1.3 Blitz Diarrhea | Static Strike | Feb 3. Major Update!

Got across a post from Mark at GGG. And I'm pretty confused... it seems you were right about WED, but the question is, does "increased physical damage with 1 handed melee weapons" increase my base projectile dmg or not?

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Mark_GGG wrote:

The projectiles are not melee, and do no benefit from any melee-specific bonuses. They are dealing your weapon damage, and do benefit from bonuses to your weapon type, or categories which include your weapon.

Does "increased physical damage with 1 handed melee weapons" fall into "categories which include your weapon"?

edit: got a confirmation, it does.

So, the build is updated to 1.1.1, MPD switched to WED, the "melee physical nodes" stand, there are only five of them, from which three include crucials stats e.g. flat life or chance to block and two pure "melee physical damage" nodes can't be respecced as they're between other nodes in the Duelist starting area. Also, they might be useful against bosses. But of course, if anyone see a good way to respec those nodes, lemme me know!

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Dzwonsson wrote:

So, the build is updated to 1.1.1, MPD switched to WED, the "melee physical nodes" stand, there are only five of them, from which three include crucials stats e.g. flat life or chance to block and two pure "melee physical damage" nodes can't be respecced as they're between other nodes in the Duelist starting area. Also, they might be useful against bosses. But of course, if anyone see a good way to respec those nodes, lemme me know!

Nice work!

"Increase MELEE physical damage .." nodes does not raise end result but "increase physical" does, so just get rid of all "melee" nodes and spent points to pure physical.

I lilbit reworked your tree, take a look.

I actually updated my tree while you were posting. I definitely agree with the idea of Resolute Techniques and Point Blank, I got rid off 3 minor block nodes and 2 minor life nodes* + of course 1 melee physical node. Some nodes I can't respec, because they're in my starting area (it's a Duelist build), but they can definitely be respecced if you were planning to play a Marauder. I'm not going to respec Sentinel and Steel Skin, call me stubborn, but all my chars are named "Pantser..." which stands for something.

So, the 1.2 version is UP.

*I got 4,200 life already, I have 25 levels till 90... so, 25 x 8 = 200, x 2.9 = 580. 4,780 life shoule be enough for endgame.

Keep going! Nice build anyway, im leveling 1H axe Marauder by the way, want to try new skill, looks interesting.

Oh and also i recommend you Meginord's belt and Abyssus coz they have shitload of phys damage.

I actually tried Meginord's out. And I don't think it's worth it, 300 less life and 200 more dps after auras and charges (from 7k to 7.2k).

My thoughts:

I think you'd be better off with a tree something like this.

Doesn't have any block chance. Takes 4% less life and 2% less attack speed, but has like 70% more damage and Iron Reflexes for a boost in armour. It's also right next to a lot more life and damage nodes for future leveling. It's also more generic to weapon types rather than being weapon specific.

The difference is that you would have the 2 melee physical nodes by Duelist rather than the life and armour by Marauder. I modified the tree that the other person gave rather than yours.

Edit: You said not to use Blood Rage in Merciless, so why build with Frenzy charges? That's 5 points that could go toward life and damage rather than being wasted. It's also a wasted bandit choice.

I like Iron Grip as it gives my projectiles 45-50% damage increase, but you skipped a lot of nodes that I included in my tree, so I'd actually lose:
- 25% attack speed from the Ranger starting area + a single node in the mace-staff cluster;
- 22% block chance;
- 40% intelligence and 24% mana which will make me unable to use some of my skills as well as gear;
- 1 endurance charge;
- 76% physical damage from Ranger starting area & mace-staff cluster;
- 18% armor.
Of course, with the 10 passives you left open I could get some of those stats back but I'd be still way worse off.

Also, I'm already using Iron Reflexes and said not to use Blood Rage until you can sustain Vitality and/or get some chaos res off gear as the chaos drain from Blood Rage would be multiplied by 60% chaos res penalty.

Anyway, thanks for the advice, I'm gonna try to get enough points to get into Iron Grip.

On the side note, a video from a 70 map is now being uploaded.

I missed the part about sustaining Vitality. My bad.

As for the rest, I just compared my tree with yours again and used Path of POE's skill tree calculator. The differences are far less than you claim, according to it. I was wrong about one thing though.

- It's 5% less attack speed, not 2. No where near the 25 you claim.
- I already mentioned no block chance. How important is this really though?
- Not quite sure what you mean by 40% intelligence, but there is only 18 intelligence difference and you are right by two 30 intelligence nodes. As for the mana, you are still attached to your mana nodes that I took off.
- They have the same amount of Endurance Charges.
- You have more physical damage. I have more elemental damage. Basically you are augmenting the single melee attack. I am augmenting the aoe. I also have Iron Grip. With my amount of strength, that's 332/5=66.4% more projectile damage. Your overall damages is 142%, not counting melee physical. Mine is 280%.
- 18% armour is negligble

I would argue strongly against your comment that my tree is "way worse off". My tree has minimally less defense and significantly more offense, but is attached to a bunch more defense nodes.

Edit: I think that the core of any build should be done by level 75ish. By this time you should be getting into end-game content and any other nodes are just bonuses to make the build better. With that in mind, I only compared 100 point trees, which is more like level 80, depending on bandit choices.

Your tree:
- Iron Grip, Unwavering Stance, Resolute Techniques, 12% incr. elemental dmg and 40% incr. weapon elemental damage (usueless for this build BTW), 30% incr. physical damage. + some life nodes.
My tree (100 pts):
- 25% increased attack speed, 76% increased physical damage, 18% increased armor, 21% block chane.

Math:
Let's say I deal 100 pdmg on 1 aps, my dps with your tree would be:
100 x 1.3 = 130
130 x 0.4/0.6 = 52/78 (phys/fire dmg)
78 x 1.4 = ~109
109 + 52 = 161 x 1.2 (base multiplier) = ~193 dps (since 1 aps)
193 x 0.6 = ~116 projectile dmg.
Total: 193 + 3 x 116 = 541
And then my tree:
100 x 1.76 = 176
Phys/fire split doesn't matter as I have no nodes influencing my ele dmg
176 x 1.2 = ~211
211 x 1.25 (aps) = ~264 dps
211 x 0.7 = ~127 projectile dmg.
Total: 264 + 3.75 (as more aps = more projectiles) x 127 = 740.

Positive, yes. And I see where you are right on the attack speed difference. I still don't see that as that big of a deal either way. You can still use the 10 more points to fill in some mana, intelligence, and attack speed if you need. I think the double damage is much better than 1 or 2 more attacks per second.

I'll just use small made up numbers for this.

Let's say with the extra attacks per second, it gives you two more attacks and that puts you at 5 attacks per second and let's say your damage is 7.

5*7=35 damage that second

With my double damage and 2 less attacks:

3*14=42

Of course, these puny numbers are far from accurate, but they will scale largely.

Example:
5*5,000=25,000
3*10,000=30,000

That's 5,000 damage per second difference.

And again, you are augmenting the initial strike where I'm augmenting the aoe.

I still strongly argue against your comment that my tree is "way worse off".

Edit: Interestingly, all of your trees start as Duelist, aside from the 110 one, which starts as Marauder.

Edit 2: Another thing that my build adds is 129 more strength, which is 25.8% more damage on Iron Grip and that much melee physical for the initial strike.