How's marauder these days?

Sup. I was gone for few months because I wasn't very happy about the state of the melee builds. For example 2-hander Marauder just seemed horrible. All the clunky stuff with stacking and getting beaten up meanwhile with a dozen mobs around you just didn't seem viable at all, or I just didn't catch the idea.

However, I'm giving another shot to aid this beta now and I feel like going for meathshield type of playstyle. Have they buffed melee at all or is it still the same?

I might be horribly wrong about the state of melee, but I base my opinions on the fact that I also tried ranged and spell casting, and they were a LOT easier to play. And sure, the playing is not supposed to be easy, I am up for a challenge. But the melee was clunky and totally not fun, which I don't want to experience again.
Melee is super easy. No real mana management, good damage, and a million ways to heal yourself with.

Only speedbumps are if you don't update your weapon regularly (makes it tedious if you take too many swings to kill anything) and if your armor values suck upon entering Chaos (the enemy damage spike is overwhelming and forces a ton of kiting if you don't update your armor).
Tanky. 2h, Resolute technique + blood magic + life leach, %health, regen = nothing stands a chance. Even physical reflects fall easily with some flasks / kiting. The downside is lower dps than some other classes. But maybe that's because I don't have good weapon / gems or did not put enough points into damage increase.
Last edited by Letamol on Jan 7, 2012, 11:26:59 AM
My staff templar just owns everything with Ground Slam, Heavy Strike and Infernal Strike for Physical reflect auras.

How would you suggest leveling up? I'm kind of interested trying to rush Blood magic and then resolute technique, but I've no idea if it's gonna work. I don't feel like wasting another leveled character that ends up being just useless. Also, what weapon would you suggest for such build?
No build is going to be useless with Blood Magic and Resolute Technique. You'd really have to try to screw that one up.

You're going to want to stack Life, Life Regen and STR mostly. Since you're using Life to cast spells/skills, the more you have the better. Anything you can get that helps replenish your life is always good, so Life Regen/Life Leech/Life Gain on Kill/Life Gain on Hit are passives and mods you want to look out for. You also want STR not only does it increases your melee physical damage but also your max Life. You will want to avoid Crit Chance/Crit Damage and Accuracy nodes, as they'll all be useless with ResTech

Aside from those things it's up to you what else you want to invest in. You can decide to get some Armor or Resistance to increase your survivability or you can go all out DPS. Personally, if you take a lot of health related passives, I would go for DPS. Survivability is already high as it is, so investments in damage/attack speed are well spent.
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FaceLicker wrote:
No build is going to be useless with Blood Magic and Resolute Technique. You'd really have to try to screw that one up.

You're going to want to stack Life, Life Regen and STR mostly. Since you're using Life to cast spells/skills, the more you have the better. Anything you can get that helps replenish your life is always good, so Life Regen/Life Leech/Life Gain on Kill/Life Gain on Hit are passives and mods you want to look out for. You also want STR not only does it increases your melee physical damage but also your max Life. You will want to avoid Crit Chance/Crit Damage and Accuracy nodes, as they'll all be useless with ResTech

Aside from those things it's up to you what else you want to invest in. You can decide to get some Armor or Resistance to increase your survivability or you can go all out DPS. Personally, if you take a lot of health related passives, I would go for DPS. Survivability is already high as it is, so investments in damage/attack speed are well spent.


Agree with everything said, but after you got resolute technique, blood magic and some life leach nodes focus fully on DPS. I over invested into +armor nodes and +health nodes and in Chaos I'm outclassed by most other builds.

Your weapon of choice is 2h mace because you don't need dexterity because of resolute technique.
Insanely easy with great DPS. Like letamol said - 2hand + Blood magic + resolute Technique + life leech + health regen. Stack DPS nodes after that. That should pretty much destroy virtually everything with little consequence to you.
Lovin the 2hander marauder so far. I think hes hella fun to play but as someone above said updating your weapon regularly is a must if you want to keep you sanity.

Out of interest why do people bother with blood magic? Resolute tech is a no brainer (im buying it next level) but I dont see a need for blood magic at all. Most of my abilities are so cheap even with just 2 INT passives I barely ever run out of mana and with a decent mana pot its just never been an issue. So whats the deal, why bother with blood magic am I missing something?
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RodHull wrote:
why bother with blood magic am I missing something?


1. At mid-to-high levels you start having to manage endurance charges; that along with watching health is taxing enough. Getting rid of one more resource to worry about is huge.

2. At higher levels with chained support gems, skills like groundslam and sweep can cost upwards of 40 mana. Your mana pool will not scale with this increase

3. You will have 5x the health and health regen than mana and mana regen

4. It is easy to get +% lifesteal (one right next to resolute techniques) and items/support gems that give +hp on hit

4.5. Blood rage gives persistent 4+% lifesteal and frenzy charges

5. It's more fun :)

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