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

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HunterMoon wrote:

After i level up i test some tier 10 maps and they are stun lock. So i decide to test Uber Lab but first of all i test Argus.

Option 1=> I can drag his aggro with totem and golem then attack him => This works fine for me.

Option 2=> Face tank him and try to stun lock => I test this and he never stunned even for 1 ms. So i imagine probably he is stun immune. If he is not then i lack dmg.

So what's the problem with argus?

The list of stun immune bosses include: 1. Minotaur; 2. Kitava; 3. Argus; 4. Rigward; 5. Atziri's complete phase or the mirror holding clone.

My strategy dealing with Argus is simply to time Basalt and Lion's Roar well, and face-tank him. Argus is easy to burst down if you're well geared.

I'm trying this out with crit and Juggernaut (for accuracy)

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brightwaha wrote:

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Zeekin wrote:

Been playing a berserker version of your build this league (HeavyZeekin character if you want to see)
And love the stun mechanic of it, obviously with only 4-5L I still have a long way to go and gear is nowhere near great yet (rares suck and need replacing).

Some general questions I had for you:

How important is reverse knockback do you think? I've been considering swapping to rare gloves and just dealing with the knockback - it seems like a lot of lost stats, maybe use some essence gloves with more attack speed and socket my leapslam in them for movement, then using kaom's roots for the stun/freeze/temp chains immunity?

Would you consider using kaom's roots? Why/why not?

On your berserker build, how do you handle twinned bosses? Or bosses that can't be stunned? I have found a few that posed a serious problem and ended up dieing a few times :(

Currently running perseverance for the fortify/onslaught effect and two extra endurance charges (5 total) - is good/bad? I can't decide if the endurance charges are worthwhile; obviously if I had GG jewels I'd opt for those instead, but until then.

If you're well geared like my Berserker in Standard, and are too lazy to swap to Heavy Strike for boss(provided you're well-geared), then you can forget about Empire's Grasp. But if I'm realistic here I think you will for sure need Heavy Strike for high tier boss fights; and you will not be happy when you keep on pushing them out of your range and have to move after every couple of attacks. So I think it's a good idea to still use Empire's Grasp, although you don't need them most of the times; but if you really prefer rare gloves, it's definitely not a bad choice.

Kaom's Roots seems too slow for me, and we need those 4 gem sockets unless you don't go for Kaom's Heart. I don't really see a reason to not choose Kaom's Heart and Redblade Trampler really just has everything that we need, so I would not consider Kaom's Roots.

Perseverance is pretty decent; of course in late-game you want an Abyss belt but for now it's great.

For months I never liked picking endurance charge nodes, and the reason is simple.

1. We run CWDT + Immortal Call, so we need to be generating endurance charges pretty fast for extra charges to be effective; 2. When we are generating endurance charges pretty fast, it means we are stunning enemies pretty frequently; 3. When we are stunning enemies pretty frequently, it means we are not really taking damage, especially physical damage from them, because they are stunned.

So I don't really like the whole extra endurance charge idea. If you stop running CWDT + Immortal Call, you may get some good physical mitigation from the charges, but you will lose the juicy 50% life recovery rate from Soul of Arakaali.

Very much appreciate your input, and after hearing your explanation I pretty much agree with everything you said. I've reconfigured a lot of my gear, still a ways to go, but definitely an improvement. Thanks! :-)

Thanks so much for the advices!

Why carnage heart isn't good for slayer? (I got this as my first big buy for 30c on 2nd day of playing the league on the 4th day of league) If slayer already does alot of life leech, wouldn't more leech be stacking it even higher towards unkillable state? What stats from rares would benefit more? stacking res past max for ele weakness maps or just flat phys dmg rolls? If just flat phys rolls, then the 40% dmg when leeching also does the same job doesn't it?


Also, just got a devoto enchant for 10c :D (When should i be wearing the devoto and when should I be using a high life roll rare helm?) - What are the scenarios that require the chaos res? (If I get another helm enchant later on on a rare that has high life rolls and ele res, but not so much dex like devoto have, then swapping them would cause discrepancies in stat requirement for dex based skill gems, how do I solve this issue? Simply stay with devoto's all along or change skills when changing helm?)


And regarding passive tree:

I picked up the jewel slot with int nodes near templar tree prior to 70 for a jewel and some boost to int;

and I will have finished getting stun mastery at lvl 87 instead of 90 but the stun duration nodes in that cluster will need to wait till 89-90. Is this what you meant by 'get stun mastery at 90?' - finish getting at 90 or start travelling towards it at 90?

I got a couple more life nodes near scion and still haven't got bloody bludgeon at lvl 84 now. When you pick up bloody bludgeon, why do you use the bleed nodes to travel to it instead of the life leech node? Will it be ok if I did the reverse? Or does that not allow warchief totem to cause enough bleed for bloodlust to benefit from? (Also when I get more int from tidebreaker, should i remove the jewel slot near templar and get the jewel slot below bloody bludgeon instead first?)


Thanks again!

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UchihaVegeta wrote:

Thanks so much for the advices!

Why carnage heart isn't good for slayer? (I got this as my first big buy for 30c on 2nd day of playing the league on the 4th day of league) If slayer already does alot of life leech, wouldn't more leech be stacking it even higher towards unkillable state? What stats from rares would benefit more? stacking res past max for ele weakness maps or just flat phys dmg rolls? If just flat phys rolls, then the 40% dmg when leeching also does the same job doesn't it?


Also, just got a devoto enchant for 10c :D (When should i be wearing the devoto and when should I be using a high life roll rare helm?) - What are the scenarios that require the chaos res? (If I get another helm enchant later on on a rare that has high life rolls and ele res, but not so much dex like devoto have, then swapping them would cause discrepancies in stat requirement for dex based skill gems, how do I solve this issue? Simply stay with devoto's all along or change skills when changing helm?)


And regarding passive tree:

I picked up the jewel slot with int nodes near templar tree prior to 70 for a jewel and some boost to int;

and I will have finished getting stun mastery at lvl 87 instead of 90 but the stun duration nodes in that cluster will need to wait till 89-90. Is this what you meant by 'get stun mastery at 90?' - finish getting at 90 or start travelling towards it at 90?

I got a couple more life nodes near scion and still haven't got bloody bludgeon at lvl 84 now. When you pick up bloody bludgeon, why do you use the bleed nodes to travel to it instead of the life leech node? Will it be ok if I did the reverse? Or does that not allow warchief totem to cause enough bleed for bloodlust to benefit from? (Also when I get more int from tidebreaker, should i remove the jewel slot near templar and get the jewel slot below bloody bludgeon instead first?)


Thanks again!

Carnage Heart is bad because both "% of damage leeched as life" and "% increased life leeched per second" are almost totally useless. The rest attributes, resists and damage are not as desirable as explicits from rare amulets.

Some leech mechanics explained here

Devoto provides movement and attack speed, both boost our mobility. In many situations, this boost to mobility will save our lifes, more so than a flat life roll. So if you have already got a Devoto, you should just stick with that.

I did say pick up Stun Mastery around lvl 90, but it's just an arbitrary number. What I meant was that "if you're lvl 70, don't bother with Stun Mastery". So if you feel you're going to be challenging difficult bosses and will be in need for those stun capability, you should get those points. The stun duration nodes are optional, sometimes I take that sometimes I don't.

Bloody Bluedgeon is one of the ways to give your totem chance to bleed. Again, the leech from the other leech node is totally useless, so it's just efficient to get this bleed chance here. Otherwise, you will need to bind Chance to Bleed support to your totem; you cannot rely on Vulnerability to apply leech, because curse effects are only 40% effective against bosses, and 20% effective against Shaper/Guardians.

Looks like a nice build, gonna try the Berserker version in the Abyss League.

I was wondering, regarding the ascendancy perk Pain Reaver. When you reach a certain amount of dps (like in your PoB pastebin link), the extra leech from it seems wasted as the 0.4 leech from Bloody Bludgeon already seems enough to reach the leech cap, according to PoB. Even with Heavy Strike - Melee Physical - Ruthless - Maim - Ancestral Call - Melee Splash PoB indicates we still hit the cap (edit: without potions up).

So, wouldn't War Bringer be a better choice? It's like a life-mana insta pott every 2 secs. When coupled with Rallying Cry, it even gives some extra dps for 16 secs (20.8 secs with 20% quality).

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Lauicus wrote:

Looks like a nice build, gonna try the Berserker version in the Abyss League.

I was wondering, regarding the ascendancy perk Pain Reaver. When you reach a certain amount of dps (like in your PoB pastebin link), the extra leech from it seems wasted as the 0.4 leech from Bloody Bludgeon already seems enough to reach the leech cap, according to PoB. Even with Heavy Strike - Melee Physical - Ruthless - Maim - Ancestral Call - Melee Splash PoB indicates we still hit the cap.

So, wouldn't War Bringer be a better choice? It's like a life-mana insta pott every 2 secs. When coupled with Rallying Cry, it even gives some extra dps for 16 secs (20.8 secs with 20% quality).

It is a very good point, and I admit that the life leech is pretty useless for us. Actually I initially picked this just so that I don't have to get mana leech on my jewelries. This historical reason that all my rings with mana leech were much worse than the ones without mana leech made it so that I didn't put much thought into it.

War Bringer is not as useful for this build as it is for many other builds(Warchief totem build, for example). In most situations, as the best defense is just using Heavy Strike to stun enemies, we actually won't find time to cast Warcries. But I agree that if you can get mana leech on the ring, then why not have a back up life/mana pot which also offers some slight regen or damage. There are certainly cases when we escape from danger and have no mobs nearby to leech from. We also do have a spare gem slot for a Warcry.

If we think of ways that Pain Reaver can be useful, I can only think of 3: 1. when you don't have mana leech on your jewelries; 2. when you're Leap Slamming over mobs(in case of low damage, more leech can be helpful); 3. the 10% increased leech rate can be slightly helpful.

So yes, definitely it was my mistake to not even mention War Bringer as a valid choice. I still think Pain Reaver can be a choice(because I think War Bringer also does not offer much to our build, so we are choosing the one that sucks less), but I think for most players War Bringer can be a better choice overall.

Thanks for pointing this out; I definitely didn't put enough thought into this choice. I will make some adjustments in the thread. I will also likely try out War Bringer in the near future to see how it works with our build.

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brightwaha wrote:

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Lauicus wrote:

Looks like a nice build, gonna try the Berserker version in the Abyss League.

I was wondering, regarding the ascendancy perk Pain Reaver. When you reach a certain amount of dps (like in your PoB pastebin link), the extra leech from it seems wasted as the 0.4 leech from Bloody Bludgeon already seems enough to reach the leech cap, according to PoB. Even with Heavy Strike - Melee Physical - Ruthless - Maim - Ancestral Call - Melee Splash PoB indicates we still hit the cap.

So, wouldn't War Bringer be a better choice? It's like a life-mana insta pott every 2 secs. When coupled with Rallying Cry, it even gives some extra dps for 16 secs (20.8 secs with 20% quality).

It is a very good point, and I admit that the life leech is pretty useless for us. Actually I initially picked this just so that I don't have to get mana leech on my jewelries. This historical reason that all my rings with mana leech were much worse than the ones without mana leech made it so that I didn't put much thought into it.

War Bringer is not as useful for this build as it is for many other builds(Warchief totem build, for example). In most situations, as the best defense is just using Heavy Strike to stun enemies, we actually won't find time to cast Warcries. But I agree that if you can get mana leech on the ring, then why not have a back up life/mana pot which also offers some slight regen or damage. There are certainly cases when we escape from danger and have no mobs nearby to leech from. We also do have a spare gem slot for a Warcry.

If we think of ways that Pain Reaver can be useful, I can only think of 3: 1. when you don't have mana leech on your jewelries; 2. when you're Leap Slamming over mobs(in case of low damage, more leech can be helpful); 3. the 10% increased leech rate can be slightly helpful.

So yes, definitely it was my mistake to not even mention War Bringer as a valid choice. I still think Pain Reaver can be a choice(because I think War Bringer also does not offer much to our build, so we are choosing the one that sucks less), but I think for most players War Bringer can be a better choice overall.

Thanks for pointing this out; I definitely didn't put enough thought into this choice. I will make some adjustments in the thread. I will also likely try out War Bringer in the near future to see how it works with our build.

As you pointed out, it's indeed the good-geared endgame build (with mana leech somewhere on gear/jewels) that the choice comes up, before dps is high enough or gear is optimized well enough Pain Reaver is obviously the better choice. Also, I missed the leap slamming point, where the extra leech from Pain Reaver comes in handy.

Btw, it's the escaping situation I primarily had in mind, since I'm a very clumsy player :D

As you provide such an awesome in-depth build guide, which even covers leveling quite extensive, I would like to share that I found that very early leveling using Heavy Strike with Melee Splash works quite well for me.

As I just started, even a 3-link is not that easy to obtain, and with HS - MS I don't feel the AoE lacks too much. Lvl 22 now, just took Resolute Technique and I find it convenient to have a skill that does nice peak dmg on bosses while one- or two shotting trash mobs along the way (using a Hrimnor's Hymn). The cool thing -as you stated- is the low mana cost of HS, with Clarity lvl 1 I don't even need a mana flask anymore at lvl 22, which I consider a huge QoL.

Forgive for spamming your forum thread :)

After some contemplating about my choice for the Berserker version I came up with a question and a remark about the build in 3.1.0.

First the question: Is, after the changes to reflect and Brutal Fervour, the Slayer still the preferred class? Before, the 50% reduced reflected damage taken from Headsman and the 10% increased leech cap would definitely have me choose the Slayer, but now the extra damage (and thus extra Stun power) shifted the balance to the Berserker for me.

The onslaught and free splash from the Slayer look nice, but with the extra damage from the Berserker I believe taking out an extra damage support for Melee Splash still leaves us with more than enough dps to clear maps fast (PoB indicates around 200k dmg with Heavy Strike - Melee Physical - Ruthless - Multistrike - Ancestral Call - Melee Splash, without potions and frenzy charges. In my experience, this should be enough considering how weak trash mobs are. So, that leaves imho the 20% culling which I surely will miss deerly, but overall that seems the only real advantage of the Slayer now.

Easy access to the new Vaal Pact also counts as a pro for the Slayer, but do we really need it? And what about the lack of regen when running Blood Rage? And Lab running? Regen makes Lab running so much more comfortable.

Also, the Berserker has much earlier access to Resolute Technique, which is a huge QoL early on during leveling. 10% increased damage taken is obviously the downside of the Berserker, but that is partially mitigated by the higher life pool and Rite of Ruin. Rite of Ruin doesn't count in fights against single big bosses, but most of their skills can't be tanked anyway or are oneshots. Does the double leech from Vaal Pact enables us to tank for instance the stone rain from the Minotaur? I dunno since I always used the old Vaal Pact for that kind of endgame encounters.

I'd love to hear your thoughts about this.

My remark is about the flasks in your PoB setups. I noticed the flasks are the legacy versions, which are nice on Standard (they hugely upped the dps of my Moonflurry after Harbinger ended), but they give some false impressions to ppl looking for a build to play in the league.

Edit: Maybe you could add a "3.1.0 Berserker-Slayer Pro-Con" section in the build guide. Imho the depth of the guide certainly justifies the effort.