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

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Crêpo wrote:

I've been eyeing this build up for ages because I absolutely adore the concept; stun-immune maps and bosses are putting me off somewhat. I wish stun-immune was swapped to stun-resist, much like the elemental ailments mod.

Can you comment on a couple things for me:

Won't crit builds have much greater success stunning due to their RNG hit-damage spikes? Won't these blows have an extremely high chance to crit?

How valuable is shock from Starforge when it comes to critting? This seems like a natural synergy since you're built to deliver maximum damage from each blow which would give a potent shock application.

Would jugg/champ Scion solve some problems vis-a-vis endurance charges vs. stun-immunity?

EDIT: I just thought about it some more and the fact is you're already stunning everything that can be stunned without crits and shock, so why bother factoring for these things. I just wish stun-immunity was coded as -100% stun duration or something like that. le sigh

It is indeed very annoying that some bosses have stun immunity and I completely agree that changing stun immunity to stun resistance would make this build much more fun to play. I am more bothered by the fact that syndicate members are all stun immune, instead of, say, having 1 out of 4 of guardians immune to stun.

Crit builds are easier to be able to land a few stuns, but non-crit builds are easier to guarantee stun-locking. In other words, if your damage is really low and you're hoping for maybe 1 stun every 5 seconds, then crit makes sense; if your damage is really high and you're going for 100% stun-locking, then consistency in damage is more important.

Shock from Starforge is definitely going to be effective, even against Shaper. The problem with Starforge is that it's really difficult to stack r.E.S.T. without Tidebreaker.

As for Jugg/Champ Scion, well, I do like the concept of Scion but picking Jugg just for the endurance charge generation against a small number of bosses that have stun immunity seems quite inefficient to me.

Great response, thanks. Agree about Jugg, I'm over-focused on the stun-immune bosses and the 5% damage per endurance charge synergy. Thoughts on grabbing Unwavering Stance on your way past?

EDIT: have a look at this Scion setup if you have some time:
https://pastebin.com/R6eYd9ti
Little more DPS than Slayer (loses a bit of per-hit damage, and gains some attack speed). Loses the over-leech and reflect immunity, gains 10% max hp, free fortify, taunt, intimidate, onslaught - probably substantially tankier with this setup?

EDIT 2: It looks like PoB isn't calculating the damage-spread change from Ryslatha's Coil at all, it only factors in the added physical damage. The Shaper DPS needs inflating some 30% from the displayed value, right? Very impressive if true.

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Crêpo wrote:

Great response, thanks. Agree about Jugg, I'm over-focused on the stun-immune bosses and the 5% damage per endurance charge synergy. Thoughts on grabbing Unwavering Stance on your way past?

EDIT: have a look at this Scion setup if you have some time:
https://pastebin.com/R6eYd9ti
Little more DPS than Slayer (loses a bit of per-hit damage, and gains some attack speed). Loses the over-leech and reflect immunity, gains 10% max hp, free fortify, taunt, intimidate, onslaught - probably substantially tankier with this setup?

EDIT 2: It looks like PoB isn't calculating the damage-spread change from Ryslatha's Coil at all, it only factors in the added physical damage. The Shaper DPS needs inflating some 30% from the displayed value, right? Very impressive if true.

Unwavering Stance is completely unnecessary as we get 50% stun recovery from Stun Mastery wheel, and another 30% from Soul of the Brine King, which means each stun only lasts about 0.07 seconds on us.

I am at work and cannot check PoB, I do have a Scion version posted in the thread and I wonder how similar will yours be. I will check your link after I get home.

Ryslatha is indeed not calculated by PoB. But it won’t be as high as 30%; for my own setup it’s equivalent to 23.6% multiplier to DPS.

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brightwaha wrote:

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Crêpo wrote:

Great response, thanks. Agree about Jugg, I'm over-focused on the stun-immune bosses and the 5% damage per endurance charge synergy. Thoughts on grabbing Unwavering Stance on your way past?

EDIT: have a look at this Scion setup if you have some time:
https://pastebin.com/R6eYd9ti
Little more DPS than Slayer (loses a bit of per-hit damage, and gains some attack speed). Loses the over-leech and reflect immunity, gains 10% max hp, free fortify, taunt, intimidate, onslaught - probably substantially tankier with this setup?

EDIT 2: It looks like PoB isn't calculating the damage-spread change from Ryslatha's Coil at all, it only factors in the added physical damage. The Shaper DPS needs inflating some 30% from the displayed value, right? Very impressive if true.

Unwavering Stance is completely unnecessary as we get 50% stun recovery from Stun Mastery wheel, and another 30% from Soul of the Brine King, which means each stun only lasts about 0.07 seconds on us.

I am at work and cannot check PoB, I do have a Scion version posted in the thread and I wonder how similar will yours be. I will check your link after I get home.

Ryslatha is indeed not calculated by PoB. But it won’t be as high as 30%; for my own setup it’s equivalent to 23.6% multiplier to DPS.

I took a look at your PoB page. It's interesting that you choose to use Might of the Meek and it's surprisingly good. I planned around it when it came out and somehow I didn't find it appealing at that time.

I compared this to my own Scion tree and I think it's about 10% less damage and 8% more life; considering that life is more difficult to get, it's superior in this sense. You also get a ton of resists near the Scion start, which allows more room for life or damage from jewelries as well.

One big issue with this tree is that you lose the Bloody Bludgeon wheel, which offers life leech and chance to bleed. Now you will need to socket Chance to Bleed Support to Warchief to enable Bloodlust on your Heavy Strike, and you will need to find a source of life leech on your jewelries. Another hidden problem is the loss of jewel sockets for rare jewels and thus the loss of stun duration.

It's very difficult to draw an objective conclusion, but for sure this is a tankier variant to my Scion version that I posted and will suit the needs of those who desire more defense than offense. I will definitely spend more time on this and maybe I will have some new thoughts later on.

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brightwaha wrote:

One big issue with this tree is that you lose the Bloody Bludgeon wheel, which offers life leech and chance to bleed. Now you will need to socket Chance to Bleed Support to Warchief to enable Bloodlust on your Heavy Strike, and you will need to find a source of life leech on your jewelries.

Yep good point. It's not too hard to tweak the tree into that wheel + jewel slot though.

Problem with the build is no ascendency is exactly right! Slayer is good but I can't help but feel like it's "lazy". Everything in there feels like a quality of life upgrade rather than real power. Scion looks good, but you can't really make use of the extra starting location - It's probably actually better if you don't use it.

By the way, can you apply the same principle to Glacial Hammer? Is freezing the Shaper a fantasy? I know it only makes him act more slowly (not sure how much more slowly) but it seems like your sort of thing, although the math is much less interesting. I see you need 1M damage to get the smallest duration freeze on him, and from the skill + tree you can grab +95% duration so you're down to ~500k hit to freeze him for 0.3s, similar threshold to stunning.

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Crêpo wrote:

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brightwaha wrote:

One big issue with this tree is that you lose the Bloody Bludgeon wheel, which offers life leech and chance to bleed. Now you will need to socket Chance to Bleed Support to Warchief to enable Bloodlust on your Heavy Strike, and you will need to find a source of life leech on your jewelries.

Yep good point. It's not too hard to tweak the tree into that wheel + jewel slot though.

Problem with the build is no ascendency is exactly right! Slayer is good but I can't help but feel like it's "lazy". Everything in there feels like a quality of life upgrade rather than real power. Scion looks good, but you can't really make use of the extra starting location - It's probably actually better if you don't use it.

By the way, can you apply the same principle to Glacial Hammer? Is freezing the Shaper a fantasy? I know it only makes him act more slowly (not sure how much more slowly) but it seems like your sort of thing, although the math is much less interesting. I see you need 1M damage to get the smallest duration freeze on him, and from the skill + tree you can grab +95% duration so you're down to ~500k hit to freeze him for 0.3s, similar threshold to stunning.

It's actually not very easy to get Bloody Bludgeon with your tree because Might of the Meek takes a lot of skill points; to get Bloody Bludgeon you will need to sacrifice some key nodes. I think I'd rather just pick up life leech from jewelries and get bleed chance from support gem.

Slayer is not just quality of life. The over-leech is a very strong reason to play Slayer, as well as the stun nodes and splash nodes. Berserker is also a very powerful choice. I think a good reason that Slayer and Berserker are my top choices is that they both can leap out of combat and still recover life (Slayer over-leech and Berserker warcry). A problem with Scion is that you don't get as much life recovery (especially while retreating), which is not a big deal while mapping, but can be a huge deal if you want to do challenging contents.

I don't think freeze is a good mechanics for bossing. As you said, if you really invest into freezing, you get 0.3 seconds for ~500k damage, but we are getting >2 seconds for the same threshold. You also need to crit to be able to freeze, which means you will need insane damage per hit as well as high crit chance and attack speed. Then, even if you get all of that, Shaper is only slowed and can still cast his slam.

I hear you, the feeling I get about overleech is that you shouldn't need it. It kinda feels like cheating you know? I agree it's incredibly strong, and if you drop the melee splash you get +100% stun duration and stun immunity from the other Slayer ascendency. Overall I think you're right and it's a better choice - more focused on what your build is meant to do.

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Crêpo wrote:

I hear you, the feeling I get about overleech is that you shouldn't need it. It kinda feels like cheating you know? I agree it's incredibly strong, and if you drop the melee splash you get +100% stun duration and stun immunity from the other Slayer ascendency. Overall I think you're right and it's a better choice - more focused on what your build is meant to do.

i went with overwhelm instead of impact and it felt great overall for mapping since everything was guaranteed stunned on first hit, and Ground slam + multistrike pulled in all monsters to continue the stun lock

i am thinking of making this my 3.6 starter, probably as serker and pure phys to be considerably cheaper overall (tidebreakers are 5c-10c)

i really enjoy the stunning playstyle and serker achieves the necessary dmg on alot lower gear cost than other ascends. serker MS and warbringer heals are also insane for QoL (if a bit annoying to spam!)

id probably ditch crave the slaughter and go war bringer, aspect, then go pain reaver and cloaked. pain reaver lets me skip the mana leech jewel or affix, freeing up for more ASPD or resists

cloaked is very situational but its not terrible. i like it better than the flat 12% dmg ascend nodes

I have another comment on the Slayer vs. Scion discussion:

The Slayer DPS relies heavily on the writhing jar procs, while not only does Scion not need this, it also gets free intimidate from champion ascendency.

It looks to me like you have Slayer for mapping, Berserker for bossing and Scion as always is in the middle of the two.

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frawrst wrote:

i really enjoy the stunning playstyle and serker achieves the necessary dmg on alot lower gear cost than other ascends. serker MS and warbringer heals are also insane for QoL (if a bit annoying to spam!)

id probably ditch crave the slaughter and go war bringer, aspect, then go pain reaver and cloaked. pain reaver lets me skip the mana leech jewel or affix, freeing up for more ASPD or resists

cloaked is very situational but its not terrible. i like it better than the flat 12% dmg ascend nodes

I think generally Crave the Slaughter is much better than Cloaked in Savagery, maybe with the exception of challenging boss encounters like Uber Elder.

Crave the Slaughter basically ensures that you will have max rage stacks at all times, which is especially handy while mapping. I don't really think anyone would like to spam warcries all day while mapping just to keep rage stacks up. (Unless macros, which is technically not allowed and you won't be able to cast warcries right after taking damage.)

So giving up Crave the Slaughter seems like a huge clear speed loss to me. Cloaked in Savagery is, well, unlike adrenaline, only lasts for 4 seconds. The buff uptime would be insanely low, and would only be useful during challenging boss encounters (the ones we can't stun).