Warrior/Knight Apocalypse Melee Build

Well, here I am again, back with another Warrior build xd I just recently got my hands on an Apocalypse (thanks @Dalarn) so I was looking for a good build for it. Turns out, all I could find (maybe 12 pages of class builds going back to 2016 posts wasn't enough searching?) was either JackyKit's outdated Apoc/Cancer build or variants of it, or people asking for an Apoc build. But Cancer has gotten a stat change since those builds, and its -500% melee damage doesn't work well with Apoc at all.

This build also resembles most generic melee builds (like Flameshot Hilt), but you can solo LI with this build (have yet to test with no skill/hp pots). Also a lot of updated (aka post-Cancer change) Apoc builds I see on the forums use double Breezehands ●, which it seems that it only boosts the melee DPS up by 1k (and to Very Fast tier), but you lose out on a lot of elemental defense along with negative melee dmg stats.

Anyway, this build uses a LOT of items that aren't the easiest to obtain for a lot of people, totalling at three Hive items and one LI, corrupted dungeon, and Mythic item each. Hopefully at this point if you have a Mythic you should have at least done the Hive a few times. .-. Click on the ● to see item IDs or builds.
All builds here have been made for a lvl 100 Warrior.

ALRIGHT ENOUGH TALKING AND GET TO THE BUILD ALREADY

Centipede ●
Yeah, pretty obvious since it's basically the only helmet that can replicate Cancer’s tier buff but without negative melee %. To get this helmet, you have to run the Corrupted Lost Sanctuary (CLS) 8 times, which can be tedious and possibly expensive. A small downside to this helmet is it has no powders slots, so you can't put T6 Fires on it.

Chestplate of Ineptitude ●
Also pretty obvious since Centipede and CoI go hand in hand practically. Also since Centi already reduces your spell percentage damage to -1000%, the -spell on CoI doesn't affect anything at this point. It's also good because it doesn't have any skill point requirements. Put T6 Fire powders on it for Endurance.

Hephaestus-Forged Greaves ●
These Hive leggings give really good elemental defense plus the stats give health regen (if your ls isn't enough), bonus Fire damage and defense, among many other good stats. Again, put T6 Fires on it for Endurance.

Gaea-Hewn Boots ●
The second piece of Hive armor, these boots highly increase elemental defense and melee % damage with a bonus 25% fire damage. Add T6 Fires on this as well.​

Spoiler: Optional/Substitutes

Vaward ● ➸ Gives no bonus elemental defense, but gives a lot of extra skill points, which you may need if you tweak this build.
Heat Sink ● ➸ Requires a lot of sp into Agi, but it gives good fire damage and more fire defense (but lowering all other defenses.)
Fire Sanctuary ● ➸ Requires another 7 CLS runs, but they give +85% fire dmg, which buffs Apoc’s dmg TREMENDOUSLY. Gives only fire defense, so you lose rainbow defense. Highly recommended if you want to do a lot more dmg.
Charcoal ● ➸ Gives +15% fire damage plus earth/fire defense. Unfortunately it has -35% water def, which can really hurt.
Corrupted Nii Mukluk ● ➸ The fire dmg and defense are so good, only problem is it has low health (lvl 78 item) and only +fire defense. You have to run the CLS to get them, which may not be worth it to run the dungeon for 2-3 items from there.
Fermion ● ➸ You should have enough skill points to be able to use these. +60 rainbow defense along with mana regen and some other positive stats.
Nether’s Scar ● ➸ They give good fire damage and poison bonuses. They use more sp into Strength, but you should have enough sp to make adjustments to use these. Downsides are the negative health regen (which is countered by Heph-Forged) and the negative water defenses which can bring it into the negatives. Not recommended unless you have no other option.

Prism (x2) ●
Doesn't really matter how many skill points you have on these, as long as it's not a 5sp one. Mostly used for +40 rainbow defense and extra skill point boosts.

Prowess ●
The last Hive item, it gives a good skill point boost when first putting on the armor due to only having to put 15sp into each to put on the Dia Fusion and subsequently both Prisms.

Diamond Fusion Necklace ●
I always find it weird when people make “Solo LI Builds” to farm tokens, yet you have to have an item FROM the thing you're trying to beat. Anyway, here I am, a total hypocrite using Dia Fusion. Honestly this thing is so overpowered (pls no nerf thx), because it gives +5sp to all AND +15 rainbow defense (like an Altum Spatium combined with Prowess.) A solid choice for almost any build.

Spoiler: Optional/Substitutes

Facile ● (x2) ➸ Skill point boost just without the added elemental defense Prisms give.
Diamond Solar Bracelet ● ➸ Gives +14% fire dmg plus all positive stats. Good for boosting melee dmg, but not so much for tanking.
Diamond Fusion Bracelet ● ➸ If you don't need the extra skill points Prowess gives, you can use this to give +60 rainbow defense plus +12% to all elemental defense.
Nebulous ● ➸ Cheaper alternative to a Dia Fusion, gives a little worse defense, but still works well for tanking.
Insulation ● ➸ Basically the poor man’s Dia Fusion, except with slight negative spell/melee % damage. Still gives decent defense though.
Jiandan Handwraps ● ➸ Really good melee % and raw dmg, plus a health boost. No elemental defense.
Stellar ● ➸ Gives +25 rainbow defense, great melee % dmg, but no skill points.
Shatterglass ● ➸ Can boost melee % up to +14%, at the expense of -10 all elemental defense and a few negative stats.

Apocalypse ●
Well duh. That's literally what this entire build is about. Since Centi + CoI give +3 tier attack speed, Apoc hits at Normal speed, instead of Super Slow. Try to get a good exploding/life steal one, they definitely help out when attempting to solo the Orange Wybel/Cybel. Also put T6 Fires on this. If you don't have enough T6s for all your armor and Apoc, it's WAY more important to have T6s on the Apoc. The Courage buff is insane.

Spoiler: Optional/Substitutes

Ignition ● ➸ Poor man’s Apoc with a higher skill point requirement. Does less damage, but with T6 Courage, you should still be able to solo a good number of bosses; only downside is it'll take a lot longer and you may not have the time or health to fight for many minutes. You can also use T4/5s on this if you can't afford T6s, but with worse dmg results. According to WynnData, Ignition paired with these same armor/accessories does 4.5k DPS at Very Fast.
Rikter ● ➸ You could try to put fire powders on this, but you'd probably be better off using Quake on it, and/or using a completely different build.
Braker ● ➸ Not sure you’d want to use this since it drops your health by around 2k and walk speed by about 50%, but it doesn't require any skill points and it has good stats. It also gets tier buffed to Very Fast doing neutral damage.
Bob’s Mythic Spear ● ➸ Really not sure why you'd be using this at lvl 100 but yeah, Very Fast tier plus neutral (or T6 Courage.)

WynnData Build
➸ Since Apoc is at Normal tier attack speed, it does around 6k melee DPS, or 2-3k per hit. With the T6 Fire buff, Apoc can do up to 10k DPS (4-6k per hit) and fire-weak mobs/bosses take around 10k per hit. (If I can math correctly, that's basically 18-25k DPS on fire-weak mobs)
➸ All elemental defense is positive, rainbow, and above 200 (which isn't the best by a long shot), but for the damage it does it tanks pretty well. It also has 70 sp defense, which puts it over the 50% damage reduction. Using a lvl 95 fire skill potion will give you an extra +71 defense, making you nearly invincible to a lot of mobs, including Death Metal and Robob.
➸ Since item stats differ, WynnData says with perfect stats you have an extra 45 skill points; I only have an extra 25, but it still gives you room to spare if you switch out armor pieces or have bad sp IDs.
➸ As your spell dmg % is in the high negatives, Uppercut is completely useless and is a waste of mana (and your mana costs are also pretty high.) Bash is nearly as useless, except for the fact that it “breaks their legs” and slows mobs. Charge can be used but not spammed due to the -4 starting cost. War Scream will deal no damage but is still useful for the defense/attack potion effect and pushing mobs away.
➸ Heph-Forged and Centi give a total of +44% walk speed, which can come in handy when you don't have good mana costs for Charge.

DISCLAIMER: This is a rough estimate, and most likely not anywhere close to accurate. Basically shows how freakin' expensive things can be, but hey, I don't know market prices anymore. xD

Apoc build cost: 55.5-75LE, hours of grinding classes to finish the Hive 3 times, plus however many stacks for Apoc itself.

Spoiler: Cost Breakdown

Cost of buying enough T6s for armor/weapons: at least 10 powders, or 40LE (Assuming T6 prices are at 4LE per.)
Cost of getting Centipede: around 48EB per CLS key, or 6LE to obtain Centi. (Assuming broken CLS keys go for 20EB per, and Nii runes for 7EB per.)
Cost of Apoc: 3-8(?) stacks, depends on stats and rerolls.
Cost of Hive armor: doing the Hive at least 3 times which probably meant a lot of money into pots and failed Qira attempts. Going to assume a minimum of 2LE was put into this.
Cost of CoI: Most likely max 5LE unless it has godly IDs.
Cost of double Prisms: 5-20LE (not sure on max bc 18sp Prisms aren't needed)
Cost of Dia Fusion: however many skill pots you used (32EB-2LE)

Ignition build cost: 17.7-52LE; more if you use the Hive armor or have to buy different armor.

Spoiler: Cost Breakdown

Cost of 9 T4s for armor/weapon: 3.4LE.
Cost of 9 T5s for armor/weapon: 13.5LE.
Cost of Centipede + CoI: 7-12LE
Cost of Ignition: 1-4LE, depends on stats.
Cost of double Prisms: 5-20LE (not sure how much on max bc 18sp Prisms aren't needed and are pretty expensive)
Cost of Dia Fusion: however many skill pots you used (32EB-2LE)

Spoiler: Boss Fight Times

Taken from my chat log on 2/1/18, this shows how fast you can solo LI with health pots and some skill pots (I’m sure people who are less laggy than me can do it a lot cleaner with less skill pots.) Time starts from when their “bad guy monologue” appears, to when I said I killed them. Proof 1 Proof 2
Mummyboard: [08:21] - [09:16] = 55s
Virus Doctor: [09:44] - [11:10] = 1m, 26s
Corkus Accipientis: [11:13] - [12:50] = 1m, 37s
Matrojan Idol: [12:56] - [16:36] = 3m, 40s
Yahya Bot V4.04: [16:49] - [22:55] = 4m, 6s (you can’t really speed this one up)
Death Metal: [23:18] - [24:16] = 58s
Mechorrupter of Worlds: [24:26] - [25:35] = 1m, 9s
Robob’s Reinvention: [25:54] - [27:01] = 1m, 7s
Orange Cybel: [27:42] - [30:23] = 2m, 41s
Dr. Legendary: [30:34] - [32:04] = 1m 30s (this one’s a bit wonky because I stopped hitting it on the 2nd form and forgot it had a 3rd)
Total minutes: 19m, 9s

I really don't know why no one else has put this build together (probably bc it's expensive as all heck or there's a better build that I've never heard of), but it works very well for me. I put probably way too much time and effort into thinking of all this stuff, but I hope someone can get some use out of this. Honestly I can't believe it even works as well as it does, since 95% of my builds are absolute trash. If you have any suggestions or build variants, please post them here and maybe I can be the next @Madkurre with too many build variants. Check me on my math, I did a lot of this when I was like, half-asleep so yeah. Thank you for reading!

Spoiler: Build Variants

The only build I've personally tested in-game is the original build. These are all theoretical builds that look good on paper, but may be terrible or unusable in-game.
(Best Dmg) Fire Sanc + Jiandan ●: Look. At. The. DPS. With all positive defenses. You lose a lot of rainbow def (highest is 480~ fire) and you only have 7k hp, so you have to kill mobs quickly and strafe a lot.
(Fire Build) Fire Sanc + Charcoal + Dia Solar Necklace ●: It has almost 800 fire def, but has negative water defense. With over 100% Fire dmg, along with high melee %, that gives it 7.6k DPS.
Jiandan + Stellar ●: Increases Apoc’s melee by 1k~ DPS (compared to original build), but sorely lacking in defense due to needing Vaward for more sp.
(Balanced) Jiandan ●: Does 500~ less DPS than the +Stellar ver. but is a lot tankier. Best of both worlds?
(Cheaper) Ignition T5 ●: Basically if you can afford everything but the Apocalypse. 4.5k DPS at Very Fast tier.
(Cheapest) No Hive/LI Ignition ●: Not great (under 10k hp), but still positive (but really low) elem def for a lot cheaper and does around 4k DPS at Very Fast.. Substitute Morph-Ruby for Clock Amulet for sp if your Vaward is terrible. This probably shouldn’t even belong here; someone pls make it better ;_;

​

 

I love how much work has been put into this for a build thread xD

good stuff^^

 

Hey, if I'm gonna make like 1 thread a year, might as well make it look nice, right? Quality over quantityyyy

 

i fucking hate melee classes never tag me in a melee class build thread ever again
the build itself is just your normal tier stack with double hive and rainbow slap accessories

 

:( but clicky clicks on mobs :(((

 

My lord you always put in loads of effort when it comes to threads ;D

 

but painmaker is a melee build

 

no u

 

oh shit im a melee build

 

How many pots do you use?

 

When I did that run, I used 2 of each pot except Intel (like I said, I was going overboard and wanted to finish it as fast as possible to help someone stuck in Dr. Legendary), but I've done it multiple times now, and I've found that you only really need 2 def pots (1 if you don't get hit much), and only one strength/agility pot if you just want to do it faster..
Pot once before the Corkus Accipientis (unless you're a pro at avoiding the golem stage), and the pot should carry through to the Idol. Pot once after Yahya (also pot str/agi for faster results), and if you do them fast enough, you're able to finish Dr. Legendary right before the potion timer ends.