So obviously Tal Rasha was THE build for S28, but without all the Altar bonuses (and the squishiness that entails), what can the average player expect to do with only 800 Paragon points?
I am torn between going back to Crusader and doing Tals again, but I am mostly a facetank player. I learned to hang back a bit with Tals after a few weeks with it, but I am worried about the survivability.
Thoughts from people who have played it before this season?
I would think ~145 should be reasonably straightforward. 150 will require some significant effort and skill.
The Guardian’s variant is a good bit tankier, so good news there.
Tals is one of the few builds that might be able to clear GR150 in S29.
As a Crusader main I recommend returning to the cause!
The new FotH build is a lot of fun (but still noteably weaker than Tal Rashas)
How is the Captain America? I heard it changed, not sure if better or worse. Probably start with Tals/Guardian and swap out to Capt if viable, then just alternate between them. I miss the Capt build when it was competitive!
Cpt.America Crusader is better than before but unfortunately still not great.
Playable sure but nothing to use for leaderboards
It still has it’s own leaderboard though right?
No, LoD Blessed Shield competes with LoD Bombardment, which is a decent bit stronger from what I can see.
The top ranks on the sader LoD board will mostly be LoD Bombardment I think.
I’m just stuck at Gr 144 ( EU server ). It’s all about fishing, still waiting for a dream Gr - one level with 100% progress, Conduit + Power, good mobs, good RG.
I have some questions about pushing GR150 this season. That is my goal, I don’t know if I’ll be able to reach it, but I wanna give it a try.
Usually I try to follow maxroll as much as possible but this season I have some questions:
Aughild’s vs Guardian’s - Probably at fully augmented gear aughilds will give more dmg but way less toughness. What is more guardians cause some issues with itemization - it is necessary to drop squirts in favor of Tal’s amulet.
Maxroll recommend Aughilds though I am really afraid of being 1-shooted by everything. Are the shields (with much higher HP pool) enough to keep us alive and protect squirts?
Star Pact vs Comet - last season I was able to reach 150 with both setups. It was actually a matter of how fast I can clear it. Did anyone try to push with them. Any singificant differences?
Gems and augments. Here lies my biggest worries. Last season I made zDH and found a group to speedrun 150. I was able to level all gems and whispers to 150 quiet easily. This season in SSF it is impossible.
Does this build really needs 150-level augments or can it handle with 125? And what about main gems (stricken, trapped, zei’s)? It should probably be relatively easy to get them to ~140, dunno if it will be so easy to reach 150.
I am probably aware that after all it will come to fishing. With a proper open map and good pylons (or maybe even mobtype) it could make all the difference.
Last season my augments were mostly 125-140. I was able to do 150s in around 10-11 minutes. My main gems were between 140-150 at the time.
BTW - Where do you find the leaderboard for this season? Looking on this site I only see season 28 and back.
No, 125s are fine. The power level gain from having 125 vs. 150 augments this season is about 0.3 GR tiers. If you want to min-max to the extreme, sure, do 150 augs. But that’d mostly only be if you are a group player.
If you are SSF, the massive time investment to grind a full set of 150 augs is not worth it over just sticking with 125s. With the lower power level this season, it just takes way too long to grind 150 augs SSF. It’s not worth the miniscule amount of power you gain. If instead of grinding 13x gems to 150, you took all those hours and just slammed speed 90s or Visions instead, you’ll probably find a piece of gear that’s a bigger upgrade than what those augs would have given you anyway. Unless you already have 100% perfect gear and have tons of time to grind, you really shouldn’t waste the time leveling 13x augs to 150 in SSF. The power gain vs. time is just not worth it this season.
Main gems should always be roughly equal to the GR tier you are trying to push. Want to push 150? You should have your main dps gems to 150 (or at least 149 or 148).
Without the APoC from altar, I think in the vast majority of cases Comet will be better this season.
Guardian is extremely strong at low paragon. Both for damage and toughness. At 800 paragon, Guardian actually gives more damage than Aughild’s - excluding Squirt’s. The real difference with Aughild’s, as you pointed out, is it lets you have Squirt’s (or at least, both Squirt’s and CoE).
With 10 Squirt’s stacks, Aughild’s should give about 1.5-1.6x damage to non-elites, and ~2x damage to elites, but has 1/3 the toughness.
With 0 Squirt’s stacks, Aughild’s should give about 3/4 the damage to non-elites and about equal damage to elites, but still has a less than 1/2 the toughness.
So IF you can consistently maintain 10 Squirt’s stacks, Aughild’s is better.
If you are always dropping your Squirt’s stacks, than Guardian is strictly superior, both for damage and toughness.
If you are somewhere in between (sometimes have some Squirt’s stacks), it’s a bit muddier, but Guardian’s has significantly more toughness in every situation. It’s going to be pretty tough to keep your Squirt’s stacks at 800 paragon with Aughild’s. (You will be way stronger for the duration of shield pylon though).
The other thing with Guardian is that you don’t have to try and play around keeping your Squirt’s stacks. Because you don’t have it! And you have 2-3x the toughness. This means you can play way more aggressively, leverage Oculus rings better etc. So that should help make up the gap.
I think the vast vast majority of players will have better results with Guardian this season.
Good comments from TinneOnnMuin. I also considered if I even want to try Aughild push and have some minor comments also.
At this point I’m fairly sure I will skip my 150 hunt this season or do it with Guardian.
Running with Guardian, did a 126 with no augments and not ideal gear, still haven’t hit paragon 800. I think with better gear and augments, I can easily do a 135-140, especially if I rank my gems up higher. Not bad, the extra area damage and attack speed are awesome.