Sean's DW Blood Tanky DPS

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Solidboss35 wrote:

I found this build after getting my first duelist to Cruel difficulty, and slamming my face into the wall known as "survivability". I got stuck at level 40 on him, and I wanted to make sure if I had to reroll, I would do it right this time.

At the moment my new Duelist is level 47, surpassing my previous build with flying colors.
So far I've followed your build point for point, other than nabbing an extra +30 Dex node because I could use any of my dex-based skills (That's my own fault for having absolutely no Dex on my gear. Doh, lol) I still die, but a helluva lot less than on my first duelist.

If you don't mind I'll try and keep you posted on my progress.

Glad to hear your seeing success. Keep me posted!

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Laststranger wrote:

wonder if it alright to use determination, grace, and anger aura with this build, but I made little change into the build.

If you're wanting to use heavy auras you CAN NOT use Blood Magic, it takes the reserve out of your health pool.

I haven't tried this yet, but I believe it would be as easy as not taking Blood Magic and picking up a mana leech gem.

Let me know if you try it.

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seanmcdn wrote:

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Laststranger wrote:

wonder if it alright to use determination, grace, and anger aura with this build, but I made little change into the build.

If you're wanting to use heavy auras you CAN NOT use Blood Magic, it takes the reserve out of your health pool.

I haven't tried this yet, but I believe it would be as easy as not taking Blood Magic and picking up a mana leech gem.

Let me know if you try it.

I myself respecced to an aura (determ, hatred, haste, grace, anger) build, as I felt blood magic simply does not cut it late game (currently doing maps at lvl 76), and running auras give you much more utility in groups. It really depends on how good your gear is. If you want a detailed explanation of my build pm me.

First off, wanted to thank you for the great detailed guide. You give everything interesting to someone looking to try a build in their head and translate it into a good position for making it into a reality in the game.

I started a DW blood tank this past weekend and wanted to give a little bit of my perspective on this. Maybe you add some of it to the OP, maybe not.

For some reason, I have terrible luck and can't get any decent swords/axes. Restricting myself to using Cleave as you recommended eventually ended up with me having terrible weapons and passing up quite decent claws/maces/etc because they just don't work.

This is one of the major advantages of using Lightning Strike, at least early on. Since it has no weapon restriction, you can slap any old 1Her in to make up for your lacking itemization while you level, this also opens the build up to many awesome alternatives. Faster attack speeds and Blind could lead to a perma-blind tank build where you hit so fast that you are getting hit ~24% of the time (you cannot take unwavering stance if you want to use blind though). You could gear up for dual maces and perma-stun and swap out a few passives to crank up the duration and reduce the threshold.


On the auras, I was trying to fit in things like Hatred or Discipline, but really, it just seems like too much effort when using Blood Magic. Anger on the other hand is only a flat number off the top of your max hp. As long as you can afford the slot, I would recommend taking it. Feel free to stop leveling it if you ever feel it's taking too much of your HP bar. As you continue stacking str and %hp runes, that flat number will become a tiny portion of your total HP pool, continue leveling later when you have more HP than you know what to do with. Same thing goes for Grace too I guess.

Or you could always opt for reserving your whole mana bar. Hatred, haste, determination, and a Level 1 mana reduction gem takes up 99% of your mana. Use a Blood Magic gem on your main attack and you're good to go.


The only other things I really feel is that a Marauder is probably actually better than a duelist for this very same build sadly enough :( They start in a better part of the tree where you can stock up on the defensive passives, which are much needed early on, I didn't even really dual wield until level 20 because I needed the extra armor a good shield provided me.

Love the guide. Having fun with the build. Thanks for all the hard work!

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seanmcdn wrote:

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Laststranger wrote:

wonder if it alright to use determination, grace, and anger aura with this build, but I made little change into the build.

If you're wanting to use heavy auras you CAN NOT use Blood Magic, it takes the reserve out of your health pool.

I haven't tried this yet, but I believe it would be as easy as not taking Blood Magic and picking up a mana leech gem.

Let me know if you try it.

well I am still low lv so I don't have everything I need atm. that why I'm asking. Maybe I should just stick to anger aura just for extra dmg?

Edit: finally I got my hand on faster attack-cleave-life gain on hit-life leech link together. feel good =)

Small update on my progression.

Currently level 57 - Act 1 Merc - Prisoner's Gate.
selfbuffed stats:
HP: 1948 (1684 after reserving)
Armor: 4851 (54%)
Resists: 50/41/36/-49 (on Merc)
Dual strike - 2000 dps (+5% life steal)
Cleave - 900 dps (+32 life on hit)
flat life steal 4%

current build:


Hitting the brick wall there. Anything that can freeze or even chill me makes a huge problem. Even some hard hitting mobs seems to be a bit over the edge.

Is there anything important I missed in my build?
Or should I just grind my way to better gear as I am hitting some gear-check border?

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Dustehh wrote:

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seanmcdn wrote:

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Laststranger wrote:

wonder if it alright to use determination, grace, and anger aura with this build, but I made little change into the build.

If you're wanting to use heavy auras you CAN NOT use Blood Magic, it takes the reserve out of your health pool.

I haven't tried this yet, but I believe it would be as easy as not taking Blood Magic and picking up a mana leech gem.

Let me know if you try it.

I myself respecced to an aura (determ, hatred, haste, grace, anger) build, as I felt blood magic simply does not cut it late game (currently doing maps at lvl 76), and running auras give you much more utility in groups. It really depends on how good your gear is. If you want a detailed explanation of my build pm me.

You can easily use Grace, Wrath, Anger with a blood magic build. The main problem is getting enough int to level Wrath up. I run those 3.

on Aura,
I finally able to run Hatred and Anger, besides Grace. Just got Blood Magic gem and going to put Anger and Haste linked to it.
I just wonder if I can Ignite/Burn Chilled/Frozen enemies. Can I set actually set fire to the..ice?
The reason I put Hatred back is for the chill effect. No point if Ignite nullify it ><

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Saery wrote:

Is there anything important I missed in my build?
Or should I just grind my way to better gear as I am hitting some gear-check border?

I would invest in two extra Endurance Charges. You are three points away from having two (and have one point you can get back at the start of Duelist tree (one point into speed on the right and then you went left side?).

You could take of Armor Master for now as well as +30 to Agility at the start of the tree on the right side. This gives you 3 extra points that you need for your Endurance Charges.

To me Endurance Charges are key to victory. This little change will give you extra 10% All Resistance (including chaos) as well as 10% less physical damage vs those heavy hitting mobs. Not to mention it will be easier to keep it up with extra two second duration.(although with Enduring Cry gem (or two) it is easy anyway).

I am level 55 and went bit differently in my build completing right side first and now on my way to Maruder side. I have no issues with hard hitting mobs or range bow mobs. Only problems I have is those damn caster :) but then i think we just have to live thru it, and move on to the next map.

For Chill/Freeze i have one Health Flask with dispel to those and if i need to get out, i just use it and then Whiriling Blade out to get life back.

I was able to reach level 50 last night. I had a terrible time with Vaal on Cruel. I seem to be running into a problem with not enough resistance. I've also noticed a huge slow-down on killing when I entered Act 3. This is probably due to my gear (Definitely the resistances at least) Not sure about my weapons though, I can't seem to find/make anything better at the moment.