1.3 The Community's Molten Strike, Face Melting Build!! 1h+shield and 2h variants available

I have recently made the switch to a sword and board user (at lvl 78 atm). My gear is currently:



I know that my jewelry sucks but it is more to cap my resists at this stage. Anyway even with the sword and board I am finding the build really strong.

EDIT: BTW my tooltip damage dropped only ~800dps when i switched out my 445pdps 2h axe to my doryanis catalyst. The sword and board is definitely much better.

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sword and board... As the author with countless testing I don't think you need any more of a reason :) You really don't need the dps from 2h and if you get a Doryani's Catalyst (3 or 4ex 1h) your dps will be like that of a 2h. I really feel my dps with my 2h is overkill.

Lol fair enough. I give it a try. Thanks for the input!

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Relytz wrote:

Is concentrated effect just for synergy with pointblank (less projectile spread) or does it actually increase the individual damage of each projectile as well?

Increases damage as well, that's the reason we take it.

did an overhaul on my build page.

This is looking really good. Can't afford a 3-4exalt item else I may like to try that.

Pretty nice you don't need BM gem. I may be looking into ways to remove the gem (outside of the obvious soul taker which is well beyond my grasp). Currently need it with the auras I use.

Wow I can't imagine the tool tip dps is a complete joke.

I have a 2hander sword tool tip dps : 6.2k

I switch to a 1hand axe and tool tip dps: 3.2k

I'm still killing at the same speed.

Further more most of my nodes are 2h damage nodes....and I see almost NO different in killing speed using a 1h axe...so question is are those physical nodes doing anything?

I've been enjoying this build quite a lot but today I was doing a bit of research as the damage conversion logic is quite convoluted and there is some important info missing in the original post.

Considering we use Avatar of Fire (AoF) and Haste, I wanted answer to the following questions:

Q: What damage type should I look for in weapons?

A: The damage type X which is used the most by "% of X damage added as Y damage" effects (such as Haste aura), where Y is best fire damage. If Y is cold or lightning it is 50% as effective (unless further converted). In practice that means physical > fire > cold/lightning. Chaos damage as is completely irrelevant.

Q: What damage increase type is the best?

A: The damage type which took at any point of the calculations (addition/conversion) the biggest chunk of the total damage. This is because PoE tracks the transformations and applies modifiers of all types the damage was at some points - so the damage from Hatred is affected by physical, elemental, fire and cold damage increase/decrease modifiers (note: elemental damage doesn't "double dip"). In practice that means physical, fire and elemental damage increase modifiers are all equally good. Melee doesn't apply to the projectiles and cold applies only to the parts of damage added by Haste or on the weapon.

Q: Can I use Cold to Fire with Hatred?

A: No, because Hatred itself is not source of the damage - Cold to Fire would have to be used with the attack skill gem, for which there are lot more effective options.

All this might be obvious to pro players, but I had to read up few hours to get to these conclusions. Might be useful to stick this up into the first post.

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Oakville wrote:

Wow I can't imagine the tool tip dps is a complete joke.

I have a 2hander sword tool tip dps : 6.2k

I switch to a 1hand axe and tool tip dps: 3.2k

I'm still killing at the same speed.

Further more most of my nodes are 2h damage nodes....and I see almost NO different in killing speed using a 1h axe...so question is are those physical nodes doing anything?

They do a lot. But killing someone with 1000 life with a 3000 damage hit vs a 2000 damage hit you won't notice a difference!

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Ali_B wrote:

I have recently made the switch to a sword and board user (at lvl 78 atm). My gear is currently:

I know that my jewelry sucks but it is more to cap my resists at this stage. Anyway even with the sword and board I am finding the build really strong.

EDIT: BTW my tooltip damage dropped only ~800dps when i switched out my 445pdps 2h axe to my doryanis catalyst. The sword and board is definitely much better.

Are you happy with the switch to sword and board? I'm currently running 2H, but considering a switch after reading up on the last pages in this thread.

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Aedax wrote:

Are you happy with the switch to sword and board? I'm currently running 2H, but considering a switch after reading up on the last pages in this thread.

MUWAHAHA yess....yesssss, come to the dark side. YOU HEAR THAT KARTIKDON 1H FTW!

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Oakville wrote:

Wow I can't imagine the tool tip dps is a complete joke.

I have a 2hander sword tool tip dps : 6.2k

I switch to a 1hand axe and tool tip dps: 3.2k

I'm still killing at the same speed.

Further more most of my nodes are 2h damage nodes....and I see almost NO different in killing speed using a 1h axe...so question is are those physical nodes doing anything?

for white trash and even blue it may be hard to tell the difference. Yes, tooltip is actually a bit of a joke since we buff the projectiles which are not used at all in the tooltip.

How much faster is the 1H? Think about this, if you get twice the attacks in say 2 seconds you now have twice the projectiles which have greater damage than the tooltip dps.

That's why I crafted my build around 1H from the get go. Want more projectiles without giving up damage. Only way to do that is a fast 1H.... or I suppose voidhome dread maul. ick.