[2.0] Hypothermal Cleaver - 80+k RT DPS high speed - super tanky - all map mods

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This build is the spiritual successor to the Eternal Cleaver (/1097378), playing very similarly but built quite differently, taking advantage of new mechanics introduced in The Awakening.

Build Highlights

Offense
- Soul taker physical damage can chill + Hypothermia
- 4 - 5 frenzy charges
- Vaal Haste

Defense
- Over 5000 life in mid 80s
- Buffed fortify
- 24% block
- Arctic Armour damage reduction
- 3 - 4 endurance charges
- ~10% life regeneration from Blood Dance and passives
- CWDT Enfeeble
- Armour flexibility - I'm wearing lightning coil
- Hematophagy Cluster
- Can't be stunned
- Vaal Grace

Passive Skills

Level 91 tree
For a tankier, less damage variation you can path through Juggernaut instead of Strong Arm with the same number of points.

Bandits:
Normal - Oak
Cruel - Kraityn
Merciless - Oak or Kraityn

Active Skills

Main Attack:
Cleave - Melee Physical - Multistrike - Hypothermia/Faster Attacks - Added Fire/Life Gain on Hit/Weapon Elemental Damage - Increased Area of Effect/Concentrated Effect/Physical to Lightning

The first three gems are critical, leaving red, green, and blue sockets to utilise depending on the situation (see the map mods section for more info). Generally we use Hypothermia - Added Fire - Increased Area of Effect for damage and AoE, and Increased AoE is swapped for Conc. Effect for boss kills.

Utility Attacks:
Leap Slam - Fortify - Endurance Charge on Melee Stun - Faster Attacks
Frenzy

Auras/Buffs:
Hatred - Herald of Ash - Arctic Armour
Vaal Haste - Vaal Grace - Increased Duration

Auto-curse:
Enfeeble (lvl 5) - Cast When Damage Taken (lvl 1) - Increased Area of Effect - Enhance

Gear
Map Mods

Physical reflect - run Physical to Lightning in the blue socket, WED in the red socket.

Elemental reflect - either 1) run LGoH in the red socket. Possibly FA in the green socket to increased the effectiveness of LGoH.

No life leech - run LGoH in the red socket. Swap Hatred for Haste and Hypothermia for Faster Attacks

Ele weakness - swap either Hatred or Arctic Armour + Herald of Ash (depending on other mods) for Purity of Elements

A note on Hypothermia

It's been pointed out that Hypothermia doesn't always work against some bosses, due to their extreme health. This is easy to solve! Leap slamming on/over a monster generates chilled ground from Arctic Armour (and has the added benefit of Fortifying you). Problem solved =)

If in HC without ST?

I have a question, is Lightning Coil a must have or can i just use simple 6L-Rare ?
There will be a little bit less dmg i guess ?

Coil isn't a must have, but necessary if you ever feel like facetanking Residence Dom's touch of god (I took about 3.8k damage...) But yes a rare chest would work and of course make gearing far easier, both for capping res and getting the required stats.

Without ST I would either swap hypothermia for blood magic or conc effect - inc aoe for blood magic -faster attacks. For leap slam swap FA for BM, and if you find you're not stunning with leap slam, swap rallying cry for enduring cry.

I'm building a very similar version of this in Standard right now. After I build my tree, I looked around for others doing this and found our trees to be very similar. Clearly, I'm going for the extra SC oomph atm; I may need to back off my dps for more leech percentage, but we'll see. I really like your idea of using Hypothermia, so I'm going to try it with mine. Good call.



I get 85% accuracy from my tree passively (at the opportunity cost of 4% attack speed from pathing in Duelist), so I've chosen not to take RT for the moment. I'm going to use MIng's Heart (not Death Rush, derp) and Abyssus to start with, which adds chaos damage and increases my crit multi, which will do some random crazy crits along with the huge damage boosts. I may decide to fall back to a combo of Alpha's Howl, lvl 4 Enlighten, Conquerer's Efficiency, and Champion of the Cause to fit in Herald of Ash if I am unsatisfied with the Abyssus physical damage taken penalty. However, I've run this build before and I think that Fortify will help offset it. (Edit: specced back into RT, it's just better to hit, I think.)

Notably, I'm running Grace and Hatred, which differs from your build, but I am focusing on the Armor/Evasion nodes in Duelist (I take them all) as I actually get a ton of both from my gear.

I'm a little concerned about not taking Hematophagy or Vitality Void. I'm probably running legacy LC, but I think I'm going to try out Cherubim's Maleficence and its 100% life leech rate (I have a 6L one). I'll be using Blood Rage and Warlord's Mark, so my leech cap could be an issue. How did things go before you specced Hematophagy?

I also may not run Blood Dance. I can sustain Blood Rage without it, but the regen might just be that good. I also have a +1 Frenzy charge one, so I can get 6 charges. Any further thoughts on regen? Is this pretty critical to you, or do you do well in half/no regen maps?



Some of the gear is pretty silly. I actually might have enough issues with reflect that force me to go RT and/or cut Abyssus.

Edit: Derp. Ming's Heart, not Death Rush.

Thanks for they reply, sorry it's taken so long to get back to you, I've been testing a whole bunch of other builds and new uniques.

Firstly I think it's worth saying that I tried using Abyssus, and found it wasn't worth it at all - my previous build the Eternal Cleaver gained about 40% more damage with it, this one only gains about 10-20% - partly because I can use better jewellery with tri-res on my helm.

The reason I don't run Grace is I get most of my armour/evasion from flasks, boosted by passives nodes, something along the lines of 15k for each. It's more than enough for hairy situations, and means I can happily run my auras/buffs. Also arctic armour helps vs reflect, Grace doesn't with RT.

Have you tested Cheribum's yet? My concern with that would be that you're a little light on life from the tree so you'll be hitting the leech cap easily but not actually gaining enough per second out of it. With the amount of life you have and Ming's I would be tempted to use LGoH to sustain life on top of the leech from Splitting Strikes. It will be interesting to know whether this trade-off of life against damage is worth doing.

Also, since switching to RT have you had any issues with reflect?

I tested without Hematophagy then immediately got it, however I also don't have the Splitting Strikes cluster, and I really felt the need for more leech. The whole regen/Hematophagy thing is really interesting, it actually helps balance the effects of half and no regen maps really nicely. In normal maps with 4 frenzy charges I have 9.2% regen + 28% leech = 37.2% of life gained per second which is crazily good, and feels amazing to play (with ~ 5200 life that's nearly 2k life gained/s). In half regen maps this is 18.6% which is almost the normal leech cap, and in no regen maps it's 28% from leech only.

I find the regen really nice in boss fights too, though I currently don't have a way to sustain frenzy charges in longer fights - I'm probably going to get rid of Rallying Cry and put in frenzy + fortify for the occasional frenzy charge upkeep as I don't acutally use Rallying Cry at all, just slows me down.

Thanks for a solid non-cyclone build.

I had a similar idea, but totally forgot about Cleave...^^

Since Dual Wield gives 15% block, I wanted to go more block...and I find Bringer of Rain really shines with this. So I took Bringer, and a few block nodes for 39% total, with a Rumi's Flask you can easily get to 60 % and more, with a legacy you could cap block even.

Also I had to cut some things (Hematophagy and Blood Dance) since the char is just L78 currently and freshly specced. I will try them as soon as possible).

My gear:


DPS goes over 50 K with Conc Effect and no buffs, I gain Frenzy Charges from Poacher's Mark: CwDt setup and trigger curse setup. Not perfect, but so far so good.

Tree:


@ OP: How do you cap your Lightning Resist with Coil? I couldn't possibly see how your gear manages that. Coil gives -60%, merciless difficulty gives -60% so you would need 195 to cap it.

Cool spin on it with block, I love how efficient the DW block nodes are, and the extra layer of defense makes the US+IR combo much more attractive (with US without block or dodge you rip to added elemental damage maps way too much). Would be cool if you could fit a Stone of Lazhwar in there too.

My lightning res is slightly over-capped (201% without coil), the Sentinel and Cloth and Chain clusters really help, and Barbarism a bit. I'm also thinking about picking up Diamond skin so I can more happily run ele weakness maps.

Update on the build I shared earlier:



Gear:
Still working on the jewelry a little, but otherwise I'm pretty happy with my gear. I may at some point get a legacy Soul Taker, but it is probably unnecessary. My damage is around 200K using this RT tree, which is already very high. Onslaught and Vaal Haste bring the damage even higher regularly. I'm sticking with Abyssus for now, but that may change to Devato's Devotion or something else if I am unhappy with the highest maps after a few more levels. I feel like the physical damage is not what I'm afraid of: it is mostly elemental damage that gives me trouble.

Gems:
I actually found that I like Added Fire better than Hypothermia. It makes me stronger against physical reflect and helps more against bosses that I have trouble chilling as consistently.
I have actually had trouble finding utility gems that I really like, as I'm using a 0 mana setup. Right now I'm largely leveling gems on my other gear. I may get a golem using blood magic or a high CwDT.
Also considering switching Vaal Haste for Vaal Grace, as my damage is fine. I should probably do that. I want to stick to one Vaal Skill so I can have more uptime. This is especially important if it is a panic button.
I've been considering taking your advice and using Enfeeble instead of Warlord's Mark. My leech is probably hitting the cap without it, so I've mostly been using it to get charges and for the free stun. If I change it though, I'll have to use blood magic Enduring Cry, which I am not looking forward to.

Tree:
I have not made the jump yet to swap into Hematophagy from Splitting Strikes, because I think I'm going to change that plan a little. Instead I'm going to path to SS from the north and cut By the Blade instead, as SS outclasses BtB and two 12% damage nodes. It will require two more points, but that should be alright, as I am only lvl 90 and still getting decent xp. I also intend to get the Duelist jewel socket, but that will require leveling to 94. I can wait for that, though my other jewel slots have been spectacular.


General Notes:
The biggest problems that I've been having stem from doing tons of damage. I did not play Bloodlines or Beta, so I'm still getting used to looking for the [Elemental] Bearers mod. This is the biggest danger for me right now, especially in parties that use large elemental effects; it is hard to see.

Physical reflect is dangerous, but I can deal with it with my armor flask. Swapping out Hypothermia for Added Fire has really helped. It was a good idea, but just too much damage. I am comfortable fighting reflect rares, but the physical reflect map mod will likely remain the one I can't run.

Speaking of map mods, there is little that I don't like. Minus resists is dangerous and overlapping damage mods on bosses (especially added elemental ones) make me play very carefully. No/half regen is easy. Elemental reflect is no prob.

I agree with Carmondai89 that the dual wield block nodes are great. They are basically free with a character like this as Blade Barrier and Dervish get decent damage otherwise. I should try out Rumi's flask, as I have a legacy one. I could see a scenario where I no longer wanted Abyssus, but I really don't actively want any of the free links in BoR and giving up a defensive chest does not seem worth it. BoR seems like a good budget alternative until you can get a 6L chest though, as it is probably better than a 5L, damage-wise. Cutting Conc and AoE to use it seems fine.

Updated in light of recent map mod additions - gem setup now more flexible for different maps.

I have also specced into IR/US, which while not as good against large packs of lesser damage monsters, is far better against -max res courtyard bosses due to not being stunned every hit.