Best melee or bow class?

[Goose Pants]

I have a conqueror but have started a bow haruspex on switch. I’m reading that the spear haruspex is better than a bow haruspex. What I want is a bow or melee class with insane damage, but also decent defense where I’m not potion spamming. I don’t like potion spamming.

[sachatara]

bow = Ranger hunting + nature is VERYYY goood :)

[Goose Pants]

How good is a ranger defensively?

[BigKahuna]

Originally posted by Goose Pants:

How good is a ranger defensively?

Defensive skill options are the Briar ward and Ensnare. You're not going to build up much actual defensive stats as ranger probably. But you have up to 4 pets, which can distract enemies as well.

[Psixi]

Originally posted by Goose Pants:

How good is a ranger defensively?

all HP bloated, nothing else, there's some ele res on HoA but it's like 18%

enemies will target you instead of pets, and briar ward breaks easy, is super high CD and even if you manage 100% uptime on it, the sanctuary part of it that gives you DAR is stationary meaning it needs to be casted every single enemy pack realistically to consider that effect be apart of your character.

Nature is good when you have other defences already. Hunting gives you some DA/projectile dodge, but it doesn't near anywhere like Defence, neidan, dream. I would say Ranger is like C tier for defences, haruspex even with a bow would be B tier.

Also, potion spamming is a thing in this game, you'd have to play with inherited gear to escape that with a niche build that uses recharge, to always use something like Rally or Regrowth or super high health regen/s which is going to be neither experience from lvl 1. Even builds with ADCTH/life leech that get their health back consistently, will run into things like Undead and constructs where they won't be able to regain health without potion usage.

[Goose Pants]

I see. I’m actually plying conqueror, almost level 56, I’m wondering where I can farm before I head to act 4 so I don’t run into resistance issues. Any suggestions? Also, any build suggestions for a level 56 conqueror are welcome.

[Psixi]

in Epic?

Act 3 Chang'an you can get rings, or even Act 4 Rhodes you can farm rings with 60% Resist to Cold/Lightning/Fire

If you put an Epic's Demon blood charm on these, 55% Vitality resist (with +vit res CB)
Monkey king's trickery relic, if you complete it manually on an item, you will receive +16% Pierce res. (do not complete it in inventory, if you want the pierce CB)

maybe show your build first

[Goose Pants]

Yeah, epic. Here’s my build:

Weapon Training 6
Battle Rage 1
Dodge attack 8
Battle standard 9
Onslaught 8
Ignore Pain 6
Ardor 6

Adrenaline 3
Resilience 4
Defensive Reaction 6
Battle Awareness 8
Focus 4
Iron Will 5
Quick Recovery 6
Shield Charge 1
Colossus 1
Shield smash 6
Disable 6
Pulverize 6

You have to add 2 to the numbers in defense mastery because I have 2 pieces of gear that boost them 2 points, so colossus for example is at 3. My DA is only 484, any way to get that higher?

[Psixi]

It's better you post some screenshots and upload them to imgur or some place.

Of your two skill trees,
Items, Character 1st/2nd sheet

[JewelryStar]

/trxhuy /icefrzzy

Originally posted by sachatara:

bow = Ranger hunting + nature is VERYYY goood :)

You get from Nature those benefits for defense:
- Heart of Oak: great bonus health by %, Permanence of Stone: give some elemental res.
- Fatigue (1st upgrade of Plague): reduced enemies dmg as long as they be affected by Plague.
- Sanctuary (last upgrade of Briar Ward): give decent dmg absorption by % + health regen for character and allies, pets in range of Briar Ward. Briar Ward can helps you block projectile attacks and blocks the path of melee enemies come to you.
- Earthbind: Immobilize almost non-bosses enemy in game in duration in super huge area around character.
* Regrowth line that recover health and Overgrowth (1st upgrade of Sylvan Nymph skill pet) give flat dmg absorption is not too important but still useful if you want to have more survival abilities.

[Goose Pants]

Originally posted by Psixi:

It's better you post some screenshots and upload them to imgur or some place.

Of your two skill trees,
Items, Character 1st/2nd sheet

Here’s a YouTube video of my gear, stats and skills. I play on ps5

https://youtu.be/TNZEilgKOBE?si=MzmsJaFDKYbciNvg

[Psixi]

Your build looks fine, skill wise. Since you are on controller, maybe using a lot of active skills is not your preference, but I would pickup Rally, to anywhere near rank 9-12, and max out Inspiration connected to it, with some points in Defiance. It's a free health potion skill, then gives you ele resis, armor and +% health regen even after it's cast, for a duration.

Maxing out Battle Awareness will give you more Defensive Ability, since you are a bit low for going into Legendary. Armor handling will help against physical damage, because it'll give more armor absorption. Lastly you have banner, but haven't spec'd a single point in Triumph, it's a very powerful skill that reduces enemies physical damage inside it, and their resistant to it. The rest of your points look fine.

https://bytesquire.github.io/TitanQuestCalculator/mods/Vanilla/Masteries.html?m1=2&m2=1&config=0-40,0;6,1;12,1;0,0;0,0;0,0;9,0;0,0;0,0;0,0;0,0;0,0;6,1;0,0;0,0;0,0;0,0;0,0;4,0;0,0;0,0;0,0;0,0-40,0;0,0;0,0;0,0;0,0;0,0;0,0;0,0;0,0;0,0;0,0;10,1;0,0;0,0;0,0;0,0;0,0;6,1;0,0;0,0;0,0;0,0;0,0

will make more sense, as a visual representation of what I just said. I only took the skills you need to max out from this point onwards on the calc.

For items, some of those blue items are holding you back. You can replace Asphodel Band with another yellow ring, that has an open enchantment slot. Yellow/green rarity items are very powerful because of enchanting with components means you can target which res exactly you need no matter what items you get, because of merchants/drops.

Your head, or chest aren't even enchanted yet, but your helmet is very good. You will likely look for another green chestpiece or upgrade. You are kinda just waiting to see what resistances you will need in Legendary with the extra penalty, since if you replace that one ring with a cold one, you will be pretty much capped in everything. So I will hold onto your components then decide with what you have, seeing how bad your res is in Legendary, then start farming in Epic.

Do you have a problem with killing Typhon and moving to Act 4? Because if not, do that, and then use the first town (rhodes a4), as a merchant farm to keep checking the mage vendor's rings to look for a Resistant ring with 60% cold res, well the highest you can find. 50-60% is fine, because it'll cap you with your current gear but keep that in mind you can get much higher. I don't know how easy it is to exit to main menu, and back to your character on PS5, because that's essentially how you restock a merchant's inventory to check for new items.

Another way of doing it is, teleport from Rhodes -> Chang'an (check both merchants), -> tele back to Rhodes, see if it restocked. If it didn't, you might have to teleport to 3 different acts, before coming back to Rhodes etc.

Oh yeah, and about these yellow rings. Specifically, look at the Jewels, the thin ones with the gemstone in the middle of them, not the fat rings that are "Kuklos", the Jewels will always roll higher stats meaning the max for a Resistant Kuklos can be 48% cold res, while a Resistant Jewel can be 60% cold resistant. Here's a video of me merchant farming.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PybVm1blJo

[Goose Pants]

Awesome. Thank you. So I upgraded my gear some more, I have another yellow ring, and a new chest piece. But my question is this. See how I have Shaitan for a main weapon? So it has 45 fire and 52 lightning res, but I found a much better legendary axe just now called torment, which boosts my damage crazily. Is it worth switching to that weapon, and leveling up defiance and relying on that for my elemental resistance? If that makes sense. My poison is now 75% res, bleed is now 5% res, cold is 71.

Edit: I also noticed on the build you linked that there is no onslaught, and no shield procs. Isn’t that where my damage comes from?

[Psixi]

A lot of weapons don't have resistance on them, so yes that's sometimes a sacrifice you have to make.

You do not need to 80% every resist, the main ones are Elemental, Pierce, Vitality. In some cases poison, but as long as poison and bleed aren't negative, you are kinda safe to use your potion/rally to keep you alive because they are damage over time. If removing one piece, to fix another ends up shuffling your resistances unintentionally and it stresses you to do a mental jigsaw, refer to what I said above about key resistances.

About relying on defiance, Rally lasts for 10 seconds, 20 with inspiration (+10 to duration), that means for 25 seconds, you won't have that 50% Ele resist, so if that last 50 is bringing you from negatives to positive values, I would not count on it. It is not attached permanently to your character because of this. You need the -% Recharge stat on items, for it to be lower CD to rely on it being a permanent buff. However, for 45 fire and 52 res, popping rally when you get low from those damage types is perfectly fine. I would still cap ele though, even if I did advise you to use another cold ring, that res might be the least important except for Act 3, so looking for a Resistant ring with 30 Fire/30 Lightning instead of the cold, and having rally to push the rest of cold up to 80 might be the most viable solution.

It's a stat micro management game. That Resistant prefix can ALSO roll on armor, not just rings, it's a yellow tier affix. So you can find it on Yellow/green armor. I will link some useful components for resist.

Let me explain a mechanic of the game quickly. I do not know if this works on PS5, but for PC. There are relics and charms, you collect them in shards, so 1/2/3/4/5 (in relics case 1/3), and you use them on each other to finish them, and get a randomly bonus ontop of it's always chosen stats, called a "completion bonus", it's the one listed under the relic/charm. But instead of completing them in your inventory, you can put them partially on gear like 1/3 on a leg, then finish them that way. If you do it this way, you will always receive a predetermined completion bonus, it will NOT be random. So e.g. Domain of the Dragon king's 1/3 -> 2/3 - 3/3 on your chest, instead of 3/3 (completed) then enchanted, will always give it's +13% elemental resist bonus. Hope that's not confusing, it's only useful for not having to farm many of the same relics to get a certain bonus, if that's the one you want.

https://tq-db.net/en/equipment/embodiment-of-the-domain-of-the-dragon-kings (all-armor) Fire res [Complete on gear for +Ele resis]

https://tq-db.net/en/equipment/epic-rigid-carapace (torso-shield) Pierce res

https://tq-db.net/en/equipment/epic-demon's-blood (ring-amulet) Vitality res

https://tq-db.net/en/equipment/embodiment-of-the-monkey-king's-trickery (ring-amulet) small Ele res [Complete on gear for +Pierce res]

You can search on that website for more, just be writing "pierce res" in the search bar in any of the categories, just make sure it's uncapitalised and you don't hit enter.

[Psixi]

The calc I linked you wasn't a full build guide, it's just which skills from your already established tree, you should get next.

[Goose Pants]

Thanks for all your help. Can you get double resistances on rings and amulets? For example could I get both fire AND cold resistance on a ring? Do merchants sell this?