1.3 sword nodes - Gotta take 'em all...

If you've looked at the 1.3 tree, there is about a metric ton of sword nodes on it.

Clearly the developers did not really intend for anyone to take them all.

So what's the best way to do it anyway?

I have this terrible passive build:


Which is basically the straightest path from sword node to sword node cluster with a few extras tacked on.
It has no significant defenses, and barely enough life.
It also has the full 396% ipd with swords and other goodies, 60% ias and a grand total of 395% crit while dual wielding.

Most likely the best skill to go along with it would be Cleave.

Do you think there's any way to actually make this work (except by bringing lots of portal scrolls...)?

I have planned a build for the next league which is basically the same idea with the 1.3 skilltree - and you know you want to try it! ;p

Passives Summary:
- 501% increased total sword damage
- 94% increased attack speed
- 130% increased max life
- 163% increased evasion (including dex bonus), 122% increased armor
- 260% increased critchance

Gear Setup:
- two high pDPS, fast swords or foils (bonus if extra critchance)
- Bringer of Rain
- Meginord's Girdle
- Thief's Torment
- loads of portal scrolls (!)

Gem Setup:
- BoR: [Blind + Melee Phys + Faster Attacks] + Cyclone + LGoH + Added Fire + Incr. AoE (switch for Conc. Effect for bosses)
- weapon1: Hatred + Grace + Reduced Mana
- weapon2: Leap Slam + Faster Attacks, Vulnerability
- Gloves: CwDT + Incr. Duration + Enduring Cry + Immortal Call
- Boots: Puncture + Melee Phys + Crit Chance + Crit Multi

Gameplay:
Spin around, Puncture bosses, spin some more, giggle like a little girl and spend a lot of time admiring all the small details in town xD

Good Luck running cyclone on mana with dat tree.

Easy enough, that is what Thief's Torment is for ;). It is very powerful for Cyclone (and tested with a similar build in Rampage) but the drawback of not being able to use a second ring is also huge so getting enough resists will be tough, especially considering that i also loose the chest slot due to the BoR.

Edit: tested it with a BoR in standard and mana recovery isn't an issue but you will need some max mana from gear to be able to use the essentially 7L Cyclone with two auras active. Looks like i will either have to drop an aura early on or switch Added Fire for Reduced Mana until everything is set.

vargon sorry gl but this way never work.

you have finaly from treee 600-700 mana. hartred and grace. so you have 85,2% mana reserved be a level 20 reducedmana. so you have ~100 mana free
cyclone cost you: 28 (cyclone) x 1,5 (loh) x 1,2 (addfire) x 1,6 (con.eff) = 80.64 mana.
that do not work if yo have codt one spell you cant cyclone again, and mast wait your mana regen go up.

cyclone works then fine, you have 2-3x from finaly cost free on mana. but be only 100 you stand 90% still and cant use cyclone again.

next fail on your tree and equipment: you want cap all res whit 3 items slots? and life to? so you have 1 side no chaos res other the other 3 res (cold, fire and lightning be not caped). gl then some mob has ele refleckt you have hartred and addfire up you kill you very fast self^^

be yu gear you have only amulet gloves and boots to cap you res, become some movment speed and life. and near 100 int you missing for conc-effect/inc-area.

and btw, cyclone and thifes, work better you look to have maxed ias. inc-phys its not very improtant for this skill. ias works alot better.

Take Revelry on the tree, it should fix 75% of your mana problem. It's a totally underrated node.

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Draqone wrote:

Take Revelry on the tree, it should fix 75% of your mana problem. It's a totally underrated node.

Thief's Torment already gives me insane amounts of mana per skill use (15 per hit and up to 10 hits/sec when dualwielding 2.0+ aps foils) so that easily covers all running mana problems. The point is whether i will be able to cast at all due to mana reservation and the remaining mana pool being too low compared to the huge mana cost of Cyclone.

"

ZscDia wrote:

cyclone works then fine, you have 2-3x from finaly cost free on mana. but be only 100 you stand 90% still and cant use cyclone again.

From various testing with diffeent chars i have found that i can usually manage if i have about 1.5x the amount needed free and better 2x.
That is indeed a viable concern and unless i get super lucky with mana on gear, i will not be able to run the full damage setup with both auras active. The conc effect version costs about 111 mana and still about 104 with incr aoe and my test char could run it just fine with a single 60% aura active but not with both. For that i would probably drop the aoe modifiers and go with reduced mana most of the time which only costs about 50 mana per use then (testing done with a lvl 19 reduced mana gem btw. and mana costs were 106, 99, 47 on a char with -5% mana cost of skills).

Obviously i still have to pack a mana flask in case my cyclone desyncs into empty space or the accuracy check fails since i will have only about ~15 mana/sec passive regen.
Since i don't expect to get a lot of mana from gear i will only have about 600-700 maximum mana, which would result in only about 85-105 mana free with two 60% auras, so maybe i will switch Hatred or Grace for Purity until my reduced mana is fully leveled.

Resistances are not that easy to gain but certainly possible. Calculating in the passive boni as well as the bonus on a decent but not top rolled Thief's Torment, i would then need 110-120% allres total to be far enough overcapped for any high level curse to affect my char (=90-100% allres in merc). I intended to drop Meginord's by the time i equip the BoR so basically i have four slots to get that number. that comes down to either 27-30% triple res (Haku/Elreon to fill the gaps) or allres combination on all four gear pieces, or T1-2 triple res on three pieces if i get really lucky.
Since resistances are all suffixes, that doesn't interfere with the chance to roll life, mana or movement speed etc but it will cost a bit and i certainly don't expect this char to be overly tanky.

It may look difficult to do but i have already leveled two chars with very similar builds to level 87 and 65 respectively and both did rather well compared to what you usually see in public map groups. The whole point of this build is - in the same sense as the OP meant it - to go for a more purist build that takes pretty much all sword nodes and then to make it work somehow.
If i wanted to make an efficient build, i'd just take the same gear except the ring and use Dualstrike + Splash or Cleave + AoE instead of Cyclone and tweak the build towards a little less damage but more life/defenses. But since my dual claw Shadow will already use Dualstrike + Melee Splash, i want to make another TT + Cyclone char ;)

Edit: typos