Tanky CoC: the cheap guy substitute to Mjolner build (just theorycrafting)

Hi everyone,
Given the high cost and awesomeness of the Mjolnir I've been thinking out a way to try and obtain its effects without the investment needed to buy a Mjolner.
The build (keep in mind this is only theory) consists on a high crit chance staff build with Cyclone CoC and Arc. You'd be a storming tornado in middle of the fight. And for single target maybe something like infernal blow or any other heavy hitting attack with multistrike CoC and a high damaging spell.
With the high life %bonuses (242% with 120 points if I remember correctly) it allows for a tanky character.
We're picking blood magic so we don't have to worry about mana and mana regen and instead focus on more life, armor, resists, and crit as I was thinking of using a Voll's Protector for earlier until I find a better way of increasing my crit chance (maybe a Romiras banquet, don't know, I'll just have to find that out).

I'd like someone to help me see if this passive tree is fine or if I should move some points here or there:
90 points
105 points
120 points

Why use a Staff for CoC and something tanky?

In my opinion using a dagger and a shield is both more tanky and more suited for CoC. Even dual wielding daggers (im talking ungil's gauche) will work out better. They dont have insane requirements so you dont have any problems there.

You get a couple of very nice advantages:

1. Higher base Aps (1.25 max vs 1.6)

2. Higher Base crit chance (6.68 max vs 7.28 max (which i dont recommend, since high aps benefits even better) and implicit global crit chance.

3. More Block chance with a shield, even more aps with dual wield, both if going ungil's gauche.

Lets look at a suited tree:



Also, i recommend picking up the following nodes:

Enemy critical strike reduced multiplier (the node right bottom linked to diamond skin)

a 20% reduction on big sudden hits is a huge deal. Its an often overlooked node but its a damn effective one

Unwavering stance (the keystone that makes you immune to stun, but i dont have to tell that right)

So here is why: You block a lot with both builds, and even tho you have a good amount of life, bigger hits will start to occur more and more on higher lvl maps. You want to pick up unwavering around lvl 75-80 probably since before that stun doesnt annoy you, but after it will. Anyways, even tho you can get max block, this doesnt remove stun animations. Stun gets calculated before its decided you block or not, and if you block a hit that wouldve stunned, you get a block animation instead, still locking you in place briefly. You can remove this by picking this insane keystone, since you already pick up Iron reflexes.

Which brings me to some nodes you shouldve picked up:

You want to be tanky? Pick up IR and Elemental Adaptation. They improve tankiness by an insane amount. I also dont actually recommend picking up blood magic. CoC skills normally arent very mana heavy, to give an example. My Molten strike - Gmp - LgoH - CoC setup only takes 27 per attack, meaning you actually only need around 60 mana per second with a 0.4 aps, which tbh is a decent attack speed for a marauder. You can solve this by running a BM - Red mana - Clarity setup and just not caring about the level unless you have exactly enough regen. This allows you to run all 3 purities in a Reduced mana setup, or, when you pick up all reduced mana nodes from sovereignity (the aura block from templar) you can even run Grace and 2 Purities. That alone will give enough defense bonus to mitigate the lifeloss you get from running clarity on life. Picking up Mana geyser can solve this even further.

Last recommendation: Pick up Accuracy as a Marauder as much as possible. Accuracy works towards critting, since of the following:

In rolling a crit, three steps are followed:

1. Is the attack a crit?
2. Does the attack hit the mob?
3. Does the mob not evade the critical hit?

1 is decided by crit chance but both 2 and 3 by accuracy.

Hence, this is what id recommend instead of going into templar area:



This also makes room for you to even expand further in damage:



I hope this explains enough to you. How i know all this? I have a Molten strike CoC Marauder who almost always facetanks for the party (I tank cintiq, I tank Rima, Reflect is a joke unless its double reflect, -Max? care more iiQ :D) Ms CoC Fs Partytank

Thanks a lot for the help, and probably I'll go your way but keeping cyclone as the main attack instead of molten strike.
The main reason I decided on cyclone was to don't have to use points in Unwavering stance as cyclone prevents you from getting stunned.
As for the staff, I was just trying to get a thematical appeal of the character (just personal opinion) and also got the benefits of knocking back enemies when I critted with a staff and a higher radius on my cyclone, although this may not be worthy of much.
Lastly, I thought I'd go for the BM keystone due to Cyclone having a 30 mana cost even at level 1 (add in CoC+LL and things get pretty serious and the BM support gem has a high mana cost modifier, it goes up to 100+ mana per attack).
I'll try going with the dual Ungil's build you commented but I'll keep the BM keystone just having Grace aura, and I'll try to figure out a way to maxing resists. If that doesn't work I supose I'll have enough lifeleech to support the cyclone mana cost with BM gem
Thanks again :)

your welcome, i think cyclone is indeed a very good way of triggering, the reason i went Ms is for the fact im using flame surge and Ms just works better with it since the ranges are somewhat similar. I also use Vaal cyclone tho and im very positive about using it. For the manacosts, it all depends on how stuff works out and found myself you cant easily theorize on it anyways, so just stick with the BM plan, since you'll only be losing purities anyways, and unless you plan on going atziri you are not even going to notice it anyways, unless you plan on tanking in parties xD (and 30 mana is really nasty :S)

About stun immunity, didnt actually knew that, guess there is always more to learn :P

If you really want knockback, there are also knockback passives that dont require crits, tho it will rather counteract what you are doing more than actually helping you, since it will be knocking enemies out of your AoE every so often.