Anomaly levels and builds

[Aleskandor]

I have seen a bunch of builds and such where they curbstomp anomaly lvl700 and similair things. See, my warlock is lvl 100, im mastery lvl 250 and i have a full gear set, but still things are getting hard already in anomaly lvl100 something, does this mean my build is terrible or what?

[Kazaf]

What kind of build you are running? Which set are you running? What enchants do you have?

I ran a Frost Warlock with Deathbringer set and a Fire Warlock with Buring Hell set, both stayed mainly in their tree with a bunch of Shadow passive and around 150 in mastery. Fire start to have problem with boss around 100 something in Anomaly. I then rebuild my tree so I will get the benefit from the Sun & Moon set, which make my damage output jump.

Here are somethings that will benefit in all build I think :
1. Get cooldown reduction to 90% and get some attack speed (they are cast speed for us), you should find that you will not be able to use so many skills at once, so you can now have more points in passive or Ritual Skills.

2. Have resist all and movement speed, they will save your life.

[Aleskandor]

I was using the Bloodbinder's Set inceasing the dmg of Infection, using "Living Blood" for tanking most dmg together with Zombies, also specing in the shadow tree for collecting souls and healing for that that + that increased the amount of Zombies i had.

Oh okay, i will look into that and see how i can optimize my build and change it at bit, thanks for the help!

[Rylocke]

The Plague Mage set is the one you'd want to use with an Infection build. If you're running with Bloodbinder, I would suggest putting more focus on Living Blood, Outbreak, and companion health/damage.

Bloodbinder is one of my favorite builds, but its drawbacks are building momentum (because you need enemy deaths to summon bloods, yet the bloods are your primary source of damage... I call it a "Clots 22") and dealing single target damage during longer boss fights because it can be difficult to summon more without many mobs for the bloods to spawn from, which is more or less the same problem. Maybe down the line that 2-piece set bonues can be changed from poison damage to "XX% chance to spawn a Living Blood/Clots whenever you deal poison damage," "poison damage has a XX% chance to immediately trigger Outbreak even on living enemies," or something similar.

Because of the fact that the bloods' damage is based on the enemy's health they spawn from, their damage can end up potentially scaling better than *any* other build, and it double dips from companion stats (health and damage). Unfortunately, the momentum problem gets harder to overcome in higher anomalies.

Either way, Alesk has some pretty good points. However, until you get up closer to 500-1000 anomaly, it might be better for you to focus almost entirely on damage stats and merely remain out of the enemy's range. While this might end up with some occasional unavoidable deaths, the "best defense is a good offense" strategy is very applicable in this game to ranged builds.

Ultimately, the bottleneck of most builds once you hit triple-digit anomalies is usually the boss fights. This becomes even more of a problem for any summoner-type build. Killing mobs is pretty quick and painless, but those bosses start taking quite a long time. Changing to a frost or fire build and using the Sun & Moon set will help you out, as will using the Plague Mage set instead of Bloodbinder.

Another good option (my personal favorite, since it would allow you to keep your living blood setup) would be to use the One for All jewelry set, if you have it, and toss in a nuke or some damage procs from other elements since the poison damage doesn't have to kill an enemy to spawn a Living Blood as long as they're infected when they die.