[0.10.1g] The Groundshocker: Dual-Wield Elemental Ground Slam Marauder

Speaking toward my own experience, I've had no real problems soloing through all content. In fact, some fights turned out a bit easier than I'd expected. The extra range *really* helps to stay out of trouble while still landing blows, maneuvering when necessary -- a technique I half-jokingly call "slam kiting". Despite its pseudo-melee roots, I truly think of him as a ranged character.

If there's sufficient interest, I can look into trying to record some of my game play.

Also,

The way of calculating the total elemental damage is not quite clear to me, could you provide some help/tutorial or even a link to a good calculator?

"

Goles wrote:

Also,

The way of calculating the total elemental damage is not quite clear to me, could you provide some help/tutorial or even a link to a good calculator?

I'm not sure of your context, but I'll speak in general terms about how to calculate damage for this build and then you can ask some specific questions if you'd like.

Generally, the way the game will calculate damage of a particular category (physical, fire, lightning, cold or chaos) is:

1) Add up all of the "integer" sources of damage
2) Add up and then apply "increased" and "decreased" modifiers to the total from (1)
3) Add up and then apply "more" and "less" modifiers to the total from (2)

Here's a simple example: You wield a hammer that hits for 5-10 physical damage. You have 50 strength. You purchase a passive node that gives +10% increased melee weapon damage. Your Ground Slam physical damage calculation is as follows:

1) 5-10 physical damage from your weapon; no other sources.
2) +10% to physical damage from passives; +10% to physical damage from strength; total = +20%. This takes your damage to 6-12.
3) -30% less physical damage (Ground Slam has 70% "damage effectiveness"). This takes your damage back down to 4.2-8.6.

Now let's say that the hammer also has 4-8 fire damage on it. You also wear a ring that gives 6-10 fire damage. And you've purchased the Lava Lash notable passive, which gives +30% increased fire damage, as well as a node that gives +10% increased elemental damage. And you wear a belt that gives +10% increased elemental damage from weapons. This works out as such:

1) 4-8 fire damage from hammer; 6-10 fire damage from ring; 10-18 total.
2) +40% increased fire damage from passives; +10% from your belt; +50% total. This takes your total fire damage to 15-27.
3) Ground Slam's damage effectiveness doesn't apply to fire damage; so there are no further modifiers. 15-27 is the final result.

Now let's step things up a tad, shall we? All of the "integer" sources of damage are added together, irrespective of their source, in step 1. So let's take a hypothetical marauder and evaluate his total fire damage. This particular hypothetical marauder might for example have:

26-54 damage from mainhand weapon
10-16 fire damage from gloves
7-17 fire damage from necklace
45-76 fire damage from Anger aura

This yields 88-163 fire damage. (1) Next we apply the sum of all "increased" and "decreased" modifiers. Our hypothetical marauder might have the following such modifiers:

+10% weapon elemental damage from mainhand weapon (implicit mod)
+20% weapon elemental damage from offhand weapon (implicit mod)
+26% weapon elemental damage from offhand weapon (attribute)
+77% weapon elemental damage (support gem)
+30% increased fire damage (Lava Lash)
+50% weapon elemental damage (various passives)
+41% increased elemental damage (various passives)
+20% increased area damage (various passives)

All of these modifiers add up to yield +274% increased fire damage. Whipping out a calculator, we apply this to the base fire damage to yield 329-610. (2)

And as our hypothetical marauder has no "less" or "more" modifiers to his damage, he's done. If, on the other hand, he managed to wedge a Concentrated Effect gem into his setup, well, this gem even at level 1 would add +50% *MORE* (not increased!) damage to his attack. This would apply as its own, separate modifier to the above, taking his fire damage to 493-915. (3)

Offhand weapon hijinks: do be careful in recognizing which characteristics of your offhand weapon DO affect your Ground Slam damage, and which ones DON'T.

Characteristics that DO apply from your offhand weapon ("global" modifiers):
+% increased fire/cold/lightning damage
+% increased elemental damage from weapons

Characteristics that DON'T apply from your offhand weapon:
Base physical weapon damage
+#-# physical/fire/cold/lightning damage ("integer" damage)

Does some of this help?

what about bandits quests reward?

"

Voyton wrote:

what about bandits quests reward?

Helping Oak would be the most useful seeing as this is a melee build. (40 HP)

For normal difficulty, I helped Oak for +40 life.

For cruel difficulty, I helped Kraityn for +4% attack speed.

For merciless difficulty, I killed them all for the skill point.

thanks, thats what i wanted to hear. regards

"

Xaxyx wrote:

"

Goles wrote:

Also,
Does some of this help?

Yeah, thanks!

I was wondering about "spell damage %" ?

Other than that, I'm loving the build... lvl 31 now, I seem to have damage issues though, killing enemies takes a while ( now I'm in act's 3 Crematorium and it takes me a while to kill enemies... )

My Ground Slam damage is reported as 119 dps, the spell is linked with Life Gain on Hit, Weapon Elemental Damage and Added Lightning Damage, doesn't seem to be enough though. My attacks per second (reported in my Character's offense ) states I'm doing 1.43...

This are the scepters that I'm currently using:

And my armor...

Hope you can help me out a bit :)

"

Goles wrote:

"

Xaxyx wrote:

"

Goles wrote:

Also,
Does some of this help?

Yeah, thanks!

I was wondering about "spell damage %" ?

Other than that, I'm loving the build... lvl 31 now, I seem to have damage issues though, killing enemies takes a while ( now I'm in act's 3 Crematorium and it takes me a while to kill enemies... )

My Ground Slam damage is reported as 119 dps, the spell is linked with Life Gain on Hit, Weapon Elemental Damage and Added Lightning Damage, doesn't seem to be enough though. My attacks per second (reported in my Character's offense ) states I'm doing 1.43...

This are the scepters that I'm currently using:

And my armor...

Hope you can help me out a bit :)

Seems like you have no Elemental damage, which is a big problem.

119 isnt horrible in Normal though. Try to find weapons with some elements.

You'll need some more sources of elemental damage in order to realize the full potential of the build. For your mainhand weapon, any ol' mace with some fire, lightning and/or cold damage should dramatically increase your damage output. Preferably a scepter with base 1.4 or 1.45 speed, but even a hammer would be fine as long as it gives you some significant elemental damage. Don't worry too much about any other mainhand weapon stats for now; just get your elemental damage rolling in.

Offhand, you won't really see anything particularly useful for a while, so you may as well stick with that quartz scepter as it gives +20% WED implicitly.

Meanwhile, try to find rings, a necklace, and/or gloves with elemental damage as well, and your dps should improve quite a bit.

Are you running Anger and Wrath auras?