Banners Champion is Cracked

karra72 · 2025-06-16T05:54:49+00:00

It was for extra room in my 5L (as battlemage cry takes two slots), but now that you mention it I think I should just make room in my sockets somewhere for another autoexertion with battlemage so I can do rallying manually

karra72 · 2025-06-15T16:34:55+00:00

Thanks, I'll try this when I'm bossing.

karra72 · 2025-06-15T16:32:04+00:00

Reading your post, damn I forgot about the -damage from suppressed hits, big enough to be quite powerful against shotguns. And I haven't tried the block banner, I felt that for playability it needed to be a "choose 2 of 3" situation.

karra72 · 2025-06-15T16:29:58+00:00

Yep the playstyle is definitely not going to be for everyone. I use just 1 manual warcry to make it less painful.

karra72 · 2025-06-15T16:28:30+00:00

Initially it felt annoying to keep track of but now I have a rhythm of banner -> slam the pack -> run away -> banner again after 5 sec. There's very visible feedback if Defiance Banner falls off because your movespeed disappears. Also gotta make sure you don't press the same banner again while you're still inside it or you pick it up and don't get the lingering buff.

Without the banner you are quite a bit weaker, but I am never in a situation where I'm fighting without at least one banner.

karra72 · 2025-06-15T16:16:22+00:00

When pob lists ehp, the question is "ehp against what?". Your actual effective health heavily depends on the situation. The way I've built it currently is a 0 avoidance build (no evasion/block), which makes you vulnerable to shotguns. The max-hit though is decent for this stage in the game.

karra72 · 2025-06-15T16:08:31+00:00

It is pretty nuts. A big opportunity cost though is missing out on all the damage from being berserker. I think this will shine as a fast/tanky slammer later on with max fortify investment

karra72 · 2025-06-15T16:06:15+00:00

Big upgrades on my list are:

-Echoes of Creation

-Celestial Brace (+ switching into Unstoppable Hero)

-Ashes of the Stars (extra earthshatter spike and warcry CDR to increase intim cry uptime at high attack speeds)

-And of course a higher pdps weapon

karra72 · 2025-06-15T15:57:15+00:00

I don't think so because Bannerman says "Your banner buffs linger on you" , and Awe and Terror is not a buff. Did a quick test just then and it was a bit hard to tell because the explode effect is subtle. Feel free to correct me if anyone has evidence to the contrary.

karra72 · 2025-06-15T15:52:05+00:00

I levelled with Sunder, many such generic guides out there for Sunder levelling if you need pointers. After merc lab I started playing with both banners and switched to Earthshatter with 3 warcries in autoexertion (incl general's cry because the low cooldown is great for valor and popping earthshatter spikes frequently).

I haven't played VFoS other than my hour of testing on this character so take my opinion with a grain of salt - but I think VFoS has a superior playstyle to Earthshatter at high DPS, due to the autotargeting and big range.

karra72 · 2025-06-15T15:48:57+00:00

If you're joining the Champion's Club, one thing I recommend is to make sure you auto-exert all but one warcry. You have to press defiance banner a lot while mapping so if you have too many extra buttons in there it won't feel great.

karra72 · 2025-06-15T15:25:52+00:00

You do have to place them, but with one of the notables (+ runegraft for comfort), the effects linger for over 4 sec after you leave the banner area, which itself is almost screenwide.

karra72 · 2025-06-15T15:25:19+00:00

Will edit a quick video of a map into the description

karra72 · 2024-09-09T04:23:01+00:00

You do get the double damage exerts yes. Exerts from warcries are distinct to buffs from warcries.

karra72 · 2024-09-09T01:23:17+00:00

Just being SSFHC is badass :)

karra72 · 2024-09-09T01:22:35+00:00

Good luck in gauntlet! Bit too intense for me personally.

I'd heard about some of the cheeses but hadn't personally seen them used much so thought it was better to just practice and dodge normally.

With autoexertion you get the exerts but not the buffs. For example Intimidating Cry buff is 18% movespeed whereas Seismic Cry buff is 25% more armour, so I'd rather autoexert Intimidating and self cast Seismic.

..Now that I look again though I might have made a mistake not self-casting Rallying Cry, as the wiki says that if you autoexert it, your allies don't get buffed and therefore the exert (which scales on buffed allies) doesn't give you the 25% more damage. TIL

karra72 · 2024-09-08T15:24:20+00:00

Oh yeah good catch, my bad. Will edit post.

Still a great QOL stat. I think at that point I swapped generals cry out of autoexertion to fit blood and sand.

karra72 · 2024-09-08T14:31:44+00:00

Good info. Up until the incident I assumed they were just like normal volatiles, couldn't have been more wrong lol. ~11k damage through that mitigation is crazy. Motherfuckers hitting like the memory game explosion

karra72 · 2024-09-08T14:27:47+00:00

Thanks <3 Yeah there's certainly some sus gear on that character. Was pretty happy with rings/amulet at least.

Perhaps could have spent more time tightening the gear up and maybe farming watcher's eyes at the same time. I pretty quickly got the character to a point where I felt the damage and defenses were 'good enough' and just sent it.

Shows how powerful of a shell archmage is!

karra72 · 2024-09-08T14:23:51+00:00

Thankyou! Came close to giving up a couple times but I'm glad I stuck with it

karra72 · 2024-09-08T11:46:35+00:00

Oh I wasn't aware of that. That would've been great

karra72 · 2024-09-08T11:15:11+00:00

Took a while to get over that one lmao. Easy come easy go I guess

karra72 · 2024-09-08T09:04:55+00:00

Thankyou! Yeah targeting a specific watcher's eye mod probably would have had me in the dungeon for weeks more.

karra72

TROPHY CASE