Act 2 tips and thoughts at 100 darkness

[DuranArgith]

Hello, please post anything you want but only related to 100 darkness act 2 runs.
Below are my opinions.

Melee characters need some serious sustain buff and they feel severely weak compared to Ranged characters.
Especially when you increase the enemy attack range, pretty much everything can hit you even if you dash. Speaking of dash, please increase the range to at least twice as much by default for everyone,

In my opinion, The cursed boss and the Insect queen need to swap places.

The healing pickups need buffs. It was okay when we had less than 100 hp before the patch but now with the items that give hundreds of hp, getting like 5hp is horrible, It does nothing. Same with regeneration. Those pitiful amounts are not cutting it especially how rare it is on gear. Not on melee characters at least.

Casts and power skills are underpowered. Attack or Strike builds or go home.
The only exception is Justice's Retribution, assuming you have the hp or armor to take the hits, it returns huge damage against bosses.

Ninh's Earth spike is the only skill that has enough power scaling to kill bosses easily. Nothing else comes close. (Maybe Justice Retribution on Avaron? Need testing).

While levelling up darkness, leave force barriers for last if you are playing melee so that your attack stuns them. Or make melee attacks stun enemies with barriers.

Strongest builds so far:

Lorien with Fates Gemini (Splinter), War Fatality Legendary and Rampaging Strike Attack with extra bounces talent and either Vampirism or Inner Peace. This build can win 100 darkness but careful of the fast moving witches they can easily kill you.

Avaron. Armor stacked gear, adept to expert talent, enough +adept offers that you get expert 100%, Justice required or Mort required for sustain legendaries. Desert Rose unique that kills everything that hits you instantly. This build can easily take you to around 75-80 darkness, then becomes increasingly difficult. Viabilty of this build severely drops at 100 because sustain is not enough. Smites at 100 darkness is a mild inconvenience for enemies. It stops for like a quarter to half a second at most. If you have the equilibrium sword (unique purple from act 1) then as soon as you have vampirism or Inner peace, the run is won.

Kront. Now we are cooking. Stronger than Avaron, stack life and regen. Do not attempt if you do not have around 600 life. Justice or Mort works great for sustain legendaries but not required if you have high hp. Justice Protection is great too. Justice Retribution works great and the Djinn will seriously injure himself but it will kill you by attrition if you stay too long in his flamethrower stream attack. Desert Rose unique that kills everything that hits you instantly. War required. Also knockback is better than stun. Get War dash and attack modifiers, chains. Instant kills like Fatality, Morts death spell, Day of judgement. Do you see a pattern emerging here?

Kront has the strongest build in the game. It involves his talent warchief. Stack as much attack area and attack damage as you can from talents and NEVER. ATTACK. Just jump around to win. This was my easiest win at darkness 100 and I was laughing all the way at how broken it is. If you have the unique Zaratan armor and his unique axe Shy who Luud equip them. Earth goddess is required for her crushing attack modifier and attack area. Get revenge on those off screen attacking witches by hitting them offscreen on your own. Felt good man. This build makes Darkness 100 a joke. Also war god and desert rose not required. I had to remind myself to get hit from a skeleton to trigger enrage for better dash recharge.

Next up is Nixi... Sigh.. I cannot for the life of me see a single redeeming quality about her talent tree. Poison is weak and you cannot outrun enemies so status builds are no good. I cannot even comprehend the shadowshift tree. Why is there a cooldown on it. And it HALVES your dash distance? Weak attack weapon, no sustain whatsoever, Death god is required for vampirism. Other than the built-in fatality in her talents I do not like anything about her. I am sorry Nixi fans, I have no choice but to declare Nixi dead in the water. I have given up on her at Darkness 100.

Now Merris. I have beaten darkness 100 with both her attack build and her cast build. Her cast build is stronger by far but you need Gem high for both builds as well as Justice for protection and light rays.
I have the multihead unique tier 1 staff (farm act 1 for it) that adds +5 cast projectiles +2 attack projectiles on your attack. That with the talent that doubles cast projectiles and twincast on dash should make Merris overpowered right?
Well, no. I feel Merris is not overpowered but not underpowered either. In both of my wins I could easily die and I think it was just luck that got me through. Casts do not scale good enough and even if you fill the screen with them and spamming them they have trouble killing the beefy enemies and elites.

Skadi. She has an interesting talent tree but I have not managed to get a darkness 100 win with her. But I can see the potential there. I have also tried the unique blue gloves that add most statuses on your attack but then realized I had nearly 0 pull range so I couln't get xp easily so I quit on the idea. Her talent that adds +222% damage to adept blessing looks promising but it constrains your choices too much and she comes with an innate 52% level up offers so that messes it up. But I have not given up on her yet.

War seems to be the best god for most if not all characters and Desert Rose seems to be required. Rampaging strike increases projectile count for Lorien and Merris and the knockback is always useful. Note that Knockback does not cancel attacks it just makes it more possible that you will avoid them. Works on barrier enemies. Instant death skills seem to be the way to go. If you can get Gem high, go for it, especially on all caster (not casts only) builds.

Your thoughts?

[DuranArgith]

One last bump so people see this now that a lot of new players have reached level 100.
I hope these builds help someone, I have put a lot of work in it.
I have now moved on, see you all in Act 3.

[0rb1t]

Nixi is good. Farm colorless rainbow and tooltip (immobilisation and -50% cast, move, attack speed), get winter embrace ring from act 1 (+50% for frozen statuses or 215 amulet from act 1) silk road waist (+75% legendary offers). Best god krom with fatality, also give knockback and attack area from attack modificator, war pact and hemorrhage is also nice. Winter with Hoarfrost, Frostbite, Icebound, Shatter feels good too. Malady and mayhem from mort good too. You just need to kill trash somehow, but killing bosses with just applying full poison and rupture and staying away is easy. On the other hand i find a big skill moments with nixi shadowshift. low dash, big shadowshift cooldown. And you can put all your damage on damn skeleton by mistake.

[0rb1t]

Desert Rose is kinda imbalanced item (lol, every good item is imba) but doesn't work on carpet ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. They kite my avalon as i kite act 1 bosses like nixi with jackrabbit dagger back in a days.

[Powerhorder]

yeah the people who say the game is easy are just using overpowered builds, however if you use your standard stuff the game is still difficult

[0rb1t]

I think every strategy on 100 darkness is based on idea to kill enemy in one nanosecond: using instant dash damage, fatality/crit, or being a meatball/tincan with desert rose. Or just strike first with lorien and insane strike damage. Merris with casts is promising too especially with instantenous pyramid of exile (312% on first hit) but very hard. Worst is pure summoner, pain, pain, pain

[doombybbr]

I agree that melee actually sucks in this game, though I am barely able to beat act 2 normal, only succeeded with Lorean using a crazy strike+time attack build that off-screened almost everything.

In terms of damage they are worse than ranged(they need a base damage of 5 times as much as ranged just to keep up with extra projectiles from fates, not even counting that they need extra on top of that from the fact that ranged can hit further)

In terms of survival, melee is worse too, because there is very little in the way of decent regen, when melee HAS to get close. Meanwhile ranged can just kill before the enemy enters the screen.

On the matter of characters(from a new player perspective), I have this to say:
Aravon:Is supposed to be the tank of the game but his skill tree lacks a reliable way to regain hp. Rest of tree is cool.
Nixi:her tree is supposed to be for high close range damage, but she lacks any decent defences. I do not know how good her poison is with full tree + dart proc, though her dart proc should really proc her attack effects on any foe it hits. The shadow shift reduced dash distance is a bit too much, it should only be 10% less per point, if there is a penalty at all.
Skaldi,Kront:Only two characters with built in healing, decent trees
Merris:decent tree, good for attack or cast builds
Lorean:Crazy powerful with attack/strike builds, making Merris look like a joke by comparison

[DuranArgith]

You should be aware that armor chest pieces with take less damage from enemies up to 60% exists.
They have the weakening prefix or of weakness suffix so keep an eye out. I have seen 60% on light armor, none on medium armor and 30% on heavy so far. I am also told that Avaron unique purple act 1 sword equilibrium seems to be broken and is an instant win with Inner Peace or Vampirism. I do not have it yet though to test it.

Update. I found that suffix on a relic too.
Which means I can now stack 90% reduction on avoron. I have no idea if the effects stack or that they are additive or multiplicative.

[Powerhorder]

yeah avoron sword is really strong i also dont have it but it doubles healing after getting hit for 2 seconds, pair that with desert rose that kills anything that hits you, and have inner peace and you are healing 1% hp per second and you could get increased healing shrines in run

[Powerhorder]

Im waiting till i get act 2 farmers ring unique to farm it since farmers ring increases unique chance

[DuranArgith]

I have heard of farmers ring. 100 hours in this game and I have nearly found every unique item except the damn thing i t seems. I have 3 full stashes of unique items.

[LoneHer0]

For most of my gameplay, I tend to just try to get Lightning Bolts up + War god's +222% damage + Lightning dash. Using Desert rose until I can one shot and run away easily

[sanguinae666]

Originally posted by DuranArgith:

Hello, please post anything you want but only related to 100 darkness act 2 runs.
Below are my opinions.

Melee characters need some serious sustain buff and they feel severely weak compared to Ranged characters.
...
Your thoughts?

I'm around darkness 45-55 with all my chars and I agree 100% with everything you said. Could go up in Darkness with the builds I have with Avaron, Kront and Lorien that are pretty similar to yours but I'm about to call quits until everything seems more well rounded, specially the sustain both in equipment and the map events.

With Merris I have gone a completly different way and embraced the dash build with between 500 and 600% dash damage, near 8-10% dash crit chance and 40-50% dash area, all build in equipment, using War, Mort and Leiling with lightning dash... everything explodes when the efect from the dash is charged. The only pain in the ass is that while in the dash form I could hardly interact if I take more increase in dash area.

Skadi I have gone basically summoner and she is neither bad nor good... she's missing something.

I have been trying for the last couple of days Nixi runs and I die 1/3 of the times early when I coudn't get more sustain, 1/3 from insects or wolves and the other 1/3 at Djiin. She has no sustain nor enought ways to survive and completly agree with you about her perk tree. I would change the slow on poison to heal on poison.

I've been having this idea about making the achievements useful again and it's like this:

For character achievements:
Each character first achievement you complete gives a perk point that could only be used at his first tier of perks, second achievement completed another perk point that could be used up to second tier (it could be used in first tier too), like that up to tier 8 with 8 achievements because some of the Tier 8 perks seems to combo but right now it would never be possible.
This way we could have a reason to complete achievement like before when we unlocked the gliphs. Right now if I start a new save from scratch I woudn't even look to make any achievement at all.

For Act achievements:
Increase achievements to 9 and create a general perk tree that scale by 2 per 2 achievements per act, by that I mean that you could put only 2 points in tier1, 2 points in tier2, 2 points in tier3, 2 points in tier 4 and 1 point in tier5, but the same goes to act 2, and the obviously future act 3 (there is another slot for a gem in the place where you chose the map and darkness).
And in this tree I would put general things that are usefull for every character:

Tier1 (Basic things)
2 points for 2 reroll each, same with baish and alter.
1 point for 1 XP second.
1 point for 0.5 life regen.
2 points for 10% def each, same with evasion.
2 points for 10% adept chance each.
1 point for 20% increase in shard pull area.

Tier2 (More basic things but a little better)
2 points for 2 reroll each, same with baish and alter.
1 point for 1 XP second.
1 point for 0.5 life regen.
2 points for 5% chance of 1 life on hit each.
2 points for 10% max life each.
2 points for 10% adept chance each.
1 point for 10% expert chance.
1 point for 20% increase in shard pull area.

Tier 3 (Another increase in rarity)
1 point for 1 XP second.
2 points for 5% chance of 1 life on hit each.
2 points for 10% general damage each.
2 points for 25% increase in attack area damage, same for strike, cast, power...
2 points for 3% damage reduction each.
1 point for 10% expert chance.
1 point for 5% master chance.
1 point for 10% legendary chance.
1 point for a 20% Dash recharge speed.

Tier 4 (Here things start to get interesting)
2 points for 2.5% general crit chance each.
1 point for 1% increased damage for 1% max life missing.
2 points for 0.15% increase in armor and evasion for 1% max life missing each.
2 points for 25% increase in general area.
3 points for 10% CD reduction each.
1 point for 5% master chance.
1 point for 10% legendary chance.
1 point for a random drop each 60 seconds (50% life heart, 10% magnet, 10% wings, 10% shields, 10% money and 10% an item)
1 point for a Dash charge
1 point for a free reroll, banish or alteration in each level-up.

Tier 5 (Here are OP things but as I said we could only get 1 per act with the last achievement of said act)
1 point for starting each run with a random legendary blessing.
1 point for starting each run with an additional 200% increase of damage of our highest damage type.
1 point for 50% increase of general damage.
1 point for infinite magnet.
1 point for God blessing upgrade could be upgraded to master.
1 point for each minute upgrading the rarity tier of 1 of your blessings, if every blessing is master/legendary upgrade 1 level instead.
1 point for 20% more mythic items.
1 point for 10% chance to apply each effect.

[Strider]

No where near these levels, but I find Nixi naturally is good at blowing up barriers and boss. Problem is after that she can't mow anything.

[DuranArgith]

If you have not reached 100 darkness first, please test your builds with the 60% movement debuff when attacking, the enemies larger area of attack at max and the barriers on at max, before posting please. I want to keep this thread solely for Darkness 100 to help new players beat it.
Why is noone talking about the Flying Carpet item. It breaks a huge game mechanic.
https://imgur.com/eq0faUj