The PoE Class Build Arena

[JerekKruger]

If anyone wants me to do a class build and fight vs bog dragons (and maybe Brynlod) I can do this once I finished my first tyranny playthru.

 

I'd be keen to see a build if/when you have the time to post it up.

[Raven Darkholme]

Ok, will do.

It's probably not gonna take that long to finish Tyranny once, people say it's only 30 hours but I already submitted to restartitis once, 8 hours into the game and still Act I.

[Boeroer]

That's because every fight feels like it's done while swimming in sirup.

Ability use... massive cooldown starts... recovery takes forever... 10min later you defeated those two noname-trash-foes. 

Maybe the fights are faster when you don't choose PotD, but I doubt it. PotD in Tyranny so far seems to be supereasy by the way. I wonder what normal is like in Tyranny...

 

What is the exact time of your cipher? I will edit the opening post accordingly with an entrance of your build, the encounter and the time it took (like Magrans Faithful (upscaled), Bountysucker (cipher), Raven Darkholme, <min>:<sec>). Or so...

[Raven Darkholme]

Well on my second char in Tyranny I took a lot of abilities so I'm never on cooldown for long.

(And I haven't added any magic yet, but will do it now)

But, yeah until now it's pretty easy on PotD I even rerolled a third time just for testing purposes and now have a valid solo build with 100

def vs range and melee on level 3 and 90% deflection for hit to graze to miss and 60% for crit to hit and that's without mirror image which will get me to 200 once I have it.

But since I did not want to restart my maingame again I'll just stick with half of those defs and more offense.

 

The time for Magran's was pretty much 300 secs, a little less maybe, because When I went into my stats at the end of the video my food was still active, but as soon as I unpaused after the fight the food went away.

[Kaylon]

Well on my second char in Tyranny I took a lot of abilities so I'm never on cooldown for long.

(And I haven't added any magic yet, but will do it now)

But, yeah until now it's pretty easy on PotD I even rerolled a third time just for testing purposes and now have a valid solo build with 100

def vs range and melee on level 3 and 90% deflection for hit to graze to miss and 60% for crit to hit and that's without mirror image which will get me to 200 once I have it.

But since I did not want to restart my maingame again I'll just stick with half of those defs and more offense.

 

The time for Magran's was pretty much 300 secs, a little less maybe, because When I went into my stats at the end of the video my food was still active, but as soon as I unpaused after the fight the food went away.

What's your build? Until now I tried a build which maximizes the experience gained, but it isn't the way to go because the enemies become stronger faster (while your equipment and weapons don't follow)... This game encourages you to stay low level as much as possible to avoid having to fight too strong enemies...

[Raven Darkholme]

Unarmed (Push + silence blow) Diplomat + Bow (bleed).

Skill 50 Lore and get the Illusion Core + Mirror Image asap, also get the immunity to terrified and frightened ring and the poison immune ring.

I'm not really that far tho, due to having started with a party and not really wanting to restart.

But since I screwed over with the merchant who sells frightened ring and Mirrorimage I think I'll have to use another char anyway I don't really know when I'll have a second chance at those Items.

[MadDemiurg]

If speed is the main measure of efficiency (and we discount the pause time), priest would have it easily with wizard being close 2nd imo. Shining beacon does ridiculous amounts of damage with maxed might and int. Chanter you could probably just leave him there and win eventually though.

Edited November 20, 2016 by MadDemiurg

[Boeroer]

Unarmed (Push + silence blow) Diplomat + Bow (bleed).

Skill 50 Lore and get the Illusion Core + Mirror Image asap, also get the immunity to terrified and frightened ring and the poison immune ring.

I'm not really that far tho, due to having started with a party and not really wanting to restart.

But since I screwed over with the merchant who sells frightened ring and Mirrorimage I think I'll have to use another char anyway I don't really know when I'll have a second chance at those Items.

After seeing your vid about the solo unarmed guy who used mirrored image I restarted my own char (not solo) and skilled him for max offense + Mirrored Image. That spell is so good for a melee guy. I combined it with Rampage (Power) and most of he time the damgerous guys are dead before Mirrored Image runs out.

There's also some nice synergies like Know your Enemy (Verse) + Evasive + Mirrored Image: IF you get hit your dodge goes up while Mirrored Image goes down. Evasive always lets you use dodge instead of parry. She has a +20 dodge stance - and in the early game you can even give her the Fatebinder's shield which gives you add. +24 Dodge. She becomes more tanky the longer the fights last and usually is the last one standing if you take out casters first (which you should).

 

Tyranny encourages you to specialize. The more skills you use/train the faster you will level, which is bad because the enemies scale while your many skills are still not very high. It's better to use only one or two skills and max them out. This will prevent faster leveling while still giving you power. To be honest: the game is fun so far but that leveling system + scaling is total crap in my opionon. Very obscure and couterintuitive. Also, some talents seem to be really useless. Of what use is it to have a small chance to hit twice or thrice with basic attacks when the game encourages you to use as many special attacks as possible? Other talents on the same tier seem to be very power- or useful. Well maybe I'm just not proficient enough to see the sense in it. 

 

@Arena: fast casts are not very helpful if you get grilled after a few seconds. So either you kite or pull (which will prolong the fight) or you try to tank (which means you can't put all your efford into offense & fast casting). But I agree that a wizard has a big advantage because he can pile up some really nice defenses while casting very quickly with Alacrity. It's just quite touch to cast all those self buffs before they obliterate you.

[MadDemiurg]

For priests, it's not even about fast casts, it's about "I melt your face off" casts. Actually almost none of the best priest spells are fast.

 

Don't have time to record anything myself atm, but here's another guy's vid for Magran's faithful, ~5m combat with pretty extensive pausing:

https://www.youtu be.com/watch?v=i4X6Zlxufh0

 

Pretty sure could be done faster if speed is the goal.

 

I had some solo vids for priest myself for pre WM stuff, but they got taken down for some reason. But basically you could 2 shot Adra dragon with beacon + cleansing flame. Can be done quite easily with fire immune AD as well https://www.youtu be.com/watch?v=i4X6Zlxufh0 (same guy vid) but takes a lot longer cause fire immunity is a pretty big problem for priest kill speed.

 

As for Tyranny, soloing is a imo easier than PoE since you get way more xp. Yes, the enemies scale as well, but you get more powerful than them way faster. You also play with 1/4 of your party instead of 1/6. Thrown weapons + shield tank with spell support works pretty well. The hardest part is act 1, and dots are very powerful earlygame, stacking poison + bleed + magefire will kill stuff really fast. With frostfire sigil and the cone frost attack you can set entire groups on fire dealing over 100 aoe dmg. Wits is actually pretty irrelevant, dots, buffs/debuffs, cc don't scale with it. So best stats are finesse, quickness, vitality. I'd go might after that. 

Edited November 21, 2016 by MadDemiurg

[Boeroer]

It's not that easy to kill upscaled Magran's Faithful with Shining Beacon, even if you use all your ACC buffs it tends to only graze and then has to work against the burn DR. If you add Cleansing Flame it gets better. The symbol spell (in my case Berath) also helps. And Storm of Holy Fire is also not bad if you use a potion of Bulwark first and have a shield. But atm I always get killed because my health runs out (not my endurance, with Triumph of the Crusaders + other healings I manage to stay up until health is zero). But I didn't put too much efford into the test (no resting bonuses, no prost. bonuses, no story talants and such things). 

[MadDemiurg]

Did you see the vid? It's against upscaled faithful and the lowest hit chance was 77% with beacon, most were 100%. Probably 75% health left at the end as well. Priests have the highest accuracy with spells (or anything for that matter), if you count in the  buffs and debuffs they can do. Burn DR also doesn't do much since dots work vs 1/4 DR  as far as I remember and beacon does a ton of damage per tick. You probably don't have the right build/not using the right spells.

Edited November 21, 2016 by MadDemiurg

[Boeroer]

No, I didn't see the vids because your links are broken and I'm too lazy to fix them.

As I said - I only tested it briefly. I'm sure it can be done in a better way.  Five minutes sounds like a really good competitor. And sometimes you also need a bit of luck. If your pillar fails to prone some people the fight can take longer, if it knocks everybody down for some seconds the fight is over soon, if the stupid potion glitch takes over it can be very annoying and so on. 

Edited November 21, 2016 by Boeroer

[MadDemiurg]

They are not broken, I intentionally added a space so the forum won't try to inline them. You just need to remove the space. If you're too lazy to remove a space, well... :D

 

Yes, it can be done pretty easily. Point is, priest is probably the strongest aoe damage dealer in the game and a strong contender for single target as well, so if we talk speed, especially in multi opponent fights, I don't see anyone else coming close.

 

Priest solo upscaled Thaos w/o lame splitiing people usually do in this fight https://www.youtu be.com/watch?v=3fhRirQZ3BQ. I have a vid of my own for Thaos solo w/o splitting with a wizard https://www.youtu be.com/watch?v=kIDjoea4aHY (mine is dated, that was pre WM).

 

Wiz has the advantage of fast self buffs and some good burst damage with fast spells, but overall I think priest is stronger, especially if you consider that most of his stuff is party wide and is not even geared towards solo (but still works incredibly well there). Solo wiz early levels are bit easier though. But priest buffs, dots and seals are all incredibly strong.

 

Safest ToI playthrough is still probably chanter or pacifist rogue, but rogue is not great at fighting tough optional content like bounties if you use that to measure power. Tank paladin can hack through a lot of stuff slowly but surely but kill speed definitely not their forte.

Edited November 21, 2016 by MadDemiurg

[grausch]

@Arena: fast casts are not very helpful if you get grilled after a few seconds. So either you kite or pull (which will prolong the fight) or you try to tank (which means you can't put all your efford into offense & fast casting). But I agree that a wizard has a big advantage because he can pile up some really nice defenses while casting very quickly with Alacrity. It's just quite touch to cast all those self buffs before they obliterate you.

Not sure if you will find this helpful against upscaled opponents, but with the Wizard, Ninagauth's Shadowflame was extremely useful. Even if you graze most opponents, it buys time to cast Merciless Gaze, DAoM, and Eldritch Aim. Since you can see how long opponents are paralysed for, you could try and keep them in a state of constant paralysis until you are ready to fire off the Kalakoth's rakes. I only needed 1 try to win this encounter using that technique and all of the casters were down after the last Kalakoth landed, and several of the melee opponents were badly injured or near death. It was easy to then just get the Spirit Lance combos and mop up what was left.

[Raven Darkholme]

 

Unarmed (Push + silence blow) Diplomat + Bow (bleed).

Skill 50 Lore and get the Illusion Core + Mirror Image asap, also get the immunity to terrified and frightened ring and the poison immune ring.

I'm not really that far tho, due to having started with a party and not really wanting to restart.

But since I screwed over with the merchant who sells frightened ring and Mirrorimage I think I'll have to use another char anyway I don't really know when I'll have a second chance at those Items.

After seeing your vid about the solo unarmed guy who used mirrored image I restarted my own char (not solo) and skilled him for max offense + Mirrored Image. That spell is so good for a melee guy. I combined it with Rampage (Power) and most of he time the damgerous guys are dead before Mirrored Image runs out.

There's also some nice synergies like Know your Enemy (Verse) + Evasive + Mirrored Image: IF you get hit your dodge goes up while Mirrored Image goes down. Evasive always lets you use dodge instead of parry. She has a +20 dodge stance - and in the early game you can even give her the Fatebinder's shield which gives you add. +24 Dodge. She becomes more tanky the longer the fights last and usually is the last one standing if you take out casters first (which you should).

 

Tyranny encourages you to specialize. The more skills you use/train the faster you will level, which is bad because the enemies scale while your many skills are still not very high. It's better to use only one or two skills and max them out. This will prevent faster leveling while still giving you power. To be honest: the game is fun so far but that leveling system + scaling is total crap in my opionon. Very obscure and couterintuitive. Also, some talents seem to be really useless. Of what use is it to have a small chance to hit twice or thrice with basic attacks when the game encourages you to use as many special attacks as possible? Other talents on the same tier seem to be very power- or useful. Well maybe I'm just not proficient enough to see the sense in it. 

 

@Arena: fast casts are not very helpful if you get grilled after a few seconds. So either you kite or pull (which will prolong the fight) or you try to tank (which means you can't put all your efford into offense & fast casting). But I agree that a wizard has a big advantage because he can pile up some really nice defenses while casting very quickly with Alacrity. It's just quite touch to cast all those self buffs before they obliterate you.

 

If you solo it matters less if you specialize, since you get above level 18 super quick and enemies stop scaling after that.

I messed up my own build and after training unarmed and thrown in Act 1 I changed to one handed in Act 2.

I also was too lazy to return too spire and level one handed each time I leveled, so I ended up with now having only 120ish unarmed and only 170 accuracy (no acc gear yet, tho).

I still laugh at any human opponents in the game, only enemies that give me some trouble are banes, but I think I figured out quite a bit in fighting them and my gear can only get better is quite ****ty atm.

 

@OP

That priest fight is kinda interesting, but uses figurines, especially my cipher would have hugely profited from those (Concelhaut getting 160 each defense from my cipher by mindweb? allied cipher spells?), but as far as I remember we agreed on no figurines for this specific arena.

[Boeroer]

Yes - I also think Pull of Eora, combined with Shadowflame (fast cast), Petrify Wall of Many Colors and Freezing Rake (fast cast, ridiculous damage) can kill those guys even faster than a priest. Maybe it would also be worth it to test Llengrath's Blunt Wisdom with Blast & Envenomed Strike. On paper it seems to deal a ton of damage. I didn't test all that though. It's just a feeling. I love priests, also solo - but I'm not convinced that he could do this faster than a wizard. But please prove me wring, that's what the whole threat is about, right?

 

p.s.: A druid with Rot Skulls + Envenomed Strike + Venombloom + Plague of Insects and the usual Storms might also be a good competitor. Rot Skulls is much stronger than you might think when you only look at the description.

[MadDemiurg]

Well, it's not my vid and it wasn't made for this thread, just a demonstration of what you can do,

 

Pretty sure I'd be able to do it w/o figurines if needed. Also, using the fire storm spell in 1st half of the fight was imo suboptimal as you can see that probably 75% of the damage was done by shining beacon + cleansing flame in the 2nd part of the fight (the combo could likely easily go up to ~1k damage with maxed stats)

 

As for who's the fastest, only possible to do with actual testing, which I don't have much time for atm. I played and tested casters a lot a long time time ago, at that time it seemed that priest > druid > wizard in terms of spell damage (wizard having great burst but losing in the long run vs powerful priest and druid dots), wizard > priest > druid in terms of survivability and wizard also had the best spell economy with summoned weapons. A lot has changed since then though and I haven't played WM enough to have a definite opinion (only 1 solo playthrough for me). Druid has pretty great spells too, but the problem is the lack of good accuracy buffs/defence debuffs and a lot of the better spells targetting fort (the hardest save to crack overall), so feels like the weaker of the 3. Pretty decent at mopping up trash with wildform, but it's not what's needed for these fights.

 

Anyway, pretty sure these 3 would be the top ones in terms of speed, followed by chanter, cipher and monk. Paladins can do it, but are too slow. Barbs are good at aoe, but since most of barb exploits are gone I'm not sure they can do it at all. Maybe someone who's more proficient with the class as it works now can prove otherwise.

Edited November 21, 2016 by MadDemiurg

[Phyriel]

 

 

Tyranny encourages you to specialize. The more skills you use/train the faster you will level, which is bad because the enemies scale while your many skills are still not very high. It's better to use only one or two skills and max them out. This will prevent faster leveling while still giving you power. To be honest: the game is fun so far but that leveling system + scaling is total crap in my opionon. Very obscure and couterintuitive. Also, some talents seem to be really useless. Of what use is it to have a small chance to hit twice or thrice with basic attacks when the game encourages you to use as many special attacks as possible? Other talents on the same tier seem to be very power- or useful. Well maybe I'm just not proficient enough to see the sense in it.

 

My solo challenge ended at start of act 2 at lvl 12 (13 in video) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cg9WWKKMEKk when I gained aura of rage + material force buff with volcanic weapon expression. Later on in the game I just kept improving that spell as my lore went higher (str sigil) and at 21 (which happened in the middle of act 2 at blades edge) when I was no longer affraid of spreading too thin I just added all the other variants of material force buffs (fire, earth, lightning) I think I could optimize to have even more with some better talent choices for extra spells but it was already crazy overkill tbh https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3o_otob1-I 

 

Atm I'm done with Tyranny, i consider the game to be diabloesque on minor rpg steroids. 

[Raven Darkholme]

@Phyriel, btw I'm building a char on the side atm that is supposed to get superior to yours, I'll keep you posted.

[Phyriel]

Haha ait I know for a fact 2h char with 2h auto attack talents and improved crit + imbued weapons + all kind of material force and self buffs would be stronger since all the % based bonus dmg from imbued and material force as based on your initial dmg. I started doing char like that but I was like... whats the point I was already wrecking faces and playing with 1 hand, sometimes a bit afk since lvl 12 ;p

[Boeroer]

Funny, I'm building exactly this - with Rampage to ensure even more crits and Mirrored Image plus Haste. But I have to say that the early game is tougher if you don't take some special attacks. Power-Thrust with +15 ACC is quite nice early on though and you have to take it anyway.

[Phyriel]

Thats true but since act 1 is very dependant on leashing anyway that 1 less talent in early game can be just mitigated by few reloads to get that auto attack crits and it pays off really quickly when u get 1 more talent to put into something usefull that outvalues those thrust as soon as act 2 begins. I realized build like that would be insanely op very fast but i was already bored with my 1h+shield guy so now I was thinking about roleplaying a bit with 2h heavy armor death knight style. Using only Frost magic / Gravelight / Antrophy and maybe Emotion. Goal would be to go borderline on armor, defensive stance + heavy armor + frostmagic guarded form (obviously not vs crush dmg) + magic tree energy shield. I guess I could go and get like 40 armor on this guy Thats the only thing that keeps me interested in Tyranny for time being. Illusion + riposte and material force with volcanic weapon is just stupid op. 

Edited November 23, 2016 by Phyriel

[Raven Darkholme]

2handed is quite nice, I think I found something with more Utility, in the end it doesn't matter that much how badly you stomp the enemies, but I want something geared specifically to dealing with malices better.

[MadDemiurg]

Malices are only really even remotely threatening if you go pure melee, you can kill them with ranged and spells w/o any issues. You can do 2h spellblade that kills stuff with both magic and weapons or a thrown weapon tank or a full caster, all are viable for solo imo.

Wrong forum tho :D.

[Raven Darkholme]

Yeah, my "secret" build utilizes thrown weapons.

Btw even tho I didn't necessarily expect it my build does not need any leashing from level 5 on all fights done fair and square 1vs 5. :D

And yes, I only have 8 Vit. :D

 

And you are right this is the wrong forum, but the Tyranny forums are pretty boring for discussions like this.