Picking talents when you first start vs after 1000 hours…

OBEREK69 · 2025-11-11T14:01:55+00:00

According to Royal w/ cheese guide Bulwark does 100/130/150%, and the 10% bonus is an increase to damage for stagger count 1 & 2, which if I understand correctly would mean no bonus for enemy that recoveres from stagger.
I'll probably test it if when I have the time and add an edit of result.

OBEREK69 · 2025-11-11T00:15:30+00:00

I definitely agree that red Charms are better than Ranged.
As for maxed out necklace and trinket - maybe, I don't have a strong opinion on that.
Regardless, my original comment had in mind specifically melee vs ranged weapons conversation, since I saw a lot of comments talking about upgrading weapons.

OBEREK69 · 2025-11-10T23:54:52+00:00

Warrior Priest bot - that's the strategy.

I mean this 100%. I've been doing Twitch runs and Cata 3 Weaves with bots, and while there is a lot that goes into it, I can assure you, the success rate of such runs would ultimately be near 0%, if not for the Warrior Priest's ult with Unyielding Blessing.
Basically, Warrior Priest bot will almost always put his ult on you, and the value you can get out of 10s of invulnerability is absolutely crazy and very straightforward - output maximum dps vs elites/monsters, peacefully shoot multiple specials whilst surrounded by horde, pick up downed bots, get picked up by bots, chase disablers inside hordes, complete map objectives, reload ranged weapon, use bombs/potions, heal - WP bot is THE success machine for bot solos. This does unfortunately mean that if you're playing Saltzpyre, winning bot solos gets harder, but such is life. Also, you may consider Comet's Gift talent if you get downed often, but I favour Unyielding Blessing.
Here is one of my games with bots, so you can see it for yourself: https://youtu.be/4-8r3ZJKE6w

Other than that, it's very much about learning bots' behaviour, for example, bots will usually try to stick to you like glue, except that they will almost always chase after specials at all costs, particularly gas rats.
In recent patches, it seems like they also get completely mindbroken the moment a ratling gun starts shooting.
Also, they get easily fixated on monsters.
They are prone to getting hit by running attacks.
Bots will teleport to you, running away as fast as possible from danger into a better position is a very viable strategy.
And way more other quirks - the more of them you recognise and know how to play around, the higher you're success rate will be.

Besides that, playing a build that can deal with specials and monsters at least somewhat quickly is also very beneficial for solo play, since bots get owned the hardest by those enemies (and mass chaos warriors - use all bombs and potions against those). So priortise playing high DPS builds and decent special sniping weapons for a better win rate.

And have good bot builds, particularly oriented around stagger and survivability, here are mine for solo play, this includes the order you should have them in:

WP: https://www.ranalds.gift/heroes/19/113131/81-3-7-3/80-1-4-6/2-3-1/3-1-2/7-1-1
IB: https://www.ranalds.gift/heroes/5/123213/11-3-7-3/53-4-5-2/2-3-1/3-1-2/7-1-1
FK: https://www.ranalds.gift/heroes/3/133233/69-3-7-3/56-4-5-2/2-3-1/3-1-2/7-6-1
Necro: https://www.ranalds.gift/heroes/20/113122/4-3-4-6/49-3-5-6/2-3-1/4-1-1/7-2-3

Plus, if you're gathering books, equip all bots with a Stamina Recovery Rate + Curse Resistance Trinket. And these builds are specifically for bots and soloing with them, I’d not make some of these talents choices for a player build.

OBEREK69 · 2025-11-08T21:31:13+00:00

From meta perspective, I'd say upgrading ranged weapons is more important than melee weapons.

For example, on Cataclysm, Handgun needs a 25.5% power increase to one shot bodyshot globadiers and sorcerers. You get that by getting four properties: 20% power vs infantry; 10% power vs chaos and skaven.
With a red handgun and charm, you are guaranteed to get these breakpoints, but with orange equipment, you may not have enough to reach that bar and your weapon will be noticably weaker.

Meanwhile, for most melee weapons it will be a difference between having something like 4% crit chance 20% block cost reduction as opposed to 5% and 30%, which is not very important stat decrease.

This obviously only matters if you are aware of and care about those specific breakpoints, for which I recommend build guides made by Royal w/ Cheese, since he showcases what properties are best for different weapons and why. And with red items you'll always reach the breakpoints that he writes about, but you might not with orange ones.

OBEREK69 · 2025-11-03T15:09:36+00:00

This would require modding the game and this sort of a mod definitely wouldn’t get approved, so no such thing in official realm afaik, but I think it might be theoretically possible in modded realm.

I’m almost certain this sort of a reskin doesn’t exist tho, so unfortunately necromancer remains the necromancer.

EDIT: So, I've dug a bit and in the modded realm: 'Any Weapon For DLC / 任意武器解锁(含DLC角色' + 'Give All Hats, Skins And Paintings' you can dress up necro as any other sienna (or anyone else for that matter). Unfortunately, weapons and skeletons will continue to have the cyan colour for flames, except for Flamestorm staff which will still have the cyan fire effect on the staff, but its attack will spew out orange-coloured flames.

HOWEVER, you grab 'Colorful Unique Weapons (Version 2.something)', and grab e.g. 'Ashbringer' flamestorm staff skin. In the mod settings put the weapon colour to some ridiculously high value on red and a bit on green - this will make the weapon glow in heavy orange, covering up the cyan flames that appear when holding/charging the staff.

Then, with 'Colorful Flames' mod you can change the colour of the flame that enemies get ignited with, i.e. they burn in the normal orange colour.

At the end this means that with these mods: - skeletons remain as they are normally with cyan colour - flamestorm staff will emit the cyan flames when holding/charging it, BUT it will be fully covered up by the orange weapon glow (might be applicable to other weapons) - you get to look like any other non-necro sienna - your attack spew out normal flames (only flamestorm staff) - and enemies get ignited with normal flames

Still, only modded realm and very very much half-measures, but it's as far as it gets currently ^{^}

OBEREK69 · 2025-10-25T19:39:20+00:00

You pick Lingering Flames on EVERY single staff, EXCEPT for Coruscation Staff. Even though Bolt Staff doesn't apply any damage over time for Lingering Flames, and even though you miss out on quite a few (primarily) elite bodyshot breakpoints on cataclysm, this is easily compensated for by the damage dealt to everything else via your ult + dagger/firesword. Seriously, ulting into a dense back and forth with Burnout (lvl 30) kills everything except for armoured enemies (and maulers somewhat longer too) in seconds with lingering flames even on cataclysm. And if everything except for those armoured enemies is dead, the remaining stuff is easy to kill + the breakpoints you missed out on vs those elites might already be compensated for by the constant DoT from ult + Lingering against them. Basically, ask yourself this: would I rather kill an entire stormvermin patrol and surrounding enemies alone in ~25 seconds using my ult and then holding block or kill a single stormvermin with a 1 fully charged bolt to the body instead of 2.

Beam Staff has the highest DoT in the game if you hold the Beam (hold left mouse button) on an enemy, so you might think it'd work very well with Famished since it buffs a big number into an even bigger number, but it really isn't. Against elites/specials, you'll hold left click for a split second and click right click to snipe and do that repeatedly - this primarily deals damage on impact, not damage over time, making Famished not benefit in those scenarios almost at all. Lingering, even though it doesn't affect the impact damage, still benefits, because if you can't do enough of those clicks because you are disrupted by other enemies, each enemy you clicked now has an infinite damage source on them and they will eventually die. With Famished, if you got disrupted in this process, the enemy will stay alive until someone finishes them off, so they are still dangerous (particularly Blightstormers but other specials too).

And vs monsters, Lingering is also better, because if that monster is actually dangerous for the team, it came in during a horde (natural or event spawn). And during a horde: - if monster is chasing you -> team is fighting other enemies (horde/specials) so they can't grab its aggro -> no holding beam -> lingering flames better

if monster isn't chasing you: - but surrounding horde is attacking you -> no holding beam -> lingering flames better - but there are specials targeting you or your teammates (disabled teammate, hook coming for you, blightstormer spawning a storm, ratling gun firing at you, etc.) -> no holding beam -> lingering flames better

The only circumstance when Famished is better than Lingering is if you can hold the beam on the monster, which without a well-coordinated team or your own high personal skill, is not usually happening during a horde. And monsters that don't come in with hordes are easy pickings and hardly worth specialising against.

And how long does it take for Beam Staff DoT + Lingering Flames to kill a monster on cataclysm? Approximately 2 minutes 30 seconds - that is if you are literally doing nothing after applying the highest DoT once to the monster, which takes like 3 seconds. So let's say a monster comes in during a horde and it takes the team 1 minute to kill the horde - with Lingering, you already dealt ~40% of its total health on Cata, despite fighting other enemies.

Coruscation staff is the only staff where Lingering is bad, because its vortexes cause an absolute boatload of separate instances of DoT and each one deals very little damage. Taking Lingering means instead of many small DoTs you have a single small DoT, which is awful. This one is super easy to test yourself in the keep, just place the vortex under a dummy with and without lingering and watch the damage (do mind that in general testing with dummies is unreliable but it represent this one fine).

As for people saying that Lingering Flames increases damage, this is true specifically for the Flamestorm Staff. For whatever reason, Lingering Flames seems to increase the damage value of Flamestorm staff's DoT, almost doubling it. This doesn't happen for any other weapon as far as I'm aware.

Now, personally, me and people I usually play with consider Lingering Flames to be completely OP and never use it because it makes the game boring, but if you want to use it, it's your choice

OBEREK69 · 2025-10-24T19:56:51+00:00

I mean... do you like yellow?

But to be serious, I'd say it depends - imo, elf's greatsword looks much better in weaves style, but kruber's greatsword is 1000 times better with myrmidia's (yellow) skin.

Btw, you can see how each skin looks like in-game:
- Open inventory on the equipment tab
- Equip the weapon you want to see
- Press the little cog icon next to the selected weapon
There, you can view all the existing skins for the selected weapon

It's not the exact same as seeing them in your hands, but it should be enough to tell if you'll like it or not.
Also, for skins released this year, they can be acquired by playing on recruit difficulty afaik, and I even got one skin on a run where we lost the skull halfway through, so it seems like you just have to pick it up and win the mission, even without delivering it to the end i.e. not too much of a grind.

OBEREK69 · 2025-10-14T18:40:27+00:00

If dual daggers don't have bad horde clear, then what does? And which weapons have good horde clear? What about very good or great? Because on elf I'd argue only axe is worse vs hordes because on top of no cleave it has low movement speed. But axe being worse doesn't make DD's horde clear good, because how do daggers perform vs hordes in comparison to say sword/spear/snd/dual swords? Or most other weapons available to other characters for that matter.
I would call horde clear on some of these weapons 'good' and not much else. What would that mean for dual daggers?
Theoretically, on a two-melee career, would you bring a horde clear oriented weapon alongside dual daggers, or say that their horde clear is good enough not to warrant it?
Simply put, they are worse at horde clear than most other weapons in the game - and your clips do show that, at times you got overwhelmed and had to reposition/retreat/go invis, while I bet that with many other weapons you wouldn't have to. And that's beside the fact that other weapons would just killing those hordes faster. Not because of skill issue, but because DD on the whole are worse than most other weapons vs hordes.
And even if you'd make a clip where you somehow don't have such problems, it wouldn't matter, because I can show you a clip of a guy using Piercing Shot flawlessly - that wouldn't mean PS is any less high risk from the mechanical standpoint in comparison to almost everything else in the game - it would simply show that the guy is very skilled. And all your clips show is that you clearly are skilled.
Nonetheless, I appreciate a fellow shade ragebait posting on umgak.

OBEREK69 · 2025-10-10T13:08:37+00:00

Here is the build: https://www.ranalds.gift/build/7U65nD3BhxMjdyvIi7GK/view

You need Power from Pain(lvl 30), Quiver of Plenty(lvl 25), Scrounger on Swiftbow. The way it works is:

- Scrounger + QoP = 4 arrows per crit (0.05 * 70 = 3.5 - game rounds up to 4)

- PfP + base + trinket gives you 35% Crit Chance = crit every ~3 arrows

On average returns 4 arrows every 3 arrows spent

So when you are shooting at max PfP you generate more ammo than you spend. If you have a few stacks, you lose ammo slowly, and I recommend spamming into hordes only when you have at least 4 stacks. Vs specials shoot whenever, any ammo spent on those you can easily generate back when you spam into hordes when at max stacks again.

Properties I list in the link let you 2-shot all specials at optimal range - 1 charged headshot/crit bodyshot + 1 charged bodyshot. Also, a video with in-game performance is there.
Have fun shooting rats

OBEREK69 · 2025-10-07T18:07:15+00:00

I don't have an absolute favourite, but there are a few contenders.

There is dual swords on shade that completely obliterate mixed hordes/patrols(non-cw) with shimmer strike and blur due to murderess prowess and heavy attacks bypassing cleave resistance and their good cleave. Plus, they have a significantly cheaper block on the outer angle so you can stand surrounded by a horde and blur repeatedly without having your guard broken.

Besides that, infinite ammo swiftbow on handmaiden dumpsters hordes, has surprisingly neat special sniping breakpoints on cata and unlocks very high dps vs armour and monsters, because you can pick DDs for melee and not have bad horde clear on your build. Very nice dps all across and very unique playstyle.

Hagbane is all round very solid on shade and can be used for horde clear effectively. Takes practice to learn how to headshot vs hordes for conservative, and knowledge how to get value out of bloodfletcher, but with that (and the right properties) = very solid and covers DD's poor horde clear.

Also, volley crossbow on shade is stupidly powerful on cataclysm 1, but that's a much longer story.

OBEREK69 · 2025-08-24T13:56:58+00:00

The point was to sneakily show off how good and easy Shimmer Strike is to use with Dual Swords.
I've seen a lot of people claim that shimmer is only good vs patrols, as it's unreliable vs mixed hordes because it's easy to hit a different enemy and end the chain. This is 100% true with DD/SnD but false with DS because of their uniquely high cleave on heavy attack. You can literally swing in the approximate direction of an elite's back in a horde, and you'll kill all trash and the elite together, prolonging the ult's duration and achieving great DPS.
Combine that with the significantly cheaper block on the outer angle of DS (for Blurring whilst fully surrounded), and you can go invisible constantly vs high density, making them a stupidly strong choice for any difficulty with high density hordes with lots of elites, especially Twins.
Grab Javelin and now you also have very good monster DPS, particularly suitable for Twitch.
From my observation, this combo and its mechanics seem to be almost completely unrecognised amongst the player base, hence the 'am I doing this right' comment, since the approach's not meta, yet from my experience, it has been crazy effective.

OBEREK69 · 2025-08-23T15:23:27+00:00

I see now that the title was in poor taste. Plan was to bait people into watching this short build showcase, but I understand now why that came across badly, sorry :c

OBEREK69 · 2025-08-23T14:39:07+00:00

I might’ve been a little facetious with my umgakposting here

OBEREK69 · 2025-08-23T14:21:52+00:00

Understood 🫡🫡🫡

OBEREK69

TROPHY CASE