Perz' Reave Shadow

I probably chose the wrong build to play as my first real character, but I guess I will just have to suck that up and deal with it. My character was really quite strong until maybe end of Act 3 Cruel.

Like I said, I'm fairly new to the game, I'm broke, I'm ignorant of many end game things, but I'm trying. I'm playing on standard first in order to learn the game, and my hope was that I could find good items for cheap, or find good items, sell them, and buy other gear easier than the other leagues, especially with Dom and Nem being pretty early on still.

But so far not all that much luck with finding upgrades. Since hitting the end of Cruel I've just been doing Docks and even a little bit of Ledge. Ledge seems to offer me better drops, but not incredible, and I die way too much to really just keep doing that I think. I tried to craft a better belt for myself, but I guess the shops don't reset until you level? That's kind of lame for crafting. If I could get a good belt with strength and stuff on it that would at least allow me to start using my strength gems a bit. Sockets would definitely be a problem at that point.

I currently do 1408.3 DPS unbuffed and I believe 2046.3 with hatred and fury. But I can't run hatred right now, I have to run Discipline or Grace. I only have 529 ES with 544 Life and only 1985 Evasion unbuffed. I have 937 Shield with Discipline though, and 5647 Evasion with Grace. If I can roll a decent strength belt or if I REALLY have to, take a strength node I can run reduced mana. I would like to find myself a nice stats necklace as well so that I have some room to level up my strength gems.

But yeah, I'm basically shit as of right now. If anyone has leftover gear from when they were leveling, and it's better than what I have, please let me know. Like I said, I'm on Standard.

So far everything is really fun though. I like this build a whole lot. I'm going to use a lot of what I've learned playing this build when I race this season as well as when I start rolling some hardcore character.

Running this build now (Level 71), and love it. I have just one bad thing to say about claw builds, and that is that decent claws are hard to find, not much for sale at reasonable prices at all :(

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Kuusou wrote:

text...

I would say that the build is at the weakest point just where you are right now(before CI and ES gear really kicks in). Just keep going, it gets a lot easier when you have a decent ES pool and CI/Ghost Reaver/Vaal Pact.

Thanks for the great build Perz, trying this out as I was looking for a good shadow build. Level 25 so far and loving it. Just used most of my currency on the Eye of Chayula.

One request, I see you have removed the paragraph about gems per equipped piece. I suppose you are re-working this part due to the latest changes to cwdt. Will you be updating this section again soon?

Thanks.

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Appren wrote:

Running this build now (Level 71), and love it. I have just one bad thing to say about claw builds, and that is that decent claws are hard to find, not much for sale at reasonable prices at all :(

Just run level 66 maps or grind the 68 place with the skeletons and pick up all white quality Great White Claws, Throat Stabbers, Hellions Paws (Maybe Chance these for the Unique one), Eye Gaugers, Vaal Claws, Imperial Claws and Terror Claws.
Then Alch them. Sell them if they are bad, collect them for chaos recepie (never did that myself).
So I got my .
Not that bad for about 30 Alchs :)

When yours Claws are good enough just collect the better ones. I just pick up Terror Claws now for max damage and 6% Lifeleech.
Maybe the Critjunkies in this guide would prefer the Vaal Claws for max base crit chance. :)

Loving the build so far but i messed up with the bandits on normal. I was hurting for hp so I helped the one that gave hp when i obviously should have killed all of them to get the skill point.

So should i just forget about the atk speed bonus on cruel and get the skill points in cruel and merciless?

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blakemasterzero wrote:

Loving the build so far but i messed up with the bandits on normal. I was hurting for hp so I helped the one that gave hp when i obviously should have killed all of them to get the skill point.

So should i just forget about the atk speed bonus on cruel and get the skill points in cruel and merciless?

You could do the reward change if you have the currency. Plus if you change to CI you will never need the life again anyway: Bandit Reward Change

So I would still go for AS and change your first choice later to the skill point (be sure to be in normal difficulty when you use the book).
Else you might end up needing to change twice if you try to max out.

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Feoras wrote:

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blakemasterzero wrote:

Loving the build so far but i messed up with the bandits on normal. I was hurting for hp so I helped the one that gave hp when i obviously should have killed all of them to get the skill point.

So should i just forget about the atk speed bonus on cruel and get the skill points in cruel and merciless?

You could do the reward change if you have the currency. Plus if you change to CI you will never need the life again anyway: Bandit Reward Change

So I would still go for AS and change your first choice later to the skill point (be sure to be in normal difficulty when you use the book).
Else you might end up needing to change twice if you try to max out.

Awesome, thanks for the info!

So a few levels later, I thought I would come in here to do a recap of how it has been playing this character for peopler thinking of it.

First, here is the gear I have accumulated and upgraded so far for my current setup.



EARLY GAME:

The game is a little rough. I didn't like using Reave off the bat, so I used Double Strike and Melee Splash to level.

I specced about 8- 10 points into life nodes as well up through merc to make it easier before i went to CI.

With normal gear, you are a bit squishy at first. If you are equipping from another character it should be OK. You will realize why the Alpha's is so important to this build after you deal with freeze on your character a bit.

Buying a nice roll rare, or a low level unique weapon with good damage is a worthwhile investment early on.

MID GAME:
You become a sort of HP/ES hybrid that has OK survivability, but things will start hitting much harder. CwDT is a lifesaver around this level. Fortunately, you also get some biggers gems as well. Multistrike with reave, since it has such a long area, relly helps with the normal desynch problems it has at lower attack speeds. If you can get yourself a decent DPS (think 150+ or so) around this time, you can crush through until merciless. Chaos damage will start to be a problem, as well as exploding enemies that can take you out in one shot. Docks runs are a bit hard at first as well as the dogs fire will take you down quick if you haven't specced a whole lot of ES and CI etc. at that point.

END GAME/MAPPING:
This is where my character has started to shine. He was always being out DPSed by my friends. I was squishy. I felt like I was always on the verge of dying. but....

VAAL PACT

When you finally put this node into your build with your ES/CI/Ghost Reaver the game is totally changed. My Reave is hitting fast enough to always keep me at full HP as long as I don't get 1 hit. The faster attacks and multistrike lets me get up to full range (with carcass jack, about 1/3 of the screen) with Reave super quickly. The combination of gems that Perz suggested keeps you up on charges constantly, and I am at a solid 19k area DPS with reave right now at lvl 76.

I have only died once or twice in maps, for example Piety boss in one, but it is nothing that a topaz flask cant handle once I grab one. I was being a bit risky.

You can literally face tank huge rooms of mobs with this build and do fine. Such great planning.



Shouts out to Perz.

Now help me get a damn crit/300+ dps claw in Domination. :P I got exalts to blow!

I struggled to get into act 3 cruel today and I think it's mostly due to not having enough ES. Should I just farm "City of Sarn" area until i get enough currency or viable item drops so i can move on?

my reave dps is also at 1130.3, is that alright for where i'm at or too low?