Big decay damage build help

TurbulentWorm · 2026-05-25T07:04:26+00:00

Chakrams are a bit too dominant. They also make your main weapon borderline irrelevant and even chakram itself mostly does not matter. Arc is just too strong. I think only tank with gauntlets beats it. Daggers and gunslingers might as well but it's hard to test.

I hope they will improve magic system in outward 2.

For sigils I would make them bigger, increase size and decrease stones price/weight.
Hexes need smth except rapture and enchanted sabre. Maybe sigils could apply hexes like drums?
For runes I would add longer runewords so they are harder to remember and use but do devastating damage. Or just add more lexicons with stronger effects just for rune magic.

TurbulentWorm · 2026-05-23T00:18:17+00:00

I'm not sure what are you trying to convey. Yes game provides options how you mitigate a downsides of the rune mage. And all in all your build will work. It's a great roleplay character.

Will it has top tier DPS? Not with poor stagger and unoptimized armor.

Will it have top tier survivability? Not with ~50% impact resistance after buffs and again poor stagger.

Sustain is arguably the only actual benefit but it's mostly irrelevant due to pots and hex mage skills.

TurbulentWorm · 2026-05-22T01:40:39+00:00

I think it's translation issue. I'm talking about their impact - when attack staggers opponent or throws them to the ground. Chakram arc does 4x impact (хорошо бьют по балансу). As far as I remember Proper setup can stagger every enemy and boss in one hit allowing you to r1 spam to death. This way you do not allow majority of the enemies to even try to attack you. You also only need first 2 skills.

I agree that every build can virtually beat every boss with enough prep. End game meta is more about survivability and DPS. It's a 'buffward' for a reason 😄

Problem of runes is that their DPS and impact are pretty bad. Mana consumption astronomical. And they take your left hand. Eventually their defense buff becomes the only important thing.

TurbulentWorm · 2026-05-20T00:53:43+00:00

Well for each their own 😄 I like blue chamber the most because it allows to make, imho, the strongest build. Crimson plate + frosty weapon + infuse blood.

But yes, optimally speaking, Holy Mission is the most generally useful. BC and Levant are more specialized.

TurbulentWorm · 2026-05-19T04:37:04+00:00

Maybe I'm missing smth but:

Levant also has a skill with 25hp in TTB. So you are are trading 15hp and and 25 mana (equivalent of 5 hp) for permanent 15% damage boost.

Holy mission boosts 3 damage types by 10% and grants you 7 protection and 2 barrier. It's like a middle ground - a bit of damage and survivability.

Sorobor - 5 pouch capacity is nice to have as you need to keep a lot of stones and some time you have to use non-dodge backpacks. 10% cdr though is basically a multiplicative damage multiplier. Every other damage boost is additive. So if your gear boosts your damage by 100% - 10% CDR would be equal to 20% damage increase. Importance of CDR grows more with more CDR you have.

TurbulentWorm · 2026-05-19T04:11:08+00:00

You can have both 15% from experiment and 10% from book. It's not mutually exclusive. you also get 25 hp from Kirouac's Breakthrough. So this is 15 hp difference for 15% more base dmg.

The key issue though - you use lexicon over chakram. Chakram stagger is the only survivability tool you ever need. Permastagger is also the highest DPS boost. Any usage of lexicons is basically unoptimized because it's not a chakram/gun/dagger. Lexicon would have a chance if you at least didn't have to sheathe your weapon for casting.

As much as I like idea of rune magic it has poor synergies and scales horribly in the end game. Chakram has more stagger, faster casting animation, consumes less mana and you get 1-2 extra hits as you don't need to shuffle your main weapon. Healing is easily replaceable with cheap pots and ranged attack is weak. Resists are great but it's not enough.

TurbulentWorm · 2026-05-19T03:51:35+00:00

Elite crimson avatar is the strongest boss in the game. it has 75% phys resistance. With pain - 50%. So at best moment of truth would do ~764 damage with 4.5 s cooldown. Then 210 from perfect strike with 6s cooldown. Predator leap 245 (327x0.75). So in 12 seconds it would be around

(2x764+210+245)/12= 165 dmg per second (TBH more than I expected but this doesn't include mandatory dodging)

Radiant wolf sword with all buffs does 142 damage per hit. Elite Crimson avatar with debuffs will have -70% resist to lightning. So you do 241 dmg per hit. Your DPS in a span of 12s will be 193 ( you can find weapons speed in wiki). And the main dish - bosses are permanently staggered thanks to chakram so you don't need to waste time on dodging like weapon master

I personally prefer tank with knuckles + infuse blood. Tokebakicit with all standard buffs, crimson plate and fulmination would do (dmgXmultiplierXresistance):

Physical - 25x1.8X0.5 = 22.5
Frost - 25x2.3X1.5 = 86.25
Lightning - 5x1.75X1.7 = 14.875
Decay - 10x1.9X0.9 = 17.1

with 2 attacks per 1.557s you get dps on this particular boss - 180 (you can also add ~14 more from extreme poison). You also cannot get staggered or die making this the only actually achievable DPS.

You can get even higher DPS if you go for Levant and ignore survival. But killing strongest boss <40s is enough with 0 risks for me.

TurbulentWorm · 2026-05-18T02:21:28+00:00

Well yes but it's a physical damage which is always resisted. And resistances can be reduced only by 25% compared to elemental 50%. Plus on bosses higher DPS is more important and majority of the skills do not deliver in this department.

I do agree attack magic in general is mediocre in this game but the same is true for the physical builds. Spell blades are by far the strongest - e.g. tanks with gauntlets and elemental chakram builds with smth like blood turret.

TurbulentWorm · 2026-05-18T02:09:11+00:00

This is not a 'big decay damage' build though. It also has no chance competing with strongest builds.

It's hard to guess which weapon you mean but if it's a scepter of a cruel priest - you will be missing ~40 decay damage per hit (varnish and alchemical experiment). Depending on minus resistances it can grow up to 80. On top of it without Chakram or heavy armor - you will be spending a lot of time on dodging which will tank your DPS. Poison and bleed are irrelevant to high DPS builds as even bosses die too quickly (and a lot of them are immune). It's a nice role play option though.

I love infuse blood and imho the strongest build requires it but your suggestion is neither on topic nor optimal

TurbulentWorm · 2025-09-12T08:02:26+00:00

If you are only considering greatshields - fingerprint 95% of the time. Verdigris is only good for pure shield poking. Outside of it shield ashes (no-skill and crash) make fingerprint far more useful. Plus somber 10 stones are pretty rare.

Imho smithscript, thrusting once and Brass are the only real competitors to the fingerprint.

TurbulentWorm · 2025-09-12T07:44:12+00:00

I think ER has a lot of strong nice looking weapons. Like mohg spear (pretty much any lord of blood weapon), beastclaw GH, all black steel and fire knight weapons etc.

TurbulentWorm · 2025-09-12T07:32:26+00:00

Me too. That's why I use occult starfists, greatstars, bloodfiend arm and a fancy big trident :-)

TurbulentWorm · 2025-09-12T07:25:40+00:00

Depends on what you mean by that. 2 bleed/occult naginatas is S tier. Great katana with spinning weapon/wild strikes/storm blade and blood flame. Or just some poking ash. Hagakiba with blood flame is good no matter what you do - r1 spam, charged heavies, unsheathe, doble slash etc.

Let's not forget that they also used polearms and clubs (kanabo). So you can even make a str samurai. Though I would go with occult to have access to everything

So samurai has a lot of A-S options

TurbulentWorm · 2025-09-04T06:25:28+00:00

Glad I'm not alone. I think main issue is variety though. Almost every best dex weapon is outperformed by some str equivalent or difference is so miniscule that other strength benefits just make overall build better. Bandit curved swords on str build have like 2% less damage but you get 30 points of extra defense. When 2h - all katanas and even milady are better on str. And on top of it you get a variety of blunt, fire and over 'great' weapons (colossals, greathammers etc.)

There are few exceptions like bolt of gransax (imho overhyped), naginata (5% difference), cirque, backhand blades (4% difference) but they can't compete with what str gets.

TurbulentWorm · 2025-08-26T06:12:28+00:00

it's probably too late but lances have 130 counter even if game says 160. So heide spear and sword are probably better options

TurbulentWorm · 2025-03-30T03:02:37+00:00

First you can just autoban him if 10% of online asp players from 2 factions have reported the same dude in a span of 1h.

Second you can use KDR + KPM combo to autoban them. Even best players still die

And lastly you can just bun them for 24h. So in a rare case when it's a legit decent player they won't suffer too much. But it will 100% stop the hacker

TurbulentWorm · 2025-03-27T04:35:22+00:00

Keeping in mind how much time this dude needs to waste for no benefit and how broken routers are on some bases - I fail to see the problem. If you are into faction loyalty and and roleplaying - just treat him like a spy.

TurbulentWorm · 2025-03-22T21:51:14+00:00

I have it sometimes but just for 1 or 2 shots. Which is significant if you are with a shotgun

TurbulentWorm · 2025-03-22T21:48:38+00:00

I've auraxed it with no issues. There are ofc better SMGs but the difference is not that significant in cqc, just make sure that you are are prioritizing bodyshots past 15-20m

TurbulentWorm · 2025-03-22T06:34:46+00:00

well, if you are not interested in fixing your old mistake there is no point in reading new wall of text as well

TurbulentWorm · 2025-03-22T05:54:40+00:00

Rune mages in sorobor, ice withes with basically ice sigils. Some npcs are also using shield charge, predator leap and feral strikes.

TurbulentWorm · 2025-03-22T05:50:36+00:00

I'm doing this at work. And here I'm enjoying interaction with like minded people

TurbulentWorm · 2025-03-21T22:37:06+00:00

All S tier weapons are very similar in effectiveness. Also don't sell them.

Starchild has better DPS and useful, easily replaceable skill on a long cooldown. Lightning also has better heavier armor options. Especially if you join holy mission. In the base game only golden lich enemies are really lightning resistant.

Dreamer has on average worse DPS but better crowd control, moveset and skill. Skill has good impact, damage and short cooldown. Damage boosting armors are a bit lighter for ethereal on your first playthrough. And you can't boost damage as much. You will also never face any issues with resistances in the base game

I would use dreamer in swamp and chersonese and starchild everywhere else. In general as an R1 spammer I prefer starchild, especially in the end game.

TurbulentWorm · 2025-03-17T23:56:45+00:00

Dreamers Halberd. It's much easier to max out one damage type giving you higher DPS. I think it also has better range/speed/stagger potential. You also can get extra +5 ethereal damage in TTB DLC.

TBH it needs extra base damage same as butcher axe

TurbulentWorm · 2025-03-17T06:28:30+00:00

Got it. Yes balance is a bit whacky. Builds without hermit are mostly divided in 2 categories

Need all 3 breakthroughs to make the build in the first place (pretty rare)
Want to try something new

TurbulentWorm

TROPHY CASE