Season 4 has some great content in the Dungeons! It was very enjoyable to explore the new mechanics. New, fun challenges await if you love dungeons!
Guide to Season 4
By Porch
What I have discovered so far is the start of some methods to overcome the dungeon changes. I am sure lots of other folks will come up with some more core strategies.
New Characters
Note: There is always a chance characters get buffed by the Devs.
DPS Legendaries
The bad news is, no legendary DPS characters are an improvement over previous season legendaries with the following exceptions:
Orfenna does help out thunderbolt with creating better damage, especially towards single target.
Majtan (Single Target) and Paixton (AoE) are not bad at applying Burn if you do not have Karf.
Other Legendaries
- Calavera is the Season’s Continental Reward, a melee healer – and AWESOME.
- Perseus is a single target god. You can manually target his ulti if you want.
- Astaion is made for PVP but really good in PVE.
- Yfeir is neat but PVP. His clones get a portion of his health and defense.
- Maashtur is neat, but PVP / Single Target
- Halramar is PVP but usable. The Bird “Dark Cloud” is not targetable.
Overall Legendaries TL/DR
- DPS Legendaries not great.
- A couple of them are amazing.
- The Supports and Defense characters are good for PVP.
- Calavera (Season Legendary) & Perseus + Astaion are the ones to chase from the Banner.
Epics and Rares
- Nadja is better than Gerthin slightly, and better than Miro.
- Note on Miro because I am seeing people mess this up: Miro is gonna be better than Gerthin with both at 100% crit and same attack/crit damage – but you don’t build Gerthin that way. You build her with 80% crit and more crit damage / attack. Be warned before you scroll Miro.
- Roberta’s damage isn’t bad, so thats another AOE for Ice Blast.
Thalorian is a good Dauntless DPS for triggering Ivellios and Schaltar – but very, very swingy and inconsistent. Nimbus was similar but more consistent.
Pearl is alright and has some uses.
Deeno and Bronagh are Fine but nothing super amazing.
Ylindra is awesome and they should have put her in s1.
Anything else I haven’t had a chance to test yet, or figure out a place for them where they excel.
Overall Epics/Rares TL/DR
Get ’em all.
Note: It looks like Nadja and Pearl come from Pillars/Fey Chests.
Fire Domain
Inflicts WAY more burn stacks. Also inflicts more burn stacks if you’re shielded. Also removes shields with the ulti.
Use debuff prevention. You can skip the staff on Garius if you want to use him. Iceblast eats through this boss instantly.
Lit Domain
Kill the spawns. This thing does WAY more damage now, but the random buffs are awful. Buffing yourself is very helpful too.
Like fire, if you just overwhelm the boss with damage (Iceblast!), he’s not hard. Ulti removal and ulti slow helps too.
Frost Domain
Gets a lot of shields, and removes your buffs and applies buff prohibition.
Fru or Garius teams work great. Wild, Burn, Dauntless work, and Id imagine tbolt would work if you love Tbolt. If the shields get out of hand, use a shield remover. Shield before the prison/ulti.
Domains overall
Ice Blast should carry you through Fire and Lit, while you’ll want your best DPS team that is not Necro or Ice for the Frost domain. They are harder, but manageable.
Venom
Pure tank and spank. Line everyone up to target the boss. Use single target, use aoe, do it all. Break shields, go through shields, doesn’t matter. Harpy is in front this season.
Mechanics changes from s3: See screen shot. Makes shields, but breaking the shields on the Harpy or the 4 orbs does damage to the Harpy. The damage reduction is not as bad as it looks, you still do damage.
It is a good idea to apply 2+ debuffs to the harpy so it targets your tank, but the fight is doable without it.
Curse
Big Changes
Finally, Stangeum and all of the Control Immunity characters are useful.
All you need to do is get rid of it’s buffs, apply debuffs, and use control immunity before the ulti and it is an easy fight. Victor and Stanguem make this fight fairly easy even at 3 affinity. Add 1 healer, 2 DPS, and you’re good.
You need to do both, or the boss super speeds up and outpaces one or the other of the buff removal/block and control immunity.
Timing is the issue, you may need to manual this for a while until you have the right gear.
The other good news, if this does not change from test: HP%/DEF% Ancestral is back for s4!!!
Rot
This is the bad news
It’s easy, smooth sailing through 8.
Then at 9, the corrosion at 50% from the attached screen shot kills everyone. The damage just becomes un-mitigatable, you cannot heal fast enough to get rid of the corrosion, and everyone dies by 2nd/3rd round even with the best healers in the game. Most squads lose their tank or half their team at the 2nd skill. I was unable to find a prime positioning.
The solution? Fast damage. Very fast damage.
Unless this boss gets nerfed, you’re going to need a less than 40 second DPS team, someone who slows down the boss’ ulti speed/removes ulti energy, and some heals.
I used shadow, corrosion works, dauntless was close, ice blast was close, burn was close. With better gear than I have on test, I think Dauntless/IB/Burn and maybe a few others will work here.
The good news is, outside of an anti-stun chest, nothing is needed from Rot until late game.
Note: I spent a large amount of time trying to figure out solutions to Rot 9.
Heretical
One major change from s3: The big bird heals from damage while invisible.
Your options are: Buff block or remove invisibility. Ignore it and go for high damage, aoe or single target.
Just DPSing the small birds down and letting the fight take its course works just fine.
Ancient Battlefield / AB
Rejoice, the Damage Reduction is GONE. Fast damage squads work again. He just shields himself now.
My first team I was able to beat AB 9 was really weird – Quaes, Ylindra, Zharloth, Feenja, and Aspalta.
Mostly: Ylindra (buff removal), some ulti manipulation and slow down, attack down, and a healer was key.
Not a difficult fight as long as you make sure you put the boss into backfire, deal with the buffs, and use attack down.
Artifacts & Gear
The Quick, Short, TLDR Version
Artifacts
- Pact with the Devil is awesome.
- Chest of Radiance is awesome.
- Conch is neat but is not going to be a replacement for Witch.
- Punisher whip will be neat against the bosses who shield but not necessary.
- Poison of swamp is amazing and adds 30% crit rate. Testing done, I love it.
- Matriarch’s Gem is awesome (Formerly Epic, now Legendary, does not cost a dupe legendary)
- Sundial and Lost Pearl are alright, but not sure if its worth a dupe and would be something I would grab way later.
Gear Sets
- Emissary is great for everyone.
- Dominator does best for Shadow and Dauntless.
Undead currently does not work in PVE. It is unknown if this is a bug, or only works in PVP.
If nothing changes from test:
- Ancestral on Tanks.
- Cyril on debuffer.
- Unclean seems about even to Emissary on Derivative DPS.
- Silence set is useless compared to stun set.
- Monelisse is still viable where needed.
- Oasis is bad and sort of non usable.
Same mythics as S3.
Vortex
Unfortunately I go out of town on vacation on Sunday for a week, so we’ll have to check out what the CC’s come up with.
From what I saw from Ragewood, Gorax, and a few others, there is selectable buffs you can choose, but we’ll see how it helps shape up other DPS specs vs Corrosion. I think Tbolt might actually do better this season.
The Future
San Ramallan – the OW zone, looks really cool compared to previous seasons. I have faith once the deal with Tencent is done, a lot of really good work is going to go into this game art wise and story wise. I know a lot of us are not thrilled with S3 and S4, but as the deal works out, I think we have a lot to look forward to.
W.I.P.
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