I wanted up give an update to this. I will update once again once I reach floor 750 and begin farming 750-800, as originally planned.
I farmed up the necessary items on my rogue, and now have the warrior built as per this build. 1 minor difference: as suggested, I used block on the OH and crit damage on the armor, since I don’t have any other skills or talents that differentiate between the two, and it’s an extra 15% bonus.
So far, I’m in the 650s floorwise, and not running into any major problems. The only issues I’ve had are with Mythic and Legendary bosses with thorns, and even then, they’re usually killable, just annoying. I still have another 150 floors to survive while in farmmode for this build to be a success however, so we shall see. Torrent in this build doesn’t do much damage (3-5mil a tick), but is good for keeping things going on strong enemies while moving. I might swap this to something else. Whirlwind can do 350M+ a tick, and ticks fast.
Overall, this is still, to me, the most fun build in the game, and definitely the one that will keep me playing. A bit more on how it matches up to other builds:
Rogue 1012 Flashfarm : This is the build I used to farm warrior items. It is the best build in the game, by far at running floors 500-550 for crystals and mythstones. If you need to get the parts for custom items, this build is for you. It’s more boring, however, and slows down at 550+, espcially since i don’t have movement speed bonuses. It’s still usable, though slow, at 600-625 for farming epiphany items, but it is NOT fun at those levels. This build will give you the most legendary items per level, and I regularly get multiple rare crystal drops and crystal legends, and even obsidian drops, from this build. Great for farming crystals on 500-550, not too much fun otherwise.
On the other extreme, we have the Green Garden build This is mostly a ladder climb build, and does the most damage out of the 3. It requires some rampup due to poison cloud, but has no problems at all even on high map floors. It is not a farm build, and has the slowest legendary and crystal rate, but is the most powerful. Swapping out affixes for luck and item drop doesn’t hurt damage too much (depending on what you replace) but will absolutely gut your survival. Still, it’s a great tactic for a hireling to have two gear sets for this guy and have him follow you around in farming gear (as long as you don’t mind hitting ‘revive’ every few pulls). Both my rogue and warrior use him as a hireling. The major problem I’ve noticed with this build (apart from low farming ability) is that poison clouds hate proccing on difficult (orange+) enemies. This isnt a problem with cartographers and enslaves, who are usually surrounded by minions, but can be a major issue for shrine guardians, legendary, and mythic enemies who are often summoned when the majority of the surrounding trash mobs have already been cleared, leaving you with no good way to kill them. This build works best with a melee hireling to keep mobs off you.
Warrior: middle of the road. Not as good crystal find as the rogue, but much more powerful. Not as powerful as the wizard, but very suitable for farming. With rediculous movement speed bonuses, energy, and a constantly procced sprint, it’s really fun, and the fastest level clearer of the three. Although it’s not obvious, it’s also the fastest legendary item farmer. Although the rogue gets more legendaries per level, due to the sheer speed of map clears, the warrior gets many more per minute spent farming. Will check in again at 750+, but this is by far my favorite build to play so far (still), and occupies a good compromise spot between floor climbing and farming. And really, there’s no reason to go beyond 750-800 right now, as thats the highest legendary item bracket (and only for wizards, so you can safely stay at 600-650 if not using a wizard hireling). No problems at 600-650 except for the very occasional thorns mythic, and extremely speedy clears. Since I don’t have frozen or stun immune (replaced with item drops), I have to be aware of and move out of giant red circles at 600+, but that’s not really a problem as much as an observation.
Keep climbing,
Zithras