Things to note ingame and on the skilldrassil when designing your build
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Preface
--------- Learning from my own mistakes and trying out several builds during the course of a few months that I've been in the CB, I'll share a few pointers and things to notice when building a character both skillpoints wise and item-wise. I'll try to stay as accurate and concise as possible in the following wall of information that I've gathered so far, but will edit this miniguide and tips compilation as needed. Feel free to leave feedback, your own tips and tricks and things to note and correct me wherever i'll be wrong in my observations. The tips ----------- - Except a few specialized builds, all stats are somewhat useful for all classes and can be taken advantage of, so don't worry about picking up a few of the "off" stats. I'll explain this a little bit when apropriate so stay tuned. - there is a big difference between how stats like life/mana leech work inherently and when used as support gems in a linked item - by default they are a percentage from the physical damage you do by an attack - which means that the larger hits and the larger portion of those hits being physical damage, the more leeching done - and exactly the opposite otherwise (applies especially for high elemental dmg/fast attack speed builds); where as manaleech/lifeleech support gems do leech from the total damage done no matter the damage type - using the passive skill tree (also called the skilldrassil in reference to the world tree) is like travelling through a swamp, you can easilly get lost and distracted by distractions and get lost or drown as a result - plan ahead, use the web version(s) of the passive tree planners, since there is only a limited way how to repsecialize ingame (orbs of regret and the few respec points from quests) - note the wording on some of the nodes.. it is important to bear in mind when building a character - for example, when a node states, that it adds 20% to elemental damage done by weapons, it does exactly that - only damage affected is that done by your attack skills tied to a weapon attack (no spell buffs like molten shell and the like) - think about what passive nodes have what stacking effect.. for example +%life node add together to form a final multiplier of every +life item you are wearing, thus having diminishing returns (100% added to a +100 item doubles your total, another 100% added when already having +400% only increases your total by 20%) - diminishing returns on armor effectiveness - many of the mobs in the game do straight up non-physical damage completely bypassing any armor you might have - on the other hand it is still applied to a lot of attacks you will be receiving and is the stat that 'is always there' .. avoidance is nice, but unreliable (especially in hardcore), which is why there is a special node to convert all evasion to armor (bottom right) - increasing returns on passive nodes effectiveness giving flat % bonus to avoidance - block %, elemental resistance % etc.. the more you have, the more each % becomes powerful - with these go all out or don't bother (with slight exception of elemental resist, which is always useful all the way up to the cap) - maximum elemental resist nodes - those two unique nodes are a really really useful (almost a must have) when you can afford them - they increase the cap from 75 to 81% which means that they effectively cut every 100 final elemental damage received after reduction to 76, reducing the dmg you take by another 24% - interchangeability of paths - many loops in the tree are designed in a way that you can get to the same place with the same amount of steps through two paths.. always consider which path at any time is more advantageous to you (has nicer neighbouring nodes) - block is full mitigation - if you block an attack, you don't receive any damage, does not apply to spells (only to melee and ranged attacks) unless you take the special node in the templar cluster that gives you this ability - certain abilities and stats affect the animation length of when you become stunned by an attack or block an attack (few nodes affect it independently, most stats in game apply to both).. this is especially important if you like to tank a bit and are receiving of a lot of attacks in a short time frame - this state can result in so called 'stun lock' where you are unable to execute your attacks because their animations/executions are being interrupted (especially long attacks like heavy strike).. - when creating a build, jack of all trades will gimp your character.. especially on very high levels, the differences start to multiply and diverge, and since the game difficulty is designed so that even people with cookie cutter build and good gear will find it challenging, ignoring this fact will result in you hitting a brick wall unable to progress and become frustrated - currently might happen somewhere around merciless act 2 - playing alts is always good - people like to progress and on alts you will always progress faster than on your max level.. besides with the shared stash you can support your alts by other alts or mains.. so that every alt will be inherently better off - saving low level version copies of gems - if you can afford to (have more than one copy of a skill or support gem), always stash those and not the high level ones - gems have a level and stats requirements which you might not meet when playing alts and wasting orbs of regret to delevel them can be pricy - using high rarity/price orbs on low level/cheap items - DON'T; this applies to the following currency items: Divine orb, Regal orb, Exalted orb, Chaos orb - save those until you know very well how rare they are and what price they can fetch you; medium level rariry/price orbs Alchemy orb, Fusing orb, Jewellers orb, Orb of regret - use with moderation and caution; Low level orbs - use at will, expect to be burning through a lot of them (especially alteration); DO NOT WASTE Gemcutter prism's on quality 0 skillgems and support gems, wait for some high +quality useful gem (especially core skills for cookiecutter builds and rarer support gems (those not rewarded from quests) with high +quality are pricy) to use them on - when deleting a character (to save up place in your roster) make sure to remove all usable items and gems to be recycled on some alt to save time re-gathering them from your invetory and equipment screen to your stash - do not use any manaflask with 'increases mana restored and removes 10% of mana restored from life' on a character with Chaos innoculation passive skill in hardcore. EVER - note that the secondary effects from mana, life and hybrid flasks last only so long, as they are restoring those values.. life flask on full life will last exactly 0 seconds so no 'preventive use' like armor buffing is possible - note that damage reduction from endurance charges is calculated after 'damage received' is calculated based on other stats where it applies to the absorbtion value of molten shell - which is why those two (endurance charges and molten shell) go well together - life gain on hit support gem or passive points work best with either very fast attacks or attacks applied to large groups of enemies (multiple projectiles (piercing even), aoe skills) where as life leech percentage is best coupled with large hitting, big physical attacks (2h heavy strike with phys. damage on full hp support gem under some energy shield into a mob debuffed by vulnerability and/or warlord's mark) /discuss | |
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One thing I would like to say about the skill tree in regards to leveling your character is that you can remove non-necessary points later on.
Example: If you take the shortest route to a keystone, then later on decide to take some surrounding nodes that make up an alternate path, you can remove the points from the shorter path for extra skill points once the other path is connected up. This can allow for some excellent builds that don't seem viable during leveling to shine early on. | |
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- depending on a build, some nodes and functions of a build are secondary or tertiary - they depend on the gear you'll manage to acquire later on, when the effects multiply and those nodes will shine - for example critical damage multiplier, critical chance.. focus on the key nodes and clusters for that specific build and don't get sidetracked by nodes that look tasty but won't add to your overall performance in the process of leveling up
- do not go overboard with the keystone passives (the largest icons on the skilldrasil) - many of them have a significant drawback that you need to take into consideration with certain builds and skill/gear choices - do not spread into too many directions too much.. usually 2-3 'branches' are (mostly 2) enough, same goes for sub-branches - stay clear off the weapon type specific nodes until the very late game, keep your options open - you never know what gear you'll acquire and locking yourself in (especially for melee weapons) will only limit your options - as it stands now, added elemental damage on weapon attacks and the plethora of passive nodes and skills utilizing and multiplying them combined with fast attack speed is the cookie cutter way to go about with DPS builds; keep in mind tho, that fast attack speed builds require a lot of mana to feed (need skills like mana siphon in the templar section of the tree or blood magic with life gain on hit support gem) because you won't be getting any life/mana from the percentual leech attribute (unless you manage to get the mana/life-leech support gem and 5L or even 6L gear to utilize it fully) - if you can fit it in your inventory, carry with you skillgems for utility curses for all situations you might encounter - consider them an reverse amplifier of your power - debuff on enemy is a buff on you and your party/minions - enfeeble for the large hitting mobs, temporary chains if you need to kite, warlord's mark if you like to use the specialized flasks like diamond or granite more often, elemental weakness for when you go crazy with detonate dead (on a totem even) etc.. - keep it simple - do not try to be a keyboard pianist to play - try to keep your build simple and straightforward not requiring you to alternate way too many skills to be effective; this might get a little bit more interesting from 0.9.12 when GGG said they'll implement fast weapon switch - percentage vs fixed reservation - certain auras and buff skills require you to have a certain amount of mana (or life if you are using blood magic) reserved for that skill to be active; utilize this to your advantage - if your build is based on a skill that itself has low base manacost, you can afford to have more of those auras up at any time (example being elemental hit, burning arrow etc); this is especially noticable with the above mentioned blood magic and auras that reserve fixed amount of 'mana', in this case life - because blood magic with big HP pool makes those practically free to have up - alternative (summoning, ranged) gear - what can sometimes cmoe handy is to have an alternative gear to switch to a role that you typically can't fill to deal with certain encounters; simple stuff like alternative resistance rings for areas or enemies that do a lot of specific elemental damage type are a nobrainer (unless you manage to get to full rainbow resists without them, in which case you can stash them for alts or sell them); less common is to have a gear to switch like 4L gloves/head(or boots if you don't depend on runspeed increase or are lucky to get those too)) with all blue sockets filled with summon skeletons supported by increased minion damage, life and movement speed; this obviously requires you to have a few nodes with +intellect if you're a STR or AGI character (preferably the +30 ones) so that those skills can level up a bit to be of any use; alternatively have a bow with a quiver to engage an enemy/boss from afar with stuff like poison arrow, puncture, temporal chains or vulnerability(or elemental vuln., burning arrow etc); unfortunately does not work very well to get a melee+shield alternative for a ranged squishy class b/c melee fighting requires to go all out or not at all with gear and build - note that you don't have to have a passive skill (aura) on the skill bar to have it active - activate it and you can replace it with something else; this unfortunately requires micromanagement when switching areas cause so far you need to recast auras and minions when switching areas |
