[OUTDATED] [3.6] [CLEAR][BERSERKER] Smite SSF HC viable
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Monoloque
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Got a lot dozens whispers and friend invites asking me about how i set my Berserkers up in order to stand the tests of HC SSF levelling. So I decided to write this guide about it. I am rank 10 in SSF Synthesis HC with my char Cuddling_with_Hyenas. Synthesis is an extremly deadly league not because of the new content but because of the Betrayal league content that cannot be dodged anymore. There are new challenges for builds that a player must face if he wants to survive. Previously, at 3.4, delve league, it was enough to just go ham on all kind of elemental mitigation but that does not work anymore because the Betrayal and Incursion content requires proper physical and chaos damage defenses in order to be done deathless. Gonna keep updating this whenever I feel like it. I know that the build is not interesting for the most players due to the fact that not many players play Berserker or HC SSF. Right now spells are the meta, attacks are inferior, so if you really want to play the game on easy mode then better check out a bane, winterorb or arc guide for occultist, elementalist or trickster. Why Berserker is GOOD for melee builds in SSF
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Berserker is said to be the worst ascendancy class in the moment. Thats bullshit of course, Raider and Slayer are the worst obviously. Berserker is good in HC due to his ability to sustain and regain huge amount of effective hitpoints (ehp) in a Mind over Matter (MoM) build due to Warbringer effect and the abundance of life and mana leech it gives and in SSF due to his very low gear requirements to deal good enough damage for map clearing. There is no other ascendancy class that has such an easy time to build and gear up a huge ehp pool using Mind over Matter and maintaining it. The reason for this: Since the stat stick nerf in 3.5, a lot of melee attack builds need critical strike in order to deal enough endgame damage for clearing red maps or whatever. Crit needs gear and gear is what people dont have and probably dont get in SSF. EVER. Berserker offers a solution here for a lot of melee builds by dealing good enough damage due to his 40% more damage multiplier from Aspect of Carnage just with Resolute Techniques or Elemental Overload. Those builds are a lot easier to gear because they dont need tons of crit multiplier and crit chance. They dont need any of this shit actually. If you dont need crit mods on your jewellry, helmet, gloves or whatever, then you can care just about having as much life/mana/resistances on them as possible. That means having 10k ehp instad of 7k like the typical crit life build and even if you take increased damage and have a degen you gonna end up surviving a lot more stuff than they do. 10/7 is literally 42% more hitpoints and now combine that with the best MoM sustain in the game, 50% ehp healed in 1.8 secs just by warbringer and another 20*1.8 = 36% ehp from having both life and mana leech cap regen against single target. Crit builds also often force a player to do stupid pathing on the skilltree in order to get enough crit chance which ends up with a player being starved of life nodes or not being able to go OP defensive nodes like MoM and/or Dodge, lacking attack speed or other stuff that is making a build rippy or feel slow and dizzy. Everyone who is saying that Berserker ascendancy has no defenses is wrong. Warbringer instant life/mana heal is the best mechanism to sustain huge amounts of ehp in a MoM build in the game. It goes as far as you not even needing a life flask as a Berserker player so yea say thank you to Berserker to 1 free flask slot. So lets put the pieces together. Berserker has the ability to sustain endless amounts of ehp if scaled with MoM thanks to Warbringer while needing barely any skilltree investments for dealing good enough damage. That means he has a lot of skillpoints left to skill life and mana nodes en masse and in the current version where chaos and phys damage roast players on a daily basis, a huge ehp pool is a very effective defensive concept against that. Goals and not goals
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Goal is a Berserker that clears T15 fast, safe and only with SSF gear. Getting 100 in the holy HC SSF marathon is the goal. Not goal is to kill Shaper, Elder, Uber Atziri or the Guardians. Its too deadly for HC and we rather sit down at 300-500k dps and just improve the defenses instead of getting the proper dps for that shit. The prime example Characters
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Magic_Hyena_Friend, Hyena_Giggle and Cuddling_with_Hyenas, you can find all of them in my profile Hyena_Giggle is the first level 100 Berserker in the history of HC SSF and was rank 14 in HC SSF Delve. The char was playing flat ele scaling ground slam 1h+shield MoM Dodge. Magic_Hyena_Friend died with level 99.6 in an incursion due to the blood architect game crash (was fixed later in 3.5.?). The char was playing flat ele scaling Smite 1h+shield MoM Dodge. Cuddling_with_hyenas. Rank 10 in Synthesis HC SSF was playing Smite, no ranger dodge but having 10300 ehp with MoM ehp stacking. This guide will be about Cuddling_with_Hyenas because he could meet the new challenges in a competitive manner, the 2 other chars with their dodge are outdated due to their low phys and chaos mitigation. Stats, Pros and Cons of the Character
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-10300 ehp -easy endurance charge generation thanks to Enduring Cry Spam, long Immortal call -basic to good phys mitigation thanks to lunaris pantheon, granite, basalt flask, 15k armour buffed, 4% phys mitigation from soul of steel and high ehp (which is also a good way to deal with phys damage) -200-600k ish dps fully buffed (hard to say with the overlapping damage or less damage due to not being the main attack but just the aoe. -blind, a little dodge, some block, solid rng defenses and afk defenses against game crashes with vengeance/reckoning and cloaked in savagery Pros: -Cheap: Just needs a tabula and 2 attacks per second weapon until red maps, gear can completely be crafted with delve fossils, does not require a special 6 link chest, any 6 link chest that is craftable will do. Its also flexible towards gem colors. -Fast: Thanks to utilizing the fastest weapon type in the game and a lot of the increased attack speed from the Skilltree, Gear and Berserker, you gonna move very fast which also makes you safer due to faster getting out of stuff like bearers. -Doesn't need or should have damage or life flasks: 5 utility flasks against all ailments and curses + improved flask duration and recovery from the skilltree, everyone will love that one. -safe even against the new betrayal and incursion content. A huge ehp pool and reliable sustain is the key to meet the old/new challenges. Lots of builds cant do that thats why Synthesis league was a huge massacre for a lot of players in HC and HC SSF. But this build can do it. -ethical :) cons: -needs lots of reskilling during levelling and gear progression (but its manageable even in SSF) -melee (therefor weak, outdated, undertuned, mimimi random feedback forum rant might be fixed in 3.7) -abyss jewels might be nerfed hard in 3.7 then we might have a damage problem -bad for deep delving due to inconsistent corpse explosions The Defenses
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Defenses are the queen of HC SSF. You only need 200-400k dps to clear red maps with an acceptable 6-7 mio xp/h at lvl 99 at normal tier 11 and 12 maps and 8-10 mio at shaped toxic sewers and wont get much better than that even with double dps. But defenses you can never have enough. The Berserker way to do things is to stack EHP with MoM. A lot of EHP. 10.000? Good start. Mind over Matter became a meta tier defense in 3.0 when GGG buffed the nodes and located them next to other attractive nodes like elemental overload MoM makes a player being able to use mana as hitpoints just like life. The condition for doing so is keeping a ratio that is 70 life for 30 mana. So the perfect MoM build has 0.428 mana per 1 life. For example having 6000 life and 2570 mana would be a perfect MoM setup ratio wise. If you break the ratio by having too much life then you might run out of mana in a battle where things hit too hard. No mana means not being able to perform any skills which is a huge discomfort and deadly. Breaking the ratio by having too much mana results in the abundant mana not contributing to ehp. tl;dr: try to keep the 0.428 ratio as well as you can. The Warbringer instant heal also works best if you keep the ratio. If you got a chestpiece that changes that ratio like I did in this league then you have to adapt to the new ratio between life and mana. for example if you got a 10% of "damage is taken as mana before life" on your delve crafted chest piece and you skiled MoM in the skilltree then the new ratio is 60 life for 40 mana thus 2/3 mana per 1 hp. Keep the calculator ready all the time. But I dont think that changing the ratio is a reasonable goal because: 1) you want a lot of life in order to not get stunned often or the enemies having too much ailment effect and a huge life pool prevents you from that. 2) after skilling all the super efficient and good mana nodes on the skiltree there are only mediocre ones left and they have the same effect on ehp as skiling similar life nodes So I think the basic 70 life for 30 mana ratio is best for Berserker but getting a ratio of 60/40 due to having a breastplate with the MoM delve mod is not a catastrophe as long as life and mana rolls on the chestpiece are very high. Thats why I kept mine eventhough it had that mod on the char cuddling_with_hyenas. Damage avoidance: As melee players, we get hit by the whole screen all the time. Lets build around that. Those 2 flasks are a good start. We will play 1h + shield, so 25% block chance. Also, Lunaris Pantheon for the little extra dodge/spell dodge and projectile damage avoidance. Stibnite Blind means enemies in the stibnite cloud have a 50% reduced chance to hit you which is nuts. This thing is going to save our ass so often that we cant count it, combined with the abundance of charges it has we can use it at every single pack we leap slam or shield charge into and also get anti curse on it so curse maps become free item quantity. With an anti curse stibnite all curse maps no matter if yellow or red become free item quantity. Spell Dodge is still a luxury but not a necessity, Bearers, lightning mirage, volatile flameblood and those Sparking obelisks from bloodlines and corpse explosions from delve will tear a player without spell dodge apart. So get big eyes when you see them and go back from where you came until its gone. Spell Block is not the way to go since the ""spellblock changes"". We get 15% spell dodge from Quartz flask + Lunaris Pantheon, that is rather low but better than nothing. Phys mitigation is OK in this build due to the armour that granite flask, the shield and eventually breastplate gives. Then we also have basalt flask and lunaris pantheon. Chaos mitigation is a huge thing since betrayal and incursion. Get at least 0-10% chaos resistance in order to feel safe against It that Fled, Tora and Incursion architects. Summary: MoM is a must, aim for 10k ehp, the more the better. Basic phys and chaos mitigation combined with high ehp are good enough to not die ever to betrayal and incursion. Good sustain with leech and warbringer instant heal will make us competitive to the defenses of very defensive orientated ascendancies like juggernaut. We get RNG defenses in order to not be damaged by everything that hits us by pressing flasks and choosing lunaris with all its upgrades as major pantheon. The Offenses
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Flat elemental damage scaling with abyss jewels and Smite. Smite is a good skill because it frees a gem slot by not needing Melee splash, has a good damage damage effectiveness of 167% at level 21 and gives us a ton of flat damage by its aura. Also the Smite animation makes it easily to see if we attack a single target twice thanks to the ancestral call trick or not. The reasoning behind flat elemental damage scaling I can just copy what I sent another player via a private message. Flat ele scaling is the way to go in SSF HC in 3.6 BUT it will change in 3.7 most probably though. Damage scaling for melee skills has 2 viable ways: 1. Phys conversion scaling: Your weapon or Facebreakers delivers the damage and you use shaper jewelry, hatred and herald of ash auras and damage flasks with "gain x% of your physical damage as x cold/lightning/fire/chaos damage". This mode for scaling is costly and not good for SSF because the damage flasks do not have anti freeze/anti curse/anti shock mods on them so you gonna have a real problem with ailments when using damage flasks. Also it requires you to have a good 400-500 pdps weapon which is a pain to get and before that you will run around with a 200-300 pdps weapon which is dealing not enough damage for yellow and red maps. I guess everyone who played HC SSF with phys conversion scaling knows that yellow map gear and weapon hole which is incredibly hard to get out. 2. Flat Elemental damage scaling: Where abyss jewels and other gear delivers the main portion of your base damage and your weapon is just delivering a bit flat ele damage, a perfect attack speed (2 attacks per second at least) and useful stats like ele penetration, attacks cannot miss mod, elemental resistances or whatever. That is the way to go for SSF because you dont need any damage flasks and there arent any damage flasks for it except wise oak but yea fuck wise oak so you can have 5 utility flasks with anti bleed/poison/shock/freeze/curses instead which improves your survivability by A TON. No matter what anti ailment mod you dont have, it will kill you sooner or later so make sure to have them all. You dont need a good weapon or even abyss jewels for flat ele scaling, just a fast one, you get huge base damage from just using the added cold damage and added lightning damage support gems. Also elemental damage does not profing from the dual wield "melee physical damage bonus", so 1h + shield is the way to play it. Here is an example how it works: With phys scaling you have a 400 pdps weapon, which has 200 base damage and 2 attacks per second and 2x 1.5 more damage support gems, resulting in 200*2*1.5*1.5 = 900 dps. With flat ele scaling you would use added cold and added lightning skillgem instead of the 2x 50% more damage skill gems and yea lets say you just a have weapon with 2 aps, and 50 flat added fire damage on it. Then you have (200+200+50)*2 = 900 dps. The key realization is that it is a million times easier to get a weapon with 2 attacks per second base and 50 flat ele damage than it is to get a 400 pdps weapon. Its literally just throw a screaming essence of zeal on a jewelled foil and craft any added fire/cold/lightning damage you like for 3 chaos on it. Then the abyss jewels come into play an abyss jewel can have up to 100 flat ele damage which is absolutely insane. Its so broken I cant say it. 50 flat ele damage are already worth a jewel slot. The more flat ele damage you get from gear and abyss jewels, the less the "added lightining/cold damage" support gems are doing, so at one point you might throw one of them out and replace it with ruthless. Lets say you have 600 flat damage from gear, the smite bonus and abyss jewels, then the added cold damage support would make you have 800 flat damage instead of 600, which is 800/600 only 33.3% more damage, while ruthless gives (1+1+2.13)/3 = 37% more damage. There are also weapons that give huge flat damage like Dyadus which are worth thinking about but you might not get them dropped so lets not build around them. Both Resolute Techniques and Elemental Overload work. Elemental Overloard will deal more damage but is inconsistent, attacks will miss, we will need anti blind and we need to get some crit chance and accuracy to have it on most of the times. A fancy or jewelled foil is a must for this build due to the maximum attack range of 12 and the best base attack speed. It might be a problem to get the accuracy and dexterity required to use one properly but it must be done. Warcries
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They are the Berserker thing to do. Rallying Cry and Enduring Cry, primairly spam Enduring Cry because it gives 400-500 flat hp regen and endurance charges all the time so your immortal call is up longer than normal and do a rallying cry here and then to get lvl 26 clarity like mana regen and a 20-200% damage boost which is an as big bonus as the adrenaline of champion at its peak if warcried at huge packs, breachers, abyss openings etc. The 2 prime chars of mine did not use Rallying Cry because I did not know back then that the Rallying Cry and Enduring Cry buffs are not overwriting each other any more. In the good old times Enduring Cry was always overwriting Rallying Cry, making it pointless to use both. But here and now they can and should be used together. Cuddling_with_Hyenas used both and was happy with it. The Skilltree
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Kill all bandits. It gets complicated because the gear decides how many life and mana nodes you will need in order to keep the MoM ratio. The rule of thumb for me normally is that a player should have as much %increased life as %increased mana. But When you get a 60/40 MoM due to the mod on the chest then that will change. Always calculate with a Texas instrument calculator next to your keyboard from your life how much mana you are supposed to have and then skill accordingly to it. Cuddling_with_Hyenas had the 60/40 MoM so I needed a shitload of mana in order to not violate the MoM ratio too much and I had to reskill some stuff. Generally, a skilltree like that is desirable for the end: https://pastebin.com/uLaEmFM5 Import Pastebin in Path of Building. If I now need a shitton of mana to keep the ratio then I skill Dynamo and Righetous Decree instead of the bloodless wheel. If I need more life I gonna skill the life wheel and so on. This tree provides good enough damage and attack speed with that build so the only hairy stuff here is "how many life nodes, how many mana nodes?" and that gets decided by the gear you have. Go with the calculator. I did not go Acrobatics this time, if you want to go acrobatics then dont skill the instant warcry nodes and just go on the skilltree like Magic_hyena_friend does. I do not recommend it eventhough spelldodge is super useful because then phys damage will become an even worse problem in the current game version. It has only very limited increased ele damage and stuff but thanks to all the ele damage with attacks craft on jewellry and the use of rallying cry it will be no problem. Instant warcries is important to play a character that does not feel like he is having heart problems when spamming warcries. 5 Abyss jewel slots, good enough, 4% phys res, 12% chaos res from the skilltree to meet the new challenges from incursion and betrayal league and lots of attack speed to move fast. GOOD. Levelling
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Do not forget to turn off all auras once you are getting MoM. The only acceptable thing would be a banner due to it reserving only 10% mana but even that becomes a discomfort at higher mana pools. I am not entirely sure what is ultimately the best, its a dilemma between speed and cost of reskilling, but I can give 2 viable choices: SLOWER but less reskill cost (THE ORIGINAL strategy used by cuddling_with_hyenas):
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Sunder dual wield phys scaling till blood aquaducts. Dont forget about the increased phys damage vendor recipe. 40% more damage first ascendancy choice, then warbringer, then leech, then cloaked in savagery. The setup: Sunder - Onslaught - melee phys damage - added fire. First skill the damage of the marauder tree then straight go to templar by going vertically from Born to Fight, skill life and try to get the damage and attack speed from the minion nodes as fast as possible. You gonna reskill that later (around level 80) in favour of more ehp and replace the loss of attack speed with skill Berserking and the loss of damage by the ele damage and penetration wheel of templar. early levelling skilltree: https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/3.5.4/AAAABAEAAASzC2EQURQgFm8YXRo4Gj4elCSqJy8oKjD4Nuk6xjrYPO89_EVHSp9QR1hjWfNfP2D4YvRmnmebaPJxsnIPd-V7jH7ggpuExIm8i0-Mz5BVl3mYTZ5XogCmrKqprj6vbMBmxq7G2ONq5FHkVe8O8B_yL_ZI-tI= We will reskill a lot of that if we dont need the resistances and phys damage nodes anymore but its good for early levelling to not have any damage or resistance problems. At lvl 40 farm chamber of innocence till 48, it gives BY FAR the best xp till blood aquaduct. Dont use multistrike with Sunder too early, it might kill you when fighting act 5 Kitava. At Blood Aquaducts we farm a tabula no matter how long it takes. When we have a tabula, we switch to 1h + shield (chaos spam an acceptable shield with a high +hp and resistances implicit to substitute the loss of the breastplate) and plant in the following the skill gem setup: Smite - Elemental Damage with Attacks - Added Cold - Added Lightining - Ancestral Call - Energy Leech Why Energy Leech? Because if bloodrage is on, you will always leech energy shield when hitting mobs, thuse giving you 39% more damage which is better than ruthless. With that we are served until red maps. Literally. Just need a fancy/jewelled foil. Roll 20+% attack speed on it, regal it and craft the Betrayal "Damage with this weapon penetrates x% of elemental resistances" or flat ele damage on it and you are done till red maps. But for red maps its not enough dps we gonna 4-5 good abyss jewels to deal the sweet spot of t15 map clear damage (200-400k). So we craft them. I recommend just starting to craft abyss jewels once you got ilvl 77 abyss jewels due to the life and ele damage mod tiers. For Abyss jewel crafting we want primairly flat mana, flat life, flat ele damage for swords, chance for onslaught on kill. Flat ele damage is the most important stat, so the perfect abyss jewel has high tier flat ele damage mods for the kind of weapon you use and has altogether a 100 flat ele damage so you get HALF a support gem for 2 skillpoints. They gonna nerf this in 3.7 I will give an alterantive then. If you have an abyss jewel with 3 good mods dont be afraid to exalt them!. All the 5 abyss jewels that cuddling_with_hyenas had were exalted. Exalting the best abyss jewels might have a bigger effect than multicrafting a good weapon. Every abyss jewel with more than 50 flat damage is worth to be put into the skilltree. "Somewhat safe HP thresholds": Innocence: 1500 hp Kitava: 1800 hp Cruel Lab: 2500 hp Act 8 Doedre: 2700 hp Solaris & Lunaris: 3000 hp Act 10 Kitava: 4000 hp (Mind over Matter after this point) Merc lab: 5000 ehp (and make sure you got the lvl1 cwdt setup at this point cause the green spray of Izaro can oneshot 5k without it) white maps: 5500 ehp yellow maps: 7000 ehp Uber lab: 7000-7500 ehp red maps: 8k ehp Delve 200+: 9500 ehp Skill the Scion life wheel to have enough HP for the challenges but unskill it once you go MoM for skilling the mana nodes instead. A good time to reskill to MoM is after the tabula rasa farm at blood aquaducts and at maps you can and should have already 6k ehp to be safe. A surprising otherworldly mob pack at a tier 2 map is all that it needs to obliterate a 5k hp pelayer so lets better get MoM sooner than later. FASTER but more reskilling:
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Pure phys Sunder dual wield phys scaling till yellow maps. Dont forget about the increased phys damage vendor recipe (go to sell items at a vendor, put your desired weapon base + a blacksmith whetstone + a blue/yellow rustic sash(yellow gives more damage) into the window and then he will offer you the same weapon with a 40-60% increased damage mod). At Labyrinth skill 40% more damage first ascendancy choice, then warbringer, then leech, then cloaked in savagery. The setup: Sunder - Melee phys - Brutality - Multistrike Also use Warbanner (Can be bought at Nessa after Mud flats), Vulnerability and Ancestral Warchief with Maim - Ruthless - Chance to bleed At deadly bossfights like Act 5 Kivata, Innocence, etc use vulnerability to boost your damage and exchange Multitstrike with Chance to Bleed so you can dodge their stuff easier. First skill the damage of the marauder tree then go strong arm. Then skill Versatility for herald of purity and blood rage. Then go resolute techniques, then skill the life nodes below Born to Fight and get the ele resistances, then the axe wheel. Then skill the life nodes at Marauder start. Then we walk to Duellist, getting Art of the Gladiator and Dervish. Then we got to the life wheel and skill some more damage and attack speed. We gonna end up having 30k Sunder tooltip dps with vendor recipe Siege Axes at Blood Aquaduct which is nuts, completely shredding everything until yellow maps and going super fast. Farm Blood Aquaduct till 70-72 and then go straight to kitava for getting fast to maps. levelling skilltree at the point of reskill at 85: https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/3.6.3/AAAABAEAAAHcAecEswthE0wUIBSpF-EaPhv6HpQl3yb4Jy8oKjB3MPgx-zIJMtE1kjboOtg9_EVHRZ1HfklPTjJQR1NSVi1YY1ivWfxZ_l8_YEFjcGRSZU1ngGebaPJsRm20bmlvO3Jsdqx343gNeWh7jHxLfNl-4H_jgpuExITZhTKFUotPjM-QVZZ0ly2XeZrgm2qeV6IApBmnMKgHqW6tja4-r2y18ryqvTa-p8AawGbBBMGjxqrGrsbYz37V-Ni92WHaP97l4mHkUeRV6hjr7u8O8B_yL_ZI9zL46w== When we have a tabula (Channel and waterways maps) or a real six link (how to get one easily is a good question though, might be best choice to farm Pen or Fungal Hollow) , a fast fancy or jewelled foil with the ele penetration craft , we do the big reskill, switch to 1h + shield (chaos spam an acceptable shield with a high +hp and resistances implicit to substitute the loss of the breastplate) and plant in the following the skill gem setup: Smite - Elemental Damage with Attacks - Added Cold - Added Lightining - Ancestral Call - Energy Leech Why Energy Leech? Because if bloodrage is on, you will always leech energy shield when hitting mobs, thuse giving you 39% more damage which is better than ruthless. It will need something like 30-40 reskill points to turn the levelling skilltree into the kind of skilltree of PoB: https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/3.6.3/AAAABAEAAAHcAecEswj0C2EQUREtFCAUqRUgFm8YXRm0Gjgb-iAGJJ0l3ycvLJwtgzD4Mgky0TNsNZI26DrGOtg9_EVHRZ1HfklPSp9QR1NSVi1WSFhjWK9Z81n8Xz9iWmL0ZU1mnmebaPJqQ2xGbmlvO3GFcbJyD3Jsd-N35XgNeWh8g4KbhNmFMom8jM-QVZctmE2a4KIApBmnCKcwqW6t8a4-r2y18ryqvOq9Nr6nwBrAZsEExqrGrsbY037V-Ngk2L3aP9q53uXjauRR5FXr7u8O73rwH_ZI9qP60g== So hoard the regret orbs, buy regret orbs for scourings and scourings for chance orbs from the vendor, do the regret point missions. That reskill is extremly demanding for sure because it also produces problems with accuracy and dexterity that must be solved with gear and crafts but its worth going for it. The best time to do the reskill is is around level 85 at early yellow maps when pure phys RT Sunder starts to become shit. This is just a suggestion, in SSF the optimal skilltree depends on the gear a player has so dont take it too seriously. If you good chaos res from gear, you dont need the templar chaos res and life nodes. If you got a lot of flat mana from gear, you might not need so mana mana nodes and can skill more life nodes etc. With that we are served for early red maps, but of course we want more attack speed and damage so we gonna improve modularly by rolling better abyss jewels, getting good attack speed gloves and better ehp/resistance gear. Once we got like 15% attack speed on the gloves we can reskill the Berserking wheel, and go for Dynamo insteaf for more ehp. For Abyss jewel crafting we want primairly flat mana, flat life, flat ele damage for swords, chance for onslaught on kill. Flat ele damage is the most important stat, so the perfect abyss jewel has high tier flat ele damage mods for the kind of weapon you use and has altogether a 100 flat ele damage so you get HALF a support gem for 2 skillpoints. They gonna nerf this in 3.7 I will give an alterantive then. Phys scaling will be probably the shit then. If you have an abyss jewel with 3 good mods dont be afraid to exalt them!. All the 5 abyss jewels that cuddling_with_hyenas had were exalted. Exalting the best abyss jewels might have a bigger effect than multicrafting a good weapon. Every abyss jewel with more than 50 flat damage is worth to be put into the skilltree. Abyss jewel crafting is really one of the most important things here. There is nothing like having a bunch of OP abyss jewels. "Somewhat safe HP thresholds": Innocence: 1500 hp Kitava: 1800 hp Cruel Lab: 2500 hp Act 8 Doedre: 2700 hp Solaris & Lunaris: 3000 hp Act 10 Kitava: 4000 hp (Mind over Matter after this point) Merc lab: 5000 ehp (and make sure you got the lvl1 cwdt setup at this point cause the green spray of Izaro can oneshot 5k without it) white maps: 5500 ehp yellow maps: 7000 ehp Uber lab: 7000-7500 ehp red maps: 8k ehp Delve 200+: 9500 ehp Skill the Scion life wheel to have enough HP for the challenges but unskill it once you go MoM for skilling the mana nodes instead. A good time to reskill to MoM is after the tabula rasa farm at blood aquaducts and at maps you can and should have already 6k ehp to be safe. A surprising otherworldly mob pack at a tier 2 map is all that it needs to obliterate a 5k hp player so lets better get MoM sooner than later. Gearing
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Due to playing SSF we gonna have dogshit gear most of the time or rather all the time. Weapon: The perfect weapon would be paradoxia with some nice attack speed veild mod but we cant get that so we get a jewelled foil (because of the huge melee attack range and perfect base attack speed) with: Prefix: -16% ele penetration with this weapon -best flat cold 1h weapon craft -Attacks cannot miss Suffix -multi craft mod -27% Maximum Increased attack speed (not crafted but rolled) -inc crit or an elemental/chaos resistance or accuracy depending on what other gear you have Shield: A good rare tower shield, ideally an Ezomyte Tower shield (highest hp implicit), crafted with a priste fossil and the flat mana master craft mod on it. Chest: something like that. Crafted with lucent + pristine fossil. Any 6 linked chest (ideally an armour/es, eva/es or ES base because those can roll flat naturally on them). Crafted with pristine + lucent fossil. The "10% of damage is taken from mana before life" mod is NOT desirable though. Just high life, high mana and life regen is also nice. You can also use other bases like pure armour bases and just mastercraft flat mana on it. Its really no drama which base you have once you got a real non tabula 6 link you are fine. Its hard to get a six link though I think the easiest way is to farm is either Pen with "Chain that binds" or Residence with "Dapper Prodigy" div cards. Farming those at Pen is faster currently I think (eventhough the residence one was faster in Delve, they change numbers all the time). This build does not need to care that much about socket colors and thats why all armor bases are fine. Only problem is with ranger armor. 3 red 3 greens would be not so good. we need like 3 red 1 blue or 4 red and the other 2 dont matter. There are many damage gems we can use: Ruthless, Hypothermia, ES leech gem, added cold, added lightning ... make it dependant on the chest base you get. ES only chest: rolls blue gem sockets most of the time. Evasion only chest: rolls mostly green gem sockets Armour only chest: rolls mostly red gem sockets And the combinations have both preferences at the same time so a Evasion/Armour base mostly rolls red and green socket colors. The way to get 3 red sockets on a chest that mostly only rolls green or blue sockets is to either master craft it with the "at least 3 red sockets" or chrome spam it. I think the only chest type where master crafting 3 red sockets is more efficient than just chrome spamming is the Evasion/ES base that I had. Even at a pure ES or pure Evasion chest you are more like to get 3 reds with less than 150 chromatics than otherwise and the 3 red recipe costs 150 chromatics. Helmet: Bone helmet, fossil crafted with lucent + pristine fossil and a reserve Ahn's Helmet in your stash. Run the red crit maps and crit delves with ahn helmet, and the normal maps with the bone helmet. Yellow crit maps arent a big deal so you run those with the bone helmet too. Boots: Two-Toned boots, preferably those with Armour and Evasion. Life, Mana, Movement Speed, Chaos Res, Ele Resistances. Gloves: Good rare spiked gloves with loads of life, mana, resistances and attack speed really liked those Belt: Abyss jewel belt with 60+ life, resitances and weapon elemental damage craft. or if you have a leather belt with abnormal life and resistances like that then of course stick with it. Rings: Rare rings with Life, mana, resistances, weapon elemental damage craft, flat ele damage. Amulet: A rare Marble Amulet with life, mana, resistances, flat ele damage and elemental damage with weapon craft. Movement skills
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Either Leap Slam or Shield Charge. Shield Charge is faster but is more sensitive to edges and obstacles, Leap Slam is safer. If you go for shield charge, dont mess around with the necropolis map boss! I will go shield charge this time. So the movement skil setup up will be: Shield Charge - Faster Attacks - Fortify Gameplay
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Shield charge/Leap Slam in the middle of a pack, press stibnite, then smite them to death. Against tough stuff like map bosses or elder portals spawn your Vaal Ancestral Warchief setup: Vaal Ancestral Warchief - added cold - elemental damage with attacks - conc effect Use Enduring Cry and Rallying Cry here and then and faceroll the flasks to keep the anti ailment buffs up and to get a ton of defensive stats. Its an ez routine, if you have suddenly huge life loss just press warcries to instant heal. There is nothing much more to say here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bs1Admt9h1w Mapping NOT OPTIMAL, probably outdated but dont have anything better yet. It has a too rough start but havent found anything better yet.
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Try to run as many Elder and Shaper influenced maps as possible due to the higher map drop rate. We cant run Ele reflect map mods but everything else and thanks to being pure ele and having basic 25%ish ele penetration we do not need to care about the monster defense map mods. But the damage mods is where it gets complicated. My rule of thumb is 2x or even 3x added ele damage for mods is a nogo at red maps. It needs a lot of game knowledge, knowing all the map bosses etc to know if you can run a map with boss damage mods without danger or not. min max resistance map mod is cancer too but without ele damage mods it can be run at maps without bosses that deal huge ele damage. No life reg and reduced life recovery is also bad but this map mod rolls so often on maps that you must run it in order to not run out of currency too fast. Run it. No leech is bad but can and should be run. Red crit maps without having Ahn's Helmet are super bad due to phys crit oneshots, dont run them unless you have it equipped. At yellow and white maps its fine. Spamming Shaped Toxic Sewer is the way to go in 3.6. Tier 14 shaped canyon, as tier 15 waste pool. I think the best way to set up the atlas is to start at alleways, dont do the other tier 1 maps till you got the tier 9 shaper orbs. I wasted a lot of currency to unsahpe all the bullshit that i tried out and I changed my mapping goal completely due to the lower map drop rate. So I recommend setting up the atlas as following tier 1-3: dont shape anything tier 4: Glacier tier 5: G Marshes. I chose graveyard for vaal fragment farming and 3 bosses with a huge loot screen but then changed to Marshes due to absurd mob density. tier 6: none. They are all shit. Had Burial chambers first but then made infested valley my only tier 11 map. Fuck Burial Chambers. tier 7: Estatuary or Fields. Fields has an easy boss for this build but the map returns arent overwhelming, Estatuary might be better. Fields was not bad enough to be unshaped but I still think it was not that good. tier 8: Toxic Sewers tier 9: Canyon tier 10: non but try to get waste pool with zana missions So you complete all unique maps you can and all maps until tier 8. you complete no tier 9 map and unshape any tier 9+ map after you got the tier memory fragment for making a shaped canyon map. ABYSS JEWEL CRAFTING - NEW
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Abyss jewels are very important for that build for damage, onslaught, life and mana so I gonna give them an own section Here is how I do it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNdnRlAD6Zo (used chance orbs cause I had no transmutes anymore lol, you should do it with transmutes instead of chance orbs) We use Murderous jewels, it should have ilvl 77+ so very high flat ele damage mods can roll. The best abyss jewel I had was that one: <3 72.5 flat damage, +34 life. The other 99+ chars had better abyss jewels, one even with 100 flat ele damage on one. Lets remember that the Added cold damage support gem on lvl 20 gives like 210 flat damage. So yea 2 of those 100 flat damage abyss jewels are literally like a support gem. Of course exalting them is not a thing to do lighthearted. The rules for regaling an abyss jewel are: it must have 2 good mods and for exalting an abyss jewel is: 1. It must have 3 good or at least OK mods. Good or at least OK mods are: -adds cold/lightning/fire damage to attacks (at least 20 average flat ele damage). Average flat ele damage is (minimum+maximum)/2, so for example the mod "adds 15 to 35 fire damage" has (15+25)/2 = 20 flat ele damage. - 30+ mana - 30+ life - x% increased attack speed if you have dealt a critical strike recently - x% chance to get onslaught on kill (unless you have already a high enough chance from other abyss jewels, more than 8-10% chance is not needed, like even 6% chance is enough to have onslaught on all the time at maps) Thats it. We want those mods and nothing else. No added chaos flat, no added phys flat. Of course you should not take those rules too strict but balance them around a little in your mind, like if you have 2 mods like I had in the beginning of the video, +35 life and 11-22 added Fire damage. Well the fire damage mod was lower than 20 but still I regaled it cause the life roll was better than expected so it was worth a try. Also I had way too many regals at this point, if you dont have any regals but a lot of alterations/augmentations then you should be more conservative with regaling and so on. 2. Only exalt if the abyss jewel with 3 useful mods with high enough mod tiers has a flat ele damage mod "with Swords" already like the one in the video so we dont risk getting completely useless mods like added ele damage with claws as 4th mod. UNLESS the abyss jewel is really so good that its acceptable to take the risk, like an abyss jewel that has 40 life and 60 flat damage just with 3 mods. Such a jewel gives the values of 4 mods just with 3 mods so even if the 4th mod is useless it will still be better than most other jewels. And if you dont have exalts, many jewels with 3 good mods or even 2 good mods are already worth their jewel slots. 50 flat damage or 30 flat life or mana and 20 flat ele damage is my rule of thumb to be worth a jewel slot if I have nothing better. At higher levels you gonna replace the mediocre abyss jewels with newly crafted better ones. Always keep rolling them if you have some unless you got 5x100 flat ele damage jewels then you won the game anyway. UPDATED, now with a typical map clear video in the gameplay section! Now also with an Abyss jewel section + a video of crafting a good abyss jewel with 4 useful mods. We youtube now. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yxb-c9snrXM Thanks GoodGuyGaming for the video, was the most satisfying to watch video I have ever seen! ^w^ Last edited by The_Human_Tornado on Jun 1, 2019, 9:49:38 PM Last bumped on Jun 11, 2019, 1:39:07 AM
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Hey, thanks for the guide! I'm playing the build (in SC though) and really enjoying it. Leveling has been a breeze SSF, I've used smite the whole way because I've played sunder way too much and it has gone pretty quickly.
Do you find yourself pressing Rallying Cry when you shield charge into the pack for the damage boost or do you hold warcries for when you get chunked? And which would you say is more important if you're crafting on a ring, flat ele or WED? Or is it just sim yourself to see? |
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Alrighty, just got 98.
The new prime char is Cuddling_with_Hyenas. I tried out a lot and ended up doing things a little different than in the original post, here is an short update, I will correct all wall of texts in the original post later: -Dont go Multistrike. You hit much harder without it and therefor have bigger shocks, chills and freeze a lot more mobs than usually. -Get Chaos Res, at least -20% or Incursion and Betrayal content gets too rippy -Spell dodge is not as important as getting the 10k ehp. HP stacking is really the way to go here and Berserker excels at MoM ehp stacking. The more ehp you have, the stronger Warbringer gets. -Dont use a life or hybrid flask. It doesnt do anything at 10k ehp. Just heal with Warbringer -I decided to not go shield charge cause I cant get good MS of boots due to urgently needing the chaos res on them and yea I rather stay safe with leap slam at the moment -no Tombfist, no Loreweave. Fuck those items I dont wanna play with the same items every leauge. -a jewelled or fancy foil is a must for comfortable 100 grind cause the 9 weapon range of swords and axes is just not good enough and makes clearing clunky and dirty at bigger packs here is what I got instead: an ilvl 84 jewelled foil that I found in Oba's unique map that costed me exactly 1 prismatic fossil to craft lol, much better than my old weapon dps wise and with higher weapon range + more attack speed for faster clearing eventhough it misses the 100ish flat ele damage that my old corsair sword had. That is because the higher attack speed works like a more multiplier for all flat elemental damage. So having a 2.03 attack speed weapon instead of a 1.9 means 7% more dps. And the 49% inc ele damage are doing so much because I got a lot of flat ele damage from abyss jewels and the 2 suppor gems. Huge upgrade. a chestpiece from a lucky drop of a "items are fully linked" box crafted with Pristine + Lucent fossil A spiked glove crafted with Pristine + Shuddering fossil. Best way to craft MoM gear is Lucent+Pristine fossil in a 2 socket resonator. Huge life mana rolls on everything are a must. Berserker is especially able to do this due to not needing crit stuff, leech or whatever on gear. MoM ehp stacking and sustaining with huge leech and warcry spam in SSF might be thing where Berserker trumps everyone else. Currently I am sitting at absurd 10200 ehp. Doing lvl 81 temples and safehous raids. No close calls ever, just the delve chain corpse explosions make me sweat. A kingdom for reliable corpse destruction. " Thank you! I spam Enduring cry all the time unless I feel lazy for keeping the 500 flat life regen and rage stacks up. If I fight hard hitting stuff or bosses then I hold it back, wait for the life/mana loss and then instantly heal up after. That works very well against a lot of bosses like shaped toxic sewer boss, they hit slower due to chill effect of the cold damage that we deal so the fight gets really easy even with damage and attack speed mods. 30% WED does most times more than flat damage on jewellry and that build doesnt have a lot of increased damage from the skilltree compared to the average phys build so it has a huge effect. The most efficient sources for flat damage are the abyss jewels and support gems or a weapon like Dyadus or a good rare. Last edited by The_Human_Tornado on Mar 24, 2019, 6:57:01 AM
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underrated thread. I wonder when meta gamers finally "understand" how good berzerker actually is and when they will shift towards this ascendancy class.
Last edited by Lewnatic on Mar 22, 2019, 7:35:19 PM
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Got a 99 problems but ehp and sustain aint one.
I will rewrite the guide completely once I'm 100 or dead. To be honest, fuck Ahn helmet and Chernobogs. Just get gear with huge life and mana rolls and you gonna be better off. That enfeeble nerf really hit muh chernobogs ... Trying to get a better shield with 120 hp and 50 mana and new boots with the same + movement speed. The fossil crafting rng wasnt good enough yet. " I assume you dont mean that sarcastic. Thank you :3 The problem in this version is that attack skillgems cant compete with spell or trap skillgems that dont need gear for anything and Berserker is an attack based ascendancy. So trappers and spellcasters have the last word at the moment. Last edited by The_Human_Tornado on Mar 23, 2019, 4:20:27 PM
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Great guide thanks a lot for all the info =)
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Hey man, thanks for the guide! May I ask is there a reason you don't use heralds/banners?
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What is the reason for the minion damage notes while leveling? i mean we are playing sunder
edit: ok got it its because of the spiritual aid node Last edited by Herrox on Mar 29, 2019, 9:20:00 AM
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Could tectonic slam replace smite here? looking at the skills they seem quite similar, other than tect slam hitting the entire screen and smite hitting like.. 2 mobs :(.
i tried levelling with it in full twink gear and it was the worst levelling ive tried lol. I was even using +20% gem, i couldnt imagine how unenjoyable this skill would be normally. Does it have some insane breakpoints later on for its radius? I even rushed the melee range node Last edited by ElseeK on Mar 29, 2019, 7:40:45 AM
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Alright guys, 100, rank 10 HC SSF :) Gonna update the guide soon, the new char is much better than the old ones because it can deal easily deal with betrayal and incursion content while the old ones struggled with it due to low chaos and phys mitigation.
" " Thanks. Yea the reason is that we are going Mind over Matter so Mana becomes pretty much the same as health as long as you keep the MoM ratio of 70 parts life and 30 parts mana. So if I have 6000 life and 2500 mana I am as tanky as a dude with 8500 life thanks to the mind over matter node. I dont use banners or heralds because they would reduce the amount of mana I have significantly and therefor lower my effective hitpoints. " Yea and spiritual command for attack speed. So we get like 110% increased damage and 20% attack speed and 1% life regen for 10 skill points. thats good when considering that it scales elemental damage. " yea it could you can scale everything with flat elemental damage thanks to the support gems and abyss jewels. It doesnt have to be smite thats just my personal choice due to it not needing melee splash, having a decent damage multiplier and giving elemental flat damage and having a good shock chance. did you use a foil to have the maximum attack range and fastest weapon the game? Did you use ancestral call? With ancestral call you just leap slam into the middle of the screen press right mouse button and everything around you is dead. And yea levelling with Sunder before having the tabula is better so just start using smite only when you have the tabula rasa. Last edited by The_Human_Tornado on Apr 1, 2019, 3:38:24 PM
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