Scion claw dual wielding - is it even viable?

The OP was referring to the base DpS of the different weapon types he took from the wiki. His highest char is lvl 30 and yes, i do know what you mean but that is not the point here. My point is to clarify that those base DpS numbers are unimportant when comparing the actual damage you will reach on a well rolled weapon or actual DpS in the game.

While yeah, L30 is my current highest level char, the reason I'm asking here is that I'd rather not spend time on a build that's doomed from the start based on a concept of 'punching fighting woman with claws and hey the synergy of these specs looks great.'

I'd rather find out I'm doomed before I've spent considerable time in a character or not. Especially when I'm told off-forum (oh 4chan, you sillies) that claws were Not Worth My Time™.

Still, given the replies from Lone and Vargorn so far, I'm inclined to say that they may well be Well Worth My Time™, and that I should just roll that Scion Claw puncher something fierce.

Much obliged on that note, I'm actually quite stoked to give that char build a run.

One last question then remains: should I use Iron Reflexes at all, considering the heavy DEX investment I have going so far? Evasion does a lot of good, but it's still a flat 'avoid X attacks Y times out of Z, repeat string' defense. On Merciless, that'd mean getting splatted, quickly. Or will the layered defenses of skills like Endurance charges, Fortify and Arctic Armour carry the day?

I am actually in love with claws right now, because of the life gain on hit implicit and super high base attack speed on most claws you can effectively ignore all life leech gems, gear, and passive points. This allows you to focus on getting great DPS from gear and an efficient passive tree.

Check out my molten claw striker build in the duelist forums if your on a budget.

Also (unrelated to my build), I realized claws have the best eDPS to crit ratios in the game, even beating out a rapier (ignore the superior weapon range of rapier for now). I found a 355 eDPS 8.0% crit claw with 31 life gained on hit and almost 2.0 attacks per second. Put on some flat damage ele and weapon elemental damage gear and an insane crit ele shadow build is made (say reave, multistrike, wed, Inc. AOE, faster attacks)

Yep, claw builds are very fun and especially dual claw ones. I've played several different builds to endgame to lvl ~85 so far (CI and life/evasion based, next project is evasion/armor hybrid). If you are interrested in doing something like that, go for it!" ;)

Btw. i took the liberty of optimizing your passive skilltree a bit. Your original draft had very little armor and evasion scaling so IR would be almost meaningless.

In general i would suggest you level without Iron Reflexes first since some evasion is always great to have. An armor/evasion hybrid build is exceptionally strong against normal mobs and for leveling (no idea why those aren't more popular o.O) but bosses can be more problematic in endgame so if you feel that you are taking too much damage from single powerful hits, you can always switch to IR later.

Personally i like to play those kind of builds slightly more evasion centered in terms of gear but use hybrid/evasion armors whenever possible. Those have the additional benefit of easy rolling for the right socket colours since the chances are based on the gears stat requirements.
With some armor on gear, you should have enough reduction to feel it on those many small hits you take from normal mobs whenever they pass through your evasion. However, since the build includes a decent armor and evasion scaling from passives, you will get a lot out of those Granite flasks whenever you face a hard hitting boss.
My personal advice would be to always carry each one of these flasks in endgame if you go for a crit claw build:

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Dinictus wrote:

based on a concept of 'punching fighting woman with claws and hey the synergy of these specs looks great.'

Too bad you weren't there in closed beta, the Witch had a really stooped stance back then so she'd remind you a lot of a hagraven from skyrim if you outfitted her with claws. Maybe I've got a screen of that somewhere.

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vargorn wrote:

[words words words]

Btw. i took the liberty of optimizing your passive skilltree a bit. Your original draft had very little armor and evasion scaling so IR would be almost meaningless.

[words words words]

Much obliged, Vargorn. I'm actually surprised you snipped in a lot more defenses that way without sacrificing a lot of DPS output. Shows what I know about the damn game.

Gave up on claws after the leech nerfs in 2.0. Before that I had a Bloodseeker build that could leech enough life to face tank all but the nastiest bosses. Bottom line at this point is that with a crit build, no claw can compete with Bino's Kitchen Knife, and it's readily available at a reasonable price. Even with a well-rolled claw, there's nowhere near as much love on the skill tree for claws as for daggers.

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RogueMage wrote:

Gave up on claws after the leech nerfs in 2.0. Before that I had a Bloodseeker build that could leech enough life to face tank all but the nastiest bosses. Bottom line at this point is that with a crit build, no claw can compete with Bino's Kitchen Knife, and it's readily available at a reasonable price. Even with a well-rolled claw, there's nowhere near as much love on the skill tree for claws as for daggers.

Wasn't most of that leech wasted before Awakening? There's an actual point to playing claws now.

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raics wrote:

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RogueMage wrote:

Gave up on claws after the leech nerfs in 2.0. Before that I had a Bloodseeker build that could leech enough life to face tank all but the nastiest bosses. Bottom line at this point is that with a crit build, no claw can compete with Bino's Kitchen Knife, and it's readily available at a reasonable price. Even with a well-rolled claw, there's nowhere near as much love on the skill tree for claws as for daggers.

Wasn't most of that leech wasted before Awakening? There's an actual point to playing claws now.

That's why I used Bloodseeker with its Instant Life Leech mod. With over 10% leech, even mediocre dps was enough to survive. The 2% I get off a leech gem in 2.0 is nowhere close. RIP Bloodseeker :(

Ah, right, ele Bloodseeker is pretty much toast, agreed. On the other hand phys claws in general look pretty good currently, they were pointless pre-2.0.