[1.2] Oldschool, cheap and noobfriendly "Sword&Board" Marauder

Interesting build. I think I'll try this!

Enjoying this build a lot.

First (and only) problem encountered thus far - Cruel Dominus.

The first sub-bosses (Rogue Exile-like characters) all too easy - just facetanked as usual.

The LAST Dominus form - too easy. Just facetanked.

The FIRST Dominus form however - died 10 times. Some of it was desync, some of it was my slow reaction time but mostly, I've never lost HP so quickly with capped resists to ANY other mob or boss in this game. That lightning stream thing Dominus does seems to hit you before you can see the action on screen and even running or leap slamming away didn't seem to help.

That, and while running away, he explodes those corpses that are already thick on the ground by that stage and causes insta-death.

Now this was my second ever Dominus fight TBH, although I don't consider myself a boss fight noob either since I've been dealing with all the other bosses since Closed Beta.

I know how to kite, pre-empt boss maneuvers to avoid getting hit, use pots (had lightning resist and seething / bubbling life flasks mods) and know when to run like hell or run circles around if things don't go well.

Since Dominus' first form is all about elemental attack (and I don't count that "hand of god" crap which is as easy to dodge as the Vaal smash) - being in close proximity to Dominus is a BAD idea. With this build, you're using Reave or Heavy Strike with Melee Splash and need to be nice and close.

If I had ANY kind of ranged attack skill it might've been useful (and slow as hell considering the non-ranged / non-elemental spec-ed skill tree) although that kind of defeats the point of this build, doesn't it?

What have other people used against Dominus with this build, with good survivability?

Cheers

P.S. To finish off where I started - I really do like this build but this Dominus encounter just puzzles me no end since it's such a specific part of the fight that went all wrong and I felt completely helpless to his attacks.

/end rant

Any videos of this build in action?

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systemdown wrote:

If I had ANY kind of ranged attack skill it might've been useful (and slow as hell considering the non-ranged / non-elemental spec-ed skill tree) although that kind of defeats the point of this build, doesn't it?

You can level up a spectral throw gem. All the sword/onehanded passives also help with spectral throw, you are "only" losing the melee damage passives.

Dominus Cruel is a tough fight.
You can facetank him (I do with most melee builds), but this requires serious gear (iE some lifeleech on gear and a 200+dps sword).

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Route1 wrote:

Any videos of this build in action?

No, and there will not be.
It's not like this will show something interesting.
Rightclicking down monsters, great... ;)

Just wanted to update. I'm almost through Act 1 Cruel. Nothing in Normal was bad save Dominus, Vaal and a few of the corrupted area bosses that had elemental where my % was low at the time.

Vaal was awful mostly because it was my first experience with it, and this build has no ranged so 2/3 of the time, Vaal seems like he will one-shot melee. I must be missing something in the right approach on this.

I tanked and spanked Piety with flasks and never got below 1/3 health.

Dominus. OMG. I finally gave up and went and swapped out gear and got 75% resist from some crappy stuff I had in stash and that made all the difference.

Brutus Cruel was tank and spank with flasks.

My biggest problem was DPS until I finally got a decent sword. I literally went from 200dps to 850dps with a sword change. My drops had just been awful so I finally broke down and made my first scan of the xyz site to find something to buy.

Multistrike is godly, especially with reave and life on hit. Only bosses make my HP go below 100% right now in cruel. I can go gather up 20 mobs and then reave them down. It's really entertaining.

I'd say this build really starts to come into its own with Multistrike and around level 40.

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Peterlerock wrote:

You can level up a spectral throw gem. All the sword/onehanded passives also help with spectral throw, you are "only" losing the melee damage passives.

Yeah that's a good tip, was thinking Spectral Throw might synergise well - I'll do a weapon swap with a beastly 2-hander and throw in LMP and Faster Projectiles. I'll only need it for less than 5% of cases but it may provide me the ranged survivability I need.

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Dominus Cruel is a tough fight.
You can facetank him (I do with most melee builds), but this requires serious gear (iE some lifeleech on gear and a 200+dps sword).

I have 2% life leech on gear, 2% from passive and 7% Life Leech gem + Reave + Multistrike but that's not enough to restore HP while facetanking. Have 150-250 phys DPS sword and 1500 tooltip Reave DPS so damage isn't an issue here - it's that I can't facetank Cruel Dominus for more than about 2 seconds at a time before I have to flee, otherwise I risk certain death.

I'll equip Spectral Throw and see if I can't do the fight again without dying - I suspect I'll be okay.

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jaredh wrote:

Vaal was awful mostly because it was my first experience with it, and this build has no ranged so 2/3 of the time, Vaal seems like he will one-shot melee. I must be missing something in the right approach on this.

With Vaal it's all about timing to make sure you miss his attacks, it's possible to not get hit once. Basically just run circles around him the whole time while attacking him in between his attacks. Rinse and repeat until he's dead.

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Dominus. OMG. I finally gave up and went and swapped out gear and got 75% resist from some crappy stuff I had in stash and that made all the difference.

Just wait until Cruel!

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My biggest problem was DPS until I finally got a decent sword. I literally went from 200dps to 850dps with a sword change. My drops had just been awful so I finally broke down and made my first scan of the xyz site to find something to buy.

I used the Rare Rustic Sash + Whetstone + Sword recipe to craft +% increased Phys Damage swords all the way through Normal and most of Cruel - actually all of Cruel up to and including Piety. I went on poe.xyz before Dominus because I knew I'd need something better, not that it helped me much (but that's probably for my own lack of strategy against Dominus, I'll tank him better next time).

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Multistrike is godly, especially with reave and life on hit.

Yeah it's a great setup and a very satisfying play style. You might get better results with Life Leech vs LGOH as your HP increases, though.

This is my first successful build! Thank you so much Peterlerock! i've not taken out Dom in merc yet, but i've made it to level 70, have started playing maps, and life is good. I still feel like a noob with no idea what im doing, but actually succeeding at a build and making it to end game is very satisfying, so thanks.

Now im working on armor upgrades, no five link yet, and im sure its time for a new sword, but i do ok at not dying (im certain dom will disprove that) unless im being stupid or desync foils my attempts to move out of the way. my reeve is at 4.4 to 5.9K dps depending on which aura im running, and 3750 life. currently at 53% block chance with tempest shield. am working on the block nodes now. i've got a 4L/5S armor with good stats that will up life to 3.9K but i cant get the right colored linked sockets yet, ran through 2/3rds of my chromatics before i decided to stop trying.

Did a map yesterday with lots of chaos monsters who couldn't be cursed so i couldn't leach life or extra mana, and cleared it without dying :D. that felt like success. my chaos resist is low still (-23%), but as long as i figure out who is throwing what type of damage at me, there usually seems to be a way to deal with it. Only one guy has one-hit killed me so far, in a merc corrupted area. Have no idea how i would have addressed that, so decided not to try again. repeating the 10% death penalty just didn't seem worth the certainly doomed effort.

i've left my reeve on mana for now, with 3% leach on my gear (that extra 1% gives me some wiggle room for gear upgrades), & i've stuck with warlords mark for my curse, i like it generates endurance charges, and that i tend to stay at full life when facetanking the big baddies(except one hit guy, the bastard! :P). dont have all your suggestions for "curse on damage taken" running yet, part of that is a gear/socket issue, but so far so good, with continued room for improvement!

All to say: this really is an easy-to-play, noob-friendly, low-cost build and i highly recommend it to anyone struggling with how to succeed at this game. i've learned a lot from this build and the thread discussions. So Thanks, and Cheers!

Thanks for the kind words!

About the corrupted zone bosses:
I'm not the right guy to give any advices, I mostly skip those zones as i'm not particularly interested in the rewards.
Some of those bosses seem pretty crazy, even without difficulty mods on the zone itself.

You definetly want to be overleveled and overgeared to fight them, and even then you may have to adapt your gear/flasks/playstyle.

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Peterlerock wrote:

Thanks for the kind words!

About the corrupted zone bosses:
I'm not the right guy to give any advices, I mostly skip those zones as i'm not particularly interested in the rewards.
Some of those bosses seem pretty crazy, even without difficulty mods on the zone itself.

You definetly want to be overleveled and overgeared to fight them, and even then you may have to adapt your gear/flasks/playstyle.

....you probably should be. The chests in corrupted zones are by far better than anywhere else as far as I can tell. I've see at least 10 through normal and A2 cruel that have the 1000%+ mod.

I had a level 19 Cast on Crit gem drop from a box last night. I can't even use it. The gems were in a box with +14 level or some such. Most of them are level 15 or higher.

The same box had a rouge exile that dropped about 20 blues, 5 rares, a chaos orb, and a unique. I did leap slam/item rarity him though, so that might have made a difference.

I've only ran into one CZ boss I couldn't deal with after a death or two (which is usually just my laziness and my laptop touchpad being not the best way to play the game), and that was due to the dumb enfeeble curse along with the nemesis mod the boss had.