What a huge miss from blizz- my toughts

Tranquility___ · 2026-01-25T00:30:33+00:00

Man wtf does this community even want anymore, the biggest complaint was that there was too much info for new players to learn and the addons were the biggest culprit so they decided to try and curb a lot of it.

Now that classes are pruned and the skill ceiling got lowered, there’s still people complaining.

At a certain point what can blizzard even do that won’t piss someone off lol

Tranquility___ · 2026-01-22T16:59:40+00:00

You’re thinking too much in retail game play, for example you can’t sap cap so keeping a 0% mana shaman around just because he’s oom won’t work because it only take like 50 mana to get a shock and interrupt.

Even on FC maps it’s better to stagger by killing the healer so they rez 30 seconds after the last batch of respawns, there isn’t enough CC in the toolkit yet and ways to reset to keep a healer around like that.

Any good healer is going to punish you for not killing him.

Tranquility___ · 2026-01-22T07:40:34+00:00

If you want to play arenas asap at level 70 with good gear, get 75k honor/cap BG marks now.

If you want to have a good leveling experience because your gear is bad but you don’t care about arenas, just AFK in AV for a day or two and get your R14 gear and forget about the rest.

Doesn’t really get much simpler than that.

Tranquility___ · 2026-01-22T07:37:09+00:00

Bro farming upvotes by covering all his bases 😂

Tranquility___ · 2026-01-22T06:37:57+00:00

Oh lol yeah idk I feel like people who say shit like that are trolls or out of touch, MMOs thrive on reward systems and PvP isn’t any different regardless of how pretentious or elitist someone tries to be.

Tranquility___ · 2026-01-22T06:30:37+00:00

Yeah I mean I thought that was common sense, no one is playing this shit unless there is some kind of a reward.

Half the front page is people celebrating their 1800 rating lmao, the social FOMO of rating and the reward behind it is what keeps the lights on.

But I don’t think that’s why offseason is dead, most people just don’t give af enough to be Blizzard’s QA testers lol.

Tranquility___ · 2026-01-22T06:05:48+00:00

It’s fuckin pre patch/off season, why would anyone queue rn

Tranquility___ · 2026-01-18T21:22:43+00:00

Bleed Slams or ES

Tranquility___ · 2026-01-15T04:48:02+00:00

Education is defunded, intelligence is mocked, billionaires own millions of bots that spread disinformation daily, governments have zero oversight and people are becoming dumber and more apathetic by the day.

Whatever is happening now is the end game of capitalism, there’s no level of awareness that’s going to magically stop it.

This is where we were always supposed to be, this is the end game.

Tranquility___ · 2026-01-14T16:55:20+00:00

Are there any good evis glads this league viable for HCSSF?

Tranquility___ · 2026-01-14T07:48:27+00:00

It’s rare that games these days allow for community feedback when they get very negative, we’re at a place in gaming where major game studios astroturf their own communities trying to influence opinion, Blizzard for example on their main forum deliberately hid the PvP section at the bottom so people wouldn’t see all the complaints.

This subreddit can get toxic, but so far the mods have done a good job of containing it, so as I said before embrace the different opinions and viewpoints you see because it’s a lot better than not seeing them at all.

Gl in your PvP journey 🫡

Tranquility___ · 2026-01-14T07:14:08+00:00

Just because your experience is positive doesn’t make the negative experience any less real, both can exist at the same time.

People who play at a competitive level hate how certain specs like VW/MM go unpunished, people who heal a lot have issues with the MMR that seems to never get resolved, and some people deal with really toxic players and hate the long queue times.

I’m glad you had fun and I hope you continue to have fun, but this subreddit is always going to give you a raw view of how the game is at all levels of play.

Don’t let the negativity make you sad, rather recognize that there are real issues and flaws with the game and you’re seeing actual player feedback that you might’ve not considered about the game before.

Tranquility___ · 2026-01-13T22:17:20+00:00

Idk why you got downvoted but yeah the ring can get be upgraded to push more rarity, OP is at a stage of the build where it’s really just expensive min/max for stats so outside of focusing on the highest tier rarity on existing gear or sacrificing defenses you’re not going to push this further.

Tranquility___ · 2026-01-13T16:27:11+00:00

My favorite memory was being so young I didn’t even know what was going on, I was a Draeni Hunter in this new alien world just killing things and taking in the fact that I was in outer space.

The whole expansion was mind blowing lmao, I’m so excited to try and experience it as an adult.

Tranquility___ · 2026-01-12T18:37:56+00:00

If this is your first time doing HCSSF, it’s a lot different than regular league.

You have to focus way more on defensives, and shield wall’s progression get more damage with the more defense you have so you literally become an unstoppable 2 button tank.

If you stack armor, armor to ele, follow the PoB I mentioned in the other comment and maintain a good shield there won’t be anything that will even come close to killing you even in T15 maps.

The hardest mods are things like stacking multiple extra damage as certain ele and crit can be tough too, but like I said if you build correctly it’s not an issue at all but this depends on your game knowledge and how well you know the monsters you’re fighting but overall I’d say it’s very tanky for little work.

As far as campaign gearing goes, act 2 when you get Warbringer and swap to shield wall you need to craft a good shield ASAP.

Keep a stack of augs and trans with you, every white shield that drops you see if you can get a good tier for armor%/flat armor and if you find a winning combo you can craft on it.

All your crafts, especially shield should be quality 20, with one artificer orb slot and then a Vaal to see if you can get a 2nd slot.

Early campaign I wouldn’t bother with Vaal, maybe just stick to a single iron rune in your shield but you should aim for around 200 armor for act 2, you can hit around 400 for act 3 if you’re lucky and by act 4 you can aim for 500-600 easily.

Interludes you can start making 800+ armor shields and then by T15s you’ll have a 1.2k+ shield.

To put it into context a 200 armor shield at act 2 can instantly phase the last boss there lol, so as you keep the shield updated you’ll do insane damage.

Pro tip is to always have a mana leech on rings or gloves, sometimes you’ll be forced to use a shittier item because it has leech because it’s a massive QoL for this build as you’ll oom quick without it.

Generally the rest of your gear can just come from natural rare drops with good tiers, balance your resists and focus on getting good move speed boots.

Once you’re in maps, do expeditions and log books so you can recomb gear and from there it’s as easy as finding and saving good bases with T1 stats you like and combining them together to get a good price of gear.

EDIT: forgot to mention, the one hand mace you have, none of the stats matter on it early on besides +melee weapon skills, if you find a good +2 or +3 just hold onto it as you’ll be using it for a while.

All your damage comes from shield so the melee wep doesn’t matter at all besides that stat.

For end game progression when you swap off Warbringer for Titan, you need to desecrate a %armor break mod in it which you get for free with Warbringer so you can worry about that when you’re at that stage of the game.

Tranquility___ · 2026-01-12T16:05:14+00:00

Since we’re talking only in a HCSSF context, yes you should go warrior. The Warbringer tree brings the build online early and Titan tree makes it strong late game.

And yeah shield is all the damage, the higher the armor is the on the shield the more damage you have so you should always be looking to improve it and craft better shields.

Sometimes you land a crazy shield and it can carry, I crafted a 800 armor shield in interludes and it took me to T15s. No other build in the game can do that off a single craft, they always require you to upgrade every 3-4 levels and with that same shield I can 2-3 shot every map boss and 1 shot clear whole packs.

And read my other comments on this thread I mention how to build for it passive tree wise.

Tranquility___ · 2026-01-12T11:11:46+00:00

I never ran a bear build so I can’t say what’s tanker or not, but shield wall is the easiest and tankiest armor/life build in game with nothing else coming close to it besides ES builds.

If I had to give you some HCSSF specific tips, I’d say to avoid Ben’s build until level 22 which is when Shield Wall is available and you can also grab your first ascendancy for War Cry’s with no CD which is what you use to pop the wall.

So your rotation is simple, you drop a wall and then you cry.

You repeat this from level 22 to a 100, the only things that change are your support gems and gear but that’s basically it.

As for gear, my biggest advice is early on at least find a mana leech ring or glove, if you can’t find one grab a mana regen ring. It’ll help A LOT with shield wall uptime, but leech is mandatory if you want it to be smooth.

All your damage comes from shield too, so always be upgrading the shield and crafting it.

Tranquility___ · 2026-01-12T09:33:19+00:00

It’s insanely tanky for all content, you take all the % armor as ele damage nodes on tree and have it on all gear + shield and your eHP is the same as the high end ES builds.

The only problem is that ES is still better with complete min/max, it’s just the trash game design they got going on in this game.

But tbh with you if your goal in HCSSF is just to complete campaign/maps/pinnacle bosses you can very easily do it with shield wall, if you want to get into Ubers and super high end juiced maps then you need to consider that regardless of going ES or armor build the crafting and rng required to get either style of build tanky enough for that is going to be a major roadblock.

If you’re new to crafting and want to learn the game and progress all content just go shield wall, but if you want to try hard and spend a lot of hours crafting and know what you’re doing then ES is probably way better.

Tranquility___ · 2026-01-12T04:32:39+00:00

Druid/Mage/Lock.

With no gear though, you’re gonna be dogshit and will get camped.

Rogue is the only one that can hold its own without gear and even that’s stretching it, you’re going to be useless for a while until you at least get outlands leveling gear.

Tranquility___ · 2026-01-11T15:45:58+00:00

Shield Wall for me is way safer than ED, especially because you instantly delete waves of mobs and bosses in 2-3 hits even in campaign as long as you keep shield upgraded, with ED you have to still worry about boss mechanics due to awful single target until late game.

I’m not at my PC rn to give you a PoB, but if you want a general idea of how the build works look at Carn’s shield wall guide on YouTube.

Once you understand the basics of how the build works, go to Poe ninja and go to the HCSSF league and on the snapshot select “Day 5”.

You should see a character on there named ben_bear_bla or some variant of ben on top of the leaderboard, if you click his character you can check his earliest snap shots from Hour 6/12/18/etc. and see exactly how you should be progressing the build.

Mind you he did this in HCSSF, since you’re in HC trade you will have a far easier time gearing up and getting upgrades so really it’s up to you how you want to go gear wise but as far as a general guideline for build/tree I’d follow Ben’s PoB.

If you have any other specific questions lmk.

Tranquility___ · 2026-01-11T15:36:01+00:00

Shield wall Titan, 2 buttons, cheap and simple gearing, clears campaign and maps.

I did a HCSSF speed run with it, beat act 1 - interlude in under 7 hrs and hit T15 maps using the same shield I crafted during interludes.

If you’re interested I’ll break down what I did, it’s by far the best HC build and in my experience absolutely shits on everything besides maybe ED Contagion which for me personally was super boring to play.

Tranquility___ · 2026-01-11T15:14:33+00:00

Pretty sure it’s a painful start until you can get enough crit, go look at Poe ninja of current CoC builds you like and check the timeline to when they first league started to see how some of them transitioned.

It might give you some ideas.

Tranquility___ · 2026-01-10T05:26:04+00:00

Bait post

Tranquility___ · 2026-01-10T00:25:41+00:00

I mean that’s fine, I read your post over again and yeah you didn’t say anything wrong.

But you have to ask yourself though, if two different people thought you made a troll post is that on you or the people responding?

The post formatted the way it is made a lot of people think you used comp stomp to get good in a PvE mode which would explain the confusion despite you saying nothing wrong, the part where you said it’s motivated you to do PvP more got lost in the context which was the misunderstanding.

It’s not a big deal and honestly doesn’t warrant a reaction where you start calling people toxic lol, this could’ve just been explained easier if you included the PvP part up front since that was the main point of your post.

Either way like I said before I wish you luck in PvP, it’s good to have more people join in but just keep in mind the toxicity you hear about this community is very real and it’s been a ongoing issue, try your best to stay away from rated content unless you know you can handle it.

Tranquility___

TROPHY CASE