my duelist build guide, for starters, hope this helps
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Before I start I just want to say that this is by no means a comprehensive duelist guide. I will only be touching on my particular build, how it works, and what it's all about. Of course anyone can take this build and tweek it and make it their own, but this is also more about enlightening people to the class and this particular play style.
Most people believe, and rightfully so, that duelists suck, and are underpowered, etc etc. This may be true, and I certainaly dont disagree with that statement. However, this does NOT mean that you cant make a duelist and have fun with it, and feel very powerful. Because you most certainly can. With that out of the way, let me briefly introduce my character. IGN : FuzzyBottoms Lv : 77 Build type : Sword and Shield, Lightning strike hybrid melee/range, tanker/aoe dpser. Stats : 3500 HP, 3000 hp after reserving, 2900 lightning strike DPS, 11,000 armor, 28% block chance, 75/36/75 resists (my cold needs work) Here is my current gear set: Itemization goals : Priority = Max HP > Resists > Attack Speed > Accuracy > Intellegence > elemental damage > Dex > Str My gear isnt amazing but it isnt bad either. Here is my current gem setup : 5L in armor = The rest is : Some mechanics for those who dont know how certain things work: So let's start off with lightning strike, which is the most important. First let's look at it as a base skill. It takes whatever your physical damage is, suppose its 50-100, and cuts it in half, and transfers that damage over to lightning. So now, ur still doing 50-100 damage, but its 25-50 lite, and 25-50 physical. So now here is the cool part. Because you are doing some amount in lightning damage, ANY % elemental damage increases you have either from gear or passives, will skyrocket that lightning damage. So suppose you pair up lightning strike with weapon elemental damage, you are now doing 61% more lightning damage then before. Another thing with Lightning strike is alot of its damage output comes from the peirce mechanic. Theres 2 different ways to go about this. Either 1) use the peirce support gem, or 2) use a quality lightning strike. I highly suggest to use a pierce gem before obtaining a quality lite strike, and then replacing the pierce gem. The reason for this is the peirce mechanic adds soooooo much damage to your lightning strike, not in the raw numbers kind of way, but in the way that, when you cast it, you are hitting all the mobs behind the ones you originally hit. Meaning if you fight a giant pack, you can dps the entire pack down at the same time. Very important. So now let's continue on to auras. I use anger and wrath. Both skills add a flat damage increase in their respective element to my lightning strike. Lets take anger for example. Lets say anger adds 25-50 fire damage. Well, before that damage is applied to your lightning strike, it first gets massively buffed by all ur elemental buffs from ur gear/passives. Finally, the projectiles lightning strike releases work in the exact same fashion, just do i beleive 30% less damage, but they are still considered to some degree, physical. The cool part about these projectiles, is the keynode passive Iron Grip, applies to it. So if you have high str, all that extra damage is applied. How the character plays out This is perhaps the most important part of the guide. If you have read nothing else, at least read this part. Anyone can make a build that looks good, or works in theory. But I am here telling you about a build I have personally put into practice and how it works. Let's start with single player. You wont be doing amazing single target damage. All your damage will primarily be AOE. As far as your AOE damage goes, if you are alone, you can take out a pretty big group of mobs at the merciless docks fairly quickly. By fairly quickly I mean like 3-5 casts of lightning strike. Which isnt bad. The way I like to play it is, once I start a fight, curse the group with conductivity to lower their lightning resist and makes it a greater chance to shock. Then, press down shift and wail on them. If it gets to the point where the mobs make it close to me, I am beefy enough to tank them without having to move. And yes, I can easily tank a massive group of void dogs at the merciless docks, UNLESS they have multi projectiles. In groups, you will mostly take on the role of a tank. Or, if you are feeling a bit cowardly, you can even take on the roll of a ranged DPS. At my current gear level, I can face tank MOST bosses in maps...not all, but most. This takes alot of pressure off of the witches/rangers. You become a very versitile character, because you can either be up in melee range, or if you want, be at range and just wail on the packs with ur projectiles. Regardless of how you do it, you will be doing tons of AOE damage, and if need be, you can take alot of hits. Passive tree Im going to provide my entire passive tree to date at the end of this section. But first, I will explain all my keynodes, and why I decided to take them. Blood Magic - Removes all mana, you cast out of your HP. The reason to take this is, with the combination of life leech and life regen, casting is free. More importantly, this removes the need to carry mana flasks, or waste nodes on mana passives. This allows you to carry more HP flasks/granite flasks/quicksilver flasks/resist flasks. Iron Reflexs - Since I need high dex to use rapiers (which are the faster of the 1 handed swords), Taking iron reflexs will take all that extra EVA you get from dex, and throw it into your armor. Its a huge buff. Also, having high dex means you have a huge boost to accuracy. Most importantly, determination, the str skill which raises your armor for 40% reserve becomes obsolete. Instead, you can use grace, which reserves less then 200 hp, and provides a massive boost to your EVA, and then gets transfered to armor. Unwavering Stance - Doesnt allow me to dodge, and I cannot be stunned. Why is this important? Well, I use a shield. When you block with a shield, you get an animation and it stuns you for a second, cancling your attacks. If you cannot be stunned, whenever you block, there is NO ANIMATION and nothing gets cancled. What does this mean for you? Well one, you dont need to waste itemization or passives on shield block recovery. Two, you attack more, which means you leech more. More dps and survive. Iron Grip - This applies ur str attack bonus to your lightning strike projectiles. Bandit rewards - Normal, help oak Cruel, kill all Merciless, kill all My passive tree : This is my current tree to date (level 77 + 20 skill points from quests) http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgQBAecEsQUtBu4OrRQgFFIUdRjbGlUbqhv6IWAj9iXfKLUppTIJMn41hjWSNug6UjqzOuFAoEOcR35KfUxgTeNOyFBHU99VqVb6WK9Y21pIXQBgS2CIYSFhUmMXZKNlTWegbUpuqnRBdO108XgNeu-BOoTZhO-HdojtiPGXcJe0mSubg52qnrmfy6QZplenMKlurFmsr6y6rpO18rnNvqfAD8EHypDM29JN1FLV7dd-3Q3fv-4O707v8Pe-_MX-jw== Conclusion There are trillions of ways you can play a duelist and still feel powerful, this is just one of them. I made this primarily targeting newer players, who dont really know too many mechanics yet and who arent exactly sure how things work. If anyone has any questions at all, please post them here or whisper me @ FuzzyBottoms. I'm also accepting all criticisms. If anyone has some helpful advice, tips, or anything at all to say. Please post them here. Good luck everyone, hope you enjoyed the read. TL;DR - Reroll witch, build summons, destroy face (whilst lagging) Last edited by twigglypuff#5570 on Feb 3, 2013, 2:44:49 PM
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Hey nice guide. I like the versatility.
Also I like that the gear setup is good but not insanely good like some people post, and 90% of the readers will never get that kind of gear. Like your armour is "only" 393 but it could get to 1000+ if you get lucky with the Armor mod. Weapon That said your weapon is pretty much maxed out, except that it's the high damage, slow one with 1.20 base attacks/sec. Do you think you would do better overall with a lower dmg, but super fast 1.7+ attacks per sec rapier? (considering you could swap Faster Attacks for another gem, maybe Added Cold?). The weapon is the only thing that's kinda hard to get. I don't get much replies when I "WTB" in trade for a high physical damage weapon. Did you craft it yourself? Iron Grip I play a melee Ranger so it's interesting to me because I was planning also with Lightning Strike which uses a very similar setup, but had no confirmation of the damage output in open beta Merciless. I was also trying to make my mind about stacking up damage nodes or getting Iron Grip. All in all when going hybrid and gaining melee damage from Strength nodes, the 6 nodes required to get to Iron Grip give more damage than by other means. Total Life and Auras When you say 3200 HP is that before or after auras are on? For Hardcore I was planning on stacking a bit more, but then the damage is not as good as I'd like. Did you purposely stop levelling some of those auras? I did some estimations and I think at some point levelling Grace is not worth it with the diminishing returns. At least I don't think Grace is worth maxing. Difficulty For my build I was planning on going full marauder hybrid, to get 81% resists, and Resolute Technique. However you seem to confirm that you can do still ok without the diamond flasks and 100% hit chance. I'm surprised you only use 1.5% life regen. How do you manage with Chaos damage, like say when you have a bunch of ranged Chaos shooters? What Map bosses can you not tank? Do you think Elemental Weakness might be better than Conductivity? Last edited by DeF46#3887 on Feb 3, 2013, 10:07:15 AM
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Since he's very focused on lightning I'd say no to elemental weakness.
Specifically the bonus chance to shock likely improves his damage more than speccing for the fairly small amount of fire damage he gets off anger. Otherwise the two spells are completely equivalent. |
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Ah right. I thought Conductivity was an interesting gem as I found it shortly before OB, I didn't get to experiment long enough with it.
Since Diamond Flasks are gone, I wonder how instrumental this curse is to a heavy Lightning Strike based build? I'm considering using Resolute Technique. Oh wait.. I often get confused on that point. Shocking and criticals are not at all the same right? So you can get Resolute Technique AND apply shocking? |
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Great looking build. I'm a beginner but I also had more or less same ideas as you for my build so I guess that means I'm not doing too bad. I do have a couple questions though.
1. What are your thoughts on not going IR and UW but going Arrow Dodging instead? I was thinking of running armor on chest but then both eva and armor on some of my other pieces. 2. Is having both Warlord's Mark, Blood Rage and Blood Drinker too much? I was thinking of getting all three of those for the life leech and also the charges they offer. 3. Thoughts on Flicker Strike or Whirling Blades? I was thinking of using them one of them to finish off straggling mobs after using LS. |
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In this post, im going to address all of the questions and concerns that those above me brought up.
Note : I've updated my shield and posted it in the original post and updated my character stats a bit. So here we go. " As far as my weapon goes...i collected alot of vaal rapiers and eternal blades from maps and just alched them. If they sucked i vendered them. This sword is the result of one alch used =). As far as attack speed goes, im also sad that it didnt roll with attack speed. Im thinking about exalting it and hoping for attack speed. However, even with a 1.20 weapon, my APS on lite strike is 1.88 so its still not bad at all. Even if my weapon was faster, I would not remove the faster attacks gem. " I now have 3500 hp, and 3000 hp after reserving. I leveled wrath and conductivity as far as my intellegence would allow, and I never stopped leveling grace for the sheer armor bonus it provides for me. " So, let me talk about accuracy and taking chaos damage. As far as accuracy goes, like armor, the damage formula is based on a per hit per mob basis. So what does this mean? The %'s on your character sheet are a MAJOR rough estimate based on your character level. If you notice, those %'s go down each time you level up. Heres how I THINK it works. The %'s you see on your character level are %'s estimated against mobs YOUR LEVEL. For example, I'm level 77, so i have an 81% chance to hit a level 77 mobs with X evasion rating. However, im not fighting level 77 mobs, because they do not exist. I'm fighting 66-69 mobs for the most part, and I almost never miss with 81% because their evasion rating isnt high enuff vs my accuracy rating. Armor damage reduction works in the same fashion I believe. Check out the formulas on wiki and u can see. As far as chaos damage, i have -60% resist. I do take alot of chaos damage, but my natural regen and life leech doesnt allow me to really die from it. The only thing is, when i see chaos damage, i tend to play extra carefully and stay at range with my lightning strike. Here are the map bosses i can tank/not tank, im doing this off the top of my head so forgive me if i miss something Springs - Aliara clone, can tank Tropical forest - monkey boss, can tank until flasks run out then run away Dunes - Hillock clone, can tank Thicket - archer boss, cannot tank Dungeon - Brutus boss, cannot tank Ledge - Dont know his name or type, i know he does lots of cold damage, I cant tank him simply becuase my cold resist is low. Ship graveyard map - Can tank the boss Crypt Boss - can tank I'm probably missing a few but you get the idea. I use conductivity over elemental weakness because I use mostly lightning damage, and the extra shock chance is super helpful. " With resolute tech, you cannot shock through critical hits anymore. But you can shock with conductivity still. " Okay so for this one....If you are using a shield, It would be silly to not go IR/UW simply because...why go arrow dodging when between ur shield and high armor, you dont really care about projectiles. However, if you are dual wielding, then you may want to pick up arrow dodging to kind of take off some of the preasure. Heres the thing tho, you can still block while dual wielding....and as i mentioned before, blocking causes a stun animation, which would cancel whatever your doing. Thus having UW is very handy. " This setup is good, but not for a lightning strike build. If you read all those abilities, it says "life leech from physical attacks". While lightning strike does SOME damage in physical, the bulk of its damage comes from lightning and other elements. Thus, warlords mark, blood rage, and blood drinker wouldn't hold out so well. I find that the life leech gem alone, attached to lite strike, is more then enuff to handle my leeching. I do have blood drinker tho for the extra boost. The life leech gem leeches life from ALL damage types. The build you may want to consider with those 3 abilities is the low health attack speed life leech/regen build, where you have 4k hp minimum and 5% life regen. Then, you reserve HP until you are at 35%. At this point you are considered at "low life", and you can abuse the attack speed bonus from blood rage. With all that attack speed plus all the leech, you wont really die. " If you are already lightning strike, these are a bit unnessecary, simply because you can use lightning strike as a single dps skill also, and it works just as well. If you really wanna get technical about it, I have elemental hit for single target damage, but i find myself NEVER using it, simply because i can just be lazy and lite strike. I hope i have addressed all questions and concerns thus far, if anyone has more to say feel free to post. I just want this to be a good reference to those players who are new and Dont know how certain mechanics work. You can also message me ingame at FuzzyBottoms Last edited by twigglypuff#5570 on Feb 3, 2013, 2:39:26 PM
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Thanks for the quick reply. I definitely learned alot from this and it's incredibly helpful. Your build is a great reference point and I'll certainly look at it when I'm building mine.
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So i recieved a whisper from someone ingame asking me a question in regards to items and item levels.
Alot of people may not be aware of this, but items roll their mods based on their item level, not their level requirement. To find out an item's itemlevel, put it on ur cursor by clicking it, and type /itemlevel. If you google path of exile item prefixs and suffixs, you will see a list of potential mods that can roll on certain item levels. Hope this helps. Last edited by twigglypuff#5570 on Feb 4, 2013, 1:26:54 AM
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@twigglypuff
That's a good point about the accuracy calculation. I have the formula on a spreadsheet but I never thought about the actual monster levels. Always thought the averag was based of some existing monster. I guess I will wait before taking Resolute Technique and see how it pans out. Thicket boss is very dangerous. But what do you mean there by not tanking? I think his main attack is the bow right? Do you mean you avoid his AOE attack at all cost? It's pretty hard to avoid it. But in Hardcore to be honest I don't know if I'll bother with him :) (if I even get there). Brutus is nasty. It seems there is a trick with a spell totem and skeletons, which keep him occupied because the totem keeps spawning them. But still I wouldn't dare to try it in Hardcore. Don't like the map all that much either. Not sure why Kripp and his team liked to do this map many times o_O " Hmmm. But you get 15% right? Your base 5% CTC +10% from the skill? Except the 10% is flat bonus unlike the ones from passives, so you get 15% not 5.5% ? I guess critting now and then does really improve your DPS overall. The idea with Resolute Technique was that it would too, since you never miss. But I didn't consider your point about the actual monster levels. Are you sure you never miss though? It's kinda hard to see in the game as your lightning strike would fire (especially if you can spam it), and make a nice display but may not do any damage now and then. I'm going to double check ingame.. I'm basically planning a build very similar to yours. Actually my first plan was practically identical, like this. But I started in Hardcore to have a go at it, so I wanted to focus a little bit more on protection, I am currently looking at this, which by swapping just a few started nodes could just as well be a duelist: Hybrid Ranger with 98 pts (level 81) for HC One thing you helped me out is that I noticed you didn't pick Weapon Elemental Damage. Or maybe you specced out of it later, as it is kinda helpful in early game. After doing some DPS calculations it doesn't seem to be very beneficial, and if I have 3 pts to spend, definitely increasing the base physical damage benefits more Lightning Strike. I did the same mistake in closed beta. The nodes look very appealing, but just on one of your rings you get 29%. As for armor, I use Enduring Cry with Faster Casting. That way it's not annoyingly slow to cast and you can recast it while meleeing without too much trouble. Since I take Elemental Adaptation, it may help to top up resists (eg 3 charges = +15% armor, +15% resists). By the way, do you notice the effect of the Stun Threshold reduction bonuses on your gear? Thanks! Last edited by DeF46#3887 on Feb 3, 2013, 6:25:50 PM
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" Critting is important yes, especially because im groups most people spam critical weakness. As far as missing, I dont miss very often but it does happen sometimes. " Im not going to comment on anything hardcore related. Never played HC, its a whole different world that I have no experience in. " I tried taking weapon elemental damage nodes at one point, but each 10% node increased my DPS by 40 points...not worth it. I dont use enduring cry, so I wont comment on it. Stun threshold is a biggie. Okay so. If you take unwavering stance/Iron reflexs, you dont need to worry about anything stun related, because you cannot be stunned. Some people however, want to dual wield and not take Iron reflexs. Heres my stand on this. Feel free to not pick up IR or UW. However, keep in the back of your head, whenever you DO take damage, it's going to be a bigger spike. More importantly, dual wield still has blocking. If you block without unwavering stance, you will be put into a block animation, thus canceling your current actions. To counteract this, its best to have some items with block/stun recovery. Hope this helps. |
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