RT elemental cleave Atziri/maps viable! 50k DPS

Here's a simple, flexible, generic build that abuses the once loved combination of alpha's howl and soul taker. With soul taker being as cheap as 3 ex nowadays, its a very affordable build, with great stats overall, as well as great reliability. The main goal is to maximise "more" effect to grow damage to high levels without crit, making it a lot cheaper and less spiky. It also gives great defensive stats. The following are what we use to maximise damage:
Dual wield cleave, weapon elemental damage, concentrated effect.
Being dual wield cleave effectively gives 30% more damage to aura damage. Wed and cfx are more damage on all the damage you deal. This can bring your dps to 50k and more, depending on your gear.
This is a duelist but it can be played as templar with success, probably better since you save points from moving out of duelist area. Duelist strenght is mostly being more flexible early on. Easier to level with facebreaker for exemple. Getting ondar's more easily is another great factor.

-Great damage. 50k is enough to plow through the game, even atziri go down pretty fast.
-Great defense. 6k hp, more is possible sacrificing a bit of offense. 10 seconds immortal calls, 76/75/75 resists. Can switch an offensive aura for purity, lvl 21 will give a huge +8 max resist thanks to +60% aura effect and alphas.
-Atziri viable. Yea we all love to kick her ass every now and then.
-Can run "hard" map mods. Every mod except blood magic and double reflect is doable. Well -20 max res elereflect could be too hard lol
-Flexible defense. Can spec into iron reflexe/unwavering or into ondar's. Depending on the content you run both have advantages and switching between the tw cost 6 regrets only.

-Clear speed is ok. Not slow by any means, clears packs real fast but being melee with a standing attack is naturally slower than tornado/spectral/wand/flicker...

Oak
Kraytin or point
Oak
Duelist tree with resolute/iron reflexe (upcoming!)
Duelist tree with ondar's (upcoming!)
Templar tree (upcoming!)

Main attack is cleave. Links I use are:
Cleave/cfx/aoe/wed/multistrike/faster attacks

Increased aoe can be dropped if you don't have a 6L, doesn't hurt anything but clear speed. When I need to switch an aura to a purity, I usually switch aoe for added lightning to cover the damage loss.

Reducedmana/anger/hatred/wrath.

Obvious choices. While some may argue for 2 heralds instead of hatred, the +2 level from alpha is a good reason to stick with it, + I love the 3 skulls mtx :3. Also makes switching any of the 3 purity in easy.

Curse on hit/warlord's mark/leap slam/faster attacks


Lazy man's life leech on all damage. This spare a gem slot since we won't need life leech, and makes life easier in not needing to stack high % of leech on physical to be really effective. Elemental weakness is a good choice for offense, but you'll need to invest more into leech% and damage is enough on 99% the content, so we can cast ele weakness if needed when it happens.

Enduring cry/echo/blood magic.

Fast max charges.

Immortal call/increased duration/blood magic.

For hard hitting physical hits.

Last links are for flexibility. Some people like cwdt or vaal skills (haste or cyclone are good here) but I prefer BM/enhance/elemental weakness for tanky bosses. Also gets us a place to switch in herald of thunder/reduced mana when we switch an offensive aura for purity.

Current gear:


Tips on leveling gear:
I liked the duelist start for the good mana patch it has. The 40% regen and massive pool is really helpfull to get to soul taker's lvl 59 requirement. A cheap way to get decent defense until high end gear is to spec into mind over matter and use the mana gain on kill/hit cluster. Really not mandatory, but it let's you get away with like 20% resist in merciless without trouble.
Other than soul taker and alpha, all gear is up to choice. We like wed and life, need some resist and thats it. You can get into massive evasion or not, good armour, good chaos resist or other stuff (iir+hp comes to mind) Higher dps gloves can help (mostly elemental weakness on hit gloves and ias/damage). Heck even aureize can be great for the big rarity in a single gear slot.

For areas: just use immortal call, jump and clear/run. Really not hard or even risky if you keep up 100% IC.
For double vaal: no gear switch. Just take both to ~20% hp then kill one after the other fast, like pretty much all builds.


For trio: unwavering is a must, at least to me. I switch my belt to a endurance charge corrupted belt to give me 10 secs IC. Game play is simple, enduring cry until max charges, immortal call, enduring cry again, jump attack and reset IC/e.cry at 1-2 seconds left. Kill the melee guys first, cyclone first if you have a hard time vs chaos damage, and the rain lady last. When she's you last victim everything will be physical damage (yea even the degen ground), so IC makes you litterally invincible. Don't slack on permaIC, you die fast from pretty much everything at this point without IC.

For atziri: I switch out anger for purity of fire and herald of thunder in my boots. Switch my gloves to bbrg to get elemental weakness instead of warlords mark in my leap coh. Level 21 pof into alpha with 60% aura effect gives +8% max resist, I have +1 in the tree, which adds up to 84%. Makes it 94% with ruby flask up. I switch to 2 rubies flask, 1 topaz (and 2 life flask). Instant flask ain't as important as other areas in the game I prefer sapping. I also switch out increased aoe for lightning pen since atziri is resistant and I deal mostly lightning damage with anger out and hot in.
Normal phase is easy, you can take double flameblast with ruby up, dodge multiple storm call and just hit her at will, she'll go down really fast. Split phase is harder. If you are out of flask somehow, go back to your hideout to fill or you will probably die. Keep constant topaz/ruby/life flask up and go all in on either the flameblast or storm call clone. I prefer when the spear clone is on the opposite side for extra security.