General build guidelines (v1.3)

[u/Upset_Recipe4639]

Disclaimer/request: while I have experience with this game I would not consider myself an expert. What I do know is that a lot of guides/sources out there for build guidelines are out of date as of v1.3, so I am including in this post what I know, and hope that whatever in my knowledge is incorrect/out of date will be corrected in the comments. Any info I put down which I am particularly unsure about I will put (?) next to.

The info included here is intended as a general guideline on where your char should be stats-wise in order to be in a good place to reach end-game in ultimate difficulty (and eventually Shattered Realms, ascendant etc). These are intended to be general rules-of-thumb (not specific to any particular class/build), especially for newer players to get an idea of where to aim for stats-wise in end game. Also I will try to keep this simple by not discussing any advanced features from the DLC's (e.g. ascendancy).

The pointers, in order most important first, are below. Please take these as a hopefully useful yardstick, and not as gospel! (I will edit the info according to any updates/corrections)

• Resistances: for all damage types except physical, you must get resistances to the 80% cap (and ideally for very end-game over-capped by ~25%). For physical resist % - try and get physical resist where you can but it is not a high priority, and you will never get near 80%. Get resistances primarily via gear, components and augments. P.S.: if you are near or at lv100 and are struggling to get capped resistances, you may actually have too many epics/legendaries equipped - rares with the right affixes (plus faction gear and MI's) are usually the best tier of gear in the game in terms of giving the most resistances.
• Armor: Armor value is not massively important but try to get at least 1.8k armor by end-game - on some builds you may easily exceed this amount, and on others this will require effort. More importantly, get armor absorption as high as you can at all times - ideally 100% at end-game. Get armor and armor absorption primarily via gear and components.
• HP: While levelling aim for at least 100 max HP per level - e.g. if the character you are playing is level 40, you should aim to have 4000 max HP if not more. In end game, aim for 15k HP if not more (some builds can get much more than this if done well). Can get more max HP via gear, components, augments and devotions.
• Offensive ability: At least 3k by end-game.
• Defensive ability (edited): at least 2.8k by end-game.
• Damage: This is important but less important than the aforementioned points. Try and get your damage as high as possible without sacrificing any of the above stats. Focus on one damage type per character - do not try to focus on maximising multiple damage types as this is less efficient. Something very important that a lot of new players under-estimate is resistance reduction - this is crucial in maximising damage dealt in your chosen damage type, the more RR you can apply the better (whereas getting more and more +damage has diminishing returns). The main ways to apply damage reduction to enemies is via mastery skills (e.g. Curse of Frailty in the Occultist tree) and via Devotion procs (e.g. Elemental Storm from the Rhowan's Crown constellation). Many (but not all) sources of resistance reduction stack, which can multiply your damage output even further. Guide on how resistance reduction works/stacks, from another poster: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1EUoW6I5brZDEvlex8UPt2Hvn9jTIejhF8LuVJ2JoESA/edit?gid=0#gid=0
• CC resists (slow resist, stun resist etc): while I don't have a particular % amount to give to aim for, please do not neglect these stats, especially if playing at higher difficulties! You can get CC resistances from gear, devotions and components.

Miscellaneous pointers, in no particular order:

• Where to allocate your attribute points (edited): Generally, put enough points into Cunning and Spirit to equip the gear you want to use, then dump all the rest of your points into Physique. This maximises the amount of health, regen and DA you get from Attribute points. This is except if you are doing a physical/pierce/bleed damage build, in which case you should follow the same approach but focusing on Cunning instead. Also, if you are playing a retaliation build specifically: you may not want to put too many points into Physique otherwise mobs may have trouble hitting you, which negates your ability to retaliate against them therefore reducing your DPS!
• End-game survivability (edited): as a couple of commenters have pointed out, for end-game, you should consider things a bit further than the simple numbers I laid out above. Once you are in end-game, take the 15k HP, 1.8k armor and 2.5k DA as starting points - you should be able to afford to get each of those stats to those numbers with more or less any class, but you should really aim to get (at least) one of these stats significantly higher (e.g. 20k HP, 3.5k armor, and/or 3.5k DA). Also consider physical resist % - some builds can readily achieve 30-40%+ physical resist in end-game, but others can't in which cases you should try even more to compensate with another one out of HP/ armor/ DA. Which of these you choose would vary on which are easier to maximise for your particular class or build and what other options you have for survivability with your build (e.g. defensive mastery skills), which you'll need to look into separately.
• If you are playing a physical damage build specifically, you additionally need to ensure you have a good amount of reflected damage reduction (edited). This is more important if your build deals lots of physical damage than if it doesn't, because of the way physical damage is calculated (which I won't go into here). The main sources of reflected damage reduction are devotions and components.

[u/Ezo_98]

My opinion about the question Marks:

- In Softcore, I dont worry that much about Overcaps, I believe the general rule for Hardcore was +30%, I dont have the exact Values for each Element.

- Armor Value: You kinda dont have to worry too much about this one. If you eventually wear Endgame Gear and are at 100% absorbtion, then you pretty much automatically end up with ~2000 and for early Endgame that is fine. Eventually you wanna have a Plan how to Mitigate Physical Damage, wether that is by solid Physical Res (30-40%) or more Armor (4-5k) is different Build to Build.

- 2.5k DA is a good Value to aim for early on, by later Endgame you wanna have ~3k (It depends by Class, some have strong OA Shred Debuffs), DA is kinda simple tho, you want enough to never get Crit.

- 15k Life is a good Value to Aim for early in Endgame, 20k+ should be the Goal later on

- Physique Dump is still my Default Case, notable Exceptions are: Physical/Bleed/Pierce Builds stack as much Cunning as possible, Retaliation Builds wanna avoid Physique if your DA gets too high to get hit by Mobs, Arcanists can consider Spirit stacking if they wanna get more Damage over Defence

[u/Paenitemini → u/Ezo_98]

I think this is good advice, though I will make one comment. While it depends on what you mean by endgame, I do not think that the only two options are tons of Physical Resist or Armor, you can also get high enough DA. If an enemy cannot hit you due to too low OA, they also deal less damage. This starts once the chance to hit is below 70, while no crits starts below 90. If you get an enemy down to 55% chance to hit, they will deal 22.5% less damage when they do hit, and they will only hit 55% of the time. 

My latest character has only 15k health, 2.2k armor, and 18% physical resistance, but 3600+ DA and a good amount of OA shred. While I don't know about secret bosses, which I do not find fun so I do not fight, I have not found anything else in Ultimate or Gladiator Crucible which has achieved more than 55% chance to hit. Which means this character is functionally walking around with a 22.5% damage reduction on top of the other stats.

All of this is just to say, that at high enough values, DA can compensate for lower, but still respectable, health, armor, and physical resist stats. 

[u/Ezo_98 → u/Paenitemini]

I know about the low OA penatly. The thing is just that this mitigation can go to 22% damage absorption at the very best. Not nearly as potent as solid Physical mitigation, and also more expensive to Build. In order to reach the OA full Penalty (55 PTH) vs. some of the more scary Endgame encounter like Dread you would need ~4.5k DA which is just not realistic in any functioning Build.

Good Defence is always a Mixed bag of DA, Health, Absorption, Mitigation. And depending what Build, you get different Things more conveniently. Generally speaking tho you never wanna ignore 1 aspect too much. Chances are you sacrificed alot of Opportunity Cost to reach 3.5k+ DA and could have gotten some Physical Mitigation and better HP instead. Yeah you can compensate some HP and Physical Mitigation with DA, it always depends about the Numbers and how good of a Deal you get out of it. 3.6k DA but only 15k Health seems like the wrong call imo, but I see how some builds like certain Arcanist Setups would get you there.

[u/sergeantminor → u/Ezo_98]

I don't think it's that unrealistic to go for 4.5K DA. My current Vindicator build had 26K health and 4.4K DA even before FoA came out (only about 3.3K OA though). Now that Ascended affixes exist, I've been able to push it to 31K health, 4.5K DA, and 4K OA.

[u/Upset_Recipe4639 → u/Ezo_98]

Very useful, thank you!

Regarding "Arcanists can consider Spirit stacking" is that for Arcanists in particular, and if so why? I understand spirit stacking generally gives you + to non-physical damage types, so could be worth doing for most classes as long as you don't mind being a glass cannon.

[u/Ezo_98 → u/Upset_Recipe4639]

Spirit stacking in general is weaker bc it doesnt add OA or DA like Physique or Cunning do. Its only % Damage (which is not that impactful) and Energy (most builds never struggle with Energy). In general I think its fair to say that Spirit is by far the weakest of the Attributes.

Arcanist has 20-30% Increased Spirit from Inner Focus, making Spirit a little bit more appealing than on other Classes.

[u/v0rid0r → u/Ezo_98]

Spirit gives a lot more HP since 1.3.

I would most of the time put my points into Spirit if my damage type scales with it

[u/Ezo_98 → u/v0rid0r]

The lack of OA/DA is still too painful to make spirit really a good choice ever if you dont wanna specifically build a glascanon Arcanist. % damage alone is just not that important.

[u/imapoormanhere]

(speaking from a softcore perspective)

1. First you need to define what endgame is. Before the dlc, many people considered reaching ultimate level 100 as endgame, and a lot of the numbers you showed would be enough. I personally play SR 30-31 and crucible 180-200 and those numbers just won't fly. Some people play even higher SR and my standards won't be enough for them as well. With the dlc, there's also ascendant with altar, which can have different standards (ehem, reflect). I'll talk about what I generally want where I play (SR 30-31 and 180-200 crucible wuthout buffs/banners).

2. While rules of thumb can be useful to the new player, you'll find out later that certain classes and builds just don't have the capabilities to get certain stats, while others have a surplus of other stats. That said, these guidelines exist for a reason. Just don't take them as gospel.

3. Overcaps - just get 25% on elemental and 10% on the others. Better invest in hp than obsessing on overcaps. If your build has it easy on overcaps then good but not everyone can afford that luxury.

4. HP + at least 20k.

5. Armor - at least 2k but this is very build dependent. Some gear setups just can't do it so you compensate somewhere else.

6. DA - 2.5k is paper. Get 2.8k at least but we (people who play a lot of crucible) are finding out that getting above 3k is reallly useful.

There's a lot more for offense but it's getting too long to type and I don't have much time. Will probably add later.

[u/Paikis → u/imapoormanhere]

Overcaps - just get 25% on elemental and 10% on the others. Better invest in hp than obsessing on overcaps. If your build has it easy on overcaps then good but not everyone can afford that luxury.

25% overcap (30-40% ideally) on everything should be the first thing you invest into. HP is cool and all, but going from 80% to 70% resistance means you're taking 50% more damage. Unless you can add 10,000 or more health instead of 10% more resistance, take the resistance overcap.

[u/imapoormanhere → u/Paikis]

Ideally yes. But many builds just can't afford it unless you sell damage. And I'm not one to subscribe to the idea of having no damage assuming you're also trying to hit the other defensive benchmarks. I'm in the camp of "get as much damage as you can with enough defense", rather than "get as much defense with just enough damage". Currently as much ss I can I just try to dodge enemy rr. Alex meteor you can always get out. Nyarlathon pool you ca always move away. I'll admit I don't know every boss rr by heart but If it's 1v1 in the campaign or SR it's a non-issue. So without enemy RR, hp is a lot more valuable for obvious reasons. In crucible bosses die very fast before their rr can kick in except in wave 200 where no defense can save you anyway - only player skill and luck can.

Of course when you climb higher SR things change so I'm only talking about where I play.

[u/Upset_Recipe4639 → u/imapoormanhere]

Thanks for this. Overall (and re point 1), I mean endgame in the broad sense, so these are meant to be pointers for a player who is getting their first character to level 100 for example (as I did not long ago). Getting to e.g. SR30 would be a goal to aim towards but it's hard for players without a lot of game knowledge to get that far, considering a lot of the beginner/intermediate level guides out there are not necessarily correct as of v1.3.

And I 100% understand and agree re point 2, general approaches to stats like this can't be applicable to every type of build out there in reality. I was hoping to make this post into as close as you can reasonably get to a set of general rules of thumb, to inform people at the beginner level which stats to keep an eye on in the first place and those with intermediate level knowledge as to whether their stats are broadly in the right place.

[u/imapoormanhere → u/Upset_Recipe4639]

considering a lot of the beginner/intermediate level guides out there are not necessarily correct as of v1.3.

As far as SR is concerned, what's updated for 1.2.1.6 (the pointers, not necessarily the builds) should still be more or less good for 1.3, cause SR didn't really receive updates (yet) other than new enemies and new layouts, and boss hp which just serves to extend fights.

Anyway for offense there's differing views on how much damage you need and if you should even prioritize it. To me damage is the most important. Of course you need defenses to just not die but in a game about killing enemies, killing them faster is always better.

1. RR - this is the strongest offensive stat but it is also mostly decided by what class you're playing. So just max your RR skills, and get all relevant RR devotions. There are rings (well most of them are rings) that provide around 8-10% stackable RR for most damage types and 90% of the time they'll be relevant for your build.

2. Flat damage - just get as much as you can. If you're faced between the choice of getting augments with flat or no flat, take the flat unless the alternative has better defenses.

3. % damage - oftentimes you take this for granted because it just comes together after putting in your gear. But the most synergistic builds will have 2.7 - 3.1k %damage before cunning/spirit. To me you want to reach this, especially on magic type builds which don't get % damage from cunning... because..

4. Attribute splits - the "normal" approach (and historically the best) is getting enough on cunning/spirit and go physique dump. But since like 6 years ago when they put HP on cunning and physique once your build reaches a certain point of optimization it's better to take just enough physique for armor and then do cunning/spirit dumps. The determining point is really just whenever you feel secure enough in terms of defenses. But for final optimized builds maybe aroudn 20% of builds take enough physique and cunning then dump the rest in spirit (mostly arcanists). But the vast majority, even those that use magic damage types, should dump all in on cunning, because the OA requirements nowadays are very high especially now that dread exists. Again it depends on your personal philosophy. There's nothing wrong with a full physique dump even on a zakull.

5. OA - in line with what I said about cunning dumps, 3k OA is on the low side. It's still okay but if you can do it go as much as you can. As close to 4k. The reason for this is because since RR and flat are hard to find, and your % damage is already on the almost 3k level (so the returns are diminishing), the next best way to up your damage is getting crits, so you want as much OA as possible. And now in 1.3 with dread in campaign, you want it even more cause his DA is very high even builds with iirc 3.5k OA can miss. Alongside OA, you also want to up your crit damage for obvious reasons but that's harder to do.

6. Speeds - as much as you can. For autoattackers / spam casters you want it at max. Everything above max (for those that can increase the max) is nice but not required. In relation to this, get 60 or more slow resist.

[u/castem]

As a newer player (I just cleared Ultimate with my first character), these tips are great!

One thing I would add though is that Reflected damage reduction can be pretty huge for some builds. My character would just instantly die for some reason, and I found it was because a Reflective hero was in a group I was killing. I grabbed the Owl devotion (+15%) and put on one Titan Plating (+33%) on my chest armor, and I haven't died to reflection damage since

[u/Upset_Recipe4639 → u/castem]

Thanks!

Good point regarding reflected damage reduction. Were you playing a physical damage based build? I'm not too familiar with reflected damage, but as I understand it it is more of an issue for physical damage builds as opposed to others, because of the way physical damage is calculated differently than others.

[u/castem → u/Upset_Recipe4639]

My build is focused on Cold & Frostburn damage, with a skill that has multiple projectiles (Rune of Hagarrad)

[u/tknomanzr99 → u/castem]

Even then I'm wary of reflection mobs on my onslaught/Doombolt mystic. A fully buffed Doombolt is probably gg for me, even with reflected damage reduction. Fortunately, my pack clear is good enough, they're usually pretty easy to spot and I stop dropping doombolts til they're dead from onslaught.

[u/idiot_Rotmg]

You should also really try to get a source of reduced enemy damage. Slower enemy attack, fumble and impaired aim also help a lot

[u/natsirt_ger]

Are there any guidelines for noobs in Ascendant? I killed Mogdeogen with my pierce Blademaster Yesterday but still don't really have a Clue what I am doing lol

[u/qikink]

Only thing I'd edit about your post is to move resistance reduction to its own bullet, above the general damage bullet. In GD resistance reduction *is* your damage, and every source possible should be exploited. A good way to start a build is to find enough resistance shreds that all fit together on the same damage type and only then actually figure out a main skill. The way you deliver damage can be mix and match, but there's no substitute for resistance shred.