[3.1] RAIDER Tanky Crit Reave/Blade Flurry Dagger/Claw AR+EV+Block NO MIRRORED GEAR

HUUUUUGE buff to Raider!
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1773975
- Avatar of the Veil's elemental damage has been increased to 40%.
- Avatar of the Chase's increase to Onslaught effect has been increased to 100%.
- Way of the Poacher now has a 20% chance to gain a frenzy charge on kill or on hitting a rare or unique enemy.
- Rapid Assault now has a 100% chance to gain Onslaught on kill.
- Quartz Infusion now has a 100% chance to gain Phasing on kill.
- The minor Ascendancy skills leading up to Avatar of the Chase now grant 20% increased Onslaught duration, instead of 5% attack speed.

So, I've updated the build for 2.5, which should be great to play in, and also added BLADE FLURRY as an option for a main skill.

Why not Vaal Pact?

Thinking of playing this as my starter build in 2.5

The blade flurry variant.

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Qtmy wrote:

Why not Vaal Pact?

It's not only VP. I really like this build idea but tree in many ways is just bad. 120 points build has only 148% HP and dont take 2 points jewel socket but has things like essence sap.
And also imo this build is not HC visable. 5k hp make all layers of defense almost meaning less in many situations.

I played this build a while ago and went for it again in Essence league and it was lots of fun. Now that 2.5 buffed this directly I may as well do it again at some point in Breach. This kind of build fits my taste, I have always played some sort of evasion+block one handed ranger since closed beta (it wasn't very powerful most of the time) and this build is not only fun but it also works.

I am not a hardcore player, but here is what I did in Essence league if anyone is looking for inspiration:

- Use Wild Strike - I was bored of reave, no other reason. Obviously I also dropped Vaal Reave. It really works better than people give it credit. With this build the occasional offscreen hits will NOT kill you if you happen to hit some reflect monster. (I even did some lower elemental reflect maps, without Vaal pact. Not recommending that, but it is possible.)

Swap Weapon elemental damage instead of Melee damage because of WS mechanics.

- Avatar of the Slaughter + Avatar of the Veil - the Veil branch in Raider is pretty good for elemental damage boost (wild strike deals lots of that) and nice defenses, plus you dont care for ice patch/shocking ground maps because of immunities while phasing which you have whenever on full charges (so all the time). It felt decent, now with 2.5 buff to both charge upkeep and elemental damage this version is something I recommend trying out.

- Claw Touch of Anguish - cheap claw that works, downside is the freeze limitation. You get another chain in Wild strike, not that I could notice any difference.

- Slot frenzy for boss fights that have separate arena. This is not needed with 2.5 buff, super QoL improvement.

- Use ancestral protector for harder content. When defenses start lacking and gear upgrade is not in sight, this helped me to push through. Distraction and decent damage buff. Also nice if some OP monster sets you running and you wanna prevent their energy shield from regenerating :D

- Leveled to 92, I got as far as T14 And some T15 maps, no idea how this would work Guardians or Shaper.

- I've enjoyed all the 'of Endurance/Power/Frenzy' maps generating charges that Claws of the Magpie would steal. 2.5 ruined this, sniff.


Essence Sap is amazing when leveling and respeccing those is really just the 3 points, no need to change pathing.
Vaal pact is very much in reach, I never used it in Essence league, though.
This is a melee life based build without Kaom's, so obvious limitations may apply...

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Qtmy wrote:

Why not Vaal Pact?

I don't want to force it on newer players. Veterans will know how it works and will take it themselves if they prefer it.

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MrOleg wrote:

Thanks for the guy comrade! I really want to make crit varunastra version of this build and this is the tree I came up with. Basically I'm trying to combine leech from claws and crit from daggers/swords. Sacrificed some nodes there and there but stayed at decent health and crit (not sure if I accidentally sacrificed something too important). Currently planning to use lioneye remorse, varunastra, facebreaker, and can't decide on chest: coil and kintsugi are nice mitigations, daresso have great stats and works well with cwdt-IC, belly of the beast just gives a lot of life and resists. Can you please take a look, and tell tell if there is something I'm missing? I'm only playing actively since beginning of essence league and never did a tree myself, so I might make some dumb mistakes. Thanks!

you definitely missed something important... frenzy charges!

How would this build fare against BF Assassin as a league starter?

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Millennium wrote:

How would this build fare against BF Assassin as a league starter?

Assassin would give you more crit chance, and therefore, more dps, while this char will give you more tankiness (because of all the armour, evasion and block chance).

is low tool tip on BF correct in this? I did up this build in my standard dude with gear I had from a reave block dude and my tool tip is around 3k with HoA, I see other BF builds saying they have 8-9k.

The characters name is "Dontplayfromyourtablet" if you want to take a look. My empty ring slot was a legacy voidheart.