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New project: Getting a DW seraphim to Niob


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Now I managed to get my Pyro HE "safe" into Niob, I've decided to try the same thing with my favorite Sacred Character, the Seraphim.

Although I do have a seraphim parked in Platinum at level 103, I think I should be able to get a new build in Niob, using a different approach which is based upon the things I've learned with my HE. Not to mention, some parts of  that build didn't work out as I hoped for, so while she's able to do the killing, I got the feeling I can get a better build.

After reading through some guides, I decided to follow the one Antitrust posted here, but with a few changes.

 

Skills overview:

 

1) Tactics Lore: Aiming for mastering after having most skills at level 20

2)Armor Lore: Keep it high enough to remove the armor regen penalty

3) Dual Wield: Equal to level until mastered

4) Exalted Warrior Focus

5) Revered Technology Lore

6) Constitution:  Aiming for mastery after having most skills at level 20

7) Combat Reflexes

8) Concentration

9) Revered Technology Focus

10) Warding Energy: To boost the shield(s)

 

Atribute point allocation:

With constitution chosen pretty late, I decided to drop the atribute points in Stamina, Vitality and Willpower in a 30 / 40 / 30% rate.

 

Chosen Combat Arts and their modifications:

 

1) Battle Stance: The must have Buff for any Melee Seraphim. Premonition, Drill and Retaliation are chosen as upgrades

2) Pelting Strikes: Upgraded with Succession, Focus and Precission

3) Assailing Somersault: Upgraded with Athletic, Impetus and Concussion

4) Flaring Nova: Upgraded with Expand, Stun and Laggard

5) Combo 1) Flaring Nova + Pelting Strikes

6) Combo 2) Assailing Somersault + Pelting Strikes

 

Equipment:

 

Niokaste's Blade Dance as primary armor, with the Holy Protection cuiras as body armor as it has amazing resistance stats.

Since a Seraphim has 9 armour slots, I decided to smith all three Blacksmith arts equally into the used armor. By doing that I will increase damage done, chance for crits, armor and defence values etc. With the Niokaste's Set having 2 sockets on each piece, I started with smithing runes in the other socket and change that into rings / amulets giving migitatioin, DoT reduction, Opponents chance to wound reduction etc over time.
For the Holy Protection, I often added a RpH or a +x skill ring combined with the amulets and Blacksmith arts.

 

Weapon slot 1: Bone Blade of Zhurag-Nar + Parashu (Crypt Raiders) or Ghoul Blade (Flesh Eaters)
Weapon slot 2: Dual Seresish Steel of Thunder
Weapon slot 3: Nikotaste's Stinger + Boneslicer / Huntress of Light / Holy Wrath or any weapon doing lots of damage and having Magical damage as well.
Weapon slot 4: Ysandryfa's Law / Ragno's Slayer and (legendary) Kal'dur's Legacy
Weapon slot 5: Free choice weapon. At some point I may use this slot for a bow to "fight" the Great Machine Egg or equip Light Sabers in it.

Each slot has at least one weapon with a ring doing RpH to keep the regentimes of the CA's lower. I'm also using the pearls,  fangs etc to boost the elemental damage of the weapons; hoping to be able to do DoT on my opponents.

Orbs:
I have collected a lot of orbs - either set or unique - over time and try to use those whenever possible. Since I don't use any of the skills most orbs have, checking for skills isn't needed. However, whenever possible I try to use the yellow ones, as they are slightly better.

I have collected a shipload of uniques and legendary items over time and as a result I got several weapons stockpiled at muling chars. To get the items I didn't have, I "cheated" a bit by downloading them and adding them to my chest; giving me the opportunity to exchange them over time.

 

Quest progress:

 

For now things are going as planned. Meaning: she hasn't died yet. :D

The plan is to do the Main Quest, the Seraphim personal quest and the Unique Mounts Quest in Silver and Gold, then checking how she's doing in Plat and whenever needed remain in an area to do side-quests and more leveling before moving on. I will most likely do the Undead Legion Quest in both Gold and Plat as well; as the Boneslicer is still one of the better swords in this game.

 

First 5 levels were slow, as she was only using a single weapon. Getting a magic pearl helped things speeding up a bit, as the side effect of magic is the weakening of your opponents resistances; thus making them a bit easier to kill.
I managed to get to Thylysium with a few near death experiences. Tactics is currently equal to my level, while Dual Wield is not that far behind. Despite the slow start, she's doing well at the moment, kills are becoming easier now, while my main point of concern is to lower the regen times of my CA's. Something  that may go faster as soon as I got DW equal to level as well.

 

I'll keep you posted!

 

 

Thorin :)

Edited by Thorin Oakshield
Ajusted skills
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Minor update (knowing me, that means a medium sized post :D )

 

I've had some hairy situations, resulting in one death; but so far progress is going nicely.

The only death occured when I had to face the Demons in Skook's Corner; of which one had LL while the others all did magic damage. Add a few rats including two champs to the fray and death was there before I was able to hit the space bar.

Gar Colossus was pretty easy and went down faster as I thought he would; the Octo was a pain because I had to deal with several Harpy Champs as well. Lost my special mount up there, but was able to replace it.

The dragon in the Carnagh-caves wasn't that hard to do; which was because you need to talk to him to start the fight, giving me the opportunity to clear his entire area before fighting him. The Carnagh itself was harder, mainly because he summons those champion fire elementals. I knew he would summon them again when killing all of them; so I kept one alive for some time. Until the moment he teleported away, that was, because the PS I just had started killed the last elemental instead. His next summons were used to leech from, so I had to kill those as well, but after that he kept teleporting, so all I had to do was spamming the AS - PS combo to get him done. Misama was done at level 26-27 and proved not to be that much of a difficulty.

 

I've made it to the desert right now, at level 28 with Tactics Lore and Dual Wield at that level, Toughness at level 7 and the rest at level 4-5. As a result regen is higher as it should be, but with unique / legendary weapons equipped, it isn't that bad. The only two problems I've got to deal with are lack of money to smith anything into sockets and that sometimes the when using the Flaring Nova - Pelting Strikes combo, the last one won't fire. Fortunately it does when I use the Assailing Somersault - Pelting Strikes combo, meaning those far away from me, but moving towards me still get hammered pretty fast. Next boss will be the Giganthropod and that one is going to be fun; given his high level of poison damage he does, combined with the high magic damage of his summons. Fortunately - for me :) - there's always the option to kite some of the monsters and kiling them off one by one.

 

Overall, things aren't going that bad and I expect to enter Gold without too many difficulties.

 

Thorin :)

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I haven't played a Seraphim in quite a while and there are quite a number of builds that have been posted, none of which I was inspired to attempt. It seems that you have your lady angel well secured under your watchful care; I look forward to your next post. Oh, see if you can muster some armor and/or jewelry to lessen DOT, poison damage, and Chance To Reflect Combat Arts -x% before you mess with the Garganthropod. A right nasty beastie is he, mate.

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Hi Thorin, what buffsare you playing with? Combat reflexes + Toughness in my opinion is not a good combo: concentrate in only one, I would go for Combat reflexes. You lack Concentration as well to take 2 buffs but it depends your choices.

Beware of the Garganthropod!! :D gl

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@ desm: I'm currently running around using Battle Stance only.

However I got that one free slot giving me the opportunity to add Concentration or Combat Discipline.

The advantage of picking Concentratin will be that I'm able to add that Energy Shield to my buff's; giving me even more damage reduction.

Combat Discipline gives me the opportunity to add a 3rd and even 4th CA to my combo's. However seeing that my PS won't fire often in the FN - PS Combo, I wonder if having 3 CA's in a combo with FN as a 2nd CA won't even work.

So right now I'm inclined to pick Concentration as last skill, or perhaps even before Rev.Tech.Focus to get that shield up and running before entering Gold.

 

@ Hooyaah: I'm currently looting my mules to get the required amy's and rings. Problem I have to deal with is the lack of funds; of which I can "cheat out" by just loading some of the downloaded chests into my personal inventory and sell the items. Most of these are worth several K in gold, so it's an easy way out of money problems.

However, I think with downloading the armor and most of the weapons I intend to use I've done enough "cheating" for now.

The combination of near full Niokaste's Armor, Twilight of of the Gods Cuiras and Dual Wielding Sereish Steel of Thunder swords is a pretty powerful one. Even without protective amulets forged into slots.

One of the reasons is that both swords add 2 FN to my CA, making it already more powerful, while the Niokaste helmet gives 10LL. I'm also wearing a set-amy, giving another 9LL, so in that way I'm getting a little compensation to the damage done to me.

I've noticed I also got a weapon equiped doing x%LL; totalling my total leeching to 34 at the moment. Which means that I'm able to recover quite some health within a few hits. And seeing the stats on later items, I may be able to get even more leeched back later.

 

But first I have to pin that Garganthropod to my stilleto heels. :D

 

Thorin :)

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More updates, this time with pictures! :D

 

I'm starting to wonder how strong this build actually can be. By the time I managed to get to the Garganthropod I was level 30 and having enemies 2 levels above me because of SB. I thought the Garganthropod would be a hard fight, but it was quite the oposite. I needed only 5 potions and 4 of those were consumed when it had spawned those T-mutant scorps with their magic damage. Once those two were down, the Garganthropod was an easy kill as well:

Eo2tzi2.png

 

So, it was off to the Jungle, still at level 30. Encountered Krall of the Winged Demons after destroying those powerstations, needed a few potions, but he too went down pretty fast:

Jp3CPUz.png

 

So it was off to the Jungle where the Fenn Fires were anoying, most monsters were easy kills and only when encountering an army of Fenn Fires and Blood Dryads I had to take a couple of potions. Somewhere in between I gained a level, but even despite of that, the Facetteleon was some kind of anti-climax after that:

6Ce3d6r.png

 

So it was off to the wastelands for the final encounter. I upgraded a part of my gear when being at the docks and that certainly made a difference for the last part, as my Sereish swords are now having an x% LL mod as well. And it made me very happy to see me leeching the heck out of those leeching demons for a change. Even the Demon Bosses you encounter at some point weren't a match to my seraphim. All the kills done there - and most were 1K kills by now - slowly pushed me higher and higher into level 33. Nimonuil went down quite fast, although I had to use a potion again.

As soon as the last ressurrection monolith was secured, I took a side stap to Sonnenwind to finish the seraphim's personal quest, then jumped back and prepared to face the four guardians.

I was a bit worried about them, but eventually they were actually a lot easier as I had expected. Each of one them went down faster as I thought.

I used my usual tactic for that fight, being disableing the portals at the side first and then facing the guardians. But unlike my other encounters, I didn't have to lure them away from that room into one of the hallways. The T-energy shield they were occasionally given was gone quite fast and the guardians themselve went down fast as well. And this time the LL I got at some weapons really proved to be beneficial, as I was easily leeching 900 HP a hit, while getting 3-500 HP damage for each hit done to me. After they went down, only thing left to me was pushing the button:

OtZP3lo.png

 

And that brought me to where I am now, back in Sloeford, but at Gold difficulty this time. And so far I had two surprices:
1) Because of my SB, enemies are 7 levels above me and for the first time I'm seeing orange-yellowish rings under their feet.
2) Ring colour isn't really telling all as the bandits and wolves I encountered went down with 2 hits.

 

I think I'm going  to have a lot of fun with this build. :D

 

Thorin :)

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2 hours ago, desm said:

If you take Concentration to add the protecting shield, you have to pick up the Warding Energy Lore skill too I think.

Problem with that is that I would have to drop Rev.Tech.Focus if I want to do that, as I was already past level 25 when you wrote your previous comment about CR and Toughness, meaning I had already taken both skills.

 

So basically I'm having the choice to pick Concentration for a second buff, which would be the Warden Energy shield; but without the Warden Energy Lore. I'm still wondering if I even need a shield for the damage migitation, with CR giving me better evasion and Toughness reducing the changes to be hit by a Crit.
Or I run without a second buff, but use Concentration to reduce the regen times of my CA's and combo's. That would allow me to eat more runes as well, if that's needed, although the increase of the gear certainly helps a lot already.

Or I skip concentration and use both EWF and RTF to decrease the regentime of my CA's, but always having that slight penalty when using my CA's in a combo. That would open up the last skill for Combat Discipline, although I'm still wondering if that would be a good idea, given that the only way for me to get the FN - PS combo work properly, is to click at the ground, instead of an opponent when firing the combo.

Either way, I'm skilling more slowly, now I got to level 36, so I got the time to think things over before hitting level 50 and picking another skill.

 

Things are progressing well up to now, although I run occasionally into monsters being 14+ levels above me, while others are 13 lvls above me. Resulting in:
2hLFVfq.png

Yup, that's right; that's a blue-purple-ish ring under that zombie's feet. Despite  that, I'm still able to kill most things without taking a potion as the leech is still good enough to heal me. That is, as long as I don't forget to switch to the right orbs when fighting some bigger monsters like the GC.
That one almost did me in because I still had the poison orbs active, instead of the magic ones. Still, one potion, the right orbs and a bunch of hits later were enough to do him in:
1OR86wq.png

 

And to think he was actually 12 levels above me, I think I didn't do that bad overall:

7KeBZgx.png

 

Not to mention, this time I was able to kill those demons from the personal quest with ease.

So - I think I mentioned this a dozen times already, but still.... - I think I'm doing well right now, I'm certainly enjoying this build and considering how well she's slicing things up, I think I'll keep enjoying this build for a while as well. Until I start with a next project, which is bringing another char to Niob........ :D

 

Thorin :D

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A few considerations:

  • If you use weapons with %LL your life will be much easier in boss fights, but at lower difficulties the +LL per hit modifier causes more impact on smaller mobs because it can leech more than a small percentage, being that the mobs' HP value is small. But it all depends on the gear you have equipped.
  • I see all this talk about second buff and Warding Energy Lore, so why not use just Divine Protection and call it a day? If you mod it to Capacity-Boost-Improved Mirror you can have it turned on 90% of the time, and by experience that's enough to avert the hardest fights. You could choose Uplifted Force as Silver mod to compensate for the lack of WEL but I feel like improving the recharge time of the CA is more important game-wise. Improved Mirror also lets you not choose Spell Resistance. Add to that a high level Battle Stance and you're very well covered.
  • You should definitely pick Revered Technology Focus to be able to raise some CA's levels, particularly Divine Devotion if that's the way you want to roll.
  • For your tenth skill you have a lot of options. You already use Battle Stance so if you pick Speed Lore you can multiply attack/defense values even more and free slots which would normally be used up with opponent's chance to evade/chance that opponents cannot evade attacks, so you could forge other useful modifiers. You play dual wield so you can choose Damage Lore and have up to 70/80% chance to apply detrimental effects on mobs at mastery level. My dual-wield SW was running with a couple of lightsabers as to cause all five damage types and with Damage Lore mastery the detrimental numbers were insane! Pick Combat Discipline for added damage and regen time at mastery, it's 20% so it does count. I don't see WEL nor Concentration being very useful at your build if you'll be picking both Focus skills and just use one buff.
  • It seems you're power-levelling over your own level, so be prepared for large jumps in mobs' level from one difficulty level to the next one. Gold should be fairly easy for your toon, but once you switch to Platinum you'll notice and even higher jump as mobs will be no smaller than on their low 70s. That's because each difficulty has a minimum mob level, so beware of too much power-levelling because it can get unbalanced pretty fast.
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Small update:

I encountered one death today. Reason, when trying to clear the area around Xantiar, one of the young dragon buffers moved my seraphim to a side, just when I was going to click at that particular dragon. Result, the conversation and the fight with Xantiar triggered and that wasn't fun in an area with lots of baddies. So it was goodbye to over 60% of SB. After returning to that area, I was able to take out all dragons as well as those pesky human "game keepers". Surprisingly, the Carnag was a lot less of a hassle to kill. It became a bit tricky when he summoned those fire elementals, but this time I took them down first as he was leeching a lot from them and after that he began teleporting. Which I was able to counter with an AS - PS combo.

 

That fight was followed by a journey through the swamp; which isn't really my favorite area. One reason is that dreaded lightning whiping out your screen for a few seconds. It's already a pain when doing one on one fights, but with multiple opponents and even the Miasma it's terrible. Not to mention, the major fights are done with either a companion or guards nearby, resulting in NPC's blocking your access to those who try to hurt you. Still, Miasma is down and I'm back in the desert.

 

Despite the death, I was having fun for quite a while. First with the bugged cavenear the Octo; in which monsters spawn at a much higher level as outside. And although they were 20+ levels above me, I was able to kill them quite fast:

KJJZ1bK.png

 

After dealing with those, I expected a hard fight with the Octo. I managed to clear the area from Harpy's - which are doing that blinding spell - before triggering the fight. That certainly helped, but despite that the fight itself was fully under control the moment I was able to fight right under that monster:

DhzsmUb.png
 

After that it was Xantiar and I've already told how that fight ended.

 

So, that leaves me at level 43 right now, with the first bit of the main quest done and ready to pick up that scroll. With the Desert being more my favorite area, as it's open, it won't be too hard to continue.

However, I'm also wondering if I should consider a restart. One reason for that is my chosen skills; I got the feeling Toughness isn't really kicking in at level 26, given that it's only giving a +1.x% change atm.
The other reason is that I'm still doubting about the last skill. If I do a restart and if I do drop Toughness, I could indeed pick Concentration and Warding Energy Lore for the Warding Energy shield, which in turn will give me an extra defensive buff as well.
I know that when I do that restart, I will be able to correct some mistakes I made; despite it's also a loss of time.

 

I think I'll sleep things over for the night. :dntknw:

 

Thorin :)

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You know Thorin, you can use the Sacred 2 Character Editor to change a wanted skill. Don't see it like cheats but like for example, an NPC that would give you the ability of changing your training ways. I love the fact that we can do lethal mistakes when picking skills and that you have to relevel your toon but playing in solo, it will save you a lot of time (just don't abuse of it! :) ).

I like these pinky circles, danger is near. You have some good stuff, going through Platinium should be a matter of time.

 

Sacred 2 Character Editor -> https://www.nexusmods.com/sacred2/mods/2

Edited by desm
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Regarding toughness there are a couple good reasons to keep it.  First is that lots of seraphim set items have mitigation to stack with.  Wings, Chests, and Shoulders.  However that being said toughness doesn't really give a lot of mitigation on its own though it also gives all channel flat armor.  So you can still use mitigation strategy (collect mitigation gear to try to reach a high number to shut out damage) even if you don't use toughness.  The second reason is that Seraphim's Divine Protection adds a good chunk of mitigation and you can stack your set pieces to try to hit a high value of mitigation.  I think at low level with one rune in Divine Protection you get 20% mitigation!  That is double Toughness mitigation at mastery!  And Divine Protection continues to deliver more mitigation at higher levels.  I could check my level 70ish Seraphim I'm working on but I think it is around high 30s in mitigation (check the gear 'sigma') when Divine Protection is up.

So the conclusion is that because of 3 set pieces and if you use Divine Protection mitigation collection is a thing for a Seraphim.  Mitigation from Toughness is small in comparison but it could be an extra little bit to go from high to higher mitigation (when you have DP up).

One warning if planning to stack Warding Energy and Divine Protection is that whenever you use DP it makes the WE buff go down so you need to remember to recast it.  My Seraphim is not using WE and I just took a small dip in Rev Tech just to mod DP.  Also so far WEL would be pointless (I think) with DP (but not WE) because by nature of DP it is very sturdy while its duration lasts.  If something is hammering through DP I would run for greener pastures!

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I assume you're loaded up with regen per hit socket somewhere to keep your CA regen manageable? That made a huge difference in I&B for melee builds and for something like pelting strikes probably provides more bang for your buck than chance to halve regen time.

Otherwise looks like solid build to have a lot of fun with!!

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Thanks for that link, Desm. It prooved to be very useful for both this char and a HE I brought to Niob.

For this char I removed Toughness and instead added Concentration and the Warding Energy shield. While that shield proved its uses in Gold, it was worthless when fighting Nimonuil and the guardians as those were able to destroy it with one hit. Result: I added a few more deaths to my count. It's not of much use in Platinum either, although I managed to get to level 50 and added WEL to my skill list. The main reason it isn't as useful as I thought it was, is the 5 second delay to do the attack / defence check, before recharging. With a partially depleted shield that recharging isn't taking long, but with a fully depleted shield that recharging takes 20 seconds after that check, so all in all it means waiting for half a minute before entering the next fight. Something almost impossible with all those pesky anoying Kobolds near Sloeford.

 

Either way, I've made it to platinum and although I had decided to do more quests there, right now I'm wondering if I shouldn't do a full explore and question in  that difficulty.

Monsters are 22 levels above me - that is, if SB doesn't kick in - and although most of them are easily defeated - for now - they're quite numerous, compared to previous difficulties.

What I had in mind, was to add the Blind Guardian and Undead Legion quests to the list of Main quest, Class quest, Tutorial quests (only part of CM-patch) and the auto-triggered quest (like Hold Up near Thylysium). When in game, I decided to do the two Seraphim related quests in the mountain area's north of Sloeford as well, plus perhaps some other follow up quests too. Hopefully the slowed change of region will help me leveling my character a bit easier, giving me a chance to catch up on the minimum level of each region. If not, I'll move to plan B; which is fully exploration and questing in Platinum.

 

The other thing I'm currently  thinking about is which mods to pick for the WE-shield. I had in mind to pick the two Field Force mods at Bronze and Silver and Resource at Gold, however with mages being able to fire bolts with their staffs now, I'm wondering if picking Magic Mirror wouldn't be a better choice as Silver mod, althoug it's still a chance to reflect the spell damage, so damage will get through. I've decided to ignore Block as Gold mod in favour of Resource, as Block is just a fixed amount, instead of a percentage; while resource is giving a percentage decrease in regeneration penalty.

I've also decided to add Divine Protection to my lists of CA's the moment I managed to get the cooldown under the duration of the CA. Right now the cooldown is about 4x as long as the duration, making it pretty useless imho. As soon as I have turned that around, a combination of WE and DP may be very useful.

@ Dragon Brother: I got some RpH rings smithed into my weapon slots and some of my weapons got that modifier as well, if I'm not mistaken. They are useful, given that I'm currently focussing at getting some skills to mastery asap, leaving little room to increase other skills as well. I had in mind to do the same thing with armour, but decided I stick to the various damage reduction amulets and defensive black smith arts for now.

 

I'll keep you posted!

 

Thorin :) 

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After experiencing my 6th, 7th and 8th death within 5 minutes (1 skelly priest with fireball, 4 kobold mages + several stonethrowers / archers and bosses and last one was that skelly priest again), I decided to give up on this build.

Facing monsters 22+ levels above me and being one-shotted by mages with fire or poison spells when having another orb selected several times in a row isn't fun. More important, the light health potions only give 30% recovery and that's not enough to counter the damage done.

So I will reconsider the build, and start over from scratch.

 

Current plan, start in Bronze to get the Ancaria Airlines quest done (one extra skill and atribute point), rush through silver but doing a few more quests this  time, do the same in gold and depending at my level, enter platinum close to level 75. Given that platinum monsters start around level 70, it should give me a few less headaches.

 

Thorin :( 

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You might just need to get more levels.  Purple enemies usually means death regardless of character.  With exception maybe of a Shadow Veiled Shadow Warrior but that almost seems cheating.  And even a Shadow Veiled SW if they are severely underleveled you don't die but every enemy seems like a 'bullet sponge'.

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I was pretty sure I needed more levels; however if your opponents level up just as fast as you do, the difference remains 22 levels. Meaning they would be able to one shot me no matter how many levels I gained. Especially when SB kicked in, as that seems to increase levels faster when you reach higher difficulties.

 

Anyway.....

Being stubborn and all that :D , I decided to give it another go.

One of the things I wondered about after looking at the build, was the order I picked my skills. In most of my games I'm an "agressive" player; meaning I go for offense first and think about defense later. Usually after I've seen my char die a bit too often. :( 

So what I did was revise my skills, change  the order and the allocation of the skill points and start over. Right now the build works out better as it is a bit more balanced. Most important change is to move Armor Lore up and making sure I won't suffer from its influence at CA regen as it did the previous attempt; in which I had over 150% regen penalty at some point. And even with many RpH rings smithed into weapon sockets, the regen of my CA was way too high.

 

So, this is how the build is planned to look right now:

 

1) Tactics Lore: Aiming for mastering after having most skills at level 20

2)Armor Lore: Keep it high enough to remove the armor regen penalty

3) Dual Wield: Equal to level until mastered

4) Exalted Warrior Focus

5) Revered Technology Lore

6) Constitution:  Aiming for mastery after having most skills at level 20

7) Combat Reflexes

8) Concentration

9) Revered Technology Focus

10) Warding Energy: To boost the shield(s)

 

Atribute point allocation:

With constitution chosen pretty late, I decided to drop the atribute points in Stamina, Vitality and Willpower in a 30 / 40 / 30% rate.

 

Chosen Combat Arts and their modifications:

 

1) Battle Stance: The must have Buff for any Melee Seraphim. Premonition, Drill and Retaliation are chosen as upgrades
1a) Warding Energy: The second buff. Currently considering Field Force, Magic Mirror, Block.

2) Pelting Strikes: Upgraded with Succession, Focus and Precission

3) Assailing Somersault: Upgraded with Athletic, Impetus and Concussion

4) Flaring Nova: Upgraded with impulse, Stun and Laggard

5) Divine Protection: Modded with Capacity, Boost and Improved Mirror.
I will start using this CA only after I managed to get the regen time lower as the duration. 

6) Combo 1) Flaring Nova + Pelting Strikes

7) Combo 2) Assailing Somersault + Pelting Strikes

 

Equipment:

 

Niokaste's Blade Dance as primary armor, with the Holy Protection cuiras as body armor as it has amazing resistance stats.

Since a Seraphim has 9 armour slots, I decided to smith all three Blacksmith arts equally into the used armor. By doing that I will increase damage done, chance for crits, armor and defence values etc. With the Niokaste's Set having 2 sockets on each piece, I started with smithing runes in the other socket and change that into rings / amulets giving migitatioin, DoT reduction, Opponents chance to wound reduction etc over time.
For the Holy Protection, I will add a RpH or a +x skill ring combined with the amulets and Blacksmith arts.

 

Weapon slot 1: Bone Blade of Zhurag-Nar + Parashu (Crypt Raiders) or Ghoul Blade (Flesh Eaters)
Weapon slot 2: Dual Seresish Steel of Thunder
Weapon slot 3: Nikotaste's Stinger + Boneslicer / Huntress of Light / Holy Wrath or any weapon doing lots of damage and having Magical damage as well.
Weapon slot 4: Ysandryfa's Law / Ragno's Slayer and (legendary) Kal'dur's Legacy
Weapon slot 5: Free choice weapon. At some point I may use this slot for a bow to "fight" the Great Machine Egg or equip Light Sabers in it.

Each slot has at least one weapon with a ring doing RpH to keep the regentimes of the CA's lower. I'm also using the pearls,  fangs etc to boost the elemental damage of the weapons; hoping to be able to do DoT on my opponents.

Orbs:


I have collected a lot of orbs - either set or unique - over time and try to use those whenever possible. Since I don't use any of the skills most orbs have, checking for skills isn't needed. However, whenever possible I try to use the yellow ones, as they are slightly better.

 

Planned quests:


Bronze: Main quest until Ancaria's Airlines is unlocked and done.
Silver: Main quest, Class personal quest, Ancaria's Airlines, Tutorial Quests Unique mounts and auto triggered quests.
Gold: Main quest, Class personal quest, Ancaria's Airlines, Tutorial quets, Blind Guardian quest, Undead Legion quest, Seraphim Monastry Quests, Whoops! quest, Unique Mounts and auto triggered quests.
Platinum: Full exploration and questing.

 

Why Ancaria's Airlines in Bronze?
Because that quest gives 1 skill point and one atribute point the first time you log in the game after doing that quest. Doing that particular quest in either difficulty, would give me a total of 5 extra skill and atribute points; which in turn may be a big difference between success and failure in Niob.

 

 

So, how am I doing with this build?
So far so good. Managed to get to Seraphim Island and about to enter the Carnach caves without a single death or even a hairy situation. GC and Octo went down faster as in my previous attempt and hopefully the dragons and Carnach will do too.
Having a lower regen penalty because of concentrating at Armor Lore instead of DW has paid off so far.
Right now I'm going to level up the other skills and leaving both Tactics and AL at level 20 for a while, only increasing AL when I equip new armor and have to deal with the penalties again.

 

 

I'll keep you posted!

 

Thorin :)

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I still don't understand why you don't aim directly at mastering all the skills you can master by level 75 prior to start raising the rest of them. You gain little advantage by having points too spread out when you could have four mastered skills by your early 80s. Having those masteries makes a lot more difference than having several skills in theirs 20s with just one or two masteries to boot. If you place your points well enough you can (read: should) have TL, DW, AL and Constitution mastered around level 80. What better way to face mobs with a level count much higher than that of your toon?

But it's your playing style, I get it. It's just that I've played like that in the past too and it doesn't sprout the same results as going after masteries first. Particularly when you speed run through the campaign in order to get to Platinum. Done that a lot of times and you just get so overwhelmed that you can't quest properly. I've long realised that getting early to Plat/Niob just isn't sustainable unless you tweak your build all the way through.

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Thanks for the tip, Hooyaah. Looks like I got some jumping back and forth to do.

 

I tried that with my previous attempt and it didn't work out, Androdion. There's a big difference between rushing through difficulties or exploring / questing a difficulty. With the focus at a few skills I got problems when facing Numonuil and the guardians near the end of Gold level. With a more balanced set up I got problems with several quest bosses in Platinum. It's no use to have a 150% attack speed and doing maximum damage, if your armor's regenpenalty is 150+% and some defences are near zero because there's only one point invested in them.

So right now I'm hoping to turn the things around by setting up a leveled character in Silver and Gold and focussing at the prime skills as soon as that's done. I hope that having focussed at some of the defensive skills, I will be able to survive longer, despite doing less damage until the point I'm able to do more and faster damage.

 

Thorin :)

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From my experience there's a more noticeable impact from having several masteries done near mastery level versus spreading points across half a dozen or more skills by that level. And the fact that you have just one hard point on a skill doesn't mean it won't be useful enough. By level 75 you can have three set pieces giving bonuses to either all skills or at least some of them, plus you can have rings socketed with bonuses to offensive skills and amulets with bonuses to defensive skills. There's no shortage of gear that will help you have those skills around level 20 by mastery level, where at the same time you can have several others making you strong both offensively and defensively. I don't understand how you can have a +150% regen penalty from armour if you follow the scenario above. By level 75 you can have TL and DW mastered for damage, CA execution speed, attack value, attack speed, plus nine fully modified CAs on the Exalted Warrior tree. At the same time you can have Constitution mastery to have in-combat HP regen, and after a few more levels you can have AL mastery too. So how is this way of building a toon causing any issues? You should get enough drops from mobs to equip your toon properly, even if you're doing speed runs, so just socket jewellery accordingly to raise those skills that are at a single hard point and you'll be just fine. :)

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Since I've edited my first post with the new build, I'll explain here.

 

My mastery goals in that build were Tactics (level 50), DW (level 51), Toughness (level 26) and Constitution (level 10). I ignored Armor (lvl8), EWF (lvl9), RTL (lvl8) and CR (lvl8) to makes sure that each and every of the main skills was on par with my level. As a result, I entered platinum with a level 39 char, having too low amounts of points into the other skills, resulting in a +150% armour penalty when using level 45 Niokaste's Set items. Combine that with a low level EWF and it'll give me a much higher regen on below level 10 CA's as it has to be.

The downside of all of  this, was also that the armor didn't offer the maxium defence it should offer as AL was too low. Sure, using  the Holy Protection Cuiras helps a lot, however if the skill meant to improve the resistances is too low, having high protection on the armor is just as useless as having the engine of a VW Beetle in a F1 car. It gets you somewhere, but it won't get you there in the way you want to.

You won't notice much about this problem in Silver and Gold, but in Platinum with a 22 level difference between me and  the monsters, it did. And very painfully as well.

 

That's why I revised my build and for now it's working a lot better as the previous one; even despite it's in silver. One of the things I noticed is that keeping your DW on par with your level will keep your attack speed at 150%, however, when you skip a level chances are the attack speed still is at 150%. So there's no need to put points in that skill if you're doing maximum speed already. Same with AL; it's nice to have the regen penalty below 100%; however, you won't note the difference between 97% and full resistances and 100% and some lower resistances if you make sure you're able to compensate with another skill. Same with EWF; having a 1-2s regen is fine when using the single CA, however when using some of the CA's in combo with Flaring Nova, making sure your regen is close to or just below the regen of the CA having the highest one, will do. Especially when putting RpH items into your weapons.

 

As for the build, at the moment I got TL and AL at 20, DW and EWF at 10 and RTL, Cons and CR at 9. I'm nearing level 30; in the desert area, just switched to the level 30 Niokaste's and level 35 Holy Protection, so at next level I'll bring RTL and CR at level 10, while starting to put points into TL, AL, DW and Cons to bring those equal to char level. I'll do some screenshots with both hard and soft points and including the sigma overview tomorrow before heading off  to find the scroll of fire.

 

 

Thorin :) 

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Having a level 39 toon in Platinum will always mean trouble, I seriously recommend getting at least your complete skill set before entering that difficulty. And even then you'll need to be well dressed and prepared to fight or flight. Having a bag full of +all skills trinkets is also a must, and all of this doesn't exclude the obvious, which is that you need to have a powerhouse build anyway. When you get to Niob the minimum level in Sloeford is 111, and that's for Kobolds alone! So yeah, speed running is fine, but I'd advice against getting a "regular" build so high so soon. It'll always be troublesome, even with twinks.

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