Dual-Wielding Melee "Dream" GB Pathfinder — Possible in early access? (Leveling + early maps)

I've tried multiple builds like this. I'm playing only SSF so my reach of equipment isn't as great, but I think the issue "we" as innovative players are running into is the game is lacking other skills and weapons to do what you are trying to do.

Maces are hands down just awful and the skills don't compliment a fast attack speed play style. I am really hedging swords/axes/fists/spear/daggers (potentially) will help round out this build.

I am currently running a mace gemling and while I've cleared all the content in the game with homebrew build, it seems stuff is lacking.

Really hope the new weapons/skills come soon. I don't think they will release axes or swords until marauder or (gladiator) comes out.

My thinking right now is that maxing resists will help me clear a bit more content. Shame its hard to get resists from the tree, I wonder if reaching for those max resist clusters is a good idea...

I replaced a few bits of gear to add more spirit and accidentally let ele resists drop to around 20-50% while chaos is at only 7% ... so 99% of my deaths are from running into fast attacking ranged elemental or chaos damage.

If I run a map without a lot of that? Its easy though.

It feels like I need to adjust the skill tree to chill out on damage, we have so much damage and not enough survivability

I too am hedging that swords especially should be great for this build. Hopefully Dreamfeather from PoE1 makes a return - it would give us a dex/evasion route to play with, possibly dropping Giant's Blood

I also feels like GGG made a mistake making every melee skill weapon-class-specific. It would be nice if we got some that were generic or usable with a couple of different weapon classes...

Greetings Exiles,

I'll have a more complete update soon to the OP post, now that I've spent more time reviewing more of the community commentary on the state of armour (I do want to get a bit deeper into maps first).

Long story short, it seems like the best endgame setup is to fork out 1ex for a Cloak of Flame (ideally with 50% fire resist - or more if you can lucky corrupt one), and then investing into exactly this:

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evilstarship#1007 wrote:

My thinking right now is that maxing resists will help me clear a bit more content. Shame its hard to get resists from the tree, I wonder if reaching for those max resist clusters is a good idea...

After grabbing both south western resist clusters focusing on max fire resist, I am sitting on 87% fire resist with the help of those passives and some cheap jewels - so 40% of incoming phys damage is reduced to a measly 13% of its original amount. My est armour % dropped by about 20% so its not without a tradeoff but I think we are much better off overall with 40% fire conversion. Feels like WAY less potential for getting 1-shot, basically.. whereas we might be taking more damage from small hits (which I think are much easier to heal/leech through than surprise 1-shot's!).

HUGE boost to my survivability, however damage is hurting a little as a result. Up to level 6 maps so far, level 76

Getting enough str on gear for Giant's blood and balancing this with resists is still a fine balance here. I don't have chaos or cold resists maxed yet and I think those are how I most often die.

Not to mention, you get to look like you just woke up out of bed and slipped on this sumptuous robe:



Considering adding a shield weapon swap and binding it to skills where it matters less eg Seismic Cry and maybe Leap Slam. Maybe we will add stampede or shield charge for utility bound to this also.

This will probably be my last update on this build - at least until any new patches drop.

As expected its pretty tough on survivability relying on life + armour once we get into the endgame. Cloak of Flame has helped a bunch but its a slog getting through maps, I'm up to about t6 maps but my success rate is maybe only 50%. Any breach or expeditions that tempt me ... unfortunately almost always get me killed. Not the best build for a league starter that's for sure (I'm moving onto a Monk build next).

I'll leave you all with a couple of Maxroll links I put toghether with Path Of Building 2, that have my character's current gear, skills, and tree in them. We can hit about 32k DPS fully buffed up, or more if I drop Life Thief from Mace Strike.

Here's where I've ended up before retiring this character to seek a more reliable endgame build: Level 76 Giant's Blood Melee Pathfinder

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evilstarship#1007 wrote:

Mapping is tough going with armour and life.

An ES version of this build could be interesting

I had the idea to make a Stormweaver variant

The idea is to benefit from shock chance and double shock stacks which would give us a decent damage boost.

The key to this variant is again to use a novel unique chestpiece: the Ghostwrithe Tattered Robe. This allows us to collect over 5000 energy shield via our massive strength investment + ES nodes on the tree.

I haven't actually tried this myself yet so I think this could be pushed a bit further than the link below suggests, since my gear is probably not optimal for a ES variant (especially jewels).

Here's the Melee Stormweaver variant. It does probably require a bit higher level to work well.

I haven't tried this out myself yet, but it was heavily inspired by Kripparian's Ghost Titan build here.

Would really love to hear if anyone tries out an ES variant!

Happy mapping all, over and out.