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

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JaguarXXX wrote:

I just checked out the new PoB OP put up for berzerker, and it looks really good.

If I removed fortify in single target set up, I would likely replace it with damage on full life since bloodlust seems like a pain to implement easily.

Also, one other point I would like to stress--heavy strike is more than viable for clearing. I would even say it was very good. I am now using awakened melee splash and awakened ancestral call, along with brutality, multistrike and fortify for clearing and it works excellent. The packs just vaporize instantly. It's way, way better than ground slam and for me is much more fun than cyclone.

Give it a try.

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JaguarXXX wrote:

Here's a video I just did of a T16 map in standard using Heavy Strike to clear. I did not switch to single target set up for boss and metamorph.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuT8DR3-IH0

Very interesting. I did some extensive testing with Heavy Strike clearing in 3.7, and my experience wasn't too great. I guess it's partly due to the fact that Pulverize and Cyclone were just way too good back then, as well as that a 3.7 Slayer build had far less attack speed than either 3.10 Slayer or Berserker.

Both Awakened Melee Splash and Awakened Ancestral Call contributes nothing to single-target DPS. But a 4-link Heavy Strike still deals almost twice as much single-target DPS than a 6-link Cyclone.

And Ground Slam does feel a little bit weak right now. It does similar level of DPS as Cyclone, but that's the only advantage it has. I probably shouldn't be advertising Ground Slam over either Cyclone or Heavy Strike.

It still feels very difficult to compare Cyclone and Heavy Strike. The main advantage of Cyclone is the mobility, which gets easily translated into both clear speed and defense - being able to move while DPSing is a huge defensive trait. Heavy Strike's advantages here include a much better stun-locking and DPS. Overall, I think the conclusion is, they're both good choices.

I will be making changes in the AoE 6-link section as well as post your vid as a demo to Heavy Strike clearing.

Thanks for that Heavy Strike demo. I'll probably just switch to a setup like that when I 6l one of these. I'm a fan of clearing with Heavy Strike, always have been, for whatever reasons.

I agree on your Ground Slam findings. I was gonna try out Sunder again or possibly even EQ, mostly because I don't like GS on Legion encounters, I'm starting to not like Ground Slam at all, I just like the on demand stun from Vaal GS.

Cyclone is probably still the best for clearing, but I am beyond bored with it. And heavy strike is surprisingly good as far as speed compared to a lot of the other high dmg melee skills.

Cyclone is also probably much faster to build up rage with too. However, I think the Mob mentality cluster passive will help Heavy strike to close the gap on that. I understand that they can be stacked too, so 10 or more rage every time you war cry??? That seems extremely OP.

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JaguarXXX wrote:

Cyclone is probably still the best for clearing, but I am beyond bored with it. And heavy strike is surprisingly good as far as speed compared to a lot of the other high dmg melee skills.

Cyclone is also probably much faster to build up rage with too. However, I think the Mob mentality cluster passive will help Heavy strike to close the gap on that. I understand that they can be stacked too, so 10 or more rage every time you war cry??? That seems extremely OP.

I have been thinking about extensive use of Berserk in synergy with the fast rage generation with Mob Mentality for a while.

Currently, my thought process is to maintain 50 rage stacks all the time and mob mentality mostly serves as a means of building up rage stacks before end-game boss fights.

But there is also a potential that we spam Berserk as long as it's off cooldown, or that we use Berserk once we reach 50 rage stacks. Previously before the existence of Mob Mentality, I did some math and my conclusion was that it wasn't worth it. This time things are more complicated.

Your comment reminded me of the possibility of having multiple Mob Mentality notables, and I saw some hope in making more use of Berserk. So, I spent the night writing a script, and I will call it the PoE Berserk Simulator.

https://repl.it/@ygshi0825/PoEBerserkSimulator

Above is the link, you should be able to run the code yourself and play with it. I will also add this code to the guide.

This simulates long boss fights with 3 different playstyles: not using Berserk at all / using Berserk as much as possible / using Berserk when reaching 50 rage stacks.

I played around it and to my surprise, the average DPS is actually higher if we use Berserk, and having 2 Mob Mentality raised the average DPS quite significantly.

I think it's still too early to tell if it's a strategy we should implement in game, since the simulation only looks at average DPS, but completely ignores problems such as you using Berserk and suddenly boss enters an invulnerability phase, or that you start having problems stunning since Berserk drained all your rage stacks.

I wonder what are other people's thoughts on this.

Thank you for your comprehensive guide, I played this build for Delirium league start
and it went really well.

This build is always good at bossing, so I think the only problem is to find a clearing setup which suit my style.
Here's some thoughts after some testing.

1. From early map to first hit T16 I use Cyclone as main skill. I found I rarely switched to Heavy Strike. 5l Tidebreaker is enough to carry T16 mapping. Shockwave support is a must I'd say for cyclone. It gives good damage multipler, much larger range, 1-shot pack which reduced the annoyance of knocking monster away and more importantly fit our build that give big hit for stunning.
I even kill A6 Sirus with Cyclone, but after using Heavy Strike against A7 Sirus, I wish I switched to Heavy Strike earlier, it was so much easier.

2. After I geared up, I tried Flicker Strike. Wow. It is extremely faster. My mapping time went from 5min to 3min.
Nothing can beat Flicker Strike on clearing speed. It is somehow safe even if I ran out of charges/mana, because we stun everything. One disadvantage would be Monster cannot be stunned become a map mod I need to re-roll. Flicker Strike also free my helmet and glove slot, cuz it don't need mv speed and reverse knock back.

3. Other than stacking Mob Mentality, I am currently building toward stacking cry wolf with Rallying Cry. This combo would give lots of general increased damage, and pair with explode chest, the explosion will stably chain itself. It is also possible that explosion make Heavy Strike with single target setup enough for clear. Also vaal breach become a powerful button both with Rallying Cry and explosion.

Other thoughts not tested:
Sweep might be good if we can scale aoe to cover whole screen
Dash with second wind feels good with Cyclone
stacking both Mob Mentality and cry wolf might be really good(and expensive), imagine we have 4 of both..

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daniel23915600 wrote:

Thank you for your comprehensive guide, I played this build for Delirium league start
and it went really well.

This build is always good at bossing, so I think the only problem is to find a clearing setup which suit my style.
Here's some thoughts after some testing.

1. From early map to first hit T16 I use Cyclone as main skill. I found I rarely switched to Heavy Strike. 5l Tidebreaker is enough to carry T16 mapping. Shockwave support is a must I'd say for cyclone. It gives good damage multipler, much larger range, 1-shot pack which reduced the annoyance of knocking monster away and more importantly fit our build that give big hit for stunning.
I even kill A6 Sirus with Cyclone, but after using Heavy Strike against A7 Sirus, I wish I switched to Heavy Strike earlier, it was so much easier.

2. After I geared up, I tried Flicker Strike. Wow. It is extremely faster. My mapping time went from 5min to 3min.
Nothing can beat Flicker Strike on clearing speed. It is somehow safe even if I ran out of charges/mana, because we stun everything. One disadvantage would be Monster cannot be stunned become a map mod I need to re-roll. Flicker Strike also free my helmet and glove slot, cuz it don't need mv speed and reverse knock back.

3. Other than stacking Mob Mentality, I am currently building toward stacking cry wolf with Rallying Cry. This combo would give lots of general increased damage, and pair with explode chest, the explosion will stably chain itself. It is also possible that explosion make Heavy Strike with single target setup enough for clear. Also vaal breach become a powerful button both with Rallying Cry and explosion.

Other thoughts not tested:
Sweep might be good if we can scale aoe to cover whole screen
Dash with second wind feels good with Cyclone
stacking both Mob Mentality and cry wolf might be really good(and expensive), imagine we have 4 of both..

Flicker is very fast indeed, but is also sometimes annoying to play with due to awkward single-targeting and backtracing for loot. I have very mixed feelings about it. Good to hear that you're enjoying it, since it's probably the fastest skill by far.

Regarding Cry Wolf, it's a very interesting idea, but I actually don't think it's that strong. We can for sure see quite a lot of increased damage from this and Rallying Cry, but we shouldn't forget that it takes quite some passive points to get each cluster jewel notable, and now passive points are really valuable.

I think Cry Wolf would be strong if you're building specifically for map clearing, giving up some boss fight performance and use both Rallying Cry and Abyssal Cry for the best clear speed. However I have a hard time recommending this to everybody.

Since this is a stun build, I was wondering....

1. Would a ring with "curse enemies with level # warlord's mark" considered powerful? Since the curse gives us mana and life leech and reduces enemy stun recovery and increases their chances to be stunned?

2. You said something about there being an interaction between stun threshold and freeze in your guide?

That being said...is it possible to create a permafreeze build to be used against stun immune bosses like atziri, minotaur, and kitava with a few gem swaps WHILE keeping our stun tree the same?

Example of gems that come to mind are: Frostbite Curse, Hatred Aura, Herald of Ice, and Glacial Hammer.

That way, stun and permafreeze can be switched depending on what boss we're fighting.

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MasterChief22530 wrote:

Since this is a stun build, I was wondering....

1. Would a ring with "curse enemies with level # warlord's mark" considered powerful? Since the curse gives us mana and life leech and reduces enemy stun recovery and increases their chances to be stunned?

2. You said something about there being an interaction between stun threshold and freeze in your guide?

That being said...is it possible to create a permafreeze build to be used against stun immune bosses like atziri, minotaur, and kitava with a few gem/jewel/item swaps WHILE keeping our stun tree the same?

Example of gems that come to mind are: Frostbite Aura and Glacial Hammer.

That way, stun and permafreeze can be switched depending on what boss we're fighting.

1. Warlord's Mark is a bad idea. First, you can only inflict 1 curse on enemies, unless you expand that limit with certain passives / items, so Warlord's Mark competes directly with Vulnerability, which is very good.

Then, Warlord's Mark itself is very awkward. Against trash mobs, you would never need that extra stun chance Warlord's Mark provides. And against end game bosses, like Shaper, due to the boss' curse resistance, all numerical variables in a curse is reduced to 1/3. This means that the 10% additional chance to be stunned from Warlord's Mark would be reduced to 3.4% additional stun chance against Shaper, and it's just very ineffective.

2. Freeze, apart from some specifically freeze related effects, is simply a 100% slow. And slow is what can potentially synergize with stun. Sources of slow, besides freeze, are mostly just chill and Temporal Chains.

Slow slows down action time on a character, and stun is acted on the action time instead of real time. In other words, a mob that's frozen and stunned will be permanently stunned until it unfreezes; and a 0.35 second stun inflicted to a mob that's chilled by 50% would instead last 0.70 seconds.

That being said, there are many problems with utilizing slow effects.

-Temporal Chains has a very tiny effect on end game bosses, making it quite uneffective.

-It can be difficult to inflict a high percentage chill onto an endgame boss due to the large life pool it has. There are some ways to inflict a fixed percentage chill, like Skitterbots, chilled ground, and a medium cluster jewel mod Chilling Presence; these fixed percentage chills can be nice to have, but these options are all quite costly and I don't see it being worthwhile to invest into.

-To achieve high percentage chill from hits you probably need 100% cold damage. You should keep in mind that melee physical damage is 125% effective at stunning and melee non-physical damage is 100% effective. So by converting to cold damage you're losing a lot of stun capability.

-Most endgame bosses, if not all of them, cannot be fully slowed, which means they can be frozen mechanically, but they can still move while frozen. This basically means permafreeze endgame bosses is only a joke.

Am I right assuming that Feed the Fury will work with full health because of our Brutal Fervour passive?

I also wonder if Titanic Swings passive will work with Heavy Strike while it uses Melee Splash support?

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daniel23915600 wrote:

1. From early map to first hit T16 I use Cyclone as main skill. I found I rarely switched to Heavy Strike. 5l Tidebreaker is enough to carry T16 mapping. Shockwave support is a must I'd say for cyclone. It gives good damage multipler, much larger range, 1-shot pack which reduced the annoyance of knocking monster away and more importantly fit our build that give big hit for stunning.
I even kill A6 Sirus with Cyclone, but after using Heavy Strike against A7 Sirus, I wish I switched to Heavy Strike earlier, it was so much easier.

Thanks on this... Testing Shockwave linked on cyclone and its crazy good.