I feel responsible for you farming this.

Firstly, it's exactly like I said in my other post. I consider an Unleashed dual-wield back bar the optimal setup for some of the Endless Archive builds I've been doing, notably for templar, but also for other classes that have an AOE gap closer. Nightblade may work (Lotus Fan), and sorc works with Streak. How much difference does it make running this versus a 2H? I don't know. Half an arc? Who knows. I only ever got to the middle of arc 5 solo, so that's what my builds do. They get to that point reasonably quickly, but won't go much further, or at least not in my hands. Point is: This is what you're looking at. A few extra rounds, maybe, from having a fully optimised build. No more and, of course, on average. There is huge variability due to archive RNG. In other words, if you have the 2H and don't want to farm Castle Thorn, I would dive in with that.

Also, weren't you considering warden, or was that someone else? In case of warden you would build entirely differently. You'd handle the slime blobs with Crystallized Slab, and you'd probably want to use the Ice Furnace / Heartland combo to build towards Focused Efforts instead.

Secondly, why farm alone?

Anyhow, I ran some tests on my 2 DDs, magplar and stamina arcanist. It took me about 1/2 hour to complete the dungeon on either. The second boss seems the trickiest alright, due to the fact that you may get hit with a DOT, or something similar to a DOT, when the knight add comes up. I think this happens when you don't kill the imps very fast. You can play the mechanics perfectly, like Code says, and you probably have to do that to some degree. That said, I didn't feel the pressure at all on my templar, who ran Iceheart / Hexos Ward / False God (light armor), and kept up Living Dark and Channeled Focus in addition to healing from Sweeps and gap closing to the imps. No Pale Order or healing from CP.

Things were initially not as good on my arcanist. I could play my full DD gear for the rest of the dungeon, but not for the second boss. I was using a mixture of offensive and defensive skills, including Pragmatic Fatecarver, Cruxweaver Armor, Resolving Vigor, and Blade Cloak, but the DOT or the boss killed me, even after switching to a tankier setup that used Hexos Ward and Aetherial Ascension (no Pale Order). It was only after adding some extra health and health regen by switching to gold food (from blue) and Strategic Reserve, that I beat the boss. This is not to say templar is better than arcanist, only that I didn't have the right build ready on my arcanist.

If you wanted to stick with sorc, my first question is: Were you using Crit Surge. I don't rate Pale Order all that highly anymore. I would keep it alright, but Crit Surge, Hurricane, and something else like Caltrops to keep it proccing can go a long way.

Blocking the second boss works with my sorc, that I can do

subarctic wrote: »

Have managed to solo the first three bosses, but any trick I can use with my sorc to beat Talfyg? For me, he’s the most difficult boss, with his heavy punches. He kills Bastian who is level 18, not yet having ultimate skills.

Well, if you're relying on a companion, there's two things you might do to improve his efficiency, if not already:

1. Wear Telvanni Efficiency and combine that with all Quickened gear. This will knock his skill cooldowns down by a combined 80%.
2. Wear Pearlescent Ward.

Not at the same time. It's one, or the other. If you wear Pearlescent Ward, you're counting on Bastian to die. This, then, gives you 33% damage reduction. I don't know whether these sets fit into your build. In particular, if you're running a heavy-attack sorc, you have to use very specific sets for that playstyle, such as Sergeant's Mail + Noble Duelist + Oakensoul...

Telvanni Efficiency sounds interesting, but I already run legendary Perfected False God and legendary Mother’s Sorrow with Pale Order and my two pets are set to healing + hurricane, critical surge and hardened ward. Use bolt - to quickly kill imps and escape from the second boss - but the combat area of the fourth boss is too small to bolt around.

Worth it to exchange gold perfected False God with purple Telvanni Efficiency?

I've soloed normal with a heavy attack mag sorc in sergeant's mail, allesian plate, one monster and oakensoul.

subarctic wrote: »

Telvanni Efficiency sounds interesting, but I already run legendary Perfected False God and legendary Mother’s Sorrow with Pale Order and my two pets are set to healing + hurricane, critical surge and hardened ward. Use bolt - to quickly kill imps and escape from the second boss - but the combat area of the fourth boss is too small to bolt around.

Worth it to exchange gold perfected False God with purple Telvanni Efficiency?

So what is your full build? Off the top of my head, if you have two healing pets, Hurricane, Crit Surge and Hardened Ward, then you only have 3 other slots for attacking skills and your damage is likely very low. You possibly have a bad build or playstyle. Solo builds are about attacking and healing from attack, e.g. basically healing from Pale Order + Crit Surge, and those skills only. If you actively heal and shield to survive, you don't progress the fight. You will run out of resources and die. As a rule of thumb, attacking skills are cheap, defensive skills - especially burst heals and shields - are expensive. If you have to use the latter outside of emergency, you are not attacking enough and you will die. If you use lightning heavy attacks a lot, then you should make a virtue out of that and wear specialised heavy attack sets, that will tremendously amp up your damage with such a playstyle, instead of False God and Order's Wrath.

Also, don't gold out your body gear thinking False God and Order's Wrath are the be all / end all sets, or that gold body gear is noticeably better than purple. Neither of those things are true. Golding out weapons is useful. Golding out anything else is a waste of money. I recommend selling the Dreugh Was to the super rich and financing your other activities from the proceeds. There is no be all / end all gear in this game. Everything is situational, build-dependent, and there are meta shifts that can turn old gear into trash. The two sets you're wearing are unlikely to be subject to such meta shifts, to be honest, but then again neither are they outright meta. Maybe for a (non Endless Archive) solo build, but ... eh. I'd take Hexos Ward over Order's Wrath, for example, and for a heavy attack build you'd need altogether different sets.

As far as companions go, they are IMO useless for serious content. They frequently do counter-productive things, such as separating the wrong mob from the trash pack you want to kill, unless you constantly direct them. They die to AOE. Their ability cooldowns are far too long. You can significantly improve companions by stacking Telvanni Efficiency with some Quickened, but I investigated that for a week, after watching the above YouTuber, and I still found them too inconsistent to beat a good non-companion build.