[3.5] FACETANK THE WORLD | Instant Leech! 8k+ life, 2.5m+ Shaper DPS Double Strike

So how do you guys plan to go with leveling? Frost Blades? Reave? Sunder with some temporary axe passives (aren't those far to the left though?)?

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CroDanZ wrote:

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Nickolai20599 wrote:

I'll post my observations on the build once Delve hits, I really struggle to believe that the mana can be that much of a problem, but then again there's a couple of variables that may change it one way or the other.

Simply pick the 0,4% "Mana leech" passive in the bottom/right corner and you can run all 3 Auras without any Mana problems. ;)

I think what PsychicMuffin meant was that the mana leech isn't the problem. The problem is when you miss several times with the first hit. Then you become OOM.

How does the BM version perform in Ueber Lab?

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YYakovliev wrote:

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CroDanZ wrote:

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Nickolai20599 wrote:

I'll post my observations on the build once Delve hits, I really struggle to believe that the mana can be that much of a problem, but then again there's a couple of variables that may change it one way or the other.

Simply pick the 0,4% "Mana leech" passive in the bottom/right corner and you can run all 3 Auras without any Mana problems. ;)

I think what PsychicMuffin meant was that the mana leech isn't the problem. The problem is when you miss several times with the first hit. Then you become OOM.

Yeah...we have plenty of leech thanks to the claw nodes, but my level 95 build with the purity setup has a base mana pool of around 700 or so. By default, purity + purity + arctic armour is 35 + 35 + 25 = 95% mana reserved. This leaves us with 5% of our mana pool available, and 5% of 700 is 35 mana. Our clearing setup costs 32 mana per skill usage and our single target is 20 mana. This means if you miss a single double strike while clearing you will be unable to use it again for multiple seconds as we do NOT have good mana regen. This means if you miss because a pack was actually already dead, you literally might not have the mana to double strike by the time you even get to the next pack. Now with ancestral call we don't miss THAT often, but we are still melee, and between the above scenario combined with party members sometimes exploding a pack as you click an attack...it's not that rare either.

Single target looks even worse despite the lower mana cost, because without ancestral call misses happen a LOT more. Did chimera jump away to a party member and leave your little t-rex arms swinging at thin air? Whelp, hope he doesn't target you next cus you can't leech for the next couple seconds, and you damn well better land that one or you are hosed for a while, and this is a boss fight so damage is coming in fast most of the time. Basically, in a build designed to facetank everything there is, mobile enemies causing you to lose your ability to leech for multiple seconds is just not ok, and in the few maps I ran with this setup, I noticed it right away. With enlighten 3 the problem is essentially gone outside of specific enemies or map mods, so it all around felt pretty much fine. Keep in mind while leveling you'll have even less mana, and while you may also have less links which makes your double strike cheaper, I have a hard time imagining it would be safe.

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Myzreal wrote:

So how do you guys plan to go with leveling? Frost Blades? Reave? Sunder with some temporary axe passives (aren't those far to the left though?)?

I think the annoyance of going axes combined with the nerfs to sunder in delve makes frost blades basically the best leveling skill for this build. That's probably what I would go with if I was playing this build in delve. Reave is great but it doesn't feel that good when you don't have good clear speed, so unless you're twinking it would probably feel kind of mediocre while leveling.

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CroDanZ wrote:

How does the BM version perform in Ueber Lab?

It performs excellently honestly. Izaro has terrible accuracy and his biggest hits are only around 6300, so decently geared you will not be one shottable with good evasion and instant leech. He is basically a gigantic pushover. The downside however, is that we don't have very good physical mitigation against non-hits like traps, and we have a LOT of life. This means traps, which deal percentage of your life as damage, hit pretty hard and life flasks, which heal flat life, don't actually help much. Honestly I just ran my damn uber labs without a life flask because it didn't really help xD. That said whirling blades is amazing in lab so we're super fast, we have a decent bit of life regen, and subbing in a basalt flask helps a lot. Just slow down around trap guantlets and it should be great.

Have you tried whirling blades as a mana solution after you miss? It's on BM so if you whirl through a pack you leech enough to use your main skill. At least that's what I do on no-regen maps with other builds.

what are you gonna play :D ?

Is there any chance of altering this build for non-crit version?

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DurLagDT wrote:

Is there any chance of altering this build for non-crit version?

So, why would you not want to go crit?
You'd be losing out on an absurd amount of damage. And for what? The only reason I would ever not go crit is for resolute technique, which is basically rendered null with the champion ascendancy since you always hit taunted enemies.

I suppose you could get even tankier, going for juggernaut, But your damage would be suffering. Not impossible to do, but the tree would see major changes.

Do not like to skip reflect mod.
And a bit of mechanics info needed - 100% hit chance against taunted enemies means, that I can miss only 1st strike, after first hit - mob/boss get status "taunted" and accuracy is not needed.
If I'm right, than it's looks good even without RT keystone, and crit passives can be moved for smth else such as raw dmg or HP.

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Aias_o_Telamonios wrote:

Have you tried whirling blades as a mana solution after you miss? It's on BM so if you whirl through a pack you leech enough to use your main skill. At least that's what I do on no-regen maps with other builds.

Interesting...I mean that would help on packs, although you have to be sure to whirl through them due to whirling blades poor AoE. I always assumed that the leech would be too low on single target, but it seems you are correct and even on single target apparently I should leech like...100 mana. That means even with crappy gear you should get a decent amount, although it will still take a few moments to let the leech finish. I still don't feel comfortable on 35 mana (I mean, I took permanent fortify partially so that I wouldn't have to stop attacking to refresh fortify on bosses), but that's a great tip even when using enlighten, thanks!

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Deadbringer wrote:

what are you gonna play :D ?

Hah, I'm probably not playing this league. I've gone super hard the last few leagues, and writing this guide was a big investment too, so I'm gonna take a league off and focus on some other IRL projects. I plan to hit December's league pretty hard as GGG has hinted at some big changes (incursions come back, master rework). Dunno what build yet, but I have a few good ones cooked up. I rarely play the same build twice unless it's different from the last time I played it.

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DurLagDT wrote:

Do not like to skip reflect mod.
And a bit of mechanics info needed - 100% hit chance against taunted enemies means, that I can miss only 1st strike, after first hit - mob/boss get status "taunted" and accuracy is not needed.
If I'm right, than it's looks good even without RT keystone, and crit passives can be moved for smth else such as raw dmg or HP.

You are correct about mechanics, but wrong about reflect. This build can do any and all reflect like it's a stroll through the park. We're instant leech, so as long as we are leeching a higher percentage than the resulting percentage of reflected damage we're good. It does mitigate our leech to be fair, as some of that leech is being countered by the reflect, but we have plenty to spare except perhaps for double reflect maps, which we can still definitely do, but a bit more carefully. Keep in mind that we can't "taunt" ourselves, so our evasion is really strong against the reflected damage as our base accuracy is garbage. There is actually a video of me doing a T15 phys reflect map in the videos section at the top of the guide. Happy hunting!