Budget PvP Guides: Anything you can gear, I can gear better.

After reading Rup's concerted effort to showcase a reasonably priced Kinetic Blast PvP build I began to ask myself why I, or any of my fellow "budget" PvP'ers, have never posted build guides to some of our more competitive PvP builds...

And well, to answer my own question: 'cause no PvP'er wants to fight a better equipped version of themselves'

Thus the only people posting build guides are the same people posting 200ex items in HLD porn.

So yeah, most entry level PvP'ers are left with build guides requiring the insanely varied 20-1000ex setups to be competitive - or spend a few months getting their teeth kicked in before theory-crafting something competitive but "cheap."

And yeah, I suppose there's a part of me that says 'fuck 'em ... make 'em eat losses for awhile like the rest of us...' and yet, I also know that this same attitude inhibits PvP community growth.

Then again, do we really want it to grow?

I guess that's the larger question.

Budget PvP guides will never exist as long as item disparity/scarcity exists... and yet it's that same disparity/scarcity that pushes some of us to create innovative and uniquely tailored builds for kicking ass despite equipment limitations.

You don't actually need expensive items to "pvp". The balance of mechanics and skills themselves far outweigh whatever you can achieve with gg gear.

So just go and abuse one of the few dozen broken things with ~5ex.

"

Actalo wrote:

Thus the only people posting build guides are the same people posting 200ex items in HLD porn.

The people you refer to are actually the minority of all people who are posting builds. There are multiple people posting builds that work well with low cost, because the stats scale off mostly passives and gems, and use clever game mechanics (also referred as broken)

If anything, this is the golden age of cheap dps builds, thanks to the imbalanced skills that insta-kill people through AoE overlap, multi-hits, cheesed T values, block/dodge bypass. These glassy playstyle builds scale their effectiveness through utility stats, like movement speed, proj speed, area, warp duration etc, which are often available on passives, ascendencies or cheap uniques. Scaling damage and ehp for them becomes irrelevant at some point, when they oneshot everyone and everyone oneshots them, what starts to matter is speed, and the so underrated skillz.

Cheap and budget is also very relative, but being too cheap often shows the lack of time and effort spent, so experienced people who post build guides simply can't lack those, thus will have a decent quality of gear to their builds, which is always good, because it shows people what to aim for, and with their stats posted they will know how much they gain by getting their upgrades.

you must try leagues

i did this char for lvl up my leo master in legacy league

(3 chaos)


(2 alch)

(2 chaos)

( 3 ex lol but i dont need it, i could use an Eye of chayula or any random dps amulet)

( 1 chaos)

(50 chaos , but i dont need a +1 to gems tabula , i could use a normal one , i just feel lazy to lvl up my gems)

( 1 chaos)

( self found )

( 1 alch )

( 2 chaos )

( i bought this for 5c when league start )


and these jewels
( 5 jewels with those mods , i spend 1c-5c in each one)


my char is lvl 86 and is able to kill the most of pvp scorching ray guys in legacy sarn arena and some of those pvp golems builds
skill tree

this is more about knowing what you should expect from "top" gear and "top dps" and with that knowlegde being able to dialect between budget and expensive gear and reach such levels of dps with budget gear.

mirrored gear item setups/or gg item setups gives you a concrete sample of what "decent" is and can be. it gives you a reference point so you can seek to get a gg build with different set of gears which can be called as "budget"

let's say, you do 350k dps with mirrored gear. you check all the items in the game, and try to get 300.
without having the experience of having 350k dps, you couldn't be daring and greedy about getting 300k dps with budget gear.

someone with 30ex would do 200k dps KB build(assuming he/she doesnt know any examples of 350k dps wander build), not because he/she doesnt have enough perception to do that, thats because he/she would think 200k dps is really top fucking dps. his satisfaction would not allow him to see further and have more improvements. but there are actually higher numbers than that.

this is the problem with 99% of all guides. they think they have good build because they have slightly more dps or tankiness than others but actually not. there are lots of rooms for improvement but they can't see it due to satisfaction feeling they have with what they have. they don't know what top is, the height of it. with 400-2000ex(depends on what you do) gear, your satisfaction bar gets very high and you always seek to get there. thats why people with fat wallet release(markusz is included) "good budget guides". the staisfaction bar and and the meaning of "decent" is very high for such people. it's not about skill or deep levels of perception of the player. it's all about what you experienced, what you haven't experienced.

competition is also a big factor to raise "satisfaction bar" and expectations from a build. thats why i release guides(so people can copy, get stronger than me maybe so i can find more improvements) or help abusive builds, to get rekt by them so i can see further than i already can see.(hideyourcurrency for example)

competition and having the experience of good gear is important to improve yourself.

thankfully, with path of building, everybody is equal. also markusz pvp damage calculator is a good tool so you can see what you are doing.

rup mind sharing how high on drugs you were when you typed that wall of gibber?

nah, actually i mean it. but i think my assumptions mostly apply to attack builds.

1- When you can beat everyone, you wouldnt try to make your build better. You can do it better, but the progression is dramatically higher when there is someone constantly beats your build. when you have satisfied with what you have, you can't upgrade your build further.

this was my first idea, and i see no problem here.

2- the hard part about attack skill build making is that, you cant guess at first glance how much damage/tankiness you can have. cause its all about gears, spell based damage skills have their base X-Y damage on the gem itself.(also spell based builds most of the time use shavs, sambars, some stun immunity item... the pattern is most of the time same) with attack builds though, the more you dig, the more you think, the more you find ways to get higher dps, higher survivability with attack builds. and that digging, requires most of the time good gear. attack builds most of the time ends up being expensive builds. After you dig the build for a while, you understand the pattern of making that build good and if there are uniques fitting the requirements, you can do that. Your Lioneyes Glare LA, Doomfletch LA, Piscators KB for example. Doomfletch LA is just 25% less stronger(its power level is equal to 500 pdps 9.4 crit binger though), 15-20% for piscators.

(i can admit that attack build tree making is easier than spell damage build making)
example:

The build depth difference between attack and caster builds you imply comes from your one-sided experience, with your words, you simply didn't dig enough to see, casters get the same depth of min-maxing.

Attack builds just have more affixes on gear to scale dps traditionally, more layers to fulfill like accuracy and added flat damage, but that just makes it straightforward to gear, because you know you need those stats, especially with mirror-tier items, where the possible alternatives become obviously inferior, so you won't really bother trying them, which makes a similar fix pattern in gearing you guessed casters might have. When was the last time you needed to swap your rings, or your high pdps phys weapon for a unique or a rare with different mods that really only allowed you to get a counter on an opponent?

My caster example is the CWC fireballer, which probably has the highest amount, and most different swaps I ever had that are used for different situations, I can be at between 3.7k ES to 10k ES, just from item swaps. In some cases I even need to swap out my 540 ES + spell dmg shield to get in appropiate amount of BCR, my 400 ES hubris, 700 ES regalia etc for completely different mechanic alternative skill setups, and these are still within the limits of a CWC, non-crit, grand spectrum, CI caster.

Even looking at a simple skill like Fireball has so many ways to build, CWC vs self cast, crit vs EO, CI vs LL vs Life based, all requiring majorly different gear, and sometimes you will see as little from that as invisible fireballs hitting you with slightly different damage.

"

you simply didn't dig enough to see

"

Attack builds just have more affixes on gear to scale dps traditionally, more layers to fulfill like accuracy and added flat damage, but that just makes it straightforward to gear, because you know you need those stats, especially with mirror-tier items, where the possible alternatives become obviously inferior, so you won't really bother trying them, which makes a similar fix pattern in gearing you guessed casters might have. When was the last time you needed to swap your rings, or your high pdps phys weapon for a unique or a rare with different mods that really only allowed you to get a counter on an opponent?

why so much ad hominem though?

state your opinions, give the reasons, give arguments. aren't we here to weight our opinions and see what is rignt? or we are here to win forum pvp duels? why there is so many "you" do this, why "you" do that, have "you" ever, "you you you"

i dont think you have reasons to hate me to be honest.



these are my swaps too. like you and rlowe have, i think i have moves like jagger too.

in short, im not overlooking spellcaster building, it sounds like that from my post but yeah, actually i do not.

"

Rupenus wrote:

"

you simply didn't dig enough to see

"

Attack builds just have more affixes on gear to scale dps traditionally, more layers to fulfill like accuracy and added flat damage, but that just makes it straightforward to gear, because you know you need those stats, especially with mirror-tier items, where the possible alternatives become obviously inferior, so you won't really bother trying them, which makes a similar fix pattern in gearing you guessed casters might have. When was the last time you needed to swap your rings, or your high pdps phys weapon for a unique or a rare with different mods that really only allowed you to get a counter on an opponent?

why so much ad hominem though?

state your opinions, give the reasons, give arguments. aren't we here to weight our opinions and see what is rignt? or we are here to win forum pvp duels? why there is so many "you" do this, why "you" do that, have "you" ever, "you you you"

i dont think you have reasons to hate me to be honest.

I don't see much actual negative ad hominem in his comment, so I'd tone it down a bit with the victim complex. Secondly, and believe me on this one, there are PLENTY of reasons to hate you. I'm really just half joking, but yea.

What I'm guessing Markuscszcscscs is saying is that you probably don't have the caster experience to really know what item swaps are optimal for certain caster builds. Not all of them really work the same as other spells, there is a degree of depth based upon the skill you choose to utilize. You got the attack builds and Pathfinder down, certainly. So there's that.


Apart from berating Rup, I'm all for this budget build guides for PVP. Only thing I'm worried about is the idea that they'd have to abuse some sort of PVP cheese just to compete with people like me and only me who have, not just the moves of Mick Jagger, but also the face of Mick Jagger after some sort of horrific accident.