Sean's DW Blood Tanky DPS

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Supajin wrote:

I got a question, if you pick up the 3 nodes for mana reduc, there's a 10% and 5% and 5% a bit north of Unwavering Stance, does it add up to 20% less cost of skills? Does that work with Blood magic as well since you use life for skills? If so I might pick that up with my Atk Speed based duelist

I attack 3 times per second on my duelist without any Mana reduction. Yes the mana reduction does make it cost less health when using Blood Magic, but once you get your health pool high enough you actually regen through any spamming of abilities. Top that with Life on Hit and Life Leech... Getting mana reductino nodes is overkill.

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walrus123 wrote:

Hey im just a noob but um does this build use pure armor or evasion rating?

Either or. I use Iron Reflexes which converts it. There is no advantage to running either one, so I would say that it would be easier to run Hybrid armor (str/dex) just to make it easier to get the right Gem patterns you want.

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meSSerszmiT wrote:

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Zoubiey wrote:

Will you add which bandit rewards to take?

I took +8% resist in Normal and both Passive points in the other 2 difficulties. Although, getting the Attack Speed reward in Cruel isn't a terrible idea.

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wrajjt wrote:

Build looks good, but there are a few oddities in it (might have been brought up earlier, I dont know)

1. I question the rationale behind going for axes. They have no intrinsic bonus like maces and swords do. Aesthetics? Predicting an intrisic bonus will be patched in later?

2. To the left of the Steel Skin node near your starting area, you decided to spend 4 points to gain 20 str, 10 int and 6% all resistances. This seems rather unnecessary to me, as resistances arent too hard to come by, endgame. If you need the int for curses, there's a 30 int node you can reach with 1 point to the right of the duelist starting area, and the other points can be used to reach Blood drinker (2% lifesteal which I think will amount to more efficiant HP over the course of a fight than 6% all res) and Fencing (18% phys damage), OR 3x8% hp nodes, OR some chaos resistance.

I'll have to look into your ideas when I get home.

1) The intrinsic bonus of Axes is increased damage. If you notice Axes have a higher Physical Damage value than any other one hand. I originally made that decision because the first "phase" of this build have very little dex nodes, and I was afraid I wouldn't be able to wield end game sword. However, after some revising I have picked up some more dex; therefore, you can use just about whatever weapon you want with this build. All you have to do is swap out a few points.

2) Resists are OP. It's a mindset I have, I guess. I want to have 75% all resist. Even with all the bonus resistance I have in these passives I still struggle to get maxed. I agree the chaos resist is useful. But as far as health nodes, you have to think... How much health is too much? For example. 3k Health with 75% all resists. Or 4k Health with 40-50% resists. The way this build is designed is to have very high sustained health regeneration, meaning that you are sitting at full health very often. At full health, having a ton of health means nothing... But the increased mitigation is still very much so useful.

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Hiroschi wrote:

How is your Manahousehould with that build?
Got you massiv Mana problem or is it perfec?

Because this build uses Blood Magic (Health is mana), and there is an absurd amount of health regen/life gain on hit, your skills basically have no cost.

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davidftw wrote:

Hey Sean! Been playing with your build and quite frankly I've had a blast.
Lvl 60 atm and its working really well in act 3 merci with Faster attacks+life gain+life leech gemmed to the main attacks :)

I just have a little question. Why did you decide on axes for the build?

Hey Dave, I actually think you added me in game. I removed you because you didn't say anything/I had no idea who you were, haha sorry.

I chose Axes because of intrinsic bonus they have, more damage. If I had to recommend a second weapon choice I would have to say use Swords.

I will be posting a new build I've been messing around with, I go into Resolute Technique and disregard all Crit/Crit Damage. It clears up a ton of node space and lets you build either much more tanky, or get some more physical damage.

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zanik93 wrote:

I see u said u are using axes, one question tho-> Do you have nice accuracy/chance to hit? I dont see u taking lots of dex nodes

Yeah, that's a problem I've ran into. Although accuracy is a fairly easy stat to get on gear, it is definitely a drawback of this build.

I think I'm going to make some changes soon to the build, possibly ditching Axes and going Swords for the intrinsic accuracy bonus.

I will probably change the Axe build into an Axe OR Mace build, with Resolute Technique. Coming soon!

Hey, followed this build as a guideline since I started, currently level 74 with a slightly modified version found here.

Mostly breezed through the game, the build is very weapon dependent, a good axe boosts damage by so much.

I no longer use Blood rage at end game due to massive regen with merciless -60% chaos resistance, so using plain frenzy for the frenzy charges. I stopped bothering with molten shell, in end game it explodes almost instantly. Accuracy became a problem at higher levels as well, so respecced a little into resolute technique which provided a huge damage boost (missing 20% of the time is really bad, even if you can crit), and specced into elemental adaption up there too.

I didn't take many armor nodes due to melee mobs not being a problem, with warlords mark you're easily able to regen a physical damage mob, and cleaving a pack of melee also nets huge life with life on hit, having granite flasks also helps with this issue, just felt like wasted points.

The big damage comes from elemental mobs' huge burst potential, so having 80% resists helps alot with this build, and chaos mobs are obviously a huge problem if you're focused, luckily they're really squishy, but having 3k+ hp helps keep you alive.

Currently sitting at 8.3k dps Dual Strike and 3.9k dps Cleave, self buffed with Anger(level 14 - have +30 all stat on my neck) and Frenzy stacks, obviously gets much higher with group buffs. Physical damage reduction at 38% with Grace running, also gets higher if someone runs armor buff.


Weapons I currently use, again, very weapon dependent. I also don't have attack speed on my gloves/rings/amulet, which would likely be a huge damage boost as well.

I don't have a 5link either at the moment, would likely add concentrated effect to cleave to massively boost damage.

hey! thanks for the guide, 've been having fun on my duelist; currently at lv42. Would you think there will be any changes if im in softcore? like drop some health/armour nodes for more dmg?

My build is kind of similar to your, but little bit of more dmg. Also, I didn't know 8% resist part. I kill all of them instead without knowing the choice of reward. =\