Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Rex_Nex]

Yeah, Caustic Arrow sadly doesn't scale at all. It never did all that much damage, but then they made it even worse shortly after 2.0 because of its popularity. It's one of those skills that has been completely outclassed by another, namely Essence Drain (+Contagion). I cant think of a skill with lower damage output, even something like Searing Bond has several orders of magnitude more damage.

[Aklyon]

Yeah, Caustic Arrow sadly doesn't scale at all. It never did all that much damage, but then they made it even worse shortly after 2.0 because of its popularity. It's one of those skills that has been completely outclassed by another, namely Essence Drain (+Contagion). I cant think of a skill with lower damage output, even something like Searing Bond has several orders of magnitude more damage.

I managed to use Caustic Arrow with Soul Strike quiver (pre-nerf) occultist just fine previously. I believe I had something like 7k dot?

ED/Contagion very much outclasses it though, simply due to it being much easier to find spell damage than chaos/dot/projectile damage.

Elemental hit is practically the rock bottomest of rock bottoms, though. Everything is better than it, especially its improved version, wild strike.

[nenjin]

Started playing Harbinger. Figured I should give it a shot at least once. Frost Blade 2-hander duelist. Pretty pleased with him so far. Damage on those Frost Blade projectiles with little to no investment is nuts. Add in some Hypo, Ice Bite, Multistrike, Herald of Ice, Cold Pen....clearing machine. May be the 2nd best clearing build I've made after my Summoner. Rolling an end-game tier damage 2handed axe at like Level 40 helped a lot too.

League is kind of a drag though. Once you get over the novelty of having no currency of back up gear, it's like a solid 30 hours (for me at least) to get the point you do enough challenges to get the first league MTX. The challenges are arranged so you pretty much have to beat the game to qualify for anything. Was hoping I could get some of those sweet league uniques to take back to my standard characters too but it looks like they're gated behind some end-level currency thing in Harbinger. Meh. At least I know how long it takes me to do all 10 acts if I spend an entire weekend doing it.

[frostshotgg]

You get the first mtx not too long after you finish the plot, and you'll be really close to 36/40 if you just level to 90 normally, then spend a few hours cleaning up misc things.

[nenjin]

Luckily the first tier one is the only one I want.

More it's just - I'm not a fan of re-leveling characters in aRPGs. I didn't like it in D2, D3 or here. So it feels like a chore. Secondly, I look at how many hours I spent on a character I might throw away, when I could have been leveling my standard toons. I don't trade so I can't shoot through the league and get teh broken drops so....league feels like me spinning my wheels for the most part.

Except for those sweet partial currency shards though. Oohhhh lawdy, such content.

[Aklyon]

Yeah, the challenge difficulty hasn't changed too much. 12 is for anyone who puts some efforts into the league, 24 for people who really want the second mtx, and 36 is for people who really want to have their challenges completed, which is usually a portal effect and is not this time.

[frostshotgg]

I'd say it mostly breaks down as 12 is mapping for a bit, 24 is putting in a few dozen hours on a character in maps, and 36 is doing almost everything. This league the challenges are mostly things that you'll get done if you keep pushing into harder content unlike previous seasons that had huge spikes of rng. The most arbitrary the challenges get is finding a few of the encounters like echoing shrine or corrupting essences, but you'll get them eventually if you just keep mapping.

[RoguelikeRazuka]

And what about a Crit Dual Clawer build? I always dreamed of making one, preferably CI. But I'm unsure what skill I should go with as my main attack skill, maybe Blade Flurry? It looks nice and supposedly deals more damage than Reave. It's also uncertain how I would scale the damage output -- best support gems for that require red sockets (and much strength), which could be difficult to obtain on an evasion chest.

here's my best attempt:
https://tinyurl.com/y83pqhdj


Please note that my tree is built taking into constideration that I have neither crit gear nor currency to afford it, so I tried to grab as many % increased Critical Strike Chance nodes as I could, probably wasting some passive skills points for no particular benefit (in case I do have some crit pieces, like Maligaro's Virtuosity and Rat's Nest).

[nenjin]

Do claws still suck? My impression is that claws still suck.

[Aklyon]

I've seen claws get used more recently, but haven't done so personally. They might've become non-suck.

[RoguelikeRazuka]

A more defensive version of my Blade Flurry Crit Dual Clawer build:

https://tinyurl.com/yab7adq2

less Crit Chance and thus less damage, but more Evasion.


By the way it occurred to me that I actually could use a shield instead of a second claw, which would give me more evasion, life and resistances (at the cost of a notable dps amount, again) in case I manage to find a good shield, and some 20% block chance (~10% more in comparison with the dual claw version) in addition to dodge and evasion is also nice, more survivability that is. What do you think?


PS does Curse on Hit Support have to be linked with a curse gem AND an attack gem in order to work?

[nenjin]

PS does Curse on Hit Support have to be linked with a curse gem AND an attack gem in order to work?

Yes.

[Aklyon]

Technically it only has to be linked to a hitting skill (ex: it works with Herald of Thunder), but if you're doing attacks its easier to use another attack.

[frostshotgg]

Alternatively, you could use a CwDT skill. CwDT - Ball Lightning - CoH - Curse of choice is very popular, you just have to be quite mindful of your gem levels to keep it working properly.

[nenjin]

Yeah I find CwDT a little too finnicky when it comes to its attack utility. Often can't maximize the attack gem because of CwDT. It's easier to balance with defensive skills since you don't need IC maxed to get a lot of benefit out of it.