'Clawrauder'

Clawrauder 81/111

Clawrauder v2 81/111 - less physical damage, 2% more life leech.

Clawrauder v3 81/111 - less physical damage, more attack speed, slightly more HP.

Clawrauder v4 81/111 - some points moved around, as per hzflank's tips. +115% Life, +65% Attack Speed, +19% Block chance.

Clawrauder v4.2 81/111 - Slight changes from v4. Sacrifices some Attack Speed for more Str nodes, more Life Leech, as well as more Life, and a little bit more elemental resistance.

53% Increased Attack Speed (more with v3 and v4)
125% Increased Crit Rate (except for v4) - Crit may be useless?
3% Life Leech (5% with v2; 2% with v4)
Plenty of Increased Physical Damage - Apparently useless.
Plenty of +Life on all versions (v4 should have the biggest value)

This build would focus on sustainability through damage. The faster he kills, the faster he keeps his HP up.

Since this build doesn't really get a lot of +HP nodes, as well as Armour/Evasion, I'm not sure how viable it would be.

Accuracy shouldn't be an issue. Mana regen 'could' be.

Skills to use:
- Warlord's Mark? More life leech and could help with mana issues.
- Vitality. instead of Determination or Grace.
- Hatred. More damage.
- Haste? More Attack Speed is always welcome.
- Blood Rage. More life leech and Attack Speed. Complements the build well. - Apparently less useful with dual wielding than with weapon+shield?
- Flicker Strike? Seems like the obvious nuke to pick up, but may be less useful with dual wielding?
- Dual Strike. Main nuke instead of Flicker Strike.
- Phase Run? A nice escape/engage mechanism. - May be unnecessary as long as move speed is decent.
- Whirling Blades? Can be go-to skill for AoE.


What are your thoughts on this?

Currently considering going with version 4 of the build.

EDIT:
Added 2 alternate versions for the build.
Added another alternate version for the build.
Edited the 'Skills to Use' section.
Added another build.

Got killed in hardcore just now. Damned Chilled status is a massive pain.

so what is your opinion so far testing this build ? i am very interesting at it but i've just started a marauder and maybe i will give it a try. So share your observations fighting with this build compared to others cuz i see that you are skilled player at this game and seems like you play a lot . :)
and also- using claws req. a lot of INT . how do you plan getting enough of it ?

Until I got bitchslapped by an endless stream of chilled/frozen effects, I was doing fine.
Juggling Armour and Evasion was working well. The only weakness was the lack of proper elemental resistances.

The Int requirement isn't really all that high.
Since this build relies on Attack Speed, the highest level claws with the highest attack speed (1.5) require only 84 Int, and since you get 64 Int with passive nodes alone, getting the remaining 20 shouldn't be an issue with equipment.

I get the impression you're the kind of player that copy/pastes other people's builds, rather than come up with your own.
None of this requires a high amount of skill. Just explore the passive skill tree, and play around with it.

You're welcome to try any of these builds or even your own twist on them, and by all means, share your experiences.

New character made it to Act 2.

Thanks to Flicker Strike, Merveil was very easy to bring down.

Currently at level 18, one more level and I start testing out Blood Rage.

Still need to get a Phase Run gem...

Been using Fire Trap and Shockwave Totem to deal with larger groups.


As of right now, all I have are the survival nodes and the stat nodes leading up to the claw nodes. Once I start getting into the attack speed and physical damage nodes, things should pick up nicely.

Survival hasn't been an issue with over 40% armour absorption. A few scares sometimes, but managed to pull through.

A lot of random stuff I have learned playing a marauder. I dont expect you to agree with it all, but I hope that some of it helps.

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I currently have a level 69 marauder in default, with around 70 deaths though. But what I have learned is that Increased Physical Damage nodes are trash. You should end up with around 400 strength (stregth on items), which is already 80% IPD, so you are getting very diminished returns on IPD nodes. You are getting life from strength though, and that life multiplies by your increased life nodes. You will want at least +100% life from passives (as well as +life from helping Oak, and +life on every item).

You will never be able to kill chaos life leeching mobs without the Bloodless passive, as they seem to leech more from high life characters. Thankfully there is a 2% life leech passive next to Bloodless, and that is a lot closer than going all the way across the tree to get to Soul Raker.

Going for Block and Attack Speed is correct though. These are both excellent. You need to grab that second anti-crit node, as I have been crit for up to 2600 when I did not have those passives.

Forget about crit, it is worthless for a melee marauder. You will be killing normal mobs in either 1 or 2 hits anyway and the crit will probably all just be overkill.

Dont worry about mana regen. You want maybe 50% but you can get that from items. Most of your mana will come from leech. You either want to run at least 3% mana leech or use warlods mark as your curse.

I assume you are using Dual Strike as you have a lot of leech, so you want to run Hatred with it. Without a shield I would not worry about Determination and would run Vitality if you want a defensive aura. Skip the second aura if your mana leech is low though.

Flicker strike would be good for your movement ability. As long as you have good run speed on your boots I would not worry about Phase Run. Blood rage is bad unless you are using Flicker as your main attack, but if you go that route I would use a shield instead of dual wield.

I dont know what I would do for AoE, whirling blades is probably the best option, but you could also go for mine-totems with an aoe spell.

Thanks hzflank, these were all very helpful tips.

I haven't gotten too far into the higher difficulties on other characters so it's nice to know these things from someone more experienced.

I was not aware that Increased Physical Damage nodes were trash. A surprising revelation, to be sure.

Back to the drawing board, I have some nodes to switch around.

EDIT:
Right now Flicker Strike hits way harder than Dual Strike ever did (with dual wielding), so I don't get why it'd be better with a shield instead. Care to expand on that?

EDIT 2:
Added a version 4 of the build, based on your suggestions. I did manage to get Bloodless and Life Leech, but I still went out of my way to get the attack speed near the Shadow's starting point. 24% Attack Speed is nothing to scoff at, and the Evade/Accuracy that comes with the Dex nodes is welcome, I think.

EDIT 3:
+Life on v4 equals to a total of +115%. Feels good.
Attack Speed hits +65%. Pretty cool.
+19% Block Rate total (dual wielding).

EDIT 4:
v4.2 has +47% Attack Speed but gets even more +Life and some more Life Leech as well.

I may be wrong as I have only toyed with flicker strike on a low level character. but I was under the impression that Dual strike would do more damage since it hits with both weapons rather than just one.

The reason I suggested a shield with flicker strike is for more block chance and evasion rating. But it looks like dual wield would actually be better for you, as you are getting loads of attack speed from dual wield passives. The alternative would be to take the 17 duel wield passive points and grab the extra frenzy charges, but you would do less damage that way and be more reliant on blood rage (I only run Chaos so I dont like blood rage, but I am sure it is better on easier levels).

The stats are looking good. Life, Attack Speed and Block are probably my three favourite things (followed by life leech and mana leech).

I really like your build, and it has a lot of potential if act 3 allows us to level higher/more easily, as you have close access to some really good clusters.

Gear wise, I would run with the mixed armour/evasion gear. The reasoning is just to reduce diminishing returns on you defenses, and you will have a good health pool to keep you alive anyway.

As for Claws, The inherent mod can be +1/2/3 life, or +1% leech. +3 life is obviously good early on, but +1% leech is much better at higher levels. You might want to keep hold of a few blessed orbs, so if you reach higher level you can get +1% leech on good claws, instead of +life on hit.

Good luck, I wish I had the guts to try it in hardcore :p

By the way, I realised why Dual Strike looks bad. The damage tooltip shows damage for one weapon only, so with two equal weapons Dual Strike does twice the damage shown in the tooltip.

Doesn't matter, flicker strike is a good option anyway, but just thought I would let you know.

Made it to level 24, everything's going fine for now.

Mostly gave up on Evasion gear since I'm getting decent Evasion from Dex nodes (over 20% right now), so I'm focusing on Armour instead (over 40% absorption now). Add in a decent Block rate from dual wielding, and it's a pretty solid setup so far.
HP is rarely dropping below 90% and I just pop my longest lasting HP pot and everything's fine.

Started using Blood Rage and it's been working well so far, especially after I began using Vitality to help keep my HP high.
Thanks to BR, I'm nearly hitting twice per second, and I've yet to grab any Attack Speed nodes. Working my way to them now.

Traded in Flicker Strike for Dual Strike again, and even though all the numbers say that DS is supposed to deal less damage than FS, the monsters' HP bars say otherwise.