"Suddenly, a flash of fire and light appeared, cutting through the battlefield, laying waste to all around it. Moving unpredictably and with great speed, it suddenly came to a full stop on a ridge, with the world around it turned to ash. The flames then receded, and a man stood in their place, clad in powerful armor humming with immense heat and power. He spoke, and let his words echo across the charred battlefield: I am Caine, Avatar of War!"

Caine's Battlegear is an incredibly versatile set capable of taking you from the lowest of Mythics to the highest of endgame Tiers. The set is themed around the Holy Fire aura and this guide will contain three separate builds tied together by a cohesive gear progression.

The Starter
Focused on clearing all of the Mythic dungeon content without the use of any True Legendary items and setting the base for your first 500 mastery levels.

The Auradin
Focused on tackling endless content up to T400, featuring extreme speed and full screen clearing with a goal of leveling up your mastery from 1000 to 3000 as fast as possible.

The Hammerdin
The ultimate version of Caine - an unstoppable Avatar of War wielding a hammer made of pure fire. Designed for a mastery level of over 3000 this build will push you to the absolute limit of Chronicon's endgame.

The separate guides will be self-contained so there will be some repeat of information between them. The Starter version will cover the basic mechanics of the set, the Auradin will feature some insight into endless dungeons and the Hammerdin will further expand on that with tackling ultra high tiers specifically. Before you dive in however be advised that I will not be covering basic game mechanics (runepowers, gems, etc.) so please check out the guides below and thank you!

https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2592626785
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=835123683
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1416936599

This build uses just the Caine's set pieces, some Legendaries and enhances them with lesser runes only (no True Legendaries). The end result still requires 450 mastery and greater augmenting most of your gear but it's one of the cheapest and fastest options to get you out of Mythics and into Endless dungeons. So let's answer the number one most asked question:

First up it guarantees that when we use an offensive fire skill we will always trigger Flare (giving us a boost of movement speed) and allows us to move through mob packs without issues. This interaction triggers Blaze - while Flare is active (which is always) we leave behind a trail of fire, dealing damage based on the triggering skill's damage. That damage is boosted by our aura effect stat and then inherited by our Holy Fire aura. The 3-piece bonus adds a form of infinite damage scaling (commonly referred to as "weakness stacking") triggering on every hit of our aura. This chain of events allows us to scale the resulting damage in multiple ways - boosting the original triggering skill's damage, then aura effect (buffing not only Blaze but also our other auras), stacking %fire damage and finally critical damage. We then invest in the Purged through holy flames passive, transferring all that damage into Expulsion which is further scaled by critical damage again. This all leads a way paved by amazing gear options on every turn and we'll be taking a look at them below. If you're not interested in the gear breakdown or just want a handy cheat sheet for the build click here[imgur.com]

Gear legend
TL - True Legendary - Acquired through random drop or tarot cards
GR - Greater Rune - Extracted runepower from a True Legendary item
Set item/Legendary - Acquired through random drop or gamble
Crafted lesser rune (C*LR) - Extracted runepower from a Legendary/Rare item
Anomalous lesser rune (A*LR) - Drops from boss of a Dungeon Anomaly (non-elite)



Caine's Vision set piece - Using any damaging fire skill triggers Blaze -> Blaze inherits and boosts the original skill's damage -> Holy Fire inherits Blaze's damage

Crown of Solitude LR (Crafted) - Extra damage against Crowned enemies.



Caine's Deflector set piece - Using any damaging fire skill triggers Blaze -> Blaze inherits and boosts the original skill's damage -> Holy Fire inherits Blaze's damage

Molten Nova LR (Anomalous) - Boosts Molten Fragmentation damage which we use as the trigger for Blaze and also gives it a "Nova" tag.



Caine's Fire set piece - Using any damaging fire skill triggers Blaze -> Blaze inherits and boosts the original skill's damage -> Holy Fire inherits Blaze's damage

Brutal Attacks LR (Anomalous) - This is a no attack speed build so this rune gives us a 400% damage boost. The epic Enrage enchant does not interfere with that bonus and saves the build from being extra clunky to play.



Caine's Armor set piece - Using any damaging fire skill triggers Blaze -> Blaze inherits and boosts the original skill's damage -> Holy Fire inherits Blaze's damage

Shield Maiden LR (Crafted) - Another boost to Molten Fragmentation since it has a "Shield" skill tag. Your block chance will always show a capped *75%, this rune however works off of the uncapped value which we stack through gems.



Boots of Hazard (Legendary) - Gives immunity to all ground effects.

Blazing Stride LR (Crafted) - Amazing damage boost for our Blaze based on our Movement speed and it works with the Kill Haste enchant.



Sun and Moon set piece - Triples our fire damage after using a "Frost" tagged skill. Since Templar doesn't naturally possess one we'll be using Soul Warp Codex.

Supernova LR (Crafted) - Doubles the damage of all "Nova" tags which we got for our Molten Fragmentation from the Molten Nova rune.



Sun and Moon set piece - Triples our fire damage after using a "Frost" tagged skill. Since Templar doesn't naturally possess one we'll be using Soul Warp Codex.

Lethal Mobility LR (Anomalous) - Some extra damage after we use Soul Warp.



Maddoc's Cure (Legendary) - One of the few actually useful quest rewards in the game. We mainly use it for the free Critical chance enchant.

Challender's Charm LR (Crafted) - Extra juice + extra packs = extra fun.




Bolster aura is our main interest here for the extra resists + some decent passives.



Just some extra critical chance here.



The main passive tree of choice for this set. Note that we only need a single point in Holy Fire since it "inherits" damage so more points do nothing for it.



Great aura, the best heal skill in the game, some filler passives and the all mighty Expulsion!



Vengeance Mastery - Mainly Crit damage + some filler extras.
Wraith Mastery - DO NOT PUT POINTS INTO ATTACK SPEED! The first passive might be tempting but it's bait - it will screw up our Brutal Attacks bonus damage.
Conviction Mastery - All the things.
Redemption Mastery - YEP


Esc -> Settings -> Controls -> Set your preferred single key for all your skills.
Skills cast from right to left so Prayer needs to be cast first so the rest of them benefit from the cooldown reduction immediately.
Holy Fire does not need to be cast so just use the X from the options to remove its button.
Use Codex of Soul Warp for movement and enabling Sun and Moon's bonus.



General tips & progression advice

• Gamble all the items and legendaries if possible
  
• Focus on farming normal non-elite dungeons for the anomalous lesser runes
  
• Don't throw all your resources into perfecting a single item, spreading out is better at the start
  
• Be smart about your Greater Augmenting since you'll be limited on Memory essence early
  
• Holy Fire is line-of-sight sensitive so you need to use your faster speed and positioning both offensively and defensively
  
• Explore the game at your own pace and most importantly

HAVE FUN PLAYING

This build is the effective progression of the Starter into True Legendary status and Endless tiers territory. Its goal is farming everything up to T400 and being the natural link between the previous iteration and the Hammerdin version. It does that not only thematically but also when it comes to gearing as it keeps using some of the core pieces while it upgrades most of the rest. It features extremely fast full screen clears and pickup radius with the tradeoff being that we're a bit squishier and we do not have impressive boss killing. If you're not interested in the gear breakdown or just want a handy cheat sheet for the build click here[imgur.com]

Gear legend
TL - True Legendary - Acquired through random drop or tarot cards
GR - Greater Rune - Extracted runepower from a True Legendary item
Set item/Legendary - Acquired through random drop or gamble
Crafted lesser rune (C*LR) - Extracted runepower from a Legendary/Rare item
Anomalous lesser rune (A*LR) - Drops from boss of a Dungeon Anomaly (non-elite)



Prayer Beads TL - Provides extra aura effect which translates into almost double damage, but more importantly it boost Holy Fire's coverage to screen-wide. Casting anything counts as being "still" so we have both effects active all of the time.

Cosmic Cape GR - The source of our base damage.

IMPORTANT NOTE - This item can be made in reverse (Cape top with a Beads rune) since they're both TLs it won't affect the GR limit. The difference between them is that Beads has an innate "+20% move speed" enchant while Cape has "+800 mana".



Caine's Armor set piece - Using any damaging fire skill triggers Blaze -> Blaze inherits and boosts the original skill's damage -> Holy Fire inherits Blaze's damage

Vestige of Lost Souls GR - The source of our barrier and survivability. Worth pointing out that this build can only get to 50% indirect DR so you really need to play smart with your speed and positioning around the enemy spells and ground effects.



Caine's Deflector set piece - Using any damaging fire skill triggers Blaze -> Blaze inherits and boosts the original skill's damage -> Holy Fire inherits Blaze's damage

Molten Nova LR (Anomalous) - Boosts Molten Fragmentation's damage which we use as the trigger for Blaze and also gives a "Nova" tag to it.



Caine's Fire set piece - Using any damaging fire skill triggers Blaze -> Blaze inherits and boosts the original skill's damage -> Holy Fire inherits Blaze's damage

Brutal Attacks LR (Anomalous) - This is a no attack speed build so this rune gives us +400% damage. The epic Enrage enchant does not interfere with that bonus and saves the build from being extra clunky to play.



Sun and Moon set piece - Triples our fire damage after using a "Frost" tagged skill. Since Templar doesn't naturally possess one we'll be using Soul Warp Codex.

(Ring of) Pure Energy GR - Huge boost to our Mana which translates into both more base damage and more barrier.



Sun and Moon set piece - Triples our fire damage after using a "Frost" tagged skill. Since Templar doesn't naturally possess one we'll be using Soul Warp Codex.

Star of the Pure LR (Crafted) - Another boost to our barrier that is only really needed if you're pushing for anything over T300. Feel free to keep using the Lethal Mobility version from the starter build if you like.



Weyrick's Crown TL - The once great king of the helmet slot has now been decently balanced and the bonus it provides is additive with the one from class mastery. Even after the nerf it is still BIS up until you get close to the 3K levels mark.

Crown of Solitude LR (Crafted) - Extra damage against Crowned enemies.



Battle Boots TL - Extra DR after we use Soul Warp codex.

Blazing Stride LR (Crafted) - Amazing damage boost for our Blaze based on our movement speed and it works with the Kill Haste enchant.




The Field Training aura is a huge damage boost since Molten Fragmentation has a Shield skill tag. And yes - we do need that resist point to hit the 130% cap.



Some critical chance and the Haste aura. Note that we're never casting it since that would screw up our Brutal Attacks bonus.



The main passive tree of choice for this set. Note that we only need a single point in Holy Fire since it "inherits" damage so more points do nothing for it.



Great aura, some filler passives and the all mighty Expulsion!



Vengeance Mastery - The build doesn't really need anything here past Supporter, but we need a third full row to get Ultimate Affinity so this is the best option.
Wraith Mastery - DO NOT PUT POINTS INTO ATTACK SPEED! The first passive might be tempting but it's bait - it will screw up our Brutal Attacks bonus damage.
Conviction Mastery - All the things.
Redemption Mastery - YEP



Esc -> Settings -> Controls -> Set your preferred single key for all your skills.
The Holy Fire, Field Training and Haste auras do not need to be cast so just use the X from the options to remove their buttons.
Use Codex of Soul Warp for movement and enabling Sun and Moon's bonus.



General tips & progression advice

• Holy Fire is line-of-sight sensitive so you need to use your faster speed and positioning both offensively and defensively
  
• Focus on Endless random anomalies once you feel your boss damage starts falling off
  
• You should try to learn the good and bad map layouts and when you need to re-roll them
  
• Learn the build-defining True Legendaries and consider keeping some in stash for the future
  
• Since we're not capped on indirect DR you should use this wonderful opportunity to learn the truly deadly enemy spells and how not to die to them >:)
  
• And as always

HAVE FUN PLAYING

WARNING! The changes in the DLC version require maxing out most of the relevant passives from the Expedition tree such as resists, critical chance, CDR and minor stats.



We get an extra 20% crit chance roll which combined with the Expedition tree passives allows us to drop the crit chance gems in favor of crit damage ones. We also get a minor roll for some extra XP bonus. Currently there are no good runes to add in the extra slot, but if you decide to upgrade to the Hammerdin you can directly use this piece to save yourself the boss farming.

The Expedition tree adds a ton of extra resists + minor stat bonuses which ends up freeing an "all resist" roll from any piece of our gear. My recommendation is that you re-roll the one on the armor chest piece to +800 mana. In the end your resists should look like this:


The tree also gives us extra cooldown reduction and effect duration, enough that we can drop the effect duration roll on our helm in favor of either XP bonus or extra reach. Your stats should end up looking like this:


Technically there's some room to min/max skill cooldown and duration time but personally I think that's overkill. As long as you have some overlap without it being a huge gap then it's all good.




Thanks to the Expedition tree bonuses again, we can drop the Ultimate Affinity finisher and save 20 points from the first row. Combined with some of the new artifacts the build comes online much sooner and is T400-ready at 1k total mastery, possibly even earlier.

Triangles are mostly QOL stuff. Havoc is kinda required for beast upgrades while Battle Lust feels great for mastery farming. The Twins is probably the most impactful one because combined with the mastery perk Picker-Upper it completely solves any sustain problems you might have.


Rhombus came with the biggest buff Brutal Attacks builds could ask for. Battle Haze is essentially a double damage artifact and while it does make casting even clunkier... it's absolutely worth it. Outside of that we have the obvious extra fire damage one but that gets outscaled pretty fast and Symbol of Hope which is fine but nothing amazing. Special shoutout to Battle Glory which I personally love since killstreaks are one of the most fun aspects of this game to me.


Stars bring the very solid Crystalized Mana which every Cosmic Cape build will love. This artifact is responsible for bringing the overall mastery requirement for mana-based builds way down. Grip of Death provides some extra damage which comes in clutch against bosses, something this build overall struggles with. Finally we have Tales of Victory to round up the killstreak combo.



Overall the gameplay has barely changed. The attack speed slowdown from Battle Haze is not that noticeable and the removal of Ultimate Affinity balanced our skills' cooldown/duration almost perfectly. I decided to showcase the same tier as before but at a much lower mastery rank and including a boss at the end since you have to run normal endless for yellow crystals now. Even though the build didn't get an extra rune, everything else in the DLC was very beneficial for it. I expect it to feel extremely comfortable speed running up to T500 @ ~2k mastery.

This build is the natural progression of the Auradin into a truly monstrous endgame destroyer. It features 89% DR, 85% block, 36% evasion, 280% base MS + 100% on kill. On top of that it has absolutely amazing scaling with mastery - at 3k levels it has over 5 million base damage, 80k life and 700k barrier. That scaling however can also be considered one of its two major downsides since the build simply doesn't work under 1,5k. The other downside, shared with many of the other ultra lategame pushers is lag - Expulsion is laggy, loud and will wreck your eyes, ears and CPU. You mainly start to feel these effects past T500 but if you're truly dedicated to taking this to its limits then I suggest you nerf your video settings, lower your audio and get a pair of cool sunglasses. If you're not interested in the gear breakdown or just want a handy cheat sheet for the build click here[imgur.com]


Gear legend
TL - True Legendary - Acquired through random drop or tarot cards
GR - Greater Rune - Extracted runepower from a True Legendary item
Set item/Legendary - Acquired through random drop or gamble
Crafted lesser rune (C*LR) - Extracted runepower from a Legendary/Rare item
Anomalous lesser rune (A*LR) - Drops from boss of a Dungeon Anomaly (non-elite)




Star of the Pure (Legendary) - This is a barrier-based+pull-the-entire-screen-on-top build so it has some small issues with one-shots. This amulet fixes most of them.

Blazing Hammers LR (Anomalous) - Turns our main damage aura into spiraling Hammers, quadruples its damage and gives it the "Hammer" skill tag.

Amulet of Despair VS Star of the Pure - Despair is a 40% more damage multiplier but we have to sacrifice a crit damage gem to enable it and lose all that extra barrier from SotP. Personally I don't think it's worth it but with all the extra stuff we get from the DLC it does eventually become the amulet of choice there.



Cosmic Cape TL - The source of our base damage.

Council's Gavel GR - Doubles the damage of all "Hammer" tags.



Caine's Armor set piece - Using any damaging fire skill triggers Blaze -> Blaze inherits and boosts the original skill's damage -> Holy Fire inherits Blaze's damage

Vestige of Lost Souls GR - The source of our barrier and survivability.



Caine's Deflector set piece - Using any damaging fire skill triggers Blaze -> Blaze inherits and boosts the original skill's damage -> Holy Fire inherits Blaze's damage

Molten Nova LR (Anomalous) - Boosts Molten Fragmentation's damage which we use as the trigger for Blaze and also gives a "Nova" tag to it.



Caine's Fire set piece - Using any damaging fire skill triggers Blaze -> Blaze inherits and boosts the original skill's damage -> Holy Fire inherits Blaze's damage

Brutal Attacks LR (Anomalous) - This is a no attack speed build so this rune gives us +400% damage. The Enrage enchant on our ring kinda saves the build from feeling too clunky to play.



Jeopardy TL - Pretty much the most meta item currently because it saves us from rolling Crit chance on gear and it gives us a lot of extra Crit damage which scales both our Hammers and our Expulsion procs. The innate Enrage enchant does not interfere with Brutal Attacks and makes the build a LOT less clunky to play.

Supernova LR (Crafted) - Doubles the damage of all "Nova" tags which we got for our Molten Fragmentation from the Molten Nova rune.



Battle Boots TL - Extra DR after we use Soul Warp codex.

Blazing Stride LR (Crafted) - Amazing damage boost for our Blaze based on our movement speed and it works with the Kill Haste enchant.



Crown of Innate Probability TL - An insane boost to all our procs including Expulsion and the passive stun for it.

Life Guard GR - A great source of survivability and more importantly indirect DR - unless you have this maxed out you will eventually die to some indirect damage since it bypasses your barrier! Don't forget the minor roll here and on the amulet!




The Field Training aura is a huge damage boost since Molten Fragmentation has a Shield skill tag. The rest is some decent filler passives.



Literally nothing here.



Literally all the things here. Note that we only need a single point in Holy Fire since it "inherits" damage so more points do nothing for it.



Great aura, some filler passives and the all mighty Expulsion!



Vengeance Mastery - Get to The Best Defence for the +15% Shield skill damage.
Wraith Mastery - DO NOT PUT POINTS INTO ATTACK SPEED! The first passive might be tempting but it's bait - it will screw up our Brutal Attacks bonus damage.
Conviction Mastery - All the things.
Redemption Mastery - YEP



Esc -> Settings -> Controls -> Set your preferred single key for all your skills.
Skills cast from right to left so Prayer needs to be cast first so the rest of them benefit from the cooldown reduction.
The Holy Fire and Field Training aura do not need to be cast so just use the X from the options to remove their buttons.
Use Codex of Soul Warp for movement and enabling the boots DR bonus.



General tips & progression advice

• Screaming Skull one-shots (aka the big purple spirals of death) - The way to play this is you Taunt to pull the whole screen on top of you so that you can "shotgun" all the mobs with your Hammers and Expulsions, so it's very ironic that when you pull a Screaming Skull pack it ALSO pulls their already cast skills which instantly shotguns you. The only counterplay currently is to wait half a second for the Skulls to expand a bit and then pull the pack which dissipates most of the damage. It's that or get more mastery for more barrier and hope to survive the burst.
  
• At this point you should've learned the most deadly enemy spells and how to use your mobility and positioning to your advantage, but even though this build will make you feel like an indestructible god you should never forget the lessons that got you here
  
• This version has the best bossing by far but it's still dependent on how wide the Boss model is which is why Random Endless runs are superior to Elites
  
• Turn on your HP/Barrier numbers since the natural UI/character barrier indicator can be iffy
  
• Turn off your Damage numbers since fat mobs + Expulsion make the CPU cry
  
• Build starts having some mana sustain issues past T500 - you can solve them with either spamming Ultimate mana pots or re-rolling the helm Mana enchant to Leech

WARNING! The changes in the DLC version require maxing out most of the relevant passives from the Expedition tree such as resists, mana, CDR and minor stats.



There are two realistic rune options - Hammerblade (crafted) and Storming Hammers (anomalous). SH is a 1.15x total multiplier and has a slightly better clear while HB is 1.5x but is additive with the 2x from Gavel, which ends up being a 1.25x total relative increase. Considering the fact that this build was designed around pushing tiers, Hammerblade is the winner in my book. If you want to go SH I won't blame you, however I should mention that you'll miss out on wielding an item called Brutal Hammering...
For our extra minor roll we're getting some mana cost reduction but feel free to replace that with XP bonus if you wish. The new major roll serves a single purpose - Frost damage inflicts chill which enables the bonus effect of our new amulet:



Previously, enabling this amulet was a pretty huge tradeoff of losing not only a massive amount of barrier but also a crit damage gem. Between all the buffs from the Expedition tree (mana, DR, sustain) and the free chill enchant on our weapon, it's safe to say that the stars have finally aligned for us to get an extra 1.4x total damage multiplier. If you're low on mastery or just feel too squishy in general then by all means keep using Star of the Pure until you're comfortable enough to replace it.



Thanks to all the extra resists from the Expedition tree, we are free to replace the perk in the class mastery for an extra 75% fire damage. The other perk we're switching is Defender for Heavy Shield because of one of the new artifacts.



Triangles are mostly QOL stuff. Havoc is kinda required for beast upgrades while Battle Lust feels great for mastery farming. The Twins is probably the most impactful one because combined with the mastery perk Picker-Upper it completely solves any sustain problems you might have.



Battle Haze is basically a double damage buff for any Brutal Attacks build and while it does make casting slightly more clunky... it's absolutely worth it.



On the other side of the equation we have this underrated monster. Shield Adornment gives us a hefty amount of EHP, just enough to comfortably drop the extra barrier from Star of the Pure. The end result is 55% damage blocked at 90% block chance over a capped 90% DR.



As far as I can tell Grip of Death is additive with the weaken effect we get from Molten Fragmentation, which also got a buff from the Expedition tree. The end result is a combined 66.25% total damage amp.



This should only be used for extremely high tiers where the mobs don't die fast enough to enable the Kill Haste bonus from our boots. If you're not pushing endless or you're still low on mastery then I strongly suggest running Crystalized Mana instead.


To say that the DLC buffed this build pretty hard would be an understatement. For the Auradin video I dropped the mastery and kept the same tier as before to showcase the new lower floor of entry but for the Hammerdin that was impossible - it steamrolls T500 packs way too fast now. Most of the build's shortcomings have been completely fixed by the new passive tree with one single remaining issue - it is still not an amazing boss killer and that's because it's dependent on how wide the boss model is. Outside of that the build is brutally solid in every single way and T600-ready at 1,5k mastery.

Even though it is a barrier-based build, the Hammerdin features phenomenal raw tankiness. The combination of nearly capped DR with Templar's block and some evasion makes him a great Hardcore character. With just a simple gear swap we can acquire nearly double our barrier for the cost of a minimal damage loss:




Pure Energy gives us 200% extra mana to our 270% we already have from gems which scales not only our barrier but also our base damage, so it mitigates most of the damage lost from dropping Supernova. However since it's a TL we have to drop a GR rune from somewhere and the best candidate for that is Gavel which is an easy swap to Provocation. Because we already have "Enemy takes 15% extra damage" from Molten Fragmentation's passive, Provocation adds to that for a total of 115% so it's another almost insignificant damage loss there.

Now let's talk defenses. The more obvious result of that gear switch is that it opens up the possibility for gem swapping into Evasion gems instead of Mana. Best possible setup for that is:
Helm - 2x Square (mana) / 1x Prismatic Star (evasion)
Armor - 1x Star (evasion) 2x Square (mana) / 1x Prismatic Star (evasion)
Boots - 1x Star (evasion) / 1x Prismatic Star (evasion)
This would put us at a total of 5x 10% evasion gems, however I personally think that's overkill. You not only lose all the barrier and base damage, but it also makes our perk The Best Defence (15% extra shield damage) even harder to proc. IMHO swapping 2 to 3 gems seems like the sweet spot, also less Prismatic Stars needed since you can already get 2 "free" stars on Armor and Boots just by re-rolling.

Finally let's talk stagger. The seemingly insignificant Conviction mastery perk Blessed Armor giving us "10% Damage Stagger" is actually a big deal. Staggered damage has an innate 30% DR, which is one of the few ways we can go over the 90% DR cap in the game. More importantly - the staggered damage bypasses barrier and is dealt straight to HP. Normally you would never want that on any barrier-based build... unless you could actually out-heal it, which incidentally we can since we're a Templar and have a decent chunk of HP regen bonuses. So that 10% perk actually translates into a 1:9 damage split or another 11% DR which bypasses the cap. The original Hammerdin setup actually respects that HP:barrier ratio almost perfectly, however the extra mana stacking of the Hardcore version pushes it closer to 1:15 which means a significantly large hit to your barrier could potentially overwhelm your HP sustain and the stagger will end up killing you. You've got 3 potential ways of dealing with that:

• Spam Scroll of Healing Touch to further boost your HP sustain
  
• Lower the ratio by doing the gem swap mentioned above and pray on your natural regen
  
• Swap out of the Blessed Armor perk and just lose the stagger

Most of the dangerous enemy spells can be avoided with movement/positioning alone, anything you can see can be countered if you play smart, even the previously mentioned Screaming Skull packs can eventually be out-tanked. Realistically there's only 3 actually dangerous crown mods:

• TOP 3 "Sturdy" - Can't be stunned/pulled
  
• TOP 2 "Shocking" - Every time you hit them they release a shock orb of lightning damage
  
• TOP 1 "Sturdy" + "Shocking"

The best advice I could give you is to keep your eyes open for the shock orbs and be extra vigilant about your barrier levels if you spot them. They can't do much to you from a distance but pulling them on top of you will be the true challenge. So best of luck to you!

https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2601946760

Thank YOU for reading the guide and enjoying the game!
Thanks to Squarebit for making this truly wonderful gem of a game!
Thanks to my friends who will probably never read this but you kept me sane during lockdown!
Stay safe, wash your hands, love and protect each other and as always
HAVE FUN PLAYING