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

I really appreciate fully trying to utilize a mechanic such as stunning - but I'm curious to how important this is overall as a focus compared to using a weapon with higher DPS? There are other Heavy Strike Builds out there that don't focus that much on the actual stun mechanic and they at least seem to clear faster.

I'm very interested in this build - as well as using a skill such as Heavy Strike that I haven't even looked at the last few years - and sucking enemies towards you with those gloves seem really fun as well. I'm just worried a bit about clearspeed since my last league starter was a Totem Build and even though it had millions of DPS it was still kind of a slow clearer because of all the manual placements of the totems - and in this game you are spending an awful lot of time not fighting bosses. =)

But maybe this is simply covered by your secondary weapon using Sunder? It's just... then it seems this build is 90% a Sunder build and Heavy Strike is mostly used on bosses? Am I completely wrong?

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Bizze79 wrote:

I really appreciate fully trying to utilize a mechanic such as stunning - but I'm curious to how important this is overall as a focus compared to using a weapon with higher DPS? There are other Heavy Strike Builds out there that don't focus that much on the actual stun mechanic and they at least seem to clear faster.

I'm very interested in this build - as well as using a skill such as Heavy Strike that I haven't even looked at the last few years - and sucking enemies towards you with those gloves seem really fun as well. I'm just worried a bit about clearspeed since my last league starter was a Totem Build and even though it had millions of DPS it was still kind of a slow clearer because of all the manual placements of the totems - and in this game you are spending an awful lot of time not fighting bosses. =)

But maybe this is simply covered by your secondary weapon using Sunder? It's just... then it seems this build is 90% a Sunder build and Heavy Strike is mostly used on bosses? Am I completely wrong?

Stunning serves 3 purposes.

1. To mitigate damage taken. This allows us to map carelessly without much risk. Most builds seek a balance between offense and defense; usually some investment needs to be made into one defensive mechanics(say, dodge). This build needs nothing besides a good life pool, so basically we are just investing into stunning instead of dodge, block, etc.

2. To create space for damage output. We don’t need dodge one shot skills(because enemies won’t have a chance to use these skills), and we don’t need to chase fleeing enemies. The Shaper fight is a perfect example: if you take a look at my Shaper video I finished the fight much much faster than any other build with similar DPS.

3. To ensure victory against most bosses. Stunning makes it so that we are confident against bosses. This is especially useful in early league as Atlas progression and Uber Lab are much less risky. We are almost certain to win any boss fight if we can stun the boss.

So compared to other Heavy Strike builds, this build won’t have lower real damage output and certainly has a much better survival. Clear speed is a bit lackluster unless you can find a good 2nd weapon; this is due to 0% local attack speed on Tidebreaker and very little can we do about it.

But to be honest the clear speed isn’t really bad compared to most builds, it’s only significantly slower when compared to those top clear speed builds; we deal good DPS after all.

Sunder is an AoE skill mostly for the Berserker version. I would prefer Heavy Strike if playing Slayer. Personally I think both skills clear as fast as the other.

I have thought about and experimented with a build variation with less investment into stunning and more damage or speed; at the end I liked none of the other variants. I feel that unless you like to farm lower tier maps, the safety that Tidebreaker offers is too good to give up.

Hey man, cool build.

I'm thinking about starting the next league with this kind of build, but I'm also interested in trying out the new Chieftain, so I was wondering what your thoughts are on a build kind of like this:

For clearing maps, use infernal blow + ancestral call. 100% fire conversion, and massive damage.

For bossing, swap infernal blow (or just have a second six-link hammer, since they aren't TOO expensive) for heavy strike, and chain stun it to death.

Do you think that it'll be possible to get our damage high enough to get solo Shaper chain-stunned with such a setup? I'm pretty sure that during the 3 seconds of 100% extra fire damage we'll be okay, but how about for the 7 seconds where it isn't? (As an added bonus, the fire damage on Kaom's actually does stuff now!)

Another question is should we use Herald of Fire (or really, should we use Xoph's blood)? I know one of the variants you posted is pure physical and doesn't use hatred; do you think that pure fire could substitute well using the nodes they've shown in the new tree?

Finally, if I assume that we take the path to the Hinekora node, and that we take the Tawhoa node, which node would you recommend for the final pick? Arohongui so that we deal 18% "moreish" damage? Ramako for the tankiness?

Thanks again for providing such a well-organized and carefully explained guide. It's quite inspiring!

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Notum wrote:

Hey man, cool build.

I'm thinking about starting the next league with this kind of build, but I'm also interested in trying out the new Chieftain, so I was wondering what your thoughts are on a build kind of like this:

For clearing maps, use infernal blow + ancestral call. 100% fire conversion, and massive damage.

For bossing, swap infernal blow (or just have a second six-link hammer, since they aren't TOO expensive) for heavy strike, and chain stun it to death.

Do you think that it'll be possible to get our damage high enough to get solo Shaper chain-stunned with such a setup? I'm pretty sure that during the 3 seconds of 100% extra fire damage we'll be okay, but how about for the 7 seconds where it isn't? (As an added bonus, the fire damage on Kaom's actually does stuff now!)

Another question is should we use Herald of Fire (or really, should we use Xoph's blood)? I know one of the variants you posted is pure physical and doesn't use hatred; do you think that pure fire could substitute well using the nodes they've shown in the new tree?

Finally, if I assume that we take the path to the Hinekora node, and that we take the Tawhoa node, which node would you recommend for the final pick? Arohongui so that we deal 18% "moreish" damage? Ramako for the tankiness?

Thanks again for providing such a well-organized and carefully explained guide. It's quite inspiring!

The problem with the Inferno Blow / Heavy Strike switch idea is that Heavy Strike will not have 100% damage converted and it’s damage is not going to look good. If Chieftain is picked I think almost certainly we are going to use Xoph’s Blood.

I pulled out a pen and paper and did some rough calculation, I believe Chieftain is still not going to deal as much damage as Berserker. The major problem being that Bloodlust is not going to work, Berserker’s 40% more Damage too powerful, and that end game bosses have 40% fire resist. I think a Chieftain version will probably have some problem stun-locking Shaper. It’s not impossible but it will be tough.

The damage boost for 3 seconds out of 10 seconds sounds so useless to me. I think it’s bad design and especially for us as a stun build the inconsistency here is pretty bad.

The Ascendancy choices are obvious to me, Ngamahu, Hindkora and Arohougui are must-picks; Tawhoa seems to be the best final pick.

Overall, I think Chieftain should be viable, although I doubt it’s performance for the Shaper stunning business. During normal mapping, Chieftain seems to have both solid offense and solid defense. I still haven’t done enough calculation and I want to wait until final patch notes to do so; maybe my idea will change afterwards.

Hey again!

I see your point about the more damage from berserker (although after the change it'll ONLY be 30% more <insert sarcastic commentary about how nerfed it is here>), and I know it's hard to compete with. Some follow-up questions I had are related to damage pen, flammability, and other stuff. As you pointed out, baddies in the end-game have 40% fire res. But we get pretty easy to access to quite a bit of ele damage pen in the form of Ngamahu's node (10%), Xoph's Blood (10%), and the Lava Lash Node (8%, right on the path for your 'zerker anyway), and rich bois can use a Watcher's Eye that gives fire pen with Anger. Combined with flammability, is that enough to overcome the res completely? And on a related note, would giving ele weakness be worthwhile? I know bosses take reduced effect from curses, so I'm not sure how worthwhile it would be, but I thought I'd ask.

The point you raised about losing bloodlust is something I don't really know how to resolve, though. Losing 60% more damage is really tough to compensate for. One thing I was wondering about after I made my post is if Endurance Charges could be incorporated into the build to help compensate for the lowered damage. Because of Tawhoa, we get 10% increased fire damage per charge. With our weapon we get 10% increased physical damage per endurance charge. 20% per charge seems pretty handy, but do most bosses stay stunned long enough to let us shout every once in awhile? Not sure it's worth as much as bloodlust, but it's something I was thinking about (especially since you're so close to so many endurance charge nodes anyway; getting to six should be trivial).

I'll definitely be trying this character out no matter what, so I'll let you know about the results if I decide to try to go against Shaper with it. I look forward to reading about your calculations if you decide it's worth the effort once the patch notes hit!

Haha, while reading another guide I had a really silly thought: what about using a scorching ray totem to debuff their fire res even further (since we need to have a totem down anyway)? Hahaha, thinking about it is too much fun, even if it's bad. ;)

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Notum wrote:

Haha, while reading another guide I had a really silly thought: what about using a scorching ray totem to debuff their fire res even further (since we need to have a totem down anyway)? Hahaha, thinking about it is too much fun, even if it's bad. ;)

Scorching Ray totem is pretty commonly used and is not a silly thought. As we don’t need Warchief to apply bleed or Maim Support debuff anymore, it can be a good choice. The increased damage from endurance charges is not going to be significant. It is way too easy to get increased damage and we have at least 750% increased damage in total, making additional 10% increased damage equivalent to less than 1.5% more damage.

There are quite a few changes to be made switching from Berserker to Chieftain and more calculations need to be done. I would probably spend some time after a while(gonna take a 12 hour flight tomorrow) and I will put up some more response after I reach some solid conclusions.

Btw, I don’t see Berserker’s 40% more damage needed to 30%. From what I have seen it’s still 40%?

Some nice buffs to Slayer w/r/t this build in 3.2 it looks like, I may try this as a league starter. Do you think Heavy Strike + Impact (and maybe Ancestral Call) will be good enough or would it be best to just stick with Sunder for maps?

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Mo_Steel wrote:

Some nice buffs to Slayer w/r/t this build in 3.2 it looks like, I may try this as a league starter. Do you think Heavy Strike + Impact (and maybe Ancestral Call) will be good enough or would it be best to just stick with Sunder for maps?

Long before the Impact buff(from 50% to 100%) and before the existence of Ancestral Call Support, I was already arguing that Heavy Strike clears as fast as Sunder. Now as the buff comes live next patch Heavy Strike is going to perform much better than Sunder; Impact is going to be a good reason to play Slayer instead of Berserker.

Well Berserker didn't get completely messed up. But gems for him are most likely going to be different now. How does HS-Melee Phys-AC-Ruthless-Melee Splash-Maim sound? If single target then run Bloodlust supp