1.3 [Newbie Friendly] GROUNDSLAMMER BUILD

Am currently level 57 in act two merciless and this build is showing one big problem: It's not survivable

You are squishy and ordinarily that's workable provided there's some evasion or block, none of which this build has. For instance, the Two Legged Goat creatures that leap onto you from half a screen away.... Well, they ALWAYS connect. They never miss because you have zero dodge and zero block. The pack leaps onto you and knocks your health down to nothing in an instant. The four legged skeleton animals that dash toward you, same thing. Ranged/projectiles also... They'll take your health down very quickly. You can't leach it back fast enough because although you technically leach alot, you attack too slowly.

My gear isn't the issue here, I'm well geared. And even the CWDT set-up doesn't help much.

Auras: you can't run any. Why? Because that's 60% of your health gone and you'll be one shotted very quickly.

Slow movement speed. This is my first marauder so I don't know, maybe it's normal to be this slow? Drives me a little crazy and I hate relying on flasks to move faster.

The only defense for this class is armor, which is the worst defense in the game (and no armor nodes are taken to support it).

Overall I'm not sure what to think, really. From the beginning up to now the damage output of ground-slam has been very good and leveling felt fluid (though I had great gear throughout, so...). Before I forget: Heavy Strike seems strange, it sucks in merciless.

I will give this build until level 65-66 or so before respecing into a RF build.

^


Don't run the blood magic node, it's crap. It's actually worse than crap.

Run Hatred+Herald of Ash with reduced mana.

I'm level 60 in Merciless act 3 (Beyond League), my gear is utterly shit and I have 38% resistances. (good RNG LOL)

I'm still using Geofri's Baptism , the level 27 unique mace.

Ground Slam - Melee phys dmg - Multistrike - faster attacks - life leech

Around 4K dps now, 3k life.

You're not really supposed to be tanking any monsters until you get good gear with high armour.
Atm I have 2K armour and take HUGE hits from stuff like Rhoa chargers or those leapers... Just use a Granite Flask, instant life flasks etc...
And move around a little bit, you have a big wide AoE cone to hit monsters, you don't need to stand to their face.

As for being slow, it will get better once you get 20-30% movement speed boots.
I'm running with 10%, I'm super slow.

I personally prefer to keep endurance charges up all the time instead of actually using them up.
Simply cause it feels more reliable this way.
7 Endurance Charges = 28% physical damage reduction.
Two granite flasks = ~10k armor = ~53% physical damage reduction.

Physical damage should not be huge problem.
If you are still super squishy to normal mobs, you are doing something wrong.

I like to use this combo in this build:



Bigger problem are huge elemental hits for example from map bosses like temple piety.
I dont really know how to compensate the lack of +max resistance or spell shield block which seem to be needed if you want to do such bosses without outleveling them by 15 levels or whatever.

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgEBAecCcQSzCZYOFA48FCAUTRRxFPYYkRnpGjga5BznIPAhNCcgJy8n7TGeNI41kjrhPC09_ETnTeNQR1HmVtlYY1nzXz9gxGo7aqVr2WwWcql7jHzZhjuHGYiPjM-QVZ7Fn8uiAKSsplenMKeEqBipaKyqtC-3PryfwBrBBMT2xq7G2MtD2L3fv-Of6hjrCew47w7wH_Iv8kX2SPcy-Ov8S_0w_gr-j__TNuhkoxpVYSGHapBsqZSE2YTvdO1672BLBS0S4TrYfLvFit7Bah6i6rvtkc4t0p8-Jbw=

S0_L337: The key is to be mobile. Groundslam really is your main attack... I only use(d) Heavy Strike on rares/bosses/Vorici mission targets.

Attack-Move-Attack-Move... them jumpers/rammers can't hit you if you aren't standing where you were standing when they targeted you.

You can run auras with Blood Magic if you take Mortal Conviction, the 60% cost reduction node past Blood Magic (it's what I'm doing for now). Herald of Ash goes from 25% to 10%, which was manageable at lower levels... and since reaching higher levels I've tacked on Hatred as well and am sitting at 3.4k HP with 1.3k reserved (4.7k total) after Mortal Conviction and Reduced Mana at level 68. (30% vs 85%)

The other thing that tided me over until I got halfway decent gear, especially in Merciless, was 3 health potions that between them (a) Healed instantly (Seething), (b) Healed instantly at low life (Panicked), (c) Healed more over time (Saturated), (d) stopped Bleeding (of Staunching), (e) and stopped Frozen (of Heat).

With all that, I was able to play through to Act 3, wearing armor from Normal still, with only about a dozen deaths, and those were mostly to Missions/Strongboxes.

Yeah, I have a few issues with the build. Blood mana is the main one; it's a terrible choice when only one of you skills (Ground Slam) is mana intensive. Just slap a BM gem on that one and don't deprive yourself of useful auras.

Second, the build completely blows points on single element resist nodes (which are terrible) while ignoring the far superior extra endurance charges and regen, and also opts to take them over going north for more life and chaos resist (which will be much harder to get on gear, generally).

It also overloads on inefficient damage and HP nodes a bit. That's not crippling, but I'd rather leave them open to take better nodes, and leave room for the build to grow after level 70.

I'd go with something like this:

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgEBogDBBOsJ_grvDg4UbBaHGcAa8B8UICcg6hg8LSkuJy-nMPcyITS0Lxo4Djy3Pl8_7DiGO_JFUEf2SMtDFE2fPlRJ_EuQVaZXGj4MX_IvWGOpaONqFm8CcRRxp4RBhzKJNI4YkQmWMZ7jn3KprKpTpcauZp68nySqBLPxrHy42L3ewRynYMSexZ_Lkc6Mz_rS_9PG2FbZLdI62DrhV-JR5vnoGelr2fjrJ-0B5zbpWfN82bvtFPY9_MT2


That allows you to run both hatred and determination (with enough base armor for it to help) and has growth options for damage, HP, single element resists, or you can take the aura nodes up north and add HoA to your auras. It does take93 points, but honestly the three leading to max ressts, or even the entre armor chain down there, could probably be dropped.

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C0Y0T3_SLY wrote:

Yeah, I have a few issues with the build. Blood mana is the main one; it's a terrible choice when only one of you skills (Ground Slam) is mana intensive. Just slap a BM gem on that one and don't deprive yourself of useful auras.

Blood magic is a wasted link.

Get a Worms Molt or somewhere 1% mana leech on amulet or rings... that's all you need.

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TheAffinity wrote:

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C0Y0T3_SLY wrote:

Yeah, I have a few issues with the build. Blood mana is the main one; it's a terrible choice when only one of you skills (Ground Slam) is mana intensive. Just slap a BM gem on that one and don't deprive yourself of useful auras.

Blood magic is a wasted link.

Get a Worms Molt or somewhere 1% mana leech on amulet or rings... that's all you need.

I agree on Worms Molt, that one is fun, even more with +1 endurance charge corruption.
Also 1% manaleech is craftable on gloves by lvl4+ Haku, 4 chaos may seem expensive, but if that is all it costs to fix the build... nice!

But generally you guys are right, in the long run blood magic seems like a waste.
It is easy to use in the beginning since all you need to care about is having a big life pool life leech. Kind of the same for the single resist nodes.

Will try to change my build to this one:

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgEBAecCcQSzCZYOFA48FCAUTRRxFPYYkRnpGjga5CE0JyAnLyftMZ40jjWSOuE8LT38TeNQR1HmVtlYY1nzXz9gxGqla9lsFnKpfNmGO4cZiI-Mz5BVnsWfy6IApKymV6cwp4SpaKyqtC-3PryfwBrBBMT2xq7G2MtD2L3jn-oY6wnsOO8O8B_yL_JF9kj3Mvjr_Ev9MP4K_o__0zboZKMaVWEhh2qQbKmUhNmE73Tteu9gSwUtEuE62Hy7xYrewaLqu-2Rzi3Snz5mnvrSNunjaiSqFm8=

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TheAffinity wrote:

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C0Y0T3_SLY wrote:

Yeah, I have a few issues with the build. Blood mana is the main one; it's a terrible choice when only one of you skills (Ground Slam) is mana intensive. Just slap a BM gem on that one and don't deprive yourself of useful auras.

Blood magic is a wasted link.

Get a Worms Molt or somewhere 1% mana leech on amulet or rings... that's all you need.

Your mana leech rate is only 10% of your max mana, which probably won't be enough to spam GS if you're a newbie stretching to run 2 or three auras. Besides, once you get multi/MPD/AF it's not like there's a lot of great DPS boosting supports anyway.

The bigger issue is that taking the BM keystone is a terrible idea, since you give up a ton and gain nothing since the mana issues of the build aren't all that hard to solve. If you can do it with leech its ideal, but even wij a BM gem its better than taking the keystone.

Thanks for the guide, really helpful for a new player. Finally can go past normal and still stand ground well against mobs.

Just wanna ask if it would be worth going around by 'str' nodes to reach life nodes in templars area instead taking 2 useless elemental damage nodes (takes 1 extra skill point) ?

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Taddis5 wrote:

Just wanna ask if it would be worth going around by 'str' nodes to reach life nodes in templars area instead taking 2 useless elemental damage nodes (takes 1 extra skill point) ?