[3.11] Shaper = Stunned, Tidebreaker Heavy Strike Stunner Build

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topperzz wrote:

Do you think EQ will be able to do reliable stun without tidebreaker? without knowing 2h changes yet ofc ^^ planning on using mace for the 6l div card in arsenal. eventually tidebreaker if it beats the dps ^^

First of all, a rare mace is very unlikely to beat Tidebreaker when it comes to stunning mobs. So by not using Tidebreaker, you are likely losing out on your stun capability.

And then EQ relies heavily on the aftershock. On the one hand the aftershock deals quite a lot of damage, but at the same time the time interval between aftershocks is a bit too long. We have a high variation in damage due to high max/min damage interval, chance of double damage and Ruthless triggers, it's close to impossible to guarantee that you stun with your aftershock, and it's close to impossible to stack enough stun duration to cover more than 1 intervals of aftershock.

So, yes, EQ can stun enemies, but it's not ideal to stun-lock enemies with EQ at all.

Question, wouldn't ruthless work well for cyclone too? Just wondering, as you don't get endurance charges while spinning around.

Edit: nevermind, just noticed I had been gaining endurance charges even while cycloning.

Edit 2:
Feedback time now that I have the build going and running: Surprisingly good clear speed with cyclone, high damage as expected. Unfortunately I am too used to play recklessly so I was surprised when I took so much damage. The lack of block/spell block will be something I will have to get used to considering how quick some bosses can melt your hp.

That being said, I got trampled by Sirus. This is my second Sirus attempt, and with a different build so I guess the outcome was somewhat expected. What had me confused is that I couldn't perma-stun the bastard. I managed to stun him in the first phase, then only managed to get a few rare stuns on the second phase. No stuns at all during the more difficult phases. Does he gain more stun resistance as the fight goes on?

Also any tips on how to avoid the final phase beam after he makes the copies? It is an insta-kill and I need to know which one is the original to dodge considering after he casts it, there is no dodge chance.

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Praef wrote:

Question, wouldn't ruthless work well for cyclone too? Just wondering, as you don't get endurance charges while spinning around.

Edit: nevermind, just noticed I had been gaining endurance charges even while cycloning.

Edit 2:
Feedback time now that I have the build going and running: Surprisingly good clear speed with cyclone, high damage as expected. Unfortunately I am too used to play recklessly so I was surprised when I took so much damage. The lack of block/spell block will be something I will have to get used to considering how quick some bosses can melt your hp.

That being said, I got trampled by Sirus. This is my second Sirus attempt, and with a different build so I guess the outcome was somewhat expected. What had me confused is that I couldn't perma-stun the bastard. I managed to stun him in the first phase, then only managed to get a few rare stuns on the second phase. No stuns at all during the more difficult phases. Does he gain more stun resistance as the fight goes on?

Also any tips on how to avoid the final phase beam after he makes the copies? It is an insta-kill and I need to know which one is the original to dodge considering after he casts it, there is no dodge chance.

Ruthless doesn't support channeling skills and thus cannot work with Cyclone, unfortunately.

The defense of this build is quite good if you're fully aware of this build's strengths and weaknesses - and since a stun build is still quite niche it really grows with your experience with this build in my opinion. Knowing how to position yourself while mapping to stun everything around you, when to use flasks proactively to mitigate projectile damage and other bursts, and when you can fully commit to stun-locking and mitigate all damage taken are all very crucial. One tip I can share is that - if you're unfamiliar with melee playstyle - mobility (attack speed and movement speed) really helps your defense, and disengage when you should.

I am not sure why you can stun-lock Sirus during the first few phases but not the last few. I suspect it comes down to having more things to dodge and thus failing to keep up endurance charges, rage stacks, etc.

The beams out of multiple copies is what kills most players who attempt this boss. It will probably kill us even if we had twice as much hp, there really isn't anything to do besides to dodge it. I don't really have any advice here as well, since I die a lot to this beam bullshit as well.

Yeah, I used steelskin back when I started the game-This is still my first league, so when I moved to the budget full block it got a lot less risky aside from DoT damage or some classic PoE bullshit to kill me. So gonna have to get used to this dangerous playstyle; high damage and high risk.

Wasn't aware about the ruthless rule, that's unfortunate. At least you can still get endurance stacks either way during SPEEN, so that's nice. And yeah, maybe it might be due to the lack of endurance charges, wasn't aware it also affected your stun chance there. After all, each time you bitchslap him to a certain hp threshold you need to dance around and wait until he decides to expose himself enough for you to get close and make him land again.

And I use heavy strike on the fight, rage is only on the cyclone mace 6L. Here is my current PoB if you are wondering my current situation. Around 23m, mostly because I am not using awakened gems. https://pastebin.com/C07RJn6N Cyclone mace isn't there because for some reason importing my account on PoB isn't working properly, so I had to design this based on part of what the game managed to import (it wasn't showing my lower cluster jewel slots and skills).

Yeahh, I imagined the last phase is what gets a lot of people. It seems he does have a phrase as a warning but that spell apparently as spell echo so you do die because he shoots -three- in a single burst. So unless you manage to track him down when he is doing this clone bullshit, chances are he will kill you off-screen or give you no time to figure out where the real one is at.

Edit: forgot to change my gems a bit on this pob, as I think I have a lv21 heavy strike on my build. Gonna double-check later.

Feedback part 2:
Elder died in less than 2 minutes.
The crazy boss with 4 arms and notorious for her mirror copy died in 3-4, mostly due to how much time she wastes between phases.
So yeah, massive damage for sure.

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Haadd wrote:

Crit tidebreaker zerk variant.

Shaper perma stunned quite easily. Huge spikes in damage makes the gameplay quite fun.

https://youtu.be/Kzhxxv93e4g

Hi, awesome build bright and awesome variant Haadd.

One question: Do you think this is viable for Slayer as well? (Crit Ground Slam)
I tried to put it in POB and seems like they're quite near in all terms, but Berserk is just so much better with warcries. Maybe we can change the warcry notables to more attack speed and damage?

I know we're still waiting for the 3.11 patchnote anyway. The hype makes it seem like warcries and slams are going to be bonkers. If the cluster notables are not nerfed then this build will be very strong. Guess if both are buffed I'll start the league with a Berserker then.

We'll see how this plays out, but the default cooldown on warcries looks like it is 8 seconds now. Moreover, the damage boost from the offensive warcries only applies to a "few hits" before it locks you out during cooldown.

This looks like a massive nerf to fast hitting Berserkers and makes the Berskerker heal pretty much worthless, as they keep trying to force feed a "slow but powerful" melee playstyle down our throats. From past experience, the strength based skills that have attack speeds below base value generally are very subpar. Viable, sure I guess, but not good or top tier by any stretch. The problem is slow and POE do not mix very well. The slow skills give mobs too much time to kill you. You don't need more damage when mapping--rather, you need to get attacks off as fast as possible. Sure scale up the AOE if possible, but then single target damage suffers.

Overall, Berserkers are going to take a massive survivability hit with the next patch. And with cluster jewels giving any class full rage within seconds, there really isn't too much of a reason to play a berserker. It'll be even more of a meme class in 3.11. Maybe I'm being too pessimistic. We'll see.

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mr_headcut wrote:

Hi, awesome build bright and awesome variant Haadd.

One question: Do you think this is viable for Slayer as well? (Crit Ground Slam)
I tried to put it in POB and seems like they're quite near in all terms, but Berserk is just so much better with warcries. Maybe we can change the warcry notables to more attack speed and damage?

I know we're still waiting for the 3.11 patchnote anyway. The hype makes it seem like warcries and slams are going to be bonkers. If the cluster notables are not nerfed then this build will be very strong. Guess if both are buffed I'll start the league with a Berserker then.

As you said, it's too early to tell. I expect some fundamental changes to Berserker and we will see what happens when the patch notes roll out.

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JaguarXXX wrote:

We'll see how this plays out, but the default cooldown on warcries looks like it is 8 seconds now. Moreover, the damage boost from the offensive warcries only applies to a "few hits" before it locks you out during cooldown.

This looks like a massive nerf to fast hitting Berserkers and makes the Berskerker heal pretty much worthless, as they keep trying to force feed a "slow but powerful" melee playstyle down our throats. From past experience, the strength based skills that have attack speeds below base value generally are very subpar. Viable, sure I guess, but not good or top tier by any stretch. The problem is slow and POE do not mix very well. The slow skills give mobs too much time to kill you. You don't need more damage when mapping--rather, you need to get attacks off as fast as possible. Sure scale up the AOE if possible, but then single target damage suffers.

Overall, Berserkers are going to take a massive survivability hit with the next patch. And with cluster jewels giving any class full rage within seconds, there really isn't too much of a reason to play a berserker. It'll be even more of a meme class in 3.11. Maybe I'm being too pessimistic. We'll see.

As I said above, I expect quite some changes to Berserker. The warcries no longer sharing cooldown guarantees the warcry notable change in my opinion, and we don't know what it will change to yet. So, I am still quite optimistic.

I do hope duelist maceman also gets to enjoy some of these buffs, I might give this a shot again next league, considering I finished the full build kinda late here.

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brightwaha wrote:

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topperzz wrote:

Do you think EQ will be able to do reliable stun without tidebreaker? without knowing 2h changes yet ofc ^^ planning on using mace for the 6l div card in arsenal. eventually tidebreaker if it beats the dps ^^

First of all, a rare mace is very unlikely to beat Tidebreaker when it comes to stunning mobs. So by not using Tidebreaker, you are likely losing out on your stun capability.

And then EQ relies heavily on the aftershock. On the one hand the aftershock deals quite a lot of damage, but at the same time the time interval between aftershocks is a bit too long. We have a high variation in damage due to high max/min damage interval, chance of double damage and Ruthless triggers, it's close to impossible to guarantee that you stun with your aftershock, and it's close to impossible to stack enough stun duration to cover more than 1 intervals of aftershock.

So, yes, EQ can stun enemies, but it's not ideal to stun-lock enemies with EQ at all.

Yea ofc i will deffenetly loose out on not having tidebreaker ^^ im going ssf so i wont get it anytime soon, but with harvest im sure ill get a really good rare in no time at all ^^ im also counting on seismic cry to help out reducing stun threshold.


since im going jugger and ill get alot of max endurance charges + the new changes to 2h bases(which will increase base dmg etc etc) im counting on Tidebreaker to be one of the best Pdps weps for me so im deffenetly gonna farm the div card

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mr_headcut wrote:

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Haadd wrote:

Crit tidebreaker zerk variant.

Shaper perma stunned quite easily. Huge spikes in damage makes the gameplay quite fun.

https://youtu.be/Kzhxxv93e4g

Hi, awesome build bright and awesome variant Haadd.

One question: Do you think this is viable for Slayer as well? (Crit Ground Slam)
I tried to put it in POB and seems like they're quite near in all terms, but Berserk is just so much better with warcries. Maybe we can change the warcry notables to more attack speed and damage?

I know we're still waiting for the 3.11 patchnote anyway. The hype makes it seem like warcries and slams are going to be bonkers. If the cluster notables are not nerfed then this build will be very strong. Guess if both are buffed I'll start the league with a Berserker then.

Well, I've tried this crit variant with slayer too, but is weaker in every way:

Berserker has better raw damage, attack speed and healing (warbringer + Leech is more efficient than Brutal Fervour Leech, IMO).

The only thing Slayer will be better is crit, but since you'll be using rare chest + hands of the high templar both with crit mod, you'll get around 7.0% with Berserker. Proper scaling can get you around 50-60% crit chance, the flasks will almost bring it to 90%.

That said, Berserker's stun will be much more consistent, once you get all the crit gear + nodes.

One alternative as a slayer is going impact and overwhelm, then head to Bane of Legends, but unless you go for the Soul Tether + Corrupted Soul + Atziri Acuity combo I guess you will die quite a lot. Slayer's super cull isn't even that necessary, since you get cull on stun hits from your tree, so, yeah... Easier crit chance and more AoE but worse in every other aspect in comparison to Berserker