[0.10.current] IR/US tri-ele dual wield [Video added]

RnG_ShaidarHaran a.k.a.
The hand of the Dark.



Summary - High evasion and armor, Great amount of health and well balanced. This build also contains insane melee dps so buckle up and enjoy the ride. Please note I plan all of my builds with 120 points, less if I take bandit passives so I can get a nice overall plan of what I am going for.

Game play video, brought to you by Hyron

2nd Game play video, brought to you by Hyron
(At this point our play styles have varied greatly, but he gets the job done)

Passive tree:Updated Version.


Skills


Support Gems


Pros
High DPS
High Armor
Able to cap damage reduction
Life leech and the ability to run 3 possibly 4 auras near endgame.
Due to the nature of our split damage (Ele and physical) reflect mobs are a joke.
Your DPS comes mostly from leveling your support gems leaving you free to gear almost exclusively for defense.

Cons
This is what I would call an advanced build that makes full use of curses, flasks and positioning.
Mana can be an issue, early on you may need to grab a clarity for a few levels before your melee physical support increases enough to sustain you with mind drinker.

Playstyle note: Currently using Cyclone w/ faster attacks and elemental proliferation (added fire damage also soon) to mow through packs of normal mobs then using whirling blades w/ life gain on hit(more supports once sockets fuse...) to go back to where i started. Then finishing off left overs with dual strike.

Current Setup - updated 3/19/2013


All the useful links for PoE in one place. (I can take no credit for these merely posting them here to help newer players and people that might just not know these things exist.


Special thanks to Hyron for posting that amazing gameplay video

Disclaimer: If you are posting to sling shit or otherwise comment on the build not having enough health for you, It will be ignored.

Where did you get +162 max life from? I calculated a total of +20 flat life. Even if you include the life that you get from str, it doesn't add up.

In my opinion, you have too little life for a melee character that replies on evasion as a defensive stat. What will happen if you fail to dodge or block 2 or 3 big hits in a small timeframe? What about un-dodgable attacks? Reflect damage? Enemy spells? Powerful stacking chaos dots?

Even with capped resists, some of the spells will still takes chunks of life away. And as a melee, it will be hard to avoid said spells.

Since you got both pure evasion and pure armour nodes, are you going to use hybrid pieces? Note that you are spending twice the number of talents to increase the stats of an hybrid piece to equal a pure piece. Eg. 100/100 helm, need 10% armour node and 10% evasion node to get to 110/110. A 200ev helm only needs a 10% evasion node to get to 220.

Also, I feel like the Adder's Touch cluster is too inefficient to get to. There are other clusters right next to your path: Gallantry, Bravado, Water Dancing, Twin Terrors, Swagger. I don't know how strong the poison is from Adder, and I haven't crunched numbers on the other suggested clusters, but they are worth checking out.

Awesome thank you!

I will use this build as a base and sneak in some extra life nodes in there :)

-Snaap

"

Samlolol wrote:

Where did you get +162 max life from? I calculated a total of +20 flat life. Even if you include the life that you get from str, it doesn't add up.

In my opinion, you have too little life for a melee character that replies on evasion as a defensive stat. What will happen if you fail to dodge or block 2 or 3 big hits in a small timeframe? What about un-dodgable attacks? Reflect damage? Enemy spells? Powerful stacking chaos dots?

Even with capped resists, some of the spells will still takes chunks of life away. And as a melee, it will be hard to avoid said spells.

Since you got both pure evasion and pure armour nodes, are you going to use hybrid pieces? Note that you are spending twice the number of talents to increase the stats of an hybrid piece to equal a pure piece. Eg. 100/100 helm, need 10% armour node and 10% evasion node to get to 110/110. A 200ev helm only needs a 10% evasion node to get to 220.

Also, I feel like the Adder's Touch cluster is too inefficient to get to. There are other clusters right next to your path: Gallantry, Bravado, Water Dancing, Twin Terrors, Swagger. I don't know how strong the poison is from Adder, and I haven't crunched numbers on the other suggested clusters, but they are worth checking out.

I do plan on using hybrid evasion/armor gear. I also plan to use hit and run tactics for some of those problems mobs that you are talking about i.e. flickering strike, whirling blades back away and flickering back in. Adders touch IMO only gains enough usefulness if running vuln, it is entirely possible I will also be leveling an enfeeble just to help make sure i don't get hit to often and if that ends up being a need later on then you are right adders might not be the best option.

My whole thinking in this was that I want the armor to be able to take a few hits and yet still have enough evasion to avoid some all together that and the chance to avoid critical hits. As I said I will upgrade this in increments and let you guys know the tough spots I hit and how I dealt with them, I am currently ready for another 6 hour leveling session or more so i should be able to do the next 20-40 points after that.

Also on the 162 max life I am not sure it's just what the offline talent calc says and ti could be entirely from passives + STR + level... though I am not sure if you gan base life as you level however if you do having 120 points could account for that.

EDIT: you do in fact gain health as you level. Also I believe adders is 10% of damage dealt including crits over 2 seconds. I did completely overlook twin terrors.

I also disagree slightly on the health part as curses and mobility are a large part of my play style. As I said before so long as I can avoid a one shot I am in fine shape.

I have since changed the build and will reflect that in the first post shortly.

Updated with first build change.

Note that this build is styled around hit and run tactics, use of resist flasks and granites, requires HP on gear, curse swapping and is only recommended in HC if you are very sure of your abilities. I am doing a dry run right now in default league to see flaws.

Change one gives a substantial dps upgrade at the cost of very little survivability. I am also currently dual wielding Mightflays for a large boost to STR and HP... and I think I may find it very hard to upgrade from them for quite sometime.

Notable uniques include:


Also need to point out that currently one HP pot and one mana pot has been all I require, I keep a flask of each type in my bags for certain areas and always have a granite on the bar.

Updated again for the next 20 passive points and moving into cruel. Haven't had a death since a mishap with hailrake way back at the start.

Currently going for the link posted under the base build, as it yields more dps. Updated through 40+ skill points. More to come tomorrow, I have also updated my current gear so you can see what supports I am using.

I can say its been a long road to the duelist area but the next 20 levels will yield a substantial survivability gain before merciless.

Nevermind this post.

might as well be the guy that askes the stupid question of "DO I have to have those uniques?" in order to make this work? or is this something that can be done with out them?.

You don't require the uniques but they do make life easier.

A few points of note.

Shadows have mana issues. You can overcome this with mind drinker + a melee physical support on your dual strike. Some mana leech on gear does not hurt but once you get that support gem leveled it isnt needed. I simply use slitherpinch now for the life leech and faster attacks.

Your next concern after mana consumption is to do whatever it takes to get 75% to all resists excluding chaos, we will fill that in where we can later.

I am going to be redoing this entire guide from the ground up after merciless I have also optimized the build a bit farther to support running grace, hatred and wrath while on RMC and still having enough mana to cast my curses and the occasional EC to cap DR. Until that point granite flasks are your best friend, rhoas, charge banners... you need to get that damage reduction up before entering the fray.

Enfeeble on melee packs, temporal chains on others... if you have to back up and swap gems do so.

I am at the point now where in Cruel act 3 I do not even have to curse.

BONUS: this build works very well with cyclone.

my DS atm is supported by: weapon elemental damage, melee physical damage and added fire damage. That plus the auras I run make my crits apply all 3 debuffs as well as put my damage over 3k dps without using anything more than a 4l.

Main post updated, new gear added.