[ 2.0 ] Vaal Pact Dual Claw Build Level 92 ( Atziri Viable + BOTW S: 2 EP: 9 )

https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgYAAAYDhwSxBbUOSBGWFfYbrR4aIuoj9iQ8JP0mlSepKCowVDBxMHw0kzpCR35JUUp9S3hMYE4qUEJRR1M1U99VS1b6WNtaSFptW69gS2J5YqxjcGVNZ6BtbG17bmlwUnBycLtw1XRBdO1313rvfXV_K3_GhNmE74d2jDaNfY2_lWaZV5uDm7Wdo52qoi6nNKdcqn-quK7PsbO1SLZBvqfAUcS4xqLQ7tN-1CPVANX41orWnd0N3ajjhOdU6NbrFOuO7UHuDu967-Pv8Pej_Kv8xf66_5M=

I had 2 characters at later invasion, around the last two weeks of it, both died to invasion bosses. First one died on lvl 50 to desync against shrapnelbearer in cruel sewers, the boss was facing me instead of my vaal skellies, fatal.

Second character did much better, I had some currency from the 1st one to start with and a first look on how the build felt. It got to lvl 77. Capped resists, 4.4k health, 33% block, 30% evasion; 9k dps. It died on piety farming to Ch'aska Maker of Rain, I picked up a hexing shrine which resulted on the invasion boss not being cursed with enfeeble.

On HC, as is, I cannot say this build is viable from scratch for solo play. You need more than whatever you find on your way to maps to stay alive. The burst is just too high for your life leech to make up for it, you will eventually die in 1-2 shoots unless you can come up with some thick amount of health, like 1.5k to start cruel, and 3k to start merc. That's on top of keeping resist capped on a 0 resist passive tree. More on that later.

I was really enjoying my second character thou, after getting a 20% Q melee splash and a carcass jack the build was much more enjoyable, but HC is cruel as is, one death and you're out. So when they announced the one month SC only race I decided to take a break from HC and try this build again because at the end it was just a lot of fun.

This build was great for the one month race. It was my only character on the race, I played a lot on the first 10 days and went more casual as it progressed, to almost not playing on the last week. I was able to get him to 91, placed 150th on the ladder. Made 95% of it solo, maybe had 10 maps on groups on him, but that's about it. I died a whole bunch of times, 28 deaths, more than half under lvl 60 because, well, on HC you cant die, so yolo'ed a lot, just to see how far "close to death" could be. It can be quiet a distance btw.

In a one month race you have nowhere near the available gear on standard, so I had to tweak a lot to optimize, and this is where I had the chance to experience a much different dual claw than most people here.

Having past experience with the build my priorities where to get a Q melee splash and a carcass jack, because they make such a HUGE difference, I just cant imagine how ppl manage to play this with BoR. The next thing would be a long shot for a 6L carcass jack, my plan was to lottery a 6L on mine, so I started farming piety/dom with whatever MF gear I could find, usually swapping rings and ammy for the kill, i got to 200% quality 20% quantity without much effort, got a couple intersting uniques, amassed around 12-13 ex, and was lucky to get a deal on a 6L from a very nice guy, a shout out to Jamieisamazing, he's amazing. Getting a 6L on my early 80's gave me a mana problem that really only got solved around lvl 90, I needed 700 mana and 40 mana per sec to not worry about it anymore, I only do 7.5 aps, wich is low for this build, so keep in mind that the 6th link is a real mana drainer if ure trying to get one.

I held from speccing on vaal pact cause it didn't do me much good on HC, after getting my 6L and missing the only 300 dps claw available during race ever cause I was broke, I did some math and decided I would get more dps from spending 7 extra points in passives and getting a bloodseeker than having a 230 ish dps claw, plus, @ 20k dps I was about to blow myself with reflect. So I went with a mediocre rolled bloodseeker from low 80 till 90. Pretty much didnt change a single piece of gear during that, just saved currency for when a good claw would come up. After so long without any upgrades it got boring and I slowed down a lot, whats the point on a melee character on SC if you cant blow shit up?

I got to 90 on the last week of the race and I realized a good claw was not going to show up on poe.xyz (and it never did). I had 4.2k hp, capped resist, -60% chaos (I found out chaos resistance makes absolutely no diff when you have a bloodseeker on) and the rest of what this tree gives you. Also, 4.2k health at lvl 90 was not enough I would get status ailment a lot of times, my main health flask was a seething heat one, I had to skip dominus on residence map cause desync would one shoot me, and pretty much anything elemental was a pain, like crematorium boss and such. By then the character felt weak both in damage and survivability, with the stuff available on market, even having around 15ex, I could not upgrade both substantially. TBH even if I could pick anything on poe.xyz I still would not be able to make a big impact on my dmg.

So pretty much the only way to increase my damage was to get an abyssus, I mean, it's SC right? So the idea was to re-spec all the extra damage points from the non vaal pact, plus some other dmg stuff into more health, And get enought of a boost to not be one shooted, I kept the crit stuff thou, since they're offense and defense. I also swapped all my jewelry into non damage + max health and just about enough resist to cap. I literally sorted stuff by max health on poe.xyz and got that stuff. As a side effect I got enough strength to use abyssus.

Getting a abyssus in a one month scenario was the best thing I ever did on my character, I wish I had the balls to do it sooner. I went from 4.2k health to 5.2, got like 5% dmg reduction from armor, so I had just enough to not get one shooted. Elemental damage became a joke, I could face-tank pretty much anything elemental I got by, excluding some crazy volatile blood zombie shit, and my damage cranked up from 28k to 43k aoe and 60k single. Since I had a crap load of crit mult, around 600%, anything I critted that wasn't piety would get permafrosted, including invasion bosses from last 4 days. I run double piety on shrine no problem, and yolo tanked courtyard bosses without breaking a sweat.

The only thing that killed me with my abyssus on was a magic pack of chargers, and that was pretty much the only thing I was afraid of, if two chargers hit me back to back, even with 80% chance to miss with vaal grace up and granite flask reducing the damage, I was going to die. Even then, after 30+ 77-78 maps it only happened once. I made my own spreadsheet with formulas for armor and damage to see if IR would be a workaround but nope, it would require 40k armor for it to pay off. but I mean, the chargers were a problem before I had abyssus, they didnt get worst, it's just everything else got easier.

The other really scary thing was reflect, I was pretty close to one shoot myself from crit reflects, it did not happen, and I'm not sure if it's possible or not, I also did not run into double phys reflect while I had abyssus on, but I started switching crit mult for crit chance on reflect maps cause I would end up under 20% health after criting, and when I critted everything would die, so I had nothing to leech from. Switching those gems was enought to get rid of the problem.

So back to HC, after playing 91 levels of this build in SC, I am again on strong belief that it's not viable. The only way to get around with this is on a saturated market, with some currency to spent and playing maps only on groups, with a bloodseeker, vaal pact is not an option. This will not be your MFder, and this wont be able to run hard maps, you will also skip the hard bosses like most of HC players do.

As for SC this is an amazing build, you can do it from scratch, thrive in a low supply market, be your own MF, bring great dps to groups, and kill pretty much anything that's thrown at you. I skipped most of SoV, so idk about Atziri.

As for what I think that can be improved. This build was not played by it's author in nemesis environment, you need a ranged skill to kill volatile bloods. And the power charge on whirling blades never really added anything. They're almost always down, and I never saw them stack to 3 during normal game play, I think I should have put a ST there. Vaal reave was nice to open boxes, but by the end I think +40% aoe range dual strike would have been just as good. Vaal skellies was good, but vaal grace + inc duration brought more to the table against invasion bosses, since almost all of them aoe, cleaning your skellies would take a couple seconds only, and the aoe would still hit you most of the time.

As a last note I'd like to say a bit about map mods. The only danger is on +% dmg ones and vulnerability, especially with abyssus, the deadly prefix can one shoot you, the elemental ones not so much cause of resistances. All other mods are doable, blood magic you have to turn off auras oc, and reduced mana/health regen are irritating, changing a red gem for blood magic fixes it, you just lose dps.

lvl 91
health: 5.3k
mana: 694, 246 unreserved
resists: capped, -60% chaos
evade: 22%
block: 33%
dodge: 40%
spell dodge: 30%
aoe dps: 43k, 52k with power charges
single target dps: 60k, 70k with power charges
crit chance: 30%
crit mult: 605%

Switch granite for elemental resist of choice on some bosses, not needed, just extra safety.

https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgYAAAYDhwW1DI0NSQ5ID6sRlhX2Fr8brR4aI_YkPCSdJd8mlSepKCowVDBxMHw0kzpCPWVAVUd-SVFKfUt4TipRR1PfVUtW-ljbWkhabVuvYEth4mJaYnlirGNwZU1noG17bmlvV3BScHJ0QXTtd9d67311fyt_xoTZhO-HdofbjDaNfY2_koCVZplXm4Odo52qpn-nNKdcqn-quLGztMW1SLZBvqfAUcS4xqLN6tDu037UI9X41orWnd0N3aje9uOE53To1u1B7g7veu_j7_Dz6vej_Kv8xf66_5M=

I'd have to test, but I think I could drop Primal spirit and 8% mana, also the armor point was just cause I had nothing else to spend on.