Punching my way through the game (facebreaker feedback)

I recently created a character who's entire build was built upon the new facebreaker gloves. I'm currently level 61 and beat merciless and doing maps here and there. This is my experience with the character so far.

Here is the build I am using http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAQEAANTk5gHOOIsEH3keB2uU1QqoMR0K_CqvDxIfmw9Iu-ISIY8jFxUX1heHlYcYYNlJI-9IrCaTIz8skvP-MZNJ9zSoAXk6q_InPSQAtUM9xqxExjLpRqoNjkhZ_PNbqUGxZGXrG2SmULRxhCkcdZ0axHYbE9V4TQG6e4rWDXzAId6AyTPVg17vB4TXHBKF_S_8iRTFaolpfpaMnwtqkrJitpOHH36W1QR6l9THBpo64s2cvMMXoUf_8KFUTLeiN6h2qgU6VqoOCjCqFnYGq2VV0q3D2jG-g3zhyJm9AsvVF8_NsSBX0MtLAdE0PdfTP_B71IvEq90jUXjdtH8R3bweUuSv3A7nCeoq62ALjfJDP37zR3cY9AqYFPhfsjP9aAlt

I project to grab iron reflexes in the next 4 levels and to then switch all my gear to evasion except the chest, which I'll likely switch to evasion/armour to facilitate red sockets layout.


This is the current gear I am using


The skills I use are:

level 1 elemental hit support by melee physical damage, added fire damage and weapon elemental damage.
Hatred supported by reduced mana cost.
Anger supported by reduced mana cost.
Enfeeble supported by totem and increased duration.
Blood rage


As for the gameplay itself, there's a number of weaknesses and strength that I'll list and eventually debate.

Pros:

One hit almost everything
Funny
Passive tree leaves a lot of room for survival nodes due to the incompatibility of most damaging nodes with unarmed combat.


Cons:

Is very unique dependent (3 uniques are basically required).
Requires physical damage on rings and amulet to even stand a chance to work.
You lose the weapon slot and glove slot.
Little room to build resists.
Attack rather slowly.
Very high restriction of attack skills.
Not much valuable damage increase nodes in the passive tree skill for the build.
Lack accuracy.



As we can see, there's quite a lot of cons compared to pros. That being said, a good deal of cons are countered simply by the tree allowing such a big focus on survival once the key nodes have been unlocked.


The fact that you are gonna kill almost everything in one hit mean that most monsters don't have enough time to harm you all the way through the game unless you are facing a high amount of ranged monsters or a concentrated melee pack. The fact that you don't need more damage for a long time allow anyone to focus on survivability or magic find (on their gear) freely. It's something that's highly enjoyable because it allow freedom of choice.

The build is just fun. I can't really explain it but it's just fun to walk toward a big pile of moving rock, punch it and it crumbles to dust. The increases gore also helps to build the fun factor. I guess unconventional builds all have their hidden fun factor and this one really hooked me.

Since the only nodes that I found that actually increased my damage by a substantial amount were the nodes that increased my fire damage (weapon elemental damage/fire lash), I could freely roam anywhere I wanted on the grid. I could have went with frenzy charges if I wanted, or reduced conservation cost, or reduced mana cost or anything really. There's a con about this too though and I'll return to it later.


Now, the cons, which make the build, at time, frustrating.

When someone wants to make this build work, he pretty much has to get the meginord's girdle and the blackgleam (blackgleam isn't nearly as important but it's vital if you want to deal damage later). It's obviously not a build that's doable as a first character and isn't probably as a second either (I actually managed to grab all the pieces before they sky rocketted in price and it's my second character). It's not necessarily a bad thing that very specific builds are hard to do but builds that are just for fun should likely be a bit easier to achieve.

Physical damage increase is a must have on any piece of loot that can have it, period. I'm currently sitting at 6.3k dps and my base physical damage is 38-78 or 58 damage on average. Increasing this average by even one point would increase my dps by roughly 100. This is big. I think the build shouldn't have to focus on physical damage flat increases as much and that strength should play a bigger part than it currently do.

The loss of the weapon slot and glove slot is big, very big. The gloves are essentially the equivalent of a weapon with pure offense stats. There's no life, no resists and almost no defense (the evasion and energy shield are extremely weak as you reach end-game). I honestly believe that the gloves should have some survival stats added to them. A flat armour increases, a bunch of life, resists, life on hit even, anything will do but it's needed. As it is, you sacrifice 2 inventory slots for a build that is pretty much just for the fun. I don't know if it's gonna be viable as it is in the later maps or compared to other builds.

Like I said previously, the build almost requires 3 uniques (and your weapon slot) to work, which leaves very little room to build resists even if the belt gives some resistance. Pair this with iron ring being very useful for the build, this leave a very small room for resistances. Luckily, I am playing as a marauder and have access to a +15 all resistances nodes and happen to have grabbed +8 resistance to fire and cold from the general middle cluster. I don't think that every class has this chance however. A good option would likely to keep Kraytin alive.

The attack speed is actually a big concern for me. In this build the faster you attack, the less damage you'll take because monsters are very quick to swarm you. It would be highly appreciated to have either a faster base speed (I know it's 1.2 for the marauder, I don't know for others) or to allow some weapon/hand specific nodes to be obtainable for unarmed builds (I'd say 1h melee attack speed would be more fitting).

Currently, there's only 2 skills working as attack skills, elemental hit and frenzy. I know that more skills are in the work for this so I'll keep judgement for when more are implemented.

The few physical damage nodes in the skill tree are extremely weak to this build. I'm not sure if it's intended or not (because the wording on the gloves means it should works) but picking a 10% damage increase node while having a base damage of 50 will not increase the base to 55 to then be amplified by the gloves. It seems as the gloves are actually increased unarmed damage rather than more unarmed damage.

Very similarly to attack speed, accuracy is pretty hard to come by for the build and it's oh so valuable! I certainly wouldn't mind if there was some flat accuracy increases here and there (aside from dex itself) and maybe some more accuracy % bonuses. Otherwise, it suffers the same problem as attack speed.



One thing I'd like to propose is to add a line on the gloves that say "every 20 strength increases your base damage by 1-1". Just to lower the absolute need to focus on physical damage on jewelry (of course, the unarmed physical damage bonus would need to be adjusted).


As I've said before, I really enjoy the build even if it has a number of flaws and is rather slow to play :)

Hmm, really interesting. I was wondering how it would work out high level and how much of a penalty it is considering you lose the weapon slot and have a hard time increasing attack speed.

This topic title really badly reminded of the Street Fighter 2 Vocal Album.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQf-JwAVWRg

get a pair or 200 lighting damage wake of destruction boots and tell me what happends hehe

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fadingg1ory wrote:

get a pair or 200 lighting damage wake of destruction boots and tell me what happends hehe

He would do 1-200 more damage per hit... What exactly are you expecting here? For physical multiplier to suddenly apply to lightning damage?

I've since then changed from elemental hit to frenzy since the physical damage from frenzy applies to facebreaker bonus (meaning I'm gaining about 40% more damage) and I get attack speed to boot.

Sitting at 10k or so dps when I don't use mana leech.

Tree-E-Hit

I would suggest this for Elemental Hit, since with Resolute Technique you would solve your accuracy-issues and Berserk would give as much AS as the 4 Nodes in the center together. Access to the duellist Area gives some boni too (you might change the path, since with more points going above Golem-Blood is better as below).

For Frenzy the Duellist-Area is even more usefull, since it gives another frenzy-sphere and Bloodmagic could be usefull too. Still I guess Resolute Technique is very usefull and if you go for frenzy you might switch to a quiver with +physical damage, since frenzy should give a lot of atk-spd.

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Emphasy wrote:

Tree-E-Hit

I would suggest this for Elemental Hit, since with Resolute Technique you would solve your accuracy-issues and Berserk would give as much AS as the 4 Nodes in the center together. Access to the duellist Area gives some boni too (you might change the path, since with more points going above Golem-Blood is better as below).

For Frenzy the Duellist-Area is even more usefull, since it gives another frenzy-sphere and Bloodmagic could be usefull too. Still I guess Resolute Technique is very usefull and if you go for frenzy you might switch to a quiver with +physical damage, since frenzy should give a lot of atk-spd.

Losing the 30% WED in the middle is the same as losing a bit over 1k dps.

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAQEAANTk5gHOOIsEH3keB2uU1QeMEywKqDEdD0i74hIhjyMXFRfWF4eVhxv-SJccezrRHu8LtSJCe5citfrNI-9IrCaTIz8skvP-MZNJ9zSoAXk6q_InPSQAtUEt8PRDPcasRMYy6UaqDY5IWfzzT-mDIFs8BoxkZesbaA1hmXGEKRxysqVudZ0axHfO0Ox4TQG6e4rWDXzAId6AyTPVhf0v_Idr4hqJaX6WjJ8LapKyYraThx9-lIM7npXAPlGW1QR6mjrizZtvQkqcvMMXoUf_8KFUTLeh5oQ1ojeodqoFOlaqDgowq2VV0q3D2jGuutvhsrw6_LTqh1u-g3zhy9UXz80SrI7NsSBX0TQ919M_8HvUi8Sr1LnAINWMg_Tbocfp3bR_Ed28HlLeoK9N5K_cDutgC43wbucv8N1IdPJDP37zR3cY9AqYFPfLcBn9aAlt

This is my current build btw.

You'll notice that quite a few thing changed.

Well you used 84 Points :P

With 13 Points more reaching the middle would be no problem.

Would be a lot better if Punching would be considered either One-Handed Combat (since you can wear a shield) or Dual-Wield, so that this nodes could be applied.

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Emphasy wrote:

Well you used 84 Points :P

With 13 Points more reaching the middle would be no problem.

Would be a lot better if Punching would be considered either One-Handed Combat (since you can wear a shield) or Dual-Wield, so that this nodes could be applied.

it would be (more) broken :p