at start it was the same for me most times I got to the boss at the end and couldn’t do anything sometimes killed the horse and then got nuked or falling off because push back but now it’s totally different story I tweaked my build made some small changes and now I kill everything crucible outbreak boss all die super-fast with ease but it would be probably get nerfed almost for sure I’m doing ice build with two handed staff using the legendary ring that use health when there no focus with life leech works like a charm
and I found out that I no longer need even food for heal because the heal aura thing with the ring it heals more than taking health(I boosted with gear the healing value quite a bit), so I have unlimited healing but the downside because it uses health for heal it’s a bit slow but still cool it works tried it at first as meme, but it worked for my surprise
oh I feel ya the ring make the biggest change of the build its funny for me idk how maybe very lucky I got the ring 3 times in a row when I’m looking for something different going for new build because now all too easy I hope you will get the ring soon I wish I could send you one sadly there no option for that
yea it’s an option but for me I can spam nonstop rune attack no need even to get close for melee
like the last run I did I just cast the rune that do like a beam of frost, so he was frozen till he died or the rune that shoot ice spheres both of it kills the boss pretty fast even without the crucible buffs now I rarely do any melee with the staff
I freeze and then just swap to Icebreaker and one shot most mobs that are not bosses. Icebreaker is a 365+ base damage 2H greatsword that scales with Intelligence and does physical damage.
Whatever doesn’t die to the massive shatter damage gets immediately staggered, so I freeze and repeat. It’s a bit more fun that way than just spamming Frost Stream or Homing Frost or Plague Splatter builds.
Of course, in both cases you need drops that are not easy to come by. The rings and the Icebreaker greatsword both are at the mercy of RNG. So until you get either you’re gonna be meleeing with a staff to regain focus if you don’t get parries.
I find it pretty silly that shatter damage on frost build up only works with physical damage, it highly devalues elemental infusions and completely creates counter-synergy for the Endless Winter staff with itself, making you actually want to swap out.
The other problem with many staffs and many weapons for that matter is that the Breach now made a lot of weapons not have any charged attacks whatsoever, so the main satisfaction of freezing an enemy and then shattering them with a big whack of a charged attack is removed.
There are a lot of plague affixes as well that function off charged attacks, and because so many weapons don’t have a charged attack you have several dead affixes you can roll on said weapons.
I’ll also say that either they tweaked or disabled backstab on staff, it feels almost impossible to pull off a backstab on my Endless Winter staff.
One of the large improvements I hope they make is allowing the player to better target loot that is relevant to their build/archetype. In the now 90 hours I’ve played the Breach update, I can say caster build items (staves, wands, cloth armor, legendary staves/wands/etc) comprise less than 15-20% of my total drops. Most crap I get are cudgels and swords and plate and mesh.
I tried out new build with the moon shard wand I think that its name not 100% sure it has the dodge attack as range attack and most times it freezes enemy with one hit and the run to attack shatter them it can be cheap replace for the icebreaker small mobs (not boss will be one shot if done right) didn’t try it yet on the echo knight or any of the breach outbreak boss but for now it’s doing nice with life steal will update if it’s any good when finishing the build
and I been using the frost build mainly to farm gear for new experiments of other builds because to only play freeze build or freeze shatter build it feels lacking for me it became too easy so no challenge and no satisfaction xd
like when I played path of exile for long time it was fun like making all map evaporate with fast pace build but for no rest for the wicked, I think in my opinion the most fun about it it’s the difficulty and the feeling of beating something that hard to beat hopefully at the future there will be options for harder challenges with better rewards and harder boss etc
It’s not just the frost build. Currently optimized builds do too much damage because plague gear allows too much stacking of % damage increase affixes.
We’re looking at 40-60% boosts total from gear and gems, plus the damage boost utility rune, plus the 10% extra damage food.
Even if you refrain from rune attacks, which were tuned to be powerful around the idea of having to build up focus (but focus gain increase affixes and gems and the focus gain vials proceed to make focus very plentiful for spam even without the OP rings that make spells cost no focus), some melee builds are still doing a ton of damage with regular attacks.
Affixes that increase damage by a % need to be eliminated. It is much easier to tune affixes by giving them something like “doing X triggers a Y damage nova or mini version of a rune attack”.
Because flat damage values from extra spell effects are much easier to keep in check than % increase bonuses that just get stacked and break the game, whether they be additive or multiplicative.
This is the curse of most RPG’s. Look at Clair Obscur, everyone and their mother ignores 90% of the Pictos because the only ones that end up mattering against health sponge enemies that one or two shot you if you don’t kill them first is the % damage increase bonuses that make you a full glass cannon.
% damage increase on gear/systems are extremely corrosive to game balance and build variety.
Idk why but it seems you actually less damage in the Crucible. my weapon would deal around 60-70 damage value outside the crucible but inside it got cut in half
You perfectly understood at that point that the difficulty is too high for your current gear setup, but you decided to brute force your way through it anyway. That is like a first time Elden Ring player trying to kill the tree sentinel level 1.
Maybe avoid it for the time being and return later, when you have enough sustain to withstand the onslaught - duh.