BUILD OUT OF COMMISSION....NO LONGER VIABLE DUE TO IDIOTIC CHANGE TO IRON REFLEXES

twitch.tv/athenalive

ATHENA'S LA ARCHER DUELIST
(great for Softcore and Hardcore)
IGN: AthenaHC

The recent buffs of the duelist tree have made them the strongest contenders for wielding the great powers of the bow and lightning arrow. Many people will say that the Ranger has better survivability but that is not exactly true. Yes the ranger has stronger survivability, BUT only in the early game. This does come at a great sacrifice. Rangers suffer from extremely weak damage and attack speed early game and make for a very painful leveling experience overall. They also require much more investment in gear to achieve what the duelist can achieve with no gear like for example (20% LMP, IAS gloves) etc..So if we use IAS as the example, a Duelist can have the exact same IAS as a Ranger decked out in quality gems and IAS gloves/quiver, but can surpass the ranger hugely with the same gear. So in essence, the duelist is stronger early game with damage, speed etc..and only gets much stronger as the game progresses, where the ranger caps out very quickly.

Now with the survivability debate, duelist suffer slightly in the department, and I mean very slightly. The ranger has access to a total of 48% extra evasion rating off the start while the duelist has access to 40%. That's only 8% difference. But luckily we can kill things much quicker and effectively to compensate. Not to mention (like I said earlier, the duelist is way more fun early game cause it doesn't take us hours between each bow attack :P

SO WHY ARE DUELIST BETTER?
-More projectile damage
-More attack speed (which is more damage and more fun)
-Access to same amount of survivability by late game/static blows AND Inner Force

THE BUILD FOCUS:
-Lightning Arrow
-High Attack Speeds
-High elemental damage
-3 auras (grace, anger and wrath)
-Static Blows (shock stacks)
-Inner Force (18%+8% buff effect further increasing damage and survivability)
-HIGH LIFE/RESISTS

THE SKILL GEMS/LINKS
5 Link Primary attack (AOE):
Lightning Arrow, Weapon Elemental Damage, Chain, Lesser Multiple Projectiles, Life on Hit

4 Link Secondary attack (single target)
Frenzy, Weapon Elemental Damage, Faster Attacks, Added Lightning
If your lucky and have a 5 link bow and chest, you can add another elemental damage gem to frenzy

4 Link Burst/Boss Skills (single target)
Bear trap x2, added fire damage, Increased critical damage

4 Link Auras
Wrath, Anger, Grace, Reduced Mana Cost

CURSES:
Early Game: Conductivity
Once you reach static blows, switch to Elemental Weakness
MAIN CURSE - Elemental Weakness

Secondary curses depending on maps
Enfeeble
Temporal Chains

BUILD PROGRESSION

10 points
20 points
30 points
40 points
50 points
60 points
70 points
80 points
90 points
100 points
110 points

LEVEL 100 VERSION (LIONSEYE BUILD)


LEVEL 100 VERSION (TRI-ELE BUILD)


BANDITS
Normal:
-help oak (40 life bonus)

Cruel
-help kratin (8% attack speed)
OR
-help oak (12% physical) up to you to chose
I personally chose 8 IAS because I love attack speed, makes the game more fun, and it allows more versatility. What I mean by versatile is the 12% physical is only a benefit if you plan to end up with lionseye. It is completely useless with a tri elemental bow as they roll extremely weak physical component. On the other hand, 8 IAS will be beneficial no matter what weapon you use.

Merciless
-kill all 3 (for extra passive)
Hopefully this helps people out a bit more

END END END GAME OPTIONS FOR THE RICH
Koams Heart
PROS
-insane life pool
-insane life regen

CONS
-limited sockets for abilities (Koams has no sockets)
-must have 5-6 link bow
-limited auras
-no room for a curse
-lower armor (which is offset by health)
-more pressure to get max resist on all the other slots

5-7 Aura build
PROS
-can run additional auras using combination of blood magic gem and mana (spec out of blood magic)
-extra auras like hatred and haste for more DPS
-much higher armor value (from chest AND determination aura)
-easier to get resist capped with tri resist chest

CONS
-much smaller life pool (maxes out around 5500 at level 90 with amazing gear)
-must have 6 link chest and 5 link bow
-less regen

Both options are incredibly powerful and both are 100% viable. The choice will be up to you, and what you can afford. Personally if I ever could afford a Koams (which I know I will never be able to) I would go that route only because one of my friends runs 7 auras and conduit so me running them would not be necessary. Generally speaking theres always enough curses between friends not to have to run the 5-7 aura build.

PERSONAL NOTES:
My "route" for leveling is very generalized. Depending on your gear, and which league you play in, you will have to determine on your own which passives to go for in what order/priority. On hardcore, I rushed for a healthy amount of life nodes before anything else, while picking up the resist talents on the way. This meant I did not reach static blows until level 81. So I used conductivity curse up until that point. On softcore, I rushed for static blows very quickly which meant my life pool was a bit smaller in end game until I reached 80. I cannot tell you an exact route that is best, there are to many factors.

The lightning talents on the lionseye build and the elemental nodes on the tri ele build in the templar tree are the very LAST LAST passives to get. Those are reserved for when you are in the low to mid 90s. Do not focus on those at all.

For the new/poor players, obtaining a 5 link will be difficult so just be prudent with LA as you wont have the life on hit gem. What I did up until I 5 linked my bow, I always leveled life on hit in the offhand and swaped out weapon elemental damage on my 4 link LA, in those really challenging or reflect maps.

Make sure you cap resists and focus on life. Those who complain about my build are the ones who focus to much on damage and in return have no survivability. High damage will come later in game. You need to focus on what truly matters and that's staying alive. 300-500 buffed LA/LMP/Chain DPS is a very healthy number for early end game in 66-69 maps and docks/lunaris farm. Once you start farming those high areas good gear will drop and it wont take long to break the 1k LA dps barrier. 1k LA dps is more then enough to handle anything solo, anything beyond that is just gravy :)

Make sure you get some nice jewelry with added elemental damage like + fire, + cold, + Lightning, they all get amplified like crazy from your elemental nodes in the passives. Also try to get a quiver and belt with added elemental damage percentage rolls. These all help in scaling your DPS.

For the survivability issue, I picked up the 3 evasion passives (leather and steel) at the early part of the game. This gave me a solid boost to my armor when I reached iron reflexes. Once my gear became strong and my health was very healthy, I speced out of those 3 talents in order to use those 3 points to rush other important nodes. I would strongly recommend keeping those passives at least until you 5 link your Lightning Arrow with life on hit. Thats a safe time to remove those as your life will never really drop around large packs.

I know im forgetting some stuff but will frequently update as I think of them.

MY CURRENT GEAR FOR REFERENCE ON HOW TO BUILD

So wait I'm confused. Because of the recent updates we should use this build you have laid out here (thanks)? Or should be ignore it?

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wilfmeister wrote:

So wait I'm confused. Because of the recent updates we should use this build you have laid out here (thanks)? Or should be ignore it?

what I am saying is for the SAME amount of points used by level 70-80-90 w/e, the Duelist is far superior then ranger on all fronts of damage while maintaining the exact same amount of survivability...

You can chose to roll ranger if you want that's your choice,

Ranger's look cooler, and I don't see you actually taking the blood magic passive, did I miss something? Also I could reduce the number of points dramatically by changing paths around slightly.

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SEOINAGE wrote:

Ranger's look cooler, and I don't see you actually taking the blood magic passive, did I miss something? Also I could reduce the number of points dramatically by changing paths around slightly.

\

sorry forgot to allocate those points, new build up was supposed to have blood magic. Also I dont think you can make it more efficient?

here, more efficient, gained 2 points by changing the path near Blood Magic.

edit: and if you don't need the fire resist, you can also gain 1 more point.

"

kodr wrote:

here, more efficient, gained 2 points by changing the path near Blood Magic.

edit: and if you don't need the fire resist, you can also gain 1 more point.

sorry i made a mistake the build i posted was not the build i used, i did that so fast not paying attention, your build is exactly what i am running.


Post updated with fixed mistakes....

Here is my HC Duelest LA ranger.

Once you get this far, you can just spend remaining points grabbing adjacent 8% hp nodes that are available all around, or that last 8% eva/armor next to duelist start, or grab the body and soul node tho I think 36% all res innate is fine.

Hakuryuukou LA Duelist

I dont get marauder start stuff because I like stacking max ele damage, 110%, and you need the 18% each resistance nodes before it to get there, so without needing diamond skin its not really worth it to me to go there. Id also have to take the 2x 15% crit reduction nodes and again I dont find them worth it on a ranged character. But you can do some shuffling of skills and grab them if you like.

And ranger is not useless, you will have much more evasion bonus for grace with a ranger, and you can get the as/stk speed major node right by ranger start on a separate branch too. And you can still grab goodies from duelist start with a ranger as well.

I just wanted to make the chara duelist as you have a little more free points to spend then with the ranger version of this build.

Yes it is based on Nalaa's LA ranger.

My la duelist is currently lvl30 in HC, about to kill vaal when I wake up tomorrow.

I use elemental hit+weapon elemental+life leech+faster attacks for single target and LA+LoH+weapon elemental+LMP for groups.

i made a small tweak to the build as posted currently. you gain 4% life from it - the life nodes near the center are 8% 8% 12%, whereas on the path you take there are two 12% nodes you can take without extra hops, and another 8% down the line.



changed nodes: three life nodes near center removed, two 12% life nodes near "cannot be HP leeched" and one 8% node near shock chance taken.

if there's a better way to explain the location then please let me know. if there isnt, good freakin luck cause i think i can get any more detailed. aanyway, i'm taking a break from my badly built ranger to try your duelist build out. huzzah, etc.

"

kuromahou wrote:

Here is my HC Duelest LA ranger.

Once you get this far, you can just spend remaining points grabbing adjacent 8% hp nodes that are available all around, or that last 8% eva/armor next to duelist start, or grab the body and soul node tho I think 36% all res innate is fine.

Hakuryuukou LA Duelist

I dont get marauder start stuff because I like stacking max ele damage, 110%, and you need the 18% each resistance nodes before it to get there, so without needing diamond skin its not really worth it to me to go there. Id also have to take the 2x 15% crit reduction nodes and again I dont find them worth it on a ranged character. But you can do some shuffling of skills and grab them if you like.

And ranger is not useless, you will have much more evasion bonus for grace with a ranger, and you can get the as/stk speed major node right by ranger start on a separate branch too. And you can still grab goodies from duelist start with a ranger as well.

I just wanted to make the chara duelist as you have a little more free points to spend then with the ranger version of this build.

Yes it is based on Nalaa's LA ranger.

My la duelist is currently lvl30 in HC, about to kill vaal when I wake up tomorrow.

I use elemental hit+weapon elemental+life leech+faster attacks for single target and LA+LoH+weapon elemental+LMP for groups.

You can compensate for the evasion bonus by taking the 8 and 24% added bonus to evasion passives right next to acceleration, so therefore the duelist is still on par..

Secondly the crit reduction is especially usefull on hardcore :)

The duelist is superior on every front

Also your point of attack speed is also false, if you look at the duelist and ranger starting areas, the duelist nodes offer slightly more speed. Also the duelist has access to acceleration very quickly in first 10 levels making leveling much more fun. The ranger would require extra points on a side by side comparison to duelist to reach the same attack speed, which would take away other important nodes like life.

My 83 ranger on HC with 20% LMP and the same build had 2.1 IAS while my duelist in the exact same gear (as they are both on default now) and the exact spec minus the starting area has 2.78 IAS base.



Duelist wins hands down and there's no denying it