[3.5] (This is a bad league starter) Lancing Steel + Shattering Steel - Deadeye - League Starter

The Champion
New Notable - Master of Metal: 20% chance to Impale Enemies on Hit with Attacks. Impales you inflict last 2 additional Hits. If you've Impaled an Enemy Recently, you and nearby Allies have +1000 to Armour. You and nearby Allies deal 4 to 8 added Physical Damage per Impale on the Enemy.

Added a small passive leading to Master of Metal which grants 15% increased Evasion Rating and Armour, and 8% increased Impale Effect.

The question is how many impales can you stack? Champion will have 40% more impale uptime on the target (7 hits up from 5) and presumably more impales happening from the 20% proc chance. So is the "4-8 added Physical" worth scaling?

On second thought, you probably wont be able to get more than single digit amounts of impale stacks with a skill like Lancing Steel. The first projectile impales, then the subsequent, lets say 7, projectiles proc that stack to completion, stacking 1-2 more impales (20%) while they do so. This seems to suggest the max stack you might reach while spamming Lancing Steel would be around 3-7 (12-56 added Physical).

I feel like dread banner, the champion impale nodes and the champion banner nodes to make dread banner even tastier should end up putting champion above deadeye in terms of potential.

Likely: Conqueror -> Worthy Foe -> Inspirational -> Master of Metal

If Impale ends up being useful at all this should make that mechanic as useful as possible. Being able to avoid stacking accuracy due to having Worthy Foe is helpful as well and since you're going with Beltimber Blade (especially now that it's even better) you will already have Far Shot which means as a deadeye you would have one wasted notable no matter if you want to get to endless munitions or, which is far more likely, ricochet (since you want to avoid pierce with lancing steel which makes chain relatively tasty).

Furthermore Rupture doesn't seem like a good idea with the Steel skills since they specified Impale Damage is considered reflected damage, meaning it will not contribute to bleed and it won't cause bleed either, so there really is no bleed synergy.

Welp. I'm a bit shocked right now. too many changes on the patch notes. I'll respond with a proper plan in a bit.

I actually don't think worthy foe is worthwhile. The fortify nodes are better I think because if your playing around far shot then keeping up fortify becomes much harder. The fact is your not going to be going crit with this build anyways so grabbing RT is not really an issue as it is not far to travel anyways. I know our BIS chest piece is probably Lioneye's Vision which should be super cheap as long as some streamer doesn't wreck it for us.

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Phaze50 wrote:

I feel like dread banner, the champion impale nodes and the champion banner nodes to make dread banner even tastier should end up putting champion above deadeye in terms of potential.

Likely: Conqueror -> Worthy Foe -> Inspirational -> Master of Metal

If Impale ends up being useful at all this should make that mechanic as useful as possible. Being able to avoid stacking accuracy due to having Worthy Foe is helpful as well and since you're going with Beltimber Blade (especially now that it's even better) you will already have Far Shot which means as a deadeye you would have one wasted notable no matter if you want to get to endless munitions or, which is far more likely, ricochet (since you want to avoid pierce with lancing steel which makes chain relatively tasty).

Furthermore Rupture doesn't seem like a good idea with the Steel skills since they specified Impale Damage is considered reflected damage, meaning it will not contribute to bleed and it won't cause bleed either, so there really is no bleed synergy.

Impale not bleeding is fairly irrelevant, we don't expect to do damage with the bleed, it's just to proc the life gain on hit and crit effects from rupture.
More of an issue might be inconsistency of inflicting bleed, especially if you don't travel to razor's edge (And I wasn't planning too). Haemophilia gloves probably not worth it either. Be fine for single target, will have so much attack speed they will be bleeding almost instantly, but might make clear a bit less consistent.

Thoughts based on the patch notes.

- Champion is almost certainly stronger single target and tankier (This was probably true before the patch anyway). Deadeye should still be faster clear though. Gladiator may be somewhere in the middle.

- Beltimber got a damage buff, not a huge difference really. Looks like it may be rarer though and restricted to higher tier guardian fights (Unless Grelwood is the rarer drop). Might be more expensive.

- And Beltimber is really the only good accessible dual wield option (Well Ewar's for levelling I guess). Scaeva might be ok, but it's slow and doesn't give any specific bonuses. Crafting may be easier this league though for a basic phys weapon.

- Might just skip dual wield nodes until later though, go sword/shield until I can get decent weapons/Beltimbers.

- Trees I'm looking at don't go to Marauder, so no razor's edge. Bleed chance is quite low for rupture. Single target would be fine.

- Chest wise, unless something unannounced comes out, loreweave still looking best, then maybe yriel's fostering. Daresso's looks more usuable now too - used to love that thing. A nice elder crit to attacks and 120+ life roll chest would be nice too, but would get expensive.

- If single target is bad, we should still have the crutch of vaal double strike (Or maybe Vaal spectral throw as discussed)

So, think I'm sticking to deadeye - mainly because haven't played one for a while, and have done champion recently.

I may actually be playing with my Guild in a private league though, we are planning on doing shared stash/intra league trading, but will still make gear a bit harder to come by. Yet to decide.

Actually, screw it. Going to go with Daresso's Defiance (Assuming it hasn't gone too rare). Zoom Zoom Dodge.

I'm really torn on deciding on what to go now. Champion is pretty interesting and I enjoy leveling a duelist more than ranger.. ugh

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mortimermcmire wrote:

"Beltimber Blade now has 185-215% (up from 170-190%) increased Physical Damage."

Okay then!

not sure if champion changes bring it above deadeye tbh

After patch notes:

-- Beltimber Blade buffed but also became more rare, so I wont expect people to get them. I'll look for alternative options.

-- Champion is now the impale ascendancy. However, I think Deadeye is still better for faster leveling and clearing (tailwind + chain + additional proj + 50% AOE). Especially without beltimber, farshot is nice. Champion is probably better for endgame bossing like vs Shaper, but I wouldn't worry about that for league start.

-- I'll stick to the original plan of leveling the Deadeye, then respeccing (with ~25 regret orbs) into a lancing steel - Cast on crit - ice spear build.