[1.1] CI Marauder + Zealot's Oath = and it works!

You tell me now where I have already used all my respec points? ;)

It's actually 4 points as I need the +30 dex, but there is some benefit for sure.
Your tree kinda forces me to go mace, in mine I can drop the 5 skillpoints and go whatever I want, in case I find a 350dps claw or something... ;)

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I go crit because I want. I don't really care if this is good or not, I want a crit CI marauder... ;)
Again it's not the biggest investment to go crit, it is only 10 passive points.

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Lvl 69 now.
I transitioned into CI on merciless Ledge, was more of a yolo decision (I knew my ES would not be enough to survive everything, had only ~2000), but I was able to progress through act 1-3 pretty easy, a couple of deaths, but nothing special...

Against Piety and her friends, and in early maps I couldnt really survive, even if I popped my granites all the time, so I bought a nice chestpiece and 5-linked it myself. I will never be able to pay what people want for 5-6L ES chests, prices are crazy, that was my only choice. Payed ~15 chaos for the chest and spent ~30 fusings (lucky me).

Gear:


Current stats: ~4000 ES, ~10000 DpS (Hatred, Discipline, 3 frezy charges), Crit Chance at ~30%, chance to hit 90%, resists barely capped.

Need:
*more ES on shield (or Aegis Aurora)
*maybe Rainbowstrides
*more pDpS plus inc. crit on Sceptre
*overall better gear

Skilltree:
click
The rest of the points will go into shieldblock, maybe a couple of 6% ES nodes.

And 74 now.

I think I will drop Zealots Oath (and the 2% regen in Marauder).
The regen is not noticable at all, Ghost Reaver is far superior.
It works in the youtube video of OP because he has a pretty shitty ES value and rejuvenation totem and fights against little bugs in CoS, but once you encounter monsters that hit hard, this regen won't help at all.

I started to seriously invest into block nodes, and feel quite tanky now.
First exalt drop invested in a dream fragments ring, because getting frozen was annoying as hell.

The build starts to roll now, at least I can play maps without permanent danger of dying...

I am also at 74.

Personally, ZO and 2% regen is worth it. Well in my case it is only 2 points and works great against the burning and puncture dots. I also escape the marauder are with 0.2% regen per end charge.

Also, ZO becomes superior to leech when using ele dmg (glacial hammer) and stacked % regen. After all, regen has no limit while leech has one. The point is to maximize your total regen per sec and you can do it quite effectively by combining ridiculous leech with heavy strike, ZO and aegis replenishing.

Got about 15k dps, 5.1k ES, 6k ar and 60% block right now. Feels very tanky. I think about getting abyssus and maybe @lvl 90 I will also go crit. Prior to that I think RT dmg is better.

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Ohjeah wrote:

After all, regen has no limit while leech has one.

Life Leech is capped at 20% of total life per second.
Getting Life Regen to 20% looks like a pretty hefty investment.

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Prior to that I think RT dmg is better.

Cold Damage+Crit = Freeze = shatter on next hit if below 40% (or was it 30%?).
Thats a pretty sick Culling Strike and gives insane clearspeed.

You get leech for free. ZO is a bonus so you extend the 20% cap.

I played GH crit in anarchy and feel like RT/stun prodiveds more than freeze. I dont think you cull map bosses, do you?

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Ohjeah wrote:

I played GH crit in anarchy and feel like RT/stun prodiveds more than freeze. I dont think you cull map bosses, do you?

I don't think you RT/stun map bosses, do you? ;-)

Heavy Strike +Hatred's cold damage +occasional Crit -> very long frozen mobs, even rares.
Next hit is usually a "shatter".
That's all I'm saying.

Great build, I have been enjoying reading about it. Very creative!

I would like to make a few suggestions:

-Do Zealot's Oath + Blood Dance (boots)
-Help Kraityn for the extra frenzy charge
-Try for as many Frenzy charges as you can in the tree
-Duelist-area Frenzy charge
-Possibly Ranger one
-(The Ranger one turns each frenzy charge into an extra 4% evasion per charge - with Iron Reflexes, that means 4% more armor per charge!)
-Get near-maximum block chance, in Marauder, Templar (Phalanx), and Duelist area
-Phalanx wheel is the only way to get any spell block chance from the tree
-Wear Stone of Lazhwar for more spell blocking

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-When you dance the Blood Dance, you get 1% life regen per frenzy charge.
-(On my Righteous Fire Ranger, I had 7 frenzy charges going at once.)

-That was a bonus 7% life regen, on top of tree nodes!
-(It made me immune to the degen of Righteous Fire, it was so powerful!)

-Near-max block chance means you rarely get hit by physical attacks
-(You will also block most arrows!)

-Near-max block chance means also a large % of spell-block chance
-(If you take the advice above)

-Because you block most physical, and many spell attacks:
-This gives your ES time to regen
-Because of the Blood Dance Boots you have huge regen and it regens *fast*

-You can either use Frenzy as an attack (it's good,) to build up charges
-Or you might as well go Blood Rage - you are CI after all!
-That's immunity to the chaos dot! :D

..........
I'm now making a CI witch with daggers, and as she levels, I'm using 2x Ungils Gauche's for 60% block chance, just by holding them in my hands. (I vaal orb corrupted one of them for an extra 5% block chance when dual wielding.)

This is a great way to level. Later, I will switch over to shields for merciless, by pulling out of my dual wield nodes, and putting them into nearby shield nodes.

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Czarevna wrote:

-Try for as many Frenzy charges as you can in the tree
-Duelist-area Frenzy charge
-Possibly Ranger one
-(The Ranger one turns each frenzy charge into an extra 4% evasion per charge - with Iron Reflexes, that means 4% more armor per charge!)

Can you show your tree?

I can't come up with any useful Marauder tree that will make use of all 3 frenzy charges and CI/Energy Shield/Shield Block nodes. I would have to sacrifice all my damage.

Instead of grabbing them in the tree, I would highly recommend going for corrupted items. Lazhwar and Blood Dance can both be corrupted into having "+1 Frenzy charge".

How do u guys handle freeze ? Since u have CI and no dream fragment, nor stun immunity. Must be a real pain later on ? I know u can handle it with flask but more often than not, its just not enough. Also you will get permachilled (which is like temp chains all the time), which will screw dps and clearing speed.

Seems like a pretty difficult build to be efficient/survivable with. The culling of Glacial Hammer is nice, but your attack speed pretty much sucks, and it takes you forever to kill stuff in CoS (+ the low hit chance).(= gearing even more difficult)

To me it seems pretty hard to stack all those good ar/es pieces with + accuracy + WeD etc etc. Also a good Staff might also be hard to find, since staffs are like daggers.

Imo you CAN pull that build off, but it takes shitloads of perfect gear to be close to what a life based marauder can do with shit gear.

Sry but i dont see the point in wasting so many points to get CI + all the shitty life regen nodes. Since ull just get perma frozen/one shot/perma stunned by everything in 70+ maps.

1h+shield might be the only real option.

Maybe its just me, but the builds, and really all of them, look like a giant waste of points to get to CI/0.4%LR. You could probably do a life based glacial hammer marauder, which is way more tanky way easier to gear and doesnt have to deal with freeze/stun.

Ps: imo you should always get ghost reaver. Its just so much better than all those inneficient 0.4 life reg nodes, even if the position on the tree is not really in your favor.

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aGnosticc wrote:

How do u guys handle freeze ? Since u have CI and no dream fragment, nor stun immunity.

You need both!
There's no way around it, the initial build in the video will not work!
You need Unwavering and one item with freeze immunity (Dream Fragments/Auxium/that Aura headpiece). All of these have drawbacks (Dream Fragments sucks, Aura head has no ES, Auxiums ridiculous price).

Chilling is annoying, but doesn't really kill you (it's more like being "temporal chainsed").
Other elemental effects (shocking, burning) can be ignored most times.

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To me it seems pretty hard to stack all those good ar/es pieces with + accuracy + WeD etc etc.

You don't need too much accuracy. And Accuracy doesnt add too much to the price of an item (you are buying everything anyways).

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Imo you CAN pull that build off, but it takes shitloads of perfect gear to be close to what a life based marauder can do with shit gear.

You don't need "near perfect", but it is definetly more expensive. High ES shield gear costs a fortune.

I went for Shield+Crit+CI and skipped the Zealot's Oath regen part for the moment (as I also have the feeling it's a huge investment (waste) of skillpoints).
Wrote a little Guide.

You can see there my equipment is not first tier, and I'm doing fine.

Payed like:
15c weapon
15c chest (5L myself)
1 ex dream fragments
1 ex shield
45 chaos Rainbowstrides
Couple chaos or selffound for the rest


(Weapon is only ~200 pDpS, theres no "affordable" (not paying 50+ es for 250 DpS ^^) Crit Claws on poe.xyz.is atm)