Maxroll Vessel of Hatred Week 1 Thoughts

Vessel of Hatred expansion and Season 6 Hatred Rising have been released on Octobor 7th! After monitoring the release and patching the expansion with several hotfixes since the Vessel of Hatred expansion launch, Blizzard released the Patch 2.0.3. With that in mind, it's time for the Maxroll Team to share their Vessel of Hatred thoughts, fidings and feedback!

Barb

As expected, Mighty Throw is the new sheriff in town and is outperforming every other build, and the competition isn't even close. What may come as a surprise though is the fact that not only is it the best Barbarian build, it's also a top contender for best build of the season across all classes (except Spiritborn - that class doesn't exist). At the time of this writing, Mighty Throw is rocking a Pit 114 clear, which is the highest known non-Spiritborn clear in Season 6 thus far. With new tech and optimizations being found (literally) every day, rest assured that this isn't even its final form.

Mighty Throw might be the goblin, but what about the goons? The Dust Devil-based Whirlwind and Rupture; Leapquake and Double Swing (you know, the skill you put on your bar just to be able to use Ring of Starless Skies); our former kings Thorns and Bash; Rend... (all right, nobody ever liked you Rend, I'm just gonna say it). All of these builds have one major thing in common - they aren't Overpower builds. For that reason, their initial impressions haven't been great; Overpower damage is, quite franky, just a little out of control at the moment. The current rule of thumb is, if it ain't Overpower, it's underpowered. You heard it here.

In that case, what about Death Blow, Upheaval and Hammer of the Ancients? These are Overpower builds, so they must be good, right? Well, yes and no. Yes because Overpower. No because Mighty Throw exists. The setups these builds use are all extremely similar; often it's just a matter of swapping the main skill and a few tempers and, voila, new build. The hard fact is, they just pale tremendously in comparison to the mighty... might... of Mighty Throw, so it's hard to recommend any of them. In conclusion, sad violin song for all builds that aren't Mighty Throw.

— Snail

Druid

With some of the best parity we've ever seen on Druid, it's a shame that the overall bar is so low. As of the time of writing, 5 Druid builds are within 6 Pit tiers of one another: Hurricane, Boulder, Shred, Companion, and Landslide (ranging from Tier 98-104). Among these, Hurricane and Boulder have risen to the top, likely a result of their ability to better leverage Overpower. As is the case with the top Spiritborn, Necromancer, and Barbarian builds, those that can best utilize Overpower are those pushing the deepest into the Pits. To that point, the reworked Hunter's Zenith has been surprisingly potent for Druids, often rivaling legendary Rings with 50%+ Aspects on builds that either attack quickly or shapeshift consistently.

After the top tier of Druid builds, Pulverize and Lightning Storm both slot as more-than-serviceable options for endgame. Their area of effect clears continue to make them prolific speedfarmers, while their lackluster single target limits them in certain situations. Lightning Storm and Tornado use a similar set of Aspects and mechanics, but the latter does everything just a bit slower or worse after the Stormchaser's tax. There have not been any significant breakthroughs on newcomer Stone Burst, and an Earth Skill without the ability to Overpower will need some help to catch up to the meta.

Perhaps as a byproduct of adjusted weapon damage, Wind Shear with Calm Breeze has been drastically underperforming, even compared to Season 5. It's nearly to the point where this isn't worth recommending for leveling. And, unfortunately, the rework to Greatstaff of the Crone has not proven effective enough to bring Stormclaw back from the grave. However, a build that utilizes Fleshrender may still be in the cards. Stay tuned for more information!

— Boiler

Sorcerer

The shining star of last season, Lightning Spear Sorcerer still remains very strong despite receiving like 4 different nerf. While certainly not as crazy as the old Fractured Winterglass build, new Lightning Spear Sorcerer still retains its insane AoE DPS combined with wide area coverage, auto targeting, and more than adequate single target performance. Curiously enough, the most impactful nerf for the build was a server stability fix that wasn't intended to be a nerf at all. Splintering Energy now can only trigger every 0.2s and any crits from your Lightning Spears that happen during this cooldown instead increase the damage of the next Splintering energy proc. The intended outcome of this change is that Lightning Spear build produces way less damage numbers while maintaining the same DPS, the unintended side effect is that in situations where you're surrounded by enemies on all sides (e.g. Infernal Hordes) your spears can't effectively deal with them and instead end up vastly overkilling stuff in one corner of the screen while dealing 0 damage to the rest of it.

When it comes to other builds, Frozen Orb is also quite strong thanks to the undocumented buff to the Frozen Orbit Aspect. Another build worth mentioning is Fireball Sorcerer which, as it turns out, sometimes deals couple orders of magnitude more damage than it should. Most likely this is a bug but nonetheless it propels Fireball to the very top of Sorcerer builds, next to (or even slightly above) Lightning Spear.

Overall, the class is not in a bad spot, as long as you don't compare it with Spiritborn :)

— Northwar

Necromancer

The Necromancer has been blessed with the majority of its builds occupying S tier and high A Tier status for Pit Pushing and Speedfarming gameplay alike in Season 6. The "stat squish" has had a quirky impact on Overpower Builds, which the Necromancer can effectively tap into on the majority of Core Skills. This leads to MASSIVE Overpower Crits in comparison to the other classes. If you can Overpower, then this season rewards that ten-fold.

1. Bone Spirit, Spirit Wave, Soulrift, Minions, Blood Lance, Blood Surge, Blood Wave and Sever have all cleared above Tier 90 in the Pit. This means any of these builds can "finish" their character by leveling their Glyphs all the way to 100, solo. With many of these build able to clear over Tier 100 with endgame gear.
2. The use of Banished Lord's Talisman Talisman and Bone Spirit to proc Overpower on your next Core Skill is currently elevating previously underperforming builds like Sever. Due to a bug currently, Sever Deals Double Damage isn't functioning, but the developers are aware. That's fine though, because it can still hit for upwards of 3 Billion Damage even in high pit tiers.
3. Sadly Damage over Time builds got the short end of the stick this season. But at least Infinimist has truly regained 100% uptime of Blood Mist, with endgame gear. We're working to push these builds as far as they can go, and to get valuable insight/feedback to the development team, in hopes of getting some much needed buffs.

Our Necromancer team has grown to include Seroc and LordxSaura, who are hard at work testing out some of the leading meta builds for you Necro enjoyers. We're also looking for new tech to bring Bone Spear back from the grave! Look forward to massive endgame updates across our guides as the meta develops!

— MacroBioBoi

Rogue

Spin2Win danced itself right into the hearts of non-spiritborn players and cements itself as the best speedfarming build for Rogue. While it is not the best at Pit Pushing (Rapid Fire seems to be taking that Crown), it's very fun to play and with the new Grenade Tech, it can still comfortably get the Glyphs to 100. While we initially saw Victimize variants, Dance of Knives has fully shifted to Momentum, leaving Victimize for other builds like Barrage and Heartseeker, which are also gaining a lot of popularity.

Twisting Blades is still left in the dust as its previous main scaling tools through Alchemical Admixture and Close Quarters Combat have taking big hits. Flurry however is doing decently well and may also push into Pit 100 once fully optimized. Andariel's Visage is, to the misfortune of many, pretty much dead with it's added internal cooldown. However, Victimize Barrage essentially plays the same way as Andariels Barrage did in Season 5. So for those who enjoyed that build, it is definitely worth a try!

— M1PY

Spiritborn

Spiritborn had a great start with huge popularity and a large variety of top performing builds. Most builds outclass anything that other classes have to offer, especially at the higher end. Unfortunately, a lot of this power comes from two major bugs with the class that were uncovered:

1. Block chance can be stacked to the moon using Max. Resolve Stacks tempers + Interdiction Aspect to buff the damage gain of Interdiction Aspect beyond the 100% block cap. Most builds that aren't based thorns use exactly this combo and are multiple times stronger than intended.
2. Likewise, every single build uses the Viscous Shield paragon node which is also bugged and grants an even larger unintended damage gain by multiplying its effect with the ratio of maximum life vs. base life, making this node ~20-40 times stronger than normal.

Taken together and optimized, these two effects create a gap of x10-30 the intended damage output, making the whole class significantly better than expected for the time being and no other able to compete outside of similar game-breaking bugs. While it's a blast for now, Spiritborn players can already expect the eventual bug fixes, maybe in the midseason patch or in Season 7. However, most builds are expected to still perform really well relative to other classes once that happens.

— Wudijo

What's Next?

We hope you enjoy the Season of Hatred Rising and the Vessel of Hatred expansion with the aid of our Season 6 compendium update. Our focus for the start of Season 6 is to make sure our Build Guides are solid with all the new Item updates, new features and mechanic changes while following vrious Vessel of Hatred hotfixes. We're continuing to work on more updates for D4Planner!

With that said, head over to our Discord to stay up to date with our content development and to make the most of your Season 6 experience! Also don't forget to check out our Youtube channel!

Written by: Maxroll Team