Full EVA / Block / Acro Duelist Build

i was in cruel on default , i only play default, and i started talking to a player about my build as he was interested in how acrobatics and full evasion was working out for me. i told him about my experience with it from lvl1-40 and he suggested i post about my build on the forums as he has wanted to try to make an Acro build.

so here we are.

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAQQBA0OLpQbmyYEHPN1QCz7rgAuCpKYOhOkcFFL5CBbCV_whI8l8I-9IrCq6bV40NrVqNN9LPDnagDJSWXnJV_IrxlrjXnJiTW8IY2o8MmWn7spu3Pyb18yj-Y2pGP-y91BH9YnDzbP11jf-aMfary8AdKOgzo2JaX6WkrJitrKzkQP9aAlthf0v_IyfC2qCee3u2N1Fzc2oYW_-_H8O3eLIJuuABwL3xWYxmMMI9_GtjPM=

this link will show what my grid looks like right now at lvl40.

early on i focused on the Melee damage up to the first Might node. i did have to grab a few Dex nodes as i noticed my Dex wasn't high enough for either a weapon or a skill, i forget which. i eventually went down into getting Water Dancing and then the Shield passives right next to it. From here on i don't get any more damage nodes.

many people over look the importance of defense nodes, especially early on and as a focus of their build. It feels like you need more damage nodes early on and its fun to be doing crazy damage. Normal is very tame and most builds can do this and be fine in terms of defense; their only issues will be bosses and mobs of blues or multiple rares with aura's. but then they hit cruel or part way through cruel and hit a wall. i know this because I've been making many builds for most of the past year in Beta and have hit this wall in cruel. Cruel is also where gear becomes much more important. the reason why it feels like you need more damage nodes early on is because the base value for your over all damage is low, because of your low lvl weapons. as you get higher up the value you gets higher and the %'s from your passive nodes will amplify your damage even more; which is why you don't need very many damage nodes at all because your damage will be getting better and better as you get mega weapons.

You need defense to dish our your damage, so don't neglect it. After obtaining the shield passives i go for the first rung of Evasion passives directly north of the duelist starting spot. I do not get any more evasion nodes after this, as Dex naturally will give some evasion so it's OK. plus, i need to begin working my way up to acrobatics, the keystone passive that defines the build. Along the way, i grab some needed INT so i can keep using Tempest shield. Tempest shield is nice to use early on as your only Mana reserve skill, it helps with your block and makes you not need as many block nodes early on. Plus the additional damage it does is helpful when grouped by enemies, which happens very often in act 2 of normal and then everywhere else passed normal difficulty. I also get the projectile evasion keystone , which becomes very useful and makes many ranged mobs deal much less damage to me; already we're seeing my survival rate increase. Once you get those first 3 Shield nodes, your defense should slowly build up over the next 30 levels. Continuously grabbing Dex helps with accuracy too, and it is good to use the accuracy support gem on your primary skill to ensure you get your hits in. Eventually we'll hit Acrobatics. some may think that this will cause a large shift, but really it doesn't. if you've been using evasion armor this whole time , you never had any armor to begin with, so you don't notice it being gone; same with energy shield. But now you have an even higher chance to evade damage , with your 20% dodge. you'll also notice i picked up that Might passive , this is in case of any Str gems one might be using and worked well for me because Lightning Strike is the AOE skill I'm using for the build; make sure you have enough Str to use it. 5 levels after getting Acro , we now have 30% dodge and 20% spell dodge! just in those 6 levels , your chance to survive attacks increased by a huge amount.

let me go over the concept of this build. Basically your Evasion will be fairly high , so your EVA die has a good chance to roll high so you don't get hit by enemy Attacks. But if you do fail that die, you have your Dodge die to back you up and hopefully it rolls high enough to allow you to dodge the attack. now if it isn't an attack, a spell, then you have a slight chance to evade spells with phase Acro; nice touch. But if you fail evading , don't worry , your shield has you covered. At lvl40 i stopped using Tempest and started using Grace , to up my Evasion. Grace gave me a much larger gain compared to the 4% from Tempest; plus using both is a huge tax on Mana so i cannot yet do that. Now if you get lucky or trade with some nice fellows, you can up your defense even more. The Lazhwar pendant is a great necklace for this build and i consider it to be mandatory. the reason is because it will increase your defense to spell even more by adding half of your block chance to spells. Many will notice as they get higher in level that spells tend to be their greatest fear; you cant evade spells and getting a lot of resist can be hard especially with the penalty in cruel and ruthless. So spell block will help ALOT. Another thing about uniques, i was lucky to get many of them throughout my play. having Wanderlust , Kaltenhalt , Tricorne and Ashrend made me immune to all ailments; this drastically improved my defense as i wasn't being frozen , taking more damage from shock or taking DoT from ignite. Later on i began to have weak defenses due to the low level of these uniques, so i got more resistance rings with maxed Implicit value to compensate for the loss in resistance buff from Ashrend and Kaltenhalt; i also tried to find some boots with move speed increase as Wanderlust is great for its move speed increase. I still use Tricorne and i consider it to possibly be a perma item, along with eventually getting a Dream Fragment so i cant be frozen anymore. Even though i wont have greater defense from better hats later on , not being effected by shock at all is a great boost, plus it gives a bit of a bonus to my block recovery so its nice that it helps my shield defenses. I may decide to replace it depending on new uniques or other ways to be immune to shock.

I think that covers a good bit about the build thus far, let me focus a bit on weapons. I decided to go with a Rapier. The reason is because of its high attack speed, allowing me to get in fast hits. having a high attack speed is a lot of fun, plus once you start getting some life leech from rings or other gear ( i suggest trying to roll that mod ) having a high attack speed will ensure you can quickly get back some more hp whenever you fail your evade/dodge/block defense tri-fecta. At lvl49 claws start to get life leech instead of life on hit, so i am going to switch to claws at that level. i am not there yet , but i have some thoughts about it.

Claws have a lower attack speed compared to rapiers. this will be a bit of an issue , especially the first claw at 49 has a really slow attack speed, so i may skip it to get the lvl52 one which has a nice 1.5 attack speed. Since they have a lower attack speed, getting a good IAS mod is very important if not required for your weapon. this will ensure you have adequate DPS and are frequently getting hits in to ensure you have a lot of life coming back through the leech. Your leech should be fairly high, if you have 2% on each ring, 4%, 6% from the implicit mod on the weapon , the 4% from the passive node ( which is right about acrobatics i might add ), plus any other life leech you may have; you should have above 10%. Depending on your DPS, i imagine you should be leeching roughly 30-60 hp a hit. With high Attack speed you should have no problem getting back lost hp from taking a hit or two in between evading everything else.

I think that covers most things. I don't have skills set in stone as i don't know what works best, but i use Double Strike which should be your primary skill especially higher up for leeching life very fast. i mentioned before that Lightning Strike is good for groups, although cleave can hit more and IMO has a easier hit range, Cleave does lesser dps. with adequate mana , adding a simply LMP on LS will make you able to clear groups faster since you'll have 5 projectiles. Other than those two, Tempest Shield and Grace for improved Defense and possibly Warlords Mark to have more life leech. Warlords is Mana costly so i don't know if it' use is worth it. Also the combo of some of those uniques i mentioned before is very nice as it adds a lot of Mana regeneration rate, which helps a lot when spamming skills. I would say getting a reduced Mana cost support on Grace and TS would really benefit you in the long run with having more MP to use.

Now after you get Phase Acro, what do you get next? well, on the way to Acro you opened yourself to being able to grab lots of nice passives. the Shield passives near the Ranger start is probably what I'm going to get next, as my shield needs more block chance. After than, getting the Last rung of Evasion nodes will allow me to not worry about them for the rest of the trip to lvl100. By that point you should be close if not ready to use claws, so if you are then head north from Acro and spend 4 levels getting more damage to claws and more life leech. After that get the shield passives right above them to ensure our shield is being effective.

I know this was a long read and i hope it makes sense. Overall this build has been the best I've played throughout the beta and i really enjoy it. Don't be scared of Evasion and try it yourself.

I'll update this more as i get higher up in levels. i will also update it upon OB as I'm sure many changes since then will make me change my strategy. i plan on streaming my play of PoE when OB starts. I hope to see you all then.

i just saw this and I'm about out the door for work so I didn't read pretty much anything beside the title and that you are lvl 40.

I've been interested in doing an acro duelist, let me know how this goes in maps. Not sure if I want to do a S&B again but this build has been in the back of my head for a while now.

sword and board is utilized in this build to maximize defenses. i think this is the reason why it does so well because i have such high survival ability. the damage can be an issue, ive been a bit lucky with getting weapons with lots of elemental damage on them , making my double strike have much more dmg from than than from high physical dmg. ill be using claws at lvl52 or so, which is when i'll need a weapon with high phys dmg+ and attack speed; not much else is required. high phys dmg as possible and fast attacks to leech that life back in between evading and blocking.

as ive hit ruthless i've noticed that more hp is needed and more damage is now needed. i grabbed several hp nodes the past few levels and my hp is much better than before , but now im gonna grab some one-handed dmg modes to help out my physical damage. 4 levels of that , then back into investing in shields, then claw life leech passives, then the last 6 big evasion nodes is mostly likely what im going for the next...20 some levels. by then evasion should be around 80% i hope, block at ~60 with tempest , giving 30% spell block from my neck.

and obviously at 40+ gear becomes super essential. passives make normal difficulty easy and you can survive without super good gear. but cruel requires better gear and then ruthless + you really need to start farming equips to make your life easier.

UPDATE:




this is what my duelist looks like at 45. doing the lvl40 area in act 1 isn't so bad with this setup. at this point im going for some dmg and possible the other attack speed node near the duelist starting point.

since my guy will switch to claws at 49, im getting claw passives once i have the said claws that give % life steal. i'll also go for the claw passives near the 30 int node i have, as the phys dmg gained from it is pretty large and the attack speed and accuracy will help. basicly right now i'm trying to up my damage output before i go harder into defense. getting a lot of dmg passives now will benefit as i try and get more defense passives later.

the only way to really die with this build is a couple of ways:

getting hit with the invulnerable curse hurts , as when any enemy gets a hit in you take more dmg than you would when not cursed, causing minor hits to be more serious and fatal.

the other way is simply getting bad luck with RNG. failing evasion , dodge and block 2-3 times in a row on a strong blue or yellow mob will kill you. but fyi, this has happened to me once throughout my entire playthough. so it wont happen that often.

after you obtain claw, claw passives for lifesteal and dmg and one-handed dmg passives it'll be time to get the last ring of evasion nodes, a few big str and hp% nodes, and then completing all the shield/block nodes near shadow and duelist areas. at that point, evasion chance should be 70%+ ( it's 60% now with the evasion aura ), block be 60% ( without the shield aura skill ).

i haven't been playing much due to job and other games, plus i feel any more speculation now and testing will have a wrench thrown into it once we see how Act 3 is. based on the enemies, bosses, quest rewards, it's possible it will change how the character is built. so i'm waiting till OB to really finalize everything.