1.3 [Newbie Friendly] GROUNDSLAMMER BUILD

Well, I just made it to merciless using this build and... I'm hitting a wall here.

My gear is not as good as the one you linked and I barely managed to do dominus with it (scariest fight ever). And now... 5 canibbal would kill me in 2 sec if I did nothing. Just finished the mercy mission and almost died to freeze stun (that was my mistake for doing it with 20% cold res though).

Running around 1500 armour and 2700 hp. DPS is 2200 on Heavy Strike and 800 on Ground Slam. Any suggestions?

"

Mist_Rider wrote:

Well, I just made it to merciless using this build and... I'm hitting a wall here.

My gear is not as good as the one you linked and I barely managed to do dominus with it (scariest fight ever). And now... 5 canibbal would kill me in 2 sec if I did nothing. Just finished the mercy mission and almost died to freeze stun (that was my mistake for doing it with 20% cold res though).

Running around 1500 armour and 2700 hp. DPS is 2200 on Heavy Strike and 800 on Ground Slam. Any suggestions?

Spoiler

You need to switch your ground slam gem into where your heavy strike is now. If you have problems with your gear and have currency saved up, spend a little time in a trade channel, you'll come up with some great crap for just a few chaos. If not, I recommend you run through merciless ledge a few times until you do.

If you can afford it, purchase a cast when damage taken as soon as feasible. CwDT+Enduring Cry+Decoy Totem will do amazing things for your survivability. Even if you dont have it, make sure you are using either a decoy totem or spell totem+skelly. Warlords mark to pull a few to you, they hit you, the totem comes out, and all mobs trickle to it while you are basically a few feet behidn it ground slamming them as they do. You should be mowing down packs cackling with glee IMO. Also, if you do see a cheap weapon upgrade while you are looking for armor it would be nice. %phys damage is great, but pair with adds x-x phys damage it becomes even greater. Good luck!

Thanks for the build, works great. I'm now at lvl 77 and i've been running maps up to lvl 71 with no problems. Stats are about:

Heavy strike: 12k dps
Ground slam: 5k dps
HP: 4k
Armor: 5k (with molten shell which is pretty much always on, thanks to CWDT gem)
Res: All 77, chaos -16

Now trying to get second 5L so i could get Faster Attacks to Ground Slam.

I ran this char to merciless ledge and ripped it to desync. Rerolling it now and I recommend the following gemsets:

Ground Slam + Faster attacks (or Multistrike, haven't tested it yet) + Melee Physical + Life gain on Hit (life leech as of approx. 1k DPS) + Blood Magic (if you spec out of the keystone) or added fire

Heavy Strike + Faster attacks (I don't recommend Multistrike due to knockback effect) + Melee Physical + Blood Magic (if you spec out of the keystone) or added fire + Life gain on Hit (life leech as of approx. 1k DPS)

Cast on Damage taken + Enduring Cry + Curse (Temp Chains or Warlords Mark) + Molten Shell

Leap Slam + Faster Attacks + Blood Magic (if you spec out of the Keystone) + Life gain on Hit (life leech as of approx. 1k DPS))

Reduced Mana + Hatred or Anger + Determination + Vitality


Either way, you want Faster Attacks or Multistrike to boost your DPS and clearing speed.

"

demon_cleaner wrote:

I ran this char to merciless ledge and ripped it to desync. Rerolling it now and I recommend the following gemsets:

Ground Slam + Faster attacks (or Multistrike, haven't tested it yet) + Melee Physical + Life gain on Hit (life leech as of approx. 1k DPS) + Blood Magic (if you spec out of the keystone) or added fire

Heavy Strike + Faster attacks (I don't recommend Multistrike due to knockback effect) + Melee Physical + Blood Magic (if you spec out of the keystone) or added fire + Life gain on Hit (life leech as of approx. 1k DPS)

Cast on Damage taken + Enduring Cry + Curse (Temp Chains or Warlords Mark) + Molten Shell

Leap Slam + Faster Attacks + Blood Magic (if you spec out of the Keystone) + Life gain on Hit (life leech as of approx. 1k DPS))

Reduced Mana + Hatred or Anger + Determination + Vitality


Either way, you want Faster Attacks or Multistrike to boost your DPS and clearing speed.

That's a bit advanced for a newbie to obtain. Also you can't run three auras on a reduced mana gem.

But if you have come this far i would recommend getting a cheap 5 link armour and also replace life gain on hit/life leech with faster attacks or something else. That way you get both multistrike and faster attacks. You don't really need any leech gem at that point anyway.

"

thaazan wrote:

Thanks for the build, works great. I'm now at lvl 77 and i've been running maps up to lvl 71 with no problems. Stats are about:

Heavy strike: 12k dps
Ground slam: 5k dps
HP: 4k
Armor: 5k (with molten shell which is pretty much always on, thanks to CWDT gem)
Res: All 77, chaos -16

Now trying to get second 5L so i could get Faster Attacks to Ground Slam.

so nice numbers, but common show us some gear that produces them! =)

what's the best aura for this build? anger, hatred, wrath or haste?

Seems like at a certain point you need some really good gear to make this build end-game viable.

Dusted off an old marauder of mine from open beta and started using this build. Got him to level 74 from level 50. He does fine on level 66 maps and in farming docks or catacombs but he is a bit of disaster trying to take on merciless Dominus.

Life is 3800 hp.
Armour is around 2150 (21% reduction of phys dmg).
DPS with Heavy Strike is 6400.
DPS with ground slam is 3400.
Resists are 75/75/45/-60

Each skill has life leech (7% or so) and with my gear he has another 5% life leech. Just can't really get too close to Dominus to do enough damage. I'll have to practice my movement.

I guess I should get a decent pair of boots with movement speed as it seems you really need to be able to run around during the first phase of that fight. During this fight you really get a sense of how squishy two handed melee fighters are unless they have really high end gear.

Here is my gear so far:

Just recently hit 66 and is having some trouble with maps around my level, got any pointers i should look for upgrades? i Still cant rock the blood magic skill, gets owned too fast.

this is my gear:

[

I'm rocking these stats:



Skill DPS


I also paid like 10 - 12 chaos for the 2h mace.. did i overpay?

Thanks in advance.

"

AsenD wrote:

Just recently hit 66 and is having some trouble with maps around my level, got any pointers i should look for upgrades? i Still cant rock the blood magic skill, gets owned too fast.

Post your skill tree. I'm level 65 with blood magic (since like lvl 30?) and I have absolutely no problem with it and I can take maps pretty easily (I followed the OP's build exactly). Your HP is really low. Mine is at 3.4k and my next 3 passives are going into +8% life.

As for your items, I'd get more + life and swap out your gloves for something like +life +attack speed and maybe some resists. Same with your helmet. I'd try to get at least one 5L so you can get ground slam-faster attack-added fire- melee physical-life leach. Swap your gold ring and amulet for something with +life and resists. I'd probably use some chroms on your boots and get rid of spectral throw and try to get like 4 red or 3 red and a blue/green so you can run cast when damage taken with Warlord's' mark + enduring cry + a totem or raise skeletons or molten armour. Also you shouldn't be leveling that gem up because it only makes it worse for our purposes (for example yours needs to take 1k damage before activating whereas level 1 only takes 445 for not additional benefits).