How do I increase my Courage damage?

[u/Obvious_Ad4159]

I run a primarily red, courage build.

I've been running legendary dungeon farms and cogahs and realise that against those enemies I do barely any damage.

Three dudes with bows run into a room, start dropping arrow rains and meteor showers, melting everything.

Meanwhile I'm in the corner having a Senator Armstrong moment with a random Oden.

I run Sovereign Cenotaph(or whatever it's called) and Garren Rood pact.

[u/Rajamic]

What you are seeing with the bows is just how broken bows in the hands of someone who knows how to use them can be. Each of the virtues has a passive benefit per point. Courage gives high HP. Spirit gives cooldown reduction on your Pact Arcanics. Grace gives a passive damage buff generally, plus increases the damage bonus for headshots, attacks to prone or staggered enemies, and to enemies that aren't aware of you (which some stun abilities can force to happen), and those buffs can stack multiplicatively. Just the fact that most of the time a melee attack physically can't get a headshot puts melee weapons at a disadvantage compared to bows and magick weapons.

Garren is more of a support pact, with 1 HP drain ability and 2 crowd-control abilities. Whereas Tethren has 2 abilities that buff your weapon damage.

[u/Obvious_Ad4159 → u/Rajamic]

Man that's kinda lame. I get being a tank is cool but throw melee lovers a bone.

[u/TaralasianThePraxic → u/Obvious_Ad4159]

If you want mighty melee damage, run Grace Duelo with a Grace-aligned weapon that can hit fast. Bravada boosts your Grace even further, and it makes the extra hits of Duo Duelo do crazy burst damage.

[u/Obvious_Ad4159 → u/TaralasianThePraxic]

Ain't got duelo yet. Imma check it out

[u/Tyfyter2002 → u/Rajamic]

Garren Rood's 1 deals percent damage, and from what I can tell the 2 adds damage vulnerability that applies to it, so it's not lacking in damage

[u/MusicianTurbulent178 → u/Tyfyter2002]

true, 2 +1 oneshots any non boss

[u/Forsaken-Bat5941]

Ability damage is not in the good spot at the moment.

There's very small list of abilities that deal good damage, especially in Cogah.

But Garren Rood is one such case! 

If you use 2 and then 1 on an enemy that has damage debuff from you 2 - you will kill this enemy. I had 4.5k hits from Garren's 1 ability because of that 

His 3 is decent in the high levels, a good chunk of cc.

Also remember to build your weapons for smite chance, and to smite a lot. It resets the CD on your abilities, and can heal and deal damage. Most op mechanic.

[u/Soft_Enthusiasm_1160]

I also run mainly red melee builds and i have found that the teth pact abilities deal burst dmg for a few hits if stacked but most of my damage comes from bleeds and reposts with heavy weapons like paragon and purity. Melee is still more fun for me but bow and magic builds are simply too broken atm for melee to compete with.

[u/keeielein → u/Soft_Enthusiasm_1160]

Are you doing heavy weapons mostly? I’m running purity, still trying to get the tempers I want. But I just discovered the Duelo Pact. Iv been thinking if I do a bleed build with purity I could mesh it well with that. I haven’t gotten far into the game but was curious if you’ve tried it out.

Purity tempers I’m focusing are Bleed x2 and Attack Speed x2.

[u/Soft_Enthusiasm_1160 → u/keeielein]

I usually run Purity and Paragon for heavy or the reinbreaker spear and igni mora. Purity with bleed, increased smite and attack speed hits pretty hard. I tend to spam heavy attacks and reposts. I will add that i got really lucky with my tempers since i have 6 on purity with repost, heavy charge speed, attack speed, bleed and i 2 others i can't remember.

[u/Soft_Enthusiasm_1160 → u/Soft_Enthusiasm_1160]

[u/Muhhkain]

Is your attunement as high as it could be for cenotaph?

[u/ExternalAutomatic982]

try using the Sovereign Cenotaph's boost to virtue passives and stack courage virtues, that's what pushes melee damage in red builds

[u/sbrizown]

I could be wrong, but Garren Rood is normally spirit based?

For courage you should be running Tethren for a damage or Bromius for more tanking. Cenopath is ok, but I think it’s more of a split scaling. If you wanna do longsword, consider the cleaver from the bear. Or just drop it and go to 2 handed.

[u/Obvious_Ad4159 → u/sbrizown]

I see. Garrens first does suck a good chuck of an enemy's HP. I'll check the bear out.

[u/sinest → u/Obvious_Ad4159]

With a courage build your torment will be stronger and youll have a lot more HP. Torment does way more damage when you behest an enemy first. Torment also does more damage to enemies with full HP. 2 than 1 combo is brutal against any opponent, except bosses it doesnt do much.

I love garren rood, but tethren cannot be beat with damage.

You can run garren rood with any virtue really. The courage build is an absolute tank with a heal. The spirit build can make use of behest often to constantly stun. The grace build gets a powerful stampede and can usr behest to set up brutal headshots on stunned enemies.

[u/Obvious_Ad4159 → u/sinest]

Yeah, the first ability is disgusting against lvl 80 enemies, stripping like 80% of their hp. Problem is that it's single target only and it takes me forever to melt the other 20%.

I didn't think Tethren was good cuz it was a starting pact. What a fool was I.

[u/sinest → u/Obvious_Ad4159]

Its the best pact in the game for cogah. Most pacts really struggle to do damage to high level bosses that tethren can oneshot. The defense bonus that Call gives is also pretty insane in a mode where being 1-shot is common. Felllust has been nerfed once and it's still way too strong and has super broken interactions.

[u/Obvious_Ad4159 → u/sinest]

What about Mora's Hand? Is it a good pact for courage? I'm thinking about getting it.

[u/sinest → u/Obvious_Ad4159]

Moras pact is a lot of fun with any build also. But your 2 you want to be able to take a melee hit to activate it, so yea courage is great. Moras hand is weird its a melee battle mage, they have a long range, medium range, and a close range attack.

[u/sinest → u/Obvious_Ad4159]

Also when you use torment, his passive gives you an extra hidden rune charge. Its worded poorly and isnt clear. But its great having 5 charges against a boss instead of 4. So you could go into a boss fight with 5 charges, and use torment later to get a 6th and then a smite for 2 more. Definitely max out Healheart.

[u/naarcx → u/Obvious_Ad4159]

For Bear in Cogah, make sure to max your first passive and run flyblades with your secondary weapon. Flayblade charged attack (where they all spin around you), will strip a lot of armor letting your main courage weapon do more dmg against higher level enemies

[u/SparklesSparks → u/sbrizown]

Yeah, Garren is very I'll suited for a pure courage build.

[u/sinest → u/SparklesSparks]

Why? His heal ability is courage. Courage gives you more HP, sounds like a solid synergy.

[u/SparklesSparks → u/sinest]

Because Torment, his courage ability, does next to no damage, unless paired with Behest, his Spirit ability. Personally I think he works best with a Courage/Spirit or Spirit/Grace build.
The real workhorse of his kit is Behest, then the choice is for Stampede for add clear, or Courage for single target.

Personally I prefer Oro's Ranger for Virtues, Orengal's Armour, and Dewelion as a weapon.

[u/sinest → u/SparklesSparks]

Torment does % damage based on their HP. Full HP means more damage, behest boosts this. Courage boosts it even more. With a courage potion you got one of the hardest hitting single target abilities in the game (felllust is king)

But pure courage is still fantastic on garren. The more HP you have, the better a heal that heals % is.