Duelist - [3.2] Reave/BF Claw Champion (low-budget feasible, 3m+ Shaper DPS with realistic gear) - Forum

After running this build with reasonably good gear in Bestiary, and now as a low-budget starter in Flashback I feel comfortable sharing my take on a physical claw-based Reave/BF Champion with you guys.
This is just what I've been running and what has been working well for me within my budget - this is not a min-maxed build or guide. Some people may prefer to go more defensive on the tree and gear choices, some might want to drop a few life nodes and go for even more damage. Consider this more of a guideline and experiment a bit with it, instead of an actual guide that needs to be followed step by step.

Pros:
- cheap to get running
- good clearspeed
- fairly robust

Cons:
- can be expensive to fully gear
- no 300% movement speed + MF gear currency farmer

Love it or hate it:
- melee build

Path of Building: https://pastebin.com/ANqA6nDf
The PoB link contains two trees, one with Farrul's fur, one without it. Since Farrul's provides you with permanent Frenzy/Power charges, stacking Frenzy charges and dropping a few crit chance nodes in favor of attack speed/physical nodes is more effective. Without Farrul's fur, we want to compensate a bit for the loss of charges by stacking more crit chance and attack speed on the tree. The changes of course aren't massive at all, but in my opinion enough to warrant not just pointing them out, but actually providing two separate trees.
The configuration options should be fairly realistic, for non-Farrul's simulation obviously don't check Power/Frenzy charges.
The gear is my gear from Bestiary and while it is pretty decent, it still leaves lots of potential for actual min-maxing. I didn't want to present some mirror-tier build with gear that most people won't ever realistically reach, but rather what can be achieved with a reasonable budget within a league. The character as it is cost me probably a bit over 20ex to gear, and comes out at ~3.4m Shaper DPS with Adrenaline active.

Passive Trees, Levelling, Bandits

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Farrul's Fur (lvl 92): www.poeurl.com/bUC6
Non-Farrul's (lvl 92): www.poeurl.com/bUC7

Levelling: I don't really want to give out specific levelling trees, I don't think there's much of a point to it. I've always found it quite comfortable to first fill out the duelist starting area, then move towards claw leech. After that get Constitution in the Scion life wheel, move towards the melee crit cluster near RT, and in the end fill out the stuff in the Shadow area and finally any not directly pathing-related nodes (i.e. additional life nodes on the life wheel, Sleight of Hand, Frenzy Charges/Duality depending on which version you're running).

Bandits: Kill 'em all. Alira isn't exactly a bad choice either and can certainly make levelling and gearing easier, but in the end two skill points are more useful in my opinion, especially considering how far the tree stretches.

My Gear, General Discussion, Budget Options

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Helmet:

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Starkonja's Head. Cheap, bunch of evasion, good amount of life, attack speed, a bit of crit chance.
A good rare is certainly worth considering especially if you have problems capping resists, and a shaped helm with Increased AoE and maybe even Hypothermia enables you to socket Reave in there for beefy clear damage without needing to switch gems.
The Bringer of Rain is actually a pretty good starter/budget option here - provides you with a pseudo 6/7-link, has decent life and defensive stats, flat physical damage, even gives you a bit of block chance.
Honorable Mention to Abyssus - while providing a metric fuckton of damage (+50% over Starkonja's) I don't really feel comfortable running it. It costs me a decent amount of life, and as it stands we don't really have a ton of physical mitigation to counter the downside. Definitely worth considering though if you want to go full glass cannon.

Main Hand:

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Rare physical claw. Ideally with at least 1.9APS, and as much base crit as possible. In my case I got lucky and got a 300pDPS shaped claw at a rather cheap price point (~2-3ex), which lets me run a pseudo six-link for Reave in my weapon, but that's far from necessary.
The Wasp Nest actually provides decent damage (still ~2.9m Shaper DPS with the rest of my gear) and is usually very cheap - severely underrated weapon in my opinion.
Bloodseeker takes about a 30% damage hit compared to my rare claw, but provides the benefit of instant leech and lets you drop Vaal Pact - we have a few percent of life regen on the tree, so if you're fine with lower damage, this is actually a pretty decent QoL choice, and still provides more than enough damage to comfortably clear maps.

Off-Hand:

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Shaped Stat-stick (Axe, Mace, Sceptre - anything that can't be used with Reave/BF). Ideally you want as much extra damage% as possible, Crit Multi is also very strong.
Death's Hand is a decent, cheap option until you can afford a good shaped rare.

Chest Armor:

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Farrul's Fur is BiS in my opinion. It basically provides you with permanent Frenzy and Power charges in exchange for one suffix slot (Aspect of the Cat). Good life roll, decent Armor and Evasion, and the Cat auras aren't too bad either. During Bestiary it was actually somewhat affordable at ~13-15ex for a 6-link, but since Bestiary will not transition into the core game prices have skyrocketed to pretty much equal a Headhunter.
Loreweave is a really good alternative to Farrul's. Obviously it doesn't provide you with any charges, but it does compensate to some degree with global crit chance, flat physical and increased elemental damage. It obviously also raises your maximum resistances up to 80% and effectively makes you immune to "-max res" mods on maps, so on the defensive end it has quite a lot to offer. Offensively speaking, the damage loss isn't too bad - I lose slightly under 10% by switching to a Loreweave.
Belly of the Beast is a staple chest for life-based builds, and it certainly isn't bad here either. Not much to say - solid, affordable chest.
Atziri's Splendour, much like a Belly, is a solid choice - good base defenses depending on the version you get, solid life and resist rolls. Solid chest, although nothing special either.
Elder rare chest with %max life, flat crit chance, etc. - although in my opinion questionable whether a Farrul's/Loreweave wouldn't be better for a similar investment.
The Bringer of Rain, altough already mentioned in the Helmet section, deserves a shoutout I think - it provides so much value despite completely replacing your chest piece, it's definitely worth considering to skip a "normal" rare six-link while saving up to an elder/unique six-link.

Belt:

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Rare belt (Stygian Vise ideally), with high life and resist rolls.

Amulet:

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Ideally a Shaped one with extra damage%, but a "regular" rare with flat physical, Life, crit multiplier also does fine and should be considerably cheaper.

Rings:

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Steel rings. Flat physical, life, and whatever other useful stats you can get. Before you can afford Steel rings, any rares with a bit of flat physical if possible, good life and resist rolls.

Gloves:

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Rare gloves. High resists and life rolls, if possible attack speed and/or flat physical.
2-socket Tombfist certainly aren't bad either, although you might have issues capping resists - and seeing as we get the Intimidate debuff from the Ascendancy anyway, and we're running a Maim support as well it might not be worth picking them up. If you can handle resists despite running Tombfist, go for it.

Boots:

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Rare boots with high life and resist rolls. Need to get thoses resists somewhere.

Flasks:

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Life, Quicksilver, Diamond is what I pretty much always have with me - one with anti-bleed, one with anti-freeze.
Useful unique flasks in no particular order: Taste of Hate, Atziri's Promise, Lion's Roar, Sin's Rebirth, Rumi's Concoction.
Except for Rumi's they all provide decent damage buffs, Taste of Hate also has a nice defensive aspect especially when combined with Loreweave.

Jewels:

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I have only allocated a single jewel slot in the tree, and maybe that is a mistake - if you have good jewels, there's a couple of jewel slots reachable with 2 passives each. Stats I'd like out for are maximum life% and crit multi mods mainly.

Gems, Links

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Single target: Blade Flurry - Melee Physical Damage - Maim - Conc. Effect - Bloodlust - Damage on Full Life
Bloodlust required you to run a totem with Chance to Bleed, Damage on Full Life might feel a bit inconsistent. These can definitely be changed for more comfortable/consistent setups (Chance to Bleed, Increased Critical Damage, Elemental Damage with Attacks) - at the cost of damage.

Clear skill: Reave - Multistrike - Melee Physical Damage - Increased AoE
Running reave in a 4-link should be sufficient, otherwise switching gems with Blade Flurry setup is always an option, although quite tedious.
Getting more pseudo-links is what I would go for: Insanity/Horror-crafted gloves, elder gloves with Faster Attacks and/or Chance to Bleed supports, Horror-crafted rare helmets, shaped helmets with Increased AoE and/or Hypothermia supports.
Weapons with support links are also an option and getting a good stat-stick or main-hand weapon with additional supports would probably be optimal, but it's nothing I would plan on finding for a good price.

Utility: Ancestral Warchief/Protector - Chance to Bleed - Culling Strike - (Blind)
The totem itself doesn't deal all that much damage, but it enables the Bloodlust gem in your single target setup, and Cull is always nice to have (aside from effectively being a ~11% more damage multiplier).

Leap Slam/Whirling Blades - Faster Attacks - Fortify
I prefer Leap Slam, but it's really down to personal taste.

Cast when Damage taken - Immortal Call - Summon Lightning Golem

Blood Rage (might as well link Blood Rage to CwDT setup, I personally like to manually activate it though)

Auras: Hatred - Herald of Ash/Herald of Ice
Herald of Ash is the way to go for single target damage, Herald of Ice makes clearing a bit more comfortable especially when you're low on damage - I personally just run HoA all the time, as it clears well enough and I don't have to switch Heralds for bosses.

Ascendancy, Pantheon

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Worthy Foe -> First to Strike, Last to Fall -> Unstoppable Hero
You can definitely take Unstoppable Hero first and leave First to Strike, Last to Fall for Uber Lab, but it does provide a nice amount of damage and I personally didn't have any problems without the additional Fortify buffs. Soul of the Brine King works well enough against stuns until you've completed Uber Lab.

Either of the Major gods are fine really, and it's up to personal preference if you ask me. Arakaali with the Arachnoxia upgrade synergizes well with Blood Rage + CwDT/IC, so you should pretty much always have the increased recovery rate up, the other gods provide decent damage reductions for clearing/bossing.
Gruthkul/Tukohama is what I'd go for with the Minor Gods, also up to personal preference.

Last edited by kenga92 on May 22, 2018, 1:26:56 PM

Last bumped on May 22, 2018, 1:12:04 PM