[3.9] Impale Blade Flurry Champion ft. Dual Paradoxica FTW
 Hello, guys. It's me again with a new build. After some leagues playing melee and depict the changes in the current league (playing melee in this league is kind of suicide) I decided to stick into melee builds again. In Blight league, I made a Blade Flurry Gladiator which I loved, wearing dual Paradoxica which I found both pretty cheap, like 1 ex each one with both more than 175 pDPS and 1.5 attack speed. The character destroyed all content with ease without a problem, super flashy character with great clear speed and very good bossing capabilities. This league seems that Paradoxica has gained a lot of popularity and with those mods, they cost around 6-10 exalted orbs. With these economic and league changes, it was pretty hard to find something good with ok-ish stats and maintain the build quite "budget", because everything seems too overpriced (as always), but I gave Paradoxica another round, bought a couple but with worse stats but taking advantage of the Double Damage implicit that the foil already has which is strong by itself. Knowing that we need a lot more of survivability this time I have chosen Champion instead of Gladiator because of a lot of reasons: - Perma Fortify (Damage reduction. Attacks speed/damage, immune to stuns) - Free mana reservation from banners. More room for powerful auras. - With the "Master Of Metal" ascendancy and the passive tree, we reach more than 100% impale chance -> more armor which means more damage mitigation and extra physical damage with each inflicted impale on the enemy. Well, after this little intro, let's get into the build.
Changelog
02/14/2020 - Created guide, adding all the needed sections to the post - TO BE ADDED: skill tree progression and some videos. 02/15/2020 - Added a rough skill tree progression. - Updated POB code. Changed one of my Paradoxicas and changed some jewels on my tree. - Fixing some typos
PROS AND CONS
+ Perma Fortify through the "Fortitude" -> damage mitigation, stun immunity, attack speed/damage. + Free mana reservation from Banners. More room for other auras. A little bit of movement speed that is always handy. + Lots of impaling chance which will be translated into more armor and more physical damage. + Great bossing capabilities. Millions of DPS without great investment counting the impale damage. + Great survivability. We reach almost 75% of physical damage reduction and coupled with Pantheons we are very tanky even in dangerous situations. - Not so great clear speed because Champion is very slow. Feels very cluncky sometimes. - Cannot do no leech/reflect map. Temporal Chains/Reduced flask charges must be rerolled. - The leveling process is not the funniest thing in the world, feels quite awful until you finally get your end game gear. - If you are looking for absurd amounts of attack speed, Champion is not the greatest choice.
POB CODE
02/20/2020 UPDATED: https://pastebin.com/cCtaaTgm -> leveled up to 96. I changed one of my rings and found a beautiful pair of boots that helps me to do a better balance to my elemental resistances. Note that in my POBs, I will not include the 2 Frenzy Charges that I generate when I swap to my secondary weapons and the 3 Power Charges that generate when hitting the enemy with the Bladestorm + Power Charge on Crit + Increased Duration setup, if you are interested in the theorical damage with Frenzy + Power charges, look at this POB code: https://pastebin.com/UdA3wRCj. This is to maintain a kind of "realistic" damage against end-game bosses as we do not always will be swapping weapons to, obviously, avoid getting killed during the fights. This POB has included Bottled Faith. I know I said that I tried to maintain my build in the "budget" section but it is a very strong item for both bossing and map clearing. Note that using Bottled Faith IS NOT MANDATORY, I had the currency to buy it and I did it. If you have problems visualizing the total combined DPS with the Impale Damage, look for the LocalIdentity fork for Path of Building application.
GOOD UNIQUES FOR LEVELING
If this is not your first character, you can use these uniques that everyone uses for leveling:
SKILL TREE PROGRESSION
These are, somehow, how I progressed during with my character from the start to my current level (95 and leveling): 50 points: https://pastebin.com/ZLtSaqE6 Start leveling with Double Strike linked with Chance to Bleed support. At level 4 socket into your links Ancestral Call and get your first movement skill (Dash I think) and get Ancestral Protector for a little bit of attack speed. If this is your first character, try to farm some little currencies to buy Ruthless, you'll get Melee Splash further in your story progression. Try to get Infused Channeling on level 4 and Maim on level 8 and socket them into your swap weapon to keep leveling them. For single bosses swap out Ancestral Call/Melee Splash for Ruthless. On level 18, grab Melee Physical Damage and socket it into your links if you have a 4 link. If you are using some of the uniques from the previous section, once you get to level 10 just change your Redbeaks for two The Princess sword. Those will carry you until Blood Aqueducts with no problem. On your way don't forget to grab some of the auras like Blood and Sand (B&S) and Flesh and Stone (F&S). Don't activate F&S as it consumes 25% of your mana and at this point, we don't have so much physical damage, better if you activate B&S that gives you some defense bonuses while you are on Sand Stance and keep F&S leveling on your swap weapons. Once you hit level 16, grab whatever aura you like, I go for Herald Of Ice (HoI) for some extra cold damage coupled with The Princess or Herald of Ash (HoA) for better clear speed. Focus on getting life, attack speed with swords and stats if you need them. We will spec into crit chance later. Remember to look for gear with life, resistances, and stats if you need them. 75 points: https://pastebin.com/1xY0FJmV Keep focusing on life and stats if you need them. On level 24 grab a Carnage Heart and two Le Houp of All rings if you have them or if you made enough currency on your days. With those 3 items, you will be surely capped on your stats and resistances until you hit maps. It's a good idea to not replace them during your leveling process unless you have good jewelry with stats and resistances to keep you going. Once you hit level 28 you can start using Blade Flurry (BF). If this is your first time using BF I don't recommend using it right away, just keep using Double Strike (Vaal Double Strike if you have it), you would feel BF clunky as it's not the best skill for leveling. If you decide to go for Blade Flurry (BF) you should socket it with Infused Channeling, Rage and Melee Physical damage. Get your first lab points whenever you can and grab Inspirational for a little movement speed boost and less mana reserved. Start going to the left side of the tree grabbing more life and more attack speed with swords, get some accuracy if you need it (like the Versatility passive node). At this point, once you hit level 46 and if you have a Belly of the Best, equip it! It will give you a great life boost as elemental resistances and defense. Remember to always keep capped your resistances and look for gear that gives you life, resistances, and stats if you need them. Start replacing some leveling uniques if you still using them. At this point, we start grabbing damage nodes and crit chance with swords and surely made up to Blood Aqueducts without many problems. 90 points: https://pastebin.com/PR5eC6TF We start filling our critical chance nodes on the tree, like the Twin Terrors cluster the Fatal Blade Cluster, and part of the Blade Of Cunning cluster. Once you hit Blood Aqueducts level up just enough to do 2 more labs and grab Unstoppable Hero > Fortitude before facing Kitava in Act 10. Remember to keep your resistances capped after you face the Kitava for the first and the second time as you will get resistance penalties after both encounters on Act 5 and Act 10. At this point, you should have replaced all your unique gear for rear gear, or keep them if you have good unique options like Starkonja's Head or Devoto's Devotion and you have your resistances capped. From here we have just hit maps! On the final PoB start grabbing Impale nodes and jewel sockets as you get good jewels, and do your last lab grabbing Master Of Metal. Final tree: https://pastebin.com/S4M937AM This will be your final tree. Here we fill our Impale nodes after getting our last Ascendancy, Master Of Metal. From this point, you can modify your tree as you like. If you feel that your damage is good enough, spec into more life. If you need more damage, modify your tree to get more damage! Just be careful and maintain your defenses while keeping your resistances capped.
VIDEOS
To be added. I haven't had so much time to record videos as I play quite casually lately. But I'll add some fights against Conquerors and Sirus if I can. At this point in the league, I have set my atlas with Awakening level 8. Some gifs here: - Al-Hezmin, the Hunter: on T16 Colosseum map. LINK: https://gfycat.com/cooperativeunacceptableasianconstablebutterfly-pathofexile 
BANDITS AND PANTHEONS
- Kill Alira for those extra elemental resistances and the crit multi. The mana regen is not that crazy but it helps a bit. - For Pantheons, I preferably use Garukhan for the extra evade change whenever you get savagely hit and Lunaris, all of this while mapping. Against single bosses like Shaper or Sirus, I change Lunaris for Solaris that I have partially upgraded with no extra damage from critical strikes and the 50% chance to avoid ailments from critical strikes.
ASCENDANCIES
I don't really know which one could be the better order to get your ascendancies but I guess you could do something like this: Inspirational > Unstoppable Hero > Fortitud > Master Of Metal 
GEM LINKS
BODY ARMOUR
You can swap Pulverise for Conc Effect, Close Combat or Brutality for bossing.
GLOVES, BOOTS, HELMET
Gloves: Unavailable Remember to keep your Precision to a low level to have space to use your skills. If you need more accuracy, replace Lightning Golem for Ice Golem. Boots: Our movement setup and Endurance charge generation while mapping. Helmet: Our aura setup.
WEAPONS
Main hand: Link your Blood Rage and Berserk to Enhance. Berserk gives you more less damage taken percentage with quality. And Blood Rage gives you more attack speed with quality. Off hand: Our CWDT setup. Portal to not use portal scrolls.
EXTRA LINKS
Just for Frenzy Charge/Power Charge generation while fighting big bosses and Metamorphs. Just a boost to my damage.
CURRENT GEAR BREAKDOWN
BODY ARMOUR
Belly of the Beast for the win. Lots of life, resistances and a bunch of armour and evasion. All in one. A stronger version would be and Explode on kill chest with Crit chance and -# mana cost but those are quite expensive and hard to craft. If you have the currency don't hesitate to make that kind of body armour.
WEAPONS
Dual Paradoxica. Although they have low attack speed and low weapon damage you have 100% chance to deal double damage and that's a huge damage boost. If you have the currency dual-wielding two big pDPS foils will surpass Paradoxica. If you stick to wear two of these big Paradoxica bois, search for attack speed/quality and flat physical damage/impale chance. Remember that more quality > more damage.
GLOVES, BOOTS AND HELMET
These places are where you have to concentrate the most amount of resistances and life. For helmet enchants look for Blade Flurry damage or Blood Rage additional attack speed. For clear speed, the Blade Flurry increased AOE is the best. Look for elemental resistances, life and stats if you need them. If you can get those Temple mods of "#% damage taken as elemental damage", great, they are a good survivability boost. For boots, life and resistances, nothing fancy here. For boot enchants, I would rather go for the life regen if you have been hit recently or the increased dodge attack chance if you've taken a critical strike recently, both of these to boost your damage mitigation and survivability. If you have the currency a good pair of Elusive/Tailwind boots would be excellent, it will boost your damage by A LOT. For gloves, look for life, resistances and attack speed if possible. Stats if you need them or accuracy if you don't want to rely on your ascendancies like I did. You can now craft Culling String on a pair of Warlord influenced gloves, or Intimidate on hit/chance to impale enemies on hit for bossing or Strike Skills target 1 additional nearby Enemy for clear speed. It's up to your personal choice, those are for stronger versions. For enchantments, Commandment of Spite as a defensive option or Commandment of Fury for clear speed.
JEWELLERY
For rings, life, resistances, flat physical damage, stats, and accuracy in that order of importance. For a stronger version, "Vulnerability on Hit" rings are a good option. If you have a spare affix craft '+1 to Minimum Endurance Charges' for even more survivability. For amulet, flat physical damage, critical strike chance/multiplier, stats, life, and resistances if you need them. For anointments, Ambidexterity is the best for me, but you can anoint whatever you want. Personally I rely on a damage anointment. For the belt, life, and resistances. Armour and stats if you need them, nothing crazy. For a stronger version, a Hunter Stygian Vise with life/increased maximum life and resistances would be better and an abyss jewel with flat physical damage and attack speed if you crit recently.
JEWELS
Attack speed with swords, attack speed while dual-wielding, attack speed with one-handed weapons, increased maximum life, melee critical strike multiplier, critical strike multiplier while dual-wielding... Well, plenty of mods to chose, it is up to your preference. For Watcher's Eye if you don't go for Conqueror -> Worthy Foe is to grab an "Intimidate on hit" one. Stronger version would be an "Impales you inflict last 2 additional Hits while using Pride" and "Chance to deal double damage while using Pride", but those are extremely expensive.
FLASKS
Anti-bleed flask, anti-curse flask, Lion's Roar for more melee damage. For clear speed, and because I don't use Brutality on my links, I prefer Taste Of Hate for some cold damage to proc the shatter effect on mobs and get some more damage mitigation. NOTE: Bottled Faith is just A LUXURY ITEMS AND NOT MANDATORY AT ALL. You can use here Atziri's Promise for some chaos resistance and get and extra damage boost for cheaper. As I said before, I had the currency and I bought one Bottle Faith. If you use Brutality on your links, swap Taste Of Hate for an anti-freeze flask of your choice. I would go for a Silver Flask to get the Onslaught effect for more DPS. And that's all! Soon I'll be adding some videos to the video section. Leave your comments or ask anything and I'll try to answer them! Have fun out there, exiles! Last edited by Educmack#7685 on Feb 20, 2020, 1:11:22 PM Last bumped on Mar 14, 2020, 6:01:54 PM
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Hello ~ if Blade Flurry change Bladestorm can play? THX
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" Hey! Thanks for passing by. Sure, you can switch Blade Flurry for Bladestorm, I guess the tree won't change at all. Maybe you will want to switch some gem links but the tree won't change unless you want some other things like more AOE action and so on, only then you will have to modify your tree in some way to get those benefits. |
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OK~THX
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" Using paradoxica and suggesting double damage watchers eye, lmao. |
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" Well, I'm using Paradoxica but it doesn't mean that everyone will follow my path in terms of gear... |
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