[1.2] Some men just want to watch the screen burn (Dualwield Crit Herald of Ash build)

Just to show how it is supposed to look: rampaging, burning and murdering.

Unfortunatly my computer is a little old and I have no hacking skillz whatsoever, so you have to live with three fraps recorded fragments glued together. I also lag a lot while recording, so please forgive me for horrible gameplay. ;)

Map: Strand Lvl 71 with more magic monsters, +30% monster life.

As someone asked about rock golems, I also murdered some rock golems for you.
I use the conc effect setup (~30k DpS), so most of the AoE is coming from Herald of Ash.

Click me for Strand Rampage

In the video, I occasionally stop attacking to show the burning damage, I usually continue hacking of course.

Btw, you can also see me finding my sweet new belt from an Inner Treasure Rock Golem:

I played with poebuilder.com for quite a while, and I finally managed to get a tree with:
*Roughly enough life (159%), which will get you to around 5k life at Lvl 85.
*most of the crit nodes (all except for the smaller ones below Scion and in the right of Ranger)
*Most Block Nodes (except for Scion's and the one in Ranger Start)

Visualized:


As you can see in post 2, a tree like this will lead to around 40% crit (without help from gear except for 6% crit swords) and a very solid 48% block (without Bringer of Rain or corrupts).

Level 85 tree

I skipped a ton of damage/attack speed nodes (there's just not enough skillpoints), but don't worry, that's still around 250% damage and 30% attackspeed, which should be enough.

Some random thoughts:

*As written above, you can include the Ranger starting zone instead of the sword stuff and get a very equal tree without being limited to any weapon type: Click me

*You can test for yourself if you want Iron Reflexes or Ondar's Guile. Both are very strong defensive nodes.

*You'll most likely need the +30 Int node for blue gems (item rarity, crit gems).

*I'd put further skillpoints into the Scion life wheel, but you may also take damage, resists or whatever.

Normal - Oak
Cruel - kill all
Merciless - kill all

In Cruel, both oak and Kraytin are very useful, but I felt I prefer the skillpoint. If I really wanted, I could take 15% damage (instead of 18%) at Duelist start or 6% dualwield attackspeed (instead of 8%) at Duelist for the skillpoint, which would only be slightly worse.

In Merciless, I took the skillpoint because I think 3 Charges are enough for Immortal Call.

Main attack:
Cleave
+melee physical damage (raw damage)
+faster attacks (faster animation, DpS)
+increased critical damage/concentrated effect (for Herald of Ash screen explosions)
+5th link: added fire damage (DpS, more fire!!!)
+6th link: increased AoE/concentrated Effect/Weapon elemental damage/Blood Magic

I prefer to use Mana as it doesn't block a support gem, but you can of course decide otherwise.
Conc Effect is the strongest DpS gem, Weapon Elemental is slightly weaker but doesn't have a downside.

I'm not using Multistrike as I don't care about my DpS screen, but I do care about overkill damage for Herald of Ash. ;)

Auras:

One out of:
Grace, Determination, Hatred
Plus:
Herald of Ash in a 4L: Reduced Mana, Increased Burning, Elemental Proliferation

Hatred is more DpS, but I'd rather use a defensive Aura. Grace is better with Iron Reflexes, if you are playing without it, use Determination.
HoA can also be supported by "increased AoE", but I prefer "increased burning" to make it actually kill monsters on its own.

Mobility:
Leap Slam
+faster attacks
+culling strike
+item rarity

I love this combo. Use to quickly maneuver and to cull bosses for better loot.

Trigger:
High level Cast when damage taken
+Molten Shell
+Immortal Call
+Increased Duration

Lvl1 Cast when damage taken
+Enduring Cry
+Temporal Chains
+Increased AoE/Decoy Totem/Blood Rage

Pretty obvious stuff.

Weapons:
High physical DpS, added Crit Chance (to get above 6%).

Armor pieces:
Life, resists, %/flat armor.
Accuracy on helmet/gloves and Int on helmet would be nice, leech or damage on gloves as well. Mana is also sweet if you are not using Blood Magic.

Jewelry/Belt:
Life, Resists, Int, Crit Chance/Multiplier, physical damage, weapon elemental damage.

Uniques:
*Bringer of Rain is obviously nice (faster attacks and melee phys are included in gem setup, it's a 6.5 Link with damage, life and block). No resists and accuracy though.
*Maligaro's are obvious choices for gloves.
*Dualwielding Doryani's would be pretty interesting with the alternate skilltree.
*Abyssus is probably the sickest DpS item, but I doubt this build can overcome the drawback
*Belly of the Beast and Lightning Coil are great choices for chest pieces
*Atziri's Acuity would be wonderful, but who the f.. has that thing? ;)

Flasks:
Something like this:

+situational resist flasks.

As you can see, this is overall pretty cheap stuff.
You can probably get all of this for 1-2 Exalted Orbs total.

250 pDpS swords with crit cost about 5-15 chaos, a white 5L will be around 5 chaos, and some resist stuff with life should be available for 2-5 chaos per piece.

With this gear and Level 82, I achieve these stats:


Auras: Grace, Lvl1 Clarity, Herald of Ash
With Hatred, it's obviously a bit more.

30k DpS isn't too bad for a 5L no quality gem main attack with mediocre weapons. ;)

Obviously level them all, invite Armorer and Weaponsmith for the dailys, later on Cartographer and Master assassin?

For the Master Assassin quests that require single target, I swap the faster attacks gem in my main skill for "Dual Strike", turn off Herald of Ash (just in case) and rightclick the exile.

The rest of the master tasks are pretty straightforward and don't require too much preperation.

In Gameplay and Feedback section, you'll usually find a thread that says "Daggers are overpowered".
Usually you'll also find someone complaining that Dagger builds with insane gear will walk around with 300k DpS, while Axe/Sword builds only achieve some 20-30k DpS, meaning: Daggers are ten times as strong.

To me, this is horseshit.

Yes, Daggers are the better weapons, there's no denying. They have the same base damage, their passives are at least as valuable as those of other weapons, and they have access to a wide selection of skills and support gems, so they are equal in most aspects, but have a higher crit chance, which makes them straight up better weapons.
Yes, Dagger builds will end up with more DpS.

But:
Dagger builds will not do ten times as much damage. This difference doesn't (only) come from the weapon type being overpowered, it is a result of Resolute Technique.

In Path of Exile, stacking up DpS is a game of "stacking multipliers".
A x (B+C+D) is worse than A x B x C x D (for B,C,D >1).

With Resolute Technique, you are restricting your DpS, you are limiting yourself, because "Crit Multiplier" is one of the, if not the strongest damage multipliers in the game.

So the question is not:
Why would you use a sword in a crit build? Go Dagger!
It is:
Why would you ever want Resolute Technique if you could go Crit?

The disadvantage of a sword to a dagger is then reduced to:
*Around 6.5% base crit vs around 10% base crit (2/3 of crit chance)
*No Power Charges in the area where you find sword nodes

This translates into - with equal (mirrored and ubercrazy) gear:
If a crit dagger build does 300k DpS, a crit sword build will do 150-200k DpS.

And that's something I'm fine with. Daggers could be nerfed a bit, but not too much.

I think Dualwielding is in a pretty good spot right now.

1. Significantly more DpS
a) You gain a small "more physical damage" multiplier and a little attackspeed bonus just by equipping a second weapon (again: multipliers are great!).
b) Dualwield attacks are better than singlehanded attacks. In example, Cleave jumps from 100-> 130%, and Dualstrike's 180% damage efficiency easily beats a skill like Heavy Strike (150%).
You pay the price in a lower block chance and defensive stats.

2. Offensive secondary effects
Your typical "dualwield block" cluster looks like this:
+8% dualwield block, +24% physical damage while dualwielding
Your typical shield block cluster on the other hand:
+8% shield block, +50% increased defenses/block recovery

Sounds fair, but...
a) the bulk of you armor comes from auras and flasks, even with a shield build
b) block recovery is imho a 100% useless stat, I have never felt I suffered any block animation.
% Damage on the other hand is always great. Obviously.

3. Do I really need 75% block?

75% block is obviously better than the 48% block this build is walking around with.
But...
With block chance, I always had the feeling that it isn't really worth stacking it to the extreme.

To get the maximum amount, you have to invest a lot of skillpoints, skillpoints that could also be damage or straight up life. You won't find enough block in any area of the skilltree, you'll have to travel quite a bit to stack it, and on top of that, shield block nodes don't provide damage (like Dualwield Block nodes), so the damage advantage of dualwielding rises and rises.

You also have to keep in mind that you are probably using life leech, life regen and a high life pool.
If you block each and every attack, those stats are basically wasted. In my shield block builds, I ended up walking around with close to full hitpoints 99% of time (equipping for the 1% is good in Hardcore, but in Softcore?), so I basically didn't use half my defensive resources.

That is not economical.

There's nothing wrong with taking damage, that's why you have a life pool and life recovery mechanics.

You want some block not to get overwhelmed, but even with shields, I felt that going for the maximum comes at too big of a cost with too small of an actual benefit.

The main drawback is now related to Uniques: you don't have infinite ES from Aegis Aurora or cheap max spellblock from Saffell.

Overall:
Dualwielding now does significantly more damage, the loss of defenses is there, but it isn't that huge.

Going Melee is obviously weaker than going range.
There's a reason why modern soldiers use rifles instead of axes (except in warhammer 40k).

1. You have to "close the gap", which takes time.
2. You take more damage from melee monsters that can be kited by ranged builds.
3. You don't have a significant bonus in offense or defense (that's a disadvantage of such an open skilltree, anyone can take the same defenses, they are not restricted to certain playstyles like in other games).

In other games, you will find mages and rangers to be quite squishy, they need their range because when they are hit, they are pretty much dead.
In PoE, they are as tanky as marauders, if they want to be.

However this doesn't mean that you can't go melee in this game.

I'm a huge fan of melee, I play it in any ARPG. And PoE is no exception.

It still provides all the tools you need.

You have "gap closing" skills like leap sla, whirling blades, flicker strike.
You can tank up enough to sustain being in the middle of everything.
You have access to very potent skills and support gems.

You are playing at a disadvantage, but since I don't compete with anyone, why would I care? It's not going to stop me from hitting monsters in the face with badass weapons.

I'm not a "rich" player.

This is my Rampage currency (my standard currency stash tab doesn't look much better):

Holy shit a Divine Orb!
I use/waste my orbs on all kinds of items, I buy items from other players, but I generally don't sell too many (I give them for free to friends most of the time).

I'm also not really "farming for money" (like "doing Piety 24/7, stacking up Alts to vendor for fusing to trade for exalts"), so I'll most likely never have any access to any "tier 1 item".

All the sweet things I ever bought came from this:
One day a strong Unique will drop. It did in every league, it also hopefully will drop in Rampage.
I'll most likely not need it. So I sell it for some Exalted Orbs and buy something else.

This is literally the only form of me getting "richer". Like many other players, I'm not the kind of guy to "work" in a game, I prefer to "play" it.

Does that put me on a disadvantage?
Sure.
Do I care?
No.

It's as simple as that. Yes, there may be mirrors, insane uniques, some monster called "Uber Atziri" and Level 100 in this game, but if I am to work hard to ever get there, I'm fine not to have access.
I hate this whining.

Find your spot in this game, accept it and move on. If you want to have everything anytime, play a game that provides that.