Trying out Duelist/Ranger Life/armour crit melee build

I like how people consider having to spend maybe 25-30% of their total points on health/ES nodes "going pure defense".

Heck, any build that cares about crits tends to spend about as many points on their crit chance/damage as they do on health/ES nodes- and thats before any other offensive stats come into play.

People seem to consider anything beyond maybe dropping 5-10 extra points into defense after they've run out of offensive nodes "pure defense"- this is not just an issue in PoE, I'll never understand why the masses seems to fundamentally hate doing anything besides pure glass cannon builds.

I don't agree with you.

Try to setup a Templar or Marauder tree for a crit life/armor build, it is nearly impossible.

I understand that the Maurauder and the Templar are simply not very compatible with crit builds though, that's why I now picked a Duelist

build

gear

This is far from great but it suits me fine. In regular play I have 25k dps before blood rage and 3k life. The fast attack speed spreads blind from the helmet very quickly and I can facetank anything including reflect mobs, provided I start hitting them one at a time.

How many auras can you activate simultaneously? I count 6 aura gems supported by reduced mana.

My Duelist is already lvl44 and in Cruel A2. The overall experience has been very good compared with the experience I had as Templar and Marauder. I feel that the DPS of the Duelist is a lot better and of course he is a lot faster which feel very satisfying. I hardly notice any difference defensive wise compared to Templar or Marauder.

I have had some good experience with certain uniques playing as Marauder/Templar that helped my Duelist rush through normal in no time as well:

-Ignomon amulet (lvl 8)
-Kaltenhalt buckler (lvl 16)
-Brightbeak hammer (lvl 20)
-Peregrine sallet (lvl 23)

These uniques are quite cheap, like only 1 chaos.

So now I am in cruel act 2 and still doing ok. I have enough life to use BM support gems for my attack skills.
My main concern atm is my lack of INT, I am using some items with a lot of INT on it in order to use my weapon and upgrade gems like enfeeble, I also am unable to respec a +Mana/Mana regen/+INT node that I don't need anymore because of BM.
Another thing is that my stash doesn't contain anymore item upgrades and I need to find or buy new upgrades, I do not have specific uniques I am thinking of. Probably at this point it will be better to upgrade the uniques I am using with higher level rares.

Here is my current build and gear, I appreciate your feedback!

Passives:


Skills:
-Lightning Strike - Fork - Blood Magic
-Double Strike - Blood Magic - Melee Physical Damage
-Flicker Strike - Melee Splash
-Tempest Shield - Determination - Reduced Mana
-Enfeeble
-Hatred

Gear:

Q_Q

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JahIthBerTirUmMalLumKoKoMal wrote:

Q_Q

Wow thanks man, really helpful!

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Startkabels wrote:

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JahIthBerTirUmMalLumKoKoMal wrote:

Q_Q

Wow thanks man, really helpful!

Ignore,he is the new resident bridge troll.That is,when he isn't spending time on probation on his various troll accounts or scrolling the jsp forums.

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Temper wrote:

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Startkabels wrote:

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JahIthBerTirUmMalLumKoKoMal wrote:

Q_Q

Wow thanks man, really helpful!

Ignore,he is the new resident bridge troll.That is,when he isn't spending time on probation on his various troll accounts or scrolling the jsp forums.

and you are following me from thread to thread to save the world from this troll threat? ZOMG heroic

Also, I think your ideas on the armor mechanics don't make any sense. It works well against small hits but not against big hits. I read somewhere that the theory behind this is that armor is supposed to work against needles but not against thinks that hit like a truck.

THIS IS COMPLETE BS

If you run 5k armor with some garbage evasion build, ofc you dont get reduction from big hits. Get more armor and endurance charges, use enfeeble, with some regen / leech and you will TANK big hits. If you dont believe me, i dont give a ff, just dont spread nonsense.

Look at juhazz's post from mara forum, dragons topic, he tanked a vaal smash (maze map with 98% lightning dmg mod) and lived, twice. With 1100 hp left the second time.

Is that bullshit? My understanding is that it's GGG's actual vision behind the armor mechanic.

If you cared to read my posts more carefully you could find that I am actually use Enfeeble and Determination at this point. I will get a Granite flask as well, it looks like I forgot about those actually so thank you for reminding me :)

About tanking the Vaal smash: It required him to use Granites and Endurance Charges (not to mention all the other defensive stats) and still almost gets one shot so that is only proof for me that tanking everything is near to impossible in this game at this point. If that smash was a crit he was dead for sure.