3.0 Gladiator Dual Wielding Sword Crit Cleave Cheap Beginner Friendly Build

So here is a build I made during 3.0 beta which I copied over into 3.0 At the very least it could handle Uber Izaro with portals and idols as well as gargoyles and fonts, fully buffed (gargoyles and fonts were done during beta).

Update: I've created a copy of this build in 3.0 and it is running t13s at the moment at level 87 (still working on my atlas).

So after breaking into t11s, I noticed that the amount of life I had was inadequate at 4k life. Before starting red maps, I would highly advice 4.3k life. Believe it or not, that 300 life makes a huge difference in deciding whether you live or die.

Pros:
+ Good survivability
+ High Block
+ Good with maps
+ Great Damage on 5-link. You don't need a sixth link really.
+ Cheap individual items
+ No unique flasks required
+ Some Physical Damage Mitigation
+ Semi Permanent Fortify
+ 4.3% life regen (higher depending on Pantheon)

Cons:

-Poor clear Speed
- Low Life At level 82, I only have about 3.8k life
- Not as much crit as I would like, cap seems to be about 75% probably after everything if you choose to use increased critical strikes gem. Otherwise, expect about 50-56% crit. Path of Building seems to indicate that it might be more efficient to go for increased critical strike damage.
- Very difficult to distribute Assassin's mark and obtain power charges reliably.
- Below block Cap (at 64%, not bad though)
- Chaos damage is very dangerous to this build. If you can, try and get some chaos resistance
- Low intelligence (need one piece of gear plus 3 passives to make up for this)
- Can run a bit low on mana unfortunately, nothing major in actual combat, but you can't spam whirling blades non-stop without a few mana regen mods on gear
- physical reflect over entire map This build cannot handle reflection at all if it's a property of the map

Path of Building Pastebin Link: https://pastebin.com/BxWryTLF

Path of Exile Tree Link for level 86: https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/3.0.0/AAAABAQCAAAGAdwEsQUtBiAGiwaiCVgKJgxzDY0UIBXsFfYX3Bm0G60g4yFgI9Mj9iT9KCowfDGwMfs1kjrhQKBGt0d-Sn1M_02STipQR1FHW69ei18_X9pgQWJ5Y3BlTWqTbydvO3SgdPF2rHfjeA15aHrvexR_44O9hNmFUod2ivCLT419jb-PYJAKkveVZpd5mmqbaqOKqW6tjbGztfK5Hb02vqfAGsEEwYvKkMv1z37Tb9P81FLYvdlh26fcvd3n5FHnD-dU6UbuDu8O8kX4AvzF_gr_3g==

Path of Exile Tree Link for level 100: https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/3.0.0/AAAABAQCAAAGAdwEsQUtBiAGiwaiCVgKJgxzDY0UIBXsFfYX3Bm0G60g4yFgI9Mj9iT9KCoshTB8MbAx-zWSNe831DrhPT4-z0CgRrdHfkp9TP9Nkk3jTipQR1FHWhpbr16LXz9f2mBBYnljcGVNZ4Bqk220bydvO3SgdO108Xasd-N4DXloeu97FH_jgUGDvYTZhVKHdorwi0-NfY2_j2CQCpJ9kveVZpd5mG-aaptqo4qmV6gHqW6tjbGztfK5Hb02vea-p8AawQTBi8qQy_XPftNv0_zUUti92WHbp9wj3L3d5-RR5c_nD-dU6UbqGO0_7g7vDvJF9zL4AvzF_gr-j__e

This link contains the passive tree as well as all gear I used during the beta.

Ascendancy Points Order:

1) Painforged
2) Versatile Combatent
3) Violent Retaliation I picked this one first only for the block chance. This can be swapped with 4 if you want. It is also very useful when surrounded by packs. 8*10= 80%. That's not light.
4) Outmatch and Outlast

Items:

Spoiler





Uniques Required: Rat's Nest, 2 Scaeva Gladius, Anvil Amulet

One piece of gear should have intelligence on it: It seems like belts are no long a good option so I would have the intelligence on a ring.
Pricing:

C means chaos if you're new.

Scaeva info: Coloring on the Scaevas is important, every green socket gives 10% critical strike multiplier so ideally you would want to have all greens on both, but 1 has to be red for fortify.

Uniques:

1 Scaeva Gladius should have a high crit chance when in main hand. Probably 5c because of the necessity of having the increased critical chance rolled out; if you don't care too much, you can use a 1c one while you save up. This one should be 2 green sockets and 1 red socket linked and contain a high roll hopefully for increased critical strike chance when in main hand. Odds are this one will have worse physical damage so it makes more sense to have less global critical strike here.

1 Scaeva Gladius should have high physical damage in offhand. This provides 8% block. Probably 5c because of the necessity of having the increased critical chance rolled out; if you don't care too much, you can use a 1c one while you save up. This one should be 3 green sockets because it can have a high physical damage roll without a high cost.

1 Rat's Nest preferably with at least 65% crit chance. Buy low roll if you have to temporarily, but honestly the crit nodes should only be taken after you finish getting your block points so this piece shouldn't be present until you can 2B1R this piece of gear.

1 amulet: Anvil amulet probably won't be too expensive, probably 1-3c.

Rares:

1 5-linked armor preferably with physical damage mitigation and life roll of about 100 maybe with resistances if necessary. This should probably cost 10c max. Dye it to have 3 Reds and 2 Blues linked together. Belly is great if it has 35% or higher increased life otherwise you might as well use a rare.

Ideally, I would pick either boots or gloves to be purely armor based though to allow for 4 red sockets allowing for the 3 green sockets on the Scaeva.

Gloves: Rare. Should cover elemental resistance. Accuracy is nice here if you can get it. Getting life here is a must (40 minimum, try for as high as you can go)

Boots: Rare Should cover elemental resistance. Movement speed is nice here if you can cover your resistances while having movement speed. Having a life roll is a must here (40 minimum, preferably higher)

Belt should probably be a sash with some life, resistance.

Rings should be resistance preferably with life rolls. At least one ring should have a life roll (30 life minimum). If you can't get accuracy on gloves, here is another place to try and obtain some accuracy if possible.

Jewel: 1 jewel should be bought to help out with resistances or just anything you want since it makes sense to go for constitution early.

Jewel: Overwhelming Odds: Quest reward now (otherwise just buy it from player market).

Items here other than the 5-link were typically socketed and fused by me. All items were chromed by me as well.



Expected Accuracy: Ideally you want at least 2300 accuracy endgame; because the crit chance you have isn't as high as I would like it to be, I would aim for 2400-2500 accuracy though if possible.

One last note for discussion: You can use Rumi's flask as a supplement and possibly drop some of the block nodes if you want for other types of investment if you choose; however as I stated, this build does not required Rumi's.

Linkage:

Spoiler


Main elemental/physical damage setup: Cleave+Multistrike+melee Physical Damage + Concentrated Effect/ Increased Area of Effect + Increased Critical Strike Chance / Increased Critical Damage depending if you prefer the raw dps or want higher crit chance.

Main pure physical damage setup: Cleave+Multistrike+melee Physical Damage + Brutality + Increased Critical Strike Chance / Increased Critical Damage depending if you prefer the raw dps or want higher crit chance. No reason to use concentrated effect over brutality for better area.

If you want to, you can swap out increased critical strike chance with critical strike damage if you feel lucky.

Sword main hand: Whirling Blades+Fortify+Faster Attacks This needs 2 Green sockets and 1 red socket all linked.

Sword offhand: Hatred+Arctic Armor+ Summon Ice Golem 3 Green sockets

Helm: Leap Slam + Curse on Hit + Assassin's Mark + Culling Strike 2 Blue sockets, 1 Red Socket, 1 Green Socket, all linked.

Gloves: Cast when damage Taken + increased duration + immortal call + enduring cry. Level 4 CWDT 4 red sockets all linked.

Boots: Frenzy+Riposte+Vengeance+Power Charge on Critical. 2 Green sockets, 1 Red socket, 1 Blue socket all linked.

l I've found frenzy is a nice way to mantain frenzy and power charges against bosses. If you want to, you could drop frenzy in favor of blood rage. Riposte and Vengeance can procure power charges if they connect and also have an increased chance to crit.



Pick Alira for your bandits: You will need the elemental resistance. You can pick other bandits if you want or Eramir, though I would encourage you to use Alira over Eramir because you perpetually will have low mana sadly.

Levelling Advice:

Spoiler


Get the jewel socket near Golem's Blood and Golem's Blood as early as possible. Then slowly start getting your dual wield block chance starting with the cluster near leech. When you've grabbed all the dual wield block chance I got on the tree as well as the block chance on the sword cluster, I would start making my way left of master of the arena.

At this point, you probably don't have a lot of Crit chance and most likely lack Rat's Nest so what I would start to do is go left from Master of the Arena. At this point, you can choose to break into Constitution for the life after grabbing the jewel socket or reach born to Fight.

Then start alternating between life and damage from the left side of the tree that I took. I also took the life with elemental resistance cluster to help cover resistances.

At 143% life on the tree, I started picking up the sword crit chance nodes, followed by twin terrors. Next would be the Throatseeker cluster.
It made more sense to pick up the crit nodes starting with twin terrors b/c by that time, they actually start to be useful since you will probably have acquired Rat's Nest and colored it as required. After twin terrors, I grabbed the sword crit nodes, followed by the throatseeker cluster. Then I started to make my way to the next crit cluster located near Resolute technique.


Pantheon:

I picked Solaris/Tukohama for significant physical damage mitigation. Really, it's up to you though. Personally, I used my divine vessel on Tukohama for the free life regen which synergizes with Arctic Armor.

Lab Enchants: Not required, but if you're one of those people who like to run the lab, here are what I would recommend. If you feel that something blends in nicely with the build, feel free to use it instead of my recommendations.

Gloves: Decree of Spite, very good counterattack if you're hit. Another good one is decree of reflection which creates a decoy version of you.

Boots: My favorite is life/mana regen if you're hit. Combined with Decree of spite and Painforged and vengeance, you basically counterattack and heal immediately. Another good one would be the increased critical chance if you've not crit recentl,or increased attack speed. Stun mitigation could be useful if you want it though.

Helm: Don't bother, really. If you really have nothing else to enchant, just enchant your helm. Anything that helps is useful.

Flask Info:

Spoiler

2-3 life flasks.
1 quicksilver/silver flask based on preference.
1 Diamond flask.

Useful mods would be instant recovery on the life flask. One flask should be able to remove curses, another should remove bleeding. Poison removal is also a good mod. Having extra charges or reduced charge usage is good on the diamond flask.

The reason I use a silver flask is I combine it with the diamond flask to temporarily deal increased damage for a portion of time. A quicksilver flask is fine if you want to use it purely for movement speed instead of offense.


Fighting Style:

Spoiler


Against regular enemies, just approach them and hit them, no real skill required because block should be handling most of your defense automatically. If you're running a map with reduced block chance or enemies that you suspect can one-shot you, you need to do a bit more dodging. If an enemy is broadcasting an attack, make sure to try and manually dodge the attack. While most defense is automatic, keep an eye on the screen for any sources of incoming damage such as spells.

3.8k is a bit low on the health side. Your main goal should really just be kill everything before it kills you. When you reach level 78-80, a strong offense is actually more valuable than defense because the longer a fight goes, the more likely you are to die.

One example would be Uber Argus. Marginally improving health from 3.8k to 4k might help a little bit, but 2-3 swipes in a row and you're still going to die if you're unlucky in the fight. However, if you were to improve your dps and shorten the fight, you could probably win very quickly. The shorter the fight, the more likely you are to survive.

Use leap slam against bosses to inflict assassin's mark. Don't be afraid to use frenzy to replenish your charges if you need to; you need as much crit as you can get. Enduring cry should be cast ocasionally if you have outmatch and outlast. Otherwise, cast it fairly often to mantain 3 endurance charges.

Short Fight = Easy Survival



Credits: Kira for learning how to link items. eviL_Bison for showing a sample guide on how to make guides.
Last edited by Slicer9875 on Aug 24, 2017, 8:13:47 PM
Last bumped on Aug 23, 2017, 12:43:57 PM
im working on a similar build for 3.0 but with the juggernaut ascendancy in hc since its nodes work pretty well as an offensive and defensive buff with fortify on the cleave jewel and all the endurance charges you can get with juggernaut.

my main problem here is the inc aoe support and the amplify aoe cluster near templar since i dont really feel oe is worth it. on the other side i fear the clear speed is pretty much on the low side if you dont take inc aoe support and/or nodes at all...

as an example:
cleave without anything: 26 radius
cleave and amplify cluster: 29 radius
cleave with inc aoe: 31
cleave with inc aoe and amplify cluster: 34

if im not going for the amplify cluster im left with tons of points to distribute into crit or dmg nodes and since im planing on not going gladiator bleed explosions are no option but i dont have to spec into bleed either.

whats your take on it?
"
im working on a similar build for 3.0 but with the juggernaut ascendancy in hc since its nodes work pretty well as an offensive and defensive buff with fortify on the cleave jewel and all the endurance charges you can get with juggernaut.

my main problem here is the inc aoe support and the amplify aoe cluster near templar since i dont really feel oe is worth it. on the other side i fear the clear speed is pretty much on the low side if you dont take inc aoe support and/or nodes at all...

as an example:
cleave without anything: 26 radius
cleave and amplify cluster: 29 radius
cleave with inc aoe: 31
cleave with inc aoe and amplify cluster: 34

if im not going for the amplify cluster im left with tons of points to distribute into crit or dmg nodes and since im planing on not going gladiator bleed explosions are no option but i dont have to spec into bleed either.

whats your take on it?


AOE isn't that high with Cleave as you've calculated. It works best if you kite the enemies together and then begin fighting.

First, I've not played Juggernaut and am not an expert so keep that in mind. Still from what I see, it will be difficult for you to get a lot of crit chance if you plan to reach all the way into the Templar AOE cluster. If you don't like the crit, you can always opt for resolute technique instead and gain more of the bleeding/fortify nodes.

I can try constructing a tree, but since I'm not quite sure on defense and only know that endurance charges are valuable to you as well as armor.

Here is what I came up with, it provides decent life, focuses on endurance charges, and gets most of my design across. I'm not sure how useful this may be to you since I don't really know Juggernaut's defense works. As long as you don't use brutality, this should be helpful.

This is if you choose to take the AOE cluster. That AOE cluster is pretty much totally out of the way, unfortunately. You might be better off just getting another threshold jewel for increased AOE. You do have 5 jewel sockets after all apparently.

https://pastebin.com/tdCHrtvp

I hope this is helpful.

Also, you may be better off not dual wielding Scaeva and instead only using 1 for the crit chance while using a good rare in your offhand. Until you get a good rare though, you might as well dual wield Scaeva.
Last edited by Slicer9875 on Aug 1, 2017, 3:41:17 PM
"
First, I've not played Juggernaut and am not an expert so keep that in mind. Still from what I see, it will be difficult for you to get a lot of crit chance if you plan to reach all the way into the Templar AOE cluster. If you don't like the crit, you can always opt for resolute technique instead and gain more of the bleeding/fortify nodes.


ye and thats my main problem...i dont really feel the amplify cluster is worth it for 26% more aoe which is pretty much nothing and the inc. aoe gem could very well be replaced with other gems like inc crit dmg, maim, added fire etc. which would boost the overall dmg for a quite a bit.

"
This is if you choose to take the AOE cluster. That AOE cluster is pretty much totally out of the way, unfortunately. You might be better off just getting another threshold jewel for increased AOE. You do have 5 jewel sockets after all apparently.

https://pastebin.com/tdCHrtvp


thanks. thats more or less how my build looks atm. i think im going for 2 overwhelming odds jewels, leave the amplify cluster and inc. aoe gem out and go for more crit chance/dmg and life nodes instead.

my build atm: https://pastebin.com/W15fGM9h
BoR till i get 6link chest + rats nest
Yeah, the build looks pretty nice. I would advise to swap the duality cluster for Razor's edge though. The reason is that 6% attack speed isn't really going to help you that much because you might end up bottlenecked by mana cost; additionally it helps your range slightly while also providing more dps boost. You also don't seem to have any mana leech which is just one point away anyway.

While I'm not sure about everything left from Aspect of the Panther (pat leading to Heart of Oak), if it works for you, that's great. I hope you have enough defense. You also don't really need that much accuracy; the bonus. 2600 is more than sufficient for a crit build. The 20% boost is nice, but investing beyond 3000 accuracy has diminishing returns.
Why you dont skill Outmatch and Outlast first? It looks like good leveling thing.
The reason is that it comes down to what is most useful. For me, the main focus of gladiator is versatile combatant which is what makes block chance become spell block chance and block is the main defense here. That is why I first get Painforged followed by Versatile combatent.

Block chance is also not that high as a dual wielder so the minor nodes granting block were also a nice side benefit. Outchatmch and Outlast won't help you too much compared to main defense: block.
make sence , thx for answering right before i finished 1st lab xD
HI ,
Ive been playing poe for a long time but never managed to get to endgame stuff , following your build i managed to get there . im lvl 73 now but im getting one shoted when mapping . this is my current passive tree :
https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAABAQCAAAGAdwFLQYgBosGoglYCiYMcw2NFCAV7BX2F9wZtButIOMhYCPTI_Yk_SgqMHwxsDH7NZJAoEa3R35KfUz_TZJN404qUEdRR1uvXz9f2mBBYnljcGVNapNvJ287dKB08Xasd-N4DXloeu97FITZhVKHdorwi0-NfY9gkAqS95S4lWaXeZpqm1ibaqOKqW6tjbGztfK5Hb02vqfAGsEEwYvKkMv1z37Tb9P81FLYvdlh26fcveRR5w_nVOlG7g7vDvgC_MX-j__e?accountName=esoolak&characterName=Ehsuxxx
and these are my itmes (im in Harbinger btw)

any suggestions?
Great to hear that you reached endgame content.

I can't see how much life you have, but I can tell you lfie I had for various stages of maps.

Tier 1-5 maps: About 3.5k health.
Tier 6-10 maps: About 4k health. (Up till here, I can honestly claim it pretty much was budget gear)
Tier 11-13 ( where I am now): (Over here is when I realized how bad my life was and consequently got better gear (30c on gloves and 20c on boots I think) because I was insistent on using Rat's Nest. If you're ok with ditching Rat's Nest, you can fill out the remaining life with a helmet with a life roll on it.

4.3k health when I did tiers 11 and 12.

I would highly recommend having a whirling blades fortify faster attacks setup. I know this may seem redundant consider cleave gets fortify, but whirling blades is used to help you manually dodge attacks and grant fortify without having to stand still.

Another thing is that you seem to be using bleed. Unfortunately, my build can't use bleed very well because it chooses to focus on critical strikes and doubledipping was removed in 3.0 i.e. bleed doesn't scale from critical strikes.

Ice bite is another gem that I would highly recommend replacing. This build scales on physical damage primarily, not flat elemental damage. Chance to bleed is another gem which doesn't make sense here because this build can't scale bleeding very well. I would use melee physical damage here as well as added fire for much higher dps. If you want to use maim on hit, that's fine instead of concentrated effect if you want to use it.

Now addressing gear:

From what I see, you're missing about 18% block chance (10% from Anvil amulet and 8% from Scaeva).

The first thing I would do is get the Anvil amulet b/c it makes your blocks much better for the life on hit and this build uses block as the main defense.

The next thing is your elemental resistance. This should be capped no matter what if you want to progress further. While you may not see it now, elemental damage becomes very large as you go through the maps.

The tabula is also a bit risky if you have low life; it might be better to get a cheap 5-link with a high life roll.

I also don' see much accuracy, you want at least 300 flat accuracy from gear because this is a crit build and accuracy is important.

The belt also doesn't have a lot of life on it.

The last thing would be getting the two Scaevas: this should signficiantly improve your dps.


If you're running short on currency run cruel or merc lab to make some. Some of the troves and keys can give a lot of rewards.

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