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

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lathspell37 wrote:

First of all, this build is awesome. I really enjoy it. But i wanna ask a question, my tooltip damage is 36k, i'm trying full phys version and i'm 86 level. Is it good? You're all talking about 400k 500k or something like that. 36k is good but i don't know.
Here my items.

Spoiler

Generally, the dps we usually talk about is the single-target setup dps. For pure physical version it's Heavy Strike + Melee Physical Damage + Ruthless + Damage on Full Life + Bloodlust + Brutality.

If you swap your current 6-link to the gems I listed above, your tooltip dps should change from 36k to 30k. Yes, it's lower, but it's a bug.

To give a good estimate of your real dps(like the one from Path of Building), we need to manually account for Ruthless gem, Bloodlust gem, Headsman, Blood Rage, frenzy charges, Maim debuff, Vulnerability debuff, threshold jewel double damage, Warchief buff, etc.

Roughly, the math should be 30k * 1.3 * 1.6 * 1.3 * 1.15 * 1.12 * 1.2 * 1.4 * 1.18 = 207k. That's actually still lower than I expected, but I might have missed something here.

Besides that, I do want to mention that you might wish to change your gem setups. Maim is not a very ideal gem on your Heavy Strike 6-link and Ruthless is almost a must have for stunning.

Also, the Added Fire Damage on your Warchief should be replaced with, say, Melee Physical Damage. Added Fire Damage is just a bad gem for our build and should be avoided. (The main reason is fire damage gets reduced by mobs' resists.)

Hey, I'm having trouble with yellow elder. I can't stun him at all - should I try swapping out bloodlust for stun support?

What has your experience been with the elder fights? They feel really tough on melee.

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Gseybold9 wrote:

Hey, I'm having trouble with yellow elder. I can't stun him at all - should I try swapping out bloodlust for stun support?

What has your experience been with the elder fights? They feel really tough on melee.

Unfortunately I have not yet had any Elder fight experience. I have been very busy irl and have been slowly progressing with my new character in Abyss league. So I cannot give you any advise here.

Elder does have a large life pool, so it could be pretty hard to stun him if your setup is not optimized. There are still many improvements you can make with your items; for example, getting 15 stun threshold on belt.

Usually the strategy to those type of fights is to either forget about stunning or invest harder into stunning. Swapping out Bloodlust doesn't seem like a good idea to me as this gem provides the most damage. If you really want to swap a gem for Stun support, it should be either Maim support or Damage on Full Life. Or you can just use gems like Multistrike and forget about stunning at all.

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brightwaha wrote:

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Gseybold9 wrote:

Hey, I'm having trouble with yellow elder. I can't stun him at all - should I try swapping out bloodlust for stun support?

What has your experience been with the elder fights? They feel really tough on melee.

Unfortunately I have not yet had any Elder fight experience. I have been very busy irl and have been slowly progressing with my new character in Abyss league. So I cannot give you any advise here.

Elder does have a large life pool, so it could be pretty hard to stun him if your setup is not optimized. There are still many improvements you can make with your items; for example, getting 15 stun threshold on belt.

Usually the strategy to those type of fights is to either forget about stunning or invest harder into stunning. Swapping out Bloodlust doesn't seem like a good idea to me as this gem provides the most damage. If you really want to swap a gem for Stun support, it should be either Maim support or Damage on Full Life. Or you can just use gems like Multistrike and forget about stunning at all.

Really appreciate the tip about my belt!

Re-did my rings, and belt to get that extra stun threshold, and was able to stun elder no problem!

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Gseybold9 wrote:

Really appreciate the tip about my belt!

Re-did my rings, and belt to get that extra stun threshold, and was able to stun elder no problem!

That's really nice to hear, congrats!

I tried two guardians today (killed minotaur before). Hydra was ez af.

About Chimera, adds are easy to deal with (as long as you stay on top right door), but my problem is that i can't stun him fast enough for first time (if i manage to stun him for first time, i have enough time to roll another stun) so he hits me hard before i can land a stun on him. I think when i swap out Multistrike i have very slow attak speed (at least animation is slow) so i can't do attacks fast enough. And if i keep Multistrike, i have to sacrifice dps (no Bloodlust/ruthless so its like less stun chance).

Another problem is when you die and re enter the arena with no frenzy charges, so you have to first stun then use frenzy to generate charges in stun duration, but that first stun is rly hard to land.
So what should i do to to solve attack speed?

Another question, What flask setup should i use? (I'm using 2 Heal Flask for boss) These are my available flask:

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HunterMoon wrote:

I tried two guardians today (killed minotaur before). Hydra was ez af.

About Chimera, adds are easy to deal with (as long as you stay on top right door), but my problem is that i can't stun him fast enough for first time (if i manage to stun him for first time, i have enough time to roll another stun) so he hits me hard before i can land a stun on him. I think when i swap out Multistrike i have very slow attak speed (at least animation is slow) so i can't do attacks fast enough. And if i keep Multistrike, i have to sacrifice dps (no Bloodlust/ruthless so its like less stun chance).

Another problem is when you die and re enter the arena with no frenzy charges, so you have to first stun then use frenzy to generate charges in stun duration, but that first stun is rly hard to land.
So what should i do to to solve attack speed?

Another question, What flask setup should i use? (I'm using 2 Heal Flask for boss) These are my available flask:

Spoiler

Usually the way I fight a tough boss is that I use Frenzy first(of course Blood Rage and totem before that). I pop my basalt flask as I hit Frenzy and then after reaching max charges I will pop my insta life flasks till I recover to max life. All these steps above is to make sure we have all buffs and rebuffs and gems active. Then it’s time for damage flasks and Heavy Strike.

You can get attack speed from jewels. Usually it’s not very important for stunning and we shouldn’t invest too much more into that.

Flasks should be changed according to the fight. For Shaper you should drop basalt, for Chimera you should drop some damage flasks. Generally I think Atziri’s provides least defense, Taste of Hate provides least offense.

Been playing this build as a berserker since start of abyss league, thought I'd share some my experiences/opinions:

* Having only 1 6-link for your attack skill is really clunky - I tried using kaom's for a while, but having to swap gems is really painful/not practical. Instead I've now opted for using belly of the beast instead, so I can run a 6-link clear skill.

* I've tried a lot of clear skills, and by far the best combo has been wild strike + ancestral call - hits off screen and very quick. Sunder is slow and clunky, and heavy-strike with melee splash has a really small radius and slow attach animation. Wild strike on the other hand just feels really good, and even though it's 100% elemental conversion it doesn't really matter - since berserker's global leech has you sorted.

* Elder is easy (stun-lockable), was very easy on white/yellow maps (haven't tried red yet).

* Bosses that can't be stunned are sometimes practically un-doable. Especially struggled on rigwald (T14 dark forest boss), other than that, mostly very (maybe too easy) easy.

* Not having any real defensive layers makes the build kind of rippy in some situations e.g. on some harder map mods like enemies can't be stunned, 60% reduced life recovery or having multiple extra damage of an element, found myself getting one-shot off screen sometimes or in hectic situations.

* A lot of the builds damage comes from really really expensive flasks, and relying on situational things like the enemy being bleeding/being on full life, so even if you see big numbers in path of building, beware that that is reliant on having as many as 4-5 damage flasks active, having frenzy charges, being on full life, and the enemy being bleeding/maimed - in reality juggling all these things is very challenging and almost impossible in some fights.

At the moment I've cleared white/yellow elder, hydra guardian and most maps up to T13-14-15. At this stage probably going to re-roll to some clear-speed meme build, as while I realise this was never meant to be a clear-speed build, I miss it :P

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Zeekin wrote:

Been playing this build as a berserker since start of abyss league, thought I'd share some my experiences/opinions:

Spoiler

* Having only 1 6-link for your attack skill is really clunky - I tried using kaom's for a while, but having to swap gems is really painful/not practical. Instead I've now opted for using belly of the beast instead, so I can run a 6-link clear skill.

* I've tried a lot of clear skills, and by far the best combo has been wild strike + ancestral call - hits off screen and very quick. Sunder is slow and clunky, and heavy-strike with melee splash has a really small radius and slow attach animation. Wild strike on the other hand just feels really good, and even though it's 100% elemental conversion it doesn't really matter - since berserker's global leech has you sorted.

* Elder is easy (stun-lockable), was very easy on white/yellow maps (haven't tried red yet).

* Bosses that can't be stunned are sometimes practically un-doable. Especially struggled on rigwald (T14 dark forest boss), other than that, mostly very (maybe too easy) easy.

* Not having any real defensive layers makes the build kind of rippy in some situations e.g. on some harder map mods like enemies can't be stunned, 60% reduced life recovery or having multiple extra damage of an element, found myself getting one-shot off screen sometimes or in hectic situations.

* A lot of the builds damage comes from really really expensive flasks, and relying on situational things like the enemy being bleeding/being on full life, so even if you see big numbers in path of building, beware that that is reliant on having as many as 4-5 damage flasks active, having frenzy charges, being on full life, and the enemy being bleeding/maimed - in reality juggling all these things is very challenging and almost impossible in some fights.

At the moment I've cleared white/yellow elder, hydra guardian and most maps up to T13-14-15. At this stage probably going to re-roll to some clear-speed meme build, as while I realise this was never meant to be a clear-speed build, I miss it :P

Many thanks for your very accurate and honest review. Here I do want to make some comments.

I actually never thought about clearing with Wild Strike, and it definitely sounds like a viable choice. I will test this skill out soon. I think you didn’t like Heavy Strike for two reasons: first, Marauder needs one more gem for splash and does not have access to inc AOE as Slayer does; second, clearing with Heavy Strike is best with a different play style - Leap Slam to the center of a pack instead of starting attacking at the edge of one. I believe if you play more you will be more used to Heavy Strike.

There is a small list of around 5 bosses that are immune to stun, and of course it’s slightly more painful to deal with, all of them are actually very easy to kill if you know what you are doing.

This build definitely feels rippy under some map mods(cannot be stunned, for example). Especially so for Berserkers. The major reason I recommend Slayer over Berserker is that Slayer is much safer during mapping. Generally, I agree that this build indeed lacks defense if we fail to stun enemies. (Lagging as we jump into a pack of mobs can be lethal.)

Now here comes to the part that I really cannot agree. I think compared to any other build with the same Path of Building dps, this build kills faster. The reason I’m saying so is that we have the best environment to deliver steady damage output. All bleed/maim/frenzy etc can be up for literally the whole fight, and because we can stun the boss, there won’t be any BS that you will have to dodge; so we won’t waste anytime in moving around the boss. Let’s take the Shaper fight for example, I don’t think any build with the same dps number can pass phase one as fast as we can. (Because stunning prevents Shaper from opening minion portals.) There are two expensive flasks you can make use of, but it’s totally not necessary; I landed my first Shaper kill with just Lion’s Roar.

Overall, this build was indeed initially designed to be a boss stunner/killer. I admit that it will never have the clear speed compared to the clear-speed-meta builds. What I hope to deliver with this build is the fun of stunning and a solid build that people can easily follow to complete all endgame content.

I killed Uber Izaro for the first time today and several times after that!!
Trying to get the attack speed enchant on my boots for now, also im having lots of fun in lab :D

I only have a 5L and while using multistrike, i was able to stun him a lot, not stunlock but interrupting lots of his actions, and face tank him easily. Next time i'll try to kill him with some buffs on him, for extra keys.

I have one question.. Can we use a third jewel Weight of the Empire for more chance to double damage ?? Why is this not suggested ??