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On September 30 2012 06:38 shabby wrote:
Think I have to take a break already. I'm some way into act 2 (7-8 hours played) and I rolled a 1h shield engi because I wanted to tank and thought it was viable. The thing is, it kinda is viable, I can take a lot of punishment so I don't die (Veteran), but after spending 30+ minutes killing a boss that just knocks back and teleports constantly I gotta admit it got boring very fast. I've maxed out the shield bash damage, almost maxed the +% damage from shield, and I keep my pet transformed for additional damage. I also gem for damage, and gambled up a very good weapon. But it simply takes too long to kill important shit, and left clicking gets old. In TL1 and D3 I just went ranged high dps and kited around so shit died in a reasonable amount of time, and I was hoping to get another kind of experience out of the game this time. Any bright ideas?
Strength is my highest attribute, followed by vitality, and rest in dexterity (very little, like 3-4% crit).
I went the same route as you, but u went for a physical tank and i went for an elemental tank. Ive been reading around and it seems that shield bash does really bad damage compared to the other skills. I know you dont have fire bash available yet, but its a fire attack using ur shield and it does so much DOT dmg. Instead of putting points into strength, i went for focus to improve my magic damage in combination with fire and spark passive. All those bosses's hp will go down because you dont need a good wpn to deal the damage. Just gear with fire % dmg and the right combination of skills.
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which stat boosts physical damage skills that dont have a weapon dmg modifier?
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On September 30 2012 07:44 LaNague wrote:
which stat boosts physical damage skills that dont have a weapon dmg modifier?
Which skills are you referring to? The only ones I can think of off the top of my head are the pets (Gun bot, Siege bot), which you can't boost through stats. You can boost through Pet/Minion Damage affixs.
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On September 30 2012 06:50 Wesso wrote:
How can I see which skills activate the "on hit" bonuses? Specifically for a Berserker, because I feel like none of my skills do which would make those bonuses kinda useless for me.
Armor Shred works on almost all skills (AFAIK), because it is a unique affix. Life on hit and Mana on hit do not work with skills.
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On September 30 2012 06:46 Blitzkrieg0 wrote:Show nested quote +On September 30 2012 06:18 Pwere wrote:
I have a question/rant for those of you who play coop. I might be doing something completely wrong, but it feels like these two points are mostly true:
1- Melee gets shafted in coop because monster damage gets ridiculously high/bursty.
2- Berserkers are terrible damage dealers (in coop games (unless you abuse infinite mana glitch from Battle Standard))
Point number one is pretty straightforward. Point number two is mostly compared to other classes. A decent Embermage around lvl 50 seems to deal about 10k per cast of prismatic spray (?) from the safety of distance, and Glaive Throw spam seems to be on par with this.
The berserker has some things going for him. Howl is a fantastic ability, and so is the Wolf summon. But that's it. I increase my allies' damage by 35%, which is a lot, and my Wolf deals good damage and heals me, but it is utterly boring, and trying to engage is pointless. That leaves you with Shadow Burst(?) spam (the one that heals you 5% per enemy hit and has no hitbox), Wolf pack spam through Battle Standard abuse (which somehow heals you), infinite northern rage, or the one I felt was less abusive, infinite storm axe throw (don't recall the name). The last three won't be an option next patch, and the first one might not always be viable, as it might lose its invincibility.
It seems like focusing on strength is worthless, as it forces you to use mostly regular attacks, which are worthless and dangerous. If you drop the shield to dual wield, you die. No amount of life stolen can keep you alive when you get bursted for more than your max life on a regular basis, and in any case, you'd need a lot of knockback resist from another source to be able to attack most bosses without a shield.
Has anyone found a way to build a viable strength berserker without relying on obvious glitches? On either Elite/Vet coop games. Even two players is enough to make surviving in melee a challenge, and it simply gets worse from there.
One option might be to focus on DoT instead of direct damage, but the mechanics of this seem pretty obscure. It would require that DoTs stack, ignore armor, scale with melee/dual/crit bonuses, but still work with health stolen % and provide charge meter. It would still feel completely wrong, but at least might be viable without relying on glitches. The key to beserker is shred armor. You need to get in there and steal so much armor that you don't take damage essentially. Ravage is a good way to do this since you spin and hit everything, although once the infinite mana glitch is fixed I don't know how viable this strategy will be (Ravage is 40mana/sec at level 1 and increases 1mana/sec/level I believe). You need to be casting Battle Rage so you can actually wind up. The real bane of this is that you're only "immune" to physical damage so you still have to pay attention to any elemental based attack because those will still one shot you  Some other things to consider are eviscerate gets some decent range from the tier bonuses. You may be able to hit and run with it. I haven't actually used it personally, but I've got a pile of skill poits saved so I can be flexible when the banner glitch is fixed and that seems to be the go to imo. I also like to bounce around with the Wolfstrike skill. When you're constantly moving a big distance, it becomes very hard for the enemy to hit you with elemental attacks. I think the best thing to do is wait until banner is fixed because it's incredibly hard to theorycraft it without knowing how much mana banner is supposed to give. I agree; Shred Armor is good, but the problem is exactly what you described. Any monster that has a "shotgun" type spell means instant death. Those are fairly common as well, so you can't engage for a good portion of act 3 and 4. Still, there's no reason not to max it, considering it's the only passive worth putting more than one point into.
As for Battle Rage, I'm pretty sure that the damage increase is additive with your other bonuses, so the +50% damage you might get in a pack is only about 20% more damage after your various bonuses. The defense buff only works vs physical which is, again, not a problem, also considering how easy it is to find gems with similar effects. Stormclaw is also free damage on your main attack. I have 5 points in it for the tier 1 bonus, but even with those two, your base damage is so low that doubling it is irrelevant compared to other classes.
I'm not sure for Eviscerate. You might be able to spam it with a non-glitched banner, and the DoT should deal significant damage. Raze is also worth mentioning for its amazing single target dps, but it is also much more useful in the hands of a Focus Zerker that can spam it for similar damage (and will probably have more cast speed than you). Note that Eviscerate and Raze become useless if you are affected by a slow that reduces both your attack and cast speed.
As long as allies don't have ways to help you mitigate damage, and monsters have increased damage in coop, I doubt that melee can be viable. Howl outdamages anything I can do anyway=)
Btw, Banner is supposed to give 24 mana over 4 seconds, plus 2 per point over 5. So 44 mana over 4 seconds at lvl 15.
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On September 30 2012 08:18 EchelonTee wrote:Show nested quote +On September 30 2012 07:44 LaNague wrote:
which stat boosts physical damage skills that dont have a weapon dmg modifier?
Which skills are you referring to? The only ones I can think of off the top of my head are the pets (Gun bot, Siege bot), which you can't boost through stats. You can boost through Pet/Minion Damage affixs.
sandstorm/shattering glaive for example.
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Eviscerate mana cost is actually pottable though. Like even constantly chugging mana potions you can't stand there and spam ravage because it costs so much mana even at level 1. At four meter range (tier 3) you may be able to "farcast" it as well, but even that seems like a stretch. Raze just seems utterly useless as the casting animation is too long. You do more damage using basic attacks unless you're using a slow weapon (and it's far easier to get higher dps with a fast weapon due to the iron gems that do flat physical damage bonus).
If your plan is to stand there and lifesteal it I dunno, but the whole melee sucks in coop games isn't anything new. Diablo 3 fixed the problem by removing the scaling damage from coop multipliers because it puts a huge burden on melee classes to the point of making them unplayble. There isn't really a solution to this issue either sadly unless you want to give melee characters a huge damage damage reduction which makes them unkillable in single player.
I think some tundra based build would be most useful in coop and even then you'd be there to freeze things rather than kill them.
Btw, Banner is supposed to give 24 mana over 4 seconds, plus 2 per point over 5. So 44 mana over 4 seconds at lvl 15.
The key is if it refreshes or not. If the mana gain is once per banner then it becomes useless. If it refreshes as long as you're in the banner and actually gives the proper mana gain then it would still give enough mana/second combined with mana potions to spam pretty much anything (namely Ravage). Right now you can cast Ravage and Wolfstrike constantly (at the same time even) for instance, but this isn't going to be possible after the mana glitch is fixed since it costs like 80mana/sec or something absurd. However, if you can constantly cast ravage and use wolfstrike to reposition it may still be viable as long as your pool is large enough that you can replenish between spams.
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On September 30 2012 06:58 recklessfire wrote:Show nested quote +On September 30 2012 06:38 shabby wrote:
Think I have to take a break already. I'm some way into act 2 (7-8 hours played) and I rolled a 1h shield engi because I wanted to tank and thought it was viable. The thing is, it kinda is viable, I can take a lot of punishment so I don't die (Veteran), but after spending 30+ minutes killing a boss that just knocks back and teleports constantly I gotta admit it got boring very fast. I've maxed out the shield bash damage, almost maxed the +% damage from shield, and I keep my pet transformed for additional damage. I also gem for damage, and gambled up a very good weapon. But it simply takes too long to kill important shit, and left clicking gets old. In TL1 and D3 I just went ranged high dps and kited around so shit died in a reasonable amount of time, and I was hoping to get another kind of experience out of the game this time. Any bright ideas?
Strength is my highest attribute, followed by vitality, and rest in dexterity (very little, like 3-4% crit). I went the same route as you, but u went for a physical tank and i went for an elemental tank. Ive been reading around and it seems that shield bash does really bad damage compared to the other skills. I know you dont have fire bash available yet, but its a fire attack using ur shield and it does so much DOT dmg. Instead of putting points into strength, i went for focus to improve my magic damage in combination with fire and spark passive. All those bosses's hp will go down because you dont need a good wpn to deal the damage. Just gear with fire % dmg and the right combination of skills.
Fire elemental % boosts at this point don't effect DoTs yet. Physical damage also scales poorly so I'd recommend going Fire bash/fire spark if you are planning to stick with shield/sword combo. Also fire bash is currently bugged from ranks 10-14 as it causes the DoT to only sometimes proc.
I'd recommend getting seismic slam/dynamo field and later on fire bash. Aside points in heal bot everything else should be in defensive passives most importantly charge recon a point in tremor does help clearing huge mob packs though. I tend to stick away from skills that benefit physical attacks because in most boss fights you'll rarely be attacking the boss with your weapon due to keeping the DoTs active and replenishing your health by using charges. Stat build wise I've been going full str until fire bash and then from that point full vit until enough block rate then you can pump focus for more fire bash dps or vit to be more tanky.
Also with this build most if not all of your dps is dependent on the armor value of your shield so if you've picked up any +physical armor iron embers be sure to save them for your upcoming shields. The quest reward for finishing the game first time round gives you a 150~ armor shield, stick 2 +physical armor embers in and you basically have enough dps for end game.
Missile reflection helps out tanking ability by a lot. Currently level 70 1h shield eng @ ng+ act 3 veteran mode and still breezing through everything.
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On September 30 2012 08:36 Blitzkrieg0 wrote:Eviscerate mana cost is actually pottable though. Like even constantly chugging mana potions you can't stand there and spam ravage because it costs so much mana even at level 1. At four meter range (tier 3) you may be able to "farcast" it as well, but even that seems like a stretch. Raze just seems utterly useless as the casting animation is too long. You do more damage using basic attacks unless you're using a slow weapon (and it's far easier to get higher dps with a fast weapon due to the iron gems that do flat physical damage bonus). If your plan is to stand there and lifesteal it I dunno, but the whole melee sucks in coop games isn't anything new. Diablo 3 fixed the problem by removing the scaling damage from coop multipliers because it puts a huge burden on melee classes to the point of making them unplayble. There isn't really a solution to this issue either sadly unless you want to give melee characters a huge damage damage reduction which makes them unkillable in single player. I think some tundra based build would be most useful in coop and even then you'd be there to freeze things rather than kill them. Show nested quote +Btw, Banner is supposed to give 24 mana over 4 seconds, plus 2 per point over 5. So 44 mana over 4 seconds at lvl 15. The key is if it refreshes or not. If the mana gain is once per banner then it becomes useless. If it refreshes as long as you're in the banner and actually gives the proper mana gain then it would still give enough mana/second combined with mana potions is enough to spam pretty much anything (namely Ravage). I think you misunderstand how Raze works. It deals 140% of your DPS per cast. Slow/fast weapon has nothing to do with it. I messed around with it, and it deals much more damage than you would expect as long as you chain cast it. The first cast deals 140% of your DPS, but the 2nd and every successive cast deals over 200%, and you also stack the damage buff it provides. It might be a glitch, but it works surprisingly well. If your weapon hits twice per second for 200, Raze level 1 would deal 560 for the first cast, and over 1k for every successive cast, at level 1. Level it up a bit, and you'd be hitting for 2k+ out of a 400dps character (so lvl 25-30). Throw in a little 20-25% cast speed for good measure, and you can kill anything in a single frenzy.
As for the Banner, it's supposed to give 6 mana per second, and you can stand out of it for 4 seconds without losing the mana buff. It's basically half a mana pot.
Finally, concerning the whole melee + coop thing, yeah, I guess you're right. But the problem is definitely compounded by the poor damage the berserker does (or strength builds in general).
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.... im trying to play coop on the internet.
almost everyone just leaves scared when i eneter or tries to vote ban me.
so many anti social people just making internet games for whatever reason.
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On September 30 2012 09:02 Pwere wrote:Show nested quote +On September 30 2012 08:36 Blitzkrieg0 wrote:Eviscerate mana cost is actually pottable though. Like even constantly chugging mana potions you can't stand there and spam ravage because it costs so much mana even at level 1. At four meter range (tier 3) you may be able to "farcast" it as well, but even that seems like a stretch. Raze just seems utterly useless as the casting animation is too long. You do more damage using basic attacks unless you're using a slow weapon (and it's far easier to get higher dps with a fast weapon due to the iron gems that do flat physical damage bonus). If your plan is to stand there and lifesteal it I dunno, but the whole melee sucks in coop games isn't anything new. Diablo 3 fixed the problem by removing the scaling damage from coop multipliers because it puts a huge burden on melee classes to the point of making them unplayble. There isn't really a solution to this issue either sadly unless you want to give melee characters a huge damage damage reduction which makes them unkillable in single player. I think some tundra based build would be most useful in coop and even then you'd be there to freeze things rather than kill them. Btw, Banner is supposed to give 24 mana over 4 seconds, plus 2 per point over 5. So 44 mana over 4 seconds at lvl 15. The key is if it refreshes or not. If the mana gain is once per banner then it becomes useless. If it refreshes as long as you're in the banner and actually gives the proper mana gain then it would still give enough mana/second combined with mana potions is enough to spam pretty much anything (namely Ravage). I think you misunderstand how Raze works. It deals 140% of your DPS per cast. Slow/fast weapon has nothing to do with it. I messed around with it, and it deals much more damage than you would expect as long as you chain cast it. The first cast deals 140% of your DPS, but the 2nd and every successive cast deals over 200%, and you also stack the damage buff it provides. It might be a glitch, but it works surprisingly well. If your weapon hits twice per second for 200, Raze level 1 would deal 560 for the first cast, and over 1k for every successive cast, at level 1. Level it up a bit, and you'd be hitting for 2k+ out of a 400dps character (so lvl 25-30). Throw in a little 20-25% cast speed for good measure, and you can kill anything in a single frenzy. As for the Banner, it's supposed to give 6 mana per second, and you can stand out of it for 4 seconds without losing the mana buff. It's basically half a mana pot. Finally, concerning the whole melee + coop thing, yeah, I guess you're right. But the problem is definitely compounded by the poor damage the berserker does (or strength builds in general).
Standing in one location to stack the Raze buff simply isn't viable most of the time regardless. I haven't actually tested above a single point in Raze (because it looked so terrible when I used it) so maybe you just need the +5%/damage/level to compound for it to be worthwhile. I'm still leveling up to 100 so I'll experiment more with builds after reaching that point. Abilities stacking with themselves shouldn't be a bug though. I think you'd need quite a bit of cast speed to make good use of the Raze bonus damage though and it'd still only be good in 1v1 situations which is practically never. I'd much rather be using an AoE ability and getting armor from everything around me so I can actually stay alive and hopefully moving because standing still is rarely good in this game.
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The endgame becomes a bit silly tho, either you have an engi with imba field turning everything into exmode while your dps amoves through everything, or else you get one shorted by everthing as a Mage or outlander (progression is still quite easy since you 1-2 everything anyways
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I'm going tanky summoner Engy. I just tank shit forever while my minions do all the fighting. Working pretty well so far on Veteran.
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N/m about Raze. Apparently, last time I tested it was before the patch. They've removed the hidden buff/glitch it had where it reported dealing 2x damage. It's now pretty bad, just like it says.
On another note, it seems like Shadow Burst heals you for 2x the amount it should. When it says 5% of your max life, it heals for 10% per target.
Also, it seems like the glitch where Battle Rage actually makes you take more damage per monster around you instead of less hasn't been fixed. But the gem with the same effect does nothing according to the character sheet. One of those is still bugged.
There's also an interesting fact about Physical Damage over Time. It is actually magical damage. It's definitely increased by Focus, but not by "All Damage" (i.e. Battle Rage, +% melee damage, etc.). Morever, Cold Steel seems to interact with DoTs. With level 0 Cold Steel, my Mace that has 110 physical damage over 5 seconds deals 140 damage over 5 seconds. With level 12 Cold Steel (+24% physical), this number goes up to 345. Eviscerate level 1, with lvl 0 Cold Steel, deals 1080 damage over 6 seconds at level 58. With level 12 Cold Steel, this number goes up to 2694. What's even more interesting is that it also affects Burning Damage by the same ratio. Eviscerate and Savage Rush deal insane damage with Cold Steel Mastery and high Focus.
Finally, it seems like Damage conveyed over time and Burning damage stacks with itself, but not the DoT from skills like Eviscerate/Shadow Burst.
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is it possible the dev was lazy and just made coldsteel increase all magic dmg and just said "ah well, close enough, berserker has not many non-frost magic sources anyways!".
so all DoTs are magical in nature?
do you know if focus affects physical skills that dont have a weapon modifier? i dont think strength does.
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I think Cold Steel increases only physical and ice magic damage by 2 and 6% per level respectively. It increases your sheet dps by that amount, and it does increase Ice skills by the amount it should. However, it also affects DoT by 10x the physical damage amount for some reason (20% per point in it). This might also be a weird display bug; it's hard to test those in the wild, but I see no reason why a physical/ice damage skill would bug the display for burning damage but have no in-game effect.
Edit: Tested it. Yes, Focus affects Physical Damage from skills, but not damage as Weapon DPS, unless said weapon is elemental damage.
Edit2: Master of the Elements reports the same damage increase to DoTs than Cold Steel does. At rank 12, you get a 2.4x DoT increase to Bad Breath, Flaming Glaive, Daggers. A rank 7 Flaming Glaive with rank 12 MotE deals 7400 damage over 6 secs, at level 59. Daggers deal 10k. I'm still not sure if it's in-game or only a display glitch. Hard to test.
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On September 30 2012 10:51 LaNague wrote:
is it possible the dev was lazy and just made coldsteel increase all magic dmg and just said "ah well, close enough, berserker has not many non-frost magic sources anyways!".
so all DoTs are magical in nature?
do you know if focus affects physical skills that dont have a weapon modifier? i dont think strength does.
The main thing is that the bleed dots should be affected by some sort of damage increase and neither really makes sense from a realism standpoint.
Also, it seems like the glitch where Battle Rage actually makes you take more damage per monster around you instead of less hasn't been fixed. But the gem with the same effect does nothing according to the character sheet. One of those is still bugged.
I've been using it constantly for the past few days and haven't noticed myself getting mega owned randomly. Haven't bothered with physical reduction gems though.
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On September 30 2012 10:58 Pwere wrote:
Edit: Tested it. Yes, Focus affects Physical Damage from skills, but not damage as Weapon DPS, unless said weapon is elemental damage.
wat
So those +Damage outlander spells are increased by focus? All summons also increased by focus? Dayum I have been looking at things wrong.
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I've tested it on actual mobs, and the damage is consistent. Focus seems to affect all skill damage aside from weapon DPS and minion damage. Master of the Elements is just as bugged as Cold Steel Mastery. They both affect DoTs 10x more than they should, and they even affect DoTs they shouldn't. Minion Damage is unaffected by any of these.
The fact that Physical Damage conveyed over time from weapons is affected by focus and not strength is really confusing. It's also unaffected by armor or crits, but I haven't tested it with damage buffs from items.On September 30 2012 11:46 Blitzkrieg0 wrote:I've been using it constantly for the past few days and haven't noticed myself getting mega owned randomly. Haven't bothered with physical reduction gems though. I think the value is only displayed incorrectly now, but the effect is either non existant or works fine. I agree that the feeling of getting randomly owned from before the patch is gone.
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EPT
