Trick to Drox Fight with non-meta-dps?

So, I actually haven't killed Sirus before, or even done the last round of conqueror fights, and I decided I wanted to give it a shot before the conquerors got reworked in the next expansion.

Unfortunately for me, I play an off-meta build that I like and want to see through, but which only does about 200kdps.

Al-Hezmin and Veritania weren't too bad; I felt like I needed to bring my A-game and it did take a while but I did both deathless. I was saving Baran for last for roleplay and "everyone says that fight's hard" reasons, so Drox was next.

After losing a portal to foolishly trying to facetank a rare with bad mods while getting hit with those leaping-lion-things, I got to Drox and hit a bit of a snag. I'll let my client.txt speak for me:

"

2022/01/21 21:55:46 177588468 b87 [INFO Client 5552] Drox, the Warlord: I've killed countless thousands. What's one more?
...
2022/01/21 22:01:44 177946125 b87 [INFO Client 5552] : ChlorinaTrifluoria has been slain.
...
2022/01/21 22:03:49 178071031 b87 [INFO Client 5552] : ChlorinaTrifluoria has been slain.
...
2022/01/21 22:10:34 178476234 b87 [INFO Client 5552] : ChlorinaTrifluoria has been slain.
...
2022/01/21 22:30:14 179656390 b87 [INFO Client 5552] : ChlorinaTrifluoria has been slain.
...
2022/01/21 22:40:22 180263921 b87 [INFO Client 5552] : ChlorinaTrifluoria has been slain.

Aside from taking watchstones from the other regions out, which I admittedly forgot to do, is there a trick to doing this fight as a low-DPS build? Or is it really the "fvck you" from the developers it seems to be?

All of the builds Ive ever played have been non-meta and medium to low budget, and Drox has always been the easiest conqueror for me.. the problem is not a build being meta or not, but the build being good or bad..

So I dont get your point. If you want to help with your build, link it here and ask for help.. If you want to just whine or complain go to Feedback and Suggestions section.

there is a difference between being off meta and a build being just not that good

i assume this is the fireball occultist we are talking about, and frankly it looks quite outdated. the ascendancy you have picked does absolutely jack shit for you besides some es regen. you pick the power charge node but the build has zero crit scaling. the cold branch does nothing except giving your cannot be frozen and sometimes chilling enemies, and thats for 4 points in total

fireball is not in a great spot currently, but you could probably crank this dmg up by a factor of 5 or 10 by simply building it differently and using different, not necessarily very expensive, gear

I admire your persistence in making it to L99 with that character. This is not meant as a slight to you but you probably have the worst gear I've ever seen on a 99 so I can only assume you got there the VERY long, slow and unprofitable way.

What is your build concept? Are you a hit based fireball or an ignite? You seem to get a little of each of those and don't really scale either. If you want your build to work at least well enough to get through Sirus, you need to pick one of those and scale it all the way.

Additionally, your jewels pretty much don't do anything for you and are wasted slots. That Red Nightmare does practically nothing in that spot and costs you your jewel socket for it. The rare jewel is terrible as well. With jewel sockets, the idea isn't "anything that can help in any way is good" because jewel sockets aren't free--you expend points (usually more than one) to get them. So the jewel needs to provide the same or better per point value as other stuff you can get on the passive tree.

One REALLY cheap way to improve your build is to pick up Melding (drop something else for this, such as the worthless jewel in the top middle) and pick up the jewel socket next to it for Energy From Within. This will convert the hybrid nature of Melding into pure ES.

Here's the thing: This game is balanced around people who make good efficient builds (doesn't have to be meta--I play tons of off-meta builds each league alongside trying out some meta builds and I never have any problems). You are free to experiment of course but if you make something inefficient that lacks identity, do not expect to get very far. It is not that easy of a game.

I've heard a lot of people hate meta builds and want to "make their own builds." This is absolutely a great goal to have. But if you want to make your own builds AND be successful at it, you have to start by learning how good character building works first. The best way to do that? Copy builds that work well (i.e. meta builds), play them, then dissect and understand what about them makes them work. You will learn what mods/skills/points/etc. are strong and which are useless. Those lessons are what then allow you to make your own successful non-meta builds. That's how I got started and that's how I'll bet most did as well. No one starts out knowing how to make good builds from day 1.

Mmkay, so to the actual question, it sounds like the answer is "no trick, pure DPS check." Thanks everyone.

TemjinGold:

Thanks. I appreciate the effort to be constructive rather than just flex.

The original build concept was a hit-based fireball build using the utility and survivability features of the Occultist class, because at the time I started in Delve the Elementalist seemed fairly "glass cannon" to me, although I find it convenient to do some ignite damage to stop enemy energy shield recharge from kicking in. I've tweaked it a bit as the game changed since, and with rare exceptions like Drox I enjoy playing it. I originally had a lot of crit nodes spec'd, but found I could make up most of the damage with EO and put more points into survivability (it was quite clear to me that the build concept didn't have a path to "doing so much damage survivability doesn't matter); I planned to respec back once I was done leveling, which I put on hold...a bunch of times, usually to explore other builds in subsequent leagues and most recently to use up the prophecies I'd accumulated and take a shot at the Sirus fight before it got reworked.

The rare gem was a cheap thing I grabbed when I got sick of being Silence'd with an eye to mana sustain and keeping my resistances capped at the time, but with the passive tree rework it's only offering anything to the former outside of Cursed with Elemental Weakness situations, which with Inspiration it doesn't make or break.

"Mana sustain" and "getting rid of things I noticed consistently killing me" (corrupted blood stacks, getting chilled/frozen, flask charges getting depleted), are the answer to a lot of the design decisions; I'm aware damage could be better, particularly if I was building this from the ground up right now rather than trying to see it through with the various items and decisions I'd accumulated, and if my personal line for what feels like "actually playing a game" vs. "being back at work running FEA simulations" were somewhere different.

The Energy from Within suggestion nets me about 400 ES according to POB; not bad, but not make or break. Not sure how endurance charges are "nothing" given how few options besides armor there are for physical mitigation, though the marginal utility of the Red Dream is a bit lower with the cluster jewel, which it predates (I find Enduring Cry clunky in practice); but okay, if you have a suggestion for what I be using instead for that slot, that I can get corrupted-blood immunity on within a few exalt, I'd be happy to hear it. (Relying on flasks...has not worked for me).

You could drop the 5l Flame Golem setup or at least the ele prolif support and swap in a flame wall, ideally linked to spell cascade and shoot your fireballs through the flame wall.

That way would get some extra dmg just for imbuing your fireballs and additionally some burn dmg from the flame wall itself. Its not like Drox is moving a lot, he´ll just sit there and burn slowly.

This might already be more dmg than the Golem provides and if you were to support flame wall with a proper 5l it should be better than the Golem.


I mean its your call at the end of the day, I just dont think Golems are worth using unless you were playing an actual golem build. Otherwise I consider Golems a waste of precious sockets for very little returns and they also tend to bait attacks you might end up walking into and get killed.

Yep, dropping the awakening level worked. (It probably helped that his citadel spawned in a T15 map this time). And in my defense, I got him to like 25% health that time, it was more the fight dragging on for 45 minutes I was reacting to...)

I did find a trick for low dps builds after all: Awakeneing level *seems* like it affects the banners' health, not just Drox's. (Also, he seems like he only summons one "group" of banners at a time, the four in the middle or the two on any given wing, so if you managed to get a bunch to low health then kill them all at once you might be able to get a bunch of good hits in).

"

Orbaal wrote:

You could drop the 5l Flame Golem setup or at least the ele prolif support and swap in a flame wall, ideally linked to spell cascade and shoot your fireballs through the flame wall.

That way would get some extra dmg just for imbuing your fireballs and additionally some burn dmg from the flame wall itself. Its not like Drox is moving a lot, he´ll just sit there and burn slowly.

This might already be more dmg than the Golem provides and if you were to support flame wall with a proper 5l it should be better than the Golem.

This makes sense. With the golem, the theory was (1) directing some of the hits away from me, (2) proc'ing culling strike (which affects conquerors anyway, I'm guessing not Sirus), and (3) applying fire exposure, all of which seem like they're some help. (It's also meant to be a 4L golem, where I was using Zealot's Oath and a stone golem for regen before the tree rework, but that was the best place I could find to put the 2L Divergent Arctic Armour and Elemental Proliferation setup).

I can see why flame wall would give better pure damage numbers though. I remember finding it hard to use initially, but it occurs to me my issues could probably be solved by setting it to "always attack[/cast] without moving". I like firestorm for dropping to hit enemies around corners, but was already thinking about rearranging to either an armageddon-brand-hextouch-flammability or arcanist-brand-curse-WOC setup for bossing, since having so many accessory skills to cast is a nuisance as it is.

What does Spell Cascade do in that setup? I remember being disappointed early on to realize it couldn't support fireball directly and haven't paid it much attention since.

Thanks for sharing all that. I know the Occultist was very tanky at one point but the reworked Elementalist is simply leagues better now. That said, if you enjoy the Occultist, that's important.

Since you mentioned hit based, I would completely scrap Ignite and instead focus on juicing up hit damage. Don't worry at all about doing a bit of ignite to stop ES regen on monsters--the reality is, having much higher damage is far superior to that.

Are you able to share a PoB? It's much easier to provide specific advice with that. For now tho I can recommend the following:

1) Drop the 4 points to Breath of Flames (these do nothing when you aren't focusing on igniting). If you are willing to give up EO and scale crit instead, I would take the 4 points to Serpent Stance as well as consider moving your annoint to Counterweight. These nodes are incredibly powerful and Fireball has a good base crit, so it's a huge shame to not use these. You also path right near Arcane Potency, Throatseeker, and Annihilation. Your character can have a monstrous amount of crit chance and multi without spending more currency if we re-configure your tree a bit. The kicker is, you can actually cut either the Ethereal Feast wheel or the Light Eater wheel with these changes because significantly higher damage (which you will have) means you need less leech to achieve the same results.

2) Replace GMP w/ Greater Volley. The reason is 2-fold--Greater Volley has a lower damage penalty AND the way GV shoots (in a line), it allows the explosions on your fireball to shotgun. What I mean is, you can't "hit" an enemy with more than 1 fireball from a single cast but if you shoot 5 fireballs that explode, the same enemy can take damage from all explosions that overlap. With your PoB, I would basically find a way to scale AoE so that we increase how many fireballs can overlap a single boss. This is a massive jump in damage against a boss like Drox.

3) Are you able to afford a rare staff? If you can't afford one that is 6L, I'd use your armour for the fireball links (you're not using 6L there anyway). Fireball scales incredibly well with gem levels, so that should be your primary focus when scaling. I'm guessing you cannot afford a +5 staff but you can probably get either a nice +3 (single mod) or a +2 / +2 (note the all spells and fire spells mods on staves roll 1-2, so a +1 / +1 that you divine will also work). Getting a weapon with gem levels like that will massively boost your damage. If these are out of your budget, look into a Searing Touch with good rolls.

4) You spend a lot to afford the mana costs it seems. I will assume that's because you don't like chugging a mana pot (I hate that too). If so, one solution (which would free up a LOT of investment) is to get a Battery Staff base when looking for a rare staff. Battery Staff gives you 140-165 flat ES and it allows socketed skills to spend your ES before spending your mana. If you go this route, you WILL want a 6L Battery staff though.

5) If you have the dex (you might not, I can't tell), Sniper's Mark is far superior to Flammability because tough bosses like Drox have greatly reduced curse effect for hexes. But marks are always full strength. Additionally, hexes are worthless in maps where you roll hexproof for monsters but marks also ignore that.

Yeah, AFAIK there's no trick to drox when he gets his shield. You just gotta dps through his crazy damage reduction while not getting overwhelmed by adds.

...okay, gonna be digesting that for a few.

A lot of that tracks with what I had in mind for a respec down the line (in 3.14 I had a whole alternate POB I'd planned out with a crit/intensity focus and as I recall like 1.2M Sirus DPS after a ~1-second "spin-up" time using Apex Mode). I somehow completely missed that Counterweight and Serptent Stance weren't attacks-with-staff specific (is that new?), and that the Breath of Flames branch had been redone to be almost completely DOT focused in the passive tree rework, so thank you especially for that.

What you describe with Greater Volley tracks with what I've been able to get with GMP if I can get a terrain feature behind a boss; that particular configuration is oriented towards clearing, but I've found it's useful for keeping at least some DPS uptime when doing a lot of running around and dodging since if I have a sense of the enemy's general direction I can launch a spread and one of them will usually hit. I have another staff (upgraded from the Searing Touch I was using before I got this one to a better-rolled Martyr of Innocence and finally managed to six-link it) with an unleash/empower-based single-target setup that I used on Veritania and Al-Hezmin this time around, but I found that between having to hit the adds and banners and having to move a lot to dodge, the GMP one was more reliable (also the pillars in Drox's arena make relatively good backstops). I might give Greater Volley a try in the future; seems like it could be a good intermediary.

For the others...well with rare items, I was planning on doing some crafting with this, once I had a bit of padding with exalts: . I could never get the hang of the rhythm of using a mana flask effectively; battery staff might be worth looking at down the line but I'm pretty sure I'm gonna end up killing myself with that effect at least once.

Looks like I have the Dex for L19 sniper's mark with the repathing based on Energy Within, and POB *thinks* it's a big damage boost. Does the "Projectiles Split" effect not, then, result in it doing the "projectile" damage rather than the "explosion" damage to the primary target, the way as I understand it Chain and Fork do?