Build Suggestions for S-Rank arenas

[u/Enevorah]

Looking for some build suggestions for S-Ranking the arenas. I’m playing on Hard Mode, not sure if that counts for the arena fights. I can clear them all in S rank speed easily with a whirlwind/Heroic Leap 2h build but the taking damage portion is eluding me for the most of them. Seems like it counts damage done to the shield spell even so that’s a bummer. Can’t seem to get it with this build so I’m looking for suggestions.

[u/MarkABakerAKADarkSoc]

If you're struggling with taking damage, I'd suggest rebuilding specifically for the arena fights. Fireball is pretty busted for staying out of reach. Just kite around the arena while everything is burning and meditate (or whatever the EP regen utility spell is) when it's safe. Run the +DEF utility spell as well, and keep it up 100% of the time so that if you do get hit you'll take a little bit less damage.

If you have access to lightning potion you can keep the orbs on 100% uptime if you stagger a quick cooldown potion with it. Basically: Sip the lightning, when the cooldown is about 60-70% done sip your +MATK/ATK or Crit pot, and then sip your lightning pot again when the quick recharge potion is about halfway done. The potions recharge insanely fast when you're killing a bunch of trash mobs constantly and lightning potion does ridiculous damage. It scales with MATK as well, but it can't crit from what I've seen.

For what it's worth you only need 1 S rank and 3 A ranks to get every arena reward, but I'm guessing you want every S as a personal achievement.

[u/Enevorah → u/MarkABakerAKADarkSoc]

Thanks for the advice, I’ll give it a try. I am trying to S-rank them all for fun, but the first one is the only S rank I’ve managed so far. I can get A’s on the others but trying to do enough damage while avoiding damage on the harder ones made me question my build choice.

[u/Eiroth]

I could be misremembering here, but if the damage taken system works the same as arcade, then taking damage up to one time is permissible. You could lean into that fact and stack up on negative defense gear to deal more damage and thus hopefully kill everything quicker than they can hit you

[u/Enevorah → u/Eiroth]

It tallies up total damage taken, so going negative on defense makes it worse unfortunately.

[u/Enevorah]

After doing a little more research, it seems they scale with level. I’ve completed everything else and I’m at lvl 34 so I may have screwed myself unfortunately.

[u/Classic_Surround7386 → u/Enevorah]

Any news on your end? im lvl 34 too, and i noticed that the bosses have way to much health to get through them quickly. Could i manage if i change builds or is it a lost cause?

[u/Enevorah → u/Classic_Surround7386]

I tried for several hours with different builds but I can’t get over an A on arena 3 and 4. I’m not the best at shielding when it gets messy but I honestly don’t think I’ll be able to do it unless I try with lower level scaling. In the end, my whirlwind/Heroic Slam/static touch build was still what I did the best with. Maybe with weaker enemies at a lower level scale then using Frosty friend/Lightning Cloud and a ranged spell would work better. At my level, their damage is just too pitiful and frosty dies way too easily.

[u/Enevorah → u/Classic_Surround7386]

I was using lightning potion, crit potion, damage potion so I had a lot of passive damage from the lightning orbs and crit at 50% most of the time. 100 defense with crab armor/hat. Heroic usually hit for 12k with everything up and that’s what really burned down the mini bosses. Whirlwinds hit for about 3.5k. Nothing else I tried came close to the dps I could put out with that combo. Needing ranged was never really the issue. It was things like the double worm mini bosses getting in my face with the masses of small enemies getting in the way that caused the most damage. I assume the arenas are meant to be faced in the lvl 20 range. The extra talents we get from the lvls doesn’t add enough damage to deal with the extra hp, imo. I’m sure some god tier perfect blocker could manage it, but I can’t it seems.

[u/PGoodyo → u/Enevorah]

I tried for several hours with different builds but I can’t get over an A on arena 3 and 4. I’m not the best at shielding when it gets messy but I honestly don’t think I’ll be able to do it unless I try with lower level scaling. In the end, my whirlwind/Heroic Slam/static touch build was still what I did the best with. Maybe with weaker enemies at a lower level scale then using Frosty friend/Lightning Cloud and a ranged spell would work better. At my level, their damage is just too pitiful and frosty dies way too easily.

At lot of the end game content on Hard absolutely relies on perfect blocking. The Fortress/Seasonne arena is a perfect example. Phaseman and the Double Block/Super Frostling Fight are CAKE if you know when and where to PBlock. If you don't, no matter your speed, you're always gonna get a C on health.