So I made a stupid glass cannon build...

[vindicar]

Basically, a plain cold-shock Saboteur: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/1NXOY0LZ
And while I'm able to take down things like Korvaak with it, that's mostly by running around like a headless chicken and spamming Stun Jacks+Whirpool while twin Mortars do all the work. Obviously, any heavy stun/slow-oriented boss is a massive threat, because most hits put me into "almost dead" territory, and if Pneumatic Burst is on cooldown, I'm down to hoping Twin Fangs or Lifestealer Nova will proc. Against normal bosses I can leverage Evade and Stormclap to escape their attacks, at least. Mind you, that's on Normal+Veteran...

Is there something I can do to make the build a bit less glass-cannony? Sacrifice skill bonuses for better armor? Drop Murmur in favor of a more defensive-oriented constellation? Replace gear components?

[shotgunharry]

You have 10 points invested in dual blades and Belgothian Shears while using a 2 hand weapon. dual blades is for dual wielding 2 swords for example.

before maxing out skills max out the bottom bar. gives you all basic stats like physique and health. you have 24 attribute points not used. put them into physique. use demolitionist blast shield and turtle devotion.

you use stun jacks and mortar as main damage output which are lightning/physical but focus on cold damage with your items. shadow strike damage comes mostly from weapon damage wich is in your case vitality. your build is all over the place. 26 points in amarastas blade burst which is for pushing cold/acid damage.

you don't need 3 damage skills. focus on 1-2 and focus on one/two damage types.

[Hobo Elf]

-Blast Shield on the Demo is one of the best defensive passives in the game and you don't even have 1 point in it.

-Vindictive Flame + Ulzuin's Wrath is also another great defensive tool. The lightning that arcs over enemies and knocks them down is very powerful against large packs of enemies. Even 1 point in both passives can do a lot for you.

-Your devotions are not good, too much put into offensive procs and not enough in Offensive Ability or OA%. The way you statted your devotions isn't actually helping you much in the 'cannon' part of glass cannon as you'd think. And that's putting aside the fact that even glass cannons need to shore up their defenses.

-Even as a glass cannon you are expected to hit resistance caps otherwise you just die.

-Rumor and any other procs that reduce resistance to types of damage you do are the last things you'd want to drop since those are the skills that are actually enabling you to do damage. You can have all the procs in the world and it won't matter if you are hitting enemies with high resistances to those damage types.

[Neit]

Additionally to what shotgunharry said, few more things:
- you have a lot of different elemental skills, but you have skipped Thermite Mine, which should be your main resist reduction skill
- your damage is all over the place, focus on one or two damage types,
- you ignored basically any defensive or otherwise useful skills like Vindictive Flame, Blast Shield, Temper or Elemental Awakening
- your resistances are terrible, either visit reputation vendors or craft something so you can get your resistances closer to the cap

[vindicar]

Originally posted by shotgunharry:

You have 10 points invested in dual blades and Belgothian Shears while using a 2 hand weapon. dual blades is for dual wielding 2 swords for example.

I have 2 points invested, the rest are occasional +skill bonuses which I picked up along with the bonuses I was going for (mostly cold aura). The scythe is a very recent addition, my other weapon set is dual melee with +resist auras. The 2 points I invested are purely so I could make use of the bonuses.

Originally posted by shotgunharry:

before maxing out skills max out the bottom bar. gives you all basic stats like physique and health. you have 24 attribute points not used. put them into physique. use demolitionist blast shield and turtle devotion.

I have 0 (zero) unused attribute points . I'm unsure why the tool shows I have them, I don't have them in the game. Still, thanks for the advice, I will keep it in mind for the future builds!

Originally posted by shotgunharry:

you use stun jacks and mortar as main damage output which are lightning/physical but focus on cold damage with your items. shadow strike damage comes mostly from weapon damage wich is in your case vitality. your build is all over the place. 26 points in amarastas blade burst which is for pushing cold/acid damage.

you don't need 3 damage skills. focus on 1-2 and focus on one/two damage types.

Sorry, I wasn't clear enough. I am pursuing a cold damage build, and Shadow Strike/Amaranda's are my main damage dealers (game shows it as 10k DPS). Well, at least for engaging heroic mobs and non instant-death-radius bosses. But since I knew I'd struggle with some of the more aggressive and damaging bosses, I chose Demolitionist as a backup plan. Stun Jacks provide crowd control/ranged damage and Mortar is for when I really have no choice but to run around trying to stay alive. They aren't targetable, so I find them better than regular pets.

Also, the medal has fire-to-cold conversion, which I hope translates into Mortars dealing some cold damage. The big question is - does damage boost happen before or after conversion? Because if after, then I'm swapping that medal out, it's not worth it.

Still, thank you for taking your time and making those suggestions. I wasn't sure if pushing mastery bar past the skills you need is worth it.

[vindicar]

Originally posted by Hobo Elf:

-Blast Shield on the Demo is one of the best defensive passives in the game and you don't even have 1 point in it.

Doesn't it requrie a shield? I had a demo build before, but it was a purely ranged one.

Originally posted by Hobo Elf:

-Vindictive Flame + Ulzuin's Wrath is also another great defensive tool. The lightning that arcs over enemies and knocks them down is very powerful against large packs of enemies. Even 1 point in both passives can do a lot for you.

Hmmm, Vindictive Flame is mostly Fire/Physical, though. Ulzuin's Wrath, however... I will give it a shot, thank you.

Originally posted by Hobo Elf:

-Your devotions are not good, too much put into offensive procs and not enough in Offensive Ability or OA%. The way you statted your devotions isn't actually helping you much in the 'cannon' part of glass cannon as you'd think. And that's putting aside the fact that even glass cannons need to shore up their defenses.

-Even as a glass cannon you are expected to hit resistance caps otherwise you just die.

-Rumor and any other procs that reduce resistance to types of damage you do are the last things you'd want to drop since those are the skills that are actually enabling you to do damage. You can have all the procs in the world and it won't matter if you are hitting enemies with high resistances to those damage types.

Yeah, swapping out the medal (I used to run Gutworm's) made me drop a couple resistances to below cap. I will probably reverse that, if turns out that fire-to-cold conversion is not worht it in my case.

As for devotions - yes, that's where I struggle. On one hand, I really like having Leviathan's Whirpool, it's a good ability - or at least it feels good to use. =)
On the other hand, I literally carved the shortest path I could think of to it, and still I've barely fit it into the base game + AoM + FG. There aren't many constellations I can drop without losing the Leviathan.
My current thought is to drop Tsunami - it has done its job, I've been using it for the better part of the game. And probably replace it with Sailor's Guide or something similar that offers +resitances.

Finally, yeah, I have absolutely zero idea how OA and DA work. I think your OA versus target's DA affects miss chance, but I'm probably wrong. So I haven't paid any attention to it whatsoever.

Thank you for your suggestions.

[vindicar]

Originally posted by Neit:

Additionally to what shotgunharry said, few more things:
- you have a lot of different elemental skills, but you have skipped Thermite Mine, which should be your main resist reduction skill
- your damage is all over the place, focus on one or two damage types,
- you ignored basically any defensive or otherwise useful skills like Vindictive Flame, Blast Shield, Temper or Elemental Awakening
- your resistances are terrible, either visit reputation vendors or craft something so you can get your resistances closer to the cap

1. Wait, it does -elemental res? I was absolutely sure its was -Fire res. Serves me right for not double checking. Not sure if I will pick it up, but it's an option.
2. I was going for cold and shock. Everything else is because I've gotten it on the way to other bonuses. I'm not sure it's even possible focus solely on 1-2 damage types without getting anything else as byproduct.
3. Yeah, I was counting on Phantasmal Armor at first, then got distracted by flashier stuff. My bad ^^
4. Most of them are above the cap, tho. Unles you mean not the 80% cap, but some other cap?

[Neit]

Originally posted by vindicar:

I was going for cold and shock. Everything else is because I've gotten it on the way to other bonuses. I'm not sure it's even possible focus solely on 1-2 damage types without getting anything else as byproduct.

WIth as many skills as you have, it will be definitely challenging, so as others suggested, definitely remove some of the skills. But yes, in general it should be possible to focus on 1-2 damage types. Maybe not during the leveling, but it should work during the endgame. WIth Thermite Mine added to the build, going mostly for elemental during the leveling should work wonders. You can be more focused later on. For now I would definitely start tinkering with skills until you reach some better distribution and see where it goes.

Originally posted by vindicar:

Yeah, I was counting on Phantasmal Armor at first, then got distracted by flashier stuff. My bad ^^

From the skills I have mentioned, at least one point in each of them should be already something you'll start to feel.
Vindictive Flame is probably most important, as it grants you health regen and stuns enemies that hit you, Ulzuin's Wrath on top of that is a nice bonus. Blast Shield is just awesome overall. Temper adds some minor DA.

Most important when it comes to these skills, is that you'll already get +2 demo skills which will boost every single 1-point investment you make into new skill into rank 3.

Elemental Awakening from the Nightblade tree, will give you Elemental damage boost, on the way to it, you can also pick Anatomy of Murder (for insane Cunning boost) and Merciless Repertoire (for Cold damage). All of them will be rank 5 instantly thank to your gear so in general this should be very noticable upgrade.

Originally posted by vindicar:

Most of them are above the cap, tho. Unles you mean not the 80% cap, but some other cap?

All of them should be capped (Physical is an exception here). But both Elite and Ultimate reduce your resistance, so you will need to be prepared for that and you are already getting hit too hard on Veteran.

[Matthew]

Originally posted by vindicar:

Doesn't it requrie a shield?

No. And the flat absorption happens after all other damage calculations, making it significantly more powerful than it looks at first glance.

10,000 damage non-physical hit.
86% resistance lowers it to 1400.
1000 flat absorb reduces it further to only 400 damage taken.
Normally you'd take 2000.

And it applies to every hit while it is up. It essentially makes you unkillable against anything except the largest physical hits for the duration.

That said, much like mirror and mark, I find these types of skills to be better when layered. Blast shield by itself alone is okay, but it gets very good when it gets rotated with other defensive procs.

Hmmm, Vindictive Flame is mostly Fire/Physical, though.

That is the least important part of that passive. You are ignoring the massive speed and hp regen boost. Granted, your build is a bit awkward right now with a lot of cooldowns, but I wouldn't sleep on this passive because the trivial amount of added damage isn't cold.

My personal suggestion would be to drop blade burst and make stun jacks zero cooldown. Go all in on shadow strike, then spam jacks while shadow strike is on cooldown. Lethal assault isn't needed for this type of build, both because 2-hand cooldown doesn't need it, and jacks doesn't use it.

Harra's set will convert jacks to cold damage, allowing you to go all in on cold. As Neit said, don't worry about it while leveling. Pick up thermite mines and they'll help both your shadow strike and stun jacks.

I'd also want to push OA on a build like this, with a lot of frostburn. Though that is easy to tweak end game. That is typically more down to a few affixes on items than an entire build decision.

[Matthew]

You can keep mortar or do blade spirits, doesn't really matter. Extra devotion procs. Most of your damage will be from the other two skills. I would drop the mindset of "if I can't tank, I'll run around and let mortars kill". Just set up your build properly.

[Lord Pingostini]

Well yes, it is pure garbage