1 claw dual wield reave, tanky and great clearspeed [HC] [budget]

EDIT: NOT UPDATING THIS THREAD AS OF 23.09.2015.

Hey there, this is my guide to a dual wield claw shadow while only using 1 claw and having a stat stick in the other hand, which makes this build very cheap to build.

Starting off with pros and cons of this build:

con:
- you have to be more careful because you are a melee, there is always more danger to play melee builds
- dangerous to whirling blades into something, be extra careful

pro:
- very quick, whirling blades with all your attack speed makes you cruise through maps in seconds
- high damage
- huge AoE after vaal reave
- a lot of fun
- mostly reactive gameplay, not as boring as totem/caster/summoner builds (subjective)

bandits:
normal - oak - 40 life
cruel - kraityn - 8% ias
merciless - kraityn for a frenzy charge

claws:

If you have a Soul Taker or have invested in Spirit Void and maybe even a jewel with +2 mana gained on hit, "Eye Gouger" has the most LGOH/Attackspeed/DPS ratio. If you have a choice and/or want to craft, pick an Eye Gouger.

If you don't have a Soul Taker or Spirit Void & mana gained on hit jewel, pick a Gemini Claw because it resolves a lot of the mana issues you will have until you get a Soul Taker.

stats:

Defense with 7 frenzy charges up. Add fortify and 3 Endurance charges to that, 72% phys reduction and 20% base reduction makes it pretty strong for physical damage.



Offense with 7 frenzy charges + blood rage

Remember: The tooltip DPS is not correct because I am using a soul taker in my main hand and it calculates my reave with the soul taker. I have a lot of claw damage from my tree and Soul Taker is an Axe, which doesn't even have quality on it. My DPS would be more about 50k with 7 frenzy charges and blood rage up.

If you were to put on both heralds instead of grace, dps would be about 60k.

gem setup:

Helmet
Spoiler



1 Herald of Ash - You will use that in combination with hatred for 75% mana reserved until you get Soul Taker
2 Faster Attacks - just leveling it up in the helmet
3 Grace - For when you get Soul Taker and can reserve 100% of mana (you can also decide to play more offensively and either use Haste Aura or Herald of Ash and Herald of Ice, I recommend the latter)
4 Hatred


Boots
Spoiler



1 Enduring Cry - Endurance charges for some hard packs/hard hitting bosses
2 Temporal Chains - Temp Chains for some hard packs/hard hitting bosses
3 Vaal Reave - To stack your reave buff to 8 for huge aoe
4 Blood Magic - To be able to use it without having to worry about mana


Gloves
Spoiler


1 Whirling Blades - (level 1 to not increase mana cost, only used for movement and fortify) [disregard if you use Soul Taker as a stat stick]
2 Curse on Hit
3 Temporal Chains
4 Fortify


Chest
Spoiler


1 Reave
2 Multistrike
3 Melee Physical
4 Faster Attacks
5 Added Fire
6 (You could use culling strike or anything else here, personally I'd take a high quality culling strike over anything else)

Gems are in order of importance, I played with a 4 link up to lvl 83, i added Added Fire just at 83 as I linked my chest.


Rest of the Gear

Spoiler


Passive Tree:

Passive Tree at lvl 89 (my current level)

Trees for leveling as shadow:

NOTE: You should pick up iron reflexes at about level 65-75.

I updated the tree to show you that you can easily pick up iron reflexes at about level 75. If you wish you can take it earlier but I personally had no problem with physical damage until higher level maps (75+). Your choice, though.

About level 12

- Getting some life and damage, usual starting path for a melee shadow

About level 25

- More life, some life leech and getting the claw cluster, you can avoid getting the claw cluster if you are leveling with non-claw leveling weapons are have problems finding good claws, just continue with the tree down below without taking the claw nodes if you indeed can't find decent claws and/or have far better leveling weapons.

About level 52

- More life, more life and some more life, in-between we get some attack speed at the ranger start. We also get some very important mana gained on hit/mana leech to sustain more easily. You can also get a 2 mana gained on hit jewel but I could not fully sustain a 4 link with that.

About level 72

- More life, some dual wield stuff and attack speed and more life, we are now done with all the life nodes we are getting. Here comes some long awaited damage!

About level 78

- Here we got iron reflexes and all our frenzy charges, preferably you should get iron reflexes first, defense first for a HC build.

Later on you go and get yourself ambidexterity and blade barrier (in the dual wield cluster below duelist) and you can get the 2 claw crit nodes in your claw cluster which you should have left untouched until now.

If you can get a Soul taker you of course should spec out of the mana leech and mana gained on hit (Spirit Void)

Video

Short Video to demonstrate this build

Demonstrating clear speed while staying very safe, I could have put a lot more emphasis on clear speed with 2 heralds instead of grace but I feel much safer with grace overall. In a non-hardcore league you can easily run those 2 heralds in addition to your hatred (if you get Soul Taker, of course)

Leveling: Start with Ice Blades until level 12 where you get reave. From level 12 on you will use reave only, you can start playing dual wield as soon as you get reave to increase your dps by a lot. You can also use a stat stick as soon as you want, it makes it a lot easier to just get 1 good claw instead of 2.

I was playing with
before I got myself the Soul Taker, it is a very powerful and cheap addition to your build. Free culling strike and 100% uptime on onslaught (20% ias and movement speed).

If you have any questions, just post here or whisper in-game @Litto
@litto or @kaharon
Last edited by Kaharon on Sep 23, 2015, 3:56:06 PM
Hi there,

this looks good. I'll give it a shot later on.

As hint, the linked trees for the leveling secion are broken. (Old version of the tree)
Lucky me got a Soultaker on Standard :D

█▀▀▌ █▌█▀▀▀ █▀▀▌█▄░▌
█▀▀█ █▌▀▀▀█ █░░▌█▀▌▌
█▄▄▌ █▌█▄▄█ █▄▄▌█░█▌
Hey this build look really nice ! I was wondering if you think its atziri viable ?
It's definitely atziri viable. I didn't want to try it out on tempest so far because I wanted to level to 90+ and didn't want to risk it.

Updated tree section, should now work properly.
@litto or @kaharon
Last edited by Kaharon on Jul 21, 2015, 8:09:14 AM
Thanks for the reply , i was looking for a atziri viable cheap build thanks to you i think i can start my new character!
post edited i got my answer from your video!
Last edited by _Betamax_ on Jul 21, 2015, 10:49:37 AM
Not sure I would call Soul Taker budget, but nice build.
Last edited by omniscientblue on Jul 21, 2015, 11:05:48 AM
What do you think of these gloves for the build:


Extra atk.speed, poison on hit, accuracy and even life for a unique piece. Not sure how reduced frenzy charge duration would work out.

Also which claw base/stats i should look for?
About the soul taker is it important to have good roll on it or it doest matter that much ?
"
Not sure I would call Soul Taker budget, but nice build.


I know what you mean. As I told I was playing up until lvl 86 with my Relentless Fury (which in most cases costs less than 1 chaos) and had more damage with it than with my Soul Taker overall. I just like the comfort of running a defensive aura, reserving 100% of my mana and never having to worry about any mana at all. The Soul Taker is in no way "mandatory" for this build to work properly, it will make it actually weaker, dps wise but I felt that I had more than enough dps to clear all the 80+ maps I wanted.

"
Taddis5 wrote:
What do you think of these gloves for the build:


Extra atk.speed, poison on hit, accuracy and even life for a unique piece. Not sure how reduced frenzy charge duration would work out.

Also which claw base/stats i should look for?


Gloves are interesting, 14% IAS, 30% Accuracy, the reduction to Frenzy Charge duration does only reduce frenzy charge duration to 8,6 seconds because you get 54% increased frenzy charge duration from tree, if you wished, you could switch 10 dex with another 18% increased frenzy charge duration and would get 72% increase of frenzy charge duration overall which then would make your Frenzy Charges last 10,2 seconds (with the gloves and 7 charges up). The poison on hit won't make much of a difference unless you are fighting against bosses. It will increase your damage only by a little amount and most bosses do have chaos resistance so that makes it even weaker. You can try it out if you wish, I guess in the end it is a DPS increase over my gloves but I would not want to trade my chaos resistance and higher life & armor/evasion for 1% IAS, 30% Accuracy and a little damage boost.

"Eye Gouger" has the most LGOH/Attackspeed/DPS ratio. If you have a choice and/or want to craft, pick an Eye Gouger. If you don't have a Soul Taker, pick a Gemini Claw because it resolves a lot of the mana issues you will have until you get a Soul Taker.

"
_Betamax_ wrote:
About the soul taker is it important to have good roll on it or it doest matter that much ?


Stats on Soul Taker don't matter at all. They will increaase tooltip dps but the tooltip dps is wrong anyway, so you can get the worst Soul Taker there is and still have EXACTLY the same actual DPS because you are only attacking with your claw.

- Edited current passive tree to show how I switched around points to get a DPS increase of over 2000
@litto or @kaharon
Last edited by Kaharon on Jul 21, 2015, 1:07:09 PM

Report Forum Post

Report Account:

Report Type

Additional Info