State of Evasion/ES/Melee/Aura
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This build was viable before the awakening:
It is not some piece of theorycraft I just made up, it is the work of many hours spent perfecting it. The build is no longer viable, or at least, not nearly as good as it was before it. I will first say why, and then explain what my build consists off to give my point of view on the matter. This build is no longer good in the awakening, due to the following reasons: - Mobs hit too hard (one-shots with evasion, armor is the only viable option) - Auras nerfed (can no longer fit 5 auras, more on this below) - Life leech support gem nerfed for vaal-pacters (big nerf for this build, more on this below) > My build: My build concept consists of: Heavily invested in auras Dual wield daggers Crit Energy shield + Evasion from grace and alpha's howl Lifesteal I've found that using static strike is by far the best option. I've tried every other melee aoe gem, including dual strike with melee splash. The concept of this build is to freeze everything hit by your attacks (crits). This is achieved with the critical strikes and, especially, the hatred aura, since this is so focused on auras. > Experience I have perfecting this build: I've tried making this build viable for all of my PoE playtime, I've tried other builds but they just aren't satisfying to me. Of course, this means that seeing this build fail in the new update was quite sad, but I'll still try to make it work, as it's the only build I like. Steam says I have 410 hours spent into the game, and I've leveled around 8 characters to level 40-70 and hit a brick wall whilst trying to perfect the build (that I've had to delete). I enjoyed the whole experience tho, seeing my build reach out further and further into the game (and exploding enemies >:D) > Problems in the awakening (with this specific build):
- Armor
I've done some research before whining in this post about this. Armor is clearly a must-have for any character that is melee or similar to melee. Evasion will get you one shot, Energy Shield won't recharge in melee (obviously), but even the raw ES you'd get wouldn't be enough to tank without mitigation. A hybrid of the two is, from my experience, still not enough. I've tried Iron Reflexes, and it is just another game with it. You never get stunned (which is a huge deal) and don't get one-shot.
- Auras
The topic everyone's whined about, because everyone uses auras. But I feel like this nerf didn't change any of that, in fact, it helped people who casually used auras more than people invested in them.
The changes to auras aren't all bad, changing reduced mana to be replaced by enlighten feels better. Before the awakening, I invested in all the reduced mana/aura nodes in the shadow/witch part of the tree, which would result in a 20% reduced mana reserved. With this, and the old reduced mana, I was able to run 5 auras. Now, however, I can only run 3 of them. Proof of 4 auras not being possible: (even with enlighten level 3, level 4 results in a 96% reservation) https://poe.mikelat.com/#2b37vBh/0CYlrm I now have to travel to the top left of the tree to get to 34% reduced mana reserved. Keep in mind that I've also had to pick up the 3 separated clusters of auras in the ranger side of the tree, which also take up about 20 skill points. Even with this, however, I am unable to run 5 auras: https://poe.mikelat.com/#oguFsOh/8gHJym The ichimonji option makes this viable, however the very low 5% crit chance on the ichimonjis, on top of the overall fact that the dagger nodes have better crit make a crit build with ichimonjis much less effective. So, after thorough testing, I can safely say that auras have been nerfed for people who are heavily invested in them, to an extreme degree.
- Life leech (support gem)
I haven't really played around the non-vaal-pact life leech mechanics, as I dislike life leech as another form of regen, I like it to be instantaneous.
I use ghost reaver in my build. All life leech values prior to the awakening have been reduced to 40% of their value. To make up for it, vaal pact has had the 40% reduced life leech removed from it, leaving it unchanged. However, the life leech support gem was previously 5% life leech to 8.8%, whereas now it is a static 2% at all levels. When leveling the life leech gem up, it'll also add life leech rate. The quality does too. This is completely useless to vaal pacters, and as such, it means that the life leech support gem has been nerfed for vaal pacters. It also seems that the support gem has been buffed for non-vaal-pacters, altough I don't have much experience on this. My solution to this would be to scale the life leech gem accordingly to its old values with a 40% reduction. As mentioned earlier, I use static strike, so I cannot rely on "% of physical damage leeched as life", since most of it is converted to lightning. All my life leech comes from that gem, so every % counts, and this is a huge nerf to converted abilities. By having to take iron reflexes and the aura nodes on the top left as well as the top right, I am unable to take anything else. The rest of my skill tree revolves in taking life. I cannot get crit like I used to be able to, and I cannot get the dagger wheel on the right next to ghost reaver due to a lack of points. > Additional thoughts on wild strike I've considered using frost blades, due to my build focusing on freezing enemies with crits, however the 180 degree angle is just frustrating to deal with on top of the 3 projectile restraint. In my opinion, the skill should target anything in a radius around the mob hit. The skill is already balanced with the 3 projectile, the rest seems just gimmicky. This is only my opinion tho, and I've seen people enjoy it. The overall opinion seemed to be that it wasn't as viable as other attack skills, however. I would like to get more people's opinion on the matter tho, so feel free to give you opinion on any of this (especially auras) Last edited by ZeroZ30o on Jul 27, 2015, 6:00:37 PM
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I didn't say, btw, that the aura nodes on the ranger part of the tree could get buffed, if necessary.
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