[1.1]Reave Duelist - Cheap, Effective, End Game Farm

Reave in general is just a great skill. Really the best first melee toon you can make in new leagues. I made a Scion version of this, and it's working out well. Probably loses quite a bit of life in the process, but that just means you will still be taking life nodes at later levels. Went Scin primarily for the Resist nodes near her start makes gearing up to merciless a cake walk.

While Blenders have more damage out of the gate, Reavers have better survivabilty (shield, which means that with Iron Reflexes, you don't sacrifice much by grabbing a Tabula as an easy 6L)' and they can more handily use Auras because the gem slot for Melee Splash will now go to Blood Magic, which takes your 4L and allows you to farm Piety with it. That, and blenders pretty much REQUIRE a soul taker.

Great guide. One of the key differences between release and recent patch is that Unwavering Stance is a bit of a ways off now, so you ABSOLUTELY have to plan out your leveling spec if you're planning on obtaining a BoR for yourself. Note that a 6L with helm is still better (BoR will negate two armor slots for resist purposes), but BoR is good enough to carry you to end game. It can even be called Build Enabling. Then again, as mentioned above, if you can overcap your resist and you took IR, you can use Tabula as a cheap alternative.

I'm a complete noobie and was wondering what parts of the passive skill tree should I be aiming for? What gems should I use for leveling, gear etc? Excited to get this build to end game and use it as my first high lvl character.

Upgraded my eq with some cheap pieces and reave show 5.2k or 7,5k with hatred + 5 frenzy charges. Next step is to get a better weapon.

My current gear :

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Malwin wrote:

Upgraded my eq with some cheap pieces and reave show 5.2k or 7,5k with hatred + 5 frenzy charges. Next step is to get a better weapon.

My current gear :

Spoiler

Your sword is actually quite good. 200 pDPS is good enough, especially with your Attack Speed. Could have been epic if the Cold Damage was Flat Phys.

What I could suggest is to replace the Faster Attacks in your Leap Slam with a Culling Strike, since it's connected to Rarity anyways. Allows you to have some semblance of farm (Cull Rares and bosses). With that gear, you can make Lunaris and 66-68 maps your playground.

I actually switching faster attacks gem to culling strike when im about to fight dominus. Faster attack is a great boost for leap slam and mobility :)

Just found heavy strike to be a better gem to fight dominus. 11K HS vs 7K reave dps and twice less mana so no mana problem in single target fight. So for farming purpouse HS wins.

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Gamepals wrote:

I'm a complete noobie and was wondering what parts of the passive skill tree should I be aiming for? What gems should I use for leveling, gear etc? Excited to get this build to end game and use it as my first high lvl character.

Depends on the league and if you are going to have/trade for a perandus.

If softcore with perandus, you can really go where you want. Even if you go full offence at the start you should still destroy.

The opposite side, hardcore league with no currency. Go for the health nodes, and block nodes. Like all of them. You will want about 50-80% of the health/block nodes to 20-50% offence nodes at the start. I have to much twink gear to write an effective leveling guide so I wont try. Life leeche though will become important as you switch to blood magic support gems on your skills, so keep blood drinker in mind.

I love this build - its extremely effective and very fun. Thanks a lot for sharing.

I'm enjoying it so much that I've made it my main and I've made some adjustments to take me into end game. Everything is working quite well so I figured I'd share my version.

The biggest thing is that I stumbled upon a 5-link chest and so I started experimenting with additional support gems on Reave. I had an Endurance Charge on Melee Stun collecting dust in my stash so I tried it out and was blown away by how effective it is. I pretty much always have max endurance charges which generally keeps me over 50% physical reduction and helps out resistances as well. I then put an Immortal Call on my CWDT and I'm basically immune to Physical damage. Any physical damage that makes it through your block or evade is met by high reduction and immediately makes you immune to further hits for the next few seconds; allowing your regen and lifesteal to do their thing while you continue to generate more endurance charges before the invulnerability even wears off.

Its crazy effective. I'm just getting started in Merc Act 2 at level 62 and my DPS and survivability are both the best I've ever had in a character.

The build's passive route is already within close range of two additional endurance charges and I was already planning to go Resolute Technique so it makes for excellent synergy. I picked up a...


...for 1c giving me an an additional endurance charge and more physical lifesteal making for a total of 6 endurance charges at the moment.

I was able to get my hands on...


...so once I can get a 5-link on it I'll swap it in.

I ditched all the accuracy related nodes in the passive tree and went for Diamond Skin since I have a few concerns about my resistances right now. I think I just need to find some good resist gear for my available slots and maybe pick up a few additional resistance passives and I should be just fine.

Here's my current passive tree:


For auras I'm running Hatred and Purity of Elements as well as Tempest Shield on reduced mana (I've got the mana for Tempest Shield so why not, right?).

Overall the build is working magically and I'm really happy with the endurance charge stuff. Any thoughts or suggestions are welcomed!

Replace my 5L armor with Tabula Rasa. With this gems combination dmg boost is significant:

Reave + Multistrike + Melee Physical Damage + Added Fire Damage + Concentrated Effect + Blood Magic

9,5K basic
12K with Hatred
13K with Hatred and Haste

Quite a lot of variants you can do with this build when you get that 6th link, and even greater flexibility if you don't run Auras or you can somehow get sustain without running into mana issues to drop Blood Magic:

Traditional Reaver:
Reaver + Faster Attacks + Multistrike + Melee Physical + Added Fire + Blood Magic

Makes you a Whirling Dervish of AOE death. Easy to gear up as well, since majority of the gems only require STR/DEX with a minimal investment in INT.

Knockback Reaver:
Same as above, replace Faster Attacks or Added Fire with Knocback

Will require two more passive points so you can get Fending from Bloodless. Keeps you relatively safe, because Reave's AoE gets larger and larger, keeping enemies out of your melee range, but still hitting them.

Close-Combat Specialist:
Same as above, replace Faster Attacks or Added Fire with Concentrated Effect

As stated by OP, it will grant a HUGE DPS boost because it uses the "more" modifier. However, that comes with a price, since you will need some form of INT investment in gear to be able to use Concentrated Effect at higher levels. Also will require an off-color socket.

The CI Heavy Damager
Reave + Multistrike + Melee Physical Damage + Melee Physical Damage on Full Life + Concentrated Effect + Added Fire/Faster Attacks

If you can somehow make this work, your Reave will have 3 "more" modifiers, giving you huge DPS. Needless to say, it will be expensive (just getting the necessary amount of mana would be a problem, since you won't be running Blood Magic). You can probably do a low-life variant using Solaris Lorica.

Maximum AoE
Same as Traditional, replace Faster Attacks or Added Fire with Increased Area of Effect and wear a Carcass Jack

Have fun Reave Sniping mobs a screen away!

Have you any experience with 6L, reave and enhance/empower gem combination? Is it worth?