[2.0] Cold Hearted Murderer Marauder - Tank with 50k+ DPS (updated)

Build Enabling Uniques:



The Cold Steel jewel is not very effective, if you try to convert physical damage to cold damage, since you need a weapon, that has got as high base cold damage as possible to deal more damage then a god damn fart (the only considerable option would be basically a Dyadus, held in the offhand.... until now). "Why the hell are you using it then?" you might ask the question, well let me show you a little twist, which makes this jewel just purely awesome.
The idea is that i convert a 100% of lightning damage to cold damage with 2 Call of the Brotherhood rings (since 1 ring converts 50% of your lightning damage to cold), and i use this pretty underrated one-handed sword:

It s a near perfect one, and i got it for pretty cheap (1 ex or even less). So as you can see, it has an insane amount of base lightning damage, which completely gets converted to cold damage with the 2 previously mentioned rings, and voila, you got a weapon with higher base cold damage, than any other weapon in the whole game.

I use 2 Cold Steel jewels, and here s the current passive tree (level 89):




As you can see there are plenty of sword physical dmg, one-handed physical weapon dmg and physical damage while holding a shield nodes in the radiuses of the jewels. All these damage increases, that affected physical damage before, now applies to cold damage instead.

The weapon has low base critical strike chance (only 5%), so i decided to go with Resolute Technique, which makes me a 100% accurate (therefore immune to the blinding mobs, that makes you significantly less accurate, i personally hate the damn things, also ignores the "Evasive" attribute of the mobs, which is also benefitial), but i can never deal critical strikes.

This is the passive tree im going for eventually (lvl 95):


I use Cleave supported by Concentrated effect, multistrike, faster attacks, weapon elemental damage and added cold damage (all of them are 20/20 except the ones that got corrupted unluckily). you dont need the quality on the gems, if you are on a small budget, but i recommend it, since they give you a nice damage boost.

The rest of the gear:
Aside its awesome defensive properties, it increases my DPS too, becouse of the increased attack speed mod. I was focusing on high armour/evasion, life and resists, but i found this one and it was so cheap i couldnt resist buying it (35c i believe).


I dont think im going to have to explain to you, why this belt is awesome. The life, tri-res and high elemental weapon damage makes this belt a no-brainer. The guy who sold me this belt, must have been broke as hell, becouse i payed only 2.5 ex for it.



I found this amulet pretty easily, since i was looking for 2 things, life and cold/elemental damage, this was the first amulet that popped on my screen, i payed 20c for it and after 5 tries, i got a pretty high base cold damage roll on it from elreon's bench.

Before i show you the rest of the gear i want you to know why i went with this kind of defence system.
First i wanted to go full armour and block, but until you have to waste a gear slot on an item that gives you a percentage of your block chance applied to spells as well (Stone of Lazhwar amulet), dodge is just simply superior (since you ll have to invest 5 passive skill points and you got 40% chance to dodge attacks and 30% chance to dodge spells). my experience is that its better to have a layered defence system rather then trying to focus on 1 thing anyway, so i rather went with the Dodge/Spell dodge keystones (first line of defence).

I use this dope shield:

you dont need a legacy one, but it gives you much more chance to block spells. As you can see, it gives you resists, maximum resists, and x% block chance applied to spells, mine has 110% which somewhat compensates the 30% less block chance attribute from the dodge keystone. You cannot block attacks with this shield, but its not a problem becouse you dodge 40% of the time (which means total damage avoidance, just like with blocks).
I also use a non-legacy unique granite flask:

Since the attack block chance now applies to spells instead (becouse of the shield) this flask immensely boosts your chance to block spells. And since i use the tempest shield gem (which grants 3% additional chance to block, which is applied to spells with this shield) supported by a cast when damage taken gem (its basically always up) my chance to block spells is 59%.

This is the second line of defence for spells (since block is rolled after dodge).

The second line of defence for attacks is evasion. I have 7.7k evasion (which is not a massive amount, but enough, and it will go up to 8k+ with a few more evasion/life passive nodes, i just need to level my character which takes time, which i dont really have. I linked you the passive tree what im going for though. 7.7k evasion gives me 41% estimated chance to evade attacks, and my experience is that i rarely get hit twice in a row.


The third line of defence for both attacks and spells is damage mitigation.
Like i mentioned earlier, i use a legacy saffel's frame, which gives me additional (5%) maximum elemental resistence, with that and the 1% additional maximum cold/fire resistence from the passive tree, i have 81% fire and cold resistence and 80% lightning resistence.

For physical damage mitigation, i use this chest:


Again, i use a legacy one, but if you re on a small budget, you can use a 5 linked non legacy one, you ll just have a little less physical damage reduction, and much less damage. so if you can, i recommend investing in a legacy 6L one.
This chest cooperates well with the shield, becouse you take 40% of physical damage as lightning, but since your lightning resist cap isnt 75% anymore, but 80% you get even more physical damage reduction, it also gives some flat lightning damage (which is converted to cold damage).
Also i get some additional physical damage reduction from armour, 3 endurance charges, molten shell and the unique granite flask.
Estimated physical damage reduction with these buffs:


So just to summerize what i ve been talking about:
i have 44% chance to avoid (dodge) spell damage completely, if not, then i have 59% chance to avoid (block) spells with buffs, if not i have a pretty decent damage reduction.
i have 44% chance to avoid (dodge) attack damage, if not, i have so much physical damage reduction that i basically never get one shot, not even from bosses that deal physical damage (ok, maybe if there are map mods like vulnerability + mobs deal x% extra elemental damage + they score a critical strike on me, then i ll probably die from some hard hitting mobs). and then, like i said, mobs rarely hit me twice in a row.

Rest of the gear:


As you can see i was focusing on life, resists, and as high evasion as possible. With basically all my gear having high evasion, i could bypass using the grace aura, so i could use wrath instead, but i ll talk about that later. Movement speed is also very important to me, since i hate being slow, so the boots is perfect for me - it has high evasion, life, movement speed, also spell dodge chance, and some attack dodge chance with a lucky corruption (i payed 10c for the corrupted boots). It doesnt have resists, but i got enough resists from the passive tree, and from other gear, so it s perfectly alright.
I needed lots of lightning resist to counter the -60% lightning resistence mod of the chest. The 2 unique rings also give me a total of 32% cold and lightning resists combined.

Life recovery:

i have 6.2% life regeneration per second (which is not much, but still enough to compensate the smaller or medium damages taken (damage over time is annoying though). And i use 3 life flasks, that i carefully crafted the way they are:


The instant recover mod is very important, since i need to gain a lot of life instantly after a heavy hit, or several hits in a short time in the middle of a large pack of mobs.
2 of them has got immunity to bleeding, i need it against corrupted blood/bloodline mobs. since im not immune to freezing, one of my life flasks grants me a temporal immunity against freezing, and it also "melts" me instantly if im already frozen. Since i need instant or partially instant recovery, i might go for divine life flasks, since they have more life, but im ok with these for now.


I also use this unique flask for 3 reasons, it gives me more damage, chaos resistence and some life leech which im gonna recover life even faster with (6.2% regen + 2% of chaos damage leeched as life)

Mana:

I ve got 32% reduced mana cost of skills, 23% from the passive tree, 9% from these jewels:

Perfect jewels for me, aside the mana cost reduction, they give me life and cold damage.

I also have 60% increased mana regeneration rate from the passive tree, my amulet gives me 58%, and the 2 unique rings give me 38% and 40%, which is a total of 196% increased mana regeneration rate. I also use a lvl10 clarity. My total mana regeneration per second is 70ish.


I reserve most of my mana, so i ve got 75+ mana to spend. the highest mana cost of skill i use is the flame golem, supported by minion life and minion and totem elemental resistence. it costs 72 mana, so i can cast it.

I use 3 auras, with a lvl3 enhance (92% mana multiplier --> basically 8% reduced mana reserved) in my gloves. lvl20 wrath (great amount of additional base lightning damage that gets converted to cold, that aura basically boosts my DPS by a solid 10k), lvl20/Quality 20% herald of ice and the previously mentioned lvl10 clarity. After 3 tries of "at least 2 blue sockets" benchcraft, i got the required BBBG colours for the auras.

in my weapon and shield, i utilize 2 setups of cast when damage taken (all the same lvl, i just wanted to have 4 spells cast, when i take damage). enfeeble, molten shell, tempest shield, immortal call.

in my helm i ve got the supported golem, i mentioned earlier.

in the boots, i have a special movement/damage mitigating skill setup. i use whirling blades, supported by faster attacks and fortify. since i use Resolute technique, i never miss, which means if i cut through enemies, i will have a temporary damage reduction from fortify. since i like to position myself on the battlefield, (for example to kill the summoners first, or the totems that buff enemies, etc.), i have fortify up, at least 80% of the times.
So its literally better for me if i just jump into the action :D

(Btw fortify is a nice addition to the 3rd line of defence, which was damage mitigation)

in the 4th socket, i ve put another gem just for leveling it. which i use frequently (for the additional physical damage reduction, also the immortal call consumes them, to increase its duration, and longer immunity to physical damage is always welcome).

Full gear:


Overall, this build is pretty tanky (4.9k life, and with the rest of the life nodes i will take when i level this character up to lvl94-95, i will have around 5k-5.1k life), while its got enough DPS (50k+) as well. i can easily clear lvl 80 maps too (i havent tried it with lvl81-82 maps though, i also havent tried atziri yet).


Damage with atziri's promise flask:


Bandit rewards:

-normal: help oak for the +40 flat life
-cruel/merciless: kill them all for the additional passive points

Pros:

-Freaking tank (im rarely in danger)
-Fast clear speed even on high lvl maps
-If you go for the budget version, you can get the gear for pretty cheap
-Melee is always fun to play
-Builds around common unique items
-Party friendly, you can tank stuff, while dealing quite a bit of damage, and since its not as visually impressive as discharge, your party members with slower computers wont get framerate drops
-Immunity to blind or any other debuff applied to accuracy
-Ignores the "Evasive" mod on mobs
-You deal enough damage to always chill, even Bosses (Chill out bro)

Cons:

-Cant roll some map mods (-max all res, reduced/no life and mana recovery)
-If you really want to kick ass, you should invest in legacy items, and good rares
-The character is complete at Lvl94-95 which takes a lot of time and maps to reach
-There are bosses i just dont dare trying to kill (e.g.: Piety in malformation or the devour boss on orchard)
-There are item attributes that this build doesnt use (e.g.: increased spell dmg on the shield, increased lightning damage or the 100% shock chance on frozen enemies with spells mods on the rings) i dont know if that is really a bad thing though, i just mention it anyway.


I hope i covered everything, if not, let me know in the comment section, or if you have any kind of questions, PM me.

congrats, the build is really unique and looks nice ! I love your conceptual thinking !

The defense looks rocksolid and with a bit more life for sure HC viable, the only thing is you got pretty GG items everywhere with a lot of resists.

can you post a video how the build performs in a 78+ map ? Like clearspeed, bossfights and all that.

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cmphx wrote:

congrats, the build is really unique and looks nice ! I love your conceptual thinking !

The defense looks rocksolid and with a bit more life for sure HC viable, the only thing is you got pretty GG items everywhere with a lot of resists.

can you post a video how the build performs in a 78+ map ? Like clearspeed, bossfights and all that.

atm im trying to get high eva items, so i can bypass using grace, and i can use wrath, so far im a bit less tanky (got 34% evasion instead of 44%) but with a lvl20 wrath my DPS got 50k+ instead of 40k, but im still testing it, so far im happy with the results. i ll post a video sometimes, although that might not happen in the near future, maybe right before xmas, becouse right now, i need to study a lot, and i dont really have time for anything else.

im glad you like it :)

Updated, video is coming in the future.