[1.1] Crit Marauder (CI and high block)

Basic Tree layout:
~300% crit
+34% block
Enough Dex and Accuracy to work with some green gems and actually hit monsters
Tree (21 points left)
Grab a high pdps crit weapon (Dagger, Claw, Sceptre, Sword) and adapt the tree for this weapon type. Depending on the weapon type, it may be useful to reroute parts of the tree.

Grab high Energy Shield base values on at least chest, helmet, shield.

Option 1 (ES regeneration):
Skill "Zealot's Oath" and "Warrior's Blood".
Grab "the Blood Dance" unique boots, +1 Frenzy charge on corrupted amulet or even corrupted BD boots, merciless Kraytin and Shadow zone, to exploit "Zealot's Oath" and counter the nerf to "Vaal Pact".

Option 2:
Grab Rainbowstrides and Stone of Lazhwar to get sick spellblock, maybe even combined with Aegis Aurora (if you can handle the low Energy Shield on AA).

Go out and hit them hard!

...just to make it clear:

I'm running this build on a budget.

I'm not the poorest dude in the game, but definetly not among the rich people, and I have to work with what I find and can afford (with self-farmed currency and a couple of sales).

It may sound crazy to try "CI on a budget", but so far I'm doing fine. I've been lucky with some drops, with 5linking my chest and with a few very nice trades, but I'm still far away from having a GG item set.

So don't disregard this build just because of gear. If you want to critize, if you find mistakes I make, go ahead and point them out, but don't say stuff like "not viable, only 5k ES" when this could be easily solved by better gear.

Pros of the build
*quite tanky (near max block, good armor etc)
*nice damage and clearspeed
*easy to play
*interesting and unique

Cons of the build
*gear is about twice as expensive as for a life-based build with similar strength
*Secondary elemental effects (chill, burn, shock) annoy and hurt
*requires a lot of levels before you get "all you want"
*Dex Requirements
*Cannot run unidentified maps (because of "players have blood magic" affix)

I've always been interested in CI/Crit, but it was so far off marauder, and this is the only class I really like. 1.1 makes it possible, finally!

The new Marauder start, while by most players received as a "straight up NERF", enables us to make use of the different areas more efficiently. We can cross between bottom and top, we don't have to invest into life to get life regen. And the switch between damage and defense (before 1.1, life was top, melee damage bottom) allows a quicker pathing to the Energy Shield area (Templar and CI).

Basic Tree Layout (21 points left)
This sums up to about +300% crit, +100% damage, +30% attackspeed, +50% accuracy in the offense, and just enough %ES, %armor, +34% block in the defense.

It needs to be adapted for a weapon type, of course. Possible "Crit weapons" are Daggers, Claws, Sceptres (because of their high basic crit chance), but you can pretty much use any weapon with this tree.

It may also be adapted for Zealot's Oath, for more block chance, for more ES (witch area or Scion wheel), more Aura stuff...
But these are options for really late lategame, or you will have to sacrifice Crit or Block.

Here's what I am going for at the moment:
Adapted to Claw, ~Lvl89
The level depends on Bandit choices.
You may also cut (add) some Dex/Accuracy if you (don't) get enough from your gear.

---

I explain my choices in a litte Q&A:


Why a Marauder?
First: why not?
Second: he looks cool. I'd always choose marauder over any other class just because of this.
Third: with CI, you are kinda forced to grab "Unwavering Stance" anyway, if you don't want to use the "Eye of Chayula", and this keystone is close to Marauders start.
Forth: having marauder's high base strength means increased damage without any skillpoint in damage. Many crit builds run on witch or shadow, who have literally no strength at all. However we have some Dex issues here, I need to invest a lot of points in +20-30 Dex nodes.

Why Crit?
I've always wanted to play crit, and I've always wanted to make use of the massive one handed crit chance nodes on the left side of the tree (260% in just a couple of nodes).
Here we go!

Why CI?
The concept always fascinated me.
From what I heard, it is not really efficient these days.
It requires expensive gear (people seem to at least double the price of any item just because it has some energy shield), and the immunity to chaos damage is rather situational.
But I wanted to try anyways. You get a lot of Energy Shield from good gear, even with very few nodes from the tree. Reaching 4k ES requires not nearly as much investment in the tree as reaching 4k life.

Why onehanded?
I want to make use of shield block, without block I don't feel tanky at all.
And we need the ES from the shield.

Why the Aura nodes?
To use two 60% auras AND mana for your attacks, you need further reduction to be comfortable.
Minmaxing this, you could get away with reaching "Sovereignty" through the two aura effect instead of reduced mana nodes (which results in a bit more ES from Discipline and a bit more damage from Hatred), but I really want enough free mana to spam my main attack even in desync/"hitting nothing but air" times.

No Crit Multiplier?
I plan to get my Crit Multi from gear and Critical Weakness alone.
More multi of course means more DpS, and there's some of it pretty close by in the tree. Grab it if you feel you need it, for my personal taste my crits already do enough damage... ;)

Main attack
I like those two the most:

Reave (for Daggers, Claws, Swords)
+multistrike (obvious)
+melee physical damage (obvious)
+melee damage on full life (why choose CI when not using this?)
+Concentrated Effect (sick DpS boost)
+increased crit chance / increased crit multi / faster attacks (your choice)

Heavy Strike (for Maces, Axes, Sceptres, Swords)
+multistrike (obvious)
+melee physical damage (obvious)
+melee damage on full life (why choose CI when not using this?)
+melee splash (obvious)
+increased crit chance / increased crit multi / faster attacks (your choice)

Auras
Reduced Mana
+Hatred
+Discipline

Not much to say here. Cold damage is insanely good with crit, both defensive and offensive, and Discipline is a must have of course.

Trigger gem
Cast when Damage taken Lvl 1
+(10+ quality!)Blood Rage Lvl 5
+(10+ quality!) Critical Weakness Lvl 5
+Enduring Cry Lvl 5

Cast when Damage taken Lvl x
+Immortal Call Lvl x
+Molten Shell Lvl x
+Increased Duration

The first setup provides "Free" Crit multi, crit chance, attackspeed (Frenzy charges), armor (Endurance Charges), life leech. Active all the time.
The gems are low, but this can be solved with quality: Weakness gains more crit multi per quality, Blood Rage gains more life leech. You don't need 20% gems, though it would be nice of course (I bought some around 10% for little to no currency).

The second setup can be levelled as high as you want, it can save your butt in dangerous situations.

It may be a better idea to level up Blood Rage and CW and cast them manually, but I am lazy as hell and really prefer the trigger gem version... ;)

Mobility/Culling
Depending on Weapon:
Leap Slam
+faster attacks
+culling strike
+item rarity

or:
Whirling Blades
+culling strike
+item rarity
Lightning Warp
+faster casting

Leap Slam can get the job done alone (Culling, mobility, crossing obstacles), with Whirling Blades you need Warp too, to get over cliffs and other obstacles.
Leap Slam requires one of your 4links, Blades+Warp can be put in Weapon and shield. Decide for yourself which is preferable...

Now we get to the expensive part.
In PoE economy, an item that has a fair amount of Enery shield and some other useful stuff will be ridicilously overpriced 99% of the time.
People simply swap the "x chaos" buyout for "x exalts" (with x being the same number), just because the item has ES instead of - let's say - Evasion.


Weapon
A weapon with high physical damage and ideally increased crit chance.
This can get very expensive. Very, very expensive. The increased Crit chance at least triples the value of a weapon in PoE economy.
In lategame, you should be fine with a ~250 pDpS weapon with ~8% crit chance.

Shield
High base block (and/or additional block chance), 300+ Energy Shield, ideally an Armor/ES hybrid.
We also need resists, but that gets quite expensive.
Aegis Aurora would be interesting, but makes the rest of the gear even more expensive, as it has shitty ES, so you need 500+ ES on chest etc.

Gloves
Up to +400 accuracy, life/mana leech, resists, physical damage...

Boots
No unique: Movespeed, ES/Armor, resists.
If you want to go for ES regen and Zealot's oath, Blood Dance is pretty much required to make it work (each charge adds 1% extra regen). Without this you will most likely not get to a significant combat regen.
They don't have armor or ES, but they can be corrupted for +1 Frenzy Charge! Sick!
If you want spellblock, Rainbowstrides are an obvious choice with resists, high ES, mana and movespeed.

Helmet
Highest possible ES(+Armor), Accuracy, resists.

Chest
High (400+!) ES+Armor, 5-6 linked sockets. Ideally with added resists. I skipped the resist part because I could never afford such a thing... ;)

Amulet
Ideally Corrupted with "+1 frenzy charge" or "+4% chance to block" as implicit mod.
A Dex Base Type is also very helpful.
If you're on the "Spellblock road": Lazhwar
No spellblock: Accuracy, physical damage, crit chance/multi, %ES or armor, resists.

Rings
Dream Fragments is required (1-2 Exalts), if you cannot afford the belt Auxium (10-15 Exalts). Otherwise you will get frozen by any cold damage monster. Flasks with "Dispells frozen and chilled" do not solve this issue!
Other ring: Physical Damage, Accuracy, resists, 2% manaleech (if not on Gloves).

Belt
Auxium for the rich people.
A rustic sash with Armor, ES, resists for the rest.

Flasks
2-3 granites, 0-1 Diamond, 1-2 Quicksilver, 0-1 mana.
Get "dispells Curses, dispells Shocked, removes bleeding" somewhere.

Just to illustrate the expense of this build, here's what I spent:
Dream Fragments: 1 pure Exalt
Other ring: ~5 chaos
Shield: 1 pure Exalt
Chest: 15 chaos, I was superlucky with 5-linking it myself (with 5L, this would have been 2+ Exalts)
Rainbowstrides: ~40 chaos
Helmet: ~10 chaos (lucky?)
Weapon: ~30 chaos
Gloves: 10 chaos (lucky?)
Belt: 10 chaos, couple of Blessed orbs to get the damage up (lucky?)
Amulet: selffound, self-corrupted

As my big ES contributors (chest, shield, helmet) don't provide crazy amounts of resists, I only barely managed to cap them.
But this is kind of what you have to expect when "running on a budget". You can triple each price, if you want 2-3 30+ resists on the sexy parts.

The weapon is a bit slow, but hits like a truck!

I was really desperate for skillpoints, so I killed them all, but this may not be the perfect choice. I leave this as a homework for you.

Normal: kill all
Kraytin: useless, we get +10% resists for 1 skillpoint in the shield cluster above templar instead of his +8%.
Alira: more mana is interesting, but I prefer the skillpoint.
Oak: obviously useless

Cruel: your choice
(I killed all)
Oak: Damage is always nice, but we have so many unspent damage nodes that it doesn't help too much. Same goes for...
Kraytin: 8% attackspeed, very nice.
Alira: cast speed ist useless, of course.

Merciless: your choice
(I killed all, but I think I will invest the Regrets to get Kraytin's or Oak's favor once I am about Lvl 90)
Oak: helps defensively with Enduring Cry/Immortal Call
Kraytin: Helps with Blood Rage attackspeed and Blood Dance Regen
Alira: If you somehow manage to incorporate Power charges in this build, go ahead!

Lvl 82 (10% more block coming), Hatred, Discipline, Blood Rage (3 charges):

It is highly recommended to use a "levelling build" for CI builds.

Follow the basic lines of this build, but grab all the life nodes you find.

Use Spectral Throw, Searing Bond, Groundslam or Facebreakers up to Level 70, then respec out of all life nodes and into ES and Ghost Reaver.

As I am silly and uninterested in "effective Levelling", I didn't do this. Instead I went for only ~5 life nodes and a Life/ES hybrid. I had to pay the price for this several times, but overall I got to merciless pretty easily.

I also respecced into CI way too early, at merciless Ledge. I had just reached Ghost Reaver, killed my 5 life nodes and took CI and the ES nodes behind it.
That was a pure "yolo" decision, I had only about 2000 ES and no respec points left to undo this. ;)

But if I want to play a build, I want to play this build as long and as soon as possible.

I had horrible problems with cold damage monsters, so the first Exalt (I luckily found one in Fellshrine) had to be spent on Dream Fragments.

I then started to "build up deaths and currency", I was limited to very easy zones (City of Sarn, Fellshrine) for quite a long time, and was forced to "zerg" several zones.
But finally I was able to do Docks, then Piety runs, and then the cash started flowing in.

With gear of about the quality shown above, I finally feel equal to a life build, and can do most of the content.

Nothing too special here.
I mostly try to roll a "pack/mob size" affix plus a "not very dangerous" second affix on my maps.

Impossible
*Players have Blood Magic. You simply die once you use a skill.

Very tough/annoying
Nothing special for CI, this is tough for anyone:
*minus max resist
*enfeeble, temporal chains, vulnerability, elemental weakness
*monsters fracture

Kinda annoying
*monsters do extra cold damage (they chill you all day)
*chilling ground (you're chilled all day)
*elemental reflect (you chill yourself all day... see a pattern?)
*additional projectiles (depends on monsters in the map, shitbirds come to mind)
*physical reflect (you hurt, but don't really kill yourself, not enough crit multi involved in this build to be considered really dangerous)

The mods above want to be avoided during levelling.
The following are what we aim for to have an easy time.

Just a little bit annoying
*Monsters resist cold, players have elemental equilibrium
*Half/no regeneration
*Monsters do extra lightning damage, attack faster, more damage, frenzy, power charges
*monsters have physical resistance, endurance charges, extra life
*shocking ground

Always welcome, doesnt hurt at all:
*pack size, extra blue mobs, rare mobs, rogue exiles, most "double bosses"
*monsters cannot be stunned, immune to curses
*monsters do extra fire damage, have fire/lightning resistance
*area is inhabited by..., contains totems
*monster skills chain additional times
*burning ground
*players take x chaos damage per second (lol)