[2.0.2] "Crasher of Worlds" Dual Wield Ice Crash Marauder (130k dps, fullscreen AOE, 6k life)

Welcome to my Dual Wield Ice Crash Marauder, the "Crasher of Worlds". While many people seem to prefer playing Ice Crash with a 2-hander (huge dps), 1-hander and shield (nice defense), this build combines the best of both worlds by dual wielding two 1-hand weapons.




Pros:
+ EXTREMELY fun to play
+ very large AOE
+ high dps (over 130.000 with all buffs)
+ insanely fast clear speed
+ good tankiness with ~ 6000 life pool, capped resistances, fortify and decent armor
+ gearing up is cheap for the insanity this build allows

Cons:
- some people in your party might not like your huge Ice Crash animation covering the entire screen
- can become more expensive when using all the recommended uniques (budget version still possible)

Why dual wielding?
Dual wielding automatically grants 10% more attack speed, 20% more attack physical damage and 15% block chance, resulting in a crazy attack speed, additional defenses and allowing the synergy of 2 amazing weapons: Doryani's Catalyst and Soul Taker.

Ice Crash links:
1. Ice Crash
2. Melee Physical Damage
3. Increased area of effect
4. Weapon elemental damage
5. Faster attacks
6. Increased critical strikes / Increased critical damage

Of course you can swap in Concentrated effect for even more damage, I prefer not using it and instead enjoing large the huge AOE convering the entire screen.

Auras / Heralds / Buffs:
1. Hatred (huge damage boost)
2. Herald of Ash (additional damage, nice overkill damage for even more AOE)
3. Herald of Ice (even more additional damage) or Arctic Armour (if necessary for defense)

Additional defense is provided by Fortify which is linked to the movement skill Leap Slam and Chaos Golem linked to level 1 CWDT (auto cast).

Movement:
Leap Slam + Curse on Hit + Frostbite + Fortify
Fast moving, auto cursing every pack, 20 % additional defense

Additional skills:
Blood Rage for insane attack speed and life leech
War cry of you choice
As 100 % of the mana is reserved, both skills are linked with Blood Magic gem.

Choice of items:
Weapons:
Doryani's Catalyst offers all you want from a 1-hand weapon: high physical dps, increased attack speed, critical strike chance, very high increased elemental damage and even some elemental leech. All these stats make it an easy choice as best in slot weapon for this build.

As Ice Crash only uses the main hand weapon for attacking, you can choose any useful off-hand weapon without taking into account its dps. Soul Taker allows to use melee attacks, even when you normally wouldn't have enough mana. This allows to reserve all mana without even having to use the Blood magic gem for the main attack. If you can't afford Soul Taker, you will have to switch out increased critical strikes for Blood magic.

Other interesting off-hand weapons are Prismatic Eclipse with 3 green sockets (36 % increased global attack speed), Ungil's Gauche (additional crit chance and up to 20 % additional block chance with legacy version), Aurumvorax (makes capping resistances really easy) or a second Doryani's Catalyst (for the extra elemental damage and crit bonus).

One problem is that the ingame tooltip doesn't show the correct dps when using Ice Crash. It seems to calculate an average of both weapons, even though only the main hand weapon (left weapon slot on your screen) is used for attacks. So your real dps will be higher than your tooltip, especially when using the recommended Soul Taker. The real dps however is hard to calculate with all the different crit multipliers and buffs factored in.

Other gear slots:
Chest piece: Carcass Jack provides huge offensive AOE stats with decent life and resists.
Helmet: Abyssus is used as a very offensive option, in a hardcore setting one might prefer a rare helmet with life and resists.
Boots: With the buff to frenzy charges in 2.0, The Blood Dance boots are very interesting for many builds. The high clear speed of Ice Crash means the chance to gain a frenzy charge on kill will keep you always on max frenzy charges and significantly boost your life regeneration and dps. Try to get you hands on a corrupted pair of boots with + 1 to maximum frenzy charges for even more awesomeness!
Gloves: Rare Gloves with life / resists / attack speed / additional accuracy or Maligaro's Virtuosity if your resistances are capped and you prefer to focus more on crit damage.
Belt: Rare leather belt / rustic sash with life / resists / weapon elemental damage, the unique Doryani's Invitation the unique Meginord's Gridle are all good choices.
Jewelry: Select your rings and amulet so you cap your remaining resistances. If these are capped, focus on life, life leech, crit, additional accuracy.
Flasks: 1 quicksilver flask with additional movement speed, 1 - 3 life flasks, 1 sapphire flask to deal with reflect (the unique flask Taste Of Haste is a really amazing flask, but very expensive and not necessary), whatever flask you want to fill in.


Play style:
Strong enemies: Jump in with Leap Slam, auto curse, get Fortify buff, crash everything!
Regular mobs: Crash everything!

My gear:





Flask setup:



Jewels:
Focus on damage, attack speed, crit and life if possible. Mace and dual wield specific jewels offer higher damage than generic melee or damage jewels.



My final skill tree (level 92, 114 points):


Levelling trees:


Bandits:
Oak / kill all / kill all

Screenshots of stats:


Additional interesting resources:
POE Wiki on Ice Crash:
http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Ice_Crash
POE Wiki on Dual wielding:
http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Dual_Wielding

Crit Staff Ice Crash by ComradeSerge:
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1289037
Facebreaker Ice Crash by Pahxy:
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1306907
1h + Shield Ice Crash by PrimordialDarkness:
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1356509

Feel free to ask questions or to add recommendations!

Reserved

I'd like some screenshots of your offense and defense stats.

Facebreakers Ice Crash is the real shit.

I have added some screenshots of my current stats in the main post and will update them as all the gems have levelled up.

I have also enjoyed playing Facebreaker Cyclone for a long time and Facebreaker Ice Crash while testing. The speed you can achieve while dual-wielding with Ice Crash is so much more satisfying than Facebreaker ever was.

Can you post some video ?

Unfortunately, I don't have any experience with recording ingame videos and can't even tell you if my notebook has enough power for that. If the interest is high enough, I will try to find a way.

BTW why not IR? it's quite close. 2k armor does not sound like a good defence for a melee character. Isn't it glass cannon?

Can you give me a more in-depth look at when you spec'd your skills? You can PM or just post it here, doesn't really matter. Just want to know what I should be taking first that way I don't feel like I've messed the character up before it even begins.

Raiste

Ice Crash itself has a required level of 28 and is available after killing General Gravicius in Normal difficulty. Until then, you can simply use Groundslam.

As high damage 1-handers are not available early in the game, I recommend using a good levelling 2-hander until Doryani's Catalyst gets available or until you get your hands on another high dps 1-hander at around level 50.

Therefore, I recommend first taking generic damage passives (melee damage, physical damage, attack speed). At the end of Normal difficulty the game gets harder, so you should start getting life nodes and make sure to have high resistances before Piety and Dominus. Afterwards, you should start taking more specialized passive nodes for 1-hand damage and dual wielding. You should wait until endgame to take crit passives and until you find really good jewels to take 3 - 5 jewel passive slots.

Thanks for the reply, but what I meant was like a lvl 20 Skill Tree then a level 40 skill tree etc, showing how you built your character node to node. I can kinda figure it out, but I'd rather not make a mistake and have to spend all my currency trying to undo it. Thanks again.

Raiste