[3.11] Shaper = Stunned, Tidebreaker Heavy Strike Stunner Build

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brightwaha wrote:

Congrats on the Taste of Hate, and, damn nice jewels :D. Maybe you don't need to swap Elemental Damage with Attacks and Ruthless, I think they provide similar dps boosts, maybe.

I believe your character can now easily kill Shaper, go for it. You may not have a good time stunning Shaper as I did on my Berserker character, but killing Shaper is definitely easier as Slayer. The third phase would be incredibly short due to the 20% culling Slayer offers.

(Would be awesome if you could record you Shaper fight and let me show your video on this thread. I cannot really record videos myself due to frame loss.)

Level 93; finally managed to Vaal my way into 15 T8 corrupted map completions for the challenge so I guess my next long-term currency investment is trying to corrupt Vuln-on-Hit onto some Empire's Grasps.

Had three attempts at Shaper - have never attempted him before (saw and knocked off the Pale Court, a Breachlord and Vinktar Square all for the first time earlier today) and still getting the hang of it. Wasn't getting many stuns on the first two attempts but I dropped two life nodes to pick up Stun Mastery, and on the last attempt was obtaining a noticeable improvement in my stun rate. Just have to learn the fight mechanics a bit better and hopefully I'll get him down. My computer's fairly vintage (couple of deaths were due to freezing up at the first time an ability was used in the fight) so I don't think I'm your person to record the fight, though.

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Haasts wrote:

Level 93; finally managed to Vaal my way into 15 T8 corrupted map completions for the challenge so I guess my next long-term currency investment is trying to corrupt Vuln-on-Hit onto some Empire's Grasps.

Had three attempts at Shaper - have never attempted him before (saw and knocked off the Pale Court, a Breachlord and Vinktar Square all for the first time earlier today) and still getting the hang of it. Wasn't getting many stuns on the first two attempts but I dropped two life nodes to pick up Stun Mastery, and on the last attempt was obtaining a noticeable improvement in my stun rate. Just have to learn the fight mechanics a bit better and hopefully I'll get him down. My computer's fairly vintage (couple of deaths were due to freezing up at the first time an ability was used in the fight) so I don't think I'm your person to record the fight, though.

Besides trying to stun Shaper, if you really want a Shaper kill, you can try to take out Stun Support and just focus on dps instead. Most damage from Shaper can be dodged by movement, and stunning Shaper doesn't mean a lot if you cannot stun-lock him consistently.

Also, I would say don't rush between phases and treat the two little bosses seriously; then take the Shaper fight slowly as well, take some time to dodge attacks, place vortexes and wait for Shaper clones to expire.

I think Shaper fight tests dps and experience; we have good dps so once you are experienced dodging his attacks, you will have some easy time killing Shaper. I failed my first 2 attampts as well, also partially because of low frames; but after I finally landed my first kill, the very next Shaper run became so much easier.

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brightwaha wrote:

You may choose to run Brutality gem for this build. You will run Grace instead(and Haste + Enlighten or just Arctic Armour), pick up Iron Reflexes, and give up Atziri's Promise or Taste of Hate. I am trying out the Brutality variation and I believe this variation should be overall better

Sorry to get you to spell it out - in this scenario, what would the DPS flask be replaced with? A Jade Flask of Iron Skin or similar? I've swapped over to the pure phys version - specced back out of Stun Mastery and into Iron Reflexes + life/armor nodes. Going to try and grind my way to L94 (+ level Grace/Haste) with some Beachheads I have lying around before attempting Shaper again ;)

(Also, I understand if it's a hassle, but any chance you could add a changelog cutaway at the bottom of the main post? You've been very diligent about updating it but I hadn't realised the extent!)

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Haasts wrote:

Sorry to get you to spell it out - in this scenario, what would the DPS flask be replaced with? A Jade Flask of Iron Skin or similar? I've swapped over to the pure phys version - specced back out of Stun Mastery and into Iron Reflexes + life/armor nodes. Going to try and grind my way to L94 (+ level Grace/Haste) with some Beachheads I have lying around before attempting Shaper again ;)

(Also, I understand if it's a hassle, but any chance you could add a changelog cutaway at the bottom of the main post? You've been very diligent about updating it but I hadn't realised the extent!)

In my opinion, flasks are all preferences. You can have one or two Lion's Roar, one or two life flasks, a Basalt flask, Jade or Stibnite flasks, resistance flasks, Quicksilver, etc. I would say Jade and Stibnite are both good choices for physical mitigation and I prefer Stibnite; get Ample Stibnite Flask of Iron Skin, it provides around 2/3 armour Jade Flask provides but you will have 5 uses and the effect lasts longer.

I used Grace & Haste & Enlighten for a bit and I just found myself out of mana very often. So I am playing with Grace & Arctic Armour right now. Do you not have mana problems?

As for a changelog, yes I do change the guide very often and I am considering making a clear note of what changes have been made. Maybe you will see one soon.

How are you getting bleed as a berserker?

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Mavada wrote:

How are you getting bleed as a berserker?

Either from the two nodes in the Bloody Bludgeon passive wheel or by linking Chance to Bleed support with totem. My Berserker character currently is using Chance to Bleed support to save some passive points.

Perfect, thanks. I'm normally making builds for summoners and am venturing into melee now.

Hey OP! im going to try this on my zerker, already got decent eq , nice mace and almost ready skilltree.

I have to ask you to clear my doubts however.
Im not sure about bloodlust support for pure phys version of this build. The main link for heavy strike would be HS + MELEE PHYS + RUTHLESS + BRUT, right? If we link bloodlust the "more dmg with bleeding caused by melee hits" part of RUTHLESS support will be ignored since bloodlust cannot cause bleeding.
How about going with multistrike + faster attacks there and picking 2 nodes in Bloody Bludgeon for 25% bleed chance, we will surely proc it on any boss and do not need bleed for trash mobs.
One more question, how do we handle aoe dmg for heavy strike if we are playing zerk? we simply switch one gem (which one?) for melee splash?

Great guide btw, rly inspiring to play something out of meta.
Cheers

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Cedvin wrote:

Hey OP! im going to try this on my zerker, already got decent eq

Spoiler

, nice mace

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and almost ready skilltree.

I have to ask you to clear my doubts however.
Im not sure about bloodlust support for pure phys version of this build. The main link for heavy strike would be HS + MELEE PHYS + RUTHLESS + BRUT, right? If we link bloodlust the "more dmg with bleeding caused by melee hits" part of RUTHLESS support will be ignored since bloodlust cannot cause bleeding.
How about going with multistrike + faster attacks there and picking 2 nodes in Bloody Bludgeon for 25% bleed chance, we will surely proc it on any boss and do not need bleed for trash mobs.
One more question, how do we handle aoe dmg for heavy strike if we are playing zerk? we simply switch one gem (which one?) for melee splash?

Great guide btw, rly inspiring to play something out of meta.
Cheers

My thoughts on Bloodlust: 1. Because we need good damage per hit to stun enemies, replacing Bloodlust with Faster Attacks or Multistrike is a very huge cut to our stun capability. 2. When Bloodlust is effective, the 59% more damage will certainly compensate for the loss of bleeding damage(this is easy to calculate, Multistrike provides less than 40% damage, Faster Attacks provides around 20% damage). So, in boss fights Bloodlust is definitely a solid choice.

There are several ways to handle aoe dmg as Berserker(Although none of those are as easy as just playing Slayer):
1. Socket another 6-link in your chest armour. You lose your life pool(for not able to use Kaom's Heart) but you will have 2 attacks skills to use at any given time.
2. Get another weapon so you press weapon swap button to swap between single-target and aoe skills. This is how I handle aoe dmg as my Berserker; no significant drawbacks besides losing some currency in buying another weapon.
3. Swap between Heavy Strike gem and another aoe skill gem. Nothing deals as much damage as Heavy Strike, so you lose damage. This is better than the 4th option when you don't like Heavy Strike.
4. Swap out a support gem for Melee Splash Support gem(maybe Bloodlust or Multistrike/Stun or Damage on Full Life). You lose a support gem, thus you lose some damage. This is better than the 3rd option when you are used to using Heavy Strike.

Ty for reply. im currently using ground slam, since i couldn't do either high tier maps or uber lab with heavy strike, im prolly doing smthing wrong, because my eq is pretty decent i would say.
My tree

And my items for heavy strike:


My gem setup was
6l: hs, ruthless, brutality, melee phys, dmg on full life, bloodlust (swapped with melee splash)
5l brotem: brotem, maim, chance to bleed, fa, melee phys
4l gloves: cwdt, ic, id, ms
4l boots: coh, vengeance, id, wm
4l helmet: leap slam, forty, fa, endurance charge on stun

i have all resistances maxed (well 2% off lightning but that can be easily fixed) and 7,5k hp
Any idea what i was doing wrong?