[1.1.0] Twin Viper Smoke Duelist (Evasion, Dodge, & Block + Viper Strike)

How about this?
click me
Skipped the scion area and went to the last Damage over time section (above shadow) instead.

And you could largely improve the viperstrike chaos damage by grabbing a +2 melee/+1 skills weapon and putting in viper strike+multistrike+melee splash. Weapons like this cost nothing.

Of course this costs you the 75% block, but tbh, I dont see why you need full 75% in the first place.

Also: Dualwield. Why?
You're only making it even harder for yourself.
You're not getting any benefits like damage boost from dual strike.
You are sacrificing damage because the lvl20 weapons you forced yourself into using... suck.
You are sacrificing the defenses and easier blocking of a shield.

Viper Strike is already a horrible skill (because you can't reduce chaos resist, there are monsters that are just impossible to kill), but you are making it even harder.

Peterlerock: You bring up some good points but this build was never about getting crazy high damage. It was more about using up unique items in my stash and trying a different play style than I was previously accustomed to. I wanted to do a dual wield character, but I saw some potential in the defensive bonuses from DWing rather than offensive ones.

Block is a pretty amazing defensive stat. Preventing 75% of all physical damage is a huge boost to an evasion based character. Keeping this high is important for spell block since you can only get 50% of your block for spells (without using different, probably less desirable, uniques). And spells are an evasion based character's worst nightmare since they have 100% accuracy by default. Unless you move out of the way you're going to take damage from the incoming spell.

Of course you can only get maximum block while dual wielding with dual Ungil's. (I'm pretty sure everything else that maximized DW Block required at least 1 Ungils, and like 15 more passive points.) I thought that using a DOT skill like Viper Strike as my main offense was actually a pretty clever way to get around the extremely low damage output of my weapons. And low damage output is actually a bonus against physical reflect enemies.

I'm still taking full advantage of several of the major inherent bonuses of Dual Wielding.
-Faster Attack Speed (Faster poisoning)
-15% Block Chance (Better defenses)

I've been using Viperstrike in a Geofri's Crest Helmet which provides a +1 bonus. I'd also like to use empower in my final build instead of Blind but I haven't found one yet. I honestly haven't found that many enemies where I thought it would take too long to kill them (and even if it takes me a while, they generally can't kill me either). Granted, I haven't done any maps over 68. The passive nodes that I currently have seem to be keeping Viper Strike as a viable skill (and it's not even level 20 yet).

There are other options for DOT damage that I haven't been using in my build mostly because of personal preference. I could've added in Fire Trap or Searing Bond ages ago, but I wanted to be a "swordsman" so I didn't feel like using those skills (plus I've already got smoke mine which is a bit cumbersome).

So what if I'm not maximizing the damage from Dual Strike? Most skills will alternate between weapons in the first place so dual wielding isn't providing them a bonus either.

As I get better equipment I will probably respec out of some of the resistance/evasion nodes near the scion and try to work my way up to those DOT nodes instead. But I like hoarding my currency and it's a hassle to trade.

In terms of a Viper Strike Build, maximizing shield block (with a 32% buckler) as a Duelist is actually more expensive than maximizing DW Block (with Ungil's). You could use a Crest of Perandus to keep up your block chance, but it has terrible stats for an end game shield. There are probably other unique item combinations that could bring the number of required nodes down, but I don't feel like researching it further.

Defeated Piety yesterday evening and invested in some more chaos damage nodes. It was pretty easy and didn't take very long at all. I also worked my way through the library and hedge maze. The big statues take a little while to kill off, but everything else seemed reasonable.

Took on Dominus tonight. I only died 8 times. Seven of which were in the first form (Since it's all friggin' spell damage.) Chilling bond was the big culprit here as my Cold Resist is only 62%. I wasn't using Grace after I fought the minions so I guess I could've swapped in Purity to max that out, but I didn't really think to do so while fighting.

The last death was during a laggy spike. I think I was just recovering from bleed and a minion got a lucky hit, but I honesty don't know what happened. I'll be adding some information to the first post with more on where I'm at and gear and so forth.

Now I guess I'm just going to enjoy running some maps since I've never really done that much before. Or start a new character... I was thinking a Cast on Crit version of this build could be interesting.

Edit: Information added to first post.

Updated the passive trees to work in 1.1.0. It didn't cause any major changes for the build except for slightly less evasion from over near the scion. Hopefully that won't be too problematic!

I actually built a low level dueler based on your build, and it's been working quite well. I have 75% block, use Smoke Mine for blind, and a ton of armour.

Here's my edited tree:

Viper Strike + Multistrike + Life Gain on Hit + lvl 2 Empower is quite good!

Thanks for the great inspiration!

I'm glad it's working out for you Obermeir! If I had an empower gem back when I was running this build I'm sure it would have made things much more enjoyable. I found the higher difficulty levels to be painful with rampant chaos resistance.

I actually used my respec points from the league reset to convert to a Cast on Crit build. (87 Point Passive Tree) Although none of my support skills are very high level, the crit chance is really high and ends up looking a lot flashier than the viper strike version did. I expect the damage output will be easier to augment than VS was but I've been running around in the new league more than Standard. There was a thread in the scion section that had basically the same idea with some pretty high numbers.

Hello

Since I've started on poe again, I'm looking for a good dual wield block build and etc, everyone say "its bad" and thats why i'm so excited with that idea. Where are the upgrades?

I'm thinking about something with



Thats a experimental tree, i do not calculate block rates and etc, so its only for discussing, btw i think ranger can be a good start, and spend nodes with life + something else for balance, mana nodes can be removed if we take off mind over matter.

hey cool build idea

corrupt a pair of these with vulnerability on hit and use a +1 curses corrupted lazhwar, that would be awesome fun...