[0.9.11] Show us your interesting characters and be featured on our YouTube channel!

I hope the streamlined passive tree doesn't kill or hamper the amount of creative builds that come up in the videos for the new patch version.

I'm sure it's just a matter of getting used to the new layout, although I would love to see a slight rework with the keystones not being so class-centric.

Quonic - Clarity Wrath Necromancer


Features:

Raise Zombie
+Minion Life
+Minion Damage

Freezing Pulse
+Increased Critical
+Lightning Damage

Summon Skeletons
Raise Spectra

With my passive touching every skill that gives an additional minion. I can have about 20+ minions active at one time. Couple that with Wrath, all my minions have added lightning damage. Even on the bosses that have no other monsters to kill for additional minions, I'm still able to summon skeletons to deal most of the damage.

Clarity is required for the massive amounts of mana that this build uses and even with Wrath, the mana regen is high enough to sustain a long combat or a large conflict.

Right now my backup damage dealer is Freezing Pulse and with the Increased Critical, I can freeze monsters about half of the time.

This build is a bit boring to play, as you aren't in the middle of combat all the time. It's mostly summon and sit back and let you minions do all the work.

EDIT: Updated for latest patch.

I want to post my blood mage marauder, I am sure it is an interesting build, but he isn't really geared enough for it to be totally "awesome" yet. Plus haven't seen the new passive tree yet, will have to check that too.

I'm still working on the stun-rauder build. His name is Thunderboltz, built as a 2-handed mace wielder. Currently at lvl 44 and in-progress, still investigating what skills might be useful towards the endgame.

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Notes:
- This melee-build focusses on getting sufficient threshold reduction to guarantee a safe take-down of any single monster (not-immune to stun) through stun-lock. This marauder is not a tank, and will rely upon totems and area skills (sweep, leap slam) to help him survive mob situations.

- It will use Heavy Strike as the main anti-unique skill, until stats endgame allows other possibilities.

- 2-handed maces are generally ok to use in hardcore lower difficulties in order to increase killing speed. I'm up to Ruthless Act 2, where the enemies begin to hurt more.

Discussions:
There is a total of 41% stun-threshold reduction (8 nodes) available from the skill tree, 26% devoted to maces. With both a weapon mod (<~20%) and stun reduction (20~40%) a character can eventually grow out of Heavy-strike.
Damage threshold is maintained by taking both added Fire Damage and Hatred. It is important that hits maintain stun for all enemies.
There are two sets of support gems in use, in order to split skills into the attack (single target, +ele damage, etc) and defense (sweep/leapslam, +life on hit, etc.) Eventually, 2-stun gems and 2 added-fire gems will be allocated.

Due to their native threshold reduction increase, a mace-user doesn't need significant stun-duration increases to achieve stun-locking.

At the moment, normal enemies are still dying in one~two hits, so I'm not sure what the end-game skill gem links will be.

I just play an evasive/ES Ranger.

Built around CI & Nullification.

High crit chance & King of the Hill. (Knockback on crit).
High crit damage for dps.

Piercing shots & as much +phys damage as can be allowed.

Followed by a small 30% (ish) flat boost to all elemental damage.

Hardily exciting, but damn effective.

Might tailor it later to a specific element, but that'd restrict viable map choices later. Which im against.

If i had to pick one though, it'd be cold.

Points for contention:

Traps + faster deployment and radius
More damage at close range passive (Forgot the name already)

Still, if anyone wants more info, they're welcome to it.

Currently working on a shadow build that I've taken to calling "On the Edge"

Dagger and shield build with the following skills:

Flicker Strike - Increased Melee at full life

Viper Strike - (need) increased duration
Whirling Blades
Detonate Dead - (need) Totem
Phase Run
Frenzy

Right now I'm grabbing as many dagger passives as i can, as well as energy shield upgrades, but I'm not touching life ups. The reason is the following Keystone

Chaos Innoculation

While it might seem a bit stupid to build CI on a melee character, my thought reasoning was this:

With Chaos Innoculation you're either at full life, or you're dead. So every flicker strike gets the damage steroid from the support gem. Combined with Frenzy to ignore cool down and you've got some crazy burst damage. Toss Phase Run on top of that for a first strike that's around 2-3 times as strong as a regular attack.

Whirling Blades is just for in fight mobility in case i accidentally stick myself into the middle of a mob.

Viper Strike (and the Adder passive when i get it) are how I plan to deal with Rares/Uniques/Reduced Physical damage taken rates that are too scary for me to jump in on.


It's an assassin build, pure and simple. The only AoE I have comes from DD and Whirling Blades. I have to kite mobs with a play style of "Retreat, FS the first enemy, retreat, DD as enemies run over it, FS another enemy, DD, whirling blades through the mob, keep running"

Stabber, level 75 whirling blades shadow.

For offense I've focused on daggers, physical damage, attack speed and critical strikes.

For defensive I've focused on energy shield / chaos inoculation, evasion, a shield and two granite flasks.

I use the following melee abilities depending on the situation: whirling blades which I use mostly for aoe, flicker strike to kill rares / unique bosses and to finish off enemies that are too spread out for whirling blades, and frenzy for closed spaces where I can't use whirling blades effectively, or for tough monsters that survive my flicker strikes.

I also use three auras. Hatred which adds a bunch of cold damage to my attacks, and both discipline and grace to boost my defense further. These auras lower my maximum mana substantially but I have 2% mana leech from physical damage from the passive tree, which is enough to keep me going along with an additional mana potion now and then.

I also have two curses I use depending on the situation. Temporal chains I use defensively on large groups of ranged enemies or any boss or group that looks potentially threatening. If it doesn't look like I need temporal chains I use Critical weakness as an offensive curse on tough enemies / bosses to kill them very quickly.

Another skill I use is blood rage. Because I'm immune to chaos damage from chaos inoculation this ability doesn't damage me, and it is a constant supply of frenzy charges that I can spend on flicker strike when I need it.

Another strategy I use for defense is to stun lock groups of enemies. I have a rare belt which increases the duration of stuns on enemies by 50%. When combined with the chill effect granted from my hatred aura and the slow effect from temporal chains enemies take a long time to recover when I hit them (if I don't crit and freeze them.)

My attack speed with whirling blades is so high that most enemies can't even react to me as I kill them. Combined with my chance to evade and block chance my energy shield will often regenerate even when I'm whirling through a large group of enemies.

Certain enemies can be incredibly dangerous however, but even then it is easy to run away with whirling blades.

I think it would be cool to show off an end game viable melee character since most people tend to be ranged. I also think it would be cool to show off how good whirling blades can be with good gear and a good spec. I'm also pretty sure that the high attack speed / crit chance would make the video fun to watch. :D

Danos how do you avoid the desire to stab yourself in the eyes when you see whirling blades desynching :(

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TinyAngryCrab wrote:

Danos how do you avoid the desire to stab yourself in the eyes when you see whirling blades desynching :(

The only time it's fun to be frozen is when I'm "mid-whirl." Hangtime! =^[.]^=