Last Resort (Low Life claw) theorycrafting

if this was viable people would be doing it with redbeak already

Well it's very interesting to be able to take a huge offensive buff instead of a shield. I'm planning on making a CI claw ranger atm but I could potentially go without CI to use this instead to save on nodes. However my build would be using frenzy and flicker strike, so due to the weapon alternation I wouldn't be able to use this at all.

Low life melee is also very far from useful. With CI I can use the full life support to get 40% more damage and spellcasters get pain attunement while any other form of damage gets... nothing. It really seems like something that isn't at all supported for.

Yeah you can get a ton of claw damage and super high accuracy with this, it'd be great with bloodseeker, but there's few claw skills that use only the main hand and CI with full-life gem means both more damage and more survivability. Sure you get a couple auras to use but man, it's unplayable until you get shavronnes and any low life melee build is simply lacking in any sort of keystones or uniques that make it playable.

Sadly there just isn't enough support for low life melee. If this unique had come out after say, an early game shavronnes for melee users and pain attunement got changed to ALL damage then this unique would be great. But for now it's just not viable.

I still think there's a way to do something with that claw.

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Wooser69 wrote:

Sadly there just isn't enough support for low life melee. If this unique had come out after say, an early game shavronnes for melee users and pain attunement got changed to ALL damage then this unique would be great. But for now it's just not viable.

I don't really expect anyone to level up as a Low Life character, more that one would specialize in life and then switch to energy shield just as people do with Chaos Inoculation.

Melee Damage on Full Life is hefty loss, but the 100% increased claw physical damage and the fact that you're using what is technically 140% of base main hand damage (over two hits) makes up for it because you can specialize less in increased damage nodes and more in critical strike chance and multiplier.

You're right that there aren't many options with a Low Life melee character, though as someone pointed out there are a few things that become available, such as with Blood Rage and its quality bonus (50% increased attack speed on Low Life and 9% physical attack life leech at level 16 with 20% quality). I do wish something like Pain Attunement worked as well, though.

By the way, this definitely isn't unplayable. It's as playable as any other Shavronne's Wrappings build, just in enemies' faces instead of either hiding behind totems or casting spells. Sure that means a lot of damage coming your way, but your attack speed and life leech will be absolutely ridiculous.

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DutchRudder wrote:

if this was viable people would be doing it with redbeak already

I miss the part where you get the low life claw damage bonus on daggers :)

Already tried it. Nope, it's not worth it.

When they gave out free respecs I took the oppurtunity to build an old character completely around low life claw with bloodseeker. It does not work. At all. It's laughably bad. I used the bear head with the low life claw. They do not interact well. And the defense boost is not that great and neithe ris the damage. I had a level 30 ranger who did better damage.

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BearCares wrote:

Already tried it. Nope, it's not worth it.

When they gave out free respecs I took the oppurtunity to build an old character completely around low life claw with bloodseeker. It does not work. At all. It's laughably bad. I used the bear head with the low life claw. They do not interact well. And the defense boost is not that great and neithe ris the damage. I had a level 30 ranger who did better damage.

1. Starkonja's Head reduces your damage by 50%. That negates half of Last Resort's damage bonus. The purpose of that modifier is to reduce your damage and increase your damage against reflection when you reach low life, not to be something used by permanently low life characters.

2. Bloodseeker has low damage compared to rare items-- around half the physical damage of a good claw. Also, if you have Ghost Reaver and Vaal Pact, you wouldn't need the instantly applied life leech from the claw so there's really no reason to use it.

3. Are you using Shavronne's Wrappings? There's really no reason to make a Low Life melee character if you don't have one.

From what I can tell what you played is certainly laughably bad, but I don't think it would be if the claw is properly built around. Sadly using the claw in your offhand means no shield, which means even less energy shield. That's the big problem in this case.

so Iao are you trying it now?

I am thinking of having good enough chaos resist so the Shavxxxx doesn't matter much. Death Rush and Lori's Lantern, plus other gear. With decent evasion and block chaos damage may not be so scary after all, after all many builds still rocking with -60% chaos resist.

At the moment I'm working on some other build ideas but I wanted to release this information so others know there are possibilities with the claw.

I have been offered temporary use of a 6L Shavronne's Wrappings by an awesome guy so some time in the future I'd like to pool together good enough equipment to test the waters and provide some information in this build for theorycrafting.

One of the main reasons Shavronne's Wrappings is optimal is because of Blood Rage. The spell provides a ridiculous life leech and attack speed boost, which is, in my opinion, necessary to be comparable to Chaos Inoculation claw builds. With low maximum life and high energy shield, the damage over time should be negligible.

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iao wrote:

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BearCares wrote:

Already tried it. Nope, it's not worth it.

When they gave out free respecs I took the oppurtunity to build an old character completely around low life claw with bloodseeker. It does not work. At all. It's laughably bad. I used the bear head with the low life claw. They do not interact well. And the defense boost is not that great and neithe ris the damage. I had a level 30 ranger who did better damage.

1. Starkonja's Head reduces your damage by 50%. That negates half of Last Resort's damage bonus. The purpose of that modifier is to reduce your damage and increase your damage against reflection when you reach low life, not to be something used by permanently low life characters.

2. Bloodseeker has low damage compared to rare items-- around half the physical damage of a good claw. Also, if you have Ghost Reaver and Vaal Pact, you wouldn't need the instantly applied life leech from the claw so there's really no reason to use it.

3. Are you using Shavronne's Wrappings? There's really no reason to make a Low Life melee character if you don't have one.

From what I can tell what you played is certainly laughably bad, but I don't think it would be if the claw is properly built around. Sadly using the claw in your offhand means no shield, which means even less energy shield. That's the big problem in this case.

Oh I played it bad huh? Do you think I wasted an entire level 64 character respec just to try out bloodseeker + bearhead? I listed ONE of the possibilies that I experimented with. But you know what go right ahead, and waste 20-30 hours making a build that's total shit = be my idiot, I mean be my guest. But know that some of these diamond supporters have a twisted sense of humor when it comes to uniques. When making them, they don't always have your best interests in mind.

Getting a claw means you PROBABLY want to take a detour around the duelist area to hit his basic melee buffs for range, attack speed etc, THEN you PROBABLY want to make another detour to get Iron Reflexes. Ok, now your level 20 and haven't gotten a single ES node yet. And since your destinatino is low life build, you'll never reach out for the CI promised land to make up for this.

I tried to warn you. But go right ahead.

gl hf