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

This build is really fun to play
I have tested it on a level 95 duelist and made some small adjustments

I use sunder to clear maps and heavy strike for the boss fight
sunder has a really nice clearspeed whit herald of ash and it is possible to stun all mobs even at tier 16 maps (not the boss)

Helmet devoto's devotion 4 link with herald of ash, enlighten, arctic armor and hatred

Boots redblade tramplers 4 link with blood rage, cast when damages taken (level 9) warlord'd mark (level 12) and fire golem (level 11)

Gloves veruso's battering rams 4 link with leap slam, fortify, blood magic, and ancestral warchief

tidebreaker 6 link with sunder/heavy strike, melee physical damage, faster attack, multi strike, added fire damage, weapon elemental damage

My damage in hide out with herald of ash and hatred

sunder 72k
Heavy strike 93k

with 5 frenzy, 5 endurance charge, totem, atziri's promise, taste of hate, lion's roar heavy strike reaches 330k damage plus 40% chance to do double damage From the two weight of the empire Jewel

I get 36% increased damage while leechin from carnage heart and 20% increased damage while leechin from hematophagy in the skill tree
I do not know if it shows in the offense state or not maybe there is somone that can answer that question

most of the tier 15 bosses i can just facetank Because of stun

ascendancy i took
Impact
Overwhelm
Endless Hunger
Brutal Fervour

I have only tested it in 2.6 so i do not know how it works in 3.0 but it seems to be a really strong build and I believe it is hc viable

Thank you brightwaha for sharing your ideas about this build

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germo78 wrote:

This build is really fun to play
I have tested it on a level 95 duelist and made some small adjustments

I use sunder to clear maps and heavy strike for the boss fight
sunder has a really nice clearspeed whit herald of ash and it is possible to stun all mobs even at tier 16 maps (not the boss)

...

I get 36% increased damage while leechin from carnage heart and 20% increased damage while leechin from hematophagy in the skill tree
I do not know if it shows in the offense state or not maybe there is somone that can answer that question

...

I'm glad that you enjoyed playing this build. Many people also suggested using an AOE skill to clear trash mobs, personally I still think Heavy Strike itself is good enough, but we will see in 3.0.

As for the increased damage while leeching passive, I believe it will show up in the tooltips when and only when you attacked and are leeching; so it's not included in your hideout dps.

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I've recently become interested in stunner builds. Excuse me, but I don't understand how you are clearing packs. Are you really using heavy strike to kill mobs of monsters?

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coatofarms wrote:

I've recently become interested in stunner builds. Excuse me, but I don't understand how you are clearing packs. Are you really using heavy strike to kill mobs of monsters?

Yes, that's how I do it. With the splash effect from Slayer ascendancy, Heavy Strike becomes a small AOE skill. I once bought 2 6-link Tidebreakers and equipped both; I put a 6-link Heavy Strike on one and a 6-link Sunder(or other skills) on another. After constantly switching weapons and playing for a while, I realized that I was more comfortable using Heavy Strike in all cases. Heavy Strike needs time to get used to and it's all down to preference. If you don't like Heavy Strike for clearing, go for a good AOE skill instead.

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brightwaha wrote:

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coatofarms wrote:

I've recently become interested in stunner builds. Excuse me, but I don't understand how you are clearing packs. Are you really using heavy strike to kill mobs of monsters?

Yes, that's how I do it. With the splash effect from Slayer ascendancy, Heavy Strike becomes a small AOE skill. I once bought 2 6-link Tidebreakers and equipped both; I put a 6-link Heavy Strike on one and a 6-link Sunder(or other skills) on another. After constantly switching weapons and playing for a while, I realized that I was more comfortable using Heavy Strike in all cases. Heavy Strike needs time to get used to and it's all down to preference. If you don't like Heavy Strike for clearing, go for a good AOE skill instead.

Have you tought to use pure physical setup like i did on my scion? It could push stun ability even higer.

Tho i don't use Kaom chest to have acess to AOE and not oneshot myslef on reflect mobs.

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Asheren wrote:

Have you tought to use pure physical setup like i did on my scion? It could push stun ability even higer.

Tho i don't use Kaom chest to have acess to AOE and not oneshot myslef on reflect mobs.

The Brutality gem is the main reason to go pure physical; I agree that the gem is really good, but I don't think it's worth it to give up on Hatred and Herald of Ash, which is 50% of phy dmg added as elemental. I have spent sometime thinking about this gem since its release and ... I just don't think there is anyway to go pure physical(give up on Hatred and HoA) and achieve the same power level as I'm currently at(dps and stun capability).

Also I am not sure about your second sentence. I use Kaom's Heart for the juicy flat life, and it is Slayer ascendancy which gives me AOE. As for reflection, I usually don't run maps with reflection mods(although I can, after changing some gems); and I don't really die to those rarely seen reflection mobs, my life pool(7.5K) and leech was enough to compensate for the reflection damage.

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brightwaha wrote:

Empire's Grasp 4L: Ancestral Warchief + Maim + Curse on Hit + Warlord's Mark (+ Knockback from glove)

-This totem provides damage buff from Warchief, bleed to enable Bloodlust, Warlord's Mark for stuns and leech, Maim for more damage, reverse knockback to pull mobs together. On top of that, the totem deals some damage. We should always keep the totem up at all times.

Curse on Hit doesn't work with totems (anymore?). How important is it and how should i apply the curse now?

Also if we use Ruthless with Multistrike, wouldn't that with enough increased stun duration be sufficient enough to permastun since the ruthless strike has base stun of 0.8? Multistrike alone may not cut it but if we add Faster Attacks our attack speed should outpace the ruthless stun.

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Thekal wrote:

Curse on Hit doesn't work with totems (anymore?). How important is it and how should i apply the curse now?

Also if we use Ruthless with Multistrike, wouldn't that with enough increased stun duration be sufficient enough to permastun since the ruthless strike has base stun of 0.8? Multistrike alone may not cut it but if we add Faster Attacks our attack speed should outpace the ruthless stun.

Many thanks for pointing out my mistake. Previously I was using curse on hit setup on my frenzy, and I guess I should switch back. I was misinformed by the skill tooltip, which I shouldn't really have trusted. Now we should do a Totem - Maim - Faster Attacks - Leap Slam setup plus a Frenzy - Fortify - Curse on Hit - Warlord's Mark. The curse is very important and greatly increases our chance to stun (although I was able to stun t16 bosses without that).

As for Ruthless: we never have any problem with the stun duration, all we are trying to achieve is higher chance to stun. I believe you thought Ruthless guarantees a 0.8 sec stun? Currently I am not running either Multistrike or Faster Attacks, and because every stun from Ruthless lasts 2.5 seconds, we have no trouble perma-stun mobs. The only problem is the chance to stun, which is related to our damage per hit, and is the reason we should not run Multistrike when fighting bosses with large life pool.

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brightwaha wrote:

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Thekal wrote:

Curse on Hit doesn't work with totems (anymore?). How important is it and how should i apply the curse now?

Also if we use Ruthless with Multistrike, wouldn't that with enough increased stun duration be sufficient enough to permastun since the ruthless strike has base stun of 0.8? Multistrike alone may not cut it but if we add Faster Attacks our attack speed should outpace the ruthless stun.

Many thanks for pointing out my mistake. Previously I was using curse on hit setup on my frenzy, and I guess I should switch back. I was misinformed by the skill tooltip, which I shouldn't really have trusted. Now we should do a Totem - Maim - Faster Attacks - Leap Slam setup plus a Frenzy - Fortify - Curse on Hit - Warlord's Mark. The curse is very important and greatly increases our chance to stun (although I was able to stun t16 bosses without that).

As for Ruthless: we never have any problem with the stun duration, all we are trying to achieve is higher chance to stun. I believe you thought Ruthless guarantees a 0.8 sec stun? Currently I am not running either Multistrike or Faster Attacks, and because every stun from Ruthless lasts 2.5 seconds, we have no trouble perma-stun mobs. The only problem is the chance to stun, which is related to our damage per hit, and is the reason we should not run Multistrike when fighting bosses with large life pool.

I corrected my mistake in the guide. Thanks again for pointing that out. I also added a discussion about curses to answer your question "how important is it?" You can find my newly added comments on curses at the bottom of the 'Gem Setup' section.