Is This Skill Tree Build Any Good?

So a few things to keep in mind beforehand:

-Im going for a melee physical life leech build

-I only ever play hardcore

-Im coming back to the game next week with "the awakening" on the next new hardcore league, so new economy, as in i won't have pages and pages of uniques and currency to go with the skill tree build so while there will be better build options with specific gear in mind, that won't be possible in the new league for awhile at least.

-I haven't played PoE in about a year so, so things may have been nerfed into the ground etc (for example i see you can now build crit chance and crit multiplier in skill tree, although i decided to save the skill points and mercy of RnG especially with the chosen life leech path, electing instead for "resolute technique" hits can never be evaded, can never critical strike, but this may be notoriously bad to you guys because of recent changes)

https://poebuilder.com/character/AAAAAgEAKjipbngNxti18jWS_grYvfJF_o9N46ZXOuExnm6qSsiKr5ARguSE2QHcvopHfr02ZU2-p90NLOnK0xm0W69OKiml_MVKfeOfh3ZnoIUydPEY21hjPfz2SIzPXz9QR-RR7w4UIPIvGj5qO2oeHOd8uCkuVw3ZYa2Nz352rPKcpzCezW6X974B5xiRvJ_8SxRNNuhhIeLqhO907XrvBS1gSzIJcmxsRhSp3uVWLdX4xLh46wqbWK_SIfJBggfZfOlGypCK8MSCe4yeV-oY9zJ82ecKdn-ExL2BmSsV7LkdXzmbLd3j9OawqzqzbmmHKR6U

I first made a Witch CI and all other ES skills build, until i read about perma cc from lower base life to base the chance of you being cc'd off, and again having little access to specific gear in a new league making it so that isnt currently a viable option.

So i then built a marauder, last time i played i enjoyed it, leap slam and heavy strike + faster attacks life leech increased physical damage multistrike etc and aura's and figured i would give it another go and see whats changed while doing so.

I personally feel the skill tree build i made is not ground breaking/cutting-edge in any way haha, but that it has been built well, having spent every last skill point wisely and in synergy with the life leeching melee attack build im going for.

If i had to criticise my own build i think or feel it may not have quite enough damage, it may take longer to kill things/level. It has life leech, instant life leech, alot of extra life to leech with, alot of attack speed to keep up leeching, resistances where i could find them, increased armor and lots of random little stats along the way, but....

I do have the 120% increased melee physical damage, 12% increased physical damage, 26% increased physical damage with attacks (not sure if that all applies for example for leap slam and heavy strike or not) but what i dont have is points specialised in areas like increase 2h damage by _ or increase axe damage by _ which is generally more each node for specialising.

I decided that i hadn't decided (haha) on whether to go 1H and shield or 2H or dual wield etc and then which type of weapon for each because not speccing into those leaves me free to use whatever whenever, the best part of this making it so every time i find a much better weapon, i can always use it and not worry if im specced into that weapon type or not or whether it has to be 2h or 1h and shield, dual wield etc. Is that worth the damage loss from not speccing into specific damage types on the skill tree?

Any thoughts, opinions, views, advice, personal experience or anything else that anyone wants to share about the build made or any of the above is much appreciated and very welcome :)

Thank you for your time.

"

Whiskiz wrote:

Im going for a melee physical life leech build...
...leap slam and heavy strike + faster attacks life leech increased physical damage multistrike etc...

It might be worth your time to have a brief read of the Upcoming Changes to Leech.

The general idea of it is that leech on a single target is a lot less effective, but leeching from a whole pack of mobs is a lot better. Your heavy strike single target leech might have some minor problems in regards to this.

It depends though, just something to keep in mind (your build looks solid)!

there is a typical big "mistake" there, which is ignoring endurance charges with melee armour based build. Get at least 2 from the tree, one from a bandit and one in form of Soul of steel passive. Keep the charges up. This is how you get tanky using armour

plan with ~100 points

"It might be worth your time to have a brief read of the Upcoming Changes to Leech."

Thanks for that, i had/have no idea of current up and coming changes, ill have to find the place to look at that again. I like the idea of better leech on packs, but maybe not less on bosses because if you cant sustain enough on a boss, you cant kill them in theory and need to repeatedly teleport back to town to heal after pots.


"there is a typical big "mistake" there, which is ignoring endurance charges with melee armour based build"

Thanks for the input, i actually specced for 2 extra endurance charges, but the node next to them saying increase life regen on them by 0.2% made me think thats all they did, did not see the damage reduction and ele resist, and with vaal pact the life regen was negated. Thanks for the input!


"I see no increased maximum endurance charges, intention to use melee with limited AOE, some sort of inclination to have a bit of armor, plenty of investment spilled into supporting mind over matter which will cut down your defenses in other ways and most importantly it is meant for hardcore. Seems really suicidal to me.

I strongly advise playing ranged for hardcore unless you specifically like melee. The game has not evolved to the stage whereby melee is that hardcore viable yet."

The only really decent melee AoE i have seen is leap slam so i was going to go with that, the investment into MoM gave me basically 30% damage reduction (into the mana) in and of itself, but then allowed me to also pick up very close by so minimal investment nodes including Iron Reflexes (the convert all evasion to armor, which also synergies with +evasion nodes i have picked up along the way) 1 point for +30 strength +22% life +12% atk spd and +8% move speed. Still not worth?

Also, again 30% damage reduction via mana, are you sure all that investment isnt worth? especially if it counts for chaos damage also and even better DoT's like puncture etc...

I had gotten to the last difficulty on hardcore before with a leapslam/heavystrike marauder life leecher/life on hitter. I didnt have vaals pact though but crazy life regen life on hit and life leech, only ended up going down in that spider den thing with the massive black widow chaos damage dealing spider boss where the room literally filled up with so many enemies that i couldnt see the floor and when i leapt near my portal to get out of there i couldnt move a few feet to get close enough and got taken down before long.

Though that means i never made it to maps/endgame to see the viability, but on the way it was pretty strong, again a literally packed room where i couldn't move, and chaos damage on hardest difficulty chaos penalties is what ended up brining me down.


So far though i will definitely be revising some of the build for endurance charges, one way or the other, and revisiting leech and maybe melee altogether if anyone else can add anything about melee endgame (i know its fine enough levelling/through the difficulties, just not as easy/faceroll as ranged ;)


Edited: Wow, so apparently Vaals Pact is getting put almost on the opposite side of where it is now in the skill tree, between shadow and range apparently, there goes that whole idea. should i not even make a build til this awakening comes out and they are finished changing up the skill tree? Guess everything ill learn from this thread will still be worth it either way :D

Thanks DeadPeng, more awesome feedback

MoM - i completely get what you mean now about MoM, it was a wistful dream of mine of having perma 30% damage reduction which would disappear magically, the reality being it'll drain my mana with this build in one hit and it definitely needing to be built for it, haha. Thanks for the heads up and explanation.

(Could you even currently make a viable eldritch battery and MoM build? they are literally on the opposite ends of the skill tree, you'd have to give up a ton, have a ton of just base stat increase nodes to reach both, smh)

Vaal Pact and Life Leech - Yeah i guess ive known some of the dangers of life leech builds but had never done vaal pact so i had good life regen and pots to fall back on if needed, doesnt matter anyway i guess because even though it is apparently going back to giving full life leech instantly instead of %40, vaal pact is apparently getting moved to in-between shadow and ranger which couldnt be further from marauder coincidentally and/or strength/melee-spell builds and the full life leech being a max of 20% of max health on top.

New Life Leech - As i mentioned the thing that took me down was spider cave where literally i couldnt move from the entire room being full of chaos damage spiders, good to know if i did make a life leech build that this would no longer be as big of a problem as it was since group leech is being buffed, and yeah ill guess ill have to see if i can pick up enough of the new leech from the tree and elsewhere to make it viable for bosses then too.

Monster Phys Damage Increase - This is the thing that may kill it for me regardless - increased enemy physical damage, meaning increased need for phys protection as melee which just isnt possible with the need for tons of life, life leech, all resistances, something for chaos damage as well as some damage on top and utility like atk speed move speed and even taking some armor still didn't stop some things hitting like a truck like the aforementioned rhoa's charging or that kole miniboss dude in the palace in one of the end acts, now its gonna be completely insane, you ever get hooked from kole and its gonna be insta R.I.P lol.

Looking possibly like Melee is now going to R.I.P.......