ReverendBizzarre: ele cleave templar [6k life, 45k+ dps]

If anyone new to melee builds is browsing threads looking for one, THIS IS THE ONE. The exact build recommended in his guide (perhaps with a few tweaks, but nothing dramatic), is both easy to start, fun to use, and viable in the late game.

I'm on day 4, currently 75, and this build does absurd amounts of damage. Just finished coming from a PhysCleave Duelist, and there is absolutely no comparison. By far the best melee build I've tried yet (Ground Slam, PhysCleave, and Lightning Strike being the other 3). Please note that I play almost exclusively Solo. My opinions on the build are not affected whatsoever by the presence of others. So far I've died twice, both times to Desync on nasty packs in a 66 map at 72.



This is my Current Passive Build @75
Currently working towards grabbing Mana Flows and move my way through the Life nodes in the Ranger zone.

And I currently operate on:
7.3k DPS on Cleave
Roughly 40% of my output is Lightning, 40% is Fire, 14% Cold, and 6% Physical.
4257 Health (reserve is currently eating up 380 though, I'll have that fixed soon)
456 Mana (107 Usable)
4836 Armor
82 (soon to be 83) All Resist

Biggest differences between OP and my setup:
Enfeeble vs Conductivity (My Ele breakdown would have me using Ele Weakness though)
No Concentrated Effect
No Conversion Trap
Less Armor vs More Health (Minus 10 Passive Points)

Important notes I'd like to make about my take on the build.

-Cleave has the best hitbox of any Melee skill. It's much longer than Sweep, and much broader than Lightning Strike or Ground Slam.

-More than high ele damage, the weapons need to be fast. Your real output is coming from Wrath/Anger, and rings, because they're double multiplying into cleave. Not only that, but weapon speed controls the cast time and cooldown on Whirling Blades, and Whirling is how you get around.

-Increased Ele Damage with Weapons may look weak in town, but once you get into the field with Wrath/Grace Active, the difference is huge.

-I chose to drop the 6 group of Body and Soul, I think 60% armor and 10 resist is weaker than the alternative 40% Health and 10 dex you can get in the Ranger wing. I find my weakness is to Chaos and ranged packs with Elemental Modifiers (deals fire, etc), so I'm doing my best to cover my bases there. On the other hand, the big Melee bosses while mapping (Brutus and Kole) are a real danger to me, and I can't touch them without Enfeeble and 5 Stacks of Endurance. Please note that I only mean the Map versions of these mobs, Merciless Kole doesn't do nearly enough damage to be a risk.

-I don't feel like Concentrated Effect is worth it. The damage is so goddamn high anyways that I prefer the extra range on Cleave, especially in a 5L where it's competing vs 6% Life Leech. The 6% is my bread and butter, keeps me from having to step out on certain mobs and potentially have to port refresh my pots. If I had a 6L, I would give serious consideration to Increased AoE, Added Cold/Lightning, or even Rarity/Quantity.

-Unless you get very lucky with gear, most people will have hiccups meeting the Dex and Int requirements of this build. Wrath eats up a lot of int, and Grace eats up a lot of Dex. If you want to use a thrusting 1h (they can be very, very nice), that eats up a whole lot more Dex. The int is easy to cover, as there are 2 30int nodes attached to the railway this build uses, but the

-When you're leveling this build, if you have any Ele Damage on your rings, gloves, neck, etc, you will do best if you can find 2 fast 1h weapons and use them instead. I leveled with Poorman Swords, and they still did considerably more DPS than the Legendary 2h weapons I have like Shiversting.

-I use Decoy Totem, but it's pretty damn useless. I pop it while Piety is babbling, and occasionally for the bigboy Melee Bosses in Maps, but other than that it's pretty useless. I also tried Regen Totem, and it's pretty stupid too. Shit takes like 3 centuries to drop and is barely worth the time. If anyone has any neat ideas on Spell/Ranged totem combinations, that would be sick.

-Swords >>>>>> Axes. Whirling Blades is OP. It's probably the only viable "Oh shit" cooldown in the game. Warp and Leap are slow as dick, and Immortal Call is probably the worst skill of all time.

-The following skills are absolutely non-negotiable:
Wrath
Anger
Whirling Blades (with Faster Attacks attached)
Faster Attacks + Weapon Ele support

-The following stills are avoidable, but highly recommended (in my opinion):
Grace
Reduced Mana on all your Auras
Mana/Life Leech supports


I have a few questions though:

- @OP - What's the damage difference on your Cleave with/without Concentrated Effect. Have you Tried Increased AoE instead? I feel like the range on Cleave could be hilarious, especially with your points in Blast Radius.

- Do the mana reduction talents in the Templar starting area affect Auras? EDIT: Never mind, found the answer. They do not affect auras.

- I'm currently farming Piety, and maps when I get them, but the Maps I get are too few and far apart. Should I be mapping in a group, or does Rarity/Quantity affect map drops? I much prefer the tranquility of solo gameplay, not to mention to rate at which this build solo clears, but I don't want to waste time either. Is the an option for me to bump up my Map count without blowing all my currency just to do it?

- Do you know the exact formulas for Damage generation and Attack speed? I'm considering hypothesizing an Attack Speed build that breaks the Ranger/Duelist arm of this build and shifts it down into the much more defensive Marauder wing of the tree. You would need very specific gear (pure armor, and enough Dex bonuses to cover the 117 on Corsair Blades), and you would definitely lose DPS, but the defensive tradeoff would be huge.

Anyways, that's all I've got for now. If you want me to Spoiler down my Notes section, just ask and I shall do. I would also love some advice on my gearing/build, or just advice in general on what to do now that I'm at +11 levels (~68% exp) on the highest mobs regularly available to me.

Also, I'd love to give a huge shoutout to the OP here for doing an amazing job monitoring your thread. Your build is honest to god probably the only reason I'm still playing PoE (I love melee, and the other builds just weren't cutting it). Kudos.

"

Panicz wrote:

Did u check this build on pvp ?

The build would do very well, but it would need some PvP tweaks. But I wouldn't worry about PvP at this stage in the game. 28 Twinks can be wildly imbalanced with certain builds like 2h Flicker or Molten Shield, because player health pools are so low that a decently geared character can easily break the 1-shot barrier. And when it comes to a 1-shot war, some skills are unbeatable.

Im sorry if this has already been asked, but is there a reason to not level cleave besides mana cost? Because from level 1 to 5 cleace costs 7 mana points.

Seems great btw, ill try this.

"

Kethzen wrote:

Im sorry if this has already been asked, but is there a reason to not level cleave besides mana cost? Because from level 1 to 5 cleace costs 7 mana points.

Seems great btw, ill try this.

The only thing I can think of is that spells may use an internal percentage for calculation. While we only see 7/7/7/7/7/8, the game could be calculating using 7/7.2/7.4/7.6/7.8/8, after multiplying that number by ~250% with support gems, you may see the end cost jump from 18 to 19 even though the base cost still appears to be 7.

That's just conjecture though, based on my experience with other games.

I'm avoiding taking the risk on my Cleave gem until I see proof that states otherwise, for what works out to be just under a 1% damage increase. Though honestly I'm at the point with my Mana Leech gem that I may just completely unleash my Cleave gem, since I seem to have unlimited Mana.

"

Fraya wrote:

I have a few questions though:

- @OP - What's the damage difference on your Cleave with/without Concentrated Effect. Have you Tried Increased AoE instead? I feel like the range on Cleave could be hilarious, especially with your points in Blast Radius.

- Do the mana reduction talents in the Templar starting area affect Auras? EDIT: Never mind, found the answer. They do not affect auras.

- I'm currently farming Piety, and maps when I get them, but the Maps I get are too few and far apart. Should I be mapping in a group, or does Rarity/Quantity affect map drops? I much prefer the tranquility of solo gameplay, not to mention to rate at which this build solo clears, but I don't want to waste time either. Is the an option for me to bump up my Map count without blowing all my currency just to do it?

- Do you know the exact formulas for Damage generation and Attack speed? I'm considering hypothesizing an Attack Speed build that breaks the Ranger/Duelist arm of this build and shifts it down into the much more defensive Marauder wing of the tree. You would need very specific gear (pure armor, and enough Dex bonuses to cover the 117 on Corsair Blades), and you would definitely lose DPS, but the defensive tradeoff would be huge.


Also, I'd love to give a huge shoutout to the OP here for doing an amazing job monitoring your thread. Your build is honest to god probably the only reason I'm still playing PoE (I love melee, and the other builds just weren't cutting it). Kudos.

I think im at around 10-11k without conc effect and increased area instead, so the damage is pretty big and the area is quite huge.

They only affect skills.

IIR/IIQ doesnt not affect map drops, i suggest you farm City of Sarn its the ebst area and i also suggest for faster map running you find a group of good friends to roll with, goes much faster and its more fun, you got people to talk to, more loot etc.

I dont quite understand that question, do you mean how does attack speed influence your tool tip dps? That is pretty simple with RT since you only have to get your damage on hit and calculate whats the damage per second with your attacks per second. as in: [(min damage + max damage) / 2] * attacks persec

Happy to help you, nice to see its working for everyone this build :)

Im an EB cleaver myself, increased aoe all the way!

im actually swapping between increased area and concentrated.
it just takes a few seconds and makes boss fights much quicker.

"

Angelolz wrote:

Im an EB cleaver myself, increased aoe all the way!

Was curious about how EB would work with this build, could you sustain a 6linked cleave without the mana leech gem? as in just by mana regeneration?

I ask this because i intend on doing a elemental crit-staff templar next, after i find a proper staff, with which i'm planning to use EB and im thinking it would be nice to not have to use a mana leech gem.

"

Use elemental weakness OR conductivity since the bulk of the damage is lightning, start and continue to use the curse you get your hands on first.

What am I missing? I don't see where this is a primary lightning dps build? You have weapons with elemental damage but they are fire and lightning -- why is lightning the primary dps?

Edit: i guess the goal is to get all rings and amulets that also have +lightning damage. So the lightning damage is strictly from gear not gems

"

VictorDoom wrote:

"

Angelolz wrote:

Im an EB cleaver myself, increased aoe all the way!

Was curious about how EB would work with this build, could you sustain a 6linked cleave without the mana leech gem? as in just by mana regeneration?

I ask this because i intend on doing a elemental crit-staff templar next, after i find a proper staff, with which i'm planning to use EB and im thinking it would be nice to not have to use a mana leech gem.

EB seems to be able to sustain pretty much anything. My wander probably had a good deal more int than his cleaver, but I had 2400 mana in the 70s without any focus on mana nodes and something like 240 mana/sec between insane base regen and inner force'd clarity.