[2.4] The Vampire - Tanky 2H Slayer Duelist (90k+DPS) [budget,acrobatics,evasion,leech] - Core Clear

• For every hit on an enemy we gain a leech instance
• Each leech instance lasts some time (which depends on the hit and % life leeched we have) during which we regenerate a certain % of our life per second (base value is 2%)
• By default leech is capped to 20% of your max life per second, however we reach the number 43% by taking additional +23% of max life to maximum leech rate
• Increased leech effect multiplies the effect of each life leech instance, making it heal more over the same amount of time, this makes it so we require less leech instances to reach the leech cap
• With Brutal Fervor while we are leeching we cannot be stunned, this isn't of a big use if you decide to use Cyclone like me but it is nice for other skills. We also cannot be affected by bleed which is awesome.
• Normally without Brutal Fervor leech instances disappear the second you reach full health, meaning if you take a hit 0.1 seconds after you reached full life you don't have any life being leeched to you until you get the leech instances rolling again.
• What Brutal Fervor does is make the leech instances persist even on full life, so you are constantly being healed for 43% of your max life per second even after you reach your maximum life.
• Because leech instances don't go out on full life we keep the immunity to stun & other leech bonuses even on full life.

Hideout stats:


Most common DPS while mapping is around 90k range (Blood rage alone pushes my hideout DPS to 66k).
DPS with a five link ranges from 45k - 133k depending on buff state.

Maximum DPS achievable:

Linking is bugging out for some reason, for updated gear you can check out my character via my account link:
https://www.pathofexile.com/account/view-profile/Mannoth/characters
Character name: Kremnon

Preferably get a Increased Duration linked to Punishment but colors didn't want to budge.
Also I swap hatred for haste on elemental reflect maps & added fire for blood lust.

Pros:

• Cheap to gear
• Decent endgame dps possibility
• Constant 43% max life leeched versus monsters
• 30% chance to gain onslaught on kill
• Flexible flask choices
• Acrobatics
• High evasion (48% evade currently)
• 6 endurance charges
• Fortify
• High life pool possible (planned 6k life by level 90)
• Stun immune
• Decent life regen (5%+)
• Can be built around armor & iron reflexes without much troubles

Cons:

• Melee
• Late cruel your dps starts to drop without a decent weapon
• Leech kicks in later during leveling
• Mana sustain can be a problem
• Capping resists is hard
• Low int
• Not crit based

Some numbers:

• 178% life from tree excluding jewels (193% endgame tree)
• 30% chance to dodge attacks
• 48% chance to evade attacks
• 6 endurance charges later in the game
• 4.8% life leech (6% with blood rage)
• 78% increased life leeched per second

https://www.pathofexile.com/fullscreen-passive-skill-tree/AAAABAQBAQBeBS0HdQguCZYMcA2NDjwUIBRNFHEV7BiRGY4hVSPTI_YnnzB3MHw5DjpSQKBDMUd-Sn1M_02STipQR1FHV1RZ_luvXhNfP2EhYVJkUmVNZadoZW8ndO12rHh6eu97dHzZfXWCB4TZhO-FUoWnhmCGtIdqh3aKs4rwjX2Nv49gkAqTqJd5mmqjiqU1qSeplK2NrlCygLkdvJ-9Nr6nwKbBo8qQz37TftQj2WHZfNrB3D3iYeOf5FHpRuoY6wntg-4O7w7vTu968933Mvjr_Ev8xf66

https://www.pathofexile.com/fullscreen-passive-skill-tree/AAAABAQBAQBeBS0HdQguCZYMcA2NDjwS4RQgFE0UcRXsGJEZjiFVI9Mj9iefLlMwcTB3MHw31DkOOkI6UkMxR35KfUt4TP9Nkk4qUEdRR1dUWf5br14TXz9hIWFSZFJlTWWnaGVvJ3Ttdqx4enrve3R82X11ggeE2YTvhVKFp4ZghrSHaod2irOK8I19jb-PYJAKkc6S0JOol3maaqLqo4qlNaknqZStja5QsoC5HbvtvJ-9Nr6nwKbBo8SCypDPftNv037UI9lh2Xzawdw93ajiYeOf5FHpRuoY6wntP-2D7g7vDu9O73ryQfPd9zL46_xL_MX-ug==

Weapon choice

I chose to go for Axes because of several reasons:

• They have the highest base DPS of 2h weapons
• Highest melee attack range (great for cyclone)
• Generally have better nodes on the tree

Rare 2h axes are rather cheap to get and they can carry your a long time.
My current weapon is:



Uniques worth mentioning:


Atziri's Disfavour is the goto endgame weapon of choice. There is not much to really say about it, it has up to 600+ dps with +2 weapon range, increased support gem level & free bleed. It literally has no downside other than being pricy and hard to get early in the league.

Blood Reaper is a decent leveling unique, but nothing to write home about. You shouldn't really use it for the sake of using it, only use it if it drops at the appropriate level.

Hezmana's Bloodlust gives us blood magic on all our attacks making you not need any mana leech at all. It has a decent DPS until you opt for a 500+ rare axe or disfavour and comes with 1% life leech which is rather nice.
That being said it is a lot more expensive than a rare 400 dps axe because of the blood magic mod.

Kaom's Primacy is also a decent unique to use until you switch to a endgame weapon. There isn't really anything bad with it, it is a bit slow for my taste but it has a really high damage per hit making our leech instances last longer and the free culling strike is a nice bonus (basically 10% more damage).

---

Ring choice


Essence Worm allows us to run a level 22 grace for 2835 base evasion. It also allows us to run hatred at 70% mana reservation leaving us with 30% of free mana to fuel our attacks.

Edit:



Alternative ring choice, we lose some DPS (16% less added damage than hatred), lose some life and 2 levels off grace. What do we gain? 20% physical as chaos, which works better versus high resist enemies and a massive 50%+ chaos resist. With this option I suggest running Enfeeble+Blasphemy and I feel like it's a good combo.



Second ring should be a rare one, aim for high life & inteligence roll with resists. Since we are starved for int on the tree ring, amulet & helm is the prime choice for getting it.
Bonus points for having x-y flat physical damage added.

---

Amulet choice


Int is the stat you generally want from your amulet, along with high life and as much resists as you can get.
If you can get x-y physical damage on it or %evasion also it is a great boost.

Don't have a preference for a unique amulet at the moment but it might change.

---

Belt choice


You generally want a good rare belt with as high life & as many resistance rolls you can get since belt is one of the places you can get the most resists & life on your gear.

---

Gloves choice

Gloves are an interesting slot to discuss, they are not as straightforward as boots & belt because you can roll some interesting stats of interest:

• Adds x-y physical damage to attacks
• %of physical attack damage leeched as mana
• %x increased Attack Speed

In my opinion my current gloves represent a decent version of what you would want from gloves:


They have decent defenses (two mediocre resists & high evasion) coupled with high life roll and a free suffix for Haku Attack Speed craft (12%).
A mana leech roll would make mana sustain easier (you could opt not to find a jewel with it for example).

---

Boots choice


Rares with high life, move speed & resists. Ideally evasion based for more evasion.
Nothing much to say other than that, don't think any unique boots are worth it.

---

Chest choice


Cherrubim's offers a high life roll, decent evasion and increases the strength of our leech instances. To me this is a really decent chest choice even though others might not agree.
I am currently using it on my build.

Kaom's Heart is a great option for the extra 400 life compared to Cherrubim's. I would consider using it only with a really strong weapon and high evasion helm / gloves / boots to offset the loss of evasion on it.

Belly of the Beast is a mini kaom but with links, it also comes with nice resists & extra gore (yay eyecandy!). Even tho it offers less evasion than Cherrubim's and doesn't boost our leech instances the life gain and resists should be enough to offset those drawbacks.

Alternatively you can run a high evasion rare chest if you want, Carcass jack deserves a mention for people who prefer higher AoE.

---

Helm choice


Generally a rare helm with high evasion / life / decent resist and a int roll is what is wanted here.
If you have to chose between 2 res and high int and between 3 resists I would go for high int option because we need a lot of it from our gear.

Can't decide what enchantment would be best at this point so I won't talk about it.

---

Jewel choice



One of these has solved my mana sustain issues for single targets, alternatively get mana leech on gloves and run life/dps jewel instead.



Grabbing resists, life and dps helps gearing choices a lot. Since we lose the ability to wear a shield,chest and a ring slot for resists getting some resists along with DPS & life is a valid choice.

---

Flasks choice


My current setup, I am using only a single life flask for emergency cases and doing fine so far.

Basalt flask

Ideally you want to roll reduce charges used so you can use it twice and Curse/Bleed/Freeze immunity on it. That being said %evasion is still a nice roll to have.

Stibnite flask

Goto flask for this build, it blinds enemies reducing their hit chance against you drastically. It also provides a hefty bonus to evasion and would roll it with %evasion & reduced charges or extra charges.

Silver Flask

This flask to me is a lot better than quicksilver flasks. With 25% reduced charges used it is at 30/60 uses and provides 6 seconds of onslaught at 20 quality giving 20% attack and move speed.
Second mod to roll would be Immunity to Bleed/Freeze/Curse.

Lion's Roar

Preference choice of mine, it gives a hefty amount of DPS boost along with added safety of knockback, two uses and 5 seconds at 20 quality.

That being said it is only a personal preference and it can be substituted by Taste of Hate / Atziri Flask or any other flask you like.

This is something that depends on the type of player you are.
That being said I will highlight those I feel are the best:

Cyclone

While not sporting the highest tooltip of melee skills this skill has a really good pro for using it and that is the added safety of moving all the time.
You can dodge a lot of projectiles, you get free stun immunity and attack rather fast all around you.

Downsides is that it's AoE isn't that large without quality and increased melee range, but to me it is fine.

Earthquake

If you favor big slower hits and longer leech instances at the price of slower leech buildup this is the goto gem for you.
It isn't mana intensive as Cyclone and can be played as hit & run due to the shockwave mechanic so it combines cyclone mobility with normal skill use.

It is a strong skill contender to cyclone.

Sunder

If you choose to go sunder you lock yourself out of Kaom's Heart, the reason for that is that sunder single target DPS is downright horrible.

That being said the AoE clear is rather decent and it's a great leveling weapon coupled with Herald of Ash.
It is a nice skill for packs but a lacking one on solo target, always remember that.

Double Strike

This gem almost never gets mentioned, but it is a rather nice combo with our build if you opt to go for the Impact node or use melee splash. The fact it splits it's damage in 2 hits per attack means you gain double the leech instances than other skills at a lower instance duration.

This makes it a nice skill if you want to minimize the leech instance buildup.

Where are all the elemental conversion skills at?

I wouldn't consider elemental conversion skills for the same reason I won't consider Physical to Lightning / Added Fire as a support gem:

• You leech less because only part of your leech is elemental
• You lower your physical damage making enemy armor more effective
• It inflates your tooltip, however it is not a representation of your actual dps
• Enemies tend to have elemental resistances which will lower your actual dps

That being said if you feel like playing a elemental conversion skill and feel the downsides aren't too big go for it.

Links would be (in order of priority):

Weapon

• Cyclone
• Fortify
• Melee Physical Damage
• Increased AoE
• Concentrated Effect
• Faster Attacks

You might be asking yourself: Where is your Added Fire damage & Weapon Elemental damage?
Well the answer to that is provided in the spoiler below:

---

Chest

• Ancestral Protector
• Melee Physical Damage
• Added Fire
• Faster Attacks
• WED
• Bloodlust (for Disfavour)

---

4L (2G 2R)

• Blood Rage
• Hatred
• Leap Slam
• Enduring cry

---

4L

• Vaal Lightning Strike
• Multistrike
• Increased Duration
• WED

I switched over to vaal lightning strike to burst down bosses and have fun all around. Fun trick is that if you pop Lion's Roar while a Vaal Lightning Strike is active the enemy will keep getting pushed back away from you, trivializing some encounters.

---

4L

• Cast When Damage Taken
• Punishment / Enfeeble
• Stone Golem / Fire Golem / Chaos Golem
• Increased Duration

If you feel squishy substitute Punishment for Enfeeble, it has great synergy against one shots and in buffing our evasion capacity by reducing enemy accuracy.
That being said Punishment works great for our DPS since it buffs us rather than debuffing enemies.

Currently I have no luck getting these colors, as such I am leveling gems instead :3

(BoE)skill=Cyclone;defense=Life;cheap=true;atziri=true;coc=false;crit=false;hardcore=false(BoE)

Refer to first post for the endgame tree.

Early on the best you can do if playing without trading is using the vendor recipe for crafting, what you want to do is grab a good base weapon of a vendor and use the following recipe:

Weapon + Magic/Rare Rustic Sash + 1 blacksmith whetstone

Selling all these 3 at once to the vendor should make him offer you a 50~% increased physical damage 2h weapon which is good enough for leveling.

I used this vendor recipe to level all the way till the end of act 3 normal until a better weapon dropped for me.

While leveling we take generic two hand damage DPS nodes so you can use swords/maces/axe without any trouble, so just always use the highest DPS option you have at the time.

There are several leveling uniques that work great:

• Shiversting
• Geofri's Baptism
• Reaper's Pursuit
• Wideswing
• Rigwald's Charge
• Quecholli

If you are having troubles capping resists consider taking the Cloth & Chain / Diamond Skin nodes and then respec them later on as you get better gear.
Running resist jewels is also an option.

Skills

During leveling I highly recommend utilizing a 2h physical weapon and Sunder + Herald of Ash.
This combination will 1 or 2 shot almost every pack it touches during normal.
During the first 30 or so levels running fortify isn't needed really so just run:

Sunder - Melee Physical Damage - Added Fire Damage - Faster Attacks

When you start taking too much damage switch the faster attacks gem for fortify.
You shouldn't be having single target issues but if you feel sunder is too weak add Ancestral Protector and Double Strike or Cyclone setups.

Sunder starts to drop off in cruel in terms of damage (or such was my experience) and it's the best time to either switch to Earthquake or Cyclone depending on your preference.
I would advise against running a melee splash setup if you want to because the leveling will be tough.
For earthquake I would run the following 4L:
Earthquake - Less Duration - Fortify - Melee Physical Damage

Alternatively run fortify on Leap Slam (if you don't mind inconsistency) and add another DPS gem like Added Fire.

---

Mana sustain

Mana potions are your friend, until merciless I ran cyclone and sunder sustaining solely on 1 mana potion and a clarity aura.
Running clarity is a must in my opinion, because mana potions can run out on long fights if you are using cyclone.

I kept using a mana potion until mid merciless when my mana leech allowed me to drop it.

---

Auras & buffs

Grab clarity & herald of ash as soon as you can and combo it with sunder.
Level clarity as you progress but keep your total unreserved mana pool at around 50%.

In cruel switch from running HoA+Clarity to hatred once you get some mana leech, if you feel mana is still an issue continue running your 1 mana potion.
Late cruel or during merciless start running blood rage once you feel your DPS is good enough to warrant the leech and you have taken the leech passives from the tree.

Late merciless once you gain access to Essence worm socket a grace gem in there for a massive boost of evasion.

I recommend the following stats for labyrinth:

Normal

Recommended level 35-40, my tooltip on cyclone was around 2000 when I passed it.
Fortify is a must, grab as much life as possible and run multiple life flasks.
Ancestral protector helps with DPSing down Izaro and you should start using it if you haven't already.

I ran punishment as self cast to boost my DPS but you may opt for enfeeble, don't run Blood Rage against him since regen is much more worth it at this point.

I took Brutal Fervor as my 2 ascendancy points, but Headsman might be a better solution in order to make cruel/merciless Izaro 3rd phase easier since it's always active versus them.

---

Cruel

Recommended level 58-62, my tooltip on cyclone was around 7000 when I passed it.

Health was 2.8k and a Basalt / Stibnite flask helped a lot, I died twice until I finally passed it.
Cruel Izaro has a ton of health so without a good weapon it can take a while and you may lose all your flasks during the fight making it a really hard fight.

---

Merciless

Recommended level 70+, my tooltip on cyclone (4l) was around 12000 when I passed it.

Health was 4.2k, I had specced acrobatics before running it and still didn't have the Grace+Essence Worm combo.

By this time you should be able to leech a lot of life back since we have taken most of the leech from the tree at this point. Good use of flasks makes the fight go a lot faster, Lion's Roar really helps if you are struggling with DPS.

You should be using blood rage by this time since we have enough life regen to counter it's downside and enough DPS to substitute the regen for leech.