[2.0.1] Benstylez' Staff Critclone [HC]
 Cyclone has always been one of my favorite skills in Path of Exile. I have tried elemental cyclone, CoC Discharge cyclone and the currently very popular RT Cyclone. I wanted to use cyclone but travel the path least trodden and do a crit cyclone. I was torn between a dagger cyclone and a staff. But after looking through the nodes and possibilities, I concluded that staves has some really cool potential. This build utilizes crit and Smashing Strikes, block and Whirling Barrier and eventually Hegemony's Era and Blunt Trauma Final Passive Tree  6L: Cyclone - Blood Magic - Life Gain on Hit - Melee Physical Damage - Fortify - Increased Area of Effect Increased Area of Effect can be changed for Concentrated Effect for bosses or Item Rarity if you feel like it. 4L: Cast when Damage Taken - Vengeance - Life Leech - Blood Rage 4L: Vaal Haste - Vaal Grace - Increased Duration - Hatred 3L: Leap Slam - Blood Magic - Faster Attacks 5L: Cast when Damage Taken - Summon Ice Golem - Immortal Call - Enfeeble - Increased Area of Effect 2 free sockets for: Grace and alternative Aura/Vaal Skill  Generally throughout your gearing process you want to make sure that you have enough dexterity and intelligence from your gear to use the various gems described above. Weapon Hegemony's Era is BiS. With the node that provides knockback on crit, this staff will allow us to stay on maximum power charges, where we normally only gain power charges on block and even though staves inherently provides block we only allocate 6% from the tree, not resulting in a whole lot of block. Otherwise go for a rare staff. Crescent, Moon and Eclipse staves offers Global Crit Chance and all other base types offers block. So if you want to generate Endurance Charges, you go for the global crit base and if you want power charges you go for the other base types. You want stats in following priority on your staff: - Physical Damage % - Added Physical Damage - Critical Strike Chance - Attack Speed - Critical Strike Multiplier Helm Rat's Nest is BiS. Otherwise go for your general helm with stats like: - Life - Resistances - High evasion/armour Chest A rare chest with high armor, max life and resistances is preferable. Boots Consider a stat roll on your boots. Furthermore go for: - Maximum life - Movement speed - Resistances Gloves Consider a stat roll on your gloves. Furthermore go for: - Maximum life - Attack speed - Added physical damage - Resistances if possible
Jewelry
Rings I am head over heels for the new unique ring Ventor's Gamble. Get your hands on one of those and spend all your currency making it GG. Otherwise you wanna look for stats like: - Added Physical Damage - Critical Strike Chance - Accuracy - Defensive stats Amulet I would go for a stat based amulet, such as a Turquoise Amulet for the dex and int. Otherwise go for - Critical strike chance - Accuracy - Maximum life - Perhaps some rarity if you are on a spending spree Belt Try to go for a Rustic Sash or a Leather Belt with stats like: - Armour - Maximum Life - High resistance rolls If you want to push your character try to corrupt your jewelry for some sweet +1 to maximum charge. This is luxury and not necessary at all.
Jewels
Unique Jewels
Generally I like rare jewels more than unique jewels. However they can be useful to fill those jewel sockets as you go. Both Warlord's Reach and Survival Skills are obtainable through the Crypt quest in Act 2. - Warlord's Reach - Survival Skills - Malicious Intent Rare Jewels For your rare jewels, you want to look for stats such as: - Physical Damage - Area Damage - Melee Damage - Maximum Life - Resistance These stats are most likely to be rolled on crimson jewels so I suggest savoring any magic or rare jewels throughout your leveling process.  Items Throughout the leveling process I didn't use staves. I waited with allocating any staff specific nodes from the passive tree and used unique such as: After Rigvald's Charge has served its purpose I would suggest making the change to staff. Rigvald's Charge offers 250pdps, so your new staff should have at least that. Skills 1 - 12: Molten Strike and Cleave/Groundslam. 12 - 28: Sweep. 28+: Cyclone - Blood Magic- Life Gain on Hit is all you need to get started. Progression through passive tree 42 Points We start out allocating a lot of defensive nodes. The leveling uniques are somewhat affordable and provide good damage without any damage nodes. The build will later utilize a lot of jewels but I am not allocating the sockets till later. 65 Points Now we get some damage. As mentioned earlier we focus on general two handed damage and save staff nodes for later. Depending on your current weapon feel free to allocate some nodes matching the weapon type. You have 18 free refund points from questing that you can use to respec into staff nodes later on. Should you come across good jewels you can easily allocate the jewels sockets I have allocated in my final passive tree. Finally if you find that you lack dexterity for Cyclone feel free to grab a +30 node but I have yet to find it necessary. 98 Points Along allocation of these passive nodes you should make the change to staff. We allocate nodes enforcing the staff weapon type along with crit and defensive nodes. This is where things get good. You get the Endurance Charges on critical strikes, you get Power Charges on Block and finally Knocback on critical strikes. Finally get Iron Reflexes to convert any unnecessary evasion to armour. The current meta and the overtuned amount of physical damage in late game makes armour highly valuable.
Bandits
Normal: Oak for 40+ Maximum Life.
Cruel: Kraityn for 8% Attack Speed. Merciless: Anything goes here. Want more crit? Power Charge. Want more defense? Endurance Charge. Want more damage? Frenzy Charge. Want that jewel socket? Skill point. Evaluate where your character is a little lackluster and choose based on your conclusion.  This build is far from complete nor reached its maximum potential. Your input is as good as mine, but I hope that this can give you a general approach to making the build. I would like to get feedback from you, both regarding layout and the build in general. I am also available for answering any questions you might have. Looking forward to hearing some of your guys opinions and good luck on your future endeavors!
To Do
Replace text with actual gems in Links section.
Add flask section.
Update Log
9th August: Changed to official website for passive trees.
Last edited by Benstylez#4309 on Aug 9, 2015, 5:36:07 PM
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I've always wanted to make a staff build, but the top node makes it very hard to do so. You have a good life pool but low armour and minimal block. The damage will be great but you will be very squishy.
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" The top node? :) |
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