400k+ DPS Groundslam - Moshslammer

1) Crit or quit. Non crit builds simply do not have the offensive potential as non-crit, and crit opens up a whole new world of interactions with items. The tree maximizes crit chance without wasting points on it. You may end up under cap, and that's okay.

2) Blasphemy Assassins mark. Freeing up the gem slot from PCoC is incredibly useful and lets us use the Increased Critical Damage gem in our main skill. Crit multi is going to be one of our best scalars as it multiplies from a 1.5 base as opposed to the 1.0 base of most other mechanics. On top of this, the 'additional' crit chance on this curse will effectively put us over the 95% crit chance cap that other builds are held to. Do to the way critical strikes are rolled twice with accuracy, getting that crit chance as close to 100% as possible is extremely important. On top of this, Assassins mark adds 40%+ additional crit multi, which isn't going to show up in our tooltip dps, but effects every monster in our range and gives a nearly flat 40% damage boost as almost every hit will be a critical strike.

3) Why ground slam? Well, ground slam has an interesting way of hitting which benefits two of our defensive mechanics really well. We benefit from instant leech, so we are only benefitting so much from a skill like sweep that hits all mobs simultaneously, vs groundslam which hits as a wave and staggers the leech out to waste as little as possible. Ground slam is a really hard hitting skill with a really good sized AoE that will prevent us from having to be too up close and personal with scary stuff. Here are the gems we'll be using in our main skill.



Pretty straightforward for a crit melee build, nothing out of the ordinary.

4) Leap slam for movement. Personally, I hate leap slam and think it's easily the least mobile of all the mobility skills and doesn't hold a candle to whirling blades. But, for our purposes it works. We're going to use it with Faster Attacks and Fortify as the essential links. I've added increased AoE (to clear a hole when I dive into a pack, and to be more likely to proc fortify) and reduced mana for spammability. Here's my gem setup.



5) Blood rage is going to generate our frenzy charges in addition to a masssive flat boost to attack speed with or without charges. I have it with a level 20 CoDT gem with a level 20 Summon Ice Golem and a level 20 Molten Shell. Here's the gem setup. Summon Ice Golem is a must, without it we have a really low Accuracy, which makes us crit significantly less. It generally lives until it is recasted by CoDT, not really something you will have to work to maintain.



6) Herald of Ash is a good substitute for Hatred in this case, as we don't quite have enough mana to support both curses and hatred. In addition to this, the ignite offers an easy way to clean up extra mobs that don't die in the first hit. Since we hit so hard, usually there will be a significant amount of overkill damage. The ignite will kill almost anything, short of rare/boss monsters.



Solo Tooltip DPS (not including Assassins Mark)

1) Blasphemy Enfeeble. I think that Enfeeble is one of the most powerful defensive options any build has at their disposal. Coupled with the 30% flat damage reduction, enemies crit far less often and when they do, they deal less damage. Not to mention a 47% loss of accuracy rating which should help us evade some damage as well.

2) Evade/Dodge. Our main source for this is Daresso's Defiance. It gives us a good source of armor and evasion, and a small amount of dodge.

3) Daresso's. In my opinion, this chest offers more defensive options than Lightning coil. You will permanently have endurance charges up, which allows our CoDT immortal call to actually work. Self casting EC can get you into trouble when you need it most. And besides, the auxiliary skills in this build are automated to improve clear speed. On top of this, it gives us onslaught when we get hit, which is a nice boost to damage in a tight spot.

4) Block. Your staff should have 18% implicit block, which is a really strong implicit and we do NOT need more crit. Maelstrom Staff is the preferred base for this build. On top of this, Rumi's Concoction gives us in immense amount of survivability with near constant uptime due to clear speeds.

5) Armor. We have enough to mitigate small hits well, and in bursts we can have up to 13000, which is enough to at least dampen bigger hits.

6) Endurance charges. Speaks for themselves! An excellent tool and opens up immortal call to deal with physical reflect and porcupines.

7) Stun and Knockback. Thanks to the Blunt Trauma notable, we knock back enemies on crit (which is always) so nothing is really able to get close enough to deal any real damage to us, and those that do should be close to stunlocked anyways with our attack speed.

8) Leech. Leech is key. I would recommend aiming to use Atziri's Acuity's for instant mana leech as well as life, but otherwise the Keystone Vaal Pact works well too. It interacts well with groundslam, as I mentioned earlier. With 4.6% Life leech, I'm able to completely refil my health pool with one hit and facetank just about any degen/fast attack (Dominus' lightning ghosts for example) Assassins mark also gives us a bit of life and mana on kill.

9) Fortify. One of the best tools available to a melee character, but I feel it's a wasted gem socket to put it in the main skill. So we put it in our mobility skill, leap slam. This will give us fortify at the start of every pack.

Flasks
I almost always pop all 3 defensive flasks simultaneously before any serious mob with no real lapses in uptime.


Raw Defenses (without endurance charges, flasks, fortify, enfeeble or molten shell)


Defenses with Molten Shell and Flasks (no endurance charges, fortify or enfeeble)

Jewels
For the most part, you can do what you need to with jewels. Being that we have 5 sockets, I would highly, highly recommend that you get life on as many of them as possible. Even though Crit chance may be an attractive jewel mod, it really isn't necessary. You'll achieve crit cap without it and it's costing you modspace for phys damage, for which we have many 'more' modifiers for. Phys damage on jewels will scale exceptionally well for us.



Scion Start

http://tinyurl.com/z5rhg3v
Passive Point - Passive Point - Power Charge


Shadow Start

http://tinyurl.com/zkfobtx
Passive Point - Passive Point - Power Charge

For the most part this build levels like any other melee build but I'll walk you through the easiest route.

Level 1-20

Start off by heading to the damage passives in the Marauder tree through the Scion life wheel. (Martial Experience and Born To Fight) Any basic twink uniques and items will work here as you won't have any particular specialization yet.

Level 20-40

Start grabbing some health and crit for Act 4. We get blasphemy at level 31, so add assassins mark as soon as you can.

Level 40-60

You should have both of the power charge passives by level 60 and as much crit as you can. Health may become an issue soon.

Level 60-80

You should have Vaal Pact before level 80 as your damage should be really coming together by now, along with the leech passives. Whispers of doom is also really important. You will need enfeeble to tackle higher maps and keep yourself alive.

Level 80-100

I mostly added health and odd damage passives/jewel sockets at this point.

Coming soon!

Coming soon!