Hello, I’ve been playing for a couple years on and off but I’ve never posted in the forums before. Most of what I know is from scanning the forums every now and then.
With that said, I feel below-average in terms of creating builds in regards to flooring and arena. I haven’t delved too deep into the mechanics of every affix, as lots of the affixes’ descriptions are vague or have unexplained synergies you’d have to luck out to figure out. I’ve just recently gotten motivated to start creating some arena builds.
I’ve tried some of the arena builds around here on the forums which worked at first, but I am still no where near strong enough to make it far. I do know the crystals pretty well in terms of getting all affixes maxed out though.
The idea I had in mind was a build focused around battle mage’s charge and whirlwind (I saw builds like this that decimated me in arena and I took a particular liking to its playstyle.)
So my question is, HP vs MP and AR vs Resists, which to pick? I don’t know how well hybrids work either, if that’s viable. I know battle mage increases armour and HP, but I’ve also seen what pumping MP with blood magic can do. I had around 35 mill HP when using solely MP affixes on a blood magic build, but it’s also a lot easier to boost MP with the amount of sets that boost it. Should I just take the hit with battle mage’s AR and HP boost and keep going the blood magic + MP route?
Is it worth it to mix up AR with resists? I know there’s affixes like ignore resists and thing like AR penetration. I’m just curious what your thoughts are.
Ignore Resist doesn’t work in PVP. but I seem to remember a Mod or Dev saying Weaken does work in PVP.
the AR Penetration makes AR less desirable than all resist, but Warrior has a Talent that gives all resist based on AR, and Wizard gets extra All Resist when putting Stat Points into Mana, plus the Cosmic Talent for even more all resist. using both Armor & All Resist just means lots more damage reduction. but then, it depends on your build and if you can fit it on the equipment.
I haven’t tried Cyclone Mythic in PVP, but it was kind of fun in PVE, even though my Build was more for testing than using it well in a build. if any enemy player in PVP has a Legend Taunt Resist, that would make Cyclone less useful. shoot, I can’t remember if it disables movement while activated, so if you get hit by a Cerebral Vortex while the enemy is in your Cyclone, that could be trouble.
as far as focusing on HP and/or MP, depends on the requirements of your Build.
Thanks a lot for the informative reply! I’m gonna give cyclone a quick try to see if it does remove the ability to move, that could change what I had in mind. I was thinking whirlwind mixed with cyclone could proc tons of damage due to the high number of hits, but if it restricts mobility, might not be worth it.
As for AR and resist, yeah it might be a little difficult balancing both of them out. I’m curious if there’s a “soft cap” that they should both reach to be effective in arena? I’m just not sure how the stat reductions work in arena. Is it an 80% decrease of all stats globally?
Now I’m curious if I should go warrior or wizard. I had wizard in mind for the most part. Do you know if HP will scale off the maximum amount of health that’s already been scaled via blood magic + MP? If so that would be amazing, but I imagine it wouldn’t be the case. If you’re not sure that’s totally okay. I’ll have to give it a bit of testing.
If I just had a better idea of the way arena scales stats and how certain builds work in order to counter them, such as what I actually NEED in order to reliably put up at least a fight, I’d be much better off.
I’m still getting a hang of the different sets available and how they synergize.
Again, thanks for the response man, and thank you for the welcome! The community is amazing and very informative, I’m glad to be here.