[3.3 Updated] MoM`s bloody Gladiator: when bleed actually does the job
 Hearthy hello to PoE community. I am playing this game all the way back from closed beta and while mostly casual player I like to experiment a little bit around. I would like to share this build with you as I really enjoy playing it and took it as personal challenge to create viable bleed build in 3.0 as all I saw around at the start of the Harbinger league discarded bleed as too low to be used. Another key thought around this build was keystone Mind over Matter that was interesting for me since it was introduced in the game. Results surprised me, especially with it`s ability to do maps with worst mod combinations possible.
[3.3] changes breakdown
As far as I can tell, it seem that new expansion touches mostly elemental and trap builds. Some new uniques may shuffle things around, but on first sight, all stays the same. One interesting thing is change of ground slam, which can become viable with its significant boost for short range dmg, especially counting in the capacity for occasional vaal ground slam. Will need a little bit of testing, but it seems now as viable option for the build. If any other changes occur, I will update appropriate section.
[3.2] changes breakdown
Main change of this update is Ascendancy rework. And we got serious buffs. -Our ascendancies now allow us to maim by main attack skill, causing main gem on totem redundant -we have small chance to blind by each hit, but 10 % feels too little on bosses, so I suggest to keep blind gem up, but in general we will see blind more often -25 % MORE bleed damage-this is seriously huge boost, with dual curse setup and reasonable gear (6L and Calineus malleus) we will reach 350k+ effective DPS -only nerf is that our bleeding does not reduce damage from enemies. How will it affect our survivalability is important question So far I have not seen any new unique gear for us to use so this change seems as the only major thing to update.
[3.1] changes breakdown
In general we have these main changes: -Former Vulnerability gem split into two gems (Vulnerability and Despair) -After-keystone passives for MoM got weaker First change is slight nerf for this build (3 % reduction in DoT taken by cursed enemies), but it gives us more reliable maim (80 % from previous 60 % chance to maim. These changes are quite minor and I believe they will help slightly in boss fights due to more reliable maim. On the other hand, witchfire brew is useless for us now (40 % increased DoT is probably not worth it) unless we manage to put second curse in the setup, which can be achieved by two ways-either investment of 6 skill points towards Whispers of doom of obtaining corrupted Atziri`s foible (+1 curse). I preffer corrupted foible setup, as 6 skill point investment seems too big. This way we got significant boost with our second curse-Despair. Second change will cause us to loose some mana buffer, as counter we can redirect part of our skill points from HP to mana in dependece on our gear. All in all it will be quite minor change, costing us about 200 eHP (out of around 7.5 eHP on [3.1]) All in all, we got some nerfs straight from the box, but with second curse we can change this into significant DPS buff
What this build can do (videos)
These are casual runs after weekend spent offline, so they are not my best runs ever, but clearly shows how many fails you can do and still live :) Guardians: Phoenix https://youtu.be/rfNTGzVbsfw Minotaur https://youtu.be/lVaXT87oU6Y Chimera https://youtu.be/h5eS9T_jNX0 Hydra https://youtu.be/FkYPbopoOq4 Shaper: https://youtu.be/DDkYOe_pdJ0 Why to choose this build and why not + cheap to start + great survivalability (MoM, block+spellblock, fortify, great mobility) + good clearspeed + can do all content solo-Shaper deathless, Guardians simple, UberLab simple, UberAtziri killed + bleed is actually main source of DPS + can do ANY COMBINATION of map mods by itself
Proof
I believe there is no worse mod combination possible for pure physical build...  I died only once on corrupted blood, which would be simply avoidable. Only worse thing imaginable could be reduced block chance in the mix. (and yeah, I know that I forgot to turn off clarity) - not god-tier single target dmg - does not get much from group auras - I really try hard to find another minus Main skill choice - Sunder This skill has high dmg which translates into high bleed dmg. Thanks to its range, it can be used for kiting and due to secondary shockwaves has very good AoE and quick bleed stacking on groups . Therefore I recommend using this skill as our main damage source Weapon choice As we are going for sunder, our only choice is between axe or mace. We are looking for maximum damage per hit, attack speed is secondary. In budget build we can take extremelly cheap Callinellus Malleus, currently this mace with dmg per hit 270 can be bought for 2 chaos. If your budget is unlimited, pick the one with higher damage per hit. Axe can offer extra onslaught, that can speed up the clear a little bit. Gear
Current gear
and recent addition: As you can see this build includes number of uniques, which are mostly very cheap and therefore starting this build should be very simple.
Recommended cheap uniques
Callinellus Malleus-yes this crab foot have huge dmg and massively reduces stun treshold and chills. 10/10 crabs recommends. In all seriousness, this item can be arguably upgraded to Breath of council for minor damage buff, but loose of stuns in budget version. For unlimited budget you could find another minor upgrade in form of rare, but I think there are other places in this build where 6ex helps more. Atziri´s foible-massive boost to our mana pool and mana regeneration. As cherry on the top it solves our problems with stat requirements. Must have, nothing more to add. It´s corrupted version (+1 curse) will allow us to run dual curse setup, bumping our dps bit up. Atziri´s step-life, movement speed and little chance to dodge spell damage. Nice little package for low price. This item can be easily replaced-some rare with movement speed, resistances, life and mana would be probably better and might be necessary for use of some uniques Rumi´s concoction-Extra block chance to cap it out for thicker fights. Currently I am thinking of buying a second one to keep it up longer. witchfire brew-Can be usefull with two curse setup until you have 20/20 Despair. Later it actually reduces your dps since curse from flask is weaker. Sibyl´s lament-necessary for physical reflect maps. Just switch him when needed Le heup of all-as expensive or as cheap as you want. I had luck of getting extremely well rolled Le heup of all-has extra dmg, great resistances and solves missing stats issue. Sadly lacks life and mana. Personally I think that you can get better rare rings in most cases, but this item can help you wrap the things to fill what you need.
Honorable non-unique mentions
Rings-in general you want rings with "adds physical damage to attacks", mana, life and resistances-perfect are steel rings, but they tend to be expensive, so at budget focus on the rest of the stats. I suggest you cap your resists WITHOUT one of the rings, as for reflect maps you will need to switch one for Sibyl´s lament, which has no resistances. Shield-in budget version range I recommend picking shield with Life gained on block modifier. It helps with survivalability in packs in general, and on no regen maps especially. Slightly advanced version is shield with modifier "gain %HP on block", which can in some cases perform similarily as The Surrender. Flasks-apart from unique flast mentioned upwards, I suggest use of hybrid flasks for general mapping (bleed removal necessary, rest is more optional). For no regen maps, mana flask will make your life easier. For chimera I strongly recommend chaos flask for the snakes, as those will eat you up without any chaos resistance Jewels-In general increased damage with bleeding and increased damage over time gems are really cheap. As for the rest of the stats, my choice is increased attack speed-in general, with shields, with one handed weapons, with mace/axe. They are not expensive and helps a lot.
Stats
Strenght-we get more than enough from skill tree, so we do not need to look for it Dexterity-we get 73DEX from skill tree, therefore we need about 20 from gear for either Atziri´s step (90) or faster attacks (86) Inteligence-we get 84INT from skill tree, therefore we need 32 more INT for lvl 20 clarity and vulnerability All in all, getting these stats should be simple, either from gear or skill tree
Resistances
Resistances are always tricky, especially as this build use quite a lot of uniques without resistances and requires that one of the rings does not have resistances if we want to run reflect maps. To cap we need (60 + 75) * 3 + 1 (extra + fire resistance cap from Barbarism) = 406 % total elemental resistances (or more if you want to be safe against elemental weakness maps without purity of elements) From skill three we get 21 % of all elemental resistances and extra 8% of fire resistance, totalling at 71 %. This means we need to get total 335 % total elemental resistance from our gear. In budget version we will have 6 slots which can have resistances (one ring, shield, head, chest, gloves and belt), which means you need cca 58 % of elemental resistances on each piece of them, which is easily doable. In expensive version, shield slot give 0 % total resistances and chest slot will give you at maximum 45 % total resistances (for calculation I will use 30 % as "worst case scenario") Therefore you will need to get (335 - 30) = 305 % total elemental resistance from 4 items, which means on average 77 % from each gear piece. It is still doable, but such gear will be more expensive. Another boost to resistances can be done through keeping endurance charges up (12 % * 3 resistances), skill tree (2 point-Sentinel 10 % * 3 resistances) and exchanging Atziri´s step for a rare One huge problem is general lack of chaos resistance (felt on chimera fight). If you manage to get some chaos resist, it would be amazing, else it can be partially solved by flask
More expensive upgrades
First most straightforward upgrade are rings with high "add physical damage to attacks"-mainly steel rings. Getting good one with some life can set you back 50+ chaos very easily and with resistances it can go to many exalts. Second, more expensive upgrade is shield The Surrender. This will set you back for 150+ chaos. In return you will get increased block chance and amazing heal from each block. This shield made amazing things on physical reflect maps-attacking mobs actually heals you on average.
Physical reflect maps healing by block ;)
This was bit unexpected effect of upgrading to this shield, but it is actually reality. Physical reflect maps are for this pure physical damage build actually easier than without this mod. Here is bit of math on my current build: Average damage per hit: 12 194 (with vulnerability, without maim from totem) Raw reflected damage: 2 195 (=0.18 * 12 194) After reductions from ring and Yugul: 768 (=2 195 * (1 - 0.4 - 0.25)) After physical damage reductions: 300 (=768 * 0.39) So on average we get 300 dmg per our hit by primary wave. My current attack dmg evasion is 68 % (without rumi), that means on average from 100 hits I get 32 hits, which cause 9 600 dmg. At the same time I will block 52.7 hits (62 % block chance, but 15 % chance to evade. Since evasion is rolled first, it will rob me of some healing), resulting in 13 175 HP recovered. For vulnerability maps you will just receive 27 % (not sure about this number) more damage, meaning you get 12 192 reflected damage, still not breaking even with recovery. Funny thing we still did not counted shockwaves, which do significantly less dmg but increase our healing in groups. And for super safety you can pop Rumi and be supersafe (e.g. harbinger) Tips: -bad luck and/or reduced block can still one shoot you -be carefull to keep fortify up, especially on vulnerability maps -you will notice that you mana drops fast, so mana flask as backup is recomended Third, very expensive upgrade would be Atziri`s foible with +1 curse corrupt. It is not very common corrupt and it will be probably cheaper to get this corrupt by yourself (should be on average 1/125 corrupts), but very tedious. This will allow us to use 2 curse setup without skill point investment. Last, most expansive upgrade is 6L Belly of the beast. This will set you back by whooping 500 chaos and will give you extra 400 HP when compared to average rare chest (and still 200-300 HP more compared to god tier rare chest)
Enchantments
Boots-0.6 % damage leeched as mana and life if you have killed recently is too strong to pass in my opinion. Will also solve all problems with no regen maps Hands-I haven´t found any suitable skill for hands so far, so I am using commandment of force for little extra burst damage, but other options are available-for example xxx of reflection to give you another decoy Head-I have currently +% elemental resistances for chaos elemental, but I would preffer some upgrade for sunder-damage>attack speed>area of effect. Get what you can. Skill gems Main skill setup Sunder-Brutality-Chance to bleed-Melee physical damage-Deadly Ailments-Unbound Ailments while not completely in order of dps, I would suggest adding them in link in this order.
Main skill setup alternatives
Currently it seems that ground slam can perform similarily in single target dps as sunder in short range. It won`t have benefit of aftershocks, but it will have faster attack speed and capacity for Vall ground slamming. Will need some testing especially when it comes to clear speed, but this alternative looks promissing "weakest" spots for exchange is Unbound Ailments. Another possibility would be deadly Ailments, which would boost our hit dmg significantly at cost of bleed dps. All of these alternatives offer stronger hit dmg, stronger but shorter bleed when exchanged for Unbound Ailments. This can help significantly on lower maps, where facetanking boss is possible. On higher tier, I personaly found longer bleed version better, as it gives you more space for movement. Another issue might arise is reflect maps, as with higher hit dmg we might be unable to run more difficult reflect maps anymore. Each of these gems have also some singular advantages/disadvantages. Ruthless-uneven dps, but while standing on spot, it will have best bleed dps Damage on full life-more reliable during farming, less on boss fights Mobility Shield charge/leap slam-faster attacks-Fortify-Culling strike Here is choice between Shield charge and leap slam. My personal choice is Shield charge, as it feels more responsive and gives me better control over my movement during boss fights. For moving around map, leap slam could be better and I keep it in switch weapons. This skill also gives us good utility-both reliable fortify and culling strike on bosses when needed. Curse setup Reckoning-Curse on hit-Vulnerability-Life gained on hit We have two curses which are interesting for us-Vulnerability and Despair. From these two, first one offers more benefits. With later gear we can get second curse and switch it instead of Life gained on hit gem. Another change in this setup will be getting The Surrender shield, which will allow us to drop reckoning and socket the gems into this shield. Totem setup Ancestral protector-Brutality-Melee physical damage-bloodlus This totem gives us nice dps boost. It is not necessary and can be switched out now when maim is in our ascendancy Tempest shield Tempest shield-Increased duration-Blind In addition to giving us more block chance, it gives us utility in form of blind, which can slightly enhance our survivalability. Note that it is not really needed to level up Tempest shield. On the other hand if you have stats high enough, it does not harm to level it. The rest (optional) Clarity-very important skill to fill our mana early on. It reserves minimum mana (less than 10 % in my build at lvl 20) and gives us nice regeneration of our secondary life pool (mana). Later in game I found it unnecessary, as my mana regen was high enough already. enduring cry-increased area of effect-bit of HP regen, endurace charge generator. Not necessary and there are other option including golems and another warcries Just take care that this is not linkes, as it would increase reservation cost of clarity for no reason Chaos golem-I added him only after obtaining surrender, but you might want him sooner, can be supported by minion life later Leap slam-faster attacks-culling strike-suggested setup in offhand as sometimes we need to jump over some obstacle. If you put it in dual wield brightbreak, it is insane movement skill Blood rage-frenzy charge generator to speed up mapping
interesting optional setups
Cast when damage taken (lvl 1)-vulnerability (lvl 5)-despair (5)-tempest shield (lvl 1-7) This setup is another option how to spread our curses around. This setup frees up some slots, on the other hand will offer only low lwl curses and loose bonus from quality of curse on hit support gem Shield charge/leap slam-faster attacks-Fortify-blood magic Including blood magic can be helpful in case you do not have enough MP to cover all your HP (3 MP for every 7 HP). This setup will require you to tweak your other "hit sources" to add culling strike to the mix-only real possibility is your totem, removing portion of its damage Passive Tree This is my current skill tree (lvl 94): http://poeurl.com/bJG0 -Crimson dance choice is obvious, it gives us needed DPS bonus on single target in general. As our attack speed is bit over 2/s and bleed duration is 7,6 s we can keep full dps at the target by dmging it "only" 50 % of the time, giving us time to move around freely. -Resolute technique is another obvious choice as crit has little meaning to us and 100 % chance to hit is too good to pass -Mind over Matter is crucial keystone for progress towards endgame. I sincerely wanted to try some MoM build for ages, but in most cases lost auras made significant difference. As this build practically does not benefit from any offensive aura/buff I finally decided to try it out. And it is better than I expected -Based on weapon choice, pick correct skill wheels
Bandits
this is no brainer-Oak. Gives us dmg, survival ability and life regeneration. Only other choice might be kill all (2 skill points)
Leveling
This is suggested pointers for your leveling, you can always change it based on your playstyle and current need: -feel your damage is too low? Take some damage nodes along path -dying too much? Take some extra resistances or life -have amazing two-handed weapon? Postpone taking block nodes for later And now to specifics:
28 skill points
https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/3.0.2/AAAABAQCAAHcFCAV7CgqUEdfP3asd-N5aHzZhNmFUorwi0-XeZtqqW6tjbkdwQTKkM9-2WHkUelG6hjvDvcy At the begining I recommend using cleave as your main damage skill, with adding sunder to your gear at lvl 12 and switching these gems based on found weapons. Skill points should direct you towards resolute technique with quite dirrect path. If you have great two-handed weapon, you can choose Butchery instead of Strong Arm and regret it later.
58 skill points
https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/3.0.2/AAAABAQCABQgGJEaPhpVHHUoKi0wL8wv1zboOlJFmkWpR35QR1ivWp9fOV8_YSFhUmLsZrZs2G5pdqx5OXlofNl-4oTZhO-FUoZgivCLT5d5my2baqlurY2wq7aKvJ-9Nr54vqfBBMGCxILEuM9-1fjZYdwn5FHqGO8O8i_3Mg== In this area I suggest shifting towards one handed weapons with shield. If you are still using cleave often I suggest getting Overwhelming Odds jewel and invest in first jewel slot. Skill points should be first directed towards "south"-especially getting bleed chance with Bloodletting. Do not forget to regret +10 Int and Str nodes. At this point you should be able to do at least normal Izaro and get 75 % bleed chance, therefore next points should go to optimization of our start area as our main dps source will be bleed. Order of the rest is up to you. If you need more survivalability, do Diamond Sking and Solidity first. Have problem with single target? Get crimson dance sooner. Have problem that sometimes one mob survives in group because he did not got bleed? Get 100 % bleed chance with Red Storm. Also at this point you should change you support gems to improve your bleed rather than hit dmg.
90 skill points
https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/3.0.2/AAAABAQCAASHBS0Giwz3FCAYkRo-GlUcdRzcIOMoKij6LTAvzC_XMk41kjboOlJAoEGHRZpFqUd-SU9QR1ivWp9fOV8_YSFhUmLsZrZs2G5pbzt07XaseA15OXloeu982X7igseE2YTvhTKFUoZgivCLT48aj5mXLZd5my2baqluqZWsr62NsKu18raKtz64k7yfvKq9Nr54vqfAGsC_wQTBgsSCxLjPftX42L3ZYdrB3CfkUeoY6-7vDvIv9zL56P4K At this point we are moving towards maps. Get Mind over Matter and Atziri Foible to get massive buff in survival ability and sustain, then finish your block, get jewels, kill at least Cruel Izaro, get Callineus Malleus and you are ready for Merciless Izaro (if you are good then even UberIzaro) and you are ready for maps. Once you get Blood in the Eyes Ascendancy, do not forget to regret "chance to bleed" from Bloodletting cluster, so you are not overcapped.
Ascendancy
Taking Gladiator is no-brainer Blood in the eyes-Painforged-Versatile combatant-Gratuitous violence This is my suggested order. First get bleed chance from Blood in the eyes, then for mapping we need to set up spell block, so next two ascendancies goes towards this goal and finish with Gratuitous violence. Violent retaliation seems like interesting choice to significantly improve our survival, but the 25 % More multiplier from Gratuitous violence seems too much to pass
Pantheon
As we do not have imunity to stuns I use Brine King, which gives us closest thing to imunity. As minor god there are options based on what give you headaches. Honorable mentions are: -Ralakesh as bleeding can ruin your day -Yugul as reflect, while minor for us in normal maps can kill us in reflect maps. This one is needed to do reflect maps -Tukohama-for tank and spank bosses, but in general not needed at all Mapping and endgame As I stated before-practically any map is possible with right approach. Some exotic combinations might be huge problem and will require slower approach, but in general you just need to adjust few things: -Reflect physical damage-Sibyl´s lament (in correct ring slot) and Yugul minor god -No regen-mana flask and play less agressive with lower gear, can be solved by enchantment on boots (0.6 % mana and life leech if you killed recently) -reduced block change-pain in the ass, but thanks to sunder range doable. Probably most problematic map mod -elemental weakness-use purity of elements, either on expense of mana or use essence worm -hexproof, reduced physical damage, chance to avoid bleed (or temporal chains)-in general just pain in the ass as everything takes bit longer, but not gamebreaking issue As for my progress: Atziri-on normal it is farm, UberAtziri is bit harder, but doable easily deathless Labyrinth-Uber Izaro dropping all keys is farm Maps -all T16 maps done -T13 Scriptorium 157 % IIQ with 18 % physical reflect, vunerability, temporal chains and NO regen done -Shaper solo deathless -UberAtziri deathless Single target DPS (based on Path of Building, current gear) Pure sunder dps-41.8k (will use only 50 % for final dps breakdown) Bleed dps-8 * 25.1k = 200.8k Ancestral protector-50.7k (again lets assume 50 % uptime) This gives us DPS breakdown of cca 245k+ DPS, which is not exceptional, but more than enough for current content with little skill and patience. Note this is real DPS estimate for real conditions, not idealized facetanking DPS often posted in guides.
Screenshots
Older representative Sunder in-game stats  Older representative defensive stats 
Highlighted in thread questions
What about Hall of Grandmasters?
death door characters with block healing/high regen are no-go. Although they cannot kill you, you cannot kill them, so you need extra help for those. Rest of the batch is simply pop rumi, charge, sunder once and they explode. Some may pose problem if they got away from this primary charge assault, but it is very uncommon. TLDR: simply doable, but with bad rng on chars you won´t be able to finish it Edit: can be solved by tabula rasa with scorching ray patent :) credit to NienasyconyMRMRMR
Is there any other skill gem besides sunder that this build could work successfully for?
I have been trying this build with several other gems, but all were performing less in the end. -cleave-second best option after sunder in my opinion. Has comparable base dmg to sunder (181.8 vs 163.2), faster attack. I also combined it with Overwhelming Odds treshold jewel to improve clearing speed. This setup was very good at low lvl maps, as it was faster, but in the end its damage fell off slightly, so I looked for alternative. Theoretically you will loose cca 10 % of bleed dps, but get faster stacking. -lacerate-offered faster stacking of lesser bleeds, so it can be used with combination of swift affliction instead of unbound ailments for cca 30 % bleed damage drop. It worked well before maps, but later I abandoned this setup To add, both these options prohibit use of our cheap/high damage mace, which I consider huge minus for "budget" part of this build. Others are untested, but option I see commonly used with bleed builds are: -Earthquake-after nerfs it has too low base dmg and bleed gets no bonus from aftershock "more" multiplier -Blade flurry-even with last stage bonus, you will not reach high enough base dmg to make it valid option TLDR: only real possibility is cleave with Overwhelming Odds jewel, rest is straight downgrade with no bonuses
Do you really think that MoM is worth it? You spend 17 nodes just pathing there and grabbing mana nodes, when you could grab an additional 51% increased life in just 11 nodes and then reserve your mana with defensive auras.
So, I did your suggested changes: -removed part of the tree starting at Constitution -took all life from Constitution wheel -added all Life and Armour nodes from Marader starting area if you meant different changes, tell me and I will simulate that accordingly. So first comparison is HP change. Life went from 5313 to 5870, which is huge net loss, as MoM makes it effectively 7585 HP, so we lost huge ammount of pure "HP" buffer. For mitigation purpose I would run as defensive aura Determination. This will cause net increase of our Armor from 8543 to 15604, which is huge boost. This will cause change of mitigation from x0.32/0.82 to x0.2/0.82 (Hit/DoT). So our effective HP for physical hits change from 23 705 to 26 565. For everything else (bleeding, all elemental and chaos dmg) it is general loss. Of course, you still have 6 skill points, which you can add somewhere, but they will not change this conclusion. In the end, I do not have problem with any heavy physical hitters-chimera and minotaur and with full buff I can survive shaper slam too. conclusion: I believe it is worth it and if I changed build from MoM, it would be different build. This makes it unique and based on this breakdown I believe it is justified.
Hey, I'm doing your build right now in 3.1, but I am wondering about 1 thing. Is unbound ailments really worth it? I am using Ruthless in substitute, from what I am seeing, it is better with the hits + the bleed. What are your thoughts on it?
I now had some time to compare these gems, I will compare for my char from last (harbinger) league for shaper fight: Ruthless -hit dmg 16.8k -DoT dmg 17.7/s (5s) -standing dps 186.2k -dmg per hit 105.3k Damage on Full Life -hit dmg 18.1k -DoT dmg 19.4/s (5s) -standing dps 203.4k -dmg per hit 115.2k Unbound Ailments -hit dmg 12.1k -DoT dmg 16.8/s (7.7s) -standing dps 166.5k -dmg per hit 141.5k What can I tell as result is, that from standing dps, DoFL performs best, will have fastest clear (highest hit, even damage) and low content boss-kill time. Ruthless offers simmilar standing dps, bit lower but I would say more reliable, on some fights staying on full life can be tricky, especially when facetanking. From damage per hit perspective, unbound ailments wins by significant margin and that can count very much on guardians/shaper fights. In the end, I guess all are viable alternatives and will come mostly to personal taste, as differences will be in real figt minor. Edits: 2017/09/12-bought and tested The Surrender, expanded sections regarding this piece, updated progress section 2017/09/20-changed gem setup a bit 2017/09/27-Shaper down 2017/10/03-Shaper deathless, minor changes (updated skill tree, added enchantment section, expanded gem setup section) 2017/10/04-minor formatting and spelling correction 2017/10/05-UberAtziri down, all content done 2017/10/18-expanded levelling section 2017/10/19-minor formatting and spelling correction 2017/10/24-added videos 2017/11/14-minor changes 2017/12/07-3.1 update 2018/01/11-alternative skill gems and highlighted thread Q&A sections added, minor improvements to whole guide 2018/06/01-3.3 update, minor changes Last edited by Ramireus on Jun 1, 2018, 2:46:34 PM Last bumped on Aug 7, 2018, 2:59:03 PM
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Cool build. Pretty unique tree, haven't seen much MoM or sword and board. Will definitely look to build this out at some point.
Crimson Dance seems pretty underrated from the builds I've looked at using it. Seem to get great end-game potential on the cheap. Thanks | |
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What's about taking some less mana nodes, and instead of it skilling to Viltality void / Spirit void double leech node?
With 40k base damage per second these nodes will deliver round about 600 mana / life leech per second singletarget. You would have less buffer, but a lot more sustain on both life and mana leech. Since melee means in the middle of things you need more sustain than necromancers who only need to buffer 1 hits with their MOM-Setup. Just a thought. | |
" thank you. I personally so not see any reason NOT to take crimson dance for this build. Basically I can always keep several stacks on target and no boss is moving 100 % of time. Crimson dance just feels more flexible for me-and also makes bosses like Atziri doable. " Thank you for suggestion. I have actually already dropped Battle rouse wheel, as I found out that my mana buffer was already too huge (even after this drop I get to 4770 HP (no BotB yet) and 2675 mana-meaning I still have about 600 mana useless). therefore I will probably drop revelry too. I need to update skill wheel soon. Currently my "free" points went towards Rampart (improving fortify) to smooth out big hits, as I do not feel not enough sustain in general, but big hits sometimes bother me. I also thought about Void nodes quite a lot as you suggested and found the skill point price not worth it. As said I do not feel any problems with sustain currently-for example Chimera boss is tank and spank, even through the red circle part. But I am also currently running mana/hp leech enchantment on my boots, so I do not feel any issue with low leech (no regen maps for example) | |
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What about Hall of Grandmasters?
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" death door characters with block healing/high regen are no-go. Although they cannot kill you, you cannot kill them, so you need extra help for those. Rest of the batch is simply pop rumi, charge, sunder once and they explode. Some may pose problem if they got away from this primary charge assault, but it is very uncommon. TLDR: simply doable, but with bad rng on chars you won´t be able to finish it Edit: can be solved by tabula rasa with scorching ray patent :) credit to NienasyconyMRMRMR Last edited by Ramireus on Jan 10, 2018, 8:41:15 PM
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" regen tanks Tabola rosa with schorhing ray old patent) |
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Could you add leveling trees to your level section when you got the time? as in first 30 points 60 etc.
Looks really awesome, will probably be giving it a try :) | |
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Hey I am really like the build. I am trying out on my gladiator that I had a full passive respec from for the 3.0 launch. But I was wondering. Is there any other skill gem besides sunder that this build could work successfully for?
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" I have been trying this build with several other gems, but all were performing less in the end. -cleave-second best option after sunder in my opinion. Has comparable base dmg to sunder (181.8 vs 163.2), faster attack. I also combined it with Overwhelming Odds treshold jewel to improve clearing speed. This setup was very good at low lvl maps, as it was faster, but in the end its damage fell off slightly, so I looked for alternative. Theoretically you will loose cca 10 % of bleed dps, but get faster stacking. -lacerate-offered faster stacking of lesser bleeds, so it can be used with combination of swift affliction instead of unbound ailments for cca 30 % bleed damage drop. It worked well before maps, but later I abandoned this setup To add, both these options prohibit use of our cheap/high damage mace, which I consider huge minus for "budget" part of this build. Others are untested, but option I see commonly used with bleed builds are: -Earthquake-after nerfs it has too low base dmg and gets no bonus from aftershock "more" multiplier -Blade flurry-even with last stage bonus, you will not reach high enough base dmg TLDR: only real possibility is cleave with Overwhelming Odds jewel, rest is straight downgrade with no bonuses |
