[Not quite 3.7] A Simple Cleaver (Beginner friendly, SSF-viable, Much Explanation)
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Hi Scythless!
First of all, I want to thank you for this nice and very well explained build. I recently started playing PoE (one week ago) and I was worried this game could be too complex for me, but I found the guide very useful. I have to admit at the beggining using Cleave was so boring and slow I almost quit (also my friends cleaned so fast using a mage and a templar that I was feeling kinda useless), but now it is getting better and better :) I have a couple of questions, sorry if they are kinda dumb (or have been answered before): 1.- I killed Izaro for the first time and got my first Ascendancy points (2). In your guide you mention to put them in Gratuitous Violence (and after in Blood in the Eyes with Izaro 2). However, I was not able to do it since I need to reach first Blood in the Eyes in order to get Gratuitous Violence, as it seems you can only put points from the center to the edge of the tree. Is this right or am I doing something wrong? 2.- I'm using your link for Path of Building as a guide for the passive skill tree. I saw you put two Overwhelming Odds in your jewel sockets. I just got the first one and was wondering where to put it, because in the recent comments you said that one can go below Berserking and I guess this is the correct placement because there are 40 strenght points inside the radius. However, in PoB at lvl 90 you have the second one at the bottom, but you don't reach 40 strenght in the radius (only 30 with your points). I guess you don't need to get 40 str since you got the Cleave's buffs with the first jewel below Berserking? 3.- Regarding the passive skill tree: I saw you spent some points on nodes that later you don't have anymore (for example in Second Goal you took "Life" right after "Golem's Blood" but it is not marked anymore in Third Goal; same for "Revelry" at lvl 90). Do you refund points or this is some kind of a PoB bug or something? Also, should I use your PoB link or guide by the passive skill tree in this page? 4.- Cleave is starting to clean very well and fast (anyway I rarely oneshot enemies and it takes me like 3-4 attacks to kill the majority of them (atm supported with Brutality and Multistrike), but against bosses I don't found it that useful, it seems like it lacks dmg compared to Double Strike. Do you recommend me using Double Strike (or another skill) against single enemies? Sorry for the long post. Again thank you for this nice guide :) Last edited by TACOS_SAMA on Mar 18, 2019, 9:44:44 PM
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" Don't worry about "dumb" questions, it's alright to ask if you're not sure about something. :) 1. The Ascendency points for Blood in the Eyes and Gratuitous Violence have been switched at some point in the past, and I was actually to lazy to change the whole section. I only made a points at the start about the switch. So put your first to points in "Blood in the Eyes" and your next 2 points in "Gratuitous Violence", which means you have to wait a bit more for amazing Blood Explosions, but the wait will be worth it. 2. For Overwhelming Odds (and every other Threshold Jewel), the Strength points only have to be in radius, not axtually allocated, so you do not have to take those 40 strength, they just have to be there. that's why the second Overwhelming Odds Jewel works. If it didn't, I wouldn't use it, because the bonus itself, without the AoE is not actually that great. 3. That's right, in this guide I respec some points that are not used later. For example Revelry is taken because it helps with early mana sustain, because of the flat 2 Mana per enemy. Later on you do enough damage that the 0.4% of Attack Damage leeched as Mana are more than enough to sustain, thus you do not need Revelry anymore. I don't remember, why I took out the life node, though. You can leave it in, because it will be "needed" later anyway. (More life is always good) The PoB Tree and the tree in the guide should be the same, as far as I know, at least if I did not mess up something horribly. 4. Cleave (in this guide) is more or less a gradual change over time. It will get better at everything, but at it's own pace, if you do not brute force your way with highly efficient items, so there is always something during the way that can do things better than cleave with lower investment. So, use Double Strike if you like it better for bosses. Cleave has the benefit of giving you Fortify, which drastically increases your survivability, but at the caveat of not dealing that amazing damage early on. Oh, if you can get your hand on Vaal Double Strike, that will probably come in useful. It even may be so useful you always want to keep it for bosses. After your second ascendency your clear speed will get a nice boost. A small tidbit about leveling: Leveling a caster and an attacker is really different. As a caster everything you need is in the gem itself, so you level up your skill, and voila you can keep on killing harder stuff just like you did weaker stuff. As a caster I found myself using the first weapons I got up to high level, because weapons don't really matter that much. As an attacker you always need to be on the lookout for better weapons, because otherwise your skill will seem weaker and weaker. On the plus side, there are some leveling uniques that are leagues better than any other weapon in existance at this point and with those you will melt bosses faster than a caster can blink. So leveling casters is more smooth and fluid, but you can progress faster with the right weapons as attacker. And another small thing: I don't know what build guide your friends are using (if any) and how experienced they are. Because this build can still be weaker than them in the end. It's not a high performance build in any way, but I had a lot of fun playing it solo. | |
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Thank you for the amazing response mate, everything clear now :)
One last question: I've read you don't want to improve this build to a high-end performance one (and I respect that), but do you think it is viable in the very end (improving it by ourselves)? Or it would be better switching to another build? Anyway I feel like I've already learnt a lot thanks to you and it is being worth even if it's just to level up my first character! |
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" It actually depends on what you want to achieve. Some spoiler-ish stuff about the endgame: The end game consists mostly of 16 Tiers of Areas, topped by a boss, which is topped by another boss. With my amazingly low investment I got comfortable at Tier ~12-13. Better Investment will probably make you comfortable at Tier 15* and heavy investment will maybe get you to Tier 16 and the Boss. Which is already something many people don't even see. I don't see this build beat the hardest boss in the game, at least not without some absurd level of optimization and investment. (I just did some number crunching and you could probably quadruple the DPS of the build if you invest heavily in it, which would probably be alright for most content.) --- * I actually did a T15 area with my no investment build. The normal monsters were fine, albeit the damage could spike somewhat. Bosses on the other hand are really tedious, because they soak up a lot of damage and dish out a lot of it, which means you would have to try to avoid most stuff the enemy is doing and weave in and out to do a bit of damage. It's an interesting playstyle, but probably not the thing most people want. --- So, to come back to the question: This build can go places with high enough investment and beat most, maybe even all, content. The question is how heavily would you like to invest and how long do you want to grind for it? If you would like easier power spikes you should probably use another build, if you enjoy the build and want to make it go wherever you want prepare to invest a lot of currency. | |
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Alright, again thank you for your nice and quick response. I'll stick to it and we'll see how things are going
Keep up the good work mate! ;) |
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Hi. Awesome build but I have a question...what about 6 Link setup for cleave ? :]
Increased Area ? | |
" The build has actually too low intelligence to properly use any intelligence based support gem. The 6th Gem would be Ruthless as the most damaging one, followed by Chance to Bleed. That is then followed by Faster Attacks on third place for most damaging gems. | |
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Cool.....and Jewels. I have 42 lvl and Im using 1 Overwhelming Odds near beggining of the build. I see a Lot of jewel sockets in tree. What other jewels do you recomend ?:]
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" Life is important on Jewels. Life is always important everywhere. Other than that... global physical damage, physical damage while dual wielding, physical damage with swords (if you're using 2 swords), strength, attack speed and if you need resistances or attributes. Those would be mods you could use on jewels. Abyssal Jewels will probably be better then normal ones. | |
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Dude...what about Bosses? Cleave is great AoE but in single target it suck balls ;/
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