What it means to have good defenses as melee

Most important to me is having good defensive passives, but I am having a really hard time optimizing that.

The better nodes are too much spread and require me to make a huge sacrifice. That means not a single point in offensive, except the almost mandatory node Resolute Technique.

whats to point. got bored of your other pointless trollthread?

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HeroOfExile wrote:

whats to point. got bored of your other pointless trollthread?

The tree is just showing what is wrong with the passives for melee in my opinion with the current state of the game.

By far the biggest issue I have is that the better life nodes are way too far away.

Here's another nice example from another player.

http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/470670

Doesn't it seem a bit over the top when people are spending all their points in defensive stats?

BTW: I'm not trolling, do you feel trolled?

It's a dilemma to be sure.

My current dualist is around level 47 finishing act 2 cruel.I was trying to roll with a shield block build.

My gear is outdated (self found/crafted),my currency is poor from trying to improve said gear.If I was to farm for currency/items with him I only have a few levels to do so before the currency DR kicks in.

He is around four skill points from two notables required for the build (making eight all up).I need more block for the build and I should be taking more block.

My dilemma is,his health needs attention,his resists need attention(forcing me to sacrifice two skill points on marauder tree resists until better gear is acquired),his armor rating is poor and needs attention,his weapon needs upgrading badly and I need to start taking those Endurance Charge nodes ASAP.

Now after all that,I have the beginning health and regen nodes of the marauder tree readily available when the skill points are at hand.It's very tempting to just run with those life nodes right now,but doing so will vastly prolong the completion of the build and what makes it *special*.

The skill points are indeed spread thin,it's a precarious situation with the Vaal fight pending.


This character is relying on so many gems at the moment to get it through content.

Main skills

Heavey Strike
Leap Slam
Shield Charge
Tempest Shield
Decoy Totem
Warlords Mark
Immortal Call
Enduring Cry
Clarity
Hatred

Secondry swapouts on weapon sets

Purity
Determination
Ground Slam

And then there is all the support gems,slowly acquiring them,won't list them lol

Wow did I go off on a tangent lol

Anyway,yeah spread thin it seems.

I recommend saving all the currency you find and get OP items from trade with high life and resistance mods on them. Like ~+70 Life, ~15% all resists or at least 30% of a specific resist while also keeping an eye for other item modes like life leech, damage and rarity find. This will give you some air, defensive wise.

Also get those bubbling and seething life flasks ;)

I know playing melee is terribly frustrating, the list of "things to keep an eye out for" is probably a lot longer anyway.

Eh, personally find melee quite enjoyable - it's trying to passively tank everything that gets frustrating. On the other hand, I don't generally play my characters all the way to "endgame", so I get to take advantage of damage passives and their handy little side effect of offensive stunlock (100% damage mitigation! At least against the everyday stuff).

Startkabels, first of all, thanks for sharing your opinion about Magic Find. I decided to share mine about your topic as well.

With my shitty Internet at workplace, I can barely open the passive skill tree. It always loads me the header about vast web of 1350 skills etc and a footer with Home Game Media and so on :( There's nothing in between the header and the footer!

After almost an hour of trying, I was finally able to view your talent build.

What I personally think + some pro-tips I want to share:

• 120 points is far too much, because level 100 is not supposed to be so easy to achieve, and at that point your build wouldn't really matter, as you actually already "won" the game
• In my opinion, Inner Force is barely worth it, especially after it was nerfed
• I feel mana regen is really weak for Health based characters, and going into mana regen talents hurts you in having less health, so using Blood Magic is almost not an option
• Mid game (level 35-50) you are so much better off with Blood Magic talent while leveling your aura gems, then make transition into using Blood Magic gems and reserving all your mana for auras
• Reduced Mana Reservation is really underrated by players. Two talents for -10% reserve (in Blood Magic talent zone) and level 17 Reduced Mana gem is enough to squeeze 3x 40% and 1x 30% auras on mana.
• When RT may be dropped at some point, going from Marauder to Templar near +30 Int and +30 Dex nodes is better in my opinion, as it helps you enormously to level gems low- to mid-game
• You don't take any Endurance Charges, but they were really an amazing life saver, but it was pre-nerf
• You seem to invest into shield block heavily, is it really worth it?
• Your survivability will increase significantly if you start using ranged spells - best game's defense is to be out of monster melee range
• Your build is amazing for Ethereal Knives

If we are to fantasize of what one would do with 120 skill points, I'd suggest the build based on what I used on my HC Marauder (level 88) ranked top 23 in 1 month party race. Ranger part of the tree was changed rather drastically, so less hp nodes there available to my build now. So I swapped some points to use 2x 10% health under marauder.
I used Blood Magic - Ethereal Knives - Added Fire Damage - Faster Projectiles - Iron Will. Earlier in the game I was swapping Added Fire for Life Leech, then used Life Leech exclusively, as it was much simpler, but in the end, my regen went to being so powerful and my EK damage with Added Fire went to 6.2k so I opted out of it. I value enormous health regeneration as additional damage buffer that's why I took those +0.4% regen nodes and 0.2% regen per Endurance Charge. For the same purpose I ran Vitality, Determination, Haste and Hatred on mana, and Grace on hp (with Blood Magic gem, I couldn't afford BM unique in 1 month party race). All my active skills were powered from BM gems. As for endurance charges duration - I used to use 2 Enduring Cry gems to have less problems with maintaining them and reduce ramp up time. I always had Skele-bros totem ready with me, you know, just in case. Face tanking Kole on level 70(?) map is never a good idea no matter how tanky you are. I took all the defenses in the whole passive tree, and was unable to feel reliably safe tanking map Kole - I have no idea how I would have killed him if I was melee. Evasion? Blind? I am having a really hard time to believe how anything from complete 100% dodge is going to help, as even a heavily mitigation-based build is close to getting one-shot from him.

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Skivverus wrote:

Eh, personally find melee quite enjoyable - it's trying to passively tank everything that gets frustrating. On the other hand, I don't generally play my characters all the way to "endgame", so I get to take advantage of damage passives and their handy little side effect of offensive stunlock (100% damage mitigation! At least against the everyday stuff).

Low- and mid-game melee characters are more than enjoyable! It's when maps kick in, melees' power start to really fade away getting overpowered by monsters. No matter how many kilo-dps you make, as long as you need to run up to the mob and eat it's melee damage (or if the monster is ranged, he start to kite the hell out of you!) it's not really that cool any more.

use that:
http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgIAAF4B5wJxBLEEswUtCC4OrRQgFE0UdRjbGS4ZjhoyGjgaVRrbG60dFCFgJ-0oxSmlMgkyiTboOJY94kCgQ5xI7kp9TDVMYFBHUFBRYFRJVvpXDVfiWGNZ818_YEthIWSjZp5noHKpdEF07XTxd-V4rnrvfNl9dYTvh3aMz5BVlWabg5uNnrmezaIApzCnhKmVrKqv67cXt9O53cAaxtjSIdN-1I_Xy9lh51LsOO2D7g7vDu9O8B_yL_O-9kj3vvrS_MX-ug==
with aegis aurora + bringer of rain + (if possible soul taker)
u wont die, like ever (use auras of course ) - nice regen 74% block + aegis = ownage
gl
and u still have some point to play to more def / more dps

Try looking at my puncture build :P
Yeah, we definitely end up having to invest way too much defensively to be effective, especially if we want to try to melee.