3.28 - Updated | Banner Slammer | SSF & SSFHC | T17/Nightmare Viable

Have you tried this? Just got it put together on gsf with the cry cdr axe and my damage feels sooo much lower than last time, no way thats the Earthshatter nerf right? I might just be missing something silly but a pinacle took forever when i was just deleting them before.

Just curious of your thoughts if you started this build this league

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mrcoolchillguy#3936 wrote:

Have you tried this? Just got it put together on gsf with the cry cdr axe and my damage feels sooo much lower than last time, no way thats the Earthshatter nerf right? I might just be missing something silly but a pinacle took forever when i was just deleting them before.

Just curious of your thoughts if you started this build this league

I'm playing it with Perforate this time around as it is a massively underrated skill and arguably is better than Earthshatter in every way. Currently in T16s SSF and still crushing. I do not yet have the axe either, so I am missing a tremendous amount of damage.

Earthshatter and the autoexertion nerfs resulted in Earthshatter losing about 40% of its damage at least up front until 7-linking or until you have a successful volatile vaal orb roll. Other slam skills are now better as detailed in the original post - higher damage effectiveness. Earthshatter still has shotgun potential in tight maps, but that's about it.

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seikikoo#3400 wrote:

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mrcoolchillguy#3936 wrote:

Have you tried this? Just got it put together on gsf with the cry cdr axe and my damage feels sooo much lower than last time, no way thats the Earthshatter nerf right? I might just be missing something silly but a pinacle took forever when i was just deleting them before.

Just curious of your thoughts if you started this build this league

I'm playing it with Perforate this time around as it is a massively underrated skill and arguably is better than Earthshatter in every way. Currently in T16s SSF and still crushing. I do not yet have the axe either, so I am missing a tremendous amount of damage.

Earthshatter and the autoexertion nerfs resulted in Earthshatter losing about 40% of its damage at least up front until 7-linking or until you have a successful volatile vaal orb roll. Other slam skills are now better as detailed in the original post - higher damage effectiveness. Earthshatter still has shotgun potential in tight maps, but that's about it.

Thanks for the reply! so it turns out it was something silly like I thought. I am kinda stupid. I had 50% chance to hit lol I thought my banner was carrying my accuracy. But but on RT and started leveling precision and it's a lot better. Lol


I also gave perforate a try and I like it! Def gonna mess around with that a bit more.

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mrcoolchillguy#3936 wrote:

Thanks for the reply! so it turns out it was something silly like I thought. I am kinda stupid. I had 50% chance to hit lol I thought my banner was carrying my accuracy. But but on RT and started leveling precision and it's a lot better. Lol


I also gave perforate a try and I like it! Def gonna mess around with that a bit more.

Haha. Yep, that's why I use Precision + Arrogance. Precision for base and to have 100% hit chance under ordinary circumstances (pretty easy since we have +% aura effectiveness on ascendancy/passives), scaled up by Arrogance further, and then War Banner's big accuracy % buff after you drop it with valor stacks usually results in more accuracy than life that Champion can normally achieve, meaning Precise Technique also flips on, which turns into a huge damage steroid on top of War Banner. I don't actually path out to Resolute Technique, but I'm sure it's a fine stopgap until you have a high enough level Precision.

Keep in mind that if you do maps with -accuracy mods or aura effect, this can make your accuracy lower than your life, meaning Precise Technique doesn't turn on. For this reason, I do tend to keep a level 20 Precision and why I do like having a little accuracy on my gear if I can help it.

Switched over from KF totems to banner slammer again because I wanted to try out Bloodsoaked Banner eventually. Banner slammer is so much more comfortable to play than KF totems. Wish I would've switched sooner. Even doing 60% less damage this league it's still better than KF totems and has comparable damage.

So far I just tested Bloodsoaked Banner in the basic Uul-Netol banner build and switched my helmet with a +2 duration, +2 aura Honourhome to bring the Banner from level 4 to level 8 and Defiance Banner to 27 for the next break point. I put Defiance and Dread Banner in the helmet and imbued Swift Affliction on the Dread Banner (which also applies to the Defiance Banner) and used Brutality as the final actual link. All that basically just makes it a 6-link worth of damage and still lets you fit in everything. (Not worth at all, Gull is just better when wearing a shrine belt.)

I'm wearing a gloom/massive shrine belt and if you walk very slowly you can see the banner pop stuff on its own which is fun but it's not really doing anything meaningful. I'm not convinced if you built around the banner and quadrupled its damage that it would be more fun to play than just playing the slammer. I suppose it doesn't hurt to leave the Bloodsoaked Banner in if you have extra sockets since there's no reason not to.

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DiabloImmoral#7632 wrote:

Even doing 60% less damage this league it's still better than KF totems and has comparable damage.

I will just say that my current version of the build does the same if not more than last league relative to the level of gearing I am at. Things are going good, and I am excited to see how much more damage the build has now due to the coins of power and some optimizations.

Been trying perforate in the campaign, it feel's really inconsistent with the damage and the blood stance version is basically worthless when I thought it might be good single target. Do you just always stay in sand or is there a learning curve?

edit: damage in sand stance was user error, but blood stance still feels iffy?

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AwildJames#3903 wrote:

Been trying perforate in the campaign, it feel's really inconsistent with the damage and the blood stance version is basically worthless when I thought it might be good single target. Do you just always stay in sand or is there a learning curve?

edit: damage in sand stance was user error, but blood stance still feels iffy?

If you are playing Perforate, the skill asks you to make some decisions. Kind of like how physics students ignore air resistance and talk about spherical cows, let's talk about the skill while ignoring impale scaling. At level 20, Perforate has 622% damage effectiveness. Each single blood spike hit is 155% damage effectiveness after the 75% tax.

4 spike hits in blood stance (common before quality): 622% damage effectiveness. This means for blood stance to do more damage than sand, it must hit at least 4 times.

Now, lets say you have full quality, then you find ways to give yourself LESS area of effect without hamstringing your sand stance AoE in order to better control Perforate spikes. This is why I doubled down on stances (to further conditionally either expand or contract my AoE) specifically for Perforate, but do not use it on other skills. Now you are having 6 spikes hit per swing: 933%. Clearly 933% is better than 622% when hitting a single target. Now add in some impale scaling magic when you're putting out multiple smaller yet still significant hits that can readily clear out previous impale scales, things change.

On my current character, after doubling down on stances and going impale, plus the somewhat significant scaling effect of blood stance's effects on enemies after non-curse aura effect scaling, the difference between blood stance does 2.33x more damage than sand stance.

In the campaign, you have probably not built around these considerations yet, so Perforate's colors do not yet show.

Man, your ability to convey info is just excruciatingly good. I recall reading most of the responses after your thread and that you were iterating on a v2 with perforate as the new main skill, but didn't see a link to it anywhere. Happy to wait if that's still in the works, I'll keep experimenting on my own. I'll be doing a build PL with some guildies and I think this will be the build I take in!

Thanks for all the hard work Seiki