Dual wield Last Resort vs Unarmed Facebreaker analysis

I haven't seen much talk of Last Resort and what little I did see, mostly focused on using it as an off-hand boost for another weapon so I thought it would be fun to compare a dual wield Last Resort build to the closest build I could think of: an unarmed facebreaker build.

For those unaware, facebreaker gives you a huge physical damage multiplier if you're unarmed (up to 800% more now and up to 1000% more if you have a legacy facebreaker). The idea is that you equip a bunch of "Added x physical damage" mods on your equip, stack general increased melee damage from Strength, passive nodes, and skills, and you do respectable damage despite not using a weapon.

Unarmed base damage: 2-8 physical at 1.2 attack speed

Amulet = 15-26 physical
Ring = 9-15 x 2 physical
Belt (Meginord's Girdle) = 10-20 physical
Helm (Abyssys) = 40-60 physical

Total = 85-144 x (1.2 attack speed) x (up to 11 from Facebreaker) = 1,112-1900
Which is then multiplied by your increased physical damage total which is multiplied by your increased attack speed and then modified by your skill & support gems.

Now let's take a look at Last Resort.



That's not a perfect Last Resort, but there isn't a huge variance for quality or rolls since the base damage is so low.

The main advantage of Last Resort are the three mods for low life.
+100% Increased Claw Physical Damage
+25% Increased Attack Speed
+100% Increased Accuracy rating

These mods are global so if you dual wield last resort, they get doubled.

Last Resort base damage: 12-39 physical at 1.35 attack speed

Amulet = 15-26 physical
Ring = 9-15 x 2 physical
Belt (Meginord's Girdle) = 10-20 physical
Helm (Abyssys) = 40-60 physical
Glove (Since we don't need Facebreaker) = 7-12 physical

Total = 102-187 x 1.35 attack speed x (1 + 0.5) increased attack speed x (1 + 2) increased physical = 619-1136

Now that's noticeably less than our result from Facebreaker but we're not done yet.

Dual wield bonuses
619-1136 x 1.1 more attack speed x 1.2 more physical damage = 817-1499

Still lower than a max roll legacy facebreaker but about on par with a high roll on a current Facebreaker. And there's still more to discuss.

Unarmed attacks can't critically hit. Last Resort can. And as fate would have it, one of the key items we were already planning on using, Abyssus, can get up to 150% increased critical multiplier with melee weapons. This is a huge potential increase in overall dps.

Last Resort gets a massive +200% accuracy rating bonus. Even if your only accuracy comes from dexterity, you should have a solid hit chance (assuming you go through a dexterity class area). Throw on a decent +accuracy mod on a piece of equipment or two and it shouldn't be hard to max out your accuracy even in endgame maps. And remember that high accuracy means more critical hits (since your accuracy gets checked twice when critically hitting).

With Last Resort, you have more skill options. Unarmed can only use Dominating Blow, Infernal Blow, Cyclone, Elemental Hit, and Frenzy. Dual wield Last Resort can use all of those except for Infernal Blow, but can also use dual strike (for x1.8 damage effectiveness) as well as some utility skills like Flicker Strike.

While dual wielding Last Resort, you can grab claw & dual wield passives. In particular, the 12% claw life leech over near the shadow tree is really nice on a physical-focused claw build like this.

You also get 3 more gem slots compared to an unarmed build.

All in all, I think a dual wield low life Last Resort build should be at least as viable as a facebreaker build (and even better in comparison in leagues where legacy facebreakers don't exist). The major difference being that the best scaling with the Last Resort build comes through crit chance & crit multiplier rather than through increased physical damage & increased attack speed (although those still help). You lose the block chance & defensive stats from having a shield slot, but that penalty should be able to be overcome by getting a good rare glove with defensive stats (with added physical damage, of course) & through your higher life leech from the claw passives.

You can't keep main hand empty, unless using a quiver or a shield in offhand, otherwise weapon automatically equip into mainhand.

Peace
-Vivre-

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Vivre wrote:

You can't keep main hand empty, unless using a quiver or a shield in offhand, otherwise weapon automatically equip into mainhand.

I think you misunderstood my post as I specifically stated that the unarmed build would probably have a shield. I never once state that the unarmed build should have a weapon in their off-hand since that is not possible.

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werezompire wrote:

"

Vivre wrote:

You can't keep main hand empty, unless using a quiver or a shield in offhand, otherwise weapon automatically equip into mainhand.

I think you misunderstood my post as I specifically stated that the unarmed build would probably have a shield. I never once state that the unarmed build should have a weapon in their off-hand since that is not possible.

I think you misunderstood my post. It was a sarcastic referration to user -removed by support-, who posts into almost all threads without reading their content first, or just writes a well known fact to up their post count.

peace,
-Vivre-

If you go low-life, wouldn't that mean that you need either Shav's or Lorica?

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GooberM wrote:

If you go low-life, wouldn't that mean that you need either Shav's or Lorica?

No, in fact you can go low-life without using those items

peace,
-Vivre-

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GooberM wrote:

If you go low-life, wouldn't that mean that you need either Shav's or Lorica?

That's the usual opinion.

My personal thought is that a dual wield Last Resort build could work well with Immortal Flesh. You'd lose about 10% total dps from not using Meginord's Girdle, but you'd gain a lot of physical defense & absorb (to help with the Abyssus drawback), you'd be able to better use Arctic Armour (which also helps with the Abyssus drawback), and the extra life & life regen would probably give you good survivability against chaos damage as long as your chaos resist is decent. So then you'd be strong against physical, fire, and chaos and weak against cold & lightning (but hopefully you'd have enough energy shield & energy shield leech to deal with those).

You'd maybe get similar damage potentially, but you have to give up an awful lot of defense. Going low-life without Shav's/Lorica is do-able, sure, but you end with a very fragile build no matter how you slice it.

The biggest benefit of doing a Facebreaker build is precisely that you can make it very tanky, because the damage doesn't rely heavily on passive tree investment. Doing similar damage to FB while investing heavily in the passive tree for damage, and having shit defense, is not a good build.

was gonna comment but Sorak pretty much covered what i was about to type.

You would require heavy passive tree investment as well as heavy item investment, without good results from either.

If you would invest in a stronger base build you will come out on top imo. It's doable for sure, but it would yield sub-par result's compared to builds with similar investments.

peace,

-Boem-

edit : maybe bloodseeker claws + last resorts could yield some interesting results in a double strike build?

Oh, this is very wrong math.

Facebreaker's provide a large "MORE" damage effect, which is multiplicative.

Last Resort adds a large "INCREASED" damage and aspd effect, which are additive with all your other increased damage/aspd effects from the tree or otherwise.

Regardless, going DW low-life, even with the "chase unique" Shavronne's Wrappings, is a recipe for disaster. You'd be much better off (higher damage, higher survivability) with any two strong rare claws on full life.