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Guides AE / Re: Breaking Titan Quest AE xMax on all 36 Professions - Hardcore (0 Deaths)
« on: 01 December 2017, 10:46:44 »
Hardcore Run Class: Conqueror
My primary character and flagship profession. It’s easy to build, brain-dead to play, and very strong. A good boss farmer, SP runner or farming anything that is melee-based.
Build Concept & Source of Damage:
- Sword & Board Tank
- Onslaught, Shield Passives, Colossus, Battle Standard, Sapros
Personal Class+Build Tier Rating: 5 out of 5; God-Tier (cookie-cutter)
Difficulty Rating:
Early Game (1-45): 3 out of 5 Early Game
Late Game (45-65): 1 out of 5 Late Game
Normal to Legendary Completion: 3 Days, 2 Hours, 11 Minutes
Kills: 93,052 Kills
Level Finished: 65; (150,000 kill requirement finished at level 67)
Class Notes:
Personal Challenge Equipment:
Myrmidon's Pendant [main]
Ritual Amulet of Immortality - Tortured Soul (L) w/ Ritual Mod [optional swap]
Hale Ring of Immortality (2) - Dionysus Wineskin (L) w/ Bleed Resist Bonuses
Hallowed (any helm) Legends/Immortality/Mastery - Crystal of Erebus (L) w/ 20% Resist Bonus to All
Legionnaire's Breastplate
Purifying Ismene’s Bracers Alacrity - Pristine Plumage (L) w/ Bleed Resist Bonuses
Resistant/Hale Revenant Greaves of Pegasus -
Sapros the Corruptor (2) - 2 copies for weapon switch
Aionios (main shield)
Any shield -% damage x creature type (switch shield) - situational
Glorybringer (greater artifact)
Equipment Notes:
At first glance, my personal equipment choice is a bit weird, and admittedly this is NOT the BiS gear you would want. You can throw in a mix of powerful 2-affix MIs like Stonebinder Cuffs of Guile and Veteran’s Alcyoneus’ Breastplate to give you a massive stat boost in just 2 items (making your remaining slots more flexible), plus giving you a whooping ~40% Chance to Avoid Projectile (CtAP) to address one of the main weaknesses of the class making your Conqueror more OP. However, in my case, I chose my equipment set-up based on a single factor: eliminates the need to gear swap or re-relic for specific areas/boss fights. Making my choice of gear more of a personal preference for convenience rather than efficiency and necessity.
Myrmiddon’s Pendant gives a massive bonus to a lot of important resists, including secondary and tertiary ones. This item just makes the character balanced as a whole, and since my goal is to avoid any need for gear/artifact swaps or re-relics. This item is best suited to do just that.
2 Hale Rings of Immortality is a no-brainer. As I’ve mentioned, this profession scales well solely of HP and STR. This makes you the tanky destroyer this class was meant to be.
Any Hallowed Helm with a Suffix. Vitality Resist and + Skills which are both good things. However, we want to be able to socket the item for Crystal Erebus w/ the multiple resists bonus. This item along with Aionios and Myrmidon’s Pendant, will take care of the bulk of your resist needs.
Legionaire’s Breastplate is a very solid pick, considering that it’s not too hard to come by. It gives a massive flat DA bonus, +skills, and a generous bonus to your Pierce resist, which is one of the more important stats overall for a Conqueror in xMax (Act 3 Dragonians/Act 4 Machaes); making it an inferior version of Alcyoneus’ Breastplate, which can roll with an Impenetrable (for 1 piece pierce resist gear) or Veteran’s (DA % bonus) prefix and a Glade (% CtAP) for your suffix.
Ismene’s Bracers is a very easy farm with a relatively decent drop rate. Getting a Purifying one shouldn’t take you ages to farm. The main purpose of this item is to protect your Conqueror from one of the known hardcore challenge enders in the game for melee: Yaoguai. With non maxed bleed resists, even with 60% damage absorption from a maxed colossus + flat damage reduction from Unbroken Fortitude scrolls, 3 Yaoguais stacking that AoE burst will cause that 9-10k HP to melt like cheese in a microwave. My chosen relic + item is will basically make this slot address not only Yaoguai (bleed), but also the Cerberus and Hydra fights, which are similar in nature on non-maxed poison resist toons.
Revenant Greaves’ only purpose is +skills, having foregone SBCs, the +2 skills modifier on your Crystal Erebus, or a +skills amulet like “Sacred”, Bronze Heart of Talos or Aphrodite’s Favor, you need the get those +skills from somewhere. Considering my choice of equipment in other slots, the best roll you can hope for on this item is added resists.
Aionios is the probably one of the notable OP items in Titan Quest pre-Anniversary. Even after the 20% nerf on all resists across the board, I still consider it to be the best shield in the game. You just can’t find another item like it that will give you a massive bonus on multiple stat line. Comparable to Demonskin Walkers for mages and Aphrodite’s Favor as an amulet in general.
Sapros, the Corruptor is still my recommended weapon of choice, regardless of the massive nerf (-25% HP). Since this profession will most likely be built with a massive HP pool. It’s able to take the ~ -25% HP hit. With my gear and all the HP quest rewards, my HP pool is at 10k+ with the debuff active. In exchange for the HP handicap you get a massive Attack Damage Converted to Health % bonus (ADCtH), and FLAT reduction to resists bonus (increases your damage multiplicatively; refer to the official forums for the exact math), both of which are very strong stats to have in general
Glorybringer Artifact is chosen for the creature damage reduction (Undead & Demon):
Biggest Threats/Potential Challenge Enders (Highest to Lowest Threat):
Progression & Recommended Grinding Routes:
Performance in Ragnarok:
Level Finished: 85
*Given that this is main xMax farmer and one of my 2 only level 75 toons, Ragnarok XP curve boosted it to level 84 right of the bat.
Completed Ragnarok Hardcore: Yes
Difficulty Rating in Legendary: 2 out of 5
Threats:
- Very few that bothered me. There was only 1 instance where in my HP hit critical level, and that was at the last area of the game where there were packs of Dark Elves. Their damage was off the charts.
- There were a couple of times that my HP reached half-way but this was mostly because I was speed running the content while still exploring, which meant I was taking a lot of unnecessary damage with 0 sustain.
- I have read that there are some very nasty damage reflect critters in Yggdrasil and Valhall, but I didn't really want to test that out firsthand with an actual hardcore toon. I didn't linger much in the area and I just completed the story line.
Possible Improvements to Existing Build/Setup:
One of the weaknesses of Conqueror is the lack of CtAP options except on equipment, and while this can be resolved with a large HP pool. This is weakness proves especially true in Ragnarok because there will be swarms of projectiles. I had to stock up on a lot Arrow Dancer scrolls while traversing the lands just to mitigate as much projectile damage intake I was receiving.
Like I mentioned, the Equipment setup I went for is not optimal. However, it's just the most balanced I could get to addressing all resists, while maintaining a huge HP pool. Equipping a Veteran's X of the Glade armor with a x of the Glade gloves and a Knot of Isis, would probably take it back to Easy Mode. I just had too much pride to resort to doing this, which is why I didn't have as much of an easy time as I would have if I did.
In terms of Boss fights, there was nothing really that hard worth noting. None seem to pose the same 1-shot capability or heavy sustained damage as that of Barmanu, Bull, Hades Ball, Typhon Thorns or even the 3 Mino Lord Bosses had.
My primary character and flagship profession. It’s easy to build, brain-dead to play, and very strong. A good boss farmer, SP runner or farming anything that is melee-based.
Build Concept & Source of Damage:
- Sword & Board Tank
- Onslaught, Shield Passives, Colossus, Battle Standard, Sapros
Personal Class+Build Tier Rating: 5 out of 5; God-Tier (cookie-cutter)
Difficulty Rating:
Early Game (1-45): 3 out of 5 Early Game
Late Game (45-65): 1 out of 5 Late Game
Normal to Legendary Completion: 3 Days, 2 Hours, 11 Minutes
Kills: 93,052 Kills
Level Finished: 65; (150,000 kill requirement finished at level 67)
Class Notes:
- A Very Low Maintenance Character; the efficiency of the class will scale well off STR and HP.
- IMHO still is most effective when played 1h+shield
- 1 of the more tankier classes, 2nd to a melee Templar in terms of Sturdiness and 2nd to melee Champion in terms of HP pool (when following a 2:1:1 distribution STR/DEX/VIT)
- Recommended to build with High HP, High STR, 1100-1400 DA, Balanced Resists (~50% or more across the board), and it will make this toon very, very, very hard to kill. While this is true for most classes, the class has easy access to high armor rating, high armor absorption and Defensive Skills (Adrenaline, Quick Recovery and Rally), and AoE crowd-control panic button (Warhorn) and 2 massive damage reduction skills: Colossus (+% damage absorption and massive +% HP bonus) and Battle Standard (long duration AoE -% damage received).
- OA is not a big issue for the class despite being a melee class, I ran mine with a natural ~600 OA buffed by the Warfare passive to ~700. Having Onslaught on your 1-hander, will ensure that your Warfare and Shield passives will clear out hordes of monsters with relatively mediocre OA.
- I consider Conqueror as one of the highest-tiered profession in the game. Given that any class can become OP with Stellar gear, Conqueror, along with Haruspex, Harbringer, Templar can do relatively well in this challenge without BiS gear.
Personal Challenge Equipment:
Myrmidon's Pendant [main]
Ritual Amulet of Immortality - Tortured Soul (L) w/ Ritual Mod [optional swap]
Hale Ring of Immortality (2) - Dionysus Wineskin (L) w/ Bleed Resist Bonuses
Hallowed (any helm) Legends/Immortality/Mastery - Crystal of Erebus (L) w/ 20% Resist Bonus to All
Legionnaire's Breastplate
Purifying Ismene’s Bracers Alacrity - Pristine Plumage (L) w/ Bleed Resist Bonuses
Resistant/Hale Revenant Greaves of Pegasus -
Sapros the Corruptor (2) - 2 copies for weapon switch
Aionios (main shield)
Any shield -% damage x creature type (switch shield) - situational
Glorybringer (greater artifact)
Equipment Notes:
At first glance, my personal equipment choice is a bit weird, and admittedly this is NOT the BiS gear you would want. You can throw in a mix of powerful 2-affix MIs like Stonebinder Cuffs of Guile and Veteran’s Alcyoneus’ Breastplate to give you a massive stat boost in just 2 items (making your remaining slots more flexible), plus giving you a whooping ~40% Chance to Avoid Projectile (CtAP) to address one of the main weaknesses of the class making your Conqueror more OP. However, in my case, I chose my equipment set-up based on a single factor: eliminates the need to gear swap or re-relic for specific areas/boss fights. Making my choice of gear more of a personal preference for convenience rather than efficiency and necessity.
Myrmiddon’s Pendant gives a massive bonus to a lot of important resists, including secondary and tertiary ones. This item just makes the character balanced as a whole, and since my goal is to avoid any need for gear/artifact swaps or re-relics. This item is best suited to do just that.
2 Hale Rings of Immortality is a no-brainer. As I’ve mentioned, this profession scales well solely of HP and STR. This makes you the tanky destroyer this class was meant to be.
Any Hallowed Helm with a Suffix. Vitality Resist and + Skills which are both good things. However, we want to be able to socket the item for Crystal Erebus w/ the multiple resists bonus. This item along with Aionios and Myrmidon’s Pendant, will take care of the bulk of your resist needs.
Legionaire’s Breastplate is a very solid pick, considering that it’s not too hard to come by. It gives a massive flat DA bonus, +skills, and a generous bonus to your Pierce resist, which is one of the more important stats overall for a Conqueror in xMax (Act 3 Dragonians/Act 4 Machaes); making it an inferior version of Alcyoneus’ Breastplate, which can roll with an Impenetrable (for 1 piece pierce resist gear) or Veteran’s (DA % bonus) prefix and a Glade (% CtAP) for your suffix.
Ismene’s Bracers is a very easy farm with a relatively decent drop rate. Getting a Purifying one shouldn’t take you ages to farm. The main purpose of this item is to protect your Conqueror from one of the known hardcore challenge enders in the game for melee: Yaoguai. With non maxed bleed resists, even with 60% damage absorption from a maxed colossus + flat damage reduction from Unbroken Fortitude scrolls, 3 Yaoguais stacking that AoE burst will cause that 9-10k HP to melt like cheese in a microwave. My chosen relic + item is will basically make this slot address not only Yaoguai (bleed), but also the Cerberus and Hydra fights, which are similar in nature on non-maxed poison resist toons.
Revenant Greaves’ only purpose is +skills, having foregone SBCs, the +2 skills modifier on your Crystal Erebus, or a +skills amulet like “Sacred”, Bronze Heart of Talos or Aphrodite’s Favor, you need the get those +skills from somewhere. Considering my choice of equipment in other slots, the best roll you can hope for on this item is added resists.
Aionios is the probably one of the notable OP items in Titan Quest pre-Anniversary. Even after the 20% nerf on all resists across the board, I still consider it to be the best shield in the game. You just can’t find another item like it that will give you a massive bonus on multiple stat line. Comparable to Demonskin Walkers for mages and Aphrodite’s Favor as an amulet in general.
Sapros, the Corruptor is still my recommended weapon of choice, regardless of the massive nerf (-25% HP). Since this profession will most likely be built with a massive HP pool. It’s able to take the ~ -25% HP hit. With my gear and all the HP quest rewards, my HP pool is at 10k+ with the debuff active. In exchange for the HP handicap you get a massive Attack Damage Converted to Health % bonus (ADCtH), and FLAT reduction to resists bonus (increases your damage multiplicatively; refer to the official forums for the exact math), both of which are very strong stats to have in general
Glorybringer Artifact is chosen for the creature damage reduction (Undead & Demon):
- Machae Archers in xMax is not a fun experience. They may deal less physical damage compared to pre-Anniversary due to the fixed STR scaling, but thanks to the new scaling of poison and bleed with DEX, the damage gained pretty much makes up for the one lost; they still hurt like hell.
- Since 100% completion means going into every dungeon and cave, it means gambling with chance to spawn Toxeus, who incidentally killed 5/7 of my challengers that had the misfortune of meeting him in Legendary pre-Anniversary. It literally takes 1 second to realize you got tombstoned by his non-SP form.The damage reduction will help lessen the chances of getting spiked down before you can react, it will still hurt like hell but I’ll take +% chance to survive of 0 any day.
Biggest Threats/Potential Challenge Enders (Highest to Lowest Threat):
- Empusa + Machae [Legendary] - Tread carefully whenever you see a mix of Empusas and Machae. This is lethal for melee toons that have no easy access to CtAP. Soul Empusas will drain your low energy pool fast and when that hits 0 you will be stripped off your buffs. Frozen Empusas will freeze you in place and leave you very vulnerable, while Defense Mastery offers reduced reduction to freeze, 2-3 seconds of being unable to cast anything will leave you dangerously open. Machae archers’ damage output needs no introduction and is one of the most annoying enemies in xMax Hardcore. The worst case scenario is for you to get frozen under an energy drain AoE with Machae archers pelting you. This is the sole reason why I would advise newer players to swap to a Ritual Amulet on top of Glorybringer (for the ~50+% demon damage reduction)
- Barmanu [Legendary] - Whenever, I enter this boss fight I always use Scale of the Black Dragon for the -25% Beastman damage. When stacked with Colossus’s 60% Damage Absorption (max +4), -% Damage debuff from Battle Standard and ~9-10k HP, you are guaranteed to survive an Ice Shower as long as your Cold Resists are in the positive. However, if you happen to get stunned and take a 3x synced Ice Shower, that’s game over for you; which is why I disengage multiple times upon agro to desync the 3 Barmanus and pick them of 1 by 1. The less showers you have to deal with the better.
- Yaoguai [Legendary] - Keeping in mind that I chose Ismene’s Bracers over Stonebinder’s Cuffs just shows how much I respect the damage output of this guy. In xMax, I never face tank all 3 at any given point in time. I kite around the ring till I take down at least one. A synced bleed spike will most likely kill you.
- Typhon [Normal] - Your first test as Conqueror. His showers are lethal, His Life Leech attack on top his sustained damage from his cast spamming of flame breath and lightning bolts will trigger your Critical HP level several times. His thorns do not pose too much of a threat in Normal. Fighting Typhon xMax Normal without cheesing him at ranged + 200 potions is actually difficult especially when untwinked.
- Polyphemus [Normal] - Very difficult to handle 3 Polys at the level you meet them in. Anything that hits you will do MASSIVE damage. What’s worse is that he has a stun attack that leaves you wide open to lethal attacks. 2 synced wave attacks will come close to killing you, if not outright ending the challenge. xMax Poly is a general problem to most melee Hardcore Challengers without access to ranged spells or some form of Kiting+Damage skill.
Progression & Recommended Grinding Routes:
- [Level 1 - Parnasus] The hardest part of this challenge for Conqueror is the Early Stages, primarily before you get access Pulverize. You’re going to have to act out of role early and resort to ranged to pick off mobs. This will be the same with Nasus, Polyphemus and Early Gorgons. I recommend using Snowball as it is highest damage range weapon you’ll have access to Early game. Combine that with 2 Poisonous Rings at Level 8 and you will literally one-shot everything that is not a boss. Very convenient as you will be swarmed in xMax and is very easy to die with such a small HP pool.
- [Level 13-19; Pre Gorgons] Once you get access to Pulverize, you can level opt level Armor Handling enabling you to wear Epic and even Legendary quality Greens or Yellow Armors that will mitigate most of the early game damage, until you fulfill the requirements to wear your end-game setup. Also put 1-2 points in Colossus to for boss fights. Continue using Snowball, as you are not ready to engage the world with Pulverize alone. Remember that Pulverize has been nerfed, almost 50% damage nerf of its former pre-Anniversary form. It’s damage output early is pathetic, without enough STR and Hamstring debuff from the Warfare tree.
- [Level 19- 24; Gorgon Grind] Having dealt with your survivability, I highly suggest to grind out your Warfare Mastery. With the mastery giving you much needed STR points and HP, it just improves your character faster. Develop your Onslaught Tree and your Battle Standard and 1 pt on Warhorn.
- [Level 24-35; Breezing through Act 1-3; Pre-Typhon] Play as is, you should have no problems with anything up until Typhon
- [Level 35-40; Typhon Farming] You’ll have maxed Pulverize, a fairly developed Onslaught tree, Battle Standard w/ Triumph and some maxed Shield Passives. Ready to take on Typhon on Normal and farm him till you are sick of him, which is basically the first challenging encounter for a Conqueror in xMax Hardcore. Once you get past this point and grinded out Typhon runs, you’ll hit level 45 in no time enabling you to equip most of your gear setup.
- [Level 45-50; Hades Farming] Farm for XP to hit level 50, this enables you to wear all your equipment and most Divine Artifacts and access to Legendary tiered Scrolls (if you need to use them)
- [Level 50-60; Epic] Steamroll
- [Level 60-7x; Legendary] Steamroll... but play with caution.There is no worse feeling than losing a character due to cockiness. Making retarded decisions like running head on and agroing a full screen of Empusas and Machaes only to get snagged by a freeze ball = auto GG.
Performance in Ragnarok:
Level Finished: 85
*Given that this is main xMax farmer and one of my 2 only level 75 toons, Ragnarok XP curve boosted it to level 84 right of the bat.
Completed Ragnarok Hardcore: Yes
Difficulty Rating in Legendary: 2 out of 5
Threats:
- Very few that bothered me. There was only 1 instance where in my HP hit critical level, and that was at the last area of the game where there were packs of Dark Elves. Their damage was off the charts.
- There were a couple of times that my HP reached half-way but this was mostly because I was speed running the content while still exploring, which meant I was taking a lot of unnecessary damage with 0 sustain.
- I have read that there are some very nasty damage reflect critters in Yggdrasil and Valhall, but I didn't really want to test that out firsthand with an actual hardcore toon. I didn't linger much in the area and I just completed the story line.
Possible Improvements to Existing Build/Setup:
One of the weaknesses of Conqueror is the lack of CtAP options except on equipment, and while this can be resolved with a large HP pool. This is weakness proves especially true in Ragnarok because there will be swarms of projectiles. I had to stock up on a lot Arrow Dancer scrolls while traversing the lands just to mitigate as much projectile damage intake I was receiving.
Like I mentioned, the Equipment setup I went for is not optimal. However, it's just the most balanced I could get to addressing all resists, while maintaining a huge HP pool. Equipping a Veteran's X of the Glade armor with a x of the Glade gloves and a Knot of Isis, would probably take it back to Easy Mode. I just had too much pride to resort to doing this, which is why I didn't have as much of an easy time as I would have if I did.
In terms of Boss fights, there was nothing really that hard worth noting. None seem to pose the same 1-shot capability or heavy sustained damage as that of Barmanu, Bull, Hades Ball, Typhon Thorns or even the 3 Mino Lord Bosses had.