Phalanx Commander (Petsader) 2.4 TX/Bounty/GR68+
Skills
Items
-
Head
- Warhelm of Kassar
- Stat Priority: Str CHC Skill: Phalanx Socket
-
Shoulders
- Death Watch Mantle
- Pauldrons of the Skeleton King
- Corruption
- Stat Priority: Str Vit AD CDR
-
Amulet
- Hellfire Amulet
- Stat Priority: Physical % CHC CHD Socket
-
Torso
- Aquila Cuirass
- Stat Priority: Str Vit Reduced Elite Dmg Socket
-
Wrists
- Warzechian Armguards
- Nemesis Bracers
- Stat Priority: Physical % Str Vit CHC
-
Hands
- Tasker and Theo
- Stat Priority: Str AS CHC CHD
-
Waist
- Harrington Waistguard
- The Witching Hour
- Krelm's Buff Belt
- Stat Priority: Str Vit AR Life
-
Legs
- Hexing Pants of Mr. Yan
- Stat Priority: Str Vit AR Socket
-
Feet
- Fire Walkers
- Stat Priority: Str Vit AR Skill: Phalanx
-
Rings
- The Wailing Host
- Litany of the Undaunted
- Stat Priority: CHD CHC CDR Socket
-
Weapon
- Baleful Remnant
- The Furnace
- Heart Slaughter
- Stat Priority: Str Dmg % Socket AS
-
Offhand
- Unrelenting Phalanx
- Stat Priority: Str Vit CHC CDR
-
Legendary Gems
Kanai's Cube
5th passive: Holy Cause
Gems: All rubies with a diamond in the helm and an emerald in the weapon.
Cooldown Reduction: 50% is ideal, not much more or less (~2%)
1-Hander vs 2-Hander:
You don't want to use a 1-hander when DPSing with this build, always a 2 hander. After a certain point, additional APS becomes meaningless because of an 18 frame cap on Bowmen. You don't want any more than 3.15 APS when you multiply your character's APS by the Tasker bonus. Considering that you want to be trying to 1-2 shot enemies, the 2 hander is going to be more valuable. 3.15 APS is very hard to achieve without Laws of Valor, so this is why things like Tal's chest, Lacunis, and Strikers aren't included in the gear list. Furthermore, Warzechians are needed for speed and Aquila is needed for toughness. 2.40001 APS is the BP you want to try and reach. Additionally, the decrease in DPS going from a 2 hander to a 1 hander is about the same difference as going from 24f Bowmen to 18f Bowmen.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/15699385989
Overview:
This build is primarily for TX, bounties, and early augment gem leveling.
You are going to want at least 11-12 ancients, around 15k STR, and at least 48% CDR for the build to really start steamrolling TX in solo play.
How fast can the build get? Currently (2/19/16) it beats 3 out of 4 LoN Bomb saders. ;D http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/20418543014?page=1
Gear:
Warhelm of Kassar - 60% multiplicative bonus to avatars
Deathwatch Mantle - Any ancient shoulder could go here, but I like the additional damage from the LoN buffed FoK procs.
Hellfire Amulet - Any well rolled amulet could go here, but the extra passive is nice on the HFA.
Aquila Curiass - This chest lets the build skimp on vitality and go for more damage on TX/GR45-55.
Warzechian Armguards - No need for Iron Skin:Flash with these bad boys, 50% speed boost when breaking stuff.
Tasker and Theo - The legendary bonus is practically the amount of DPS you're gaining. Don't try this build without them.
Harrington Waistguard - In TX and Bounties there's so many clickables, and in 4 player splits, having an immense damage boost really helps out.
Hexing Pants of Mr. Yan - 25% damage boost that's always active because you never have to stop moving.
Fire Walkers - These pack quite a punch with the LoN bonus and are not to be underestimated. They also help open doors and destroy breakables by adding an additional tick of damage under your feet alongside the Steed Charge ticks.
Wailing Host and LItany of the Undaunted - It's a Legacy of Nightmares build.
Baleful Remnant - I like this more than The Furnace or Heart Slaughter for a few reasons. First is that it has a higher APS, making the APS breakpoints and cap easier to achieve. Second, the spawned avatars help clear large packs of trash more efficiently and dispatch single targets faster. They also provide more CC because there are more avatars running around. A purely subjective reason, I like to use the class' signature weapons.
Unrelenting Phalanx - Spawn twice the amount of Bowmen. 100% damage increase on Bowmen.
Cube:
In-geom - Who needs a Swiftmount when you have an In-geom? It is practically 100% uptime on Steed Charge without Endurance at 50% CDR. Additionally, Laws and Akarats come off CD much faster as well, boosting your damage and speed.
Leoric's Crown - Helps get to the CDR goal a bit easier.
Eternal Union - This is more of a quality of life choice. It also extends the life of your Baleful Remnant avatars to 30 seconds. Although you can run Convention of Elements, it's only active 25% of the time, which isn't that helpful when you're trying to one shot everything. Avarice Band is great for gold farming, but you'll be casting Bowmen 3 times as often.
Skills:
Shield Glare: Divine Verdict - This provides a 20% damage boost to all of your, and your group's, damage. It also procs Trapped and deals a small amount of damage that can crit, causing Pain Enhancer to proc.
Judgment: Resolved - 20% increased chance to crit for everyone and procs Trapped.
Laws of Hope: Wings of Angels - This makes you and your whole party move unhindered, 50% faster, and grants a shield which is crucial for swapping to Krelm's in bounties.
Phalanx: Bowmen - Pew pew pew pew pew pew!
Akarat's Champion: Hasteful - Since survivability isn't an issue in TX, more damage is better. With IAS on the weapon and near max IAS on TnT, the Hasteful rune should be all you need to get to the 2.40001 BP.
Steed Charge: Nightmare - Like the Firewalkers, it does quite a bit of damage with the LoN bonus. As mentioned above, it also procs stacks of Firestarter.
Bounty Setup:
Use Steed Charge: Endurance. Use Swiftmount and Krelm's when running to bosses or level 2 clears. When clearing, switch back to 2 hander and Harrington (clear all monsters) or Witching Hour (boss).
Augment Gem GR Setup:
I am now running GR 55s with Nems and Witching Hour equipped, Akarat's Champion: Firestarter, and Laws of Valor Critical. Blast them out in ~2 minutes.
GR Capability, Gear, and Skill changes:
I can do GR 65s comfortably in 10 minutes with near BiS, augmented gear, and I completed a 70 with 2 seconds left. You could probably get to a 72 to 73 at the max if you wanted to fish a little bit and had completely optimized gear. The main issue with the build is that you cannot direct the damage and its survivability is lacking. In the GR build I swapped out to diamonds for all res, Prophet rune for Akarats, Laws of Valor:Critical in place of Laws of Hope, Indestructible instead of Holy Cause, and Furnace instead of In-Geom. I tested Convention of Elements in the cube and it appeared to have more consistency in clearing capability at 67-68 than the Eternal Union. However, without 10 more avatars running crowd control, it was more squishy.
Alternate Considerations:
Laws of Valor: Critical - Use this if you are in a situation where you need more damage instead of mobility. This law really helps if you're shooting for the BP cap of 3.15 for higher GRs. If you are going to use Laws of Valor, always make sure that you cast the Law before you activate Bowmen because they snapshot your APS when cast.
Falling Sword - Not recommended. The only reason to use Falling Sword is the situational mobility of jumping over walls. Other than that, the damage is poor and the avatars from the Rise Brothers rune are less powerful than your avatars from the Baleful Remnant. This is a problem because not all the avatars are able to swing away at a single target. Falling Sword: Rise Brothers has the potential to nerf your avatar damage.
Bombardment - Not recommended. Compared to your Phalanx damage, Bombardment pales in comparison. Take the Impactful Rune, 3320% weapon damage. Sounds good, right? Since the build doesn't run anything that buffs Bombardment, that's about where it ends for the damage. The Bowmen only do 185% per arrow, but let's add everything up. 185 x 2.1 for % Phalanx, x ~1.35 for Enforcer x 1.6 for Kassar helm x 8 Bowmen = 6713.28% weapon damage in a single volley of arrows. Bowmen will fire around 3 arrows per second. And that's only your Bowmen, not including the Baleful Avatars running around. I'd rather take the Shield Glare or Judgment to buff the avatar damage instead. Same goes for using Belt of the Trove, I'd rather buff the avatars for up to 135% bonus damage or add more IAS and CHD than have Bombardments every 6 seconds, which will probably miss most targets since enemies will most likely already be dead by the time they come down. This is the other issue with the skill, the travel time. If the impacts were instant, it would probably have a place in the build.
Zei's Stone of Vengeance - Not recommended. This does not work nearly as well as one might think because it is based on the avatar's distance from the mob, not your distance. The bowmen will not try to be at max distance, and the baleful avatars always have to be in melee. Most trash is dying in one or two hits anyway, so the only enemies of concern are elites. However, since we are using Nightmare and Firewalkers, it is ideal to be making fire trails underneath the mobs for the additional damage and Trapped will proc its bonus for all of your avatars. Additionally, Shield Glare and Judgment also count as cc effects. Aside from the trash you're leaving in your dust, all other enemies will get the full bonus from Trapped. There isn't enough elemental damage to generate diminishing returns with Enforcer. Pain Enhancer is a powerful DoT that will finish off mobs, gets applied by Shield Glare since it does a minuscule amount of damage that can crit, and gets the build close to the APS cap for Bowmen.
Bane of the Stricken - Not recommended. Bowmen don't proc Stricken. Even if they did, this gem is primarily useful in GRs when fighting RGs with limited single target capability. That's fine and dandy, but that is where this build excels, single target. Without stricken, the rift guardians in 67-68 still melt in around a minute or less.
Bane of the Powerful - Not recommended. Due to the additive nature of the gem, it encounters some hefty diminishing returns because of Hexing Pants and Akkhans. It pulls only about 11-12% additional damage instead of 20% because of the other additive sources. Although the 15% to elites is nice, it certainly doesn't beat the bonuses from Enforcer or Trapped.
Paragon Priorities
Movement Speed |
Primary Stat |
Vitality |
Maximum Resource |
Cooldown Reduction |
Attack Speed |
Critical Hit Chance |
Critical Hit Damage |
Resist All |
Armor |
Life |
Life Regeneration |
Area Damage |
Gold Find |
Life on Hit |
Resource Cost Reduction |
Hi, can you think I can use that build to do a Grift 45 with no set (Unicity/CoE) instead ? And in HC, replacing Long Harm of the Law to Indestructible ?
Thx by advance, look cool as Guide
At 15k STR (took out paragon and STR gems), I was able to clear a 45 in 5 mins. I used CoE and an old Untold Secrets with 5 properties. You could probably also use Unity or a physical SoJ. I also replaced Laws of Hope with Laws of Valor: Critical. If I were to replace a passive, it would be Holy Cause instead of Long arm of the Law. If you don't have a Hellfire Amulet, yes, I would replace Long arm of the Law with Indestructible for HC.
Thx for rapid response and advices
This one should be upvoted a lot. Tried the Bowmen build on the front page, but it has too many dead spots, and elites are much tougher to kill than they should be. Switched to this one and the power spike was immediately very high. I love it! One question, do you think Area Damage on shoulders, weapon and shield would make a huge difference?
Edit: I am also using an ancient Vigilante Belt for some extra CDR. It works well since I can't roll the perfect trifecta on the rings.
Thanks for the recognition and the love, Azhid. ;D I'm not sure if Area Damage would make a huge difference since most things aren't usually clumped together that much when you're barreling down the corridors like a banshee on fire, but I imagine that more pew pew couldn't hurt. Area Damage on shoulders is definitely doable in place of all res or vit. Going to update that in the guide right now. I am unsure about dropping the 900-1000 vit on the shield though. I imagine that you still wouldn't be super squish in TX, but I have yet to get a well rolled, ancient AD shield to test it out. Area Damage on the Baleful...ugh, good luck on that one. ;p That is definitely one of the hardest pieces to get to roll well (stupid flail always auto-rolling a socket without guaranteed STR ). Hope that helps answer your question. ;D
Word. I haven't been able to mess around with AD on this build, but it seems like it might help when things are clumped together, as in higher GRs. But I'm sure you're right about not stacking it in favor of more valuable rolls. I also can't get a decent ancient shield, but wow that's some serious bad luck on the weapon. BTW, Fire % found its way on to your shoulders instead of STR and CDR.
Thanks for the heads up on the shoulders, fixed now. ;D
Baleful Remnant is so good though, braindoper. You're telling me you don't want 10k weapon damage per second? ;D Although the Baleful Remnant Avatars don't benefit from %Phalanx damage, they still benefit from everything else, LoN, Enforcer, Trapped, Akkhans, Hexing Pants. I wouldn't be clearing TXs faster than LoN Bombers if it was bad. ;p
What's the alternative, Bombardment: Annihilate with The Mortal Drama? That's 5.7k weapon damage ~9 seconds that isn't buffed by one of your legendary gems. Pick up Belt of the Trove and now it's 11.4k ~7.5 seconds. Let's account for the crit, so Avatars will essentially be doing 6k weapon damage per second since I have 60% crit hit chance. Enforcer brings it up to 8.25. It appears that each Bombardment impact needs to be hitting at least 11 enemies every time in order for the damage to win out over Remnant Avatars. This is the first time I've really tried to do the math on it, but it seems like it checks out since this is what the damage difference feels like in higher GRs when I tried out TMD and Trove with Bombs.
Can you clarify the attack speed break point? Initially you had Firestarter listed here...is that why you dropped it for hasteful? When I go to D3 planner if I have +7aps on weapons +7aps on gloves and +50aps tasker bonus + hasteful I still don't hit the break point. It says I need 4 stacks of Pain Enhancer to reach next breakpoint for bowmen. Is that what we're after or am I missing something?
in D3 planner, do you have the points for IAS in paragon? If you have 50% Taskers, then you need your character's sheet IAS to be 1.61 aps with Akarat's Hasteful up to get the 2.40001 BP.
Ah now I see I misunderstood...I thought you were talking about the phalanx bowmen breakpoint now I see you were talking about the avatars spawned from Baleful Remnant. I did not notice they had different breakpoints at first.
wouldnt it just be better to equip the ingeom and cube the remnant? you get 15% atk spd and cdr which im pretty sure applies to your phalanx and get closer to 100% up time on horsey
Either my 1 hander vs 2 hander section is not clear enough, or you didn't read it. ;p Either way, I might update how it's worded at some point. To answer your question, here we go. ;D
The increased IAS from a 1 hander does make it easier to reach the 3.15 BP for Bowmen, but it is only a 25% increase in damage to Bowmen, nothing else. The Baleful Remnant avatars don't get anything special as far as I could tell, and the Pain Enhancer, Fire Walkers, Steed Charge: Nightmare, and Deathwatch Mantle don't benefit as much from the 1 hander either. Considering that 2 handers can do 73% more base weapon damage (not damage per second which factors in attack speed), many of the other components of the build get a huge buff because they all derive from your weapon damage.
The CDR from the Fervor passive does not make that much of a difference on the Steed Charge uptime. Although it will eliminate the half second of downtime (80% uptime), the practical effect is barely noticeable due to the fact that you are going to be stopping by picking things up and using Shield Glare/Judgment.
tl;dr No. 73% to all skills and effects is better than 25% to Bowmen only. CDR from Fervor won't be noticeable in practice.
I just tested it again to make sure I wasn't going crazy, and I confirmed that they do not proc Stricken. 3rd phase Belial with nerfed damage and long damage numbers on and I didn't see even one additional point of damage accumulate over the entire fight of a few minutes. I believe it's because Bowmen do not have a proc coefficient unlike some of the other Phalanx skills. More importantly, this build isn't meant to be a pushing build, it's a speed farmer. Stricken doesn't have a place due to that fundamental aspect alone.
This is probably one of the best build reviews I have read. +1
If you want a 2.4.2 guide on this same build but with a few updated (well thought out) changes I highly recommend the one Angry_Roleplayer released
http://www.diablofans.com/builds/82553-2-4-2-phalanx-bowmen-petsader-t6-t13-gr70