Weekly Community Discussion (07/02/2020) - Build Terminology

Cool, it seems Kio already covered most of the style terminology, although I'd like to add or change some things:

Sustain (Damage Upkeep) : For spell builds, this means how many spells you can cast, using a combination of mana regen, mana steal, intelligence and spell costs. Having sustain is very important, as consistent damage is easier and more effective than occasional high damage ones, plus having the added benefit of being able to use crowd control-like spells such as Ice Snake much more iften. Good sustain is different for all classes, but ideally you'd want to be able to keep spamming spells without ever running out of mana (for those unaware, the cost of spells goes up by 1 every time you can the same spell in a row after the second time, by "spellcycling" you can manage to keep the costs of spells under your regained mana).
Sustain (Melee): Sustain (when talking about melee builds, sustain gets used for both spell and melee since it's often obvious which version you mean) is the amount of health you can regain when meleeing. Melee builds are usually much closer to the mob than spell builds are, and as such can't rely on health potions as well- you almost always want some amount of life steal or health regen in your build. A good standard to keep is that life steal is roughly 3 times as effective as health regen, seeing as it procs about once ever 4 seconds instead of the guaranteed health regen every 10 seconds; and a sustained amount of regained health is more useful than health regained in bursts. The third less obvious way of melee sustain is by using Old Keeper's Ring, which allows you to also heal, but is also quite situational, so consider what the goal of the build is when using it.

-slap: Builds that seem like they were made by searching one id on Wynndata or certain items used in places they don't really belong (often skill point items) are considered __slap. If someone calls your build a slap of something, you probably need to look at your item options again- or prove them dead wrong, of course.
ETWFA or any combination of these letters: Ever since master hive armour went tri-elemental, we tend to use the first letters of the elements to indicate which ones the build are using, and are often put with the weapon as a short description of the build. Keep in mind that it is illegal to not use do it in the order of ETWFA.
Also, neutral is used for non-elemental things, rainbow is used for all element things, and penta-element is used for builds that are technically rainbow but don't use any rainbow items.
-stack: Literally the same as slap except it's an approved spam of id, which only really happens as (spell) rawstack on mage and (melee) rawstack on super fast melee builds seeing as that is sometimes just the better way of making that build lol
tier: also used in place for attack speed bonus
i might add a list of full abbreviations used but i'm kinda busy right now

Standard Spell (Regen Spell, Spellspam): Just the standard spell builds, often TWA, TWF, WFA, EWF and even EWA at times. They use mana regen for damage sustain/upkeep.
Hybrid: Spell builds using mana steal (and nearly always with slower attack speeds) to get damage. Usually EWA, TWA, TWF or TFA
True Hybrid: A version of hybrid where both spell and melee damage are decently high, only realistically done through using heavy melee or poison items. (EWA/TFA)
Heavy Hybrid: The above, except specifically done with heavy melee items. (EWA/TFA)
Fast Hybrid: Also true hybrid, but it uses faster attack speeds (usually with raw melee), which is considered to not be very good for hybrid as it requires you to go to insane cps just to keep both melee and spell damage up. (EWA)
Mixed Mana: This is how I'm used to calling spell builds with no clear preference of either mana regen or mana steal. (Usually EWA or TWF)
Spell-Capable Melee: Where you have some intelligence and/or mana on a melee build, often associated with heavy melee (since it tends to have high mana steal), but it works for any classes that have useful spells, so Mage, Shaman and Assassin (heavy melee only). (Usually locked to ETF, EWA or rainbow)
Heavy Spell: More of a concept than a real playstyle, but it would use high spell costs with insane damage, but low sustain. Only existing example is Hadal- if you'd remove the intelligence and mana, that is.
Burst Spell: Another style that is barely a thing. It allows you to spam spells at high damage- for very short bursts at a time. The only item that does this is Lunar Spine, through very big negative mana regen but massive mana steal. Spell builds without intelligence or spell costs usually fall under this as well. (no archetypes, just lunar spine)
Spell Cost Spellspam: Although not necessarily different from any other spell builds, this uses spell costs to lower the mana cost per spell, and with not many items actually having good spell costs at the moment, the builds are quite different from standard spell builds. (TFA)
Tierstack: Oh god, finally a melee playstyle. Tierstack uses items with attack speed bonus to boost the attack speeds of weapons with a natural low attack speed to easily get high damage. (ETA, ETF, TFA)
Rawstack: Taking an already very or super fast weapon, and throwing as much raw melee on top of it as you can. Works for many archetypes, but it's only the main focus for EFA.
Heavy Melee: Using gear with high melee and raw melee damage but high negative tiers to make you attack extremely slow but with extremely high damage. Special shoutouts to Assassin which can vanish between melee hits for stupid amounts of damage. ETF is the main heavy melee archetype but it works for others too.
Cancelstack (Downstack/Upstack/Tiercancel/please just call it cancelstack so we can agree on something thanks): Where you use weapons with a resulted attack speed of above super fast (Overdrive, Skien's Madness, Nona, etc.) and some armor with high raw melee but low negative tiers (see heavy melee leggings slot) to get super fast with tons of raw melee. Kind of a strange buildtype that doesn't always work, but is very epic when it does. Usually uses ETF but can go many ways.
Tank: Kind of an awkward playstyle right now, seeing as most tank builds have trouble getting enough damage outside of mythics. Spell tank exists in the form of WFA and EWF with hpr and/or Heal, while melee tank exists with ETF and TFA with life steal/OKR. Tank builds usually have high sustain and high defense/agility, but again, trouble with getting high damage.

 

Here's the best I could do: https://wynndata.tk/s/auvnmo
stackcancelling twa/twf pentaelemental with -hpr, positive ws and ls. atlas, tenuto, breezehands, sidecancelstackstealing all included, even with greed thrown in. No mythics or killstreak!

 

Neutral dmg is glitched on Wynndata so that build looks pretty bad

 

I mean...
It is bad.

It was a joke

 

hybrid is pretty clearly defined though?

spell steal = spell that sustains with steals
true hybrid/hybrid = does both damages bigly
and the rest of the <speed> hybrids are self explanatory.

zzz

 

I think I would also like to take this in the direction of what could be cool for more support in the future but first this ig.

To me this is how I see each type as well as how I would like to see each type changed in the future.

Spell just in general are mana regen focused builds sometimes with some mana sustain mixed into them. In my opinion w/f/t, w/f/a, and w/f/e are the only ones that really fit into this completely. w/t/a feels weird like it can't decide if it wants to be regen or steal. I myself think this playstyle is rather well balanced right now. I think that with the new earth/water support in 1.19.4 w/f/e is alot better and with just a few more items that contain hpr (to go with gaea boots and elder oak) the playstyle would be complete basically. w/f/a right now is insanely powerful when made as a hpr/rainbow tank on warrior but on other classes feels subpar so I would hope in the future we could see some more weapons focused specifically on that playstyle for other classes.

Fast hybrid is underrated and is very good don't let atlas abusers tell you otherwise <3. generally works with e/w/a, e/w/t and w/f/t and in my opinion is fine as is currently.

Slow hybrid aka atlas or lunar spine is something i'm not a huge fan of right now because it almost always requires heavy melee or atlas to utilize lower attack speeds so I would hope this could be changed in the future. In terms of how good it is it is quite powerful and most hybrid builds are insane once you get comfortable relying on mana steal.



Tierstacking is just stacking melee tiers xD. Honestly right now I wish there was a little more support for it with how much support there is for heavy melee right now.

Rainbow tank is just stacking elemental defenses with defense and currently only works really well with warrior but can be used with other classes effectively. The damage trade offs just often aren't worth it.

Hpr tank is just stacking hp regen items to give yourself near magelike health sustain at the cost of most of your damage, and again only works well with warrior...and kinda assassin.

Health tank is using the highest hp items you can find and then staying alive as long as you can. In my experience it sucks compared to hpr tank or rainbow tank unless you are using guardian.

The last tank is skill point tank which is stacking defense and agility. This can be really powerful because you can still deal alot of damage and actually works with every class!

now heres some changes I'd hope to see in the future.

Heavy spell and burst spell are things I personally hope to see in the near future. Items with high damage but lots of -mana or items with insane damage but +10 or +5000 raw spell costs or whatever. I would expect this to be very hard to balance but if done well would be insanely epic. Currently there is no good alternative to intel spell because t/f/a has such lacking support (and heph boots need more than -40% 3nd spell imo) and -% spell all around is just somewhat lacking.

A/t/w is something speaking of this id like to see changed a bit. Currently it feels like you can build both mana regen or mana steal but both ways is subpar to other elemental setups with said playstyles. When making builds with this I really find that unless i'm a mage with nepta, lament, or morrow it is just meh and I would rather be using other elemental setups. The damage is high but not high enough to make up for the lower defenses and mana sustain compared to alot of other spell spam playstyles. I would personally like to see this become a mixed mana playstyle with actual support. having both lots of mana regen and steal would be really awesome and would give alot of potential for new items to support it. And a general increase in damage could also be neat cuz of how glassy this playstyle is.

For rainbow Id like to see new items that mix all playstyles and build types into rainbow items. So I can combine basically any playstyles I wanted to make a truely uniquely played build and also make rainbow good. I mean outside of gravity tank and riverflow mana slap rainbow is kinda just meh right now. So having the ability to combine playstyles could be amazing, let me tierstack with spell reduction or let me spell steal heavy melee tank or whatever, just allow rainbow to fit whatever the player wants. also add rainbow mythic boots please :>

 

slow hybrid and fast hybrid, by your definition, are really confusing because you consider fast hybrid as a damage source but slow hybrid as not

That's why the term "spell steal" exists for slow hybrid

 

WE DEMAND NEUTRAL REPRESENTATION NOW

 

heavy melee version of that build would be better which is really sad

 

skill points are for normies anyway

 

nah i abbreviate tri elements in the order of the corresponding hive armor

and you can't stop me

 

ur under arrest

 

damn

 

This thread is already dead (probably because the terms used are very clear right now and it's not hard to learn them)

I hate TWA with a passion, can we kill it even more please thanks

Oh well bumperino and check out my pretty bad guide on this stuff
https://forums.wynncraft.com/threads/class-building-vocabulary.260229/