[Bloodlines] ~ The little marauder that could (clear every mapmod!) ~ Cold Crit Tank

[WIP build, things may change!]

This was a build created in bloodlines with a special purpose in mind: clear any map with any mod. I've always had to reroll maps with "half/no reg" or "blood magic" for example. So i started to theorycraft some.

The idea was simple: Use blood magic for abilities while you use the mana for auras. This way you can do no-regs fairly easily. And since this was supposed to be tanky enough for every map mod, i had to go tanky. And whats a better tank than a marauder? Maruader has a lot of Life and with that comes a decent amount of armor. The templar / marauder trees are stupid strong right now and can very well support a caster. I've always loved freeze pulse and I think it scales really well with the points i reach. The summary:

- Be Marauder.
- Use freeze pulse.
- Use crit, castspeed and a lot of elemental damage.
- Have selfsustain.


Vaal Pact vs Sibyl's
Here's the problem with crit though: reflect hurts. A lot. And you generally want to have vaal pact since it sort of functions like damage reduction (since you leech instantly), and this way dont oneshot yourself. Albeit this build can still pick up vaal pact, i wanted to try to sustain the reflect via high lifereg and via the new unique ring, Sibyl's lament.

The reduced reflect damage taken works surprisingly well since you will have really high leech from the life leech gem and high regeneration.


Core uniques

Spoiler for reasoning.


Skillpoints and Passive Tree
I think this side of the tree is the best for this build, because of it gets A LOT of elemental damage, a decent amount of crit. Serpent Stance and Whirling Barrier synergizes amazingly well with this build. Serpent Stance gives a lot of crit And Whirling Barrier gives a power charge on block. This will not proc all to often but the extra block is really nice to get (especially in a hardcore league), so the "wasted" physical damage for staves in the tree is justified. I of course got Arcane Potency as well as Annihilation, but thats basically all the crit you're going to get in this build.

The templar (and witch to some degree) offers a very silly amount of elemental damage. This is perfect since this makes up for the fact that i dont get much crit (roughly 21 chance to crit on freeze pulse). A nice addition is that with all the nodes (plus frostbite and taryn's) i have 41% chance to freeze enemies. And combine this with the crit, you rarely even take hits since everything is frozen. Celestial Punishment stacks with taryn's aswell. Thats a total of 45% increased damage against frozen enemies.

I'd personally skip the power charges if you're just trying this out, since you have a hard time sustaining them unless you use Ass Mark. The chance on chance from whirling barrier is actually really lackluster, and i have yet to try the build with a Victarios Acuity.

Bandits: Oak, kill, kill. 40 life is a lot. Thing i might do is switch to alira in merciless, once i get good sustain for power charges.

Full build:


Current Gear:


Current Potions:



Current stats:

Offense:

Defense:



For levling:
These two puppies are really broken for leveling. I used them all the way up until i got my taryn's! It aint worht using Freeze Pulse with just a lifesprig though. I personally groundslammed (with Pillar of The Caged god) until i could use the reverberation rod and used the sprig in offhand. I have not tried leveling as groundslam all the way up until taryns shiver, so i cant give any input on that.


Gems


Pros & Cons, and things to note
- Has high damage, despite being...
- ...tanky!
- Good in partyplay, but only because of freezechance really. I'd recommend staying solo with a build like this since your damamge will be a significant amount lower than actual DPS builds.
- Can clear every mapmod (note that difficult maps will still be difficult)
- Relatively cheap, and easy to set up and level.

- Has a hard time getting dexterity.
- Ceratin mods, like corrupting blood (and lightning thorns!!) can INSTANTLY kill you.
- A 5l is needed for the self sustain.
- Not exactly a fast-moving build..

- In "players have blood magic" maps, dispell all auras and run only Purity of ice.

Things to try:

Things to get (dream about):


Videos:

Bump for my friend, I've been playing with him in partymapping and we're melting everything, not anymore tho since my highlevel character is dead, my character didn't die in party, by my own mistake in solomapping.
But this build really shines in cooperative play from the bonus damage while enemies being frozen.

I've been playing with Qupex in maps up to 74s and a couple 76 from zana and it is devastating, entire groups of mobs are near permafreezed and I at times cannot contribute due to his clearing speed, as an arcer myself. It works very well and has very few problems, other than some minor movement speed issues.

Bumping for a strong build that needs to be seen by more!

This build ooks interesting but could really use videos from a few different maps, so that I know what I'm getting into. I'm not sure how good the map clear speed is with just 4k tooltip dps

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outerworld wrote:

This build ooks interesting but could really use videos from a few different maps, so that I know what I'm getting into. I'm not sure how good the map clear speed is with just 4k tooltip dps

Yeah, I fixed that now, look in the Video-tab! Will upload more if that is what people want. :3

Thanks for putting the effort into your guide.

It caught my eye some time ago, and I was working on a character based on this. Unfortunately the drunken bum embarked on a Haku quest he should have ignored and passed away this evening, so I cannot really give the objective feedback I would have liked.

But I feel you deserve a bump :)

This character ripped, trying to solo a Poorjoys. He did good, but a desync next to a Living blood finally got him. Will update if remake, but for now, this char is put on ice (hue).

May he rest in peace! ;_;

Sorry to hear of your loss. May he rest in peace.