Struggling with surviving in act-2 with warrior. Any tips?
I hardly ever get armor upgrades as drops and still have some rares from act-1. I made a beeline for giants blood on the passives and got lucky with a rare two handed mace with reduced strength requirement. I am running one two handed mace and one handed mace (thanks to giants blood). So my damage is pretty good, but the various spell casters (necromancers, serpent magi) etc. are ruining my day. I am level 24 right now and my build is around leap slam to build up stun and bone shatter to do aoe damage. For bosses I build up stun with mace strike, then stun them with bone shatter, and try to get as many perfect strikes as possible when they are stunned.
What can I do for better survivability? Should I perhaps switch to a shield and two handed mace? My resistances are not great? Can I target gear to get better resistance? Are there any ways I can target improve my armor? Is crafting the way to go given I hardly ever get armor appropriate for my warrior (lots of dex or int armor pieces drop for me)? Any other tips to survive a few hits?
Comments
Some advice friend: bone shatter and leap slam aren’t gonna get it done. No way you are killing bosses with those two skills if you have giant blood already. That’s with gods hammer equipped. Chances are you have mana problems and get stuck in mobs when you can’t leap and they lock you down while casters and ranger blow you up?
I would recommend dropping giants blood until you have your second titan ascendancy. You don’t feel the strength requirements now, but you will when your dps falls off in act3. I felt the best with some INT and armor/es gear on. With GB you have to spam strength until deeper into the tree. Grab a shield and run a one hander with your preferred skills only active on your other weapon set. Meaning put perfect strike on the two hander only. Switch back to your sword and board with auto attacks or whatever.
The best defense is a good offense. Kill them fast, worry about nothing. Change out your leap slam for rolling strike. Rolling strike has a mechanic where you can cancel it into other attacks after the first slam. Can also just cancel out the second half of the attack. With a couple of stun nodes you can use the first half of the attack to combo into bone shatter. Like press bone shatter as you land the first slam. It can cancel into almost every other skill. Press the opposite direction of movement to cancel out the second slam. For bosses just spam rolling and perfect strike. Use this method if you don’t want to use a shield.
If you want a shield, use totems. At lvl 24 you should be able to get 2 up at once without a support gem. Keep pathing for three by around 28-32 and you are good to go. Same area of tree as giants blood. Focus the damage nodes for totems then attack speed of totems. Finish with the health Regen. Keep in mind totems don’t scale off weapon damage. Meaning no matter how good your weapon is, totems will do what they do. Big hammer with a pocket perfect strike of course. Unless you have +5 to melee skills on your gear, the totems won’t outperform perfect strike on bosses but will give safe and comfortable trash clear. The boss damage is still good with three totems up. Just not optimized perfect strike damage. Take martial tempo and any general damage boosting support gem on them. As far as perfect strike, window of opportunity and the 40% damage to low health enemies will get every boss in one or two hits at half health.
Overall the build I recommend is this: rolling slam with ancestral boost support and stun/damage support of choice, warcry with corrupted blood support, bleed and rage on auto attacks, perfect strike with window of opportunity and the 40% damage to low life. Slot in totems(what I personally run) if the play style suits you and you can get +melee skills on really any hammer, preferably two one handers at that stage of the game.
Armor/es gear is your friend. It takes a bit of investment but you can always change travel nodes back to strength later. Two INT nodes and a INT roll on a piece of gear and you are gold. Don’t focus on resistance. Just don’t get hit. Throw on two lightning res rings and act boss is food. Just one and you can honestly face tank him first phase.
And watch your support gems. Most int gems don’t apply cost multipliers but most strength gems do at this stage of the game. Hope this helps.
2 hander and shield
you can swap weapons so use your 2h for trash or big hits and keep a super defensive shield on. Look to stack armor, life, resist and str. Also, the playstyle tends to be - Left click(melee) and hop in and out of the bosses range.
Leap slam and bone shatter will do more than enough for clear if you use a 2H + shield. For bossing use Perfect Strike until you get Hammer of the Gods.
Frankly, I had a hard time keeping up with the Str requirement while leveling so there are times I just used a one handed with the shield to clear and weapon swap to 2H for perfect strike
While doing the campaign I never worried about resistances. Just spec a little into armor and block if you’re using a shield to make yourself a bit stronger. I never struggled leveling my Warrior so youre likely just missing a few things and it will be a lot easier.
If you shared your build it would be easier to help
im wrecking act 2 no warrior, and i can bet no one is building like me. literally my build will come online with 2nd ascendancy but my warrior is a beef cake and a dps machine.