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

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JaguarXXX wrote:

Took a long break from league and just thought I would provide an update.

Shaper and Elder were easily stunlocked with the gear in my profile, except swap out ancestral call, multistrike and melee splash with ruthless, melee phys. and stun support.

Sirus I never could consistently stunlock, but I could intermittently stun him. My gear is not completely optimized and I am not sure it would be worth spending many exalts to get the damage to just stun-lock this one boss. Maybe I will try if I build up a lot more currency.

I also have to say I had a heck of a time with the Phoenix guardian using heavy strike. Although he can be stunlocked, he takes a while to bring down and he has adds that require you to disengage the boss. It's probably a lot easier with something like cyclone. Perhaps I need to experiment more with the support gems for heavy strike, as ancestral call helps out a bit here.

Thanks to OP for sticking with this build. It was a lot of fun.

I am not surprised by the results considering your gears and the state of the build in 3.9. As you have said, there is still some room to improve your gears, and at the same time, this build would perform much better with the introduction of cluster jewels in 3.10.

Phoenix is one of the bosses that you shouldn't use Heavy Strike on. Before the boss hp buffs in 3.9, I was able to tank the little birds' hits w/ flasks and burst Phoenix down. This is probably not the case anymore. This boss is trivial if you use Cyclone, thanks to the mobility it provides.

Finished my setup:

https://www.pathofexile.com/account/view-profile/MetalSlave/characters?characterName=LifeBones

There's room to improvements specially on jewels and weapon (corrupted). Did some tests and was able to stunlock guardians (Hydra was lol).

For 3.10 I will try Slayer. Sounds safer I and don't need to care with that dam war cry! But probably loosing a bit of stun capabilites due the lower damage...

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MetalSlave wrote:

Finished my setup:

https://www.pathofexile.com/account/view-profile/MetalSlave/characters?characterName=LifeBones

There's room to improvements specially on jewels and weapon (corrupted). Did some tests and was able to stunlock guardians (Hydra was lol).

For 3.10 I will try Slayer. Sounds safer I and don't need to care with that dam war cry! But probably loosing a bit of stun capabilites due the lower damage...

Here are some comments that may affect your decision on Berserker vs Slayer:

-One feature added in 3.10 was that you can now assign warcries to your left-mouse-button. As long as you get the instant warcry node you will automatically cast warcries when it's off cd. You lose the situational heal, but you save yourself some mental effort.

-They said the new league mobs will have high life pool rather than high damage that one-shots you. So that means DPS would maybe mean something next league and defense is less of a concern.

-With the addition of cluster jewels and the insanely strong stun nodes, I am confident that Slayer can make up for the stun capability if you really go for it. The "while leeching" notables are also very strong, which benefits Slayers but not Berserkers.

It's also understated how nice it is to not have to check maps for phys reflect, concerning Slayer.
I did a "monsters can't be stunned" 14 last night and didn't even come close to dying.

Point is, you probably won't need to check the map mods until you hit like 15. This build has really nice defense when you break 6khp. If you don't use full phys you will need to watch out for ele reflect however. I forgot I switched to Herald of Ash a while ago and was gibbing myself on ele reflect unknowingly at first.

Hi again, I have a couple of questions:

1. For the tidebreaker, since it's hard to get your version of the tidebreaker with an extra implicit for a 8th link, what are the 4 MANDATORY most important gems I MUST have on a tidebreaker with heavy strike as its main skill?


2. The sixth gem after the 5 gems can be anything right? It could be stun support..etc?

3. Since we're trying to increase the chances of doing double damage with heavy strike.....with the enchants and jewels, would aspect of the avian attached to a ring be useful in increases the chances of doing double damage for the build?

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MasterChief22530 wrote:

Hi again, I have a couple of questions:

1. For the tidebreaker, since it's hard to get your version of the tidebreaker with an extra implicit for a 8th link, what are the 4 MANDATORY most important gems I MUST have on a tidebreaker with heavy strike as its main skill?


2. The sixth gem after the 5 gems can be anything right? It could be stun support..etc?

3. Since we're trying to increase the chances of doing double damage with heavy strike.....with the enchants and jewels, would aspect of the avian attached to a ring be useful in increases the chances of doing double damage for the build?

1&2. It depends on your setup.

One of the new cluster jewel notables gives Fortify on hit; depending if you take it or not you might want to have Fortify Support in your 6-link. Not too important to have it, but not bad nonetheless.

Also depending on if you like Bloodlust or not you may also have it in your setup.

Otherwise, Melee Phys, Ruthless, Brutality are brainless options. Stun Support, Damage on Full Life can be okay options for the 6th slot - if there is still an empty slot, that is.

If you have an empty slot left and you like none of the remaining choices, the last gem you want to consider is Maim Support. But it really shouldn't happen.

Awakened Multistrike can also be very strong when you have a very optimized build - but it can ruin your stun capability if you're under-geared.

So a sample decision making progress would be like
3. We are not necessarily trying to increase the chances of double damage. It just happened to be the case that we get a ton of double damage and they effectively raise our DPS.

And in fact, each additional source of double damage is less effective. For example, having +20% chance of double damage from 0% gives 20% more damage; having +20% chance of double damage from 20% gives only 16.7% more damage.

In our cases, Berserker gets 87% chance of double damage already. Aspect of the Avian offers 10% chance of double damage 50% of the times, this would only account for 2.7% more damage, which is definitely not enough to justify its 25% mana reservation.

Found a ring in my stash with a -7 mana legacy enchant and could test Cyclone (AoE) with Heavy Strike (ST). I think I found the sweet spot of this build with this combo.

What do you think about putting in impale support with the offhand cyclone setup? Does it do more DPS?

Because I heard that impale combined with dreadbanner is OP.

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MasterChief22530 wrote:

What do you think about putting in impale support with the offhand cyclone setup? Does it do more DPS?

Because I heard that impale combined with dreadbanner is OP.

Usually I don't recommend utilizing Impale, but with Cyclone, Impale is not bad.

Impale alone without Dread Banner gives about 50% DPS in theory, which is about as good as the support gem you're replacing. The advantage of doing so is as you said, Dread Banner works quite well with it and offers quite a bit more DPS, given that the mobs are tanky enough to take quite a few hits to die.

The downside is that Cyclone has a low stun capability to begin with, and using Impale makes it worse. Another downside is that Dread Banner doesn't help your main-hand Heavy Strike much.

I would say it's something you can test yourself. Swapping on Impale Support and Dread Banner doesn't cost much besides some chromes. If you find it working well - which is likely, as the league content was said to be tanky - you can certainly keep the Impale setup.

I'm excited for the new league and probably gonna run this build again (had so much fun on the last one, although I died quite a few times because I'm a noob :D)

Will try to run it in HC and see how it goes, I'm a little afraid with the new mechanics but time and testing will say!

PD: Tried Slayer and felt very confortable with it, probably I'll be sticking with it this time too.