Best/Fastest Arena build - NG+ - easiest way to farm Legendaries/Level

[MDS]

Hey folks,

Found BH:L again recently and had a blast playing through again from scratch. Also hit NG+ and spent some colosseum/arena time. Tried out a bunch of builds, from the web and my own head, and found the following to be far the most effective. This is my variation on all the builds out there.

This build clears Arena faster than any other I have played. It scales well with gear, but also with the mobs you're up against - so you can also hit kill scores above what other builds may allow. It is not an "immortal" build (which is damn slow anyway).

The point of this build is to hit 100 arena kills asap (for the legendary item), and reset. However, you can push into the multi-hundreds if your goal is to level instead.

Skills

Premeditate (Ranger) - only used to cast Revenge. Premeditate has a 15s CD, which (in this build) means it is up a lot. Revenge has a 30s CD, which means that if you cast it with Premeditate then Revenge becomes a 15s CD skill. In this build, it's up for 9s (Favoured Soul), and with the CD acceleration we have, that means that Revenge is up...permanently.

Revenge (Knight) - This skill wipes out all the pesky archers and mages that you can't be assed to run around and kill. It crits, to help Impending Doom. It heals, under Aura of Light. It strikes anything that hits you, including spells. And it scales with their damage, helping you wipe higher level waves.

Tornado (Witch) - Does rubbish damage, but it ticks like a sonovabitch and crits away all your CD because of Impending Doom.

Blizzard (Mage) - see Tornado.

Victory Banner (Knight) - 50% crit chance, and some crit damage boost. Key engine of the build. With this up, every single hit - including all the Tornado/Blizzard ticks - take 1s off your Radiance, Banner, Premeditate (Revenge)...it basically means you can permanently spam spells without any down-time.

Aura of Light (Pally) - Heals

Radiance (Pally) - Main AOE. Board wipe. The 20 sec CD typically takes about 3s in practical terms with all the above. Add in revenge, and the whole wave is typically dead in <10 seconds; faster for earlier waves of course.

Time Stop (Wizard) - an "oh ♥♥♥♥" button, as in "Oh ♥♥♥♥, I'm taking too much damage", or "Oh ♥♥♥♥, Banner is on CD", or "Oh ♥♥♥♥, I meant to hit premediate before I clicked Revenge, but I didn't". 5 seconds to take a sip of coffee.

Passives

Impending Doom (Nin-gaaa) - because, well, Because.

Arcane potency (Battlemage) - crit on this build is almost 100%, so may as well take 50% more damage.

Wild Magic (Wizzy) - 10% crit on spells

Staff Master (Wizzy) - because it's all spells

Student of the Mind - because CD recovery is nice. If you're going for Levels and Distance in the arena, consider swopping this for Life Leech (Witch).

Favoured Soul (Monk) - because this increases Revenge and Banner and is a nice QoL.

How to play:

Cast order: Premeditate -> Revenge -> Tornado -> Blizzard - these four are cast immediately in succession, and set you up. Then: Banner -> AoL -> Radiance and everything dies and all your CDs reset. Handy.

After that, just keep everything up.

Gear:

Woteva.

Robes of the Shadomancer are beter than Cowl of the Red Fang because we don't want Dex - wasted stat. However, the instant cool down on RotS is actually a bit annoying, leading to some "did that click?" moments. First-world problems. Crystalwave also works.

Best staff you have.

Crit trickets >> life steal >> CDR

Stats:

Int, with a bit of skill to raise your crit level up so that when you hit banner it's basically 100%. 20-30 poitns skill with the rest in Int.

Assumes NG+. If you don't have NG+, make damn sure you get Generalist from Bard before you waste attribute points learning other skill trees. Equip it in the tavern, buy the skill, unequip it.



There we go...10 mins of my life I'll never get back for the 3 people that read this post :) You're welcome!