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

i thought this build was about burning not cleave

If you read the starting post, I fell in love with the skill Cleave.
Cleave needs Swords/Axes.

Doryani's Catalysts do nothing for Herald of Ash Proliferation, as "% Elemental damage" does not apply to Burn damage iirc.
Also Maces have very bad passives, compared to swords. So the nice %elemental damage only compensates for the loss of acc/attackspeed/crit/damage.

But you can obviously do a very similar build with the sceptres.

I actually had this same idea a few days ago, when i was using the free respec on my first char i ever made, your s&b mara :)

The initial idea was to make it a glass cannon, stacking as much crit and damage nodes as possible, but it turned out to be a balanced tree with enough hp and defence to survive high level maps. The only problem with crit is that you never have enough points left to get all the good damage nodes, so maybe if i had more patience to level all the way to 100 i could get those nice sword nodes to.


I'm not sure what the idea was for defensive nodes, so i just have a bit of armor, eva and block, and somehow it seems work on most maps.


I still had some ok-ish swords from the original build on ambush, but with master crafting they got alot better. Or well, good enough for some decent dps.



And just to show off, my 2 most valuable items that also work really well with this build.


So what started as a random experiment with a free respec turned into a nice build. And maybe with the new 1.3 tree the mara start will get even better so i have a good excuse to roll the same build again :p


ps: after using a shadow for 3 months it's nice to be playing a mara again, i almost forgot how awesome he looks compared to that weirdo!

Dramatic smoke effect to enhance HoA.

As long as your Dual Strike is not 20q, I'd recommend Cleave+Conc Effect.
After 20q, the 80% additional crit make it worth using DS/Splash.

I recommend this tree

Swapping the not-so-amazing "by the blade" and "Water dancing" for the full sweet sword cluster at ranger.
With options for a lot more block/sword damage on additional level ups.

Conc is kinda awkward, with the smaller range it takes longer to clear some maps even with the higher dps. I liked it with reave, but with cleave it seems to miss alot even when monsters are right in front of you.

And i wasn't sure about entering the duelist zone trough those armor nodes, because i only have 2 AR items as i was trying to recycle the EV gear from the shadow. It would have been even better with acrobatics, but then i couldn't use that nice 6l chest.

"

Foewat wrote:

Conc is kinda awkward, with the smaller range it takes longer to clear some maps even with the higher dps. I liked it with reave, but with cleave it seems to miss alot even when monsters are right in front of you.

And i wasn't sure about entering the duelist zone trough those armor nodes, because i only have 2 AR items as i was trying to recycle the EV gear from the shadow. It would have been even better with acrobatics, but then i couldn't use that nice 6l chest.

The Duelist Armor nodes are kind of useless, yes.

But you pay less points to get into Duelist this way.
In between "Warrior's Blood" and "Master of the Arena", I spend 9 points. You spend 15.

Those 6 "saved" points are 40% damage and 24% attackspeed at Brutal Blade, +1 free point.
Water Dancing plus By the Blade are 76% damage and 11% attackspeed, if I counted correctly.
Kind of hard to tell which is better in the end.

I prefer my version because it also saves two points on the way to the Scion life wheel and has a +10 Int node.


Conc Effect/Cleave:
I consider it to be ok in terms of clearspeed, but I'm maybe the wrong person to speak to, as I also like to play Single Target Melee and never really played ranged builds. ;)

Ok, let me preface this by saying I've still got a long ways to go towards learning PoE. But I've a question that perhaps is obvious to more experienced players. Looking at your skill guide which I'm really enjoying playing (lvl 32 now) there seems to be not enough gear for the gems listed. Here's what I mean. There's a 6L set for Main attack (armor), a 4L set each for Aura and Mobility and 2 for Trigger. It seems that I can't get more than a 3L in my one hand swords, that leaves a helm, glove and boot to hold the 4L gem sets. That's 3 sets but you've described 4. Am I supposed to pick only one of the Triggers to use? They seem to complement each other well.

Thanks again for the detailed build write up.

The trigger gem sets are in a 3l. Look closely

He's right, I have one 4L more than possible in the first post.

I prefered to run Leap Slam in a 4L over increased AoE on cwdt-EC-Curse.

OK, thanks for the reply.