[1.2] Oldschool, cheap and noobfriendly "Sword&Board" Marauder

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cas5nq wrote:

Do you personally recommend getting the fire resist passives instead? It also frees up a point. 10% dmg and 4% ias seem low value.

I personally find the fire resist wasted, this can be accomplished with gear.
So it's "1 wasted point vs. 2 subpar, but useful points".

Decide for yourself... ;)

Well well well... I decided to make sword&shield marauder too recently and found this thread which is pretty much same I've been up to. Current passive tree lvl56

I would advice not to be true sword&shield guy from start.. getting dex up is pain in the ass and crappy swords drops guarantee you are going to be slow as fuck. Go for max. pdps 2-handed weapon with spectral. I suppose that's still fast way to get some levels fast and safely. Anyways because I wanted to be true hero I've been going for sword&shield from the start ( not efficient at all :D )

I've also went for reave now. Just recently switched as I got multistrike as drop and dps got better than with double strike + melee splash + melee phys dmg + life leech.

Now I have reave + multistrike + melee phys dmg + life leech

One thing I don't get.. How do you get enough life gain/leech with your current reave setup? I see you have no life gain / leech linked to reave which I suppose is your main attack

Also I gotta run clarity from life at the moment to be able to spam my attacks

I would like to run determination + hatred (I could switch it to grace and use 2 points to get iron reflexes for ~1500 additional armor at this point) but currently this combo with my lvl 12 reduced mana leaves me with mana pool of 23 which is not enough to cast enduring cry (24 mana..) from mana even tho I could run reave via blood magic gem. (ofc I would lose dps from melee phys dmg gem.. 5L would help with that issue) Also I could go for blood magic gemstone but because of auras I won't

Rest of gear



I'm still at the end of act3 on cruel because those fucking invader bosses are sooo scary even tho I'm supposed to tank something. Big issue I feel at the moment is mobility.. Faster attacks just won't drop -> don't have fast leap to gtfo. I also need 6 more points to get leather and steel to get rid of movement penalties (yes, I'm slow as..) Didn't see my mobility as issue before facing some really badass invader bosses with exile + rare spawns with funny modifiers.. This has been happening so often recently that I think it's supposed to be so. I can only imagine how faceroll this build would be without invader bosses

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Nurffe wrote:

I would advice not to be true sword&shield guy from start.. getting dex up is pain in the ass and crappy swords drops guarantee you are going to be slow as fuck.

I found act 1 and 2 so easy that it's ok to use "rustic sash recipe" swords.
And I don't like "levelling builds". If I want to go for a certain playstyle, I try to do it from Lvl1 on. ;)

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One thing I don't get.. How do you get enough life gain/leech with your current reave setup? I see you have no life gain / leech linked to reave which I suppose is your main attack

Health regen and 2% leech from passive tree were more than enough to sustain my HP pool against mobs, even with bloodmagic gem, and against bosses I had flasks.

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I'm still at the end of act3 on cruel because those fucking invader bosses are sooo scary even tho I'm supposed to tank something. Big issue I feel at the moment is mobility..

I had the same problems, no movement speed bonus and huge movement penalty. Was such a relief to finally get movement boots and "leather and steel".

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I can only imagine how faceroll this build would be without invader bosses

I don't play Invasion, but from what I've read, they are pretty scary... ;)

For people who want block cap without bor just do this


Just drop whichever damage nodes you want to make up points.

I played a very similar build in nemesis and it was indeed one of the best chars i have owned. Very tanky but also satisfying and responsive. Im trying to rebuild that character for Invasion. Though im considering swapping out sword for axe. The sword and axe nodes are nice since they let you delay commiting to one form of weapon.

The other thing I also recommend for invasion is to always have a leveled spectral throw on you. Because theres some mobs you just dont want to get close to at all.

Buying a slitherpinch to level is also great.

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Aggnog wrote:

For people who want block cap without bor just do this

Spoiler

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgEBAecEsQUtBu4S4RQgGJEY2xo-GlUa2xutIWAj9iSbJd8nLykuNDU26DiWPeI9_ECgR35I7kp9TGBQR1PfVElW-lcNWGNY21pIW69fP2BLYSFjF2SjZU1noG5pcqlyu3TtdPF4rnrvfLh82YCKhNmE74d2i0-Mz5HOlWaXcJuDns2gtKFtpzCsr7cXt9O5zbvtvqfAD8EHxtjM29Ih0k3TftRS137Xy90N45_kUe4O7w7v8PGs8i_zBvZI9zL3Tfe--6r8xa-iEPDnrpB0q8V7jKyqWfPAGmae-tIdFEw1KMXzvr2BmStwfamVGjJRYJBV

Just drop whichever damage nodes you want to make up points.

I tried to reduce this into a 100 points build, as 120 seems a bit crazy (especially because we only have 117 helping Oak 3 times).

Click
I dropped all the resist and armor stuff and a bit of damage.
But I'd say to successfully play a build like this, you will need very good gear, at least as expensive as BoR.
So I'm not too sure if this is an improvement.

Instead you could do:
click
Took the rest of nearby block nodes, which is +31% block total (with a 36% shield you get 67%, which should be more than ok).

75% block is not mandatory.
I got my BoR very late, with Level 80 or 82, and this was not huge jump in effectiveness.
My survivability and damage stayed about the same, compared to my old 5L setup.

your build works just fine without any amazing gear. I made a few changes to your tree according to what suits me better, but overal it is your idea and it is great:


current tree:


current gear:

hi i play this build too in ambush and im at cruel on the way to vaal, really cool build, i love it, only bought the sword and the chest

wouldnt it be the best to get a really good high armor and tri res shield for the "+30% defences from equipped shield" nodes ?

and why not take iron grip, would give a lot armor with grace ?

also this amulet helped me a lot, found it in normal i think



also for no mana problems

@Mrzimz

Explained that in the guide:

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Why no Iron Reflexes/Unwavering Stance?
You can take both (at the cost of damage) if you think it helps, it's only a couple of passive points. I personally don't.
I have never felt stun is an issue, and the little amount of Evasion Rating on my Gear still provides an ok dodge chance (20%) due to the high dexterity. I tested IR, but I only gain a minimum % of additional armor protection, that just doesn't seem to be worth it.

Going IR (and then of course US too) costs 5 skillpoints (2 for IR, 3 for US). Those have to be saved in other areas. I don't think it is worth it.

We are already sitting on a ton of armor, and you can run Determination instead of Grace for a similar effect.

I only have the Evasion from BoR, that still causes monsters to miss sometimes (20%).
With US I would also lose the "Blind" effect.

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Your jewelry looks nice, but actually isn't good.

Running a Wurm's Molt Unique Belt (1-2 chaos) and wearing jewelry with life and good amount of resists instead would be way more beneficial.

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A lot of armor on the shield is of course very nice, but I'm quite sure that the resists are not multiplied by "increased defenses of equipped shield". That should only apply to the primary defense, not affixes and implicit mods (could be wrong though, but I doubt).