ragbasti's Physical Bow Marauder, tested and approved :P

Since I've seen quite a few attempts at building a good Physical Bow Marauder, I decided to try and write up a little guide to my Marauder, who has finally reached level 59 and is safe to say, it works.


EDIT:
Currently playing a HC Marauder to test the viability on hardcore and I'll make adjustments to the build according to my experience.

What is this build going to do?

The general idea is to make use of Iron Grip and therefore be able to have tons of points left, which can be stuck into your defense. That will give you good survivability and even open up a few new ways to play as a ranged character.

-You will be very versatile in terms of weapon choice and the leveling is easy peasy because you can always use the best wepon currently available to you, since you will only pick very few weapon specific passives

-High Physical Damage and very good armor

-No need really for those pesky auras that suck up all your mana/life, however I have been able to successfully run Grace, Determination and Purity which will be explained later (this will cost you some DPS though)

So what does the build look like ?

Well it looks like this.
Alternatively, if you want the auras like I did it will look like this.
For the Hardcore players amongst you, this is probably the best. Taking alot more life and going for the aura version, unless you have people you always team up with that can provide said auras for you.

The Leveling Process

First of all:
Going melee with Sweep or Ground Slam will make your early game life alot easier unless you have good low level gear lying around in your chest. If you are going bow you will also want to pick up the +30 Dex node on the way into the Templar area early so you can wear a bow at all or use a +Dex amulet

Rough order in which to pick up what:



I usually start off with the Life nodes of the marauder and then in the Templar area, note that if you are playing HC you will want to take the path going through the Marauder Life linewith the Regeneration and Trolsl Blood in it instead of making a shortcut with the Str nodes. After that I grab RT, you should be about level 21 (25 in HC) now and without Accuracy gear you will notice a lot of misses if you haven't got RT yet. Again If you are playing HC also pick up all the Life around the flat Life in the Templar area after that.
You should easily be around 600-800 HP by the time you reach the upper 20s.

After that I head towards Blood Magic, not taking it yet, picking up Blood Drinker and +24% life on the way. Grab Warlord's Mark as a Quest reward from Intruders in Black and if you are HC getting the extra Endurance Charge on the way to down to Blood Magic might already pay off for you. After the Weavers Chamber you will now definately have Life Gain on Hit. Hook this up to your Ground Slam/Sweep/Rain of Arrows and feel invincible for the next 10+ levels. By the time you have Berserking you should be in your lower 30s and heading towards the Pyramid. Now is the time to get Diamond Skin if you haven't already due to all the Skeleton Mages there.

After that you have two choices:

Grab a good Bow, pick up Iron Grip and start leveling your Bow Gems if you haven't already carried them in extra slots and after that head towards the Duelist area.

Alternatively you can also pick Iron Reflexes early and then respec once you connected it to Iron Grip. This is probably the beast Idea if you chos to level up as Melee, however I have a nice low level bow and didn't need to do that. The Respec will cost you 6 points. No Problem as you get thos by going through all the Quests in normal.


Things such as Points blank and Vaal Pact are optional, if you want to get a little more into the close quarter combat, but I picked them as feel very happy with it. They are however not part of a core build for a Physical bow Marauder.

By level 50 my Passive skills looked something like this
For Hardcore I probably would have gone this route picking up Iron Grip later but getting alot more survival out of it.

Bandits


Now for the Pros and Cons:

Pros:

Cons:


Whether to forge a Pact with Vaal or not to?



So What do we need gear-wise to make this thing work ?

Well you best friends will be:
- +Life
- +Chaos Res (as we don't have any except for Ruby flasks
- +Elemental Res (the more the merrier and we only get ~20% from passives
- High Phys Damage Bow, ideally with some extra attack speed but not 100% necessary
- Nice Physical Damage Quiver like Broadstroke
- +Physical Damage, all you can get ^^


Some axamples of my current gear:
Nothing Special, except for maybe the bow, but it still works out pretty great


Suggested Skills and Links:

First of all, this is a tough one, since I kinda use everything every now and then but then again there are Certain ones that I've come to love.

AOE Damage:




Single Targets:



Utility:



My playstyle:

The reason why I sacrificed DPS for survivability in the later game was my discovery of the Chin Sol Bow, which I'll hopefully call my own soon. It gives you +100% damage at close range, that stacks with Point Blank and Knocks enemies back that get too close.
This + high def + life leech + Rain of Arrows on yourself = WIN
Ever since I started that combo I've had so much fun jsut running into an enemy pack and tanking them through the fight with my lifeleech. It is risky and you might die every now and then, but hey, this isn't a HC character guide.
I basically start my auras, kick in blood rage and Enduring Cry and fire away. Ranged Mobs are dealt with by either my party or kept busy by my Decoy until I get to them.

I also always carry my beloved Blood Reaper on my offhand with which I leap Slam in and out when I feel like it, spreading a decently damaging bleeding effect throughout the enemy ranks


This is pretty much my take on the Physical Bow Marauder and I can only recommend it.
If I would anything differently it would be getting more life nodes instead of some of the ones in the Duelist area but I haven't felt the need yet

Looks fun, I think I'll use this (though with some more life nodes like you said) on my next foray into hardcore after the horribly embarrassing death of my minion witch.

for HC definately pick up all the life and life regen nodes you can get in the marauder/templar area, I just skipped many of them/respecced them because my life leech + vaal pact allowed it
After getting all the main skills i'll put all remaining points into life again

I have started playing a HC physical Marauder to test how it goes.
I am currently Level 35 and ahve made some adjustments to the build above to tend to the HC folks out there.

Is this writeup really so horrible that noone has a comment on it ? xD

I started playing this build myself, added the unique belt The Magnate and added Bear Trap as my main singletarget big nuke. Fit it with Added Fire damage support and it completely demolishes everything during the first two difficulty levels.

I've also modified it for more hp and am running with Enduring Cry as secondary survivability and some more focus on stun duration and stun treshold. And it's really really enjoyable to play as soon as you get past level 35. Until then it's not as great but still fun.