what skills for duel wield duelist?

Hello all, I am tired of my ranger and want to build a duelist instead. I have always had a soft spot for this class since I tried it a year ago, but for open I decided to take an easy (bow ranger) class to 70 to farm for the equipment I need for my new main the duelist.

My ranger is 70 and full of currencies to purchase everything I need for my new duelist.

All that's left is deciding what to use now. I want to play a duel wield duelist. Preferably with duel strike as my primary single target and lightning strike for my aoe. What do you guys think? I'm sure this is a viable strategy but I would greatly appreciate some end game duelists opinions here.



How does the duel strike/lightning strike duelist fair at the 66 maps? Would around 3000 life and max resists have it rough with these two skills as the primary single/multiple target dps? What other skills should I focus on to supplement this character aside from the obvious enduring cry for large groups.

Thanks!

And what about str based skills such as infernal blow? I will be leaning towards the maurader tree for the HP boosts anyway, will I benefit from using infernal blow instead of duel strike?

hello

first character im building, lvl 40 dualist. Lightning strike was great, but it didn't scale right, not sure if its a glitch in the display or for real. It still seems to do fair amount of damage at my level though. Dual strike is a great choice. Im going to replace lightning strike with cleave soon. I've heard it does pretty well. Ive used the strength side for a the health passives mostly. Dex side for sword damage, attack speed. I went with unwavering stance for my keystone and the one that doesn't let me get stunned.

Just got my new duelist to level 20 using dual strike/cleave/lightning strike.

I have lightning on my hot bar but I never use it because cleave is literally more than twice as effective damage wise.

Can someone higher level explain to me if this gap is ever closed? Will cleave always outperform lightning strike in the closer ranges and lightning strike is meant for a kite strategy or something? I don't get it.

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Lightning strike requires you to completely gear around increasing elemental damage, and putting it in a 4 or 5 link to be good. Once you do do that, it is very good, but prior to that it isn't so hot. Cleave with life on hit gem does some very good damage and gives you great survivability. Dual wield a couple rapiers and use frenzy to ramp your attackspeed up to 2.7 and you'll be lifestealing your health bar every 2 seconds. I've had horrid luck (and haven't bothered to trade), so I can't speak about dual strike, but frenzy, cleave, and flicker strike are all very good. Personally I think IR+US is a noob trap, since armor falls off later and IR+US makes it so that you can't pick up arrow dodging which mitigates a lot of damage from the duelist's endgame foe: elemental damage.

The way that armor works, is that it blocks less % of a blow the more damage the blow does. A blow of 1000 may have 40% of its damage blocked for a net damage of 600, but a 2500 blow to the same target will only be reduced by 10%.

End game you want a shitload of life, high as possible elemental resists, and a 50/50 balance of evasion and armor. I run 2/3rds armor 1/3rd evasion, and grace balances it out to about even.

Also, rejuvenating totems are really nice and overlooked for melee. They get quite good when leveled and positioned well. I'd pick it up if you decide to use blood rage, since the regen counterbalances the self-damage after a fight's over (so you aren't left dying). They also let you left click down a lot of bosses right up through cruel.

Thanks for the lightning strike clarification. The rest of the stuff I'm well aware of.

currently my dual wielding duelist is a blood mage using these skills

dual strike for my single target damage.

cleave for my aoe damage.

viper strike to help bring down bosses and rare monsters (the chaos damage over time, just adds so much damage)

flicker strike to maneuver around the map, to get those pesky casters in the back of the group, or the necromancer who keeps spawning enemies. this could be replaced with leap strike to have more utility so that you dont require a target to use. and as such you can use it for escape

warlord's mark for endurance charges and the extra life leech.

blood rage for increased attack speed and the frenzy charges. (try to get at least 3% life regen before using this, so you dont have to worry about the side effects)

and I use decoy totem to help draw attention away from me so I can snipe down those casters that I cant dodge. wish they would let minion life apply to totems to increase their survivability but oh well.

What level are you? How does that strategy work in end game maps?