[1.0.5] Critical Cleave "Blender" (Cutting Uniques Up Like Butter)

Although many think that Dual-Wield Cleave has been nerfed to the ground with patch 1.0: "The dual wielding penalty for Cleave is now multiplicative and includes elemental damage."(And don't get me wrong, it is a massively, massively huge nerf to Cleave) while Cleave builds that use Resolute Technique are more or less not viable anymore, Cleave that utilizes CRITICAL STRIKES is still completely viable as of the current patch. This build is a physical Cleave build that does tons of damage from Critical Multiplier nodes and equipment.






Essential Unique Items:



Gems:




Standard Leap Slam + Whirling Blades mobility skills linked with Faster Attacks (If you use a Soul Taker, you can remove the Blood Magic gem).
As of auras, I use Grace and Hatred linked with Reduced Mana gem, but if you want to run another 40% aura such as Purity, you'll need to grab some additional Mana Reservation Reduction.
Casting When Damage Taken is extremely important for this build as this build does not have a lot of built-in defenses.
The standard physical damage links for Cleave, note that Concentrated Effect gives Cleave a TON of damage since it's an AoE attack (x% MORE Area Damage).
Priority of Skill Gems for Cleave:



Leveling Passives:

20 Points:


40 Points:


60 Points:


80 Points:


100 Points:


Full Build:


This build does NOT work for HC because the lack of life nodes. If you want to modify it for HC then you should take out some damage nodes and put it into survivability.


My Gear


Ideally you want to have two 1.7+ aps and 200+ pdps rapiers / rapier + one-handed axe. I am against having two axes as you cannot use whirling blades if you do that.
Maligaro's is pretty much the best gloves as they give a decent amount of crit and crit damage.
This build is better if you use Abyssus instead of Bringer of Rain as the former gives MASSIVE crit multiplier. But you can always use Bringer of Rain or even simply swap out Abyssus if you feel like you need more survivability.
As for accessories you want physical damage and crit / crit multiplier, any life and resistance would also be very nice. For belt use a Rustic Sash (x% Increased Physical Damage) that has life and resists.
To compensate for the lack of resistances in Maligaro's and Abyssus / Bringer of Rain, you'll want as much resists in your other gear as possible.
Very standard flask set-up, the only thing is that you want flasks that you're going to use often to have the prefix "Surgeon" as it recovers your charges when you crit.


Current Stats (level 66 & lol at my Chaos resist):



Bandits:



Overall this build is very cost-efficient, easy to level, and cuts through things easily. This build is mainly to show that while Dual Strike is considered much better than Cleave with the Resolute Technique Blender builds, Cleave is still a considerably strong choice for a crit-based build.


Update Log:



If you have any questions or would like to inform me of flaws in this guide please reply to this thread or find me ingame, ign is TripleColored.

Reserved.

Giving it a shot, thanks for the guide! Will post back questions/progress.

-Fezz

Build updated, check update log for details.

Added the "Essential Unique Items" section.

A lot of fun so far....thanks for putting the guide together. I hadn't tried cleave-blending since the nerf to cleave, but with stacking crit, the damage feels meaty. :) Going to stick with this for a while.

Good to hear that it actually works for others :P

that hp is scary, and with abyssus. omg

going crit for 30k dps?

looks like the ultimate definition of scrubcore

"

ancalagon3000 wrote:

that hp is scary, and with abyssus. omg

going crit for 30k dps?

looks like the ultimate definition of scrubcore

notice how I was level 66 on the stats. by level 90 this build should achieve around 5k health with around 40-50k dps with merely 200 dps weapons, if not more