#buildcrafting

[clockworkcanary]

The build crafting for Koumei has weird possibilities…

For the people who decide to use her second ability, omikuji, and not ditch it as the helminth sacrifice.

There’s going to be a stark divide between people who think the challenges are fun(hello Patagium) and the people who decide the distraction isn’t worth it.

Also, apparently I need to figure out how to jump kick.

[hundchentanque]

Hello gang, would you like to calculate an immense amount of damage that my Dark Heresy character (Garruk) could theoretically do?

Let's start with the weapon: Selvanian Power Maul When its energy field is active (all power weapons are melee weapons that have an activatable energy field. They're lightsabers but more practical) the Selvanian Power Maul deals a quality 1d10+5 energy damage with an armour penetration value of 4, nothing to scoff at. Couple that with its bonus to parry checks (Balanced Keyword), its ability to potentially stun targets if it deals damage (Shocking Keyword), and its ability to potentially destroy any weapon that it parries (Power Field Keyword) makes this weapon a godsend for Garruk's role as the main melee dps and "tank" of the group.

A weapon's stats and keywords aren't the only thing that determines its effectivenes and damage. A good combat character in Dark Heresy tricks themselves out as much as the weapons that they are carrying. With that said, we now turn our eyes to the abilities that Garruk will ideally gain before finally calculating potential damage.

Melee weapons add a character's strength bonus to their damage, no matter which type of melee weapon is used. In this case I will use xp to bump my strength characteristic to a near overwhelming 53, getting my bonus to 5. I will also do the same with my weapon skill characteristic, putting it at 50 to gain 5 as my bonus. Increasing Garruk's weapon skill to 50 allows for two things: it firstly allows for an incredibly high parry success rate, since the Power Maul is Blanaced and Garruk is trained in the parrying skill (gaining an additional +10 to parry checks) it brings it up to a rolling threshold of 70 and lower for a successful parry. Secondly, increasing my weapon skill to 50 will allow for extra damage when I purchase the talent Crushing Blow.

Crushing Blow allows for the character (In this case, Garruk) to add half of their weapon skill bonus (rounding up) to their melee weapon damage in the same way that they would their strength bonus. Considering that Garruk's strength bonus is a 5, this means that the bonus damage from Crushing Blow becomes a 3 (5/2=2.5 rounded up=3). With the stats and the talents covered, one thing remains: Cybernetics.

In Dark Heresy, access to cybernetics is a godsend. They act as no-xp cost passive (and sometimes active) abilities that play characters can gain if they have connections to facilities and Adeptus Mechanicus NPCs. In this case, the cybernetic that Garruk will get will be Synthmuscle. Synthmuscle is a cybernetic that grants the character Unnatural Strength (1). Unnatural Strength is a bonus to the damage bonus that strength gives melee attacks. The numerical amount that Unnatural Strength gives is shown by the number in parenthesis. Synthmuscle can give Unnatural Strength (4) if it's high quality, but the character suffers an agility penalty as well, something that i do not wish for Garruk.

So! Onto the big question! what is the amount of damage that Garruk will be outputting? The final calculation is this 1d10+5(from the weapon itself)+5(strength)+3(crushing blow)+1(synthmuscle). Garruk is doing at 14 damage before the dice are rolled. When the dice are rolled, he will be outputting a range of 18 to 21 (based on the percentages of rolling a 4, 5, 6, and 7 on the dice respectively) damage per attack. To make this scarier, the Power Maul's armour penetration and damage are also modified by Garruk's passive ability from his Role (think of it as a class) as a Crusader; any time that Garruk faces an enemy with a fear characteristic, the numerical value of that characteristic is automatically added to the armour penetration and damage values of any weapon that he attacks it with.

In total: this build will cost 1400 xp and a successful trip to the surgical table. Quite a lot, but most of it can be done after one mission, and the damage he'll put out is well worth it.

Some notes: Fear in Dark Heresy works mechanically like Unnatural Strength, with the number associate with the fear stat (for example, [2]) being its fear "level."

[l3rking]

If you thought for a second I wasn't going to immediately make new builds in light of the ToM and WI buffs, idk what you were thinking. Please for the love of the Traveler let there be stasis mods in the Artifact next season.

[theravingnecromancer]

Current BDO goals. Missing everything at tet, missing the tree armor itself too.

But, with this build, my HP will be at 4310 at node wars - while buffed up the ass. My resting HP should be 3600~ and with alch stone 3750.

At full pen, this is what it looks like gear-wise:

with kutum, this is what it looks like:

Kutum is my PvP endgame dagger, and nouver is my PvE. With full PEN, regardless of dagger, my HP would be 4655 fully buffed with a resting(non-buffed) hp of around 3995~.

An awakened wizard, rolling into RBF with almost 400 DP, 4655 HP and 218 awakened AP is nigh impossible to kill. I’ve seen what zerker 400 DP is like - with close to 5k hp and way lower ap(100-130? maybe?), this would be amazing!!

Cannot wait to get started on this. Fuck the glass cannon meta! Currently, with 288 DP and 2645 HP, I don’t even get one shot by 60′s. Imagine another 2k HP and 100 DP on top of that.. *drools* 

Nouver until Kutum is ready, Kutum is bae<3

[l3rking]

Buildcrafting: Taraxippos

Spoiler Warning: I’m going to talk about the Guardian Games reward that is coming out next week. You can keep scrolling if you want to experiment with it yourself. I’m just going to talk about perk combos and how it fits into the sandbox. This is all speculation and might be completely moot by the time we get our hands on it. This is gonna be a loooooooooong post. 

~ A flash of green on the event horizon.

We’re getting a new kinetic/strand/stasis slot 200rpm scout. As a resident scout rifle enthusiast, I feel like I can weigh in with some pretty confident recommendations and evaluations. 

Here’s what we know: 

Type: Scout Rifle

Frame: Lightweight ~ 200 RPM

Element: Strand 

Out of the box Tarax has one of the lowest Zooms for all scouts at 19. Tied with Tears of Contrition and right above DMT and Long Arm’s 18. Fortunately it has fixed sights and barrel options like usual nowadays. This means we can focus on improving stats. 

Speaking of stats, Tarax sits right above the few other LW options. 

AT BASE: It has the 3rd best range (30 vs Night Watch’s 37), 2nd best stability (42 vs Pleiades’s 43), 2nd best handling (69 vs PC’s 71), 2nd best reload (59 vs PC’s 63), 2nd best Aim Assist (75 vs PC’s 76), 2nd best AE (12 vs Tarnished’s 18), the lowest mag size at 15 (however all the others only have 1 more at 16), and the best recoil direction at 54. 

So 2nd overall, by only 1 or 2 points in each stat, behind Pleiades which is both extremely hard to obtain and awful to use IMHO. This is where my personal opinion and experience starts to weigh in.  

PC has 25 zoom (the most out of all fixed sight scouts), 52 recoil direction (67 with a counterbalance mod) which can only go up to 97 with arrowhead and a CB mod (we’ll touch on this again in a sec), and a frankly awful perk selection. All of this compounds to a scout that, to me, feels terrible in hand compared to other scouts that should, statistically, be way worse. Since we brought up perks, let’s get into what sits Tarax apart.

Right off the bat we have a stellar perk pool with a lot of top tier selections and some personal favorites. Let’s go through a handful of “godrolls” and talk about them in a bit more detail. 

PVP

1. The Classic

The classic combo. Outlaw + Killclip. It’s still strong on LW scouts. Kill Clip will push the damage to 68 on a crit allowing a 3 tap at any resilience in .6s with a total of 208 damage. The last LW scout to get KC was the Eternal Blazon which was a wonderful rifle but is currently nearly impossible to get and Tarax out paces it in nearly every stat. 19 zoom with the +2 to mobility from the LW frame makes this a dream weapon for hunters who like to play aggressive with ranged weapons (i.e. ME). Arrowhead and stab rounds will be probably be my barrel and mag choice for nearly every roll moving forward. The 54 base RD does help open up other options like Polygonal and Smallbore if you don’t think RD is all that important.   

2. The DMR

A little experimental, maybe. I’ve been pleasantly surprised with Off-Hand Strike on weapons like the Hung Jury, Fioritura, and Heritage. Kill Clip makes the most sense here for post-kill potential but Explosive Rounds and Keep Away would be good alternatives. Full into handling to make it as snappy as possible since Offhand does a lot of heavy lifting with the RD and Stability. If the Offhand/Adagio Hung Jury is anything to go by, hipfire 3 taps with KC are extremely feasible. 

3. The Dueler

No post-kill perks here. We’re going all in to dueling. The Zen rework has been mega. I play MNK and even I’m gunning for Zen these days. I despise flinch and the resist you get from Zen just for hitting your shots has been incredible. Reminder on how Zen Moment works: For 1 second each hit grants flinch resist, reduces recoil, removes reticle bounce (controller), and reduces weapons shake. This can stack up to 5 times with each hit granting 1 stack. Scouts receive 2 stacks per hit. So less flinch coming in. Great, right? Now we through in Explosive Rounds. ER causes your opponent to flinch harder as well as providing a flash effect on their screen depending where you hit and where they’re looking. This makes you infuriating to fight against. LW scouts typically kill in 4 shots (3c1b at T7 and below and 4c at any above) at .9 seconds. Not particularly great given high impact pulses have a .67 optimal and rapidfire pulses and 140 HCs sit at .8. So if we are going for dueling, making your opponet miss as many shots as possible is going to be big. I’ve had a lot of luck with a similar roll on the Tears of Contrition with it’s base 1s ttk. 

4. Honorable Mentions

No Distractions is a toptier perk. If Zen wasn’t so useful I would have swapped it out with Zen on the dueling roll in a heartbeat. 

Keep Away provides a great stat boost for essentially just playing with a scout. It grants 10 Range, 30 Reload Speed, and narrows the Accuracy Cone by 5% if no enemies are within 15m. 

Focused Fury is an interesting one. It provides a 20% damage buff for 11s after hitting half the mag as crits (7 for the Tarax). This will take it up to ~65.3 per crit. This means it will 3c guardians at T7 resil and below for ~196. Not bad but outclassed by Kill Clip and Explosive Rounds. Most players are running 8-10 resil these days, anyways. 

Moving Target is always a correct choice. Bonus AA and strafe speed will never not be useful. MT with ER or KC will be a lot of people’s 5/5 and you should be very happy with that roll if you can get it.

Cascade Point will boos you to 280rpm with a final blow or sustained crits with another weapon. This will put it right under a 4 shot .7s ttk. A big improvement but it requires a kill with another weapon and only makes it just as good as other meta contenders like high impact pulse rifles. KC just has more utility here.   

PVE 

1. If It Ain’t Broke

PVE rolls are a bit easier to discuss since the meta for scouts are a bit more well defined for that content. FTTC and Explosive Rounds will do you well. There is a bit of RNG when it comes to registering crits with ER but there’s an opportunity to turn your 16 round mag w/tac mag into a 24 rounder with all crits. Swap out for literally any other perk in the 3rd column and you’ll be just fine. In this context it’s a matter of taste more than anything. 

2. OMG Cats

The Strand tie-in roll. Personally, I’m still having a hard time vibing with strand. It is very powerful but I just don’t have as much fun with it as I do the other classes. This will get better with time but since this is out first strand scout we have to talk about how it can play out. Hatchling is the obvious choice for strand builds, especially warlocks, but hatchlings right now are rather weak in endgame content. However, spawning them at a distance makes them quite a bit more useful. Removing you from danger and just adding raw damage output in crowds of mobs. Is it more useful than ER or FF? Probably not. And if we had Frenzy it would lose straight out but hey...FREE CATS.

3. Full Auto Goes Brrrrr....

Similar to the first roll, we’re going for raw damage from sustained crits on high health targets. This will be the roll I’d recommend for Conquerors. Sit at the back, build up crits, and take the free 20% to damage whatever you need to from safety. FTTC will trigger twice if you hit all crits before activating FF. This will leave 12 shots in the mag (if you’re using tactical mag) to utilize FF. FTTC also gives a little more leeway with activating FF making it much more forgiving. Slideways would’ve been better here tbh but this is a good alternative for accurate players. 

4. Honorable Mentions

Cascade Point is interesting but all together not very useful for this weapon type for PVE. This would convert it to a 280rpm (rapid fires are 260rpm) increasing damage output but will burn through the mag without something like FTTC. Just use Servant Leader if you want a rapid fire scout. 

Kill Clip is a great PvE perk. Despite the buff in PvE it still isn’t really all that useful in high tier content. Neutral damage perks like ER and FF are just way more useful.

Closing Thoughts

I’m extremely hyped about the new scout. I love scout rifles. Always have. And I’ll always welcome more options. The Overflow/ER Night Watch will always be top tier just because it’s so accessible to everyone. But I welcome the chance to swap it out for something new. I’m going to grind the hell out of it but if I can get even one of the rolls I mentioned, I’ll be happy. 

I hope this was useful! Good luck Guardians, 

AND HAPPY GUARDIAN GAMES

[immortal-elements]

Antiquary is very good, and I need to ramble about it because it's making me love thief through the power of gambling

I call this "Random Bullshit: Go!" And 7/10 doctors do not recommend it. This build is solely for open world, I would not bring this into instanced content, but it is very very fun. The entire point of this build is to make use of sword/dagger's incredible utility to allow you to make the most of your artifact skills. You can start fights by stealing from a distance. Depending on what you steal you may decide to keep your distance and use shortbow, or you can teleport in with sword 2. You can dump initiative with dagger 3 or dagger 5 and a stealth attack, and then you can teleport out with the return on sword 2. Sword/dagger is very evasive and slippery, so it thrives on being able to create and close gaps and to strafe around your enemies.

Im still iffy on the first column of Antiquary, but getting two artifacts for the price of one is pretty good. The minor and major grandmaster say "pilfer after using a certain amount of initiative, gain 2 initiative whenever you use an artifact skill." I cannot stress enough how so much of this build is gambling, you gamble on your artifacts, you gamble on most of your utility skills, and your elite is a giant area of randomness. The shield and the healing skill are the "oh shit" buttons that are always available (unless they aren't), the cannon and signet are there for damage, and the elite is there because it is new, and fun, and it gives us so many artifacts and so much initiative.

The gear is power gear with some vitality, relic of Zakiros, sigil of force and accuracy on the sword/dagger, sigil of cleansing and energy on the shortbow.

[marcos-chill-spot]

12//05//24 P2

For my class in Path of Exile 2 my plan is the the Mercenary, and to ascend as the Gemling Legionnaire.

Adding quality and levels to skills is great. And its generic, thats good for every gem in the game to some degree usually. Making skills cheaper and easier to use the attribute requirements on is handy as well. it would let me have gems outside of my primary stat more easily which is great since i dont know what skills to play yet.

The ability to use duplicate support gems is pretty insane though and I cant wait to see what sort of stuff will become an option with that.

I dont currently plan on focusing maximum resistances much for myy starting character and dont know how viable stacking max res is in this version of the game yet. But I love having an easy option open do do so if I end up desiring to do that. I loved max res stacking in path of exile 1, but i also felt a need to do so due to teh damage tankiness arms race that had been occuring in that game.

---

In POE2 the player can have up to 9 active skill gem slots for moves. having access to 12 total instead will be awesome combined with the ability to trigger gems under certain conditions, for instance cast on shock or an equivalent.

Overall the Gemling ligionaire looks flexibble and customizable and it might enable some fun options for my gameplay depending on what i find when i play as I have avoided too many spoilers this time around.

[veilrenda]

I love buildcraftijng you can take any facet of a profession and immediately make it busted. nothing brings me more joy than gearing all my deadeye skills to provide stealth or quickness because revealing myself gives +120 power on top of a +80 power on top of a +20% strike damage to enemies below the half health threshold on top of a +100 power while under quickness and stealing power with the deadeye trait with a base 2.3k power to work with and a max 3k

also I got 70% chance to crit and I do 180% more damage per hit.