This is not intended to be a directive or order to gear or play a certain way but more to provide some insights into how players are Min/Max their gear to make clearing mutations and specifically high level mutations possible. Once you get to M6 you need a GOLD finish to unlock M7. Getting that gold finish even with a well balanced, very familiar group where the group is progressing together and not being carried is quite challenging. The M6 Gold to progress to M7 has been elusive for our static groups for weeks.
This past week we hit a wall. The groups we been working with doing M6 content. We hit a literal face plant wall in M1 for the new expedition. We out geared in some cases the gear requirement by 602 vs 625. On paper, the numbers we should be dealing more than 120% more damage and taking less than 90% due to GS scaling. Our results? Our groups still got punched in the face, kicked in the crouch and sent packing. Part of that was strategy but part of that was also damage intake from the mechanics.
We had experienced veteran players dying in 625 gear because we couldn’t survive the damage being dealt to us.
The solution? As sad as it is to say. It was throwing the baby out with the bathwater. In our groups we literally went back to the drawing board. Replaced our entire armor set where it didn’t have corrupted ward perks. Ignored weapon perks and bumped it as high as we could. The result we had gear sets 10-15 gear score levels lower than what we did the first attempts. Our lowest GS was 611 and highest was generally 622 which was our tanks who had ward/perk sets already. The DPS tended to be in the 612-618 range. Healers were both kinda lower teens.
On paper GS scaling should of made us deal 10% less damage than in our better gear and take 10% more damage.
The reality… damage taken was more than halved.
Damage output was as good if not better.
How? Why?
Defensively, wards and gems interact. Attacks that deal void damage coming from a corrupted creature are subject to both absorbs both the 25% ward and the 30% void for a total of 55% reduction before you even factor in any fortifications you might have. You just can’t know how big of a deal this is until you actually try it in an instance like Depths on M1. You go from mine’s chunking half to three quarters of your health to literally almost no damage at all.
Offensively, not worrying about your life constantly opens up more DPS windows and lets you play a little more seat of your pants. you get more DPS uptime and fewer deaths so less DPS lost. You also can drop a full armor weight and still be as hearty as you were before if not more so. Light DPS across the board becomes viable. Some mechanics still require attention but most stop being as punishing.
I’d highly suggest developing ward sets for each dungeon type - it’s not a race - it will take time. You can’t craft these because you can’t force two perks. It’s something you have to farm, collect, and watch the TP for but it is very rewarding when you get it together.
If your on the fence and you have the tempest sets… throw it on use your current weapons don’t bump it just go in as is with gems. see if you notice a difference.