Introduction
I'm not here to tell you why you should be playing Vesper, I'm here to ask YOU, what are you trying to accomplish by playing him.
Vesper can be a ballistic missile with Discipline that one shots a group of enemies and mini bosses whilst leaping across the universe, he can be a raging inferno with Baptism that moves swiftly through groups of enemies and incinerates the main bosses with 2k AD, or you can reject the light of Discipline and the warmth of Baptism and plunge into the Cold Fury that is the tank build with Cold Cruel Sun to become unmovable and immortal.
The following chapters will go over what I would consider to be the top 3 Vesper builds and how they slot in compared to each other...
... but first, lets go into some tank info.
How do I tank?
I'll try to break it down into 3 steps;
- Health, Healing, and Shields/Barrier can benefit from Armor/Defense to increase their value through a concept called total effective health or effective health pool .
(a separate guide will be written on this and linked later, use this for now: League of Legends: What is Effective Health? – StrategyZero).
Since Vesper's dodge gives him a shield scaling with health, Vesper reduces resource balancing. We only have to focus on two separate resources to boost his dodge strength, health and armor. but since the dodge protects him from enemies whilst his passive heals him, the dodge, and thus health/armor are even more valuable. Getting more barrier from your dodge and more armor to reinforce it is the key to tank, which leads to stars...
- Heavy Armor Mastery is your best friend on any vesper build as it amplifies your dodge shield and extends it. This means that running Threat Detection to close the gap on the duration of the dodge shield by reducing the dodge cooldown is very strong. Finally running Regenerative Skin boosts this further, but also amplifies the healing from your passives. These 3 stars combined creates the Dynamic trio and is a classic staple combo that can't do you wrong. This combo is designed around the idea that you will be protecting your health bar from the fish scales evil lucid dream to retain your overall tankiness and damage with health scaling abilities like Cruel Sun, and maintain your current health by boosting healing and shielding so that whilst you defend your self directly you also get to regain lost health. The trio also serves as a way to make Wicked Vitality more formidable should you choose to take it.
- But this character is designed with health stacking in mind and both his passives' healing scale with health as well. Do we take more armor or health if both accomplish a similar goal? the answer lies in taking good amounts of each. You can use the link to the formulas from point 1 to help get exact numbers, but we can simplify how we do this with the first two builds. We can see that % amplifiers for health are in the game as health stars; Way Too Thick Skin , No Armor Is Too Thick , but not for armor. this means we can brute force the health stat in both page and chaos choices. The builds will grant him armor from the abilities themselves, e.g. Cold Cruel Sun and Baptism (only the Discipline build that we get into later actually uses most armor stars), so we don't touch armor stars for the most part and instead we take most combinations of health stars.
Cold Cruel Sun
https://shapeofdreamstools.com/builds/cmuzrkcbr003601p68x0pczy3
Here we go into the easiest build to run for most, Cold Cruel Sun. The idea is to be Immortal and never die.
This build relies solely on HP as both your defensive source and your damage so you'll need to protect it from fish scales. This means you take the Dynamic trio (mentioned in 2. of How do I tank?). Cowardly Doll will further extend our goal since it allows you to further extend the lifetime of the barrier from your passive by making sure that you are immune to any follow up hits after the first hit instead of hitting the barrier itself. The armor you gain from maxing Cruel Sun is what prevents the first hit you take from eating your dodge barrier. The longer we hold the hammer the more we extend our armor which allows our dodge to come off cooldown and line up with the hammer's armor again. Any existing barrier that is still up after the immunity has ended is protected by the armor from Embers.
Standard Rotation;
- Always start with dodge into a boss or group of enemies but do it so that you don't get aggro until after the dodge so that you don't risk getting hit before your barrier is up and hammer is fully charged. If you have enemies aggro before you dodge then dodge away or commit to dodging into them to both stun enemies and damage them with the dodge itself, but only under these 2 conditions:
- If you got aggro early and dodge away, make sure that they are still close enough to get hit with the hammer. Dodge too early and you'll run out of hammer charge before an enemy even approaches you which wastes both damage and defenses.
- if you got aggro early and dodge in, make sure you are on your 3rd or 4th basic so you can stun a group of enemies twice (on 3rd basic use it then dodge) because you'll stun with dodge, get a basic attack timer reset and then stun with Resolve's 4th basic (you can also quick tap/release with hammer slam for the 3 stun juggle combo if you think they are low enough to kill and you need to reposition).
- With dodge barrier up you should have enough time to get the hammer to max charge before you take a hit. Once you see the immunity active hold hammer long as you can to maximize the number of enemies hit and allow the dodge timer to align more cleanly with your hammer cooldown, and as soon as the immunity is gone, release. by the time your hammer has slammed down you should still have your barrier up for anything that survived.
This is the gameplay loop that makes you invincible, no ultimate is needed really, the enhanced armor from Cold Fury and the additional damage reduction from Cold Affinity helps to ensure this as a fact.
Other stars and Chaos;
- Take both % HP stars, Way Too Thick Skin , No Armor Is Too Thick, as well as both scaling HP per level stars, Steel Refinement, and Marvelous Muscles. you can use either Boundless Blessing of the Great Guide or Tough Skin with those and that covers all your greens.
- Taking both Primordial Chaos and Ordered Chaos furthers the health stacking by ensuring we run into more of it more often as the only two chaos types we want are going to be Health, and Memory haste. Go for the 40-60 range on haste total in a run.
You can get away with just running these greens and blues and nothing else, but if you take a peak at the build I've linked you'll see I like the two red attack speed stars Pulverizer and Hurricane for early stuns on weaker groups of enemies using Resolve, there's also the staple Bizarre Spoils and Trading Fates combo for finding the essences you need.
- There are two strategies for running into a corrupted chaos during a run;
- Dodge haste the first time you find one then Dodge Charges and continue to the 2nd strategy
- Taking 3 levels on every chaos for your health scaling and % health stars.
Essences and Memories;
We have some obvious stuff for essences: Divine Faith, Essence of the Giant, Essence of Vengeance, Essence of Reflex...
... and some other obvious or generally strong stuff: Glacial Core, Essence of Bleakness, Essence of Frost, Essence of Glass, Essence of the Hedgehog, Essence of Panic, Essence of Aftershock, Essence of Liberty...
... and either obscure, weak, or less obvious stuff:Essence of Confidence, Essence of Protection, Essence of Snow, Essence of Regeneration, Essence of Apathy, Essence of Insight... (Too many cases of everything being meager and is why I'll make a tier list eventually,)
... and the two that I really think do the most, Essence of Efficiency and Essence of Flexibility. These two gems are the only ones you need to win a run.
- Essence of Efficiency can keep the gameplay loop we desire going by making sure that there is ZERO down time on the armor we get from cruel sun.
- We ensure there are no gaps even further and then some with Essence of Flexibility. This essence breaks the game (figuratively). A percentage of any damage we take is split to hit us as a DoT (damage over time) effect based on the essences quality, and that split damage is also directly reduced by 20%, so nothing can ever get through the first hit to our dodge barrier if the quality is high enough. The ticking damage gets deleted by the immunity from Cowardly Doll and any leftover ticking damage goes to our remaining barrier. This essences 20% damage reduction is strong in combination with the direct damage reduction from Cold Affinity, but the main reason the split effect matters is because there are some sources of % health damage in this game too, mainly some of that damage being designed to goes through armor as a direct counter to tank playstyles, but this essence ensures that even that damage becomes reduced, and then the split damage becomes mitigate-able through barrier and armor when it normally isn't. Very, very strong.
- Divine Faith and Essence of the Giant are the two big ones you always use no matter where they go. On Hammer they boost damage but just by having health your hammer deals more damage so we'd rather have something else more impactful like either Essence of Confidence or Essence of Bleakness on the hammer so the game isn't a slog and you start making mistakes out of boredom.
Memories don't matter that much, I like to speed up the gameplay so I tend to use Swift Slash, Shadow Walk, Backstep, and best of all, Ice Claw due to it having health scaling, healing, and crowd control. Permafrost is great for more armor, all the health scaling cold memories, and Frostbite's low cooldown is nice for essence triggers like Essence of the Hedgehog, Essence of Aftershock, and Essence of Liberty .
Baptism of the Sun
V1: https://shapeofdreamstools.com/builds/cmuzver7r006301p6uq9dgyj2
V2: https://shapeofdreamstools.com/builds/cmuzw732a007401p6jsjn6ve8
Next up is Baptism, and I have couple things we can try here but the overall goal is the same, maximize the uptime of the main skill and stack it to + 6 active casts to gain upwards of 2000 AD.
All 3 flex stars are recommended, the main one is No Pain, No Gain and is the only reason this build works in L6. Endless Hammering ensures uptime through basic attacks only but is very noticeable once we get some cooldown and attack speed going. Invigorating Heat doesn't seem like much, but when you need to go from target to target or keep up with a dashy opponent, sticking to them means more uptime through basic attacks with Endless Hammering.
So, why two builds;
- V1 is stronger and more consistent when you find the right gems. V1 uses Discipline's Reckless Leap to hit as many targets as possible, and to maximize hang time as a dodging mechanic without needing a target. The longer you are in the air the better your i-frames, can't be hit during those. I usually like a lot of move speed on Baptism to supplement how much less tanky you are than Cold Cruel Sun , so V1 only uses Way Too Thick Skin to stay healthy in a middle ground area. Beastification works well on both baptism and discipline for scaling our damage so we take it.
On Chaos V1 is pretty decent with 200HP early (world 1) and transitions to mainly taking even amounts of attack speed and memory haste, prioritizing somewhere between 30-60% attack speed and 45 - 60 memory Haste, and whenever you see a purple or red drop you get the AD. Blue chaos is statistically best for haste, whilst purple and red are statistically best for AD and HP.
- V2 is weaker, but more consistent when you are feeling very unlucky and can't get the setup you need to delete the whole room and every boss in sight. V2 you end up borrowing Cruel Sun's Embers to armor up and stay tanky but due to not having AD scaling on this hammer we miss a lot of damage that makes the build work in the first place. So to re-counter that we need to pull out a cheeky strat I normally wouldn't recommend, Reckless Fury, but only if you pair it with Pulverizer or you don't compound on enough attack speed to make taking it worth the health % loss. V2's usage of Reckless Fury puts us in a negative 5% total health deficit though so taking No Armor Is Too Thick feels pretty mandatory for something that has to utilize Cruel Sun anyway. V2's usage of Cruel Sun is also why I use Hammer of Divinity over Beastification as they almost even out in value. Hammer of Divinity always gives 13 ad at the start but Beastification will scale better every time.
On chaos V2 Can take the same strategy as V1, but can go up to 800HP total in a run if you feel you need more health to use tankiness as a supplement for some damage loss comapred to V1.
Other stars and Chaos;
If you happen to come across early attack speed boosting gems such as Essence of Wind and Essence of the Starry Sky, maybe take more low level AD from white chaos instead of attack speed.
Corrupted Chaos options can vary.
- Light stacks with V1
- Deft hands and Light stacks with Essence of Shock or Essence of Inversion w/ Essence of Crimson
- 3 levels / burn damage for V2.
I go back and forth putting this star on the page but Grand Purpose, is very strong and I needed to mention that you should try it now and then. Especially in combination with Valiant Challenger. Running this star Is just 30% more damage on bosses (hunters too!) when you deal either light or fire damage, NOT, burn, FIRE. Big distinction. But you do lose 10% of all health increases so generally it's not big enough of a boost for V1, and way too detrimental for V2 unless you take off Reckless Fury completely, but either way V1 deals light, and V2 deals fire so it works! This star also means that you can use Essence of Sulfur and Essence of Inversion on most memories and essences to deal either more fire or light damage as a potential win condition since baptism is about creating a lot of ad you can turn those light or fire damage memories into something worthwhile.
Essences and Memories;
Essence of Momentum, Essence of Efficiency, Essence of Virtue are the top 3, but we can slide in Essence of Voracity and Essence of Obsidian as well into a nice top 5.
- Momentum is typically the main enabler of the build since this is how we stack multiple active duration's without needing down time like we would with Virtue, they do pair nicely though, as Virtue allows you to front load all the damage right away without need basic attacks to maintain stacks. however once those stacks are gone you typically need a long wait.
- Efficiency is where both issues get solved by reducing the required quality of momentum, and the downtime on virtue stacks. in a pinch, Essence of Direness, Essence of Panic, and maybe Essence of Lightness, will come in a pinch to substitute. for V1 Essence of Flow is a great pickup too.
- Virtue I've touched on a bit but I wanted to mention that it has great synergy with the memory Undo, as it can fully refund all stacks of Baptism that Virtue can give you
- Voracity's value comes from being triggered not necessarily being on baptism itself, but if you have good uptime and it's the most spammable memory you have, then it works, other wise put it on either hammer just to get the AD boost.
- Obsidian can work as a cooldown for baptism but unless you have momentum or a good fangs setup then it's probably better off on either hammer like voracity. it's just a great place for all the stacking ad to go into, so it can be leveled quite high just for damage.
The honorable mentions being; Essence of Fangs, Essence of Wind, Essence of the Starry Sky, Essence of Crimson. Eternal Flame is it's own beast that can override any build on any character but it has a place here as well of course. (again, I'll make a tier list eventually)
- Fangs is similar to momentum but needs some help. It only procs on the 4th basic and is not an attack effect so it has no synergy with memories that do apply Essence of Momentum, but any critical strike with a basic attack will also proc it. If you have memories like Umbral Edge, or Somersault, then we have a much better chance of getting the cooldown to function well. Having fangs also means that Essence of Composure, Essence of the Crucible, and Essence of Domination, gain value as well, although maybe not priority.
- Wind and Starry are simply attack speed boosts which is good for Baptism itself but also momentum and fangs. Generally these gems just correlate directly to more damage which is why...
- Crimson is the best of most worlds, damage, healing, and an easy enabler for Essence of the Starry Sky. You can also run it with Essence of Inversion, for Essence of Flow, or Grand Purpose.
Memories can be good dashes or big AD scalars, Shadow Walk, Vile Strike, and Swift Slash for movement. Umbral Edge makes great DPS. Justice Guillotine and Blood Harvest will give you some great back-loaded burst damage when you have max stacks.
Discipline
https://shapeofdreamstools.com/builds/cmuzzxead008501p6i44jw56i
The goal of Discipline is to swiftly serve justice in a single hit to nuke anything.
I have cooked up a version of discipline I have found to be very consistent, but may take some time to learn. I don't run Threat Detection on it anymore either at this point but I'd recommend newer users to keep it on. It may make more sense when we get to essences and memories but perhaps I've just gotten used to it. the link to the build will mention that;
Layered Scales, Ragged Armor, and I Shall Not Waver! may be replaced with: Cowardly Doll, Threat Detection, and Regenerative Skin. the difference of 3 stars aren't enough to justify two build versions so I'm mentioning it here.
However I've found those armor stars are what makes up for the fact that we don't have to take armor chaos and can maintain some semblance of direct tankiness since we don't have Cruel Sun or stacking armor from No Pain, No Gain. I suppose you can call it a play style difference and is why I need to highlight the slight variations, maybe you'll find your own preference between the 6 stars.
Discipline's Reckless Leap is again here of course, same concept, use it to dodge. but now you have to hone it as you'll need to simultaneously dodge and wipe the floor with enemies to maximize value all the way. And in the same way that the Dynamic trio is based on the knowledge of compounding value, we have the 4 pillars of discipline : Momentum, Daylight, Valiant Challenger, and Grand Purpose. This combo brings all the damage to the table, like sharpening a blade thrice over. We have a lot of health sacrifice between Momentum and Grand Purpose but we fill it in with Way Too Thick Skin quite nicely, and we don't lose any movement speed this way. This high burst play style requires you to constantly make room between you and your opponent(s) to maximize the damage from Momentum . it can be a challenge but that's where memories and essences come in to help.
Before we go there though, quick chaos tips. AD is your best friend, Haste is your second, if you happen to pull out 3 different cooldown gems during worlds 1 & 2 before world 3, you can skip haste as a stat entirely to build your stat stick entirely with AD. HP Chaos can and should go up to about 400 total, and a red chaos of armor is a juicy 1 time take, otherwise stick with about 30 armor as a normal total. (You don't have to take any armor at all if you decided to go for most of it in your page though)
Essences and Memories;
Essence of Clemency can get you out of some rough scenarios in most cases. It's even on the build page but I don't feel it's always needed. You use it just for the healing if mistakes happen often to you. it can make the list but the true top 5 are in my opinion: Essence of Confidence, Essence of Efficiency, Essence of Momentum, Essence of Virtue, and Essence of Voracity.
- Confidence is the easiest pickup in most cases due to multiplicative damage being present in the game. Meaning that if I increase the damage of my hammer by 150% with max range damage sourced from Discipline's Momentum, Confidence will apply it's % boost to that damage as well not just the base damage of the memory. (the math works both ways via either Commutative Property or Associative Property)
- Efficiency I would hope you understand now is really good due to the existence of the evil lucid Prudent Jellyfish, but Essence of Momentum is interesting due to the sheer number of enemies Discipline can hit at once. Discipline will apply 100% of all attack effects to a target, including it's own cooldown mechanic, so a group of enemies can be an instant reset in most cases.
- Which is where Virtue saves the day in more than one way. You miss your targets? no worries cast again right away! But if you hit more enemies than you need... The excess cooldown reduction isn't "wasted" it goes to the other stacks you may have used.
- A repeat from the baptism list, (and probably most guides for AD characters), Voracity's value comes from being triggered not necessarily being on Discipline itself, but if you have good uptime and it's the most spammable memory you have, then it works, other wise put it on another short cooldown memory just to get the AD boost.
They can all find their place on the hammer itself during a run, but can move around any which way onto Shadow Walk and Swift Slash, these two memories I'm always on the lookout for and are integrated into the build for me as if they were part of Vesper himself. Vile Strike is a great option as well but sometimes I like the fixed distance the other two provide as a form of consistency that you don't pay any mind to.
Creating lower cooldowns on these dash memories with good distance allows us to begin dashing out of combat to gain the distance we need to maximize the damage with Discipline's Momentum, movement speed and cooldown of most sorts can be valuable. Essence of Quicksilver, Essence of Panic , and Essence of Direness are the top 3 supportive essences.
- Quicksilver works quite well on baptism, and Discipline's dash speed is actually based on Vespers move speed. so even though baptism isn't a main part of the build, I 'll usually select and hang onto it for this reason, and being that shadow walk can apply the attack effect it makes for a good synergy there as well to help maintain distance while keeping the speed going.
- Panic and Direness both fill a very particular niche. getting hit is good (don't do it intentionally though). putting both of these on the same memory is constant distance management for Discipline's Momentum. Panic isn't up all the time but both buffs it grants help in the same way, Direness is only up when you're missing health, but the cooldown it provides actually outperforms efficiency even if you are only missing 25% of your health instead of the max benefit it provides at 50%.
A quick touch on Essence of Lethality and Essence of Contempt. They are great to put on Discipline, but I don't like to heavily invest in them as these are essences that you do not have consistent control over how they apply damage. Once an enemy is below the Lethality threshold it becomes a huge waste, but It's one of my favorite essences for taking out skinned enemies and mini bosses. Contempt ends up being still useful for mini bosses and quite good for World Bosses, though without some front loaded damage, you can't get them to the needed threshold quickly, Since these essences have opposite issues though, they can be paired together in lieu of confidence.
Conclusion
At the end of the day Vesper can take any health stacking gem or armor/damage reduction gem for any of these builds, but there are a particular group that can fit on the 3 builds here as well as any vesper build in general; Essence of Efficiency, Essence of Vengeance, Divine Faith, and Essence of the Giant. They enable so many different things. Permafrost is always a good memory and works on any traveler. Last thing to note, you will find that your play style may not fit perfectly with the builds listed. Most of what's here is suggested based on my multiple successful runs in Limbo 6 pushing limits for my own enjoyment. If you feel like something wasn't covered or may be missing then please @ me on the Shape of Dreams Discord. I may not respond immediately but I'll definitely see comments on the thread in the discord where this guide was posted. Thank you for going through this guide with me and know it will be changed from time to time. Have a great time playing Shape of Dreams.
- Mathos
