[2.0] Dyadus Elemental Wild Strike - Cheap and Beginner friendly!

Why not just another 360+ edps sword instead?



Because, the reason I chose Dyadus as the main weapon, is that it's primarily one elemental type. Aside Hyaon's Fury, Dyadus is the best elemental unique 1-h weapon with one element. By having a high elemental property, you can scale it much better than having multiple smaller elemental properties, meaning we'll actually deal MORE damage then something with a higher edps because we can scale it much better.

Another equally important reason is its main hand effect: 25% to ignite enemies on hit. This is key into activating our notable node: Celestial Punishment, which gives 25% increased damage against shock, frozen, or ignited targets. As RT, it's impossible to ignite or inflict any elemental status without having "% chance to inflict x elemental status" mods or passives. CP gives 5% chance to shock, ignite, and freeze, however these aren't enough to activate often, Dyadus ensures we activate it, which is an easy 25% increased damage, along with the bonus damage from ignite itself.

But isn't Dyadus Attacks per second low for elemental build? No, it's fair enough to be good. Wild Strike is actually better off with hard fast hits rather then extremely fast small hits. A good fire Dyadus roll will be slightly over 300 pure fire damage, which is a lot.

More so, it usually always cost 1 Chaos orb. Because of its cheapness, it can be bought in multiples for Vaal orb science class. Using a vaal orb and getting Weapon range +1-2, 0.2% fire damage leeched as life, or Culling Strike is super beneficial and is recommended you do this when you have spare money, as it greatly improves the build overall.

I've made a 2h crit build with wild strike, and know what it is capable of, thus I chose it as opposed to something like Cleave.



Wild Strike requires no aoe investment. Unlike some other melee builds, your free to just pump attacks speed/damage, and the skill will do all the aoe for you.

Wild Strike has two attacks, your first initial hit which is melee, and a second hit consisting of what it says in its description. The damage is based off your TOTAL weapon damage, so all of our elemental damage and even physical is included. 60% of physical is converted to a random element, which is then buffed by our elemental passives.

Wild Strike benefits from faster attack speed, which goes hand in hand with flat elemental damage. Its quality also increases elemental damage, 20% at full 20% quality.

Aside from Dyadus, there are no other "must" have unique's, however the build has a ton of room to stretch, both BiS and some more niche setups. However I will first go over the standard gear to look out for before diving into the plethora of uniques we can have at our disposal for rather cheap.

1st matter of importance, our other weapon. Since we duel wield, we have to use 2 weapons right? The best weapon that I think would be most beneficial, is a high epdps weapon (340+) with 1.8+ aps. These are fairly cheap, most go for 0.5 ex in Warbands, despite the damage they give. I say go for the highest aps because we have a special notable, Ambidextiery. This gives use 26% increased ATTACK damage for our main hand, and 20% increased attack speed with offhand. This is huge because the faster we attack with offhand, the more we attack with Dyadus, the more we proc ignites and the harder our fire damage will do. It's a beautiful and deadly synchro. Corsair swords are the best because of their low dexterity requirement, something like rapiers may get more damage/aps, however they require 200+ dex, and we simply don't get much on tree meaning you have to invest a lot into dex from gear or waste a jewel slot for Fluid Motion(s).

Because fire damage is the most elemental increase we have from passives, its best to get as highest fire damage ele wpn as possible. Here's poetrade search link for easy findings.

All other gear is standard life/resist gear. Get as much flat elemental and Increased Elemental damage with weapons mod as you can on rings/ammy/belt. Fire and/or lightning flat damage is best.

For Gloves, you want attack speed, life, and resist. Special note however, for science with Vaal Orbs time! Try to vaal "Curse enemies with Elemental Weakness on hit", this is a major benefit and extreme boost in clear speed, though lots can go wrong so don't try this unless you have money to throw around or the flexibility to wear any gloves without worrying about getting the perfect resist. So I recommend trying to cap most other resist with other gear with gloves needing only one resist to have all capped or 2 low % resist.

As you read from gearing section, you can complete the build with just rares and Dyadus! However, certain uniques can often be better than just a rare, and I'll go over the main potential options. These usually are much more costly, but something to work towards after getting into early maps.

Helms



The most notable unique is of course, Alpha's Howl. This unique is the BiS helm. It gives reduced mana reservation of 8%, immunity to freeze, and +2 to level of our aura's, along with a little cold resist. I recommend this being the item you invest into towards most aside your 2nd weapon. This unique along with another certain gem, allow you to run both Anger, and Wrath.



A cheaper but not as good 2nd option is Devoto's Devotion. These are about 1/6th the cost of Alpha's. Their attack speed increase is nice, with movement speed being a big bonus along with some chaos res. Important as well is they're the highest armour/ev helm, giving a whopping 1.2k+ armour with top rolls.



The last helm is niche but very solid, Deodre's Scorn. This piece is a combo wombo piece paired with the vaal gloves I mentioned in "Gearing" section. Simultaneously, this can be paired with Windscreams for up to 40% increased damage against cursed enemies, up to 20% guaranteed from curse gloves. Combined with the innate 20% elemental weapon damage boost = tons of damage. The helm only cost 1-2 chaos. Very cheap for such a boost.

Belts
2nd most notable slot for unique's are belts. Just like helms there's 3 optional belts to use.

The 1st is Dyadian's Dawn. This belt provides a nice leech bonus, and since its attack specific, it double dips for Wild Strike, leeching both the initial hit, and whatever the 2nd attack hits. Aside from LL gem this is the highest leech you'll be able to get for the build. It has resist and nice life, but it does take our phys damage however which is damage lost, losing around 60 elemental damage from Dyadus, and usually around 50 dmg from your offhand weapon because of wild strikes phys conversion. The belt is cheap however so it's an option for tad more survivability.

2nd belt, perhaps the most popular belt(s), Doryani's Invitation. The Fire damage variant provides armour, resist, and 0.2% fire leech. The are on the bit more pricier side with 28%+ going for around 1.5-2ex. Not a bad choice however, though less life is a bit of a bummer.

Last belt is Maligaro's Restraint. Yes. That's right. But we don't even shock aside the measly 5% from CP? True, however false, because of jewels your able to get shock chance, thus with 4 jewels you can have 20% chance to shock. This swings the build in a cool way, more dangerous, but offers the biggest damage boost among the belts. Also gives you a badass cosmetic/visual effect.

Boots
Final notable uniques are from boots, which give lots of nice options.

Darkray Vectors are perhaps the most prominent. We get 5 frenzy charges without them, 6 with them. 6 x 2 = 12% chance to dodge attacks. Some lightning resist and 30% movement speed at maximum frenzy charges. Since we gain charges through blood, rage, so long as you kill fast and often, you'll maintain charges up decently.

As mentioned before, Windscreams are strong boots paired with doedre setup. They're nice otherwise, allows double curse, some moves speed, some damage, some resist, overall solid boots.

And last but not least, Steppan Eard are great boots when mapping. No negatives, just costly at 3-3.5ex range due to their rarity.

As always chest you have the option of Daresso Defiance, Hyrri's Ire, or Lightning Coil. They're so popular that I don't need to point out why they're good or preferred over some rare chest.

Remember, all these uniques are optional, and are not required. This is because in new leagues or when you start the game for the 1st time, being dependent on uniques is the last thing you want to do. Dyadus being the only required one is fine since it's fairly common, extremely cheap, and is high enough lvl to give you room to acquire it. Its also not a popular unique, so people won't be scrambling to get it skyrocketing prices (see Kaom's Primacy at start of warbands, to where it is now).

Here's the tree you'll be climbing as you slug your way through Wraeclast:

https://poebuilder.com/character/AAAAAgUA-d2LjEqYlFzMZsBm8B-iAASzaPLhc4Kb7SB35VfiMokaOJBVJy862HIPWfOUb2ZUcYVG12P9euaxQvrSZp4XL2TnVdaApBZv42o26SSqA3WdrhpsXwRYd5ErfNn3MnKprKrPfnas6hiCBxRx-Os67TXvgUHBiyFgQKBeE-9OYVKGYDpSDjwFLXrvWhoshdNvRrd25zhTIq8YkbyftfJ4DcAaqW5Yrzbo2L01km87MglsRnJs7w4UIF8_wQR5aGhl8932SIzPxFify6cwAecppXTx2Xzli37HG_HzEQ==

Rough levels for each difficulty, feel free to spec into stats you need, or if damage is low maybe get damage before life, this is leveling, and the build won't take too far off without Dyadus, which is in high lv60's.

Normal (1-35)


Cruel (35-56)


Merciless (56-70)


Remember to upgrade frequently, I currently don't know what weapons to get before lv50, so just highest dps weapon you can DW is good enough since we don't take too much damage nodes early one. Normal > Act 2 Cruel I recommend going 2H to get more damage.

Leveling skill is Wild Strike - Multistrike - Faster Attacks - Mana Leech, with a 5-link preferably in mid-40's gaining Added fire for 5th gem link. Mana leech can be dropped once you get 2 life gain on hit jewels, probably need at least 3. Alternatively you can level as good ol cyclone, with bm gem instead of multistrike, and added fire instead of mana leech, play around.

Rigvalds and Liakshu's are good leveling weapons, I'd probably buy 2x 200 epdps weapons around 48+ to level with, cheapest you can get obviously. Start saving up for your end game off hand weapon, around 20-30c. Then worry about a decent 5-link chest, dragonscale is a nice one to pick.

-Oak
-Kraytan
-Kraytan

Our main attack setup is as follows:

Wild Strike - Multistrike - Faster Attacks - WED - Added Lightning/Innervate - Life Leech

I think these are the best gems we could use. The 1st 4 gems I'm certain of, and you can get by with just those 4. An added link however should boost damage quite well, with the 6th improving survivability. Innervate's a neat gem, and should be tested, since while added lightning is very nice flat lightning and improved by elemental damage, innervate can give you Onslaught, which is 20% increased attack speed, as well as the chance to shock enemies meaning you'll deal 50% increased damage to them. Both are blue gems so they can be interchanged, for example removing added lightning in lightning resist maps and putting innervate in will upkeep damage.

Now before we get onto the other gem setups, there's one gem I want to point out: Enlighten. Enlighten is the new reduced mana for aura's basically. I recommend buying one, then leveling it, or just buy a lv2. With lv2 Enlighten, and Alpha's Howl, you'll be able to run both Anger and Wrath in Alpha's for maximum elemental damage with enough mana room to breathe. Lv3 is even better.

Aura's:
Our aura setup is dependent on your gear. Ultimately, with Alpha's Howl, lv2 Enlighten, and 500 mana (more is better), your aura setup is:

Anger - Wrath - lv2 Enlighten

This would be the best damage because of the +2 in alpha's, which doesn't effect Herald's. Without Alpha's Howl, you won't have enough mana room to breath unless you had over 900 mana. Wild strike is mana hungry, and with the gem setup I proposed we're talking 48+ per attack. 2 mana gained per enemy hit only go so far against single targets.

Without Alpha's, then there's no need for enlighten either, and our aura's then become:

Anger - Herald Of Thunder

You'll do less damage, but with Innervate combo perhaps you can link Curse on hit with enfeeble/warlords mark/poachers mark/elemental weakness for constant curse upkeep.

Movement
Because we're essentially southpaw, we can use whirling Blades for movement.

Whirling Blades - Faster Attacks - Fortify (- Blood Magic)

Defense Setups

CWDT - Warlord's Mark(Increased Duration/Summon Flame/Chaos Golem) - Immortal Call - Blood Rage

With HoT+innervate curse on hit setup, Immortal call becomes great and has constant upkeep, also allows you to take out warlords from cwdt setup since its in your curse setup for something else, like Summon Chaos/Flame Golem, or even increased duration.

Bonus
Without curse setup, then you may want to think about casting Enduring Cry manually.

Enduring Cry - Abyssal/Rallying Cry - Increased Aoe (- Increased Duration/Reduced Mana)

A extremely nice occasional setup is:

Vaal Grace - Vaal Haste - Increased Duration

Fits perfect in either weapon, tons of survivability and damage gained.