I finished the story content, so guess I’m “end game” now. I watched a video on crafting, but not sure.
Do I go for resistances, like in POE? I know resistances work completely differently, but it still seems important to not die in one hit. What’s a good amount to aim for, if so?
I like the idea of the crafting system, by the eay, reminds me of an MMORPG I played ages ago called Aika in many ways.
I’m playing a Beastmaster build with wolves, scorpion, bear, fury leap, and serpent strike. I’m level 41ish. I should probably try to go for strength, minion health regen, and minion damage i think, in addition to resistances. Maybe mimion resistances, if that’s a thing.
The only good uniqies for my build I’ve found, and am using, are the Arboreal ring thingy that summons a tree sometimes when you’re hit (apparently with super omega taunt) and the claw ring thingy that gives you an extra wolf.
(No seriously, minions will travel far and wide to attack this tree. It’s so amazing and odd at the same time lol)
For summoner Primalist, the only uniques you want are extra wolf amulet and possibly extra companion helmet.
There are 2 areas you should devote your gear affixes to: defense and offense.
For melee/caster types offense includes attack/cast speed, damage, critical chance/multi and the like.
Summoners have minion damage, minion health and minion dodge rating instead.
Defense includes glancing blow, dodge rating, vitality, elemental protections, health, block affixes (chance/protection/damage reduced).
IMO, Glancing Blow Chance is worth going for, for any build. you want 100%, there are 2 different prefixes that give up to 15% each (22% for body armor), so you need 6-7 good rolls on your gear.
Dodge Rating is debatable. You want at least thousand, and that’s too many affixes to afford, unless your class/build can stack DEX or has passives that increase dodge rating (Beastmaster).
Ward is only viable for INT-based classes (mage, acolyte). You’ll need to stack INT and take ward retention passives.
What’s left is effective health in the form of health + protections.
there are 2 ways to go: stack health or stack protections.
If your class/build has passives that increase health, go for max health (necromancer has Tyrant). if you have bonuses that increase protections, stack protections (vitality, elemental protection, “Glancng Blow Chance and Armor” for armor. Armor affix per se is not worth it IMO). Druid has passives that increase protections and armor.
The general idea is to maximize your effective hp (sum of health and protection against certain element). Argument for health is it “protects” against all types of damage, and there are many affixes that help to stack it (health added, health increased, glancing blow chance and health, set health). Argument against health is you’ll need to restore health to survive. More health means your potions/leech/heal/life gain will be less effective in restoring your health to full. This is argument for protections - they “take” part of the damage that you don’t need to restore. but if you want to stack protections instead of health, you’ll need to pay attention to all of them (there are 7 kinds including armor).
stats are not worth stacking on gear IMO, except vitality for protections and INT for Ward builds.
It’s funny how they call it crafting when it feels to me more like enchanting or enhancing. In any case, it’s cool to be able to add stuff to your items - the system seems pretty cool so far. I’ve just been using materials I come across, and tossing on what looks useful. shrug
I’m really enjoying the game as a whole so far, and I look forward to more polish!
affix management is important.
prefixes are usually the important part, while suffixes are mostly reserved for health/elemenal protection
for example, a typical melee prefix setup can look like this:
Amulet, Relic: phys.damage, crit chance/multi, or vitality
Head: Cooldown reduction
Rings: health leech
Gloves: attack.speed
remaining affixes: glancing blow up to 100%, then Vitality
For pure summoner:
6-7 glancing blow, 3-4 minion health, 3-4 minion dodge;
minion physical damage is a prefix, and I only put it on a weapon, because other prefixes are more important.
minion damage is a suffix (weapon, rings, amulet, relic).
As you can see, they are pretty different setups and because of that it’s hard to make a good setup for a build that is both melee and summoner.
You could try to stack strength, which affects both your damage and minions damage/health, but it’s less effective than minion damage/health affixes.
I am not very experienced and only played sorceror, but heres my few observations:
Since most stuff is additive, you need to focus on the few multiplicative factors. Glancing blow is the most obvious one. (i think they already indicated this will be nerfed or adjusted somehow so that it wont be a no-brainer to max it in the future)
The shield is also pretty straightforward: you want the highest block chance you can get, and block protection > block armor as if im right, it protects you against everything including physical attacks that armor protect you against.
if you want to get yourself tougher, you would need to add: Armor + Elemental defence + Vitality. (or worse yet, the 3 defences given by vitality seperately). Thats a lot of seperate stats. For an equal amount of stats, you can get significantly more health. On top of that, there is actually a % health modifier. (so that is a multiplier instead while all else is additive). Therefore, i think its probably best to ignore all those defences and just get as much health as you can. (A mix of added and %)
On the offence, you have:
base damage * total of all other mods * crit * attack/cast speed.
Dont know for the other classes, but i suspect its pretty much the same. Base dmg comes from your weapon 250% ish. Total of all other mods is spell dmg, elemental dmg comes from both items and passives, will very easilly get to between 500 and 1000%. Means that another 50%, which is typical for a single stat will only be 5-10%. So it’s probably best not to focus on this, but focus on those remaining multipliers instead: crit and attack/cast speed. For the mage i didnt get to trying out crit because i feel its only worth it if you can get very high crit chance and i didn’t get to the point of gear quality that makes that possible.
Thanks for the advice, Alchemist. I think for me, the best damage is minion damage but it’s additive and not multiplicative (I’ve played games like Path of Exile and technically even League of Legends extensively that use multiplicative damage so I know the difference). My Serpent Strike does OK damage, but my pets do more than I do. I figure as long as I can live – and they can live – then the damage will be mostly fine.
Also thanks to Magaiti. Because of both of you, I now know that Glancing Blow is important and I should focus on it first and foremost.
Cooldown reduction doesn’t help me much (the only skill I could really use more is Leap Slam, maybe the wolf cry but it seems bad because isn’t that additive? So not even really worth using. But if there’s nothing better to focus on then OK.
I’m not sure how I like dodge though. I’d rather be able to tank hits when I get hit (and especially spell-based AOEs) as opposed to hoping I dodge and get lucky. (Same for my pets.)
Overall though, good advice, and it gives me an idea of what to do going into crafting.
Getting some dodge rating is always a good idea. The damage mitigation especially when you get to higher arena waves is far better than from protections alone. It also allows you to have damage mitigation that does not diminish with increased life. Dodge rating has diminishing returns itself though so you dont need to fully invest into it. 300 or so for example is perfectly fine. And if i remember correctly will put you at 20% ish. You can still maintain solid protections. This of course depends on your gear quality though. Minion dodge rating from your passive tree is a good idea. But only if youre planning on doing arena where the damage scales pretty huge the farther you go.
For a beastmaster I think cooldown reduction is not needed at all fyi.
If you’re using strength based minions I think its absolutely one of the best prefix stats because it scales base minion hp and gives damage. It also gives you % armor , therefore making % armor affix one of the worst.
If you’re using strength based minions I think its absolutely one of the best prefix stats because it scales base minion hp and gives damage.
Well, you have to compare it to affixes that directly increase health/damage.
8 strength gives your minions 32% increased damage and about 8% increased health.
The formula for health is:
so if you already have say 400% increased minion health, another health prefix will add ~130%, which is 130%/500% ~= 25% increase, while strength will only give you say ~8% increase. And minion damage is a suffix, so it doesn’t take prefix slots at all.
Dodge is probabilistic defense, it prevents damage on all or nothing basis. this makes you more prone to one-shots than ehp-based protections (glancing blow, protections, health/ward). It’s nice to have, but only when you have other defenses at adequate level.
For Strength based minions it adds flat health. For wolves for example its 15 points per point of strength. So I’m not really sure what you’re talking about as far as minion health goes. The more % increased minion health you have the better the strength stat becomes.
Yes it doesn’t prevent pure one shots but theres a ton of danger in the arena of “shot gun” one shots. Like packs of skeletal archers for example. Dodge helps a lot in these types of situations. I think health for the player is actually not very important in the current build of game because of the down scaling to protections when you have more health. Glancing blow is of course amazing for yourself and for minions.
yes, flat health. but on average 1 strength adds about 1% of total health, or less.
because wolves have (300 + 15 per level + 15 per strength), and at level 80 this already translates to 15 * (100 + strength).
Dodge as protection against shotgun one-shots is a good point, thanks!
Health is either your pump stat or dump stat. Either you maximize health and take protections when there’s nothing better to take, or you maximize protections, and take health when there’s nothing better to take. Summoners usually don’t have prefixes to spare for vitality, so I go full health with them (health added/increased as suffixes, “glancing blow and health” as prefix). Exsanguinous also adds Ward based on health, so for int-based builds I try to maximize ward by choosing good ratio of ward retention and health, and ignore protections.
