my melee build that's worse than yours (Ethical™ btw)

The "I like to move fast and do no damage" build. Main skill is Leap Slam since that's the skill most people see me use. My secondary skills vary depending on who I'm playing against or what I feel like using, but for the most part are Dual Strike and Cleave. Sometimes I use Lacerate, and sometimes I use Heavy Strike. When I feel like actually killing people I swap to Blade Flurry because it's stupid powerful compared to the other melee skills.

In all seriousness, my character is designed to be a sort of rush-down melee character. I use no auras aside from Blasphemy Vulnerability, which is pretty quick to cast anyway. The aim is to rush the enemy before they can set up their auras, which sometimes works. If it doesn't, I'm usually fast enough to fuck off before I die anyway.

Since I have two characters set up, the Champion's name is "Im_Fucking_Bad_At_This", and the Gladiator's name is "Harry_Hardcock". The passive trees are the same, only difference is the ascendancy class.


Gear









Most of my gear is pretty self explanatory. I dual wield Dreadbeaks because they're the best swords for this format in my opinion. Riggy's and Ahn's are too slow, however if I wanted to go more defensive I'd definitely use Riggy's for the 20% block. Use two of them because you have to for Cleave and Dual Strike. Good damage, decent attack speed, and if you're on low life you can hit pretty hard. But I usually die before that happens. I have Wildslash as a swap for if I want to use Heavy Strike and Lacerate, since it makes me leap a lot faster.

Helm is nice for some chaos resistance and movement speed. Boots grant freeze, chill and chains immunity, as well as having nice life. I swap to Duskblight against chaos builds, and swap to Atziri's against spell trappers. Gloves are rare because apparently that's a thing now, so why not. Before them I was using Embalmer's for life and chaos resistance, my rare gloves do the exact same but also give me some elemental resistance.

Jewelry is two Heups and a physical Impresence. Impresence is undeniably best in slot for my build. Best flat phys on a unique neck, good life roll, and free vulnerability. Essentially a free 39% more multiplier. Very nice. Belt gives me pretty much permanent onslaught since Cleave grants fortify on hit, and even if it didn't my Leap Slam does. Life and cold resistance are nice as well. I have one Ming's Heart for a swap against chaos builds, which is pretty helpful.

Jewels are pretty basic as well, just basic damage mods and resistances. Might of the Meek goes in the jewel socket next to Scion start. I use Overwhelming Odds all the time except when I swap to Heavy Strike, as it replaces Cleave in my main setup. Swap it out for Weight of the Empire, which I use 2 of, so I swap one of my rare jewels out. I do have one jewel with 4 mods, but the extra mod is life leech so I'm gonna assume it's safe to use.

For flasks, I always use three panicked life flasks. My utilities I swap fairly frequently, depends on who I'm against, assuming I know ahead of time. My default is my stibnite and quartz. In CTF I swap 1 life flasks for my quicksilver. I use the amethyst against chaos builds, obviously. I take enough flask life recovery from the passive tree and from the Pantheon to get my flasks to pretty much fully heal me, which is super important.



As of the Incursion league I have made a few small adjustments to my characters gear. I'm now running
the Coward's Legacy belt, combined with a Lori's Lantern. It comes with the downside that curses can cripple me, however chains does nothing to me and I'm already cursed with vulnerability, so the only major source of being cursed are self cast. I also lose the life that I used to have on my belt slot, Coward's Legacy gives pretty much nothing good aside from the lowlife effect.

The benefits of having permanent low life are pretty good though. Because of my weapons, I get 200% increased damage and have onslaught up at all times. Lori's grants me some very welcome chaos resistance and the mod "enemies are unlucky while damaging you", which essentially rolls every attack through my defences twice and picks the best outcome.

Gems and Links

I still need to get around to replacing a lot of my support gems, since I have to buy new ones. Got rid of all my level 21's just need to replace the extra quality gems.



Main skill link, have 3 skills in there because I swap out Dual Strike and Blade Flurry regularly. Multistrike is a swap for Maim, I don't really use it too often though because it's weaker in most situations.



The real main skill like, Leap Slam linked with Faster Attacks and Faster Attacks Jr. (culling). Fortify in there as well because why not. It's also pretty funny culling nerds who think low life is a viable option.



My free damage, Blasphemy level doesn't matter since even at level 1 it's in my melee range, though a higher level would be better in teams. Quality is important too, I'll probably sort that out before I participate in any events.



Flicker is pretty nice for getting in close to enemies. The damage is pretty much nonexistent, I only use it for getting close.



I had a free 4 link open so I threw in a few counters. Even with low block they still trigger every now and then. Definitely not mandatory but I don't have anything else to socket in.


Passives

Passive Tree:

I currently have two versions of the same build, one a Gladiator and one a Champion Been experimenting with both and I'm not sure which is necessarily better, both have their advantages. I think if I decided to swap to a shield I'd prefer Gladiator, but that's probably never gonna happen. I've also considered making a Slayer for the 20% cull as well, Duelist in general has some very nice melee ascendancy classes.

I take four keystone passives, all of which I think are mandatory. Maybe not Blood Magic, but the rest definitely are. I probably don't need to explain why Acrobatics and Phase are important, same goes for Resolute Technique.


Edit: Made a few small updates to the guide, mostly just updating what gear I'm using.

Legit build. have been slain daily by it

sick build, always get focking rekt by it

i was under the impression using such gloves is prohibited :p

"

lapiz wrote:

i was under the impression using such gloves is prohibited :p

I guess technically I did ban things based of suffixes and prefixes..... but it is not in the spirit of the rule