McBain
1841
Convalescence seems pretty good, at least at low/mid level. My level 23 Dream/Warfare character is currently mowing through Act II with 16.72 health regeneration per second and 8.79 energy regeneration per second. I don’t think I’ve chugged an energy potion even once during Act II, and health potions are a “boss fights only” proposition.
Not sure how well that’s going to hold up later on, though.
As my Templar, I took the Trance of Empathy. It was okay and seemed to work well enough. However, the Trance of Convalescence is incredible. My Haruspex has a regen rate of nearly 50 health per second and energy regen is nearly 20 (at least mid-teens). If you couple the Convalescence trance with some other % regen boosters, you’ll be mowing through enemy in no time and won’t need so many health potions (I collect so many now that I have to sell them off just to keep room in my inventory).
The rogue + ranger combination still rocks, though. My primary toon. The only thing that can kill him are those spam mobs that can teleport across the room in 1 second, surround him in the 2nd second, and deal insta-kill 1000+ damage each in the next. With ultralord archers pumping 1200 HP death arrows from across the room.
Fixed most of that issue with a +75% demon damage relic, though. He slices, he dices, 1800 pt. crits. In normal difficulty. LOL.
Kareem
1844
I feel like I’ve gimped my Conqueror (Warfare/Defense) character too much by spending a lot of points on the mastery rather than the skills. I thought it might be a good idea to pump a lot of points into the defense mastery so I can get Colossal form, in addition to the bonuses you get to health and dexterity from those points. I’m having 0 trouble with all the trash mobs, but bosses are a pain, relegated to running back and forth and trying to kite them while slowly draining their health with bow attacks. Either that or zerging them until I die then run back and zerg them some more. I assume this isn’t normal. Because otherwise it would seem a bit pointless to play a pure melee character if they can’t really take the punishment. So I’m thinking I fucked up the spec.
Think I should reroll?
Pouring points into the masteries, in order to get to the higher skills, is generally a bad idea. You need those lower level skills to be beefed up to survive encounters long enough to occassionally dump a point or so to your masteries. My main toon is level 38, and I think he’s 17 rogue/18 ranger, with the skills totally bottom heavy. Those high-level skills look tasty, but you won’t live long enough to use em if you go pure mastery early.
Yeah, absolutely. Despite all my complaints about the difficulty of boss battles, my character with the most deaths only has 9, and that was my first character who was discovering everything for the first time (like the Manticore). Part of the reason for that is the balancing of skill point distribution between low-to-mid level skills and the masteries (as I mentioned earlier in this thread) and focusing only on a couple of branches. Going for the high level skills and neglecting the low level ones is a recipe for disaster.
Also, don’t ignore the resistances, especially the secondary ones. You can have all the health and stat points you want but if you have crappy resistance you are going to go down. After learning that myself, I give up DPS and armour for maximizing my resistances and it’s done wonders.
After learning that myself, I give up DPS and armour for maximizing my resistances and it’s done wonders
Another key point. My rings are exclusively resistance soakers, period, full stop. I will give up lots of armor points (when newer, heavier armor becomes available) for lighter gear + decent resistances.
Remember that +% on anything is your friend. A couple of +10% damage items might be pretty silly at low level, but when you’re regularly dishing out 1000 pts of damage + bleeding + poison + vitality damage at higher levels, that +10% or +20% comes in real handy. Same goes with +% on attributes and resistances.
Jab
1848
Agree, when you hit epic and legendary it’s more important to get resist gear over dps gear. With my assassin I started collected a ring of each type of element resist for different fights.
On the subject of skill points, I fill up my masteries first for the stat bonuses. Usually I go 2 in one mastery and a point into a skill, repeat until I max out the mastery and go to my second one.
Kareem
1849
Bah gotta reroll then. Level 14 and just finished the Athens catacombs :<
Kareem
1850
I’m fiddling around with a Conqueror and Dream character at the moment. The Dream character is still in the very early levels, but damn she mows through stuff like jelly. Psionic touch every 3rd or 4th hit which is almost an instagib, plus the distortion wave AoE at level 2 is really nice. I’m leveling strength and some dexterity mainly, as I’m planning on eventually adding a warfare mastery to it. Thinking of going nature to have offtank pets though, haven’t decided yet. How does a melee Dream character do on bosses?
The Conqueror is a bit less interesting to play. Seems as if you can’t really go hand to hand with most of the bosses until you get Colossal Form and Ancestral Spirits? Sounds like they blossom into a great end-game class, but for the meantime they’re quite uninteresting. Not because they struggle on large collections of mobs or anything, quite the contrary.
Nah. You probably just need better gear. My 56 Conqueror has never, ever done anything but go hand-to-hand with bosses. I haven’t equipped a bow or staff once.
Followup: you might also need to look at your build. I’ve maxed out every single power that boosts armor absorption, dodging, shield block %, shield recovery time, resistences, and so on. Individually, none of those powers look that attactive, but combine them and you become a real tank (a lesson I learned from City of Heroes). Attacks are great, and you need to max some of them too, but the defense powers will make or break your ability to outslug bosses.
Pumping the masteries early nets you alot of hits but will slow your killing speed. However Mastery rushing in the 20’s and just tagging the skills you want with 1 can be a great tactic. It is situational however as to fully realise the potential of this requires a few + to all skill items. The assassin I run has quite a few skills tagged with 1 point for their effects and then +5 from items bringing the skill levels to 6 for anything not currently pummped up. There is a downside though and that is Legendary mode will really force you to either be really squishy due to missing resists or to sacrafice the +skill for survivability.
McBain
1854
Hold on, you just mindfucked me.
You mean to tell me this is an action RPG where focusing on defensive skills isn’t a complete waste of fucking time?
For one particular character (Warfare/Defense), yes. Diablo II had some paladin and barbarian builds that were defense heavy as well.
Kareem
1856
Well here’s how I specced my Conqueror (he’s still pretty low level, 10 or 11 I think):
I started with 1 point in Batter (until I got Onslaught, then I dropped it) since I started out with Defense. After that I maxed out armor handling, got 1 point in Battle Awareness, then raised my mastery until I got Shield Smash. Then after level 8, I dropped a couple points in Onslaught, then maxed out weapon handling until I got a green weapon and maxed out Onslaught.
What I was planning to do was continue going up the defense mastery tree while dropping a point in Adrenaline Rush, Resilience, Focus, Shield Charge, Disable, Defensive Reaction and Iron Will. Then Colossus Form.
Kareem
1857
BTW reading at the start of the thread it’s hilarious how opinion of the game was at the start and how it ended up being :P .
Well, I just ran into my first unbeatable boss, the Hydra on Legendary difficulty. Despite 2000 points of armor, a block chance of 98% when buffed, 5500 HP, and nearly maxed fire/cold/lightning resists, it keeps one-shotting me. I tried dodging his breath animations, hit-and-runs, Colossus form, the Ancestral Horn spirits, etc.–all my standard tactics–but gave up after about 30 deaths. It’s possible my lack of pierce and poison resistence (both of which are negative) are the problem, but I’m open to suggestions from anyone who’s taken him down with a melee build on the hardest difficulty.
Jab
1859
I had help from dusty and I still died a few times. Bring a scroll of elemental shielding to help you with the resists.
If anyone wants to play I could try hosting a game tonight maybe I’ll try to get further in legendary with my assassin.
That’s one of my favorites, Kareem. Heh.
