2.2 Chieftan: Earthquake Tank

*****Work in Progress Editing Will continue for ease of use and updating*****


Overview:

This build intends to build on being a big tank with the huge single hit AOE that is a good mix of Physical scaling with elemental because of that. It should be very new player and new league friendly.



Chieftan:
Hinkora for the fire leech, pen, and physical to fire
Ramako for extra fire, life regen, and end charges on kills


Major Bonuses from tree's At 82:

Chieftan:


Defense


Offense


Misc:


Thoughts and reasoning: The build sets you around level 80, gives you many options to move on from here, you could go more tank and get life/armor, or go more damage and get the two hand nodes in duelist, or depending on how well the elemental damage is move up to Galvanic Hammer to double dip the elemental sockets. It leaves you open for resolute technique or go across and do crit. We get large nodes that are close and have 3 jewels, possiblity for 4 and go to the scion life wheel.


Reasoning Behind a few of the tree picks



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Bandits: Tanky: Oak, Oak, Oak (My current spec)
Damage: Oak, Oak, Craitlyn and get the other frenzy by duelist.
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Skills:



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Equipment:

Nothing is a build breaker so far. Thoughts on Rings/Neck/Belt Get WED and Added Physical to attacks after you have life and resists.



Marohi will be best but Kongors could be ok budget to start since Marohi will become expensive.


Possible use of uniques besides Marohi




My Current Equipment: Sitting at 12K DPS I am using RT right now.


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Playstyle:

Trash:
Step 1: Leap Slam group of mobs
Step 2: Earhquake
Step 3: Go to Step 1

Video


Boss:
Step 1: Leap Slam
Step 2: Cast Totem on boss
Step 3: Repeat Earthquake till new fortify or totem is needed. The first hit of earthquake will do damage. Even if the big aoe doesnt hit everytime.
Video


Overall this will be my primary build that I try to get to 95 this league. I have yet to play a real melee class till now. Last league i had about 5 80+ and one 90. Going to tone down the changes some and get one guy up there. I will try to update the build at least once a week as the test goes on and the next league continues. Please leave constructive criticism.

Reserved

Hello,

Thanks for posting this, it is very interesting. I am planning as well myself to start the league with a tanky Earthquake Marauder, using a tree very similar to yours, although slightly tweaked (I'll probably take RT, go up to Amplify from the templar area and take the Destroyer cluster from the duelist area).
That's my planned 110 points tree (on the 2.2 offline planner):

The only thing I am not entirely sure about is the choice of the Ascendency class. Until very recently I was considering Duelist Slayer and Scion Slayer+Assassin, before switching my mind to the Juggernaut.
Basically, while I like the idea of the Chieftain, I am not convinced it would be a better choice over a Juggernaut. True, an important part of your scaling would come from fire damage, but with the juggernaut if would come from the use of Fortify and (at least) 8 endurance charges, which all increase (unqualified) "damage", respectively by 30% and 48%.

So all in all it seems to me that Juggernaut offers a better capacity to absorb damage (minus the leech from fire damage) while probably offering equivalent, or maybe better, damage, owing to its more general scaling instead of its emphasis on fire damage. Of course I may very well be completely wrong here.

So what do you think? Did I miss something? Do you think this is more a matter of personal preference, or is there something strongly in favor of Chieftain for such a build? I really like the idea of the Chieftain, but I'm not sold on the emphasis on fire damage for a skill like Earthquake.

As for the auras, I was planning to run Warlord with Blasphemy as well. However that would not work with HoA and Hatred, so maybe I will switch Warlord to a CoH setup with Leap Slam...

Concerning the gear I'm not quite sure either for now, I'm not used to playing tanky and melee, except that indeed the Marohi seems like the perfect weapon for this build.

Thanks again for posting this, glad to get some discussion started on the Marauder and Earthquake!

Cheers,

I picked chieftan because of the double dip of scaling fire damage from the added fire gem and from herald of ash. We will also almost always get 20% of physical as extra fire during map play and even possibly on boss fights that can last under 5 seconds(thats from chieftan not from the gem/aura). Plus we leech from it and have 18% fire penetration (They added 8% to lava lash). That is almost a free level 1 link. So it makes all the fire nodes and the elemental damage with weapons worth it.

The regen is about the same, and I would end up with a little less armor. Your increased base damage will unlikely do more than my fire penetration in the end game with the same gear. Since I am not using a socketed fire pen gem. I do not know if you plan on doing that.

I like your thinking with the cast on hit leap slam, because then it could just curse them as I jump in and run away. Still unsure totally on that because i like faster attacks for movement since Mahori is slow, and i want to use the second 5/6 link for the totem on assisted single target damage.

Also i changed my two points in the big mace circle left side from the stun threshold to 12% damage and still use the same points to get the large nodes.

What I really like about Chieftain, besides the extra damage, is the fact that you can use a totem in boss fights. However Unstoppable from Juggernaut looks really good, and Unrelenting grants decent damage from endurance charges. If Unstoppable actually makes you immune to freeze and slows, I guess i have no choice.

Hey,

I very much like Earthquake, especially with Chieftain, but I think a different route might be a tad more interesting, and seeing as there is no other similar thread, I'll post my thoughts on Chieftan Earthquake here :)

I'm thinking of rolling with Avatar of Fire. This is the late-80s build that I've come up with:

With the Twahoa, Ngamahu and Hinekora of the Ascendancy tree.

Overall, 218% max life, 106% armor, 4.3% life regen on the defence; and 250% incr phys dmg with 2h Axes, 93% fire, 54% fire with weapons, 20% area range + dmg, 91% melee (str+melee), 70% Burning and 18% Fire pen. 3 jewel slots. A ton of leech :)

Keystones - Resolute Techniques, Unwavering Stance, Blood Magic, Avatar of Fire. Axe damage, because it's the highest pure dps (can't stun with fire damage, hence we're ignoring Maces). Swords and staves are well behind.

EQ would be supported by added fire, melee phys, weapon ele dmg, fire pen and radius/duration/phys to cold/lightn/hypothermia (with Arctic Armor). All supports appear to scale extremely well. Edit: Now that I think about it, Reduced Duration will help not only with the EQ eruption (giving big dps increase) but also with burning, so it's probably maybe-maybe-not on par with the first four support options.

The idea is to 1 shot most enemies, while the Ngamahu and incr Burn dmg will help a ton on tougher enemies.

Seems pretty solid to me, but I am open to any criticism. I am not too confident in Blood Magic, because I won't be able to run Auras. Besides that it's all the main things - Leap + fortify, Blood Rage and so forth... Flammability is a massive dmg increase. Note that the passives come very close to the second curse node, so that may be worth tinkering with :) A few more life nodes are close too. In general, the key nodes can be acquried early on, and the build can be functional in the 40s.

The build also depends on no tier 1 uniques, so it's relatively cheap to get going :)

Sorry if I sort-of abducted the thread, but I see no other Chieftain+EQ discussion, and I'm aching to hear others' thoughts on this :D

I was messing around Earthquake builds lately. General idea i had was a duelist champion build around maces and perma Fortify. But since you can add Fortify to Leap Slap and use leap+ earthquake simultaneously i gave up my build. After reading the topic all i can say is Chieftain Marauder looks promising, but i would still strongly consider taking Rampart to get more damage and additional effect on You.

I am still not sure about that burning damage you focus strongly on. Isn't it only ~24 chance to Ignite in this build (or maybe i missed something)? 10%+14% from Flammability? Also that Flammability would be 6th link, if i count properly.

EQ + Added Fire + Weapon Elemental Damage + Melee Physical + Fire Penetration + Flammability???
Where is the room for Reduced duration? to EQ more often?

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sultangurde wrote:

I was messing around Earthquake builds lately. General idea i had was a duelist champion build around maces and perma Fortify. But since you can add Fortify to Leap Slap and use leap+ earthquake simultaneously i gave up my build. After reading the topic all i can say is Chieftain Marauder looks promising, but i would still strongly consider taking Rampart to get more damage and additional 20% more effect on Fortify.

I am still not sure about that burning damage you focus strongly on. Isn't it only ~24 chance to Ignite in this build (or maybe i missed something)? 10%+14% from Flammability? Also that Flammability would be 6th link, if i count properly.

EQ + Added Fire + Weapon Elemental Damage + Melee Physical + Fire Penetration + Flammability???
Where is the room for Reduced duration? to EQ more often?

Flammability is a curse, not a support gem :) (maybe I'll use it on hit with Leap, though)

Burning isn't really the focus here. It's only three points that are directly adjacent to Avatar, so I think it will be well worth it against tougher enemies. Also, EQ has 2 hits (initial slam + eruption), so Ignite rate overall shouldn't be abysmal (though, you'd only want the eruption to be igniting really).

"

Vezu wrote:

Flammability is a curse, not a support gem :) (maybe I'll use it on hit with Leap, though)

Burning isn't really the focus here. It's only three points that are directly adjacent to Avatar, so I think it will be well worth it against tougher enemies.

Alright! That is good point :)
Both Juggernaut and Chieftain looks good for EQ.
About that Blood Magic keystone it is not worth imo.

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sultangurde wrote:

About that Blood Magic keystone it is not worth imo.

Yeah, I'm not sure about that. On one hand, many auras are not really scaling extremely well with the build - you can safely ignore Hatred, haste, maybe also Arctic Armor (for a Hypothermia support on EQ) and most any others. The only auras that would make me think twice is having Flammability as an aura (and maybe 1 more curse) and Herald of Ash. Not sure though. I'll definitely play around with those once Ascendancy is live :)

Also, no blood magic means that the beefed-up EQ will be very taxing on mana, and resource management may become a problem. So, originally I thought the benefits of HoA + maybe Flammability on aura would not offset a difficult-to-manage EQ and 35% less increased life, so I went BM.

Generally, I'd like to have leap + faster attacks + fortify as an opener-mobility. If I get 2 more links on that, I may put in cast on hit + flammability, but the first 5-link is reserved for EQ.