Guide: Power Charged Crit Duelist

FinnThaHuman's Power Charged Crit Duelist!!

Updated July 31st



Please note: This thread isn't a brag thread or a 30k DPS build thread...this is a simple build that almost any player with any level of wealth should be able to make work for them. It is my first duelist and I came up with this skill tree on my own designed around an excellent mix of crit chance, attack speed, and of course big damage from physical weapons. This build will allow you to progress through and beat Merciless as long as you are spending points on survivability and keeping an eye on your gear to keep it somewhat current. Once you get to Merciless, you should start trading for gear in game or on the forums...I have been very fortunate with self found and gear from my partner. Not everyone will be so lucky, although as you will see from my gear I am not exactly "loaded" with great items LOL. ENJOY!

Wall of text = worth reading if you're new to duelist or Cleave/Crit mechanics.

TL;DR: This guide isn't a brag thread or a 30k dps thread. Crit like a mofo while dual wielding with only 5 power charges!

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Intro

Here is my own build for Anarchy, also my first Duelist. I am currently 74 and farming level 69-71 maps with a partner. The docks are a joke solo, and Lunaris 3 is getting pretty easy solo as well, though I do have to watch out for big packs of ranged physical mobs and some specials depending on mods. I can solo Merciless Piety. I run about 3000 life with Grace+Blood Magic turned on, my only leech comes from Life Leech gem and Mana Leech node (2%).

Rationale

The build focuses on Cleave for big AoE and generating Power charges for crits, and then using Dual Strike with melee splash while your power charges are up. Switch back to cleave when you need to refresh the power charges.

Once you have 5 power charges up (one passive node + bandit reward: Merciless help Alira) you have over 500% chance to crit with minimal passives. With 5% base chance crit weapons, this translates to about a 36% chance to crit with each weapon, which means you are going to crit with at least 1 over 50% of the time. Long story short: With power charges up, you basically crit at least every other attack

Yes, this build will die to Physical Reflect if you rush right in and start spamming skills. Oh well. I can accept having one mod that I need to be careful around and have other group members deal with. It is not the end of the world to have to be careful. I can fight phys reflect mobs if I whittle them down slowly. Just be careful not to cleave into an entire pack of minions that all reflect...if you crit and one-shot them all, you also one-shot yourself lol.

My Gear



All self found/made with this character, or bought with currency found with this character. I've spent perhaps 8-10 GCP total on weapons and a ring or two. There are a couple of good pieces and the rest is pretty average. I haven't started to focus on swapping out armor for higher base level items yet so currently I am just geared for resist cap in Merciless. I only started wearing the crit rings (crafted /w 2 alchs!) at level 66 or so and only because they both had life and resists to replace the rings I wore previously. It wasn't worth wearing crit rings until my crit chance from passives was well established.

You can use either axes or swords (axes may hit harder but swords are faster...use what you have) and try an get pure phys weapons for the max damage and bonuses from nodes. Accuracy comes mostly from nodes (I had around 85% with only 3-4 nodes using axes...some swords grant implicit bonus to accuracy too). If you need more, there are nodes available on the paths shown below. Personally I am fine with hitting 85% of the time, which in practice works out to usually only missing once in 9-10 swings. 90% is awesome in practice.

Note: I only sped'd into "sword nodes" after level 63 when I have 2x great swords to use. Prior to that, I stay away from weapon specific nodes.

My Current Points Tree (Major change @ 70 for map survivability and now working PERFECTLY!!!)


Performance?
So far it is great. With only basic gear and two decent weapons I was able to start mapping with a friend at level 64 and now at level 74 I am crushing everything we have played so far up to and including rare level 70 maps. We pretty much only play as a duo, though it is even easier when we open up our maps to the pubs. When fully buffed (Grace, Determination, Purity) and 5x power charges up my Cleave tooltip DPS is over 7,000 and my Dual Strike tooltip DPS is over 9,500. When Cleave crits into a big crowd of mobs you can tell because health bars just disappear. Those numbers are the biggest, but I still have room to add stats to one weapon (crit, IAS) not to mention I am not using a 6 link yet or wearing this:



After we found that helm, I decided to change my build around to make my passive tree more defensive, since I gain about (no joke) 4,000 dps on my Cleave from wearing that helm. It. Is. NASTY :D

Skills/Gems/Auras

Auras
4L: Reduced Mana + Determination + Purity + Anger
3L: Grace + Reduced Mana + Blood Magic (Some do not like this, but it suites me fine to run one aura off my HP)

Skills
4L Dual Strike: Dual Strike + Life Leech + Multistrike + Melee Splash

5L: Cleave + Life Leech + Melee Phys Dmg + Faster Attacks + Power Charge on Crit
6L: Add Critical Hit Damage or Incr. Crit Chance (Damage likely better with proper passives and base crit on weapon over 6%)

** Enduring Cry **
Start leveling one up early, though you won't have to wear it right away. Endurance Charges for Melee are basically non-negotiable in maps over 66 and will be quite useful from Merciless A3 onward. Enduring Cry is SO POWERFUL. 4 charges gives 16% damage mitigation, and this number is added directly to the "Reduced Damage" number on your character sheet. If, for example, you have 50% reduction from armor/auras, running 4 power charges boosts that up to 66%!!! It's a direct increase which is both awesome and valuable. Put it on a button next to cleave and train yourself to press it every 5-6 seconds...once you get used to it, you will wonder how you ever lived without it.

Leveling Guide with Progressive Passive Trees




Play Style

Cleave to get your power charges up and Cleave when you can hit at least 4 enemies. Switch to Dual Strike for single target (yellows, tough blues) or when you need more life leech but make sure you switch back to Cleave before you lose your charges. Cleave generates waaaay more crits. Multistrike only rolls for crit once, for both weapons, an then attacks 3 times. You either roll a crit or you don't. Cleave rolls it twice. Use Leap Slam (axes or mix) or Whirling Blades (swords) to move around faster an keep your charges. Use Quicksilver to move faster an keep charges up as well. As long as you are getting killing blows you will always have your Granite and Quicksilver up.

This build plays well with Sporkers, Fireballers, Flame totemers, Infernal Blow splash an other AoE oriented builds. Sparkers especially are nice partners because their AoE fills the room as you push further and further into it, cleaving all the while, and the shock debuff they put on large mobs means you are going to mow through them with crit-boosted dual strike. If you find an enemy you can't face tank, just cast decoy totem to help the Sparker keep their totems up while also keeping the mob off of them. I have a farm partner who is a lvl 81 witch and this strat never fails us against map bosses who hit me too hard for my poopy defense (gear mods = good, gear armor values = bad) to tolerate.


Plans for Future

Working as planned so far...I may need to take Vaal Pact later for faster life leech. I am a big believer in Effective Hit Points, not stacking as much life as possible. I play with a pool of about 2750 right now and stay alive easily as long as I'm hitting things. Know when to withdraw an regroup and lazy deaths are easily avoidable. I can see that getting harder in 70+ maps, but rather than stack more life I will just use better leech with Vaal Pact, since my damage will be high enough to break the per second cap on leech (that is my hypothesis anyway!). I am unsure about whether I will need Unwavering Stance and when to take it. If I am counting on Vaal Pact at some point, I kind of assume I will need immunity to stun to guarantee I stay up through hard hitting melee packs.

Just my build and my opinions! Feel free to post questions or commentary/criticism. Have fun with your duelist!

Hey i am very interested in trying out your build and was wondering what type of armor you wear and what stat you prioritize while leveling?

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Why Cleave for power charge? It rolls for Crit twice (one for each weapon) on each swing which means you get two chances to generate a power charge or land a crit. Once you have 5 power charges up (one node + bandit reward: Merciless help Alira) you have over 500% chance to crit with minimal passives. With 5% base chance crit weapons, this translates to about a 36% chance to crit with each weapon, which means you are going to crit with at least 1 over 50% of the time. Long story short: With power charges up, you basically crit at least every other attack, and sometimes crit 2-3 times in a row! As you level past 70 you can add more crit passives, add crit on gear, and get weapons with a base crit over 5%. Even going from 5% base crit on wep to 6.25 translates to an actual gain of 6% chance to crit on your swings! I went from 33% to 39.5% when switching from a 5% axe to a 6.3% sword.

Not true unfortunately; just like with Multistrike+PCOC and the like, you can only get one Power Charge per action. Try it yourself, just swing once with Cleave and note how many Power Charges you gained. You will never gain more than one per swing, even if you were to use Multistrike which technically repeats three times.

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Kirarik wrote:

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Why Cleave for power charge? It rolls for Crit twice (one for each weapon) on each swing which means you get two chances to land a crit. Once you have 5 power charges up (one node + bandit reward: Merciless help Alira) you have over 500% chance to crit with minimal passives. With 5% base chance crit weapons, this translates to about a 36% chance to crit with each weapon, which means you are going to crit with at least 1 over 50% of the time. Long story short: With power charges up, you basically crit at least every other attack, and sometimes crit 2-3 times in a row! As you level past 70 you can add more crit passives, add crit on gear, and get weapons with a base crit over 5%. Even going from 5% base crit on wep to 6.25 translates to an actual gain of 6% chance to crit on your swings! I went from 33% to 39.5% when switching from a 5% axe to a 6.3% sword.

Not true unfortunately; just like with Multistrike+PCOC and the like, you can only get one Power Charge per action. Try it yourself, just swing once with Cleave and note how many Power Charges you gained. You will never gain more than one per swing, even if you were to use Multistrike which technically repeats three times.

Oops, that is a definite typo on my part. I only meant to convey that you get two chances at the crit, not the power charge. Changing the OP. Thanks for the catch!

That said, Cleave is still the way to go as the fastest way to build up charges while your natural crit (from the character sheet, unbuffed) is still low ( < 20%)

@JTuck:

This build takes Iron Reflexes and can therefore wear pure armor, pure evasion, or mixed pieces. I also have some slots that have ES as well as I like a small buffer on my health. I am adding my gear to the original post and my current build at lvl 69. I acquired two swords and changed a few things to get more damage and speed out of the build.

As far as primary stats, Dex is your number one since we start in the Duelist tree and also work over to Shadow. I get a lot of strength from an Ammy and try to take the +20 STR nodes when I can to wear gear and level gems. I also take the +20 INT nodes in order to level up a few blue gems that this builds needs: Power Charge on Crit, Increased Critical Damage, Purity, etc.

As far as stats on gear: For leveling just stick to the usual: Life, resists, etc.

Once you are leveled up somewhat (early 60's) and have a 5 link running Cleave /w power charge, then you want to try and add critical hit chance, critical hit multipler, and attack speed on any piece that you can WITHOUT sacrificing too much survivability.

On weapons specifically: Ideal stats are % inreased Phys dmg, +(x-x) phys damage, +crit chance, +attack speed, % crit multiplier, and accuracy is nice too. Don't worry about elemental damage as it doesn't get buffed at all from our passive nodes.

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jtuck523 wrote:

Hey i am very interested in trying out your build and was wondering what type of armor you wear and what stat you prioritize while leveling?

Major update...

Survivability in maps over lvl 67 fixed.

Changed leveling guide to reflect better pathing and timing of nodes taken.

Give it a look...this is an "everyman" build, no great wealth or specific uniques required.

Updated...changed name, updated current passives and current gear, re-wrote a couple of small sections to make them more concise.

Questions welcome, feel free to PM as well.

your tree feels alot weaker cuz theres alot of random clusters you went for, like going the long way up the witch tree with alot of random stat nodes that leads to nothing. heres what i would have gone for.

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgQAAAYFLQbuDkgOrRLhFfYY2xv6IWAl3ymlNDVAoEOcR35KfVPfWNtbr2BLYSFieWMXY0NjcGVNZ6BuaXDVdO108XrvhNmE74d2l3CZK5uDnrmkGavFvYG-p8APwFHBB9Du0k3UUtd-3Q3jhO_j8-r3o_zFVvruDiP27_BaSBrbTGAEsZVmJP3nVBXwOlgEfocZBfmjipsm6Nbe9ud0YeKH2xa_pzQyAbIZz3qMNlVLJpVte6Z_7UGxs7VI

i set you up to grab aleast 50% more crit nodes, another 20% atkspeed, more life, more eva, and more phy atk nodes. the only down side is i have less int/str base until i head over to the witch crit/life nodes. granted you seem pretty high leveled alrdy and you probably would have to invest alot more regrets to respec.


here is the end game build ofc is softcore so i grab the extra dmg nodes instead avoid stun in heart of oak.

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Halezor wrote:

Why Cleave for power charge? It rolls for Crit twice (one for each weapon) on each swing which means you get two chances to land a crit and generate a power charge, though you can only get one power charge, max, per attack (regardless how if both weapons crit).

This is wrong. You only roll once for crit but then check each weapon individually, so when come to PCoC, it's always the weapon with higher base crit chance matter(assume no weapon specified crit passive).The only benefit comes from the accuracy reroll for crit confirm, which is tiny when hit chance is more than 80%

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zumiknight wrote:

your tree feels alot weaker cuz theres alot of random clusters you went for, like going the long way up the witch tree with alot of random stat nodes that leads to nothing. heres what i would have gone for.

You know, I actually had a similar tree posted at one point in the build. The efficiency of some of the new Ranger nodes and the buff to it's crit cluster was not lost on me haha. Thanks for posting that nonetheless.

I actually respecced to my current build b/c I want to test out Vaal Pact at some point soon and see how it works when I get my defense up a bit and start wearing Abyssus all the time, not to mention a 6L. My personal current build is not optimized ATM, with respect to damage and IAS at least, because of this. The Int that is taken in my build is to ensure I am not locked in to any gear for Int, and the boost to mana is appreciable, not to mention the guarantee of being able to level increased crit chance, crit multiplier, and power charge gems more easily so they are ready when needed.

If someone was certain they weren't going to take Vaal Pact, that path to the power charge and mana leech would be much funner haha. I will be changing back to my previous build if Vaal Pact isn't to my liking on this guy ;)