[3.7] Reave/Bflurry Claw Berserker | Budget Friendly | Instant Leech | Uber Elder Vid Up!

Made some more changes to the guide; added some end game gear, fixed up some inconsistencies/outdated stuff, and all around made the guide more complete. I'm really happy with how this build has come along, this league and build is the first time I've killed Uber Elder and I'm impressed with how little investment it really needs as a melee build to feel so good.

Not sure how much more I'll be playing as I leave the country for a work study soon, but I'll try to reply to any questions and help anybody who needs it! Thanks to everyone who gave my build a shot :) It warms my heart to see others enjoy something I created.

Here's my gear as of level 93:



I crafted the Claw myself by spamming alterations until i got a good prefix, regaling, then annuling the subsequent shit mod, then multimodding the rest. I recommend others do the same, if you can. In total, it cost me around 5-6 exalts to do. The Impale craft is a veiled mod, which took me a while to get, but it's very worth it.

I crafted the chest as well using a pristine and serrated fossil. Took me a while to get the maim craft, but when I did it came with -15 mana & life regen which is pretty damn nice. Cost maybe 4-5ex total? I recommend using a ilvl 86 astral plate, non elder base unless you can afford it.

Currently at 4.2m dps (with vaal warchief up), 3.2m otherwise. Still have room to improve my gear, jewels/rings/ammy in particular. Also, a precision Watcher's eye would be amazing (crit multi/phys damage/attack speed), though getting two of those mods on one eye is expensive as hell. A one mod eye (crit multi) would be my next upgrade, I think. Also, still a lot of damage to get from the tree.

Path of Building: https://pastebin.com/bU35BWUj
My character's PoB: https://pastebin.com/M0TUv9B4
Poeplanner: www.poeurl.com/csRH

For the main PoB, there are two Item Sets to choose from: Budget and High End. It defaults to budget. Blade flurry is recommended for high end bossing / red maps for tanky legion rares, and is set to use the same links as Reave (though replacing multistrike with rage).

If you want to go full Blade Flurry, replace Rage with Infused Channeling. The Level 100 tree is meant to be used with the high end item set, as we can respec the impale chance node and go for effectiveness in swift skewering.

Ascendency:
Crave the Slaughter -> Flawless Savagery -> Aspect of Carnage (or Rite of Ruin) -> Blitz

I would go Blitz last as keeping up those charges might prove to be difficult early on, and unconditional damage is simply too good to pass up early.

I recommend going Aspect of Carnage over Rite of Ruin as it is slightly more dps and avoids the annoying degen/conditional damage, as well as making Berserk feel a lot better to use. However, if the 10% increased damage taken sketches you out, Rite of Ruin is still a very strong choice. Comes down to preference, really.

Bandits: Save Alira/Kill all

With so many great passive choices on the tree you can make a case for 2 extra passives, especially if you want more tankiness. Alira is still hard to beat however, as crit multi alone is significant dps, and the all res is always helpful for gearing on league start.

Pantheon: Solaris, Tukohama/Garukhan

For general clear: Get blood rage going, avoid getting into melee range, and whirling blades in between packs. Use Vaal Reave as soon as it's up, as that will give you 8 Reave stacks as compared to the 4 maximum of regular Reave, which is a huge difference in aoe.

Try and get to the next pack as fast as possible to maintain your reave stacks, as if you take too long to hit a mob you'll lose 'em! Take every map like it's a speedrun :) (or not, no pressure!)

For Blade Flurry, just whirling blades up to packs and kill em. Against bosses, try not to be in one place for too long, but you also want to let bladeflurry hit its release at 6 stacks; essentially, just hold right click on the boss for a second or so then whirling blades to reposition -- or earlier if you need to dodge an obvious attack. Because we have a decent life pool and instant leech, you can face tank many end game bosses (minotaur, chimera). Also, flasks aren't that big a deal thankfully, so you never need to port out.

Recommended Gear:

Check the Path of Building for example gear. There's both a budget item set and a high end item set to look at.

Claws:

The Wasp Nest is an amazing, cheap claw that will carry you through all content.



Bloodseeker is great for the instant 10% max hp leech, which paired with zerker attack speed makes you very hard to kill (unless one shot by a Maraketh archer...). Corrupt it for 6% chance to gain power charge on crit if you can.

Use Bloodseeker on the offhand, and whatever high dps claw (again, wasp nest is more than enough for 99% of content) on the primary.

High budget option: An imperial claw w/ 350+ dps & high base crit, try to craft one yourself by rolling flaring/hybrid phys, then using the "can have multiple crafted mods" craft to craft the rest of the mods. I recommend using the t3 impale veil mod instead of the regular phys mod, as that impale chance lets us get to 100% with less nodes, meaning a lot more damage. An example below:



If requested I can attempt to make a video to show how to craft the high end claw & body.



Chest: You have two (super) budget options to start with:
For survivability/mapping: get a 5l white armour or armour/evasion base (no energy shield, as that makes it harder to colour), then either alc it and hope for decent rolls or use a wailing essence of greed to ensure a decent life roll (or screaming if you'd like).

For DPS/High end bosses on a budget: Get a tabula rasa. Just be aware that one-shots can and will happen. (HINT: Not worth going tabula unless you want enough dps to kill shaper comfortably, which by the time you can actually fight shaper you'll likely have enough currency to buy a decent rare 6l).

Transition that 5l into a 6l (which are really cheap this league) as as soon as possible. Personally, I bought a white 6l armour base (again, as long as it has no es you're good to go) then used whatever screaming essences I had in my stash that gave res (I believe it was a hatred), and it rolled a solid life/res combo. I recommend doing the same.
Here's a poe.trade link for the right 6l base: http://poe.trade/search/haratohoriokih


High budget option: Elder Astral Plate with +% critical strike chance, level 1 maim (absolute best). Alternatively, and more realistically, get a level 1 maim chest (on regular ilvl 86 astral plate) w/ a solid life roll by using pristine & serrated fossils to craft, or buy one outright.

I crafted this chest (on a cheap elder base hoping to get lucky w/ crit & maim, but in retrospect an astral plate would have been smarter):





Helm:


Starkonja's Head is a great dps boost and has a high life roll, highly recommended. However, for early gearing you might need res on your helm, so a rare helmet with life/res is fine too.



Boots: Any rare boots with high life and resistances.



Gloves: Tombfist corrupted with enfeeble on hit & socketed with a life/attack speed on crit Murdering Eye Jewel is BiS, as that will give you easy intimidate, lots of life, and solid dps/survivability from enfeeble. Poe.trade link: http://poe.trade/search/yohuyakonokore

Until you can afford the 30-40c for that tombfist, go with rare gloves with life/res (and ideally attack speed).



Belt: Stygian Belt with life and res is ideal



Rings: Diamond rings are ideal as we want as high crit chance as possible to keep up blitz charges. Get life, flat phys, accuracy, res as needed. Remember that 3000 accuracy is all you need to get 100% chance to hit, so strive for that. You may also need int on your rings to equip your claws/for a higher level blasphemy. Attack speed would be great to have on them as well.



Amulet: Focus on dps stats for your amulet. Lapis base is ideal for the int. Ideal stats are, in order: Crit multi, Life, Flat Phys, Crit Chance. You will likely need an int roll on your amulet, and possibly a res, so focus on getting at least crit multi & life.



Jewels: In order of importance: Life, Critical Strike Multiplier, Attack Speed, Critical Strike Chance
PoE Trade link: https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Legion/RMWk8gs7 You can set it to active search to try and nab cheap ones. It might also be worth searching for blue jewels with life & crit multi/chance, then regaling it and hoping for decent luck.



Flasks:




Lion's Roar is a huge dps and surivability increase, as knockback is great with Reave. Past that, Jade Flask with duration and curse immunity, Diamond Flask with either duration or charge on crit, Basalt Flask with duration and freeze immunity, seething/panicked life flask with bleed immunity would be my recommendations.

Flasks are largely personal preference; for example, if you're comfortable with relying on instant leech, you don't necessarily need a life flask and can use a silver flask instead for more dps/clear speed. There are also a few unique flasks that are quite nice, such as Blood of the Karui and The Overflowing Chalice

Body:
Vaal Reave -> Brutality -> Multistrike/Rage-> Melee Physical Damage-> Pulverise -> Impale

You may want to swap out Reave with Blade Flurry once you hit red maps, as Blade Flurry will just demolish bosses/tough rares by facetanking, and doesn't have the downside reave has of losing aoe stacks which can screw you on bosses, i.e. if you have to port out. You don't need to change any of the links, just Reave out Bflurry in.

Also, 20 quality Reave/BFlurry is highly recommended as it gives 10% increased attack speed, a solid dps boost. Impale is the next best 20q gem to get.


Helm:
Blood magic, Faster Attacks, Fortify, Whirling Blades

Our movement skill setup. Could possibly get away without using blood magic, but it's nice to have.

Gloves:
Vaal Ancestral Warchief -> Multiple Totems | Berserk

I put my Berserk here, can put it anywhere else however. Summon ancestral warchief than vaal ancestral warchief for one regular warchief and two slammy bois

Boots:
Blood & Sand, Flesh & Stone -> maim | Dread Banner

Flesh & Stone linked to maim causes enemies to take 30% increased physical damage. This is essentially a 30% more multiplier -- aka huge damage. I usually keep Blood stance on just cause I like to kill things faster, but in high red maps it's probably prudent to keep sand stance up and switch to blood stance for bosses.

Weapon 1:
Culling Strike -> Herald of Purity-> Precision

Keep precision at a low level (mine is at level 3) so that it doesn't take up too much mana. Herald of purity + culling strike means the little sword dudes will cull bosses.

Weapon 2:
Cast when Damage Taken -> Ice Golem | Blood Rage

I put CWDT with ice golem as it keeps dying; keep CWDT at a decently low level. Mine is at level 9, meaning ice golem is at level 11. Blood rage can also be linked to CWDT, but I prefer to have blood rage as high a level as possible for the attack speed increase. Self-casting it isn't too bad, either.

Leveling filter: http://www.filterblade.xyz/#YKrTzS5gnIW7
This is my custom melee leveling filter using neversink's amazing filterblade. It highlights the links we want early, as well as good weapon bases, and a few other useful things.

The leveling trees are also in the PoB.

Level 1-28: poeurl.com/cqmE
I grab versatility for the dex/int, you can spec out later

For leveling I recommend Smite: Smite->Ancestral Call->Onslaught->Melee Physical Damage

Smite is a very good leveling skill, and has been for a while, and has only gotten better with the new patch. Perforate might be really good as well, worth trying. Use the Blood & Sand aura and War Banner from act 1, Herald of Purity from act 2, then Pride from act 3

Use whatever weapons are best, likely swords/axes. You won't spec into claw nodes until much later anyways.

Make use of the rustic sash recipe to keep your weapons up to date. That means keep an eye out for good white weapon bases. The recipe is:

Weapon x 1, blue/rare rustic sash (rare is a higher damage roll) x 1, & blacksmith's whetsone x 1 -> sell these items to a vendor to upgrade your weapon to one with 40-69% increased physical damage.

I recommend killing all essences found for use on your rustic sashes.

Level 28-60: poeurl.com/cqhK
You could also go down and grab Swift Skewering/Bloodless/Soul of Steel before going to the right of the tree for more defenses.

At Level 28 I'd recommend going Cyclone. This is where you might want to start using claws, as cyclone is great with life gain on hit. Make sure to use a twin claw at ~lvl 36 for the mana sustain. Claws require a lot of int though, so make sure you grab a lapis amulet from quest rewards. You can also spec into a +30 int node on the tree.

Cyclone links depends on what colours you have available, but the setup I used is: Cyclone->Brutality->Pulverise/Melee Physical->Infused Channeling

For auras, I recommend using: Pride, Blood & Sand, Flesh & stone. Use Sand stance when out and about killing easy mobs, and Blood stance when killing hard rares/bosses. Or just stay in Blood stance, the aoe difference isn't really significant and the damage is much higher with blood stance.

Switch to Reave once you get to Maps (if you have decent claws/Wasp Nest), else keep cycloning.

Recommended early uniques:
Mortem Morsu for a solid early claw (don't run brutality with it)
Goldrim to help with res

Boss kills (Blade Flurry):

Uber Elder Kill: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/440171471
(I use Kaom's roots & sapphire flask to make fight easier.)

Shaper Kill: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/438364612
Minotaur in 6 seconds:https://www.twitch.tv/videos/438367295
Chimera Kill: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/438366534
Map Clears:
T14 Orchard: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/437873714
T12 Core: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/437869834