How to rock HC Merciless with 50 dps!

Although that bow's required level is 5, Explosive Arrow requires level 19 to use. Also the dexterity requirement for EA is really high, so IMO it isn't that great to spec for this on normal. I started doing this on Act 1 Cruel. At that point you can get the Dex node next to Blood Magic to help out. You'll also need either Dex amulet or dex quiver, preferably both to be honest.

What I did was go Sweep/Leapslam/Poison Arrow hybrid for normal. Used the best twohander I could find during the journey and some random bow on weapon switch. I would basically spray the room with Poison Arrow + Fork, then switch to my 2hander and jump in to sweep. It was pretty painless experience overall. Both act3 last bosses have pretty high energy shields, so poison arrow was quite good against them as well :)

As far as I know, Lava lash and weapon elemental damage% in general doesn't work with EA, dont know about Iron Grip (man that would be amazing if that worked :D.)

Why aren't you using Blood Rage?

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easyBreeze wrote:

Why aren't you using Blood Rage?

I can't literally use Blood Rage at any cost. First of all the DoT damage taken to myself is absurd. I'm already losing ton of life by attacking with 50mana (life) spell 3+ times a second. Add to that 4% EXTRA life lost per second, which gets multiplied by the -60% chaos resistance I have, so it becomes losing 6.4% of my life per second + the cost of my spells.

Secondly, the only thing that would benefit me from Blood Rage is Frenzy charges. I have literally no physical damage at all, so the life leech doesn't do anything (even if it did, it's still harsh to get 6.4% damage per second vs. like 4% leech). I can't use the attack speed on low life either, because on hardcore you don't generally want to be on low life.

I really love the idea of this build and am working on it currently. Do you think this build will be able to handle the high chaos damage that I've seen on streams from maps + blood magic?

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darrellwyatt wrote:

I really love the idea of this build and am working on it currently. Do you think this build will be able to handle the high chaos damage that I've seen on streams from maps + blood magic?

Probably chaos damage maps won't be a problem, as long as I can upgrade my gear a bit. At the moment I'm level 68 with ~3000 life. A 30 chaos damage map won't still be draining my life at all. 30 chaos is around 1% of my life, so with -60res it's -1.6% per second. My natural regen at this stage is 2.9% per sec.

I think they are viable, but can't say for sure yet, still need couple of levels to start the map process :)

You mentioned you ditched a Sweep warrior. Is melee not viable at higher levels?

Viable? Sure. Efficient? No. Being melee requires a lot more gear than being ranged, sadly.

started using a similar build last night on my 45 mara. taking a while to level up EA gem but for only being level 3 it works decently on cruel, really liking it so far.

i just keep a strong 2 hander on my weapon swap to deal with the occasional tough guys. glad the first unique i found in OB is going to be useful after all :)

reflexii:

Thinking about trying a non-hardcore build with this. . .

Any suggestions?
Should I still be Marauder?

Also could you re-post your early level version of the build before you used respec points?

Thanks ahead of time

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MaximumSquid wrote:

reflexii:

Thinking about trying a non-hardcore build with this. . .

Any suggestions?
Should I still be Marauder?

Also could you re-post your early level version of the build before you used respec points?

Thanks ahead of time

Earlygame I played typical sweeper marauder, because imo it's clearspeed on normal is higher than most other builds.

My build with 30 skillpoints was:



I like marauder the best for this kind of build because it semi-close by to all the fire damage nodes in witch tree and SW of marauder tree. Although I don't think templar version would be much more worse off to be honest. It could focus on eldritch battery and maybe double curses to give different type of advantages.



I dunno how to modify the build for softcore, lets just say that I didn't have TOO MUCH defences for HC, but damage was more than great, even without a single fire node. So perhaps just focus more on fire damage and not life.