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

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sparkdaniel wrote:

Hey man, leveled this toon, 70 for now, but clear speed is like real slow, at least if you want to clear a lot of maps, would AoE improve this? any ideas on how to clear faster? I already have the slayer ascendancy.

Thanks.

To improve clear speed, there are mainly 2 ways:

1. Use Herald of Ash. This skill provides huge clear speed, but you lose defence from grace, which can be essential in high tier maps. I recommend to try it out. Also, having 20 quality faster attacks gems on Heavy Strike and Leap Slam can be very helpful if you don't already have them.

3. Get used to melee targeting. I actually clear maps faster with Heavy Strike than any AoE skills like Sunder. Leap Slam to the center of the pack and Heavy Strike, since Heavy Strike deals so much damage, usually the random targeting due to Multistrike gem will be enough to clear everything around you.

I actually never had any problems after switching on a Devoto's Devotion. Both mobility and clear speed was enough for me. For sure this build cannot compete with some super fast cyclone or flicker builds in terms of mapping speed, but it was good enough for me to drop my mobility flask and I never thought about picking up one again.

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brightwaha wrote:

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DiscoPug wrote:

I was wondering if this works with a 5 link Tidebreaker?
if so what skill would you drop in the 6 link for it
here's my tidebreaker

Only 4 gems are necessary. First 3 are Heavy Strike, Melee Phy Dmg, Added Fire Dmg; the 4th link is Multistrike for dps or Stun Support for stuns. For the 5th/6th links, you can choose from Faster Attacks, Melee Dmg on Full Life or Weapon Elemental Dmg depending on your gears and encounter.

A 5 link Tidebreaker is good enough. You lose about 20% of dmg compared to a 6 link weapon, but everything else works well.

Thanks for the clarification!,

I'm doing a similar build (currently level 59) but I'm using two handed sword, instead of maces. I know maces are better suited for stun builds, but I want to try this out (perhaps the attack speed and crit focused build will short the gap)

Any ideas/suggestions?

Is it possible to stunlock some of the more endgame bosses like Shaper, Uber Atziri, Guardians etc?

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Haadd wrote:

I'm doing a similar build (currently level 59) but I'm using two handed sword, instead of maces. I know maces are better suited for stun builds, but I want to try this out (perhaps the attack speed and crit focused build will short the gap)

Any ideas/suggestions?

Are you considering a unique sword , like the Starforge? or a rare one? In terms of stun capability I don't see any other weapon at the same power level as the Tidebreaker(non-crit) or Hegemony's Era(crit version). If you are not sure what to do, and really don't like the Tidebreaker, maybe you can consider the Hegemony's Era(skill tree needs to be adjusted for some staff and crit nodes).

With that being said, if you really want to try a sword build and use a similar heavy strike setup, it is totally fine. You might be able to reach even higher dps potentially but you will be having some problem stunning endgame bosses.

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Bigschwang wrote:

Is it possible to stunlock some of the more endgame bosses like Shaper, Uber Atziri, Guardians etc?

In short, it is possible, but extremely hard. Designers for sure do not want to reward 1-key spamming facetank gameplay so that stun chance is inversely proportional to boss's life pool. I have no problem stunning t15 bosses and Lab Izaro, but Uber Atziri and Guardians have much higher life pool(and Shaper even higher). So I failed to stunlock them.

But in theory, it is possible. There are several ways:

First and the easiest, aurabot. Auras and curses greatly increase our chance to stun and thus make it totally viable to stunlock any bosses except Shaper. For the Shaper fight, after calculation, I think I will still fail to land stuns even with the help from an aurabot.

Also, we can always respec some survival nodes to improve our damage and thus our capability to stun. We can also use physical to lightning support gem together with good penetration and curses to achieve higher damage.

One way to invest more into damage is to pick up Hegemony's Era instead of Tidebreaker. One of my friend switched to this weapon and achieved more than 1 million dps while still keeping a good amount of stun threshold reduction.

In conclusion, it is totally possible to stunlock Guardians(3 of them) with little to some investment. To stunlock the Shaper, I think you need at least a glass cannon character together with a good aurabot/cursebot to make that happen.

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brightwaha wrote:

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Haadd wrote:

I'm doing a similar build (currently level 59) but I'm using two handed sword, instead of maces. I know maces are better suited for stun builds, but I want to try this out (perhaps the attack speed and crit focused build will short the gap)

Any ideas/suggestions?

Are you considering a unique sword , like the Starforge? or a rare one? In terms of stun capability I don't see any other weapon at the same power level as the Tidebreaker(non-crit) or Hegemony's Era(crit version). If you are not sure what to do, and really don't like the Tidebreaker, maybe you can consider the Hegemony's Era(skill tree needs to be adjusted for some staff and crit nodes).

With that being said, if you really want to try a sword build and use a similar heavy strike setup, it is totally fine. You might be able to reach even higher dps potentially but you will be having some problem stunning endgame bosses.

Yeah, in my case I'm set for sword cos I'm fond of the "swordsman" stereotype in games. I'm aiming for Starforge right now.

I'm currently 75+, and my experience with this build was better while rushing through the campaign, while mapping it's disapointing, clear speed is so slow and ranged attacks can be a major pain in the a#$.

Here's what I've been doing: alternating between flicker strike and heavy strike (with two "weight of the empire" jewels), I'm still able to deal huge amounts of damage through heavy strike, with 61% crit chance fully buffed plus insane mobility and trash clearing with flicker strike. Boss fights are usually very fast, with high damage spikes, sometimes one shotting elites.

I like it because flicker strike teleport me into the fray, and heavy strike blows things up. I'm using Terminus Est sword, but I think it's not mandatory for this, since Flicker strike can be used only for mobility and proccing fortify. Of course I still use leap.

Haven't done any end game content yet, since I'm still levelling, bit merciless lab was quite easy, even in level 66.

Great fun with this so far!

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Haadd wrote:

Yeah, in my case I'm set for sword cos I'm fond of the "swordsman" stereotype in games. I'm aiming for Starforge right now.

I'm currently 75+, and my experience with this build was better while rushing through the campaign, while mapping it's disapointing, clear speed is so slow and ranged attacks can be a major pain in the a#$.

Here's what I've been doing: alternating between flicker strike and heavy strike (with two "weight of the empire" jewels), I'm still able to deal huge amounts of damage through heavy strike, with 61% crit chance fully buffed plus insane mobility and trash clearing with flicker strike. Boss fights are usually very fast, with high damage spikes, sometimes one shotting elites.

I like it because flicker strike teleport me into the fray, and heavy strike blows things up. I'm using Terminus Est sword, but I think it's not mandatory for this, since Flicker strike can be used only for mobility and proccing fortify. Of course I still use leap.

Haven't done any end game content yet, since I'm still levelling, bit merciless lab was quite easy, even in level 66.

Great fun with this so far!

Sounds like you are doing pretty well. Heavy strike can certainly work for any weapon type and the stun mechanic is also not bound to maces.

One thing to keep in mind is that the Starforge limits damage type to physical, which means you cannot use Added Fire Damage gem, Hatred aura and Weapon Elemental Damage gem(which is getting nerfed in 3.0). I guess it's alright and you can just use Crit Chance and Crit Dmg gems instead. Haste or maybe even Determination can be used to replace Hatred.

I expect you to achieve a decent dps. But one limitation of this sword variation is that, when fighting higher tier bosses, you might not be able to either shock or stun, thus face some challenges due to lack of both damage and defence. You might need to experiment a bit to figure out how to deal with that.

This is a fabulous build! Thank you for sharing!

Question: In regards to mana regen, was there a need for physical leech for mana? I seem to be having issues with keeping enough mana to spam heavy strike.

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Pracis wrote:

This is a fabulous build! Thank you for sharing!

Question: In regards to mana regen, was there a need for physical leech for mana? I seem to be having issues with keeping enough mana to spam heavy strike.

You definitely need some sort of mana leech. My character only has 0.4% from my ring, and it was enough for me; heavy strike is one of the least expensive skill in terms of mana usage. If you have no mana leech from gears, you can take the mana leech node right above the Iron Reflexes node.