos/AR: frenzy attacks and procs. Basically the build will have perpetual evasion bonus and the mobs will heal you when they hit you. Now all I need is some evasion gear, haven't found any in 25 hours of gameplay.

[Tyrnan]

I finally discovered what seems like a good synergy in Chaos/AR: frenzy attacks and procs. Basically the build will have perpetual evasion bonus and the mobs will heal you when they hit you. Now all I need is some evasion gear, haven't found any in 25 hours of gameplay.

You can make your own evasion glyphs if you want. You'll need runes (easiest way to get them is to disassemble Anima - Evasion Rating pots) and a glyph toolkit.

[palmer_eldritch]

So I'm moving to a completely non-synergistic build now.  Elemental Chaos!  Designed around ranged DoT affliction with hindrance (ele) and then finishing off with mitigation, weakening, and impairment (chaos).  Thiscanwork, I know it.  Fuck synergy!  I wanna light shit on fire just before they eat my melee anima.

Unless they've nerfed it since beta, there's a chaos ability called Cry Havoc which will destroy any mob that's impaired. Only issue is making sure you fire it off at the right moment, because impair effects don't last long.

[Sky]

Mentioned it in the Things You Like thread, been playing an alt with pistol dps lately. It's amazing how much better this seems than Komoto's Blade/AR survival tanky build. I think the only mob Komoto had an easier time with was Deadeye, because of the tank gear and heals.

Newbie pistol DPS build:

The Business (p) - Pistol builder, adds Weakened with passive
Shootout (p) - Focus consumer, single target nuke
Above The Law (p) - GTAoE DoT, more dmg to Hindered
Drone Kit (p) - DoT
Dirty Tricks (p) - GTAoE, Hinders for 3s
Combust (e) - just added to get an Ele consumer
Deadly Aim (p) -Crit buff

Magnum (p) - Adds Weaken to The Business
Coup de Grace (p) - When enemy dies with pistol resource on it, TAoE heal
Straight Shooter (p) - 10% pistol dmg
Hothead (p) - Applying Hinder gives Crit buff
Vigilante (p) - + duration for Above the Law
Rapid Getaway (p) - Activating consumers gives run buff (kiiiite)
Mind Over Matter (e) - Crits add magic Affliction DoT

The Elemental stuff is new, replacing a pistol chain attack I kinda liked for kiting multiples.

Pretty straight rotation: drop Above the Law and immediately use Dirty Tricks to hinder them in position. That should pop a resource for Drone Kit, then circle kite until you can use Shootout (and Combust, but I hate the cast time). When just circle kiting, it's not really avoidance of dmg as much as aoes, but can linear kite if needed to avoid melee but you'll need to hit Shootout more often to keep the run buff up and you lose the benefit of Above the Law.

Using the 2 golem types by the junkyard/airport as test subjects (they are still yellow skulls to me); I can take out the melee golem with almost no health loss and the ranged golem will sometimes get me to 50% health. Two ranged golems will usually put me to 30% health. Ranged/melee will be about like a single ranged. Melee golems...I've circle kited three and only been down to 75% and that's just me being sloppy.

Awesome newb build. Also got into a mess when I was mostly QL1 with some Draug, took out 4 yellow dots, mixed pack of impalers, drowned and broodchick without dying. I was amazed, since I was around 1.8k hp at the time.

[Lantyssa]

If I have two passives that add Penetration Rating, one stacks to 5 and the other to 10, will they combine?  Specifically I'm looking at Dark Potency (Blood) and Fatal Flourish (Blades).

[Falconeer]

As far as I know, they don't stack. Identical effects don't stack and the one that lasts longer or is more powerful takes precedence. So you get to ten stacks and that should be it.

My build is not that interesting. It's shotgun/hammer and it's very close to the "Puritan" templar build. I charge enemies, I knock them down, I hammer them and get a beneficial defensive ward in the process, and at that point I they are one consumer away from dying. The rotation is not that interesting though.

What *is* interesting though is that I am running only +attack talismans. I have all blues and only 2 greens (which are the ones that add a little bit of HP). My point is that I have only 2054 HP, a ridiculously low amount, and I still destroy the mobs before they even have a chance to retaliate. I am sure this won't fly in later zones, but so far I am impressed by the sheer potency of a full (literally) DPS build. Not only I have close to no-HP on any item, but I have absolutely zero defensive bonus of any kind. I am as vulnerable as a freshly made character, but I kill stuff so fast they can't even dent my life bar.

Again, I am sure this won't last (I'm only in Blue Mountain), but the simple fact that I can play such an extreme build efficiently and go around in the third zone of the game with the same amount of HP of when I started makes me appreciate the freedom of the system so much more.


UPDATED: My weird Offensive/Defensive stats:



Also, I am pretty sure the 99.1% Crit Chance is just a visual error.

[Segoris]

I don't know if they do stack, it's possible since I believe the buff icons and names are different, but I'm not sure either way. Though, Fatal Flourish has as bugged tooltip and should read "only stacks to 5" as I've found, and is being fixed as posted on the test patch notes

* Blade - Fatal Flourish's tooltip has been updated to state it will stack 5 times.

[Lantyssa]

Bah.  Then I'll stick with the cheaper version.  Having a more expensive one makes me think they might actually stack though.

[cironian]

Bah.  Then I'll stick with the cheaper version.  Having a more expensive one makes me think they might actually stack though.

Nope. I just tried with both passives slotted, there's still just 5 stacks of the buff there. I was really hoping that it was just a bug with FF, but it seems no such luck.

Really idiotic to have 2 completely identical and non-stacking abilities like that. They could at least have turned one of them into a higher power/lower duration type deal like they did with some other similiar abilities.

[Segoris]

Usually the buffs trigger in a different way though. One will trigger from applying infliction while another applies from hitting an impaired target (just as an example, I don't have applications memorized)


That's why it's not really idiotic (unless there are identical buffs that are triggered through the same applications, then I'd agree)

[Lantyssa]

They are identical.  Unless they both apply so you can get 2 stacks with each hit, then Fatal Flourish is completely pointless, especially since Dark Potency costs 5 AP to get.

[Falconeer]

Am I missing something? Dark Potency is a low cost ability in the Blood tree and stack up to 5 times. Fatal Flourish is a more expensive (to get) ability, higher in the Blade tree, that stacks up to 10 times.

Basically, you can get a cheap but less effective version of Fatal Flourish for 5 AP spent on the Blood tree, or you can get a more powerful version of Dark Potency (Fatal Flourish) if you invest 51 AP in the Blade tree.

They are pointless only if you equip them at the same time, but while the one that costs less do its thing up to 5 times (total Penetration rating bonus 150), the one that costs more does it up to 10 times (total Penetration Rating bonus 300), so you gotta decide how to invest your AP in order to get what. Needless to say, this totally contradicts the whole: "skills in the outer rings are not supposed to be more powerful than skills in the inner rings". Obviously _in this case_ the one in the outer ring is more powerful.

All that said, I think they might overlooked something here cause Dark Potency is, in the long run, absolutely useless.

[Sky]

Ah, I guess that's where I enter the stacking discussion because I was using both Fatal Flourish and Dark Potency on Komoto's Pen build.

[palmer_eldritch]

All that said, I think they might overlooked something here cause Dark Potency is, in the long run, absolutely useless.

How come?

[Falconeer]

Well, they said multiple times that even "starter" abilities are supposed to be potentially useful in any deck at any point. If a certain passive ability ("Dark Potency"), can simply be replaced/upgraded with a 51AP investment (Fatal Flourish) to the point you will never ever have a single reason to use it anymore, I think it's a flaw in their design idea. No matter how few reasons you might have to prefer one over the other, one skill should never be just a flat upgrade to any previous one with the only difference being in the AP cost (again: given the design they quote all the time).