[2.3] PoisonReave/Cleave+Viper Strike (1 million DPS) Raider using Dreamfeathers (Videos Included)

Dual Dreamfeathers are the core of this build. Their attack damage bonus makes up for the lack of chaos damage bonuses on the tree, their physical damage gets converted to poison, and their attack speed synergizes with the flat damage bonus of added chaos damage.


Doedre's Damning lets you run a second curse which is very useful for melee survivability, and a corrupted one can roll added chaos damage as implicit.


Snakebite gives our Reave/Cleave poison at the cost of resists and lower frenzy charge duration. With Raider, our frenzy charge duration will be 9 seconds at max charges which is enough with Blood Rage, Frenzy, and raider's frenzy charge on kill. A corrupted version with +1 skill gems can increase Viper Strike's DPS quite a bit as well (due to added chaos damage scaling). Well worth it.


Queen of the Forest gives you a hefty movespeed bonus as we're going for high evasion. Since poison-focused builds can't clear as fast as pure phys/ele crit builds this helps bridge the gap, even though we're already using whirling blades for mobility. A viable alternative is Hyrri's Ire since its +dodge synergizes with Atziri's Step, or Kintsugi since its survivability benefits can outshine QotF's since we have whirling blades.


Atziri's Step makes you much more durable against spells which evasion has no cover for. It also has really high base evasion and life which our build relies on.



Finally, Growing Agony essentially turns our 4-link Viper Strike into a 5-link. Since our Attack Speed will be in the 10 APS number and the poison duration is 8*1.4(temporal chains) seconds, Viper Strike's attack damage is increased by 20% every second for up to about 220% (more with poison duration nodes and quality on blasphemy+11 APS).

Skill Tree
Level 92
Level 80
Level 70

Ascendancy Reasoning
I chose Raider to get an 8th frenzy charge, more evasion, and buffed up frenzy charges with greater duration for snakebite.

Bandits
Normal = Oak
Cruel = All (since our attack speed increase is already really high, Kraityn's bonus doesn't do that much due to diminishing returns).
Merciless= Kraityn

Skill Gems Setup

(5L) Cleave Links:

Cleave+Added Chaos Damage+Multistrike+Void Manipulation+Increased Area of Effect

(5L/6L) Reave Links:

Reave+Added Chaos Damage+Multistrike+Void Manipulation+Concentrated Effect+Increased Area of Effect

(4L#1)Viper Strike Links:

Viper Strike+Added Chaos Damage+Void Manipulation+Multistrike

(4L#2)Duration Buffs:

Vaal Reave/Rallying Cry+Vaal Grace+Blood Rage+Increased Duration.

(4L#3)Trigger Curse Setup:

CWDT(level 1)+Blade Vortex(level 1)+Curse on Hit+Enfeeble

(3L#1)Aura Setup:

Grace+Blasphemy+Temporal Chains

(3L#2)Fortify Setup:

Whirling Blades+Frenzy+Fortify

Current Gear
Along with the uniques mentioned at the start of this post, we aim for high evasion, resists and life on the rest of our gear. We also try to craft chaos damage on our jewelry:



Current Flask Setup

Pros:

• Strong in boss fights. This build is tankier than you might think being a melee evasion build, due to having enfeeble and temp chains combined with a powerful flask backbone.
  I've so far facetanked and beaten: Merc Izaro, Merc Malachi, Merc Lab Argus, Shrine Piety, Village Ruin bosses with extra damage, Atziri trio, and others. Viper Strike lets me get in, apply lots of poison stacks and run off before the bosses get a chance to apply most of their damage. This means that unlike other melee build i'm not all-in, I can back off and still beat the boss.
• Tanky enough for red maps. Between 5k life, 30k evasion (before flasks), Temp Chains+Enfeeble, Fortify, max spell/attack dodge (with vaal grace) and flasks I can take the hits that do get through.
• Can do any map mod. Doesn't put all its eggs in one basket and doesn't mind reflect.

Cons:

• Not Uber Atziri/Core Malachi viable. This build simply can't tank that much damage.
• Clearspeed is good, but not quite top tier. Crit ele/phys builds will out-clear this build since they can just one-shot mobs, while this build's DPS grows the longer the fight gets. Our front-loaded damage is still considerable however, as you can see in the linked gorge videos below.
• Chance-based Melee Defense. No matter how tanky evasion makes me, there's always a chance for a chain of bad luck to make me hit the ground. However since this build also has Poison, you can keep at range from targets while still dealing damage which is a nice survivability perk.

Gorge Run with Reave (6L+Snakebite)

Gorge Run with Cleave (6L including a Poison Support gem)

Atziri Run with Cleave (6L including a Poison Support gem)

Maybe more videos to come, depending on interest.

While Dual Wielding, Cleave gives us 20% more damage than Reave. In addition, Cleave's base damage is higher than Reave by about 11%. This makes Cleave deal 33% more damage which is about the same as a damage support. On a 5L setup with Snakebite, Cleave will have the Increased AoE gem to make up for its AoE while Reave will have a Conc Effect gem to make up for its damage.

When we get to 6L however, Reave shines as it can have both Conc Effect and Increased AoE while Cleave doesn't have another good support gem. The only saving grace for Cleave there is the extra gem slot due to not needing vaal reave, where you can fit Rallying Cry to increase your damage.

Lacerate: It's important to note that Lacerate's stated strongest point is in its versatility in both AoE and single target DPS, since it "shotguns" when you're in melee range of a boss. Since we're using Viper Strike, that aspect of Lacerate doesn't benefit the build much.

Tooltip

Hideout DPS = 22k
Frenzy Charges+Blood Rage DPS = 48k
Fully Buffed DPS with Flasks = 64k

Poison

32% More poison damage from Frenzy Charges.
39% More poison damage from Void Manipulation
59% More poison damage from Concentrated Effect.
400% increased poison damage from tree and quality on gems.

25% Increased poison duration from tree.
44% More poison duration from 20% Blasphemy Temporal Chains.

Base poison damage = 10% of DPS every second
Base poison duration = 2 seconds

Buffed poison damage = 10*1.32*1.39*1.59*(1+4) = 146% of DPS every second
Buffed poison duration = 2*1.44*1.25 = 3.6 seconds

Every hit also deals 146% of its damage for 3.6 seconds, for a total of 526% of its hit damage as poison damage.

Summary

This means our maximum possible Reave DPS is 64*(1+5.26) = 400k DPS

Realistically we won't reach that number ever, since we'll be using Viper Strike in lengthy boss fights.

Tooltip

Hideout DPS = 19k
Frenzy Charges+Blood Rage DPS = 41k
Fully Buffed DPS with Flasks = 55k

Poison

32% More poison damage from Frenzy Charges.
39% More poison damage from Void Manipulation
380% increased poison damage from tree and quality on gems.

25% Increased poison duration from tree.
44% More poison duration from 20% Blasphemy Temporal Chains.

Base poison damage = 10% of DPS every second
Base poison duration = 8 seconds

Buffed poison damage = 10*1.32*1.39*(1+3.8) = 88% of DPS every second
Buffed poison duration = 8*1.44*1.25 = 14.4 seconds

Every hit also deals 88% of its damage for 14.4 seconds, for a total of 1267% of its hit damage as poison damage.

Growing Agony

With the Growing Agony unique jewel, we gain 2% increased attack damage for every hit, for 14.4 seconds. We hit once every 0.09 seconds. Total possible increased attack damage is:

2*14.4/0.09 = 320% increased attack damage after 14.4 seconds of hitting the same target with viper strike. Our base increased attack damage is 440% fully buffed, so 320% increased attack damage is a 59% DPS increase (a higher percentage without flasks active due to Dreamfeathers).

Summary

This means our maximum possible Viper Strike DPS is 55*(1+12.67)*1.59 = 1195k DPS or 1.2 Million DPS

Realistically we won't reach that number ever, since boss fights lasting longer than 14 seconds will be ones where we'll be forced to back off due to incoming damage and ones where we won't have flasks up all the time. Also, these bosses would have curse resistance which means temporal chains won't make poison last as long (12.7 seconds instead of 14.4 seconds).