2.6- Wild Strike Gladiator

UPDATE:
I swapped away from this a little bit, wanted to dabble with the new Dual Strike Threshold Gem.
It's glorious. I eat bosses alive and can get up to 74% regular block, 78% spell block.
All it required was to drop the elemental damage wheel and grab a jewel socket.


Current Clear:
Farmin UBER labs solo. Carried a friend through, but didn't try for many extra keys.


So, I wanted to play with the new Elemental Weapon Damage wheel added in with 2.6.
And then, I got REALLY curious about the Gladiator talent "Outmatch and Outlast". See, what about Wings of Entropy? (Spoiler: it works WONDERFULLY)

And so, I present my super blocky build with WoE and Wild Strike. Nicest part so far is nothing requires more than a 4 link.


Pros:
Block for days. You can block reflected damage.

The 100% of block applied to spell block stacks with the 25% from Wings of Entropy. 50% block chance? Have 62% spell block then. I was surprised with this.

Super far reach and clear with the frost/lightning procs of Wild Strike.

The various elemental statuses are handy.

Unwavering Stance + Block = never needing block recovery. So no cooldown on block.

Cons:
Admittedly, 4k life is a little low. Might be up to 4.5 or so at 90.

A string of bad blocks on Ele Reflect is a bad thing. Or, clipping too many reflect monsters at once with the fire explosion hit.

Melee.

Very position heavy. More than just because it's a melee build. Can't block fire puddles and such, but also need to aim the shotgun blast of a frost hit.




The Build:

Gear:



My gems:


There's no required jewels, but I got lucky on a 1% block while dual wielding with max life and such too. The Intelligence is rather low on this build, but it only needs enough to have the curse on hit for anything mapping t10+ so far.

Wanted to stop by and say I've been playing this build and it's pretty nice. Not a veteran by any means but up to t10 maps and not really having any troubles.

Best part is the low cost of these items.

Haven't given dual strike a try but maybe if wild strike struggles.

Wild strike is 100% ele conversion, the majority of monsters have moderate elemental resists, and some have a huge amount. I see next to no ele pen on your tree and you are not even using elemental weakness, meaning the damage you do to most stuff is greatly hindered and far lower than the tooltip probably. That said, dual strike is probably far, far better damage (although clearspeed might be a lot worse). I think im going to load up PoB and do some tests, max block dual wield build seems fun.

EDIT: Also, why Violent Retaliation over Gratuitous Violence?

I love the wildstrike gem, its so fun to play with and the satisfaction you get out of every hit is just so nice. There aren't many wildstrike builds out there and im happy i found yours, although im not following yours 100%. I altered the passive tree a little bit, swapped out bringer of rain for abyssus ezomyte and added in a cheap 6L. right now im sitting at level 73 with ~4.3k hp, already done norm, cruel and merc lab and can clear T6 maps with ease. i have capped resists, 41% block and 51% spellblock.
My hideout dps can either be 39k with hatred and herald of ash which is a little more agressive, or switch out the herald of ash for arctic armour for 35k hideout dps + some phys dmg redcution. my boots and wings are running the same gem setup as your build, my 6L is running: Wild strike - Faster attacks - Multistrike - Weapon ele - physical to lightning (somehow gives around +12k dps to wildstrike) - and Fortify as the last gem for some extra survivability. Could swap it out for something more offensive like fire dmg or culling strike(?). Also, i couldn't find wich bandits you helped so i just winged mine. But all in all, its a really fun build and thank you for sharing it with us,

hey, looks like an interesting build. im likely going to give it a go. does this build use frenzy charges too? if so... im wondering if the Touch of Anguish Claws might be viable?(it might even be able to generate and maintain its own frenzy charges with the additional cold damage. even though not every crit freezes, they may or may not add cold damage to every attack... depending on how wildstrike calculates damage conversion) i know you said steer clear from claws of any kind, but if you could maintain maximum frenzy charges, the chain effect would be nice. might only affect the lightning damage though... just a thought you probably already went over lol. (the claws also have a higher base crit chance, so if they were to be viable they might even help dps wise? wishful thinking lol)

I don't know if you are still running this build, because it's been a while since you posted it, but how can you effectively measure the dps of the skill to see if items are actually benefiting you or not? I equipped that unique belt that you recommend, and my tooltip DPS dropped from 7k to 400.

Also items that have "converts xx% of physical damage into cold/fire/lightning damage" would those lower the overall damage you do with Wild Strike, since it says 100% of your physical damage is converted into a random element.

Sorry for the noob questions, I am pretty new to this game, but this build seemed really interesting to me.

Thanks!

You have any video footage of the build?