The Easiest of the Easy Beginner Build Guides [1.1 SotV UPDATED]

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sodium777 wrote:

well written guide! Just 1 questions, why do you recommend LA instead of ice shot for beginners? Ice shot's cc is pretty underestimated imo

the Text!... so bright!... I can't... my retinas!

Noob Question: Help bandits or not with this build? Prisma sounds nice, but i have no idea how important it is later... So, for a not wealthy (poor) player, what would you suggest?

PS: Build seems nice, good killspeed on lvl21 :)

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TheAndereth wrote:

Noob Question: Help bandits or not with this build? Prisma sounds nice, but i have no idea how important it is later... So, for a not wealthy (poor) player, what would you suggest?

PS: Build seems nice, good killspeed on lvl21 :)

In my experience, I would go with:

Normal: Help Oak EXCEPT if you are planning on using Kaom's Heart (get the skill point instead in this case, as if you take a life node with that skill point, it will give you a bigger bonus.. but ONLY if you take a life node with it)

Cruel: Attack speed if you use Elemental Hit. If you don't use Elemental Hit, it becomes a much more complicated question (if you use Frenzy for example), compounded if you end up using a Lioneye's Glare. You might want to consider the physical damage boost if you are going to use a physical damage based single target skill (especially since Frenzy charges already boost your attack speed anyways, and attack speed becomes less and less useful the more of it you get.. well, sort of, but that is a rather complicated discussion).

Merciless: If you use Frenzy and are focusing more on Frenzy charges, get the Frenzy boost.. otherwise, the skill point. However, the extra Frenzy charge is only really useful if you focus on maintaining max Frenzy stacks at all times to augment LA's damage, which is a very micro-intensive play style (and doesn't directly increase LA's damage all that much, it only increases the attack speed of LA more than anything else). It is also debatable how useful doing that really is in this particular build, as you pay an opportunity cost when refreshing Frenzy stacks as opposed to using LA. It's probably only really useful to do this if you have a very high amount of max Frenzy charges, which doesn't synergize well with the LA build due to the amount of Frenzy nodes you'd need to get (in my opinion). The other question to ask yourself here is if you want to use the unique Sharkskin Boots, which add a significant amount of bonuses to Frenzy charges, and if you use Lioneye's Glare, you can remove the Resolute Technique keystone to allow yourself to crit more, which will make it much easier to maintain Frenzy charges with the boots.

Since you mentioned that budget is tight for you, I suggest:
Normal: Help Oak
Cruel: Help Kraityn
Merciless: Kill them all

Even if you would take a life node over the 40 HP and are using Kaom's Heart, the actual difference in HP increase is pretty insignificant. Even with a 12% life node, that is 120 extra HP from Kaom's, and depending on how much base life you have (let's use 500 as an example), that would be an extra 60, for 180 total bonus. Compared to the 40 life, let's say you have 100% life bonus (you'll likely have more), that is 80 HP more with Oak's reward, so that 100 difference in this scenario would likely amount to less than 5% more health at end game (and probably even less). This all also assumes that you can get a Kaom's Heart.. heh!

Hope this helped, happy hunting!

I have 2 questions (beginner player)


1. Why the focus on strength nodes?
2. Why don't you take the ranger bow nodes ?

The Strngth nodes are taken because this build goes blood magic. Meaning you dont use Mana to attack enemies but your HP. Therefore you need more HP in general. Life will improve with taking +str nodes.

Also you would be able to use a skill that let you do more dmg from str nodes with bows as well. (Iron WIll? - not sure about the support gems name)

D.

ah I see, makes sense lol.

And the bow nodes aren't taken because of simple lack of points I take it ?

Oh hey, a ZiggyD thread.

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Darkenfall wrote:

ah I see, makes sense lol.

And the bow nodes aren't taken because of simple lack of points I take it ?

Grabbing straight up damage nodes is rarely recommended, by end-game your damage is usually fine with good use of support gems and a small amount of incredibly efficient nodes taken (the weapon elemental damage nodes in this case, 6 over the course of the build), survivability is much harder to get on gear than damage and you need to scale your defenses to your damage to ensure you don't die to Reflect mobs, which usually involves grabbing only a few damage nodes again, as damage ramps up more than health does late-game.

thanks for the fast and clear response ;-)

Thanks for your answer Eternal!

I killed them all in Normal and Cruel, but I think it's not that much of a difference, like your said.