Offensive Vs Defensive Artifact Gear

kydavi

The general wisdom with the HR that I have heard has always been roll heave on life steal, augment with deflect, and run offensive sets (lostmauth, orcus, etc); however, lately I have come across a few high IL HRs that buck that and slot the more defensive gear sets (lathander, seldarine, valhala, etc) and slot azures over darks/silvers.

Obviously the offensive sets may give you an immediate dps boost, but survivability can't be ignored either (you can't kill anything if you are respawning at the camp fire). I have always operated under traditional thought, but being less squishy is certainly appealing.

So, thoughts?

wdj40

I have been banging on for ages about the need to balance a HR for the very best character. I have run with many a HR who are very impressive and put out the numbers, but they hit any kind of rubbish PUG and thats it, they will die and just totally under perform ect.

But balancing it out to be able to survive and take any 4 players through 99% of the content is much much better. Also with the way I set my Trapper up I dont need to dodge very much, by me taking hits I am reflecting back like 4-6 Hits worth of damage as well smashing out the DPS

jonkoca

Nah, y'wanna specc glass cannon. SH boons, lonewolf and pathfinders action, plus shadow demon allow you to specc wholly around dps, and if you hit a bad pug, swap a few things out and boom, you're near immortal.

wdj40

jonkoca said:

Nah, y'wanna specc glass cannon. SH boons, lonewolf and pathfinders action, plus shadow demon allow you to specc wholly around dps, and if you hit a bad pug, swap a few things out and boom, you're near immortal.

Those Passives are a waste for DPS so you are countering your own statement. I run Pack + 1000 CA + 5% CA Damage + 5% CA when controlling + a few other sources of CA damage. Yes i know you can position etc but thats not amazingly viable or constant, with Pack i get like 99% uptime of CA on everything around me.

Then Serpent is slotted with gives massive 34% damage bonus to my heaviest hitting powers plus extra Crit (buffed by off hand passive too). Which i can then manipulate my weak hits (like Steel Breeze) into heavy hits occasionally via Owlbear Active. 60-70% Crit seems perfect for this. 

Anyhoo slightly more defensive builds (Trapper) can smash out the DPS when set up right. I dont know about the Archery or Combat Trees though.

dmcewen

@wdj40 I'm almost certain combatant's maneuver is broke right now.

jonkoca

Combatants is still broken.

Sure WD, what I meant was, I only swap those features into my slots *IF* I'm in a bad pug, to keep me alive while we finish, because at that point dps is not the issue, and most probably I'm out dps'ing everyone anyway. I just meant that SH boons etc. give us the flexibility to specc for full blown dps glass cannon, but tank up whenever we like temporarily.