Scion claw dual wielding - is it even viable?

So I've been looking around at builds and build options recently for the Scion, wanting to build what basically is a dual wielding face punching (without the actual Facebreaker Gloves proper) machine capable of staying alive, but also giving a beating.

I'm finding myself sorely disappointed, however, with the damage output of claws versus that of other weapons available. Even when I spec around claw improvements (as per this build), I am basically only working with suboptimal gear and damage outputs versus, say, something less claw-centric (such as the example here).

So here I am with a few questions. Just how viable, or doable, or even fun, can a dual wielding claw build be? Especially compared to what can be done with axes and swords?

Additionally, should I even spec for Iron Reflexes at all? I would imagine it to be a necessity at higher difficulties, or especially Hardcore proper.

Oh hey, neato, moved to Gameplay Help. Suppose that'd be a better place than the completed builds section.

Thanks, based mod.

Before i go into more detail, are you set on doing this with a Scion or would you also consider Shadow or Ranger?

Generally, dual claw builds can be pretty strong but you would need two good crit claws for that (240+ pDpS, 7.5%+ critchance). Luckily, those are rather cheap atm since they are not in flavor atm ;).

"

vargorn wrote:

Before i go into more detail, are you set on doing this with a Scion or would you also consider Shadow or Ranger?

Generally, dual claw builds can be pretty strong but you would need two good crit claws for that (240+ pDpS, 7.5%+ critchance). Luckily, those are rather cheap atm since they are not in flavor atm ;).

Scion for flavour and jewel slots. Though if Ranger works better according to you, I'd love to see that.

Still, dual claw build compares well to say, swords or axes? The wiki seemed to indicate generally much higher numbers for the latter weapons compared to claws. Would you care to explain?

Check Sceaduwe in my characters if you want a look at a dual claw (albiet shadow but I go across to the scion life wheel so you could do it as scion) build.

Non crit because at the time I most certainly couldn't afford high pdps crit claws.

Does 60k dual strike dps with layered defence (50% evasion, dodge, spell dodge, block, 3 x endurance charge, fortify, arctic armour etc).

"

Dinictus wrote:

Still, dual claw build compares well to say, swords or axes? The wiki seemed to indicate generally much higher numbers for the latter weapons compared to claws. Would you care to explain?

Sure! Claws have a lower base DpS than swords or axes but in the end that difference is negated mostly by their faster attack speeds.
Now, if a weapon has rolled 100% increased damage on it, it will increase the DpS by 100%. But if it has rolled something like +15-25 physical damage, the x% increase it gets from that depends on how much damage it had before and its attack speed.
In other words: a faster weapon with lower base damage will scale "flat" added physical damage better than one with high base damage but slower attack speed.

The second thing is crit. Claws have a decent base critchance and some good crit passives so they can reach a moderate (~40%) total critchance relatively easy. With some more investment, you can get into the 50%+ range where crits start to get really good.

Swords, on the other hand can reach a similar critchance but only with one-handed Rapiers, which are usually very expensive compared to axes or claws.
Now those Rapiers have that juicy crit multiplier bonus on them so while the critchance and damage are similar to claws, your crits would be stronger. Claws on the other hand make up for that by allowing for a more offense oriented build due to their ability to regain a lot of life and mana quickly.
Especially that mana gain will save you usually 3+ skillpoints that you would have to put into mana leech/ gain on hit otherwise.


In short:
Axes:
highest base dps, easy and cheap to reach good damage but not suited for "going crit" so your options for further scaling your damage output are limited.
Swords:
Medium damage but fast with high accuracy. Arguably the most versatile of the weapon types that can be tailored towards any build.
Claws:
Medium damage but fastest weapon with high life/mana regain. Well suited for a crit build but can also go without.

i havent had time to make a build guide but heres my basic dual crit claw character. i started as duelist and realized that duelist is ok but not optimal starting point. i thing ranger is best starting point for this build. you could of course go scion if you wished but the outcome would be something different all together and less effecient i believe.

my build link-

https://www.poebuilder.com/character/AAAAAgIACC6bjRmO7YMAXtN-7-MDh5VmG63-un1173pNkiP2o4ruDo19_MVKfeOfh3YNjWegAAZieRX2pMIUdVuvKaV08Rjb0_wJWNunwYshYL_VU7tEnkMx2sEFLXTteu8uU9NvhO9D5zndY3AR1VeXYEG-p0d-vTZlTYTZUUcwfI2_3edei4O9tMXC7AW1YqydqmyMtUhtbDY97UGmf7GzYeImlRa_VUuMNtDQRwbb5-uOz-kuCJP8j_pJUfDVBx6VLt1IuNkBCRGWwaDWB4_BSxyNgRX9eBlvVxLhouriXoDhtxc4lnBSKgvz6v_eJP3nVO0_N9TximwI


you can of course change it up a bit. aura nodes could be useful if you wanted to run 2 purities and herald/arctic armour.

use grace and arctic armour is my standard defense setup unless those are just useless in a certain fight then switch out to purities. for running easy mode stuff i have herald of ash and hatred.

use enduring cry- i like to have a cwdt setup with IC/ blood rage/flame golem. swap in/out blood rage as necessary.

still have testing on final setups but for now i have the 3 reaction skills with life leech/mana leech. vegeance is paired with a lgoh.

whirling blades with faster attacks and fortify of course.

eventually i would like to dual curse so i could use enfeeble. my main curse is poachers mark.

so far im just using a bunch of rares with 2 pretty meh claws. laz for heavy spell areas.

never lacked for damage either. right now im sitting at 7k with my defense auras, no real damage nodes taken other than what is taken while pathing to life. so damage is never really problem. blood rage adds a huge boost when you turn it on and turn off grace or arctic armour and replace with a damage aura and dps goes over 10k so when i get good claws and get some damage nodes the dps will really really jump.

currently using a 5 link and using molten strike/GMP/PPAD/multistrike/added fire. just happened to roll 3 reds on my armor so thats what i went with for now. and i can change out added fire with lgoh when i want to. late game id rather have crit/multi

flasks are great! try to have surgeons flasks of every type. rumis/taste of hate/atziris good flasks too.

and last thing i can think to add is that revelrys +2 mana on hit is what completely sustains your mana. only works like that when using MS/GMP/multistrike combo tho. u can get rid of revelry if you wish by using a +2 mana on hit jewel. not sure if late game 6 link setup is sustainable on just +2 tho. might need +4 at that point im not sure.

overall he was stupid powerful thru leveling. i have an absolute blast playing him but gotta be careful its not exactly easy to play and i wouldnt suggest it for hardcore tho thats possible. gotta keep your buffs up and be greatly considerate of what your fighting.

one shots are the only big weakness of course but you shouldnt be standing in one shots generally.

the biggest deal to remember is that you can get yourself in way way to deep at times and suddenly die. for example i went blazing into a bunch of magic spiders. health doesnt drop because of the massive hits and lgoh. spiders stack tons of viper strikes on me which isnt noticed till its far to late. chaos damage hurts but this weakness can be negated with the correct gear and using flasks.

basically if you dont read monsters mods and want to face roll this build is not for you. if you want a good cheap to work melee build that will test the limits of how good YOU are of a player then this is surely it :)

good luck and have fun. edit- take a look at my profile and check out my character if you want too. insultswithinaction is his name. hes currently lvl 76 and already done up to lvl 73 maps with no problems.

"

vargorn wrote:

Sure! Claws have a lower base DpS than swords or axes but in the end that difference is negated mostly by their faster attack speeds.
Now, if a weapon has rolled 100% increased damage on it, it will increase the DpS by 100%. But if it has rolled something like +15-25 physical damage, the x% increase it gets from that depends on how much damage it had before and its attack speed.
In other words: a faster weapon with lower base damage will scale "flat" added physical damage better than one with high base damage but slower attack speed.

I'm not 100% sure you know how damage is calculated.
Making a difference between flat and % damage on the weapon itself is meaningless. Both increases local DpS.
For flat damage on other gear (like Abyssus), what you write is true.

---

@OP
The choice of a weapon class is pretty meaningless in PoE.
They all work.

No matter what you decide to wear, you'll be able to afford a decent 200-250 pDpS pair of weapons and murder monsters with it.

Claws make no real difference.

"

Peterlerock wrote:

I'm not 100% sure you know how damage is calculated.
Making a difference between flat and % damage on the weapon itself is meaningless. Both increases local DpS.

Alright, let me clarify this then: average local DpS on a weapon is simply [average damage] x [attack speed]. I put the two stats in brackets since both can be affected by affixes on the item. If we write the formula out, we get:
(average) DpS = (local base damage + local flat added damage) x % damage increase x attack speed x % attack speed increase
As you can see, all the boni are multiplicative except for the local flat added damage as i tried to exlain in my previous post. But maybe it's easier to understand with an example:

Weapon A: 20-80 damage, 1.2 attacks per second
-> average damage = (20 + 80) / 2 = 50
-> average DpS = 50 x 1.2 = 60

Weapon B: 21-55 damage, 1.5 attacks per second
-> average damage = 38
-> average DpS = 57


Obviously, weapon A is a bit stronger in terms of base DpS. Now we look at what happens if we "roll" 100% increased damage, 20% increased attack speed or +15-25 flat damage on the weapons respectively (all local mods on the weapon itself of course!):


+100% increased damage leads to
Weapon A: (20-80 damage) x 2 -> 40-160 damage, 1.2 attacks per second
-> average damage = 100
-> average DpS = 120

Weapon B: (21-55 damage) x 2 -> 42-110 damage, 1.5 attacks per second
-> average damage = 76
-> average DpS = 114


No surprise here. The DpS scales linearly with %increased damage so +100% damage means +100% DpS. The same goes for %increased attack speed as shown in the example below:


+20% increased attack speed leads to
Weapon A: 1.2 ApS x 1.20 -> 20-80 damage, 1.44 attacks per second
-> average damage = 50
-> average DpS = 72

Weapon B: 1.5 ApS x 1.20 -> 21-55 damage, 1.8 attacks per second
-> average damage = 38
-> average DpS = 68.4


Now we get to the interesting part where we add +15-25 damage to each of the weapons:


+15-25 damage leads to
Weapon A: (20-80 damage) + (15-25 damage) -> 35-105 damage, 1.2 attacks per second
-> average damage = 70
-> average DpS = 84

Weapon B: (21-55 damage) + (15-25 damage) -> 36-80 damage, 1.5 attacks per second
-> average damage = 58
-> average DpS = 87


As you can see, weapon B now has a higher DpS than weapon A even though it has a lower base DpS! Obviously, the same happens if you add all of the mods:


+100% increased damage, +20% increased attack speed, +15-25 damage leads to
Weapon A: ((20-80 damage) + (15-25 damage)) x 2, 1.2 x 1.2
-> 70-210 damage, 1.2 attacks per second
-> average damage = 140
-> average DpS = 201.6

Weapon B: ((21-55 damage) + (15-25 damage)) x 2, 1.5 x 1.2
-> 72-160 damage, 1.8 attacks per second
-> average damage = 116
-> average DpS = 208.8


In this example, the initialy weaker weapon B even became slightly stronger than weapon A since the same flat added damage had a bigger impact compared to its base damage.
If you now feature in other factors like available passives, critchance, accuracy and the scaling from global flat added damage from jewellery etc., the effective power of the individual weapon classes more or less evens out in the end.

"

Peterlerock wrote:

For flat damage on other gear (like Abyssus), what you write is true.

As you can see from the simple example above, local flat added damage makes an even bigger difference than global added flat damage because it also gets scaled by the weapons local %increase.

Let me quote you again:

"

But if it has rolled something like +15-25 physical damage, the x% increase it gets from that depends on how much damage it had before and its attack speed.
In other words: a faster weapon with lower base damage will scale "flat" added physical damage better than one with high base damage but slower attack speed.

In terms of local dps, a 200 dps weapon is a 200 dps weapon, no matter its base item, weapon class, aps or whatever.
And since you need both rolls (flat and %) for a weapon to be useful in endgame, all your calculations are pretty obsolete. A local flat damage roll is 100% mandatory on any physical weapon. And no matter the base item, I will have to pay similar amounts of currency for similar DpS. So what are you trying to prove here?

But considering global dps, with other gear (like abyssus, iron rings...) a "200 dph, 1 aps" weapon scales worse than a "100 dph, 2 aps" weapon because you get the flat damage bonus "more often". That's what I mean.