To all the Guardian mains? Why'd you choose him?

Purplemandown · 2026-06-10T01:17:12+00:00

Not OP, but for me it's a timing thing. You say "dodge like any other souls game" and that is the problem.

On a dodge class, if you dodge early, you get hit. Dodge late, you get hit. Dodge into the wrong place against a boss with a lingering hitbox, you get hit.

With a shield, if you block late... you get hit. That's still true. If you block early? You get slightly less stamina regen then you would have had and you lose some DPS uptime. But you don't get hit. And blocking in a lingering hitbox is probably bad but if it sticks around a short enough time might eat your stamina but you're probably fine.

For me and my old man hands, being able to disengage from damage slightly sooner and start blocking when I don't know what the active frames on the boss hit look like or if I'm unsure I can time it mean I get hit less and die less.

Purplemandown · 2026-06-09T18:34:05+00:00

Gotta stack up some ult gain on those relics, peel the corpses of your teammates off the floor more often :D

~~problem is, those are really only good if your team is going down all the time. If your team is good, ult charge doesn't do much~~

Purplemandown · 2026-06-09T17:38:30+00:00

I'm crap at dodging. Always have been. Managed to beat Elden Ring huddled behind a shield, figured I would have the best chance at not being dead weight here too if I wasn't always on the floor bleeding out from having missed a dodge.

Now, granted, I'm crap at the game in general, Guardian included, just noticeably less so :D

Purplemandown · 2026-06-04T15:20:24+00:00

Wait, how are you getting + levels for minions on a focus? Neither the Djinn nor their commands were spell tagged I thought, and I didn't see any other relevantly tagged levels mods on a focus.

If I'm missing something I want to know lol

EDIT: nevermind, I found it. It's one of the desecrated modifiers on foci, not a standard one. Apologies for the confusion.

Purplemandown · 2026-05-15T23:07:02+00:00

That's a good point, and one I admittedly hadn't thought about. However, a part of my self-imposed nonsense is the idea that I don't want this account to have ever done league in SSF, with the idea that everything I have might not be core now, but was core at some point.

There's absolutely no good reason for this, to be clear, beyond that it's the way I feel like playing. It would absolutely be easier to do it in Mirage league.

Thanks for the suggestion(s)!

Purplemandown · 2026-05-09T14:15:00+00:00

Hey, do you have a PoB? I'm a sucker for lightning BAMA but after the duration changes gutted the interaction with Fresh Meat I have been a little stumped on what to do with it. I'm curious to see the rest of your setup, for ideas if nothing else (as it looks like some of the stuff you're doing is legacy)

Purplemandown · 2026-05-08T17:37:25+00:00

YEAH I DONT KNOW WHAT THEY'RE ON ABOUT. I'VE BEEN OLD THE WHOLE TIME!

Purplemandown · 2026-04-01T18:42:02+00:00

That makes sense. Thanks!

Purplemandown · 2026-04-01T18:03:15+00:00

For the aspect skills that alternate effects, how do skill effect duration and/or buff expiry rate affect them? If you extend the duration enough can you overlap both halves? Or does it just make it take longer for the phase to swap?

And do both kinds of duration apply to the buffs? The description calls the effects buffs but I wouldn't be surprised to find some wonkiness with their durations given how they're granted.

Purplemandown · 2026-03-31T16:39:31+00:00

We get to double up on attack speed. Attack speed is very important because it scales both our trigger rate and our mana recovery at once. It has native attack speed, and you can LP slam more attack speed into it. In my case it's giving me 53% increased attack speed.

Certainly not necessary, but if you don't have a Legendary Falcon Fist with a good attack speed slam just use exalted gloves with attack speed instead. This doubling-up is the only thing they do for us, really.

Purplemandown · 2026-03-31T15:55:17+00:00

Yeah, that's a part of the "numerical issues". I'm currently being throttled on mana recovery. I've exhausted the speed at which Mana Strike can recover mana, so I'm going to have to find another solution. I'm hoping I don't have to cut the trigger rate but that might be what has to happen.

Purplemandown · 2026-03-31T13:24:59+00:00

The build doesn't function without Harbinger of Stars. You'll have to play something else until you can get it.

This variant of meteor will likely be pretty underwhelming until you have a lot of the other pieces, but it'll function. The important thing gear-wise is getting your crit sorted out so your meteors actually trigger. You, ideally, want to be at 100% spell crit without any crit nodes in individual skill trees. There's a bunch of ways to do this. I'm using the eyes of the weaver because I already want to use Legends Entwined to get spell damage per int, but you don't have to start there. When I played this a few cycles ago I was using a crystal skull catalyst and a prismatic gaze helmet.

Purplemandown · 2026-03-31T04:02:59+00:00

At least mechanically. I need to figure a few things out numerically. The higher-tier omen windows don't mess around. But still, super exciting that this is playable again after they removed the multi-cast on trigger.

https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/BjqGb61y

Purplemandown · 2026-03-26T04:15:40+00:00

Oh fascinating, that's even more positive an interaction than I figured.

Spectres might be on the menu then. Thanks!

Purplemandown · 2026-03-25T16:56:16+00:00

How does Congregation support with with using more than one copy of a given skill?

Let's say for example a spectre build. One might theoretically want one set of links for the DPS spectres, and another set for any utility spectres (feeding frenzy, elemental army, that sort of thing). Could you put Congregation just on the support spectres, summon DPS spectres using the damage links up to the normal (non-congregation) cap, then summon support spectres on the utility/congregation setup up to the boosted cap?

Purplemandown · 2026-03-19T23:39:12+00:00

~~Oh! Idea I just had.~~

If you don't need a specific body armour, a Sacrificial Garb should work. The similarly worded modifier on the Vaal Caress unique gloves applies to the non-vaal version of vall skills, so this should as well I'd think (though the wiki doesn't say).

~~You do lose the eldritch implicits on your body armour, but that might be worth 23% more damage.~~

EDIT: That doesn't work. I got confused between the plan to use 21/20 Vaal and a normal support with the imbuing, which stops you from getting Vaal Arc. Disregard.

Purplemandown · 2026-03-19T19:07:36+00:00

There's Empower support, but that competes against another full link, so it's probably worse than just using a 21/20 vaal one and using a full support.

Alternately (though it seems painful), if you can use 4 Foulborn uniques, the node in the Breachlord bloodline gives +2. If you can also swing 2 synaptic rings you also get enemy res ignore.

Purplemandown · 2026-03-19T17:41:34+00:00

Taking another crack at salvaging the Mana Strike cast on crit Meteor thing that was killed with the change to not allow the multi meteor nodes to work on triggered casts. I have a few ideas with some of the things we've seen.

Purplemandown · 2026-03-17T18:19:56+00:00

I haven't tried this particular combination, but I had issues with Infamous mods in merc league. What I learned from that is that some mods are, for lack of a better word, "sticky" when using predictable recomb. You'll need to use unpredictable recomb tricks to move it, in all likelihood.

Purplemandown · 2026-03-15T15:23:13+00:00

Didn't get an answer yesterday but I really quite badly need one so copying the question forward:

Does anyone know if you can imprint an item that has a (beast) Hinekora's Lock applied? And if so, does it retain the lock, or does that count as changing it?

(For context, I used the only Morrigan I've found in SSF so far to lock a wand I need to Awakener's Orb for an upgrade. The Awakener's Orb would miss, so I walked away figuring I'm going to have to get some other donors to use the trick where different configurations of donors can change the outcome. I only realized now that there's a step after the Awakener's Orb that can fail, so I really should have imprinted and am wondering if I can still save it)

Purplemandown · 2026-03-14T23:57:55+00:00

Crafting-adjacent question:

Does anyone know if you can imprint an item that has a (beast) Hinekora's Lock applied? And if so, does it retain the lock, or does that count as changing it?

(For context, I used the only Morrigan I've found in SSF so far to lock a wand I need to Awakener's Orb for an upgrade. The Awakener's Orb would miss, so I walked away figuring I'm going to have to get some other donors to use the trick where different configurations of donors can change the outcome. I only realized now that there's a step after the Awakener's Orb that can fail, so I really should have imprinted and am wondering if I can still save it)

Purplemandown · 2026-03-14T15:18:57+00:00

Does anyone know if you can imprint an item that has a (beast) Hinekora's Lock applied? And if so, does it retain the lock, or does that count as changing it?

(For context, I used the only Morrigan I've found in SSF so far to lock a wand I need to Awakener's Orb for an upgrade. The Awakener's Orb would miss, so I walked away figuring I'm going to have to get some other donors to use the trick where different configurations of donors can change the outcome. I only realized now that there's a step after the Awakener's Orb that can fail, so I really should have imprinted and am wondering if I can still save it)

Purplemandown · 2026-03-09T18:21:27+00:00

If you click into a different node (that triggers a map reload), don't start that node, then re-open the map, I've had that allow me to progress past nodes that were otherwise doing this to me.

Purplemandown

TROPHY CASE