Duelist being a better maura in their favorite build

After 7th deaths in the first two days of the 1 week race I decided I was going 100% defensive on passive tree and just getting a heavy hitting 2h wpn to make up for the lack of dmg.

What I ended up with is this at lvl 64: http://tinyurl.com/97ezs2n

Some things I'd like to say is all of the IAS (besides the very first node) were picked up after 60. So before 60 I had a total of 3 dmg passives. By the end of merciless I was sitting on 5k armor buffed (grace/determination), 3.2k life (w/ vitality for safety) and 1.3k DPS ground slam (with hatred and haste).

I wasn't able to get a 5L armor/mace so this is a build that most people can get, you don't need to be rich to get a 4L or two.

AOE attack - Ground slam + melee phys dmg + faster attack + blood magic
Single Target attack - Heavy Strike + melee phys dmg + faster attack + blood magic

I had temporal chains and grace on blood magic. Grace take alot of mana but very little life, even on BM. For a while I was using anger on BM but it took too much life for how little dmg it added. I had 2k life at the time, the 2 together reserved 500 life.

I have leap slam and phase run as a GTFO of here option. Both on mana. Could do BM gem to make it easier but as they aren't a quest reward and trading in the 1 week race was spotty, I was only able to easily get 3 blood magic gems.

On my off hand wpn I have Hatred + Vitality + Haste + Reduced mana. The wpn choices being so slow I think haste is a must but lower lvl hardcore determination can be very helpful. I'd suggest dropping hatred for it. Again, not a quest reward gem so if you can't find/trade for determ just ignore it. If you are playing default you probably would be fine without it.

For hardcore my order of importance went Life>Resists>Armor>>>>>>DPS. My only DPS upgrades, unless a good tank item had dmg on it, was upgrading my mace every 10-20 lvls. If you are 4+ shotting stuff, it's probably time for an upgrade. Before merciless it shouldn't be too expensive to trade for, after 50-55 if you are broke it could be a pain to get an upgrade.

The reason I think this build is better with duelist than it is with maura is the IAS we have access too. After getting no IAS passives from lvl 60 to 70 I'm able to get 43% worth. Also we have the option to stack crit as we have enough dex to not worry about accuracy and get resolute tech. Also with iron reflex, evasion gets bonuses from armor and evasion passives so we can have higher DEF than a maura.

I have very few DPS passives even still and only a 4L, but still I'm getting 2.5k from heavy strike and 1.5k from GS unbuffed.

This build is extremely tanky and pretty powerful, especially if someone could balance crit/EHP. I think a more balanced version in default could be incredibly powerful.

Anyways here's my gear so you have an idea of my selection. BTW, my rings and ammy blow. I had awful luck and finding/trading for any.



current wpn (got lucky rolling it)


wpn I got late in merciless

The one I had before this was a blue with like 120-190 DMG range 1.2 AS. I had that through all of ruthless (i think) and most of merciless. Still able to 3-4 shot things. Act two I couldn't stand my slow killing speed so I traded for the one above.

offhand is just a 4l mace with my mana auras.

Been doing the same stuff just with a completely different build. In the end i had 3.5k life, 10k armor and about 3k dps on my groundslam.

My build couldve been done a little better as marauder in the end, I liked the flexibility at armor choice in midgame due to early access to iron reflexes as a duelist tho.

Since I never made it to merciless before i chose to try a duelist since i used to feel a little unsave as a marauder in ruthless.

Well heres my build

"

Balko wrote:

Been doing the same stuff just with a completely different build. In the end i had 3.5k life, 10k armor and about 3k dps on my groundslam.

My build couldve been done a little better as marauder in the end, I liked the flexibility at armor choice in midgame due to early access to iron reflexes as a duelist tho.

Since I never made it to merciless before i chose to try a duelist since i used to feel a little unsave as a marauder in ruthless.

Well heres my build

Spoiler

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAQQB18yj-Y2pGP9JhQajSSHky185dqIqum1eDvSWEYkb7dxhimoo6jtuP9jZxq9631gQ9iayzlR55wBZ6TIBADZky_f0mygCZSqGPSq--FNPbMKqSAHzKYbAjzeXCEQg_v6OygGufYQJ_inWKw-4KRnjE_ylNRSJg5Mkt6LQauMraEW06odb1LnAIGgNYZnVjIP0N8Qjf6gveolyn1bUFeNpnd8DFdR3zwJZ1LYfVM0SrI6Y9YarFgj2HUWPPDf53pAIvEfe4KQRgMWh5oQ1crKlbvDdSHSbb0JKojeodnhNAbq7ikAZBI6nnNM_8Hsxk0n3y9UXzxIhjyPRND3XzbEgV9SLxKsBzjiLANTk5qFhd4yr4DIVlcA-Ud6gr02Ugzue_WgJbYX9L_wj70isRMYy6XGEKRxIWfzzUvyEBJTBvwpVGbg3hEXBWMEqs9RQ4wIwcpXop2ibpfs=

Wow you went WAY more tanky than I did. I just didn't feel I needed all that extra armor and as you see from my gear I don't have an amazing amount of it.

I was close to following what you did but early in the 1 week race I kept dying so I went straight for the 18% life node rather than the dmg nodes. I noticed as long as I upgraded my wpn enough I could always one shot mobs.

Also now from 60+ I'm focusing 100% on dps because I haven't been below 50% life since I entered act 2 merci. I think the last close call was against Brutus or rhoas in mudflats.

I still want more life and armor on gear so I can handle lvl 69 maps but as for passive tree I think besides getting the 30% evasion (with the two 10% before it) there's nothing of real value left to get, but a bunch of dmg related ones.

Every duelist I've made I've loved more than the previous one. I still love my bow duelist but this 2h mace one feels unstoppable.