(Updated for 1.2) Actingrude's Blood-Arc Marauder, Ultra-Cheap, Ultra-Tanky

More Videos coming soon! I may wait till right after reset so I can have everything reflecting the new skill tree that I am eagerly awaiting.

Concept:
So I love arc, I tried to build for it pre-buff and found it possible but not very exciting late game. I tried Foxtactic's Arc Build and loved it. It is a fantastic build that is every bit as tanky and has higher dps than this build. The issue is, its a bit pricey to start a season with. Then ZiggyD did his one-week build videos on it and basically forced it to the top of the "flavor-of-the-month" list. The one month race was full of arc builds and the price of Cloak of Defiance and other great items for the build got absolutely ridiculous.
By day 3 of the one-month race CoD was going for 5-10 exalts. They didn't normalize until 14 days in and even then the price of Doryani's invitation and the Chaos Flask stayed dumb all the way through the league.

So I set out to come up with a tanky build that scales well with gear, requires as few of the core pieces of foxtastics build as possible; but maintains the high damage and fun of an Arc Build. Hard Core Viability is key, and reflect needs to be handled without purity auras.



No Auras, Just life, Armor, and the pursuit of tankyness.

In order to test how well it scaled I started with what are basically some shit items.

With that garbage gear I was able to run at/near-level maps with no issue at level 66ish.
I found that the fights took longer and clear speed took a hit, but it was more than doable.

The goal was for a build that Scales well. So with that in mind I then took a look around my stash and geared up a little bit.



This gear shows over a 100% damage increase and a substantial survive-ability increase. At level 70 I can run level 72 maps with no issue.



So Finally the leveling steps:
I leveled to 55 as Flameblast and waited until I took the cast speed and spell damage nodes to make the switch. I would recommend making the switch much earlier and honestly arc is a pretty good skill to level with.

Bandits:
I went with
Oak for life in Nomral,
Alira for Cast Speed in Cruel,
And Oak in Merciless for the endurance charge.
I think only Oak in normal is a must, and I suspect after the tree changes in the upcoming expansion; Alira in cruel may not be worth it either. See notes at bottom for endurance charge reflecting.



Notes for Progression:
-Reflect is not an issue because of the life leach and over-capped resists.

-My first and only death between level 1 and 75 was to champion Rhoas on mountain ledge at level 68. after leveling that map I went back to the pack that killed me and got revenge. I am 100% sure that I would have been fine had I picked up Unwavering stance before then. It was the chain stun that got me.

-Noting the last piece of information I am confident that this build is Hard core viable and can easily be modified to have well over 5k health by level 73.

-In retrospect I went with 7 endurance charges (3 base + 3 tree + 1 bandit). When mapping solo I see rare times where they get over 5. I would have likely taken the point from the final bandits and only picked up 2 from the tree at the most (and possibly not till much higher level).

-This build picks up a lot of int and dex nodes at earlier levels. Once you make it over to Iron Reflexes and up to the witch tree you can drop most if not all of these. It's nice.

At level 70 I had 3369 Life, 48% damage reduction without any endurance charges up. 4k tooltip damage. Solo Target is never great with arc, but this build really is a lot of fun, super cheap, and avoids the unbearably over-priced flavor of the month items.

Added Video of pier map solo to original post.

"

Actingrude wrote:

Added Video of pier map solo to original post.

hm no actually the link opens this thread in a new tab

You claim to have a tanky build yet you haven't done anything to show that in the build or gear. All I am seeing from your defences is a perandus without block nodes, IR without stacking any real evasion and almost zero +max% resistances.

You will have more success losing the Geofri's and going without the bloodmagic keystone in the passive tree for a number of reasons - the first being that you have no auras and gain nothing in return for using the bloodmagic keystone.

My recommendation is using a Tabula for a 6L, still remaining a cheap build, use a bloodmagic gem and iron will. What is the point of the +2 gem levels you gain from a Geofri's when you have nothing to scale that damage. Lose the life leech gem completely, only swap it for empower if you are planning on clearing a reflect map or similar.

You have a few choices for defence, you can invest in a Lightning Coil which is extremely effective and allows you to drop IR and invest in auras for +% resists. You can keep IR and scale armour like you should have been doing by using Grace and Determination to reach above 15k, this sacrifices space for auras since you only really have two clusters of aura nodes nearby. Another choice is Blocking which is efficient since you don't have to stack as much armour to remain fairly durable and it allows you to block spells.

The result is you will have much higher life through strength stacking for iron will, more armour/mitigation and auras.

https://poebuilder.com/character/AAAAAgEAxthYYz38jM_2SF8_458nL-8OvJ-krPIvqBhE58EEns1VtfuqoLTzBuRRFCCnMBiRUEehbbnNcrthIRpVZKM26AHnYEt673TthO8FLeeRw4ZeE6yvKaVOKrZBQzEbyEp9h3ZnoPzF3Q1brzwtd-OuPmeb6dUM96IA8B_Fiq9stPkCcQSzFE2paIFvjHZN2J48OtiQVaeEGjjsOBoyqZVwffrSZp7AGlFg42o26fPdGmwZhSSq874oxUw1HRQXL1XWZOcWb1XGz2XQ0I9GFVCnCBDwr6I6s4Ck

Auras: Grace, Determination and Purity of Lightning

You will have around 15k armour, which is not bad, but you will have 67% chance to block with a Rathpith Globe and 64% chance to spellblock with Rainbowstride boots. Your Arc should have ~7k dps tooltip with a level 20 Arc linked to lightning penetration - Faster Casting - Empower - Blood Magic - Iron Will, you could swap Empower for Spell Echo but you won't have very much cast speed so you are less mobile when casting since the animation can take a relatively long time. You are open to use a 6L Lightning Coil which will make the build very very tanky. Your life pool will sit at around the 7k mark if you get str/life on gear pieces. Str is very crucial to the build so you should be using an Astramentis if you can or a very good amulet with Str/Spell damage/Cast Speed/Life. A Doon Cuebiyari scepter fits the build better than any wand once you surpass the 650-ish Str mark since you gain so much dps from the item.

I'm not telling you to follow what I'm saying, I'm sharing what I think makes a successfully tanky build and you can feel free to take parts of this and add it to your own. Hopefully what I explained gave you some ideas for improvements and good luck, :)

"

qwertazx wrote:

"

Actingrude wrote:

Added Video of pier map solo to original post.

hm no actually the link opens this thread in a new tab

I fixed the link sorry about that.

"

You claim to have a tanky build yet you haven't done anything to show that in the build or gear. All I am seeing from your defences is a perandus without block nodes, IR without stacking any real evasion and almost zero +max% resistances.

The tankyness of the build refers to the fact that it is high-life, high-armor (it does get up there) and eventually 7 endurance charges. Don't kid yourself, that is a good amount of damage reduction right there. Additionally it allows for around 40% block chance and elemental resists cap at 77, with fire hitting 78. The idea here is scale-ability. My numbers are based on a lvl 70 character with poor gear who still has the ability to face-tank almost any boss at that level.

"

You will have more success losing the Geofri's and going without the bloodmagic keystone in the passive tree for a number of reasons - the first being that you have no auras and gain nothing in return for using the bloodmagic keystone.

Grabbing bloodmagic allows for you to spare any points that would have gone into mana and mana regen. The Geofri's allows for great damage scaling (with empower) while minimizing the effect on mana cost of skills. (or in this case health cost). I would argue that you lose nothing by grabbing blood magic, and in tern it allows for a much cheaper version of the Arc build; which was the goal.

"

My recommendation is using a Tabula for a 6L, still remaining a cheap build, use a bloodmagic gem and iron will. What is the point of the +2 gem levels you gain from a Geofri's when you have nothing to scale that damage. Lose the life leech gem completely, only swap it for empower if you are planning on clearing a reflect map or similar.

Life leach was essential until 69 when I was able to equip Doryani's. The plan is to drop it in favor of lightning pen. Six linking arc sky-rockets the cost of using the attack (especially if one of the gems in blood magic :O ) I am going to take a serious look at iron will for later levels. The idea of this build is to pack on what you need from 75-90. I realize it leaves the build guide looking incomplete to the un-trained eye, but in reality it is a road-map, not a gps. By the time you hit 75 with a build you should be able to take control of where you are going as things change based on personal RNG and choices.

"

You have a few choices for defence, you can invest in a Lightning Coil which is extremely effective and allows you to drop IR and invest in auras for +% resists. You can keep IR and scale armour like you should have been doing by using Grace and Determination to reach above 15k, this sacrifices space for auras since you only really have two clusters of aura nodes nearby. Another choice is Blocking which is efficient since you don't have to stack as much armour to remain fairly durable and it allows you to block spells.

A lightning coil is actually next on my list to test this build with. I used my current character as a "proof of concept" but when it comes to the new 3 month, LC is a serious possibility.

"

The result is you will have much higher life through strength stacking for iron will, more armour/mitigation and auras.

https://poebuilder.com/character/AAAAAgEAxthYYz38jM_2SF8_458nL-8OvJ-krPIvqBhE58EEns1VtfuqoLTzBuRRFCCnMBiRUEehbbnNcrthIRpVZKM26AHnYEt673TthO8FLeeRw4ZeE6yvKaVOKrZBQzEbyEp9h3ZnoPzF3Q1brzwtd-OuPmeb6dUM96IA8B_Fiq9stPkCcQSzFE2paIFvjHZN2J48OtiQVaeEGjjsOBoyqZVwffrSZp7AGlFg42o26fPdGmwZhSSq874oxUw1HRQXL1XWZOcWb1XGz2XQ0I9GFVCnCBDwr6I6s4Ck

Auras: Grace, Determination and Purity of Lightning

You will have around 15k armour, which is not bad, but you will have 67% chance to block with a Rathpith Globe and 64% chance to spellblock with Rainbowstride boots. Your Arc should have ~7k dps tooltip with a level 20 Arc linked to lightning penetration - Faster Casting - Empower - Blood Magic - Iron Will, you could swap Empower for Spell Echo but you won't have very much cast speed so you are less mobile when casting since the animation can take a relatively long time. You are open to use a 6L Lightning Coil which will make the build very very tanky. Your life pool will sit at around the 7k mark if you get str/life on gear pieces. Str is very crucial to the build so you should be using an Astramentis if you can or a very good amulet with Str/Spell damage/Cast Speed/Life. A Doon Cuebiyari scepter fits the build better than any wand once you surpass the 650-ish Str mark since you gain so much dps from the item.

I still disagree with the idea of losing bloodmagic. Having tried this build already using the EB set-up and grabbing aura nodes; I stated at the top that it is most likley more effective. But the goal here was to come from a completely different direction and still allow for great scaling. The rest of what you have here I agree with. Rainbowstrides were somthing I used for a bit, but the two issues I had with them were that my block chance was not high enough to warrent the spell block; and I was losing it with the low movement speed on them.

"

I'm not telling you to follow what I'm saying, I'm sharing what I think makes a successfully tanky build and you can feel free to take parts of this and add it to your own. Hopefully what I explained gave you some ideas for improvements and good luck, :)

I appreciate the critique and I will be looking into some of your suggestions. I hope my responses have not come off as too hostile, I really do enjoy theory crafting these and by no-means do I resent your comments. Some of them I highly agree with, and some of them I have stated why I chose to not go that route. I would like higher block and armour totals; but without them I do not feel the build is lacking; and they are something I would prefer to pick up late game as needed.
Thank you,

show pictures of your defence/life and your damage plz

"

Yuliano wrote:

show pictures of your defence/life and your damage plz

Posted at bottom, please let me know if there is an issue viewing. Also keep in mind this is with very very budget gear and level 71.