FACEBREAKER Man-rauder! Theorycrafting inside

Hello guys!

Im a CB tester but didn't got much time to play around at that time.

This being said, I got a pretty amazing item that grants +923% damage with unarmed attacks, facebreaker. Plus EXTRA GORE. So yes, I want to make a build around that.

I was researching on the forums but all the threads regarding this are quite old and probably dated.

Can you guys think of any viable build revolving around unarmed attacks? Its my understanding that you can still use a quiver or a shield on the left hand for the bonuses... But I'm worried about how to deal with mob packs. For this, I'm thinking about using projectile totems with something I am not sure with. Is it a terrible idea? If not, I would branch to the totem nodes, which are very nearby. I'm thinking about a way to deal damage other way than punching things in the face.

Was thinking something around these lines:



Or this:



Chris Wilson's build of the week video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_EcQDOUN9Y&list=PLt5SL2R19SuLFX61HjO-6jJw-iy42tFOR

I have no idea how the loads of nerfs changed this for OB. Need experienced players input in this matter.
Opinions? Suggestions? I want to make a viable character that punches things in their faces until they explode.

Im pretty newb so maybe someone else can confirm or deny this but:

If i would see a item that grants a HUGE unarmed bonus I would take it with a grain of salt because by being unarmed you are losing weapon dmg, so you get larger bonuses to compensate.

Over 900% damage bonus is huge. In fact, alot of passives and their mechanics were changed in terms of how they interacted with this item because of its power.

Someone answered a few of my questions that I had about this item and said mechanics. This might help you out. Although, more testing needs to be done in my estimate.

http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/92005

Meh, my main concern is survivability really.

Some people complain about melee being gimped even using weapons, imagine not using them?

Indeed. I'm working on some builds right now that (on paper of course) seem like they will be able to survive quite well. Some aren't even Marauders. Just takes some studying of the passive tree to see what could work best. I wouldn't use them in hardcore yet, but they seem they would be viable, efficient, and fun to play on default mode.

The sacrifice will be overall damage in general when trying to compensate for survivability (like any build). Which would seem to defeat the purpose of building around the gloves. But I think the intention is to be a viable build you have fun playing, not to be something overpowered that no one has discovered yet. This already happened in closed beta it seems and that's now nerfed for good reason.

The reason these inspire me so much is because there was DOZENS of items like this in Diablo 2 that were just so fun to create a different way of killing things. It gives you a goal to always cater your skills and items around enhancing that one (or few) featured items. The goal wasn't always get maxed dps. I enjoy experimenting like that.

I thought unarmed didn't benefit from quivers anymore? I really hope that isn't just a bug and they decided to make them work again. It opens up a lot of different choices to Facebreaker builds without making them OP.

I saw some elemental weapon damage in your tree, those don't work unarmed so they're a waste of points. Also, i'm not sure how different it would be in practice, but you have so much physical damage amp for the facebreakers that I don't think that any points into phys damage passives would be worth it. They're just drops in the bucket.

I would do something like this