Sunderella needs help

Hi exiles!

My first league char found a "Faith exumed" prophecy. So she bought a 6L Chober Chaber and turned it into a weapon that looks perfectly suited for a dominating blow build.
I was tired of hanging back and letting my minions/totems/traps/projectiles do the work, so this came at a good time. So I recycled Sunderella (her first incarnation was created when Sunder was introduced) into a bam!-in-your-face melee character.

Choices and their rationale:
- Ascendant so she can get the "no phys reflect" node and either the speed of a Raider, the minion supports of a Necro or the tankiness of a Jugg. I went for the tankiness.
- Main skill was obvioulsy DB and I decided to support it with leap slam for the stun+endurance charges and the sheer joy of jumping at my enemies and then laying waste wit ma hamma.
- The tree is mostly life nodes and minion damage nodes. I did get a sick cluster jewel which gives me both fortify and explody enemies, suiting the play style admirably.

Results
And it was a blast to play, I was laughing out loud pretty often and breezed through the story line and low level maps.
However, come yellow maps, she's just in it way over her head and may as well be made of paper.

So she stopped leap slamming into enemy packs, taking away most of the fun. If I play carefully, I can usually seperate a few monsters from the mobs and start make some minions before speeding up into the rest of the area.
But not always, PoE's monster density is just too high for this strategy. And hard enemies? I have to be up close and personal (which is what I wanted anyway) to hit them for a chance at minions, but with their damage output and degen auras and shotgunning projectiles, this is just not working for me.

'elp!
Does anyone have any tipps on how to save Sunderalla with relatively minor changes or is she a lost cause? Is there a way for her to participate in the fights or must she hang back and let others do the killing? That would be really disappointing.

May your map pools never run dry,
SB

Hmm thats an interesting and also weird approach ;)

I was playing DB this league as well but I went for Guardian instead and a different approach when it comes to the tree and support gems.


Im not quite sure why you seem to focus so much on skill effect duration. I didnt find that useful at all tbh. Might be wrong on that one though.
However you didnt go for impale, which would have been a massive dps boost and You are still using ancestral call. Thats fine while leveling but its a wasted socket in endgame because it doesnt support your minions.
Instead you should go for tribal fury on the tree or "strike skills hit an additional target" hunter gloves to replace ancestral call.
Also ruthless isnt as good as multistrike.

That would be my first goto changes.
Get rid of ruthless and ancestral call, go for impale and multistrike instead and also get some sort additional hits for strike skills, whether thats tribal fury and/or hunter gloves.


For defenses I was heavily relying on block, leech, regen and longterm I wanted to add "gain %life on block", but didnt enjoy the build enough to really bother.
Since you are using a 2handed hammer block is kinda out of the window already, so you´ll have to make up otherwise and thats most likely going to be a pain in the bottom...

However you could go for the necro ascendancy over jugger to get access to offerings and then run bone offering for a solid base block chance as well as life gain block. Not sure if thats good enough (doubt it tbh) but it might help out more than jugger does.
If you combined this with "Call to Arms" right next to tribal fury, you could use instant endu cries on your move button to generate endus as well as benfit from heal over time effect endu cry provides. Link it to second wind and also invest into "Escalation" to reduce the warcry cooldown as well as some additional heal when you do use a warcry.
This combo should outperform jugger by a mile defensively and should help out quite a bit.
If this feels good enough, consider investing into a hunter chest for another 25% offering effect to boost your block chance as well as the amount of life gained on block.


Hope it helps and provides a different perspective

Ooh sweet, thanks for the suggestions!

Hope I get time to play tonight, work is absolutely insane at the moment. Will try those changes.

"

Orbaal wrote:

Hmm thats an interesting and also weird approach ;)

Thank you :) It was a very intuitive thought process:
"Ooh, looky dat shiny hamma! Whatsit do? Minions and stun, so DM and leapslam"

OK, so I'll
1. Replace ancestral call with multistrike for more attack speed and damage, especially for the minions. I do love leap slamming around while my minions go to work so at least some of mine enemies shalt be stunned. Speed plenty good for dat.
2. Replace Ruthless by impale for more damage. Kinda weird to "impale" monsters with a stonking great hammer, but whatever works, huh?

"

Orbaal wrote:

However you could go for the necro ascendancy over jugger

I'm less sure about the necro vs jugg thing:
I would lose
- most of my accuracy
- stun immunity
- chill immunity
- some small benefits from enduring cry
and gain
- <20% block
- 30% extra AoE
- some small benefit from my aura
Dunno if that is worth it, but will try it if all else fails.


I'll give the instant enduring cry a chance, though maybe with an amulet enchant, as it's quite a few skill points away.
The extra strike from gloves sounds nice, will keep a lookout for such gloves.

Thank you for your thoughts, much appreciated!

"

SisterBlister wrote:

I'm less sure about the necro vs jugg thing:
I would lose
- most of my accuracy
- stun immunity
- chill immunity
- some small benefits from enduring cry

Erm yes but Resolute Technique exists and removes the need for acc completely for a total investment of 1 point. So thats a not an argument as far as Im concerned.
Stun immunity however is a concern. I solved this by traveling into the Marauder start area for all the sweet life and increased stun threshold. That fixed it for me.
Chill immunity is nice and all, but not that relevant tbh and the smaller benefits from endus wont do much anyways, so I dont think jugger is a good choice but in the end it always boils down to personal preferences and playstyle.

"

SisterBlister wrote:

Thank you for your thoughts, much appreciated!

Welcome!
Feel free to ask

So, I tried most of your suggestions, just left the jugg vs necro change out for now.
It certainly feels a bit smoother and I believe the enduring cry does help. Had to swap my amulet to fit it in, then had to rebalance my resis and stumbled upon some really cool gloves with blind on them. So, one extra little layer of defense.

Still don't think she'll fare well in any but very benevolently modded red maps. I guess not all builds/play styles are suited for end game.

But as I love the play style, I'll continue a while until I'm tired of it.
You've extended that time, so thank you.

Always happy to help out :)


And there is still plenty you could improve.

I would probably replace the flame golem with either carrion golem or stone golem - depends on whether you want an offensive or defensive option - and replace the relic with feeding frenzy (FF). Your golem will trigger FF and thats going to buff everyones atk and movespeed, cant hurt.
Honestly I do consider FF mandatory for all minion builds. You should check that out for sure.

Also if you want to stick to jugger, might as well complete uber lab and go for marauder start over the scion start. Should result in more life and some more armor. Latter one wont save the day but it cant hurt either.
FF should easily make up for the melee dmg lost in scion start, so you should be better off overall.

Your flasks could use some love too.
Like an enduring mana flask of warding is always a solid choice until you got some mana leech going and with some life leech on top you should be able to ditch 1 life flask for most likely a defensive flask.
I was using a rumis just to get some more block. Block is just great and unlike armor can save the day ;)
But yeah I was using the scourge claw and a shield, so thats a no brainer.

If you can squeeze in a dread banner for more impale, you and the boys would deal more dmg, but all minion builds are always socket starved as hell. So there is that.


In case you do commit to this build, Id recommend to roll fear essences on vermillion rings, after applying life catalysts on white bases. The essences will guarantee minion movespeed and each vermillion ring would provide 8% max life plus whatever life you can roll/craft onto it. Thats a total of 16% max life for 2 rings and about 50-60% minion movespeed.
Its funny if you have to chase after your minions, because they simply run much faster than you do ^^

Oh, hey, I completely forgot about the 4th ascendancy :)
The skill point alone will be nice to get.

Feeding frenzy seems a no-brainer, now that you pointed it out. Will definitely try that.
Dread banner, too, but let's see if I can squeeze it in.

Golem: Yeah, was considering the phys dmg reduction one previously, but at this point I'm thinking "What the hell, go ham, this char will anyway never be really tanky", so maybe the carrion golem would be best :) Whackem before they can hurt me.

I'll check if I can rearrange the tree for the marauder start, need a few more lvls for that (which could all go directly into more life nodes) unless I cut down on minion damage nodes... If not, I'll grab the 40 dex node, because dex really limits my gear choices atm.

Also: Berserker instead of jugg could be an option if I can squeeze in the Berserk skill for that extra damage and, more importantly, 19% less dmg taken. Sounds bonkers strong.

Vermillion rings do sound great, but by now I'm even struggling to get my resis capped. Those two-stone rings are awesome for that. Something to work up to, I guess. Gotta have chase goals :)

Anyway, planning a build instead of just playing intuitively is more fun than expected. I'm sure I'll tire of it eventually, but it's an interesting new experience.

"

SisterBlister wrote:

Anyway, planning a build instead of just playing intuitively is more fun than expected.

Thats a good start :)

Because those two things arent mutually exclusive.
I plan all my builds to the T and beyond - but I never end up playing the build I planned. This might sound stupid, but its true.

Sometimes I do spend days - yes you heard that right: DAYS - on planning a build, knowing full well all Im gonna get is numbers.
Those numbers dont translate into fun tho.

But those numbers do protect me from not having fun by hitting the wall and ending up frustrated. So best I can get for all the work I put into planning stuff is protection against frustration. Because the numbers do tell me I wont hit the wall.

I still have to put in the work to make it fun tho.
The only way Im aware of getting there is actually playing the damn thing, figuring whats not fun and why - and then fix it if I can or play something else.


Not planning a build in a game like this means rolling the dice.
For each build there are say 10 ways to do it right and 1000 ways to fuck it up. Why would I roll the dice knowing the odds?

All I can do is recommend you to plan your builds too and/or ask right here for help. There are plenty exiles around willing and capable to help out.
You´ll be better off for it and hopefully get more enjoyment out of the game and at the end of the day: thats what we are all here for even though our definition of fun might be vastly different.


Anyways, enjoy and have fun

So, that Marauder start did help, it wastes fewer points. Am now at alomst 6k life.

Feeding frenzy and dread banner seem to help a bit, but not tremendously.

Chose the (defensive) stone golem because I'd need a lot more int for a high level blue one, but that kinda sucks. It keeps dying, much faster than the flame one. Will switch back.

Didn't have much time to play around today, maybe it gets better towards the weekend.

Still thinking about berserk, maybe squeeze it in instead of the enduring cry which only seems to go off when I don't need it (got in on LMB, am running out of keys to press). The stun immunity would be quite a loss, but the dmg reduction of berserker might make a big difference.

I guess that's this character's last chance, because I almost died quite often in a T9 with only a few (and none of the mean) damage mods. If it doesn't get much better, I'll call it a hugely fun experiment, but nowhere near viable for high level maps. I guess true melee is just not as efficient as a snipe&kite character.
Definitely had my money's worth of fun, though.