Question about stunlock

Hi, for some reason i always wanted a stunlock build, but since ppl nowadays just rush through maps insta-killing whole areas there doesn't seem much point (sadly) in anything that doesnt.....well...insta kill whole areas.

Still, i'd like to try a stunlock build someday, and was wondering if endgame map bosses can be stunlocked (to feel at least somewhat useful xD) or their life is just too high. Thanks!.

If you get enough curse effectiveness then yeah. Warlock Mark gives a flat stun chance, and that can allow some fast hitting attacks or spells to permastun any boss.

Some can. Others not. i don't remember which bosses I could stun with my stun build last league. The one I remember the most is the Cremetorium boss. If I could leap to her before she cast her firestorm, she wouldn't cast it and it was a really easy fight. It did help to be in a party so they could keep all the other monsters off me while I kept the bosses stunlocked.

Lets do some math. Warlock Mark gives you 15% base stun chance.

You can get up to 73% curse effect (all passives, blasphemy q23, Dying Breath and Conqueror's Potency).

Given than bosses have 60% curse res, you end with just 13% curse effect that bumps you 15% base stun to 16% (if you can get 1% more of curse effect then you would have 17%).

That means your damage has to do the 4% missing. So you have to do 2% of the boss max life per hit (you get 2% chance of stunning for each % of max life you do as damage).

The stun support gem gives you 50% reduced stun threshold, so now you need to do just 1% of the boss life to stun.

The increased stun duration from the stun gem and WM gives you a bit over half a second of stun, so you have to hit around 10 times per second to permastun.


Do remember than this calculations are the bare minimum. Each thing you get will give you more breathing room.

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Adser wrote:

Spoiler

Lets do some math. Warlock Mark gives you 15% base stun chance.

You can get up to 73% curse effect (all passives, blasphemy q23, Dying Breath and Conqueror's Potency).

Given than bosses have 60% curse res, you end with just 13% curse effect that bumps you 15% base stun to 16% (if you can get 1% more of curse effect then you would have 17%).

That means your damage has to do the 4% missing. So you have to do 2% of the boss max life per hit (you get 2% chance of stunning for each % of max life you do as damage).

The stun support gem gives you 50% reduced stun threshold, so now you need to do just 1% of the boss life to stun.

The increased stun duration from the stun gem and WM gives you a bit over half a second of stun, so you have to hit around 10 times per second to permastun.


Do remember than this calculations are the bare minimum. Each thing you get will give you more breathing room.

Interesting post, thanks for the calculations.

If I may add to that, some additional things one could consider to increase stunning ability or stun duration:

• +20% increased Warlord's Mark Curse Effect helmet enchant.
• A Studded Belt grants up to 30% increased stun duration on enemies.
• Temporal Chains, which synergizes quite well if you've already gone through the trouble of getting increased curse effectiveness.

Not all of them might be practical or worth the opportunity cost.

To OP: I don't know if pursuing a pure stunlock build is worth the effort, considering maps mods that reduce the size/speed of your hits (Enfeeble/Temporal Chains) or increase monster/boss life are fairly common and straight up desirable if they provide pack size. You will most likely not be able to stunlock bosses in t12+ maps - or anything if you roll the Unwavering map mod. An enhanced Warlord's Mark is still pretty powerful on its own if you forego the idea of specializing in stun.

Debilitating curses and chill seems the way to go if you truly want to make most t12+ bosses trivial.

Well, I could freeze most bosses with crit freezing pulse, so I suspect if you got a really good 2H you could stun bosses, too. AFAIK Malformation Piety has about 500k life, so if you can get 8-10k damage per hit while having decent attack speed and getting ~100% reduced stun threshold, then stunlock might be possible. Warlord's Mark, like all curses, has reduced effectiveness against bosses, but even if it's only 50% effective it still would give about 7.5% chance to stun, which REALLY helps with meeting the minimum 20% chance to stun (less than 20% chance to stun and you will never stun).

See this build.

If you're making a stun build, you're going to build for it. Mine had 33% reduced stun threshold and 115% increased stun duration from the tree. Heavy Strike has 25% reduced stun threshold and with 20% quality has 20% stun duration. A 20/20 Endurance Charge on Melee Stun has 19% reduced stun threshold and 20% stun duration. Along with the stun gem and belt mod give a lot of options for stunning. My build had Warlord's Mark on Blasphemy. I didn't run Unwavering maps. Enfeebled maps were only really an issue against bosses.

you're not gonna stunlock on warlord's alone, you need to build for it.



Generally speaking, you would spec for stunning in the tree (the mace wheel and the stun mastery cluster) and orient your gear around it to some degree (again, use maces, preferably 2h, also get reduced stun threshold on a belt and possibly weapon).

For gems, you usually don't need to worry about using stun or ecoms on a clearing skill... with all the stun theshold reduction you'd have elsewhere plus their life pools, you should be able to stun them just fine just by using dps supports. However, for your bosskiller, you're best off using a single-target skill with stun+ecoms and the best damage-per-hit mods you can attach (usually melee physical for starters, then bloodlust/melee dmg on full life/added fire based on the situation). Heavy Strike works well for stunning, ofc, because of the base damage and its innate theshold reduction, but the knockback is super annoying if you don't use Empire's Grasp. Frenzy can actually be a pretty reasonable alternative, the frenzy charges help make up for the lower base damage, and the attack speed helps with the fact that you likely won't have much inc attack speed elsewhere.


Oh, and don't be fooled into doing a slayer. Sure, he's got one branch for stunning, but really it's pretty useless and poorly designed (GGG not knowing how to help 2handers? no shock there). Most of it is duration, which isn't relevant if you're capable of stunning on every hit (you'll have enough duration from the tree to keep enemies stunned until your next hit), and the little bit of extra threshold reduction doesn't help as much as stuff from other trees. The best bet is to go Berzerker, 40% more damage will help you reach stun thesholds much more easily, and the inc damage taken is irrelevant if everything is stunned.



As for enemies that are tough to stun? Well, anything unwavering, of course, but that's pretty much occasional rares/magics, lab Argus, 2nd/3rd survivors of the Trio, and solo phase Atziri (yes you can stun at least some of her clones, think the spear one might still be unwavering though... doesn't matter, you stunlock the flameblast one and move slightly when the stormcalls are gonna fall on you). And anything in the unwavering map mod, too. Other than them, Izaro is tough to stun (he's got a tripled life bar, after all), and map Dom/Malachai are notably difficult to stun, but not impossible.



As a final note... I recommend trying a Marohi flicker character with stunlocking capabilities. It's pretty fun, clears extremely fast. I use Frenzy with 6 charges to stunlock with it.

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Adser wrote:

Lets do some math. Warlock Mark gives you 15% base stun chance.

You can get up to 73% curse effect (all passives, blasphemy q23, Dying Breath and Conqueror's Potency).

Given than bosses have 60% curse res, you end with just 13% curse effect that bumps you 15% base stun to 16% (if you can get 1% more of curse effect then you would have 17%).

That means your damage has to do the 4% missing. So you have to do 2% of the boss max life per hit (you get 2% chance of stunning for each % of max life you do as damage).

there is also Worthy Foe champion's perk, increasing chance to stun by 20%. but it looks its perfectly designed so that you cant reach the minimum stun chance on bosses, even with insane investment