Stuck in Act 2 Merciless

I decided to try to make an aura and elemental damage leaning marauder, and I have hit a few major roadblocks on the way. First was in Act 3 Cruel but that was resolved with gear and farming. This time I can't farm anywhere that is effective and I don't see much improvement on this character in the future. My current build is:



And my items are:



Any advice on how to overcome this block would be appreciated.

Edit: And my stats are here:

Good luck, I hope someone will help you with your problem.

Hello, I am a fellow marauder that has been progressing through Act 3 Mericless with relative ease and thought I'd help you out. The first thing that I noticed that desperately needs to be upgraded is your weapon. It maybe a 5 link but the damage is less than my 1H weapon, and at least I have a shield with over 30% block to help me survive.



The only reason for the claw is because that was the best weapon I found, I can use any 1H weapon with my build. Ignore the gems. I found in Fellshrine.

If I were you I'd use ground slam with just life gain on hit, drop life leech and reduced mana cause you don't need them. If you want to continue with 2H then grab gems like Melee Physical Damage, Added Fire Damage, and most importantly Weapon Elemental Damage. As an elemental damage character there is no reason at all not to have WED on all abilities.

Also swap out Heavy Strike for either Glacial Hammer or Infernal Blow, they will benefit from your elemental passives unlike heavy strike which is all physical. I have a 9% leveled Infernal Blow that I am no longer using if you want to trade for it.

Feel free to drop Vitality Aura, it is the most useless aura honestly. Life regen isn't as important as just life and some good health pots. You can replace it with Purity if you really want.

One other note, if you use Resolute Technique you completely negate the effectiveness of elemental damage. I made a few modifications to your build that should help you out as well:


I hope this helps, and if you need any more help feel free to let me know. :)

PS - Farm Fellshrine or Western Forest.

can you or anyone please explain this..

One other note, if you use Resolute Technique you completely negate the effectiveness of elemental damage.


RT only removes the ability to crit, but every swing or spell hits. + Ele Dmg increases the base damage of elemental damage on weapons or spells. How does RT ruin more ele dmg??

elemental statuses (shocked, frozen, burning) are applied on crits.

oh, i didnt know that!! good information

so what if you don't crit? WED is still adding damage.

but...

if someone were to spec into RT, could they still benefit from spending points in + increased elemental weapon damage?

You may not be able to crit, but any armor or weapon or gem that adds +lightening damage or +fire damage would have increased damage on hit from those nodes, right? RT will make it so enemies dont freeze and dont burn, but when fire hits them or cold hits them, it can still hit with more damage i assume; one could still benefit from points like Catalyse +30% increased elemental damage with weapons.

You need more resist. Link your defensive stats page.

To Trickslol: the two imgur links are my offensive and defensive stats pages under the spoiler tag.

To Krozjin: Thanks for the detailed reply, I appreciate it. Dropping resolute technique and swapping to glacial hammer/infernal blow sounds like it would make sense, but will I be able to have a decent chance to hit with little accuracy rating on gear? I am assuming that I will also be able to spec into the accuracy nodes you added, depends if i can get enough respec points. For the vitality aura, I will try without it, I just recently started using it and it didn't make much of a difference. I'll try Purity out if i can get one. As for the weapon, I traded for a staff with more elemental damage on it. Does it look alright?


*I'll drop life leech and put in elemental damage or something

Thanks.

Edit: With the 8 respec points I have left I can get to here: