Most O.P build

[Sergeant Poultry]

Title, what is the most O.P build that allows you to completely stomp the game (or come close to) on the hardest difficulty?

[steffire3]

Originally posted by Sergeant Poultry:

Title, what is the most O.P build that allows you to completely stomp the game (or come close to) on the hardest difficulty?

Some Dexterity benefits Critical Chances.

Engineer Builds that use Forcefield for survival,
At that point Emberquake, Blast Cannon, and Fusillade at max rank can destroy many foes.

Embermage built around Focus based Prismatic Bolt or Frost Wave.
Optionally built around Strength DPS with Shock Orb.

Outlander with Shotgonne Mastery and Venom Hail maxed plus Rapid Fire or Chaos Burst is guaranteed to lock down foes even Bosses invested into Strength.
Glaives can be amazing when invested into Focus.

Berserker with Shadow Burst, Wolfstrike, Savage Rush, Wolfpack, Ice Shield and Blood Hunger tend to be powerful. Strength for Dps Skills and Focus for other Skill damage.

[Uncle Fester]

Little correction, shock obs uses weapon damage, now weapon DPS

[Turuk Makto]

To me the most op builds are:

Mage with prism bolt and high cast speed with mostly passives and no pets. It is so op that it gets boring over time.

Zerker with wolfpack,storm hatchet and high cast speed. On max one storm hatchet gets you fully charged and makes wolfpack faster. It's fun with frenzy mastery and rampage because it makes you faster again. - Basicly you can rund blind cuz you shoot 5 op fire and forget missiles. I can watch a movie while playing on elite with that char.

Zerker with ravage is my favorite and the most underestimated spec. People say "but it is so low damage" because it says 35 % of weapon dps. But it hits 3 times. 3 x 35 % = 105 % effective damage + it hits multiple targets.

The downside of ravage is that you get it in your 40th. So what I do is I'm skilling howl and stormclaw + shadowbind. The last two both help you damage more mobs even though you are just hitting one. At higher levels ravage is so lethal that I keep forgetting to use all the 3 afore mentioned skills. If you use just ravage they die faster than when you take the time debuffing them first. Debuffing helps alot though if you are in a 3+ people game because then the mobs have massive hp on elite. Healing comes through the passive skill blood hunger and if there is a problem then I have a lvl 5 shadow burst that heales me. I never needed more than 5 points in it. My first one has just 1 point but with 5 I felt more secure. The rest of the skills I use are: executioner, rampage, ice shield (only 10 pts because of the reflection bug that can kill party members), cold steel mastery (along with an ice damage enchant on the weapons), savage rush (1 pt) just for faster running, frenzy mastery, shred armor, a few points in red wolf and rage retaliation (mostly just one).

My fastest farming mob is imho the outlander with chaosbolt and passives. I use it mostly without spawns but tried it with spawns as well. Never used the summonable pet though because chaos bolt is so strong on its own that I dont need anything else.

While the ravage zerker is alot faster than the outlander because of the frenzy skill the outlander is easier to control you shoot and run to the loot, while the zerker is in the middle of the action and has to run around alot to pick up the loot front, back, left right.

The most agile is imho the mage cuz he can teleport (frost phase) thus easily evade any attack if you are fast enough.

All of my specs need alot of mana regeneration which I´m gemming on the right side of the gear screen. On the zerker I started to use caster rings that give 1 % mana leech. Since mana is gone fast I´ll leech life and mana on normal attacks in between without the need of much targeting cuz when ravage cant be cast it does normal attacks anyways.

Shotgun is imho the crappiest spec because it has no reach so you'll barely use the shotgun anyways because getting close is getting you killed (at least on higher difficulty). Who plays a ranged if he has to get close to enemies anyways?

[ADEC Inc]

Originally posted by Fred_VIE:

Shotgun is imho the crappiest spec because it has no reach so you'll barely use the shotgun anyways because getting close is getting you killed (at least on higher difficulty). Who plays a ranged if he has to get close to enemies anyways?

Skills don't use the weapon's range, Rapid Fire compensates for normally low attack speed, and blinding enemies stops them from targeting you, which is the safest you can be outside of actual cheating.

[Turuk Makto]

Originally posted by ADEC Inc:

Skills don't use the weapon's range, Rapid Fire compensates for normally low attack speed, and blinding enemies stops them from targeting you, which is the safest you can be

Indeed thats what I said. "You will barely use the shotgun", you will use skills because they have reach, thus shotgun spec is pointless. On elite some mobs will get to you and kill you because of the missing shield sooner or later.

Also you have to actually target a mob to be able to shot the shotgun. With many other skills you just have to aim in the general direction of a mob no matter if and where they are moving. Single target attacks are way tougher to sustain because you often have to change target after one is dead. Even though shotgun hits more mobs it plays like single target attacks considering one has to switch all the time and the need for holding shift to not run is an uncomfortable position at best, at worst my hand is cramping up after a few minutes of trying to hold shift while shooting that damn thing :)

Also Rapid fire is imho one of the worst and weakest outlander skills. I have a friend who uses it and I am way faster with chaos burst than he is with rapid fire on lvl 100 in elite games. I myself have used rapid fire on an outlander but respecced because I found it slow and ineffective compared to other skills.

Even my lol sandstorm build that I ran an outlander with was better than rapid fire.

But I guess one cant discuss taste :)

[ADEC Inc]

A "spec" includes the relevant skills, and the point of the shotgun spec is to blind enemies. They won't kill you because they literally can't attack you. Even if you equipped the weakest shotgun in the world, the blindness of Shotgun Mastery and the knockback of Rapid Fire wouldn't allow any enemy to touch you.

Chaos Burst does have a higher damage spike potential than Rapid Fire, but only at close range or in confined spaces, and as you said, "getting close is getting you killed." If you really want the fastest kills possible you'll be using Venomous Hail anyway.

[Turuk Makto]

Originally posted by ADEC Inc:

If you really want the fastest kills possible you'll be using Venomous Hail anyway.

I´m using it along with chaos bolt, but I just need it on bosses, the trash is dying too fast for it to be necessary. Not to mention that chaos has a wider arc thus damages bigger groups unlike hail which is a pretty localized skill with a short but annoying cd when speed is key.

Most outlander gear has knockback thus rapid fire does not have any advantage whatsoever and cursed daggers can push close mobs back just fine either. The only use I see with rapid fire is that when grouped with someone who has it chaos burst kills mobs even faster because of the armor reduction debuff it does.

It sounds nice with what you are saying about blinding the mobs but there are alot of charging and teleporting mobs around that can get you charging from outside the visible screen or teleport to you from there hitting you, ranged groups who shoot at you as soon as you are in range if you see them or not so chances are pretty high you are going to die alot on elite because its hard to hit what you can not see in time.

There is jewellery that has a chance to immobilize mobs and that set does not need a shotgun and works just fine with all outlander skills.

I also can not confirm your claim that chaos burst just works well at close range, since nothing comes even close to me to begin with. So it seems pretty strong up far too, but that maybe the passive poison explosion skill I´m always using with any spec.

Lets just agree to disagree :)

My shotgun outlander is around 60 atm because I found a legendary shotgun months ago already thus raised one even though I never wanted to. I still hate to play it. :)

[ADEC Inc]

Yes of course trash mobs will die to anything. That's the intent of the game's design.

https://tidbi.ru/eng/searchv2.php Searching for outlander gear with knockback returns 5 items, most of which are nothing special. Cursed Daggers does not apply blindness, though it is a great way to reduce incoming damage for other builds. Rapid Fire has the advantage of applying blind and knockback very quickly, as no matter the enemy's resistance they still take a portion of both effects. Blindness stacks with itself up to 100%, so the greater number of hits works to your favor.

I've never been charged from offscreen or telefragged, but I have heard this mentioned many times. I wonder if it has anything to do with the game resolution one plays with. The one thing I've noted is the dwarven walking turrets that shoot the instant they appear, but that hasn't been a problem.

Immobilize can be completely resisted, especially by bosses. Nothing is immune to blindness.

My experience with Chaos Burst at longer range is that I burn an awful lot of mana throwing bolts and waiting for them to hit what I wanted to kill. I can make them hit more reliably by getting closer but that exposes me to greater risk. Despite my own preferences I've never called Chaos Burst useless though.

[Turuk Makto]

Well most of my outlander sets and many weapons have knockback so I´m fine. With the Labarinto set I'm not even using the 7th part that gives the knockback because I simply dont need it with CB.

Getting charged/shot onto from outside of the viewing screen happens to me when I run north and south mostly. Thats why I prefer shields.

Unfortunately I have not had luck getting a proper working specimen of the monitor I would like to have since online shops have been invented. Lately I had to return three because they where broken or flawed and I´m not willing to pay 1k for a monitor thats less than perfect.

What resolution are you playing on?

[ADEC Inc]

I was once curious about how the knockback value translated into distance pushed, so I tested with the highest total knockback I could achieve - somewhere over 800 in the end. The results were unimpressive even against standard mobs, due to resistance. Increasing the rate of fire on the other hand, shoved them back more quickly. Knockback synergizes well with blindness because you're reducing their vision radius and removing yourself from it simultaneously.

I play most games in 1600x1200. My monitor is capable of better, but I still play a lot of much older games, so I don't have much incentive to crank it up. I've tried various scalers and filters but the results were unsatisfactory.

[Turuk Makto]

I didnt need to test it because I have several toons with that skill and slightly different sub skills and it works perfectly. Even with just 15 % chance to immobilize bosses keep standing around doing nothing after a hail and CB is taking care of the trash so fast that there is, most of the time, not even time enough to push them back or stun them.

Also there is no hassle of trying to push back every mob line separately because of the bolt spread.

Without the need of mods, modded gear or high lvl gear I might add.

There is absolutely no need to push a mob to the other side of the screen.

[ADEC Inc]

Originally posted by Fred_VIE:

There is absolutely no need to push a mob to the other side of the screen.

Indeed there isn't, which is good because it doesn't work that way as I said.

That was purely a test I did years ago out of curiosity, but the conclusion was that higher rate of fire on knockback attacks worked better than trying to stack more knockback value.

In any case the knockback is secondary to the blindness. It simply puts you outside of their vision a little bit sooner.

Trash mobs, again, die from just pointing sternly in their direction.

[Turuk Makto]

The game consists of 99 % trash mobs and every single legendary I have dropped from a trash mob.

[ADEC Inc]

Yes. And..?

It's not a question of whether they can be killed, but how to kill them safely. Blinding shotgunner is the safest method there is, to the point of actually becoming boring pretty quickly. The total removal of threat makes it feel like cheating.

Your legendary drops are to be expected. The quantity of kills is always more significant than the drop rate of an individual mob.