[2.0] Wild strike dual wield dagger/1h dagger shield - the ultimate guide!!!

Hello my fellow Wraeclasters! As everyone might know, the best skill ever to be added to the game was added in the awakening, and it's called wild strike! I have played around with it for a long time, pretty much ever since it got released, and i have done a ton of testing on it, and through blood, sweat and tears i have been able to craft a rather great build.

UPDATE!!!
So after a long time since i started this guide, there have been a significant amount of changes and i have not been able to keep you guys updated, but basically, there are to variants of the build that i use, a shield and a dual wield. I am using the dual wield at the moment.

Build introduction:
The build is very similar in how it plays whether you choose the dual wield or the shield version.

This Build is very gear and lvl dependent, aquiring the proper items and uniques can be crucial and build defining. So i will not suggest using this build as your first character or even second, if you don't have atleast 5 ex worth of currency to invest in the build. But if you have that currency, this build is a ton of fun, and pretty darn good.

The offence of this build is focused around fast attacks and crits, and with the use of whirling blades, we become extremly quick and mobile.

Defence wise, this build is actually one hell of a tank, we do not utilize vaal pact, so we won't be leeching life, since life leech is really bad with wild strike.

If you go dual wield, you will be using grace and maybe also arctic armour since our damage is really high even without a damage aura, i am able to hit almost 100k without one.

The really great thing about going shield, is that it first of all increases our defences an absolute brick ton, but it also gives us some realy nice dmg nodes down by the duelist tree. These nodes are a nice mix of dmg/defence.
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Gem setup (lots of testing):


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Bandit quests:




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Passive tree:
Shield version

Dual wield version

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Gear:

Oh yes, the gear, this is where the build will require you to maybe empty your pockets, because it is quite gear dependent. First of all you need the binos kitchen knife, this is absolutely crucial since it first of all provides us with a rather high physical dmg and a great crit chance, but also because it gives us an absolutely amazing amount of life regen. Whenever you kill a poisoned enemy, you, and all your teammates gets a life regen buff, which usually gives me around 1k - 1.2k life per second.

The third unique that grealy benefits this build is lioneyes remorse, this shield simply provides us with a huge increase in armour and a really good block chance with a nice amount of hp on top.

On the rest of the gear you will obviously need to get enough resistance to max them out, and you will also be needing to get quite a lot of strength and int on your gear so you don't have to rely on those annoying 30+ strenght and int nodes. The mind drinker passive node will be used until you can get the proper mana leech on your gear, i got mana leech on my hands, 1 ring and my amulet. You will also want to have as much HP on your gear as possible, if a gear piece does not have a really nice hp roll, it is usually not good enough.

My gear currently looks like this:


if you go shield you will ofcourse be using lioneyes remorse.
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Mapping:

When you start doing maps with this build, you will probably not have very high HP, i started doing maps with around 3k - 3,5k, but since you have a binos you will have plenty of regen to compensate. For me doing maps have been quite a breece with this build, the only thing that i have encountered thus far on a map that is dangerous to the build is, curse immune (which we can still do) and no regen (which is pretty darn difficult). Against the really scary bosses, you will have to rely on your ability to use whirling blades in time and keeping your fingers on your instant health potions, it can get scary!

I would love to hear some of your thoughts guys :)!

Looks nice . Could you add videos ? :D

@Mysterious11: yea i really want to add some videos, and i will look into doing it as soon as i possibly can, i might be able to do it tommorow or atleast during next week, the pc i am currently using is not really good enough to play and record at the same time, but i got a solution!

I did some gear updating and some other updates after having done some more testing.

interresting build, maybe i try this build out later on and use some regrets on my reaver im making now ;)

anyway your gem-setup has melee physical support, ive heard that this support only works for the intial hit of wild strike and not on the elemental projetiles !? (not sure though)

Well, the initial hit is what you see in your tooltip dps, and that is greatly affected by Melee physical, but i am almost 100% certain, that melee physical also increases the dmg of the secondary effects, since it has more physical dmg that it can convert. The higher the physical, the more is converted and the higher the dmg of the secondary effect.

But yea, i just checked the wiki, and it does say that melee physical only affects the intial hit, but in all honesty, even if that is the case, it is still not bad to use, since our single target dmg would be significantly lower without that gem.

dont you think reave is better than wild strike for this build? i tested both gems at lvl 65 and with your passive tree , and i think reave might be better for life and mana leech aswell dmg wise. What is your opinion?

Sadly, i have to agree with you on this one, this is something a lot of people have concluded, as it is now, it seems like Reave is still better than Wild strike for a few reasons:
1. Reave does not require a target, so you can attack from a distance.
2. Reave does not convert our physical dmg, so leeching is 1000000 times better.
3. Reave has a much more reliable AoE effect, you know what you will get, and that is a really large cone of AoE in front of your character.
4. And lastly, because reave has a very large AoE, it makes it better for, first of all damage, and second of all better for leeching/life gain on hit.

I know that reave is superior, but i just really enjoy using wild strike which is why i made a guide for it.

And just to keep you guys updated, i am currently testing using Bringer of rain, which as it seems now is really good and will save you a ton of currency on that stupid 6l, i will keep testing and possibly make a huge update to the guide tommorow or something.

So after a couple days of testing, i have found Bringer of rain to not be worth it, it does give a large increase in damage, but must of that tooltip dps is just from the fact that we have faster attacks, which is not that big a deal and bringer of rain is just simply to straining on the mana pool. I have gone back to a pure armour chest and helmet, so that we can get even more phys reduction and i feel like this works a lot better. i am currently lvl 89 and doing 76+ maps with ease. I will try and keep this guide updated, if there seems to be interrest in it. Have a nice day!

PS: the skill tree has been changed rather significantly, i removed 15 points in favor of getting some better nodes.

Grats for the nice guide! I've been using it to make a new shadow. I've reached lvl 72, and the damage output is great, 71-72 map mobs are 1-2 shot. I feel the defences are a little low, i have about 5k armor and almost 4k life with overcap resists and sometimes i get 1 shot from crits before i get the chance to life regen. What is the armour amount on your char? I didnt take the bravery and defiance nodes yet. Will it get better after those? Also, with 0.4 mana leech on gloves, 0.4 on one ring and 0.6 on neck i find it necessary to take the spirit void cluster. I would like to hear more if you managed to improve the build since your last post. Thank you.