Mace and Board viable?

I'm not necessarily looking to be OCD about min-maxing. but I was thinking of making a shield and mace character. I'm new I was wondering if this could work and what are some basic passives I should go for to maximize my damage and tanking with this type of character.

I tend to think that physical Damage 1h/board toons need quality gear to suceed. How is your gear budget? For example, if you have the funds for an Aegis shield and good 5l\6l, people can tailor their advice accordingly....

gear budget? i'm new, i'm not sure what that means.
if you mean real money then budget is close to zero.

You can borrow a lot of ideas from the "Sword and Board" thread, the same concepts apply.

There are some nice Mace damage passives around the Marauder start and so the Sword and Board build will only need minor modification while sticking to the same principles of going for Shield Block nodes, Resolute Technique keystone etc.

You don't need great gear. My gear was all self-found / crafted from currency drops while leveling in Ambush up till the end of Cruel difficulty, where I decided to "splash out" and bought a high DPS sword for 2 chaos orbs.

I might upgrade my sword when I approach the end of Merciless difficulty as the current sword should get me through most or all of it and the rest of my gear will only cost me a few Alchs that I pick up, if I need to craft upgrades.

EDIT: Forgot I also bought this "Stone of Lazhwar" amulet for the spell block - 1 chaos IIRC. This lets you walk straight into an elemental mob without even blinking (well, some caution still advised but with capped resistances you will feel invincible most of the time).



So yeah. Very low budget (in terms of in-game currency) to build. Stack the Armor gear and resistances and you'll be right.

Resolute teq?

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Sobertoaster wrote:

Resolute teq?

In the passive skill tree, go directly to the left of the Marauder start until you see a big round skill node ("keystone") on the far left. This is Resolute Technique. This is a core skill which makes these builds viable i.e. consistent damage output with 100% hit chance, at the expense of never dealing critical strikes (but the massive damage you build up with +melee and +mace damage will more than make up for it).

1h maces are considered not as good as swords, but that's only true if you go for absolute endgame crazyness.

It doesn't matter whatsoever if you use a 200DpS sword or a 200DpS Mace. There's no difference except in missing attack speed nodes, but this can be fixed by:

*Kraytin reward cruel
*attack speed nodes that are not weapon-dependent
*attack speed on gloves, rings etc
*faster attack/multistrike gem

http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/897401

http://poebuilder.com/#character/AAAAAgEAAecCcQSzBS0OPBLhFE0U9hmFGjIaOBpVGmwdFCSqJy8oxS3SMok0jjboNuk6UjrYPfxBP0KOROdHfkw1UWBR5lPfVElXDVfiWD1YY1jbWfNfP2BLYSFko2VNZp5r2XB9cql07Xrve4x82YErgziE2YTvhjuLT4zPkFWQdJHOlIeYCpuDnsWfPp_LoLSiAKLqpKynhKgYqZWrxayqrK-0L7T5tqS77byfwBrBBMOGxtjM296W3sHfsuJD42rjn-RR5K3nkeeu7DjvDu988B_yL_MG877z3fZI9zL60vuq

This is what I'm working on. The goal is to be extremely tanky with budget gear. Endurance Charge on Melee Stun keeps my 7 endurance charges up all the time without having to pause for enduring cry (pause = no leech = dead!). I've got manual immortal call if I feel in danger. I'm thinking about setting up a CWDT for enduring cry since I never bother to use it manually solo, but I'm sure I'll use it for the taunt on map bosses in groups.

Just hit lvl 60 last night and it works fine. I'm using a carnage heart for the stats, resist, and leech. The -hp/ES isn't too bad, and it was only like 5 chaos for a 7%LL one. My gear is complete garbage. I spent 1 chaos on my weapon and 2-3 chaos on each gear piece to get something with the right color sockets based on the limited selection available right then. My fire and cold resist arent even capped, although they're probably capped with my endurance charges up.

I do miss whirling blades, though.

Is the never miss skill required? I feel like I may have messed my character up already then because downward from the starting position on the tree I invested in a couple accuracy nodes.... ;(

I was able to use the 2 reset skills they gave me to get rid of the accuracy points. gonna head left on the tree now, especially for that mace tree.

why is it that swords are better late late game? am I making a huge mistake. I technique want to be late game viable if a choose to keep playing this game.

or will he be but just not as good as sword board?

also have a quick question. what is "endurance charge"