[3.11] Shaper = Stunned, Tidebreaker Heavy Strike Stunner Build

I am absolutely loving this build - it's very out of character for me, I never would have thought of it on my own. I usually prefer ranged/summoner types...I almost never even bother with this sort of build.

Thanks!

PS: I haven't noticed any serious differences in 3.0. If anything, it seems to be working better.
Likewise, I'm having a blast with this once I picked up the Impact ascendancy from Cruel Lab and swapped from Sunder to Heavy Strike - I'd started this league with an ele wander and was struggling with T6+ bosses, so this is a breath of fresh air.

I'm likely missing something obvious, but:

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Empire's Grasp 4L: Ancestral Warchief + Maim + Faster Attacks + Leap Slam (+ Knockback from glove)

-This totem provides damage buff from Warchief, bleed to enable Bloodlust, Maim for more damage, reverse knockback to pull mobs together. On top of that, the totem deals some damage. We should always keep the totem up at all times.


What is the source of the bleed - does Maim count as a bleed for the purposes of Bloodlust, or is it from somewhere else?
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Haasts wrote:
Likewise, I'm having a blast with this once I picked up the Impact ascendancy from Cruel Lab and swapped from Sunder to Heavy Strike - I'd started this league with an ele wander and was struggling with T6+ bosses, so this is a breath of fresh air.

I'm likely missing something obvious, but:

"
Empire's Grasp 4L: Ancestral Warchief + Maim + Faster Attacks + Leap Slam (+ Knockback from glove)

-This totem provides damage buff from Warchief, bleed to enable Bloodlust, Maim for more damage, reverse knockback to pull mobs together. On top of that, the totem deals some damage. We should always keep the totem up at all times.


What is the source of the bleed - does Maim count as a bleed for the purposes of Bloodlust, or is it from somewhere else?


The source of bleed comes from the passive tree; see the cluster Bloody Bludgeon. By picking the two node on the right you will gain 25% chance to bleed with all damage sources. You can also use a chance to bleed support, but I am not particularly interested in sacrificing a gem slot for that. Maim has nothing to do with bleed.
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Novae_Blue wrote:
I am absolutely loving this build - it's very out of character for me, I never would have thought of it on my own. I usually prefer ranged/summoner types...I almost never even bother with this sort of build.

Thanks!

PS: I haven't noticed any serious differences in 3.0. If anything, it seems to be working better.


My pleasure to see you enjoy this build. As for 3.0, there were lots of minor changes; I hope you did not miss the new Ruthless gem, it makes our build so much stronger.
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brightwaha wrote:

The source of bleed comes from the passive tree; see the cluster Bloody Bludgeon. By picking the two node on the right you will gain 25% chance to bleed with all damage sources. You can also use a chance to bleed support, but I am not particularly interested in sacrificing a gem slot for that. Maim has nothing to do with bleed.


Ha, turns out POESkillTree is out of date and was still listing those two nodes as "Mace Damage and Life Leech Rate" - I'd searched for bleeds on that tree seemingly to no avail as I didn't think you'd navigated to the Bloodletting cluster. Thanks for the heads-up!
I'm currently levelling a guy to do this build. Excited to get it going. I've done a Heavy Strike build before with Oro's Sacrifice. Very different play style.

Some variations on the build that I'm going to test out:
1. Using Melee Splash gem instead Impact. This is mainly because I can easily swap out Heavy Strike and Melee Splash for Sunder and Multistrike while clearing maps.
2. Attempt using Brutality. This frees up mana for Grace getting better evasion to work with Perseverance. Also can use Blasphemy and Warlord's Mark.
3. Brass Dome for the body armour. This is more because I was thinking about farming Izaro with this build and always wanted to use Brass Dome.
4. Soul Tether belt might work well with Endless Hunger. Problem is Blood Rage eats the Energy Shield. This might also allow use of Damage on Full Life.

The Ascendancy nodes that I'm taking are:
Bane of Legends
Endless Hunger
Headsman
Last nodes would go either Brutal Fervour or Overwhelm. I will decide once I get to later maps and test what I like.

I will most likely not use Frenzy to Curse on Hit/Fortify. It doesn't feel right to me.
(EDIT: it didn't feel right because I didn't have Impact. Moved Fortify to Leap Slam and Warchief links and put a Melee Splash in Frenzy to Curse. Feels Much better, still not great.)

If anyone else has tried these combos I'd like to know how it went.
Thanks for the guide. Time to stun.
Last edited by bausHuck on Aug 16, 2017, 5:13:14 AM
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bausHuck wrote:
I'm currently levelling a guy to do this build. Excited to get it going. I've done a Heavy Strike build before with Oro's Sacrifice. Very different play style.

Some variations on the build that I'm going to test out:
1. Using Melee Splash gem instead Impact. This is mainly because I can easily swap out Heavy Strike and Melee Splash for Sunder and Multistrike while clearing maps.
2. Attempt using Brutality. This frees up mana for Grace getting better evasion to work with Perseverance. Also can use Blasphemy and Warlord's Mark.
3. Brass Dome for the body armour. This is more because I was thinking about farming Izaro with this build and always wanted to use Brass Dome.
4. Soul Tether belt might work well with Endless Hunger. Problem is Blood Rage eats the Energy Shield. This might also allow use of Damage on Full Life.

The Ascendancy nodes that I'm taking are:
Bane of Legends
Endless Hunger
Headsman
Last nodes would go either Brutal Fervour or Overwhelm. I will decide once I get to later maps and test what I like.

I will most likely not use Frenzy to Curse on Hit/Fortify. It doesn't feel right to me.
(EDIT: it didn't feel right because I didn't have Impact. Moved Fortify to Leap Slam and Warchief links and put a Melee Splash in Frenzy to Curse. Feels Much better, still not great.)

If anyone else has tried these combos I'd like to know how it went.
Thanks for the guide. Time to stun.


Sounds good, hope everything works well. I am also interested in seeing the results of these changes. Several points I want to mention:
1. These changes bring different advantages, but I don't think after these changes this build can stun T16 anymore. You can still facetank everything.
2. To farm Izaro I don't think Brass Dome is ever needed; we just stun him to death.
3. Blood Rage and Damage on Full Life work well together as long as regen + leech exceeds the degen rate.
Last edited by brightwaha on Aug 16, 2017, 7:08:11 AM
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brightwaha wrote:
As for reflection, I usually don't run maps with reflection mods(although I can, after changing some gems); and I don't really die to those rarely seen reflection mobs, my life pool(7.5K) and leech was enough to compensate for the reflection damage.


Out of curiosity, what are your recommended gem swaps for reflect maps? I tried swapping out Melee Physical & Bloodlust for Added Fire / Elemental Damage With Attacks as well as using the Yugul pantheon power & using Arctic Armour, but was still finding things pretty rough in reflect maps - ran in circles spamming my Warchief totem after a while. Still have to finish finding the uber lab trials - have the option of Headsman over Brutal Fervour, I guess.

Level 80; managed to 5-link my Tidebreaker and have a Devoto's Devotion with the double-damage head enchant (person I bought it off advised me "dont use such a shity skill" (sic)) and a Perseverance. Guess I'm saving up for the unique flasks and body armour.
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Haasts wrote:
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brightwaha wrote:
As for reflection, I usually don't run maps with reflection mods(although I can, after changing some gems); and I don't really die to those rarely seen reflection mobs, my life pool(7.5K) and leech was enough to compensate for the reflection damage.


Out of curiosity, what are your recommended gem swaps for reflect maps? I tried swapping out Melee Physical & Bloodlust for Added Fire / Elemental Damage With Attacks as well as using the Yugul pantheon power & using Arctic Armour, but was still finding things pretty rough in reflect maps - ran in circles spamming my Warchief totem after a while. Still have to finish finding the uber lab trials - have the option of Headsman over Brutal Fervour, I guess.

Level 80; managed to 5-link my Tidebreaker and have a Devoto's Devotion with the double-damage head enchant (person I bought it off advised me "dont use such a shity skill" (sic)) and a Perseverance. Guess I'm saving up for the unique flasks and body armour.


To do a physical reflection map without taking any reflected damage, you need two gems: one attack skill gem with damage conversion(for example Static Strike), and Physical to Lightning support. This combination converts all of your physical damage to elemental. The problem is the Physical to Lightning gem is blue. Usually, if you choose Headsman and have good physical mitigation, even without the Physical to Lightning gem the reflected damage will be minor. To do a elemental reflection map, you turn off both auras and you will deal 0 elemental damage.

Kaom's Heart gives a ton of health and I think is more important than anything else. All 3 of the flasks are nerfed in 3.0. Generally, Lion's Roar is the best one, Atziri's Promise is the cheapest one, and Taste of Hate provides some physical mitigation as well as damage. Choose to invest in flasks wisely as they are no longer auto-picks.

And by the way, if you are still leveling, you might want to consider dropping Bloodlust, this gem is not very ideal for clearing.

Hey just want to say I played this build up to lvl 79 in HHC, before ripping (I was playing recklessly since I have to go back to work tomorrow). It was very fun and the clearspeed was surprisingly good. I really like how so much of the build synergises with tidebreaker; Empire's Grasp for suction, Perseverance for fortify and onslaught, and the Slayer overkill leech.

I had planned my own tree and build for using Tidebreaker before I saw this build guide. However, I ended up using most of the ideas here for my character. The most significant difference was that I was a bit more focused on getting and scaling armour, since I was playing hardcore and because the uniques the build uses also provide good armour. The only uniques I was missing from the recommended section was taste of hate (too expensive) and Kaom's/Red Blade Tramplers (too little armour). You can see the character on my profile - 'locoduelist'.

I would say that herald of ash is essential for trash clearing due to the extra AOE it provides. Having mana leech too is a really good QOL boost. I chose to take the two leech ascendencies before getting Impact from merciless lab.

Last edited by locobilbo on Aug 20, 2017, 2:00:42 AM

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