[1.0.2] One-Hand/Shield Lightning Strike Templar

[Why Lightning Strike?]

Lightning Strike is an active skill with many factors to take into account. It contains both a melee and projectile component, and you end up dealing both physical and elemental damage with it. It's a great entry if you want to learn how Path of Exile's keywords and mechanics work.

Pros:

- Can use any melee weapon
- Can be used in both melee and ranged scenarios
- Can be used as an area skill
- Lightning component allows you to apply shock, depending on your skill/gear setup
- Has great damage potential due to its physical and elemental nature
- Cool and flashy-looking (:

Cons:

- Can be very gear-intensive in late-game
- Being both physical and elemental can make reflect painful in maps
- Many enemies resist lightning

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[Passive Skill Tree]


Keystones:

Resolute Technique: I originally planned this build to utilize crits, but soon realized that I will have to make a heavy investment in crit nodes and rapiers to make it work. As it turns out, rapiers are heavy on the DEX and it wasn't something I can easily afford from a Templar base. Instead, I decided to ditch crits and just rely on the Static Blows and Chance to Shock nodes to shock, which despite the 20% base chance, actually feels pretty consistent when you have perfect accuracy and a fast attack speed.

Iron Grip: As this build gets a fair amount of STR, Iron Grip puts it to use by adding the STR portion of the damage increase to the Lightning Strike projectiles. In the beta, Iron Grip was not a very accessible node for the build and the hassle wasn't worth it; however, that has changed for the release build of the game so I decided to go for it again. Note that your tooltip DPS will not change, since it is only an indication of Lightning Strike's melee range DPS.

Unwavering Stance: As a shield user, this takes block recovery out of the equation (as well as regular stun). I use Tempest Shield in this build, so alongside shield nodes, blocking will mitigate a good portion of damage.

(Optional) Iron Reflexes: If you have the spare points, you can go for Iron Reflex so you can use Grace for a potentially better armor boost, depending on your equipment.

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[Equipment]

One-Handed Weapons: For attack speed, aim for at least 1.5 (as shown on the weapon). The most accessible ones are the 1.6 attack speed swords (STR/DEX), although other weapon types with 1.3 attack speed may have mods that can bump it beyond 1.5 as well.

For damage, focus on getting physical damage modifiers first (both the flat values as well as the percentage increasing ones), followed by other mods like additional attack speed (at 1.5 or above), elemental damage and so forth.

Shields: Any STR or STR/INT shield will do. Keep in mind that while the STR/INT ones do not offer as much armor, they often do include elemental resistances as an implicit mod and it can help in a pinch if you need to have your resists covered. Alternatively, STR/DEX shields offer higher block rates, but lacks a bit in the armor department; they can be more readily used once you get Iron Reflexes.

Accessories: One important area to cover is to get your hands on an amulet that grants added stats to DEX and INT - you will absolutely need the stats if you want to equip higher-leveled swords and maxed-out INT skill gems, such as Conductivity. You can dump points into any +30 INT/DEX nodes you come across as a temporary solution if you need it; once you have the appropriate gears, you can refund them for other areas of the skill tree.

Everything else is up to you. Mix and match some ES equipment if you want, but don't forget to stock up on STR, life, resistances of all kinds, and additional physical and elemental damage mods (physical takes precedence over elemental).


[Current Gears]


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[Gems + Support]

a. Core Skills

This section will cover 4-link setups as well as suggestions for higher links.


Lightning Strike: Weapon Elemental Damage, Multistrike, Blood Magic/Mana Leech.
Your main attack.

Additional support gems:
- Faster Attacks
- Added Fire Damage
- Lightning Penetration

Notes:
- Any increases in "Melee Physical Damage" only affects the initial melee hit.
- To increase projectile damage, generic "Increased Physical Damage" will work, because it does not refer to "Melee Physical Damage".
- The lightning damage source is converted from your physical damage, so having high physical damage will grant you more damage overall than simply increasing your lightning damage.


Heavy Strike: Melee Physical Damage, Added Fire Damage, Weapon Elemental Damage.
Your main single-target attack for bosses/tougher single mobs.


Tempest Shield: Reduced Mana, Iron Will, Elemental Proliferation.
Gives you additional chance to block. Plus, it dishes out lightning damage to attacking foes; Iron Will boosts damage from Tempest Shield, and Elemental Proliferation spreads your shock to nearby mobs.


Enduring Cry: Cast when Damage Taken
This is your standard auto-cast setup; as of 1.0.1, you can only auto-cast Enduring Cry up to level 5 if you're sticking with a level 1 Cast when Damage Taken. I will be looking into this in depth to figure out the optimal levels for this gem.

Other recommended gems:
- Enfeeble, level 5 (at level 1 CwDT)
- Temporal Chains, level 5 (at level 1 CwDT)
- Decoy Totem, level 8 (at level 1 CwDT)
- Molten Shell, level 7 (at level 1 CwDT)
- Devouring Totem (need to test later)
- Immortal Call + Increased Duration (need to test later)


b. Supplemental Skills

This section covers other skills that you may want to take along, depending on your playstyle and/or the types of situations you encounter.

Regarding auras: once you get the aura nodes near the Templar area, you should be able to run two 60% auras plus Tempest Shield as long as you have leveled Reduced Mana gems.


Conductivity
Lowers lightning resistance in an area. Becomes more useful at higher difficulties, where mobs pack more resistance. This also gives a higher chance of applying shock.

Leap Slam
AoE melee attack. Lets you cover distance quickly. It also allows you to jump over elevated heights - especially useful when navigating certain environments. Note that you can jump faster with a higher attack speed.

Shield Charge
Melee attack. Our version of Whirling Blades, except this only hits a single target. Useful when you need to quickly ping a soft target (for example, Blackguard Mages). Note that you can charge faster with a higher attack speed.

Infernal Blow / Glacial Hammer
Elemental melee attacks. These are decent alternatives to Heavy Strike, depending on the weapon you're wielding.

Dominating Blow
Melee attack. It's a decent finisher for stragglers with low health, reanimating them to your side when they die to this skill. Fun to play around with.

Hatred/Wrath
Additional elemental damage auras. Reservation rate is fixed at 60% for both, but the Reduced Mana support gem can take it down considerably.

Generally speaking, Hatred provides higher upfront DPS, while Wrath provides additional lightning damage that can help with your shocks.

Determination/Grace
Additional armor/evasion aura. Determination can be used if you need the armor; Grace can be used for armor as well after obtaining Iron Reflexes.

Clarity
Mana regeneration aura. It's nice to have early on, but once your Mana Leech is sufficiently leveled, your gears can compensate.

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[Q/A]

a. I have mana issues with Lightning Strike. What can I do?

- Blood Magic support gem
- Mana Leech support gem
- Low-level Clarity aura (around level 4 or 5)
- Mana regeneration/mana leech from physical attack damage from equipment


b. Why don't you take Melee Physical Damage nodes? Why aren't you using the Melee Physical Damage support gem on Lightning Strike?

Anything that affects "melee physical damage" only affects the melee portion of Lightning Strike (in other words, only the melee-ranged swing); they do not affect the projectiles' damage. Note that this is different from the "Increased Physical Damage with One-Handed Melee Weapons" nodes, since the "melee" in this case refers to the weapon type, not the damage type.


c. Why do you take so many physical damage nodes, as opposed to elemental nodes?

Lightning Strike converts 50% of your physical damage into lightning damage. Getting more physical damage will increase your overall damage output more than simply increasing the elemental portion of it.


d. Lightning Strike isn't doing enough damage. What can I do?

You need a better weapon. Lightning Strike requires more investment to be comparable to its peers, such as Ground Slam and Ethereal Knives. I went with Lightning Strike since it is fairly versatile (I can use any melee weapon I want), the projectile range is very far for a "melee" skill, and it's just freaking cool to look at. (:


e. Why do you emphasize on attack speed? Doesn't Multistrike grant you enough anyways?

You can never have enough attack speed, especially with Multistrike.

The three-hit feature of Multistrike has one nasty side-effect: you are rooted while the animation is taking place. To minimize this animation window, you will need a faster attack speed. This becomes important if you ever find the need to kite/evade certain targets, and it sucks to die at inopportune times because Multistrike rooted you half a second too long.


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[Changelog]

12/10/2013: Slightly updated formatting and added a new "Why Lightning Strike?" section.
11/25/2013: Did several revamps to the build trees and the Q/A section.
11/12/2013: Added a general one-handed skill tree and some edits pertaining to 1.0.1 CwDT.
11/11/2013: Revamped the entire guide for the release build of Path of Exile.

03/24/2013: Minor update on skill tree to reflect recent patch changes.
02/19/2013: Major revision to the passive tree; added a section for general tips.
02/13/2013: Added a selection of my current gears under the [Equipment] subsection.
02/07/2013: Did a somewhat major revamp on the skill tree itself. Section updated.
02/07/2013: Added a brief passive skill tree progression.
02/05/2013: Revised the build again to include Iron Grip and more HP nodes.
02/01/2013: Revised build to include Resolute Technique, forgoing crits.
01/26/2013: Thread created, with focus on crits.

I really like the concept of this build, but I'm also pretty much a newb, so my question is, do you think this build will work in end game content, like on merc difficulty etc?
Also, why did you take the mana regen node if you have Blood Magic? And with so little hp nodes won't I have troubles surviving later on? Or does the shield/ES values make up for it?
Overall I didn't see many sword focused templates around and I really like it so far, so cheers ^^

[edit]
Also, what other skills except LS are you suggesting, like auras/single target spells?

you have 60% elemental resist in this build, and since you're a templar i'm assuming you're going kite shields making that 70%

with some gear that's easily going to be over 100% making those points wasted since i'm fairly sure it maxes out at 79%

You dont need Manaregn with Blood Magic

Frohammer, there are resistance penalties added on higher difficulties, so going over the "limit" is still relevant.

60% for cruel, i guess that's true, still seems like overkill.

just my opinion though.

I'm building a similar character, I'd go with more life nodes.

Bump - I made an extensive update to the main post.

My templar is currently up to Act 2 on cruel difficulty, and everything's been smooth sailing so far. I made quite a few changes as well, thanks for the help/suggestions guys!

Bump - I added Iron Grip since I ended up with a build that has a good chunk of STR from nodes alone (250+, see updated skill tree).

I also reorganized the first post as well. Enjoy!

Now, addressing some of the previous posts:

Viability at endgame: I am currently at Act 3 on Cruel difficulty. By the way things are looking, I think this build should be alright!

Additional skills: I added a more comprehensive list on the first post.

Elemental resistance nodes: the latest revision totals up to 50% now. Along with gears, I'd say that I should still have a good amount of resists by Merciless (hopefully!).

Blood Magic: my main reason for not going Blood Magic is due to Tempest Shield - it would take a flat percentage of my health if I went with Blood Magic, which I do not think I'm willing to give up as difficulty ramps. So far, with mana regen from gears, I've been doing fine. If Blood Magic turns out to work well later on, I'll simply respec the point out of the 40% Mana Regeneration node at the beginning of the tree.

Health nodes: I grabbed more, which was a good move since it seems to be pretty much mandatory on Cruel and (I'd imagine moreso) Merciless.

Just a nooby question.
I'm currently rolling Mace/Shield lightning strike build, exact same way the OP goes except for the mace.
Is the sword superior? Or can i stick to maces?
any help is appreciated