1.3 [Newbie Friendly] GROUNDSLAMMER BUILD

I've noticed that not many people take the armor nodes, even tho they give quite a big bonus, around 100% if you pick them all up. Is armor that worthless, or do you just have enough of it anyway ?

And another question :) As far as I know, 75% is the max resistance I can have in this game, and I see I can actually get it from passive skills. Does that mean that if I pick all these resist nodes, and get +75% from them, I won't need any resistance on any piece of my gear ?

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Poganyz wrote:

I've noticed that not many people take the armor nodes, even tho they give quite a big bonus, around 100% if you pick them all up. Is armor that worthless, or do you just have enough of it anyway ?

And another question :) As far as I know, 75% is the max resistance I can have in this game, and I see I can actually get it from passive skills. Does that mean that if I pick all these resist nodes, and get +75% from them, I won't need any resistance on any piece of my gear ?

1. Armour is not as useful against bosses and unique monsters that deal high amounts of damage, it works better for weaker mobs. As such it's usually a better idea to go for the life nodes, for survivability across the board and go for armour from gear. Additionally, endurance charges add 5% per stack anyway, so supplements quite a lot of damage reduction from gear.

2. You're right, however in merciless the sheer drop in character resists from the penalty almost neccesitates the need for resists from gear. This is especially the case for chaos too. And you can get it up to 80% with the elemental adaptation passive.

Hope that helps :)

Ive read the first 25 pages and then pages 100- the most recent as of this posting and was unable to find an answer to this question.

1.If were using lava lash and fire support gems, Why not use infernal blow over heavy strike?

2.Why is everyone using maces and not used staffs as an alternative?

I recognize you can get blood magic support gems for your spamable skills and you could change the spec slightly picking up more Int allowing you to spec into 25% block rate from staves instead of maces. In all those pages I read there are no comments on why people are not using staves. Doing this would allow you to have auras running from mana and 25% block.

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lscsfs3 wrote:

Ive read the first 25 pages and then pages 100- the most recent as of this posting and was unable to find an answer to this question.

1.If were using lava lash and fire support gems, Why not use infernal blow over heavy strike?

2.Why is everyone using maces and not used staffs as an alternative?

I recognize you can get blood magic support gems for your spamable skills and you could change the spec slightly picking up more Int allowing you to spec into 25% block rate from staves instead of maces. In all those pages I read there are no comments on why people are not using staves. Doing this would allow you to have auras running from mana and 25% block.

Not an expert by any means but here's my two cents:

1. I think heavy strike does more damage to single targets (and has increased change to stun), compared to infernal blow. While the latter would somewhat offer CC benefits, ground slam or whatever the primary AoE is probably far superior to the infernal blow explosions.

Additionally, not everyone opts for lava lash. Not sure if it's been included in the passive build now, but don't think I have it.

http://en.pathofexilewiki.com/wiki/Infernal_Blow Infernal Blow vs. Heavy Strike http://en.pathofexilewiki.com/wiki/Heavy_Strike

2. Interesting point, never considered that myself.

Might be because maces offer more raw damage compared to staves? Not sure if this is always the case, but I've been using Geofri's Baptism Brass Maul

Aiming to eventually upgrade to Marohi Erqi Karui Maul (~400-600dmg).

From the unique list http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/12056, seems that staves have lower damage if you compare a similar level weapon such as Taryn's Shiver Maelstrom Staff (~100dmg).

Would also mean getting a different set of passives for damage if using staves right, so would fundamentally change the passive tree build?

Thanks for the answers, things are clearing up. :) I only have 2 more questions left :

1) What exactly is an endurance charge, and for what, or how do I use it ? I always see it in descriptions and the skill tree, but I have no idea what it is, or what it does.

2) How does stun work in this game ? I see most melee Marauder builds take the extra stun duration and reduced enemy stun threshold, so I just followed those builds, but how exactly does it work ? Do enemies always get stunned for a very short time when I hit them with a 2h mace ? What exactly is the enemy stun threshold ? Can I stunlock a boss if I stack these two stats and attack speed high enough ?

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Poganyz wrote:

Thanks for the answers, things are clearing up. :) I only have 2 more questions left :

1) What exactly is an endurance charge, and for what, or how do I use it ? I always see it in descriptions and the skill tree, but I have no idea what it is, or what it does.

2) How does stun work in this game ? I see most melee Marauder builds take the extra stun duration and reduced enemy stun threshold, so I just followed those builds, but how exactly does it work ? Do enemies always get stunned for a very short time when I hit them with a 2h mace ? What exactly is the enemy stun threshold ? Can I stunlock a boss if I stack these two stats and attack speed high enough ?

Happy to help, relatively new myself :)

For both of these questions, the wiki page is probably the most thorough resource.

1. http://en.pathofexilewiki.com/wiki/Charges and http://en.pathofexilewiki.com/wiki/Endurance_Charge.

Endurance charges are generated usually by taunting enemies (similar to taunt in WC3) to attack you, and also a % chance by killing a unit cursed with warlord's mark.

Effectively upon generation, these charges grant 5% damage reduction (think bonus armour) and 5% elemental resistances per charge, which last for a short period of time. Not sure about others but it is pretty much a staple for me in merciless.

2. http://en.pathofexilewiki.com/wiki/Stun.

Stun is a little more complicated, but simplistically a unit will become stunned if a certain % of total hp is damaged in a single hit. As such, it is easier to stun units with less life, and a lot more difficult to stun or permastun bosses.

Stun threshold lowers the single hit damage required by the stun calculation to grant the stun effect, thought I personally haven't bothered with this. From what I gather stun has been nerfed over time, and it isn't feasible to run permastun builds unless you invest heavily in gear and a specialised passive tree.

thank you very much. I was a hardcore player of ARPGs back in the day, but have other responsabilities today that I just wanna enjoy a game and play with friends. This thread just got me pumped to start playing and don't worry about all the math and complications that goes in this kind of game.

Thank you for this guide,

just started Marauder.


I question about gems. When i start leveling them ? should i keep them low till i take blood magic ?


plz help :))

Build


Gear


Marauder lvl 77

I've 3.6k hp, 135.7 l/s and 80% all res.

On HS i've 18k with auras and on GS 4.3k.

Now i'm gonna to take Leather and Steel and the others dmg above Master of Arena.

For gear i think to change the chest, buy one with high max life, Chaos res. What do you think about?
Do i buy an Alpha Howl for auras? Because now i can't use Anger and Grace on mana, and spend them on life is too much for the cost of BM.

Thanks for the great Post.