Viable builds that aren't boring

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raics wrote:

You know, when you make an attack/spell hybrid in another game you feel like you cheated the house a bit, in PoE you feel like you're gimping yourself on purpose.

Not disagreeing at all, I just usually do stuff like this with the idea "I want to make this work" or "Let's see if I can do an allout lightning damage melee build in a game that has only physical melee attacks".

I know I'm gimping myself, but what's left in a game when you've played most common builds, other than checking out the niche variations?

Yeah, that's exactly what's wrong with it. In a game that looks like it offers absolute freedom, a playstyle that seems obvious and natural is considered a niche activity for bored longtime players instead of being a mainstay. That's why it got the 'noobtrap' moniker.

Not really bitching about it (at least not anymore), nowadays I recognize it as a symptom of overall poor balance and know what kind of rehaul it would require to well and truly work. The kind a company that needs to pay its bills wouldn't be too keen to undertake.

It's kind of hard to implement this.

In a game with "number of skillpoints < possible allocation for skillpoints", and that applies to almost all of them, it is more efficient to "focus" on one thing.

In Titan Quest, it was more efficient to combine caster+caster mastery, or melee+melee.
Playing "warfare + earth" was not half as strong as "warfare + hunting/defense/dream".
->> Niche build.

in Sacred, your playstyle was defined by these 8 specials you could choose.
For every playstyle, you needed 3-4 special abilities, and you needed 3-4 special abilities to survive. So a hybrid build was missing key stats AND did not have the luxury of coo stuff like the "trade" ability.
->> Niche Build.

In Torchlight, you were already niche if you didn't play the way the generic heroes are set up to. That fat dude wants to be melee, the girl ranged, and the small dude a caster.
->> Niche build.

The only games in which hybrid is really strong are games in which you become "omnipotent" after a while. When it doesn't cost you anything to add another playstyle on top of your current, you can be as hybrid as you want to be.
Like Fallout 3... Even if you invested all points in melee, nothing was preventing you from oneshooting dudes with a sniper rifle or ramboing around with a shotgun/rocket launcher.

It's hard currently because being melee makes you no tankier than the same setup that uses a ranged attack. With new skills like spectral throw and supports like splash, we have even less distinction between playstyles than we had in the beginning, even ES plays the same as life now.

If we take your TQ example, combining melee+melee was certainly a better option, but warfare+earth worked too, and with no strings and snags attached, it was just as strong as taking warfare all the way, that's my point.

It's really interesting that even with our generally very low damage investment and availability of crown of eyes people still don't really choose to play attack/spell. If you compare TQ with PoE you can see that TQ has very few 'spammy' spells, most have a cooldown, do pretty high damage relative to monster health and often provide additional benefits like stun or other debuffs. In PoE all spells are spammy, even if you don't cast them constantly you work towards casting them, like you do with discharge.

So the main problem is you can't really do both at the same time, unless you use summons or totems (with totems being pointless because of large penalties that come with additional ones). A few years ago I suggested 'cooldown supports' that would give a cooldown to skills that don't have it but also provide a large damage boost. I realized it would cause some issue with regular caster balance so I also offered a keystone that would do the same thing but prohibit casting as long as any of your spells is on cooldown.

Instead, we got... trigger gems. Unfortunately, although they look like they were made with a 'battlemage' style in mind, they aren't. CwDT and CoS are used as hands-off tools for casting buffs, CoC is used as a way to cast ridiculous number of spells with no damage done by attacks and CoMK is used... pretty much not at all. Because as much as it hurts to split investment on passive tree level, doing it with supports is even more painful.

...
Apologies to the OP for the chit-chat, I still like to talk about this.

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KnyazSunny wrote:

I have tried a lot of different builds. Some viable, some not. But a common trend I am noticing among viable builds is that there exists a lack of spells / skills in most viable builds.

E.G You make a build around spamming Ice spear.
E.G You make a build around spamming Flicker strike.
E.G You make a build around spamming Arc.

But is there a build where you get to use a decent variety of spells? Seems like there aren't many (or any actually).

E.G You make a build around using Fireball + Flame surge + Flameblast. Such a build wouldn't make sense, and many of those spells would be redundent. And you would benefit more from filling sockets with passive gems like Cast when Hit / Curses.

Yet the game gets boring when all you do is spam 1 (maybe 2) spells over and over for 70-80 levels. Is this really all the game will even boil down to? or am I just not looking hard enough for viable builds.

This is one advantage the entire Diablo series has over Path of Exile and some other ARPGs. They force you to use more than one skill and promote the use of multiple skills. This is especially true in Diablo 1.

However, games like Path of Exile force you to focus on one skill, maximize its power, and spam it until you've indoctrinated yourself that it is the best skill ever.

Either way, all ARPGs end up a boring grindfest. You kill the same things over and over without any real sense of progress.

TLDR: No, you won't get very far without focusing on one skill in this game. If you try to use more than one, you end up losing links unless you have two six-linked items.

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raics wrote:

It's really interesting that even with our generally very low damage investment and availability of crown of eyes people still don't really choose to play attack/spell. If you compare TQ with PoE you can see that TQ has very few 'spammy' spells, most have a cooldown, do pretty high damage relative to monster health and often provide additional benefits like stun or other debuffs. In PoE all spells are spammy, even if you don't cast them constantly you work towards casting them, like you do with discharge.

In TQ a serious caster build usually had 90-100% cooldown reduction for spamming reasons. ;)

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So the main problem is you can't really do both at the same time, unless you use summons or totems (with totems being pointless because of large penalties that come with additional ones). A few years ago I suggested 'cooldown supports' that would give a cooldown to skills that don't have it but also provide a large damage boost. I realized it would cause some issue with regular caster balance so I also offered a keystone that would do the same thing but prohibit casting as long as any of your spells is on cooldown.

I like this. :)

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Instead, we got... trigger gems. Unfortunately, although they look like they were made with a 'battlemage' style in mind, they aren't. CwDT and CoS are used as hands-off tools for casting buffs, CoC is used as a way to cast ridiculous number of spells with no damage done by attacks and CoMK is used... pretty much not at all. Because as much as it hurts to split investment on passive tree level, doing it with supports is even more painful.

You could actually use 2-3 cwdt setups, and use only one of them for buff/debuff (CWDT, IC, EC, Curse), the other 1-2 for spells.

That leaves one 4L for auras, and the weapon gems for whatever else you want (mobility?).

I think I'll try an allout fire cast/melee/totem build next league.
Though probably soon after getting it to work, I'll fall back to "use my molten strike only". ;)

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Peterlerock wrote:

In TQ a serious caster build usually had 90-100% cooldown reduction for spamming reasons. ;)

Heh, ok, we won't go into broken stuff now :)

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Peterlerock wrote:

You could actually use 2-3 cwdt setups, and use only one of them for buff/debuff (CWDT, IC, EC, Curse), the other 1-2 for spells.

That leaves one 4L for auras, and the weapon gems for whatever else you want (mobility?).

I think I'll try an allout fire cast/melee/totem build next league.
Though probably soon after getting it to work, I'll fall back to "use my molten strike only". ;)

Yeah, I've been meaning to give that one a go, now that the price of crown of eyes is somewhat acceptable and we got a really good fire attack skill in molten... but I suspect it will end up as you predict. :)

I have to disagree on the apparently wide spread opinion that single skill >> multiskill build - although not a 100% disagree. To avoid misunderstandings, i should probably clarify what i mean in a bit more detail.

The common skil setup:
1. heavily supported aoe or at least multitarget main skill in a 5+ link setup
2. (optional) single target skill
3. mobility skill
4. curse
5. CwDT setup (or sometimes selfcast defensive skills for farming specific bosses)
6. (optional) crowd control skill, mostly totems or alternatively vaal skill
7. Aura setup

What distinguishes a multiskill setup from the common single skill build is, in my opinion, when you consistently use 2-3 skills that are each set within a 4L+ instead of using a single (damage) skill 95% of the time. What skill combinations qualify for a multiskill build is mostly determined by two factors:
a) each skill individually is supported well by your gear and passives
b) each skill gains more profit from sindividually different support gems


As an example i will take the Ranger build that i designed for Rampage and am currently using as my main char:
1. single target/boss killer: Punture + Phys Proj. Damage + Critchance + Critmulti
2. fast trash mob clearer: Split arrow + Phys Proj. Damage + Faster Attacks + Added Fire + Weapon Elemental Damage (+ Critmulti if i ever get a 6L)
3. anti cluster skill: Rain of Arrows + Phys Proj. Damage + Faster Attacks + Faster Projectiles
4. anti reflect skill: Ice Shot (generally unsupported or i switch it in for Split Arrow)
5. Vulnerability for Puncture and Projectile Weakness for the other attack skills
6. CwDT setup
7. Hatred + Grace + Herald of Ash + Reduced Mana

Because my basic build is centered purely around physical damage, all of my damage skills profit greatly from the physical projectile attack damage support gem.
RoA gets a huge boost from faster projectiles and faster attacks because it allows me to 'lock' or even push back an entire cluster of mobs with the help of the King of the Hill notable and the projetile weakness curse and even though it has a lot less tooltip dps than the Split Arrow setup, it gives me a lot of crowd control as well as the limited ability to shoot around corners to avoid dangerous situation when entering a room full of mobs.
Although my bow and passives almost entirely feature only physical damage, the Split Arrow setup gains about 136% of that damage as extra elemental damage from the auras and support gems. Due to this circumstance, it deals a lot of damage to a limited number of targets regardless of their specific resistances or armor but looses in terms of effective dps versus the RoA setup against very large or tightly clustered groups.
Ice Shot is meant purely for large groups of mobs that are under the influence of a physical reflect aura but can also be swapped in for Split Arrow in reflect maps.
Punture on the other hand gets a lot of its effective dps from the bleeding effect which only derives from the physical damage portion of the biggest single hit so any elemental links or faster attacks will have little effect there and instead it focuses on dealing as high as possible physical damage per hit in combination with the vulnerability curse.
To be able to use three different main skills i had to drop the movement skills but because of the very high base movement speed of this char as well as the ability to go even much faster with a quicksilver flask, i found this to be no issue and have been able to solo any endgame content besides the Alluring Abbyss's Uber Atziri.


[TL;DR]
Especially if you don't have access to 1-2 6L or play moslty self found like me, multiskill builds can be very viable indeed and even greatly outperform many of those since they are more versatile.

Your build is not "hybrid" as all your stuff is scaling with physical damage.
It is multi-skill-based, yes, but we were talking hybrids.

Bow builds are an exception to the rule.
1. they actually have great difference in AoE and ST damage.
2. You have two 6 Links.
Edit: A Bow build has potential access to two 6L. Not "you".

A 1h Melee build will probably get more damage into his 6L AoE attack than a 4L ST attack can provide.
A 2h Melee build better uses Cyclone, and this skill is both AoE and ST. ;)

Have to agree that bow builds might indeed be favoured in that aspect but i don't have even a single 6L. I do have a 5L for Split Arrow but the other two are only 4L. From how i understand the OP, he asked for multi-skill builds in general that use different skills depending on the situation and not specifically hybrid builds but maybe i am mistaken there?

edit: saw your edit too late :)