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Background
I was originally intrigued by the prospect of playing a marauder wielding a mace when I read about how stuns worked. This was back when lower stun threshold had no DR, and you could actually hit 100% lower stun threshold (meaning the enemy was stunned whenever you hit them). Of course, I didn’t know this at the time, and was curious about whether you could lower it to the point that you could stun bosses. I had myself worked into the duelist tree by the time they patched it, but fortunately for me, they also refunded passives for people who messed around in the duelist tree. So I got a rebuild. My feeling about stun was this: stun works too well when you can stun them, and does absolutely nothing when you can’t – therefore it’s pretty awful to make a stun-based character.
I was in the middle of Cruel, and found that it was pretty hard to live with my previous setup unless I got a ton of stuns off. With stun gone, I decided to try to stick to maces (as I loved ground slam and had a unique 1-handed mace), but go tankier. And it worked. It worked well. The first character I leveled, and even today it’s probably the most stable of any of them.
Philosophy of the Build
Basically, we’re looking to be safe – as safe as possible. We’re looking to tank Merciless Brutus with poor gear and (eventually) break him through sheer force of life. To do this, we need to always consider a few things as being of paramount importance.
1. We want our life total to be as high as possible. Resists or no, no melee character is going very far with 1000 health.
2. We’d like to cap our resists. I would say this includes Chaos resist, but the mods adding chaos resist are so rare that this isn’t really feasible on a budget. We’ll settle for at least capping elemental resists.
3. We want to leech as much as possible.
Skills Used
Ground Slam – Life Gain on Hit + Multistrike + Faster Attacks – If I had a 5L or 6L, I’d likely add Life Leech, Increased Melee Physical Damage, or something to that effect. Ground Slam is going to be our go-to for groups of enemies (which is often). We use Multistrike and Faster Attacks here, basically because we’re looking to leech more life. Other gems which amp up dps (such as melee physical) do not affect the Life Gain on Hit gem, while attack speed does (since when you attack 30% faster, you gain life 30% faster as well). The real beauty of Ground Slam, though, is in its use as a pseudo-ranged power. It’s a melee ability, gains the way a melee ability would, except that you can hit things 2/3 of the screen away from you with it – and thereby is necessary for enemies which would normally eat you up in melee combat.
Enduring Cry – Every little bit of mitigation helps, and once you get a few +Max Endurance Charges Passives, the amount of mitigation you get from this is much more than “a little bit”. My current character has 7 Endurance charges – that’s 35% damage resistance – the same as buffing your health multiplicatively (as opposed to additively, which is to say that multiplicatively is better scaling) by about 54%. And of course, if you’re able to keep them up, the lower elemental resist requirement on gear means you can budget more for Chaos Resist and Life.
Frenzy – (Currently for me, this is Life Gain on Hit + Melee Physical + Added Fire, because I don’t have enough support, but ideally…) Life Gain on Hit + Multistrike + Faster Attacks - In keeping with the above, having frenzy charges gets us attacking faster, and 15% attack speed (or more, if we’re willing to get the passive) is worth an attack every 10 seconds.
Leap Slam – Life Gain on Hit + Faster Attacks – Obviously, Leap Slam is useful for getting out of tight spots and getting away when we seem close to death. Also, notice in the above that we seem to be attacking very, very fast. Here’s a fun fact about Leap Slam. Where other movement attacks like Cyclone use your movement speed for moving, and attacking speed for attacking – Leap Slam (and Whirling Blades, for that matter) – uses attack speed to determine how fast we move. So when we attach Faster Attacks to Leap Slam, it’s not for the dps increase (like it is for most attacks), it’s for the faster movement. The only drawback is rollbacks – don’t rely too heavily on this to get you out, because desyncs can kill this. While movement during a desync figures itself out, Leap Slams during a desync get rolled back (at least this has been my experience). With my health regen and attack speed though, I literally Leap Slam around the map. It’s faster than walking.
Heavy Strike – (Currently for me, this is Life Gain on Hit + Faster Attacks, but ideally…) Life Gain on Hit + Faster Attacks + Melee Splash/Melee Physical/Life Leech – I’m still up in the air about whether attaching Melee Splash is good or bad for this character. On the one hand, melee splash makes for higher dps in a group of enemies, and due to the 150% damage effectiveness, and the fact that melee splash grants you the ability to collect on the LGoH gem many times per swing, it seems good. But on the other hand, it detracts from it’s usefulness in single-target fights, and isn’t that why we wouldn’t be using Ground Slam in the first place?
Warlord’s Mark – Spell Totem (if you have a spare one, which I don’t) – The Life Leech is substantial, and while the mana leech may not be what we need, it also can save us from having to renew Enduring Cry.
Molten Shell – Iron Will (+ Cast Speed, if you have the stats) – This is a cute little trick against melee enemies which you know deal a ton of damage. At my level, this deals nearly 2k damage (a fair deal more than my melee attacks), and I can have it up before I can use my attacks, so there’s more or less no downside.
Passives
Obviously, since we want really high health, we want to take the health route out of the marauder tree, and over to Resolute Technique. From there, I headed down to the Max Endurance Charge, the two 12% health passives, and then down to Blood Magic. From there, I head down to the stun immunity node, and take the Golem’s Blood Node (and the 15% atk speed and Max End Charge) beyond that. Coincidentally, the branch leading back to the Duelist’s starting point (by the life route) is really good. So, I take that path all the way to the first Duelist node. Then I go up into the Templar tree and take the shield node with 30% elemental resist, then take as many life nodes as I can and the Max Endurance Charge. When you get the central Tempest health node (the one that has +30 life, +12% life in it), you can go back to the duelist tree and get the life nodes just north of Diamond Skin.
When all things are said and done, we should have a ton of life, something in the neighborhood of 8% life regen per second, resistances that seem be high with minimal gear (+30% resist all, +30% resist all when using a shield, +35% resist all with 7 endurance charges), and 35% physical damage reduction plus armor (I assume armor and endurance charges are multiplicative, not additive).
Basically, this means we can tank whatever we want.
Gear
I haven’t looked at what uniques exist (nor do I want to, I like the element of surprise in a game’s itemization), but a few things I’ve found that are really nice to have for a character stomping around in Merciless.
Obviously, attack speed, life and resists (esp. chaos resist) will be good. But also, I have a unique glove item that is very low level and provides 14% attack speed and conduit – which makes this character actually really, really good in a party (providing 3 end/frenzy charges). However, also note that the fast attack speed also makes static damage bonuses (e.g. 29-40 cold damage) provide a ton of damage.
Flasks have limited utility as you don’t really need mana, and nearly all of your regen comes from passives + leech, with a rejuv totem somewhere if you get low. Good flasks to look for include: those with anti-curse, those with a ton of armor, and those with chaos resist.
Conclusion
This character is built for those who prize survival above all else, those who wish to stand toe-to-toe with the hardest hitting foes in the game and live to tell the tale. And through copious use of endurance charges, life nodes, and leech, we are able to do just that – at least as far in as the early mapping content, anyway. Hope you guys like the guide. Try out the character – you’ll be surprised how sturdy he is.
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I found that for single target heavy strike should be linked to life leech not life gain on hit. Also melee splash heavy strike felt a lot worse than just ground slam for AOE attacks.
PS: no particular reason to face-tank merciless brutus when you could just have Summon Skeletons + Spell totem (+faster casting, ideally) somewhere on your gear and brutus never even looks at you. He has a crit chance, you know.
Anyway, the game isn't called "Path of Life Nodes" for nothing.
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On April 25 2013 23:28 Sn0_Man wrote:
I found that for single target heavy strike should be linked to life leech not life gain on hit. Also melee splash heavy strike felt a lot worse than just ground slam for AOE attacks.
PS: no particular reason to face-tank merciless brutus when you could just have Summon Skeletons + Spell totem (+faster casting, ideally) somewhere on your gear and brutus never even looks at you. He has a crit chance, you know.
Anyway, the game isn't called "Path of Life Nodes" for nothing.
Your mileage may vary here - but since it's a percentage of damage done, if you deal a ton of damage per swing, you want life leech. I do small amount of damage and attack very fast.
For instance, if I did 1k dps with 3.5 hits per second:
285 per hit means a 6% LL gives 17 health per hit.
If I do 1k dps with 1.0 hits per second:
1000 per hit means a 6% LL gives 60 health per hit.
The LL will probably become better as my gear/damage improves, but for now I'm sticking with LGoH. Don't forget that Heavy Strike now receives 1.5x the listed life value on the gem (the mouseover on the skill should still be right) due to its 150% damage effectiveness.
Also - I like being able to tank Brutus. Sure I don't *have* to - but really how much fun is letting skeletons do the work? My fight took long enough that I'm sure he crit me several times. I was okay.
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1K dps single target with heavy strike?
Well, I guess...
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On April 26 2013 00:42 Sn0_Man wrote:
1K dps single target with heavy strike?
Well, I guess...
It was an example.
More meaningfully, the break even point assuming 3.5 attacks per second (again, made up number) is:
3.5 attacks per second * 36 life per attack * 1.5 damage effectiveness = 189 health per second
189 health per second / 0.06 health per damage = 3150 dps
My dps is not that high, nor do I anticipate it becoming so.
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Armor's damage reduction is calculated by the formula Armor/(Armor + 12*damage). The estimated physical reduction is a bit lower than how much it reduces the attacks from white mobs, but powerful attacks from something like Brutus are only mitigated by 13-15% if you have 50% estimated physical dr. But endurance charges give flat damage reduction, which is awesome.
I did a similar build to yours with two handed weapons, except that I skipped Blood Magic so I could use auras, and I'm using cleave instead of ground slam atm since I have a unique sword. Other than that, all the same skills with a different support gem setup (had to make do with what I got). Without a shield I don't get the elemental resist from shield like you do, but I have Iron Reflexes and I run Determination + Vitality/Purity + Hatred on mana and Grace on life. My gear sucks though....I have 2k hp at lvl 62 lol.
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On April 26 2013 01:33 Demonhunter04 wrote:
Armor's damage reduction is calculated by the formula Armor/(Armor + 12*damage). The estimated physical reduction is a bit lower than how much it reduces the attacks from white mobs, but powerful attacks from something like Brutus are only mitigated by 13-15% if you have 50% estimated physical dr.
Don't forget that this applies to damage that you do as well. Few big hits is stronger than many small hits, assuming your damage is primarily physical.
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On April 26 2013 01:33 Demonhunter04 wrote:
Armor's damage reduction is calculated by the formula Armor/(Armor + 12*damage). The estimated physical reduction is a bit lower than how much it reduces the attacks from white mobs, but powerful attacks from something like Brutus are only mitigated by 13-15% if you have 50% estimated physical dr. But endurance charges give flat damage reduction, which is awesome.
I did a similar build to yours with two handed weapons, except that I skipped Blood Magic so I could use auras, and I'm using cleave instead of ground slam atm since I have a unique sword. Other than that, all the same skills with a different support gem setup (had to make do with what I got). Without a shield I don't get the elemental resist from shield like you do, but I have Iron Reflexes and I run Determination + Vitality/Purity + Hatred on mana and Grace on life. My gear sucks though....I have 2k hp at lvl 62 lol.
I do wish I could run auras, if only for vitality. One of the downsides of having 300% attack speed, though, is that you spend mana 300% faster - and I never really had much to start with. This would probably be fine if I had another gem slot for each skill with blood magic/mana leech attached, but I don't have many of those gems - or slots for that matter - and it wouldn't change anything about the build (except that your regen and armor would be slightly higher). Purity is overkill if you're using an identical build to mine. I have 60% resist all from passives, 35% resist all from endurance charges - so I really only need 45% resist all on my gear). I get practically all of that on jewelry alone. With the aura, the only defensive stats I'd need to itemize for would be life and chaos resist.
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On April 26 2013 03:51 Treehead wrote:Show nested quote +On April 26 2013 01:33 Demonhunter04 wrote:
Armor's damage reduction is calculated by the formula Armor/(Armor + 12*damage). The estimated physical reduction is a bit lower than how much it reduces the attacks from white mobs, but powerful attacks from something like Brutus are only mitigated by 13-15% if you have 50% estimated physical dr. But endurance charges give flat damage reduction, which is awesome.
I did a similar build to yours with two handed weapons, except that I skipped Blood Magic so I could use auras, and I'm using cleave instead of ground slam atm since I have a unique sword. Other than that, all the same skills with a different support gem setup (had to make do with what I got). Without a shield I don't get the elemental resist from shield like you do, but I have Iron Reflexes and I run Determination + Vitality/Purity + Hatred on mana and Grace on life. My gear sucks though....I have 2k hp at lvl 62 lol. I do wish I could run auras, if only for vitality. One of the downsides of having 300% attack speed, though, is that you spend mana 300% faster - and I never really had much to start with. This would probably be fine if I had another gem slot for each skill with blood magic/mana leech attached, but I don't have many of those gems - or slots for that matter - and it wouldn't change anything about the build (except that your regen and armor would be slightly higher). Purity is overkill if you're using an identical build to mine. I have 60% resist all from passives, 35% resist all from endurance charges - so I really only need 45% resist all on my gear). I get practically all of that on jewelry alone. With the aura, the only defensive stats I'd need to itemize for would be life and chaos resist.
Purity isn't overkill for my build, since I'm working towards being able to use Righteous Fire. I can get to 85% with Purity and Elemental Adaptation, but that's still double what I'd be regenerating (max % life regen you can get from passives is 7.4%, by the way). Rise of the Phoenix is the last necessary step, so I'll stay 2 handed till then. I don't want to go all in and build entirely around RF because a few things completely nullify RF builds, like the curses flammability, elemental weakness, vulnerability, and temporal chains. All four of those curses increase the damage RF deals to the user.
I don't have the 30% resist with shield passives that you do. I have only 30% from passives and another 30% from endurance charges once I get to 6. Purity with Inner Force will give me around 35% to all resists, so I'll need 50% to all res from gear, not much more than you need. Another 1.95% life regen from Vitality (with 1.2% life regen from the life regen per endurance charge passive, this all adds to 10.55%), 68% more armor (multiplicative with total armor) from Determination, about 3500 armor from Grace, 32.5% physical damage added as cold from Hatred, and can add in Wrath later.
All I'll need from gear is life, armor, and resist (esp chaos). I might be able to get away with quite a bit of increased quantity and rarity because of that.
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On April 26 2013 06:42 Demonhunter04 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 26 2013 03:51 Treehead wrote:On April 26 2013 01:33 Demonhunter04 wrote:
Armor's damage reduction is calculated by the formula Armor/(Armor + 12*damage). The estimated physical reduction is a bit lower than how much it reduces the attacks from white mobs, but powerful attacks from something like Brutus are only mitigated by 13-15% if you have 50% estimated physical dr. But endurance charges give flat damage reduction, which is awesome.
I did a similar build to yours with two handed weapons, except that I skipped Blood Magic so I could use auras, and I'm using cleave instead of ground slam atm since I have a unique sword. Other than that, all the same skills with a different support gem setup (had to make do with what I got). Without a shield I don't get the elemental resist from shield like you do, but I have Iron Reflexes and I run Determination + Vitality/Purity + Hatred on mana and Grace on life. My gear sucks though....I have 2k hp at lvl 62 lol. I do wish I could run auras, if only for vitality. One of the downsides of having 300% attack speed, though, is that you spend mana 300% faster - and I never really had much to start with. This would probably be fine if I had another gem slot for each skill with blood magic/mana leech attached, but I don't have many of those gems - or slots for that matter - and it wouldn't change anything about the build (except that your regen and armor would be slightly higher). Purity is overkill if you're using an identical build to mine. I have 60% resist all from passives, 35% resist all from endurance charges - so I really only need 45% resist all on my gear). I get practically all of that on jewelry alone. With the aura, the only defensive stats I'd need to itemize for would be life and chaos resist. Purity isn't overkill for my build, since I'm working towards being able to use Righteous Fire. I can get to 85% with Purity and Elemental Adaptation, but that's still double what I'd be regenerating (max % life regen you can get from passives is 7.4%, by the way). Rise of the Phoenix is the last necessary step, so I'll stay 2 handed till then. I don't want to go all in and build entirely around RF because a few things completely nullify RF builds, like the curses flammability, elemental weakness, vulnerability, and temporal chains. All four of those curses increase the damage RF deals to the user. I don't have the 30% resist with shield passives that you do. I have only 30% from passives and another 30% from endurance charges once I get to 6. Purity with Inner Force will give me around 35% to all resists, so I'll need 50% to all res from gear, not much more than you need. Another 1.95% life regen from Vitality (with 1.2% life regen from the life regen per endurance charge passive, this all adds to 10.55%), 68% more armor (multiplicative with total armor) from Determination, about 3500 armor from Grace, 32.5% physical damage added as cold from Hatred, and can add in Wrath later. All I'll need from gear is life, armor, and resist (esp chaos). I might be able to get away with quite a bit of increased quantity and rarity because of that.
You can get more than 7.4% life regen - if you take the passive that gives you 0.2% life regen per endurance charge. With 7-8 charges (depending on items), you can feasibly get 9% life regen.
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On April 26 2013 22:32 Treehead wrote:Show nested quote +On April 26 2013 06:42 Demonhunter04 wrote:On April 26 2013 03:51 Treehead wrote:On April 26 2013 01:33 Demonhunter04 wrote:
Armor's damage reduction is calculated by the formula Armor/(Armor + 12*damage). The estimated physical reduction is a bit lower than how much it reduces the attacks from white mobs, but powerful attacks from something like Brutus are only mitigated by 13-15% if you have 50% estimated physical dr. But endurance charges give flat damage reduction, which is awesome.
I did a similar build to yours with two handed weapons, except that I skipped Blood Magic so I could use auras, and I'm using cleave instead of ground slam atm since I have a unique sword. Other than that, all the same skills with a different support gem setup (had to make do with what I got). Without a shield I don't get the elemental resist from shield like you do, but I have Iron Reflexes and I run Determination + Vitality/Purity + Hatred on mana and Grace on life. My gear sucks though....I have 2k hp at lvl 62 lol. I do wish I could run auras, if only for vitality. One of the downsides of having 300% attack speed, though, is that you spend mana 300% faster - and I never really had much to start with. This would probably be fine if I had another gem slot for each skill with blood magic/mana leech attached, but I don't have many of those gems - or slots for that matter - and it wouldn't change anything about the build (except that your regen and armor would be slightly higher). Purity is overkill if you're using an identical build to mine. I have 60% resist all from passives, 35% resist all from endurance charges - so I really only need 45% resist all on my gear). I get practically all of that on jewelry alone. With the aura, the only defensive stats I'd need to itemize for would be life and chaos resist. Purity isn't overkill for my build, since I'm working towards being able to use Righteous Fire. I can get to 85% with Purity and Elemental Adaptation, but that's still double what I'd be regenerating (max % life regen you can get from passives is 7.4%, by the way). Rise of the Phoenix is the last necessary step, so I'll stay 2 handed till then. I don't want to go all in and build entirely around RF because a few things completely nullify RF builds, like the curses flammability, elemental weakness, vulnerability, and temporal chains. All four of those curses increase the damage RF deals to the user. I don't have the 30% resist with shield passives that you do. I have only 30% from passives and another 30% from endurance charges once I get to 6. Purity with Inner Force will give me around 35% to all resists, so I'll need 50% to all res from gear, not much more than you need. Another 1.95% life regen from Vitality (with 1.2% life regen from the life regen per endurance charge passive, this all adds to 10.55%), 68% more armor (multiplicative with total armor) from Determination, about 3500 armor from Grace, 32.5% physical damage added as cold from Hatred, and can add in Wrath later. All I'll need from gear is life, armor, and resist (esp chaos). I might be able to get away with quite a bit of increased quantity and rarity because of that. You can get more than 7.4% life regen - if you take the passive that gives you 0.2% life regen per endurance charge. With 7-8 charges (depending on items), you can feasibly get 9% life regen.
I mentioned that very passive by name in my post 
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Use Ruby flasks for righteous fire builds.
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I hate having to rely on flasks, but I can understand why. It's the super short duration that's the problem for me. Is it even feasible to have a ruby flask active over 50% of the time while facing whites, let alone elites and above?
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EPT
