Author Topic: Juggernaut (physical focus) Needing Suggestions Against Megalesios on Normal  (Read 1558 times)

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Offline mattlan175

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I'll preface this with am new to Titan Quest.

Using a lvl 19 Juggernaut (defense/earth) with a physical focus on Normal mode.

Running into a brick wall with Megalesios. Can't seem to kill those minions fast enough before they heal him up with his leaching.

I think I need more points into Bash and Earth Enchantment? Does anyone have any suggested skill distributions for him?

Current Mastery Skill Distributions:
Adrenaline: 1
Rally: 1
Inspiration: 1
Battle Awareness: 6
Focus: 1
Quick Recovery: 2
Batter: 1
Rend Armor: 1
Colossus Form: 1
Armor Handling: 1
Shield Smash: 1
Earth Enchantment: 2

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Offline Xerxes

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Try to get some item(s) with Vitality Resistance. This will prevent them from leaching too much life. Shield Charge could also help, if it's done when they start leaching. The stun will interrupt the minion.

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Offline Bloke

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My Suggestions:

Megalesios:
You may need to use his leash range, run away until you get to the point where he returns to his starting position, near the stairs. Fight him there and try to get him and the demons to uncouple by moving around the leash spot, then kill them quickly.  Against Megalesios himself, you might try to get more vitality res from things like Essence of Aegis of Athena shield or Demon's Blood jewelry.

Juggernaut:
If played as a melee character, this class is characterized by its lack of OA bonuses, like many other Defense characters. In Normal you may find enough OA items to get by but in the later difficulties this weakness has to be dealt with somehow. In general, if dealing physical or piercing damage in melee and you aren't critting, you should get more OA.
Shield Smash helps deal with this by way of lowering the opponent's DA, but from my experience this should only be relied upon for bosses unless you are a Monk with Achilles' Shield. Flame Surge also has an effect that lowers enemy DA, but it requires a high level for the debuff to be good enough and it requires its later passives to buff its other attributes, even when not using it to deal damage

Leveling strategy: In general, relying on skills that deal fixed amounts of damage to kill things is much more reliable when starting out. A character with godly gear can outpace spells but early on you can do huge damage reliably just by pumping a specific spell. For Juggernaut I would recommend a Defense dip / Earth pump strategy but I see you already have Colossus Form so we have to think of something different!

Some suggested Defense skills:

Armor Handling: The requirements reduction is useful, but the "Armor Absorption" property is integral to Defense because along with Quick Recovery, it allows you to rely on a high armor to reduce pretty much all of enemy physical damage. Someone can correct me if I am wrong but by default, armor reduces up to 66% of incoming damage, the rest is taken in full. Armor Absorption increases the ratio, in other words, reduces enemy armor penetration. And so, since ultimate AH + QR add to 34%, it means that having a high enough armor can prevent all damage taken. Because you already have a lot of stats from pumping Defense mastery, this might not be needed to be maxed quickly, depends if you think you are dying too fast.

Quick Recovery: Even though this is a cooldown, the uptime ratio is one of the highest around. At ultimate level it is 3/4 so you only need 25% recharge reduction to have it up almost constantly. Look for unique weapons and shields with -recharge, keep them in your second weapon set and swap to that to cast QR with. A typical goal for Defense gearing later on is to have enough recharge to be able to cast QR and Rally at 100% uptime without weapon swapping.
Anyway, what QR actually does is increase armor absorption, increase shield blocking and block recovery. Block recovery in other words is block cooldown, and 2 seconds by default, so blocking by default does little against crowds. QR eventually reduces the cooldown by a huge amount. Be sure to upgrade to better shields as they become available.

Batter: 1 point is fine to begin with, and 1 point in the passive. Shield attacks attack with the weapon too even if the animation doesn't show it. You can put this on your left button so it's used automatically when attacking whenever it's up which is a good idea because Juggernaut doesn't have a dedicated LMB skill.

Shield Smash: Attacks with both weapons as noted, plus the -50% DA property causes enemies to get owned by subsequent melee attacks which is  mainly relevant against bosses.
Disable, Pulverize: As before, but the bonus effects are different and Pulverize hits 3 enemies.

Earth:
Volcanic Orb: good split fire/physical damage at a reasonable cooldown.
Ring of Fire can be pretty powerful but the energy drain can be an annoyance, and you can't rely on getting big energy regen items in the early game.
Heat Shield: 1 point is plenty. 15% physical res at 100% uptime is great for anyone.
Stone Skin, Stone Form, Eruption, Volativity: when they become available.
Note: any more than 1 point in Stone Form is useless, because the potion cooldown is shorter than the duration of SF with 1 point in Molten Rock.

OK looking at your skills I'll assume that with 55 total points at this stage, 32 in Defense and 1 in Earth:
33 on masteries; 22 unspent. The skills added up to 19 so maybe Earth is at 4. Going for a defense dip/earth spell strategy at this point is unworkable, so I think spending aggressively for a fighter spec might be the best here:
3 Armor Handling
4 Shield Smash
4 Pulverize
1 Disable
1 Batter
1 Rend Armor
1 Shield Charge
1 Disruption
1 Quick Recovery
1 Colossus Form
1 Heat Shield (up at ALL times)

Megalesios hits harder with spells than melee so no maxed AH yet. EE doesn't really do anything if you don't have fire or burn damage to multiply, so no points in earth yet. Remember that Shield Charge can be used in melee, with +1 extra target from Disruption hits 2 enemies with weapon and shield for a total of 4 hits, you can use that too against the demons. Shop for a better weapon if you can afford one. Favor quicker ones (sword) over slower (club/spear) at this point, very low attack speeds (under 100% or so) are really slow and proc bonus damage like the shield procs less efficiently. Cast Colossus Form with -recharge items if you can, since the cooldown is so long.

The important thing here is to get past Megalesios, Egypt is easy and you get 4 free skill points from quests there, just be sure to have a good amount of poison resist (Pristine Plumage charms) for the first boss, in the library.

Following points I would spend:
-max AH
-max pulverize
-max shield smash
then,
-disable
-1 point in battle awareness and passives (probably don't need more DA yet because of the dex from defense mastery, focus is good but I think QR should be maxed first for blocking)
-volcanic orb or ring of fire, then earth enchantment
-QR gradually, more quickly if you find good -recharge items. Late act 3 and especially act 4 will be big difficulty spikes and QR will be wonderful then
-adrenaline, resilience, defensive reaction (DR is the important one here, but you should have good attacking from maxed shield procs, good weapon, etc. first)
Prioritize based on whether you feel you need more offense or defense. Note that scaling stat doesn't really matter in the early game, you can use any damage type as long as you put enough points into the corresponding skill.

Not going to lie, going so deep into Defense that early on seems like a big challenge, but it can work out if you find good weapons. Look out for "Veteran's" or "of Reckless Power" weapons on merchants, once in Egypt you get better max selling prices from vendors and more space, pick up stuff preferring valuable (dual affix) and efficient (jewelry) items to vendor, habitually look for better weapons on traders and blacksmiths. Don't wait too long to drink potions, running away and drinking allows you to beat anything. Good Luck!!!!

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