Eric_Lindros: FB ignite Shield charge Marauder [1.3.x, solo, cheap]

Initial damage

With Facebreaker, added phys damage from gear is the main priority. You will get Abyssus helmet (50 added phys damage), Meginord's Girdle belt (15), rings (max 2x12) and amulet (max 20.5), and little bonus (5.5) from optional shield crafted mod. Marauders base unarmed damage is 2-8 (5) Total maximum average phys damage of this build is 120. Max roll Facebreaker (800%) makes it equivalent to 1080 damage weapon.

Shield charge distance damage bonus scales linearly from ~200% more damage at max distance (60 units) to no bonus (= tooltip damage) at close range. You don’t need to always charge at max distance, 30 units (radius of unaugmented Ice nova) and 100% more damage is often enough

Aura: Hatred provides additional damage as well as survivability (via chill)

Mods and Passives: damage of Shield charge FB build has following properties: melee physical attack damage. Stay away from mods that say “weapon”. Unarmed does not count as weapon damage

Gems: Shield charge – quality melee splash - melee physical damage – added fire
Optional 5th gem: melee damage on full life

Reasoning: you focus on hit damage. Attack speed is irrelevant. It would make the charges faster, sure, but you can achieve the same with quicksilver flasks, and it is not as much important.. you want to kill all with only one charge anyways. Most of the charges are made when on full life. It’s a nice bonus, but not reliable.

You will want chest armour with good stats thus the low budged build won’t include 5L. You can 5L it later but you don’t need it for soloing high maps.

Ignite

Ignite comes from Herald of Ash (HoA). It is worth improving its damage because the overkill damage can be truly massive.

Example: Let’s say you charge at a trash mob (8k life) in the middle of a pack for 30k damage. Overkill damage is 22k and lvl 18 HoA ignites nearby enemies for 33.2k (22k * 1.51), which is 6.6k base burn damage for second. ~200% increase makes it 20k per second on non-resistant enemy. Good news is that dead bodies continue to proliferate the ignite until the duration ends, killing approaching mobs before they can reach you (charging rhoas, leapers, or spawned mobs – fracture/beyond)

Mods and Passives: burning, fire, elemental, DoT have all the same effect, AoE damage affects (should affect) only ignite caused by mobs killed by splash damage. My char has total 150% increase

Gems: Herald of Ash – elemental proliferation – increased burning damage – reduced mana

AoE

Aoe is very important to be (and feel) powerful. Max effective AoE reach is the sum of HoA, melee splash and ele proli radiuses. I find mandatory to take 20% increased AoE Templar cluster

(Note that radius is an integer value. Similar to almost everything else in PoE, it gets rounded down)

HoA: base radius is low (10 units), templar cluster makes it 12 (which performs much better). It would be nice to have more, but not worth the sacrifices you’d have to make.

Melee splash: base radius is 14 units (16 with Templar AoE cluster). You can (should) increase it further with melee splash quality. I recommend going for q16 (19 units). Another unit can be gained from corrupted mod on belt (optional).


Map Boss Killer

Vaal Cyclone – melee phys damage – concentrated effect – added fire

Very strong. Kills most map bosses. Can be dangerous in some cases, because when there are many mobs around, monsters sometimes get stuck in the middle taking no damage and hitting you (I call it “The eye of the Cyclone”). Always make sure you have endurance charges and Granite flask up. I also recommend performing one charge first to take down surrounding mobs.

Offensive curse

I dont use any, dont need it and have no time to cast it. The obvious choice would be one that affects both initial hit and burn. Vulnerability and Elemental weakness are similarly strong with this setup

Kill speed and mobility are the best defenses, but it does not mean that we are to skip the real ones. Shield charge is a skill that is likely to get you out of sync and you need to survive in situations when it fails to hit

Life

Getting enough life is easy with this build. You should have life on most rare pieces of gear, some comes from Strength, and there are many %life passives around.

Aim for 4k at lvl 70, 4.5k at lvl 80 and 5k at lvl 85+

Physical damage mitigation

Build hits at close range and uses Abyssus thus phys damage reduction is mandatory. Good news is that Abyssus´ “increased phys damage taken” mod takes effect after the mitigation and not before.

Stacking Armour only is not good enough, because of Armour formula and its low effect against big hits. Based on my analysis I decided to rely on Armour + endurance charges. Charges provide flat mitigation added on top of reduction from Armour formula. There is also Soul of Steel passive providing additional 4% flat phys reduction

You should have solid Armour on every piece of gear, the most comes from chest armour and shield. Aim for 8k at lvl 70, 10k at lvl 80, 12k at 85+

7 endurance charge + Soul of Steel passive for total additional 32% phys damage reduction
For maximal effectiveness, enduring cry is being supported with spell echo

You also use Granite flask of iron skin against bosses and known big phys hitters (chargers, leapers, spike-on-death monsters, flicker, etc)

(Note: physical damage reduction is capped at 90%)


Elemental + chaos damage mitigation

75% elemental res is good enough. I don’t care about chaos res, gear with it tends to be too expensive for budget build and I haven’t found it to be an issue. Chaos hitters die fast and DoTs are being countered by regen + flasks + mobility. But its nice to have some if you can afford it

Other defences

Regen and life leech: helps against DoTs and to keep you on full life (important when playing with 5L). I have 4.8% (+ 1.4% with charges) regen and 3% life leech from tree. You don’t need more, trust me:)

Mana leech: 1% on gear is more than you’ll ever need to solve mana management

Enfeeble: I use it against tougher bosses

Gear

Helmet - Abyssus
The most expensive stat on Abyssus is crit multiplier, which is irrelevant for this build. Get the one with lowest damage taken mod you can afford

Links: herald of ash – increased burn damage – elemental proliferation – reduced mana

Body Armour – STR based rare

Mod priority: Armour > Life > resists
high links are irrelevant. Build works with 4L and you can 5L it later
(got mine for 5c – 5-linked later with Vorici)

Links: Shield charge – melee physical – (q)melee splash – added fire – (optional)melee phys on full life

Gloves – 750%+ Facebreaker

Links: vaal cyclone – melee physical – added fire – concentrated effect

Boots - STR based rare
Mod priority: Movement speed > Life > Armour > resists

Links: hatred - reduced mana - enduring cry – spell echo

Shield - STR based rare
Mod priority: Armour > Life > resists > free prefix for added phys crafted > block
Getting Great Old Ones Ward unique shield for added phys damage would be nice, but you need armour and other stats. Crafted mod is optional
(found mine)

Links: Lightning warp – reduced duration; enfeeble/vulnerability

Belt – Meginord's Girdle unique
If you have resources, consider getting one with corrupted mod, either +1 endurance charge or %increased AoE (for extra unit of Melee splash)

Amulet and rings - rare
Mod priority: added phys damage > resists > int/dex (requirements) >life > leech
Don’t forget about mana leech mod, at least 1% is mandatory


as you can see, my gear is not super good:)

Flasks

My preferred setup is:

Seething/panicked Divine flask of Staunching
Eternal of Heat
Granite of Iron Skin
Quicksilver of Adrenaline
Quicksilver of Warding

Tree

Keystones: Unwavering Stance, Resolute Technique
no need to explain further, get these asap

Important mods: melee physical attack damage (+ while wielding a shield), life, armour, endurance charges, life regen, phys damage reduction, AoE, burn damage, life leech

Lvl 60
Lvl 75
Lvl 88 (final)

Leveling is easy. First you buy Facebreaker (buy any if you cant afford 750%+ and upgrade later). Then you get Meginord's Girdle belt. Use jewelry with added phys. This is enough until you get Abyssus.

You can start playing the build as soon as you get melee splash (level 19) and elemental proliferation on Herald of ash (level 24). Use Infernal blow on the same link with splash (I was using IB+Shield charge+splash+melee phys until lvl70)

My rules for leveling:
1) don’t buy anything you won’t use endgame
2) as long as your damage is fine, put points in defenses
3) Always aim to have solid elemental resistances towards second half of act 3

Bandits: Oak (or kill all), Oak, Oak

Quality gem priority: melee splash

Charge from pack to pack. Try to avoid charging near terrain obstacles. Find a good position for a maneuver using quicksilver flask or Warp. Cast enduring cry before and after the charge. If there is someone left who failed to die, finish him off with short-distance charge or reposition with Warp (this is often better against tougher enemies in case you use 5L (damage on full life) because repositioning gives you some time to top up your life pool)

Kill map bosses with Vaal cyclone after performing one charge to take down surrounding trash mobs. Have Granite and charges up. While cycloning, you can’t move, which can be sometimes dangerous. Good example is Temple Piety with her lightning bolts.

Have Quicksilver flask up when moving from pack to pack and while charging. Use Granite against known big phys hitters (chargers, leapers, spike-on-death mobs, bears, etc), reflect mobs and while Vaal cyclone effect

I recommend binding Shield charge to left mouse button, this way it performs only in case you actually target an enemy, not the ground next to it

It takes some time to learn the playstyle, you’ll figure it out while leveling

Yeah, Shield charge is desync heavy skill. The main reasons are terrain obstacles.

Where it comes from

Due to action prediction system, your position on server is slightly different than your position on client. Same goes for the enemies. Now when you target an enemy, there can be something blocking the path even though it looks fine on the client.

How does it look like

You charge at enemies, they take no damage: this means that something blocked your charge on the server (you in fact did not hit the enemies)

You get blocked by an obstacle, enemies far away take damage: It went fine on the server, but not on client (you did the damage in fact)

How to avoid problems

First, try to avoid charging near the obstacles, through the door, etc. You only need one good charge, so when needed, take your time to get in good position (Lightning warp). When you notice something is wrong (as described above) use /oos macro

Conclusion

It is not so bad when you pay attention, because you usually need only one charge to kill the pack. I’ve never died to desync with this build. But still, if you think that desync is your worst enemy, Id not recommend this build for you

Don’t charge at full distance. Against physical, have Granite and charges up. Be more careful if using 5L setup. Charge towards the edge of the pack, rather than straight in the middle of it. Block also helps. You will figure out the ideal distance/strategy while playing. Not a big problem though. I’ve died only couple of times due to not paying attention

This build does not perform well in parties. The reason is that monsters have more life, which means you are no longer able to one-shot them (with overkill damage) -> you need to repeat charges -> less fun, more desync, you don’t feel that powerful any more. It is somewhat ok in party of two (with 5L setup)

Map mods

Physical reflect: I never play these
Elemental reflect: Playable (you turn Hatred off), unless in combination with -max resists
Blood Magic: I never play them, the problem is you cant use HoA any more
-max res in combination with added elemental dmg: playable

That’s it, this build is ideal for playing rare maps, because there is only handful of bad mods.

Fracture and Beyond mods are interesting, because mobs are spawned on top of slained enemies, and are usually burned to death quickly from burning corpses proliferate

Map layout

Prefer open maps with enough space. The more obstacles the less clear speed and more problems with desync

Bosses

Avoid those with high chaos damage (unless you invested in chaos res). I got raped by the one in Museum (in lvl 74 Zana map)

Also avoid high elemental damage ones (Torture chamber, Dominus...) in –max resists map

Don’t use Vaal Cyclone on Temple Piety (especially on the one from high Zana map)