YES, DEFINITELY. More cheat deaths = more better.
Power Hungry and Galvanizing Ward are the keepers, Replace either Blur or Elemental Exposure depending on whether you think you need more damage or more toughness. I ran Unstable Anomaly + Galvanizing Ward + Power Hungry + Elemental Exposure in HC.
Unstable Anomaly isn’t super reliable, it just gives you a big shield but not immunity. It can be overwhelmed by two quick hits, e.g. two slightly staggered molten explosions. If Unstable Anomaly is your only cheat death, you can be killed straight through it.
Combining it with a follower cheat death and having both together is very nice. The Templar has the most reliable cheat death for HC.
Normally the CC immunity one is best.
That’s not really necessary in season 28. Kulle Aid isn’t particularly necessary either, can help you bust walls to group stuff, but you can pass through the walls yourself and land meteors over them, so the walls aren’t a huge hindrance.
I used the armor potion just for a bit of extra toughness.
Storm Armor: Shocking Aspect keeps up Karini more consistently, I’d recommend that for HC.
Play comet with diamond skin prism and magic weapon deflection. Replace elemental exposure with cheat death, use armour potion and put plenty of paragon in vitality. If you want to push leader boards get slightly braver slowly starting with paragon, ultimately changing to starpact I guess. Never played hardcore as I like taking risks and going glass cannon when pushing times
Just throwing it out there that Meteor is so strong now that you can make a fine Meteor-based build with the Firebird set, which has a built-in cheat-death ability that is quite a bit better than Unstable Anomaly.
(of course you’ll still use Unstable Anomaly and whatever ability your follower comes with too)
Thanks as always!
Just as a disclaimer, this is my first real attempt at HC so I’m actually trying. (I have played HC once before but it was just for achievements so I stopped as soon as they were done.)
I’ll keep Blur for now for added safety. Maybe once I can rack up 1M hp I’ll change over to Elemental Exposure.
Yeah, that’s what I run with my SC Wiz. I’ll definitely keep him.
Yeah, some of those aren’t an issue right now. I suspected either the life per hit or armor. I’ll give armor a try.
Yep! Was already on my mind.
I think tinne covered it, and don’t know your SC setup, but just making sure that you run guardians. It’s great at low paragon, and it’s great defense.
Another damage → toughness swap you can do is squirts and coe for endless walk set. Quite a lot of damage to give up, but it can be scary with 1-shots with squirts, especially if you run through an empty part without mobs, or enter a new floor or rift (10 squirts stacks: 1.5x damage taken, karini offline: 5x damage taken), and then easy to get 1-shot, and if you proc straight through your shield like that, then you don’t lose squirts, so you get the 1.5x damage taken for the second hit as well, that can very well go through your unstable anomaly shield as you take 7.5x times more damage. So just not wearing squirts should reduce risk of death, even apart from endless walk that will mostly be in defense mode when moving through empty areas like that. You do give up a lot of damage though.
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Thanks!
My SC and HC are the same gear setup.
I did use Guardian’s early on while building the Tal set. Once it was built, I had to drop it because there wasn’t a way to have Tal’s, Aughild’s and Guardian’s all at the same time. In order to have both supporting sets, Tal’s 6-piece would have to be broken.
So, it looks like Endless Walk is the only option. I’ll definitely do that while leveling up paragon. For now I’m just farming T16 (GR keys, Ramal’s, bounties) so the damage loss wouldn’t hurt all that much. When I go back into the GR’s I can swap back to my main gear.
Edit: Now that I look at it closer, it seems that temporarily dropping Aughild’s for Guardian’s is totally worth it?
Yes.
At low paragon, Guardian’s is about equal in damage vs. Aughild + CoE but WAAAY more toughness.
Compare these two setups at 1000 paragon with 4 augments in d3planner: Diablo 3 Build Guides, Tierlists, D3Planner - maxroll.gg
Aughild + CoE has 120.6T average meteor damage without CoE. Averaging CoE (1.5x), you end up with 180.9T average meteor damage. And that setup has 492M toughness.
Guardian + Squirt’s 146.6T average meteor damage. But 1113M toughness.
So at around 1000 paragon, Guardian’s has a bit more damage than Aughild’s off CoE, but less damage than Aughild’s with CoE. But then WAY more toughness. More than double the toughness.
If you’re just doing farming runs you don’t get as much value from CoE anyway, so in HC I’d just farm with Guardian’s up to something like 1500 paragon, then maybe think about switching to push 145+ if you are feeling comfortable with the toughness at that point.
Unfortunately, using Guardian’s breaks my 6-piece bonus. I equipped the bracers, but must replace the Tal belt or helm (I did belt).
To get the 6-piece bonus back, I had to equip the amulet or the offhand. But only the amulet is a possibility due to the 2-handed weapon.
So I had to give up Squirts. It’s not really hurting much. I still have CoE if I need a sudden burst, plus I’ve gotten to a point where T16 is no match, and so far GR80 isn’t either.
I now have an idle Aughild’s in my shoulder slot. Is there a different shoulder out there that could benefit the build in the mean time?
Thanks as always!
PS. As soon as I’m finished writing this, I have to leave for work. So I didn’t have time to look at the maxroll build.
Yeah, you have to use Tal’s amulet, unless you are dropping down to lower tiers and farming with Aether Walker + Tal’s source.
Another option for Guardian’s with 2x staff though is to wear RoRG + Karini and cube Squirt’s.
That’s what I’d recommend for farming runs, Squirt’s is more consistent dps vs. CoE when you are doing fast(ish) clears.
It just requires you to have a RoRG you can wear.
Nah, just your best rolled ancient shoulder. Pauldrons of the Skeleton King maybe, but the proc isn’t super consistent so I wouldn’t bother specifically farming those, just use your best ancient shoulder.
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I do! I’ll give that combo a try when I’m back playing.
If you have a good Karini, that is… I mean that ring can be pretty nasty to roll. Paired with RoRG, which is also meh in terms of affixes these two can become an awful combo. Unless Lady Luck is generous and graces you with a Karini like the one on my seasonal wiz.
My char is only a few days old. I have all the gear, however I’m just now getting into finding ancient versions. Meaning, nothing is optimal (or even close) at the moment. I have a normal Karini, but luckily it rolled 80%.
So hopefully, it + RoRG + cubed Squirts (+ Guardian’s) should work pretty well for the paragon farming where I won’t be in any pushing/super dangerous situations.
What do you assign to your left mouse button? I currently have Familiar there.
The reason I ask is because the left mouse is a both movement and a targeted skill. And so, I often have a problem when trying to maneuver through big crowds. I want to move, but if I click on an enemy, or even on the ground close to one, I won’t move. Instead I just refresh Familiar, sometimes over and over and over as I try to move.
In emergency situations that I need to get out of, that can be the death of me. Plus it wastes 20 Arcane Power with every unneeded refresh. (That’s why I chose Familiar, it has the lowest AP cost of the three “Conjuration” skills.)
Primary skill if I’m running one, otherwise Meteor. If I do throw out a random attack accidentally, it should at least be a meteor!
I attack with Force Stand Still and move with Force Move though (and I’ve been doing it that way for years), so it’s generally not much of an issue for me.
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With Meteor on left, what do you put on right?
Echoing tinne: force move (I use thumb mouse button, wudi uses scroll wheel) and force stand still (space most common) is totally the way to go. Takes a bit to retrain your muscle memory to but it’s a huge quality of life once it’s there, as well as life-saver as you say.
With that I put generator or something I don’t press on LMB, and mobility (teleport, dash, strafe) on RMB, typically damage on 1. Exactly how you set that up is up to you, but moving with force move is mandatory, and force stand still not far behind.
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Awesome.
I’ve set the two force actions to some comfortable keys. Now I just need to run around a bunch to get used to them.