[0.10.3b] CI DUALWIELDING MELEE DUELIST (updated 16/03/2013)
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17/03/2013 – Updated skill tree 15/03/2013 – Updated extensively Why this build? I do not claim to be the most defensive or safest build to play with, it has its risks, but it does some pretty ghastly DPS and is fun to play. The defensive nature of this build revolves around, instead of just stacking lots and lots of hp/es (which is is somewhat tedious), you are enfeebling targets to reduce their DPS (and increase yours at the same time) and then life leeching at a rate greater than they can damage you. Because of your mobility, you can control fights very easily. SKILL TREE
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30 points <-- click for skill tree Although this is an ES build, the pickup of some hp nodes early on can be quite useful to get through content a bit easier. You can skip them though if you wish. The priority at the start is to get Mana Flows and branch out to the required skill nodes as soon as possible. Early game, with mana flows and clarity should allow you to steamroll through early game content quite easily. For the time being, lightning strike is not a bad option, infact for most levelling purposes, you do not have to go cleave until you feel you are strong enough to use this. So feel free to use Ground slam, Lightning strike or even pick up Explosive arrow (one of my favourite for leveling with a Quill rain!). Around 65 points<-- click for skill tree The middle stage, this is the hardest part of the build. Here, a lot of points are focused on getting you to key areas of the tree and get those much needed points. We start to work up some es/armour and get the very much sought after Mana Drinker for 2% mana leech. Some questions could arise regarding points which I would like to address. You will have noticed that hp nodes would have been refunded by now, as you should have got enough hp gear on the way to manage. Why not Arcane focus? You will probably notice other guides get this coupled with the 8% es nodes above Conduit. However, let’s compare. This guide, will eventually go for Blood Thirst, on the top left area of the skill tree. Going to Body and Soul, it takes me 9 skill points from the node attached to the Blood Thirst. This provides: - 30 intel - 60% increased armour - 60% increased Energy shield - +10% to all Elemental resistances Compare this to taking 6 points to go to arcane focus - and lets use the remaining 3 points to put in the ES rings (8% each), you will get: - 40 intel - 20 to max mana - 10% energy shield recovery - 50% increased energy shield For 10 intel, 10% energy shield recovery and 20 mana, you are giving up 10% ES, 60% armour and +10% to all Elemental resistances. I do not feel this is a good trade off to be honest. Inner Force This is highly underrated by too many people too often. This will improve Grace, Discipline, Frenzy Charges, Wrath, Anger, Hatred[/b] and so on. It adds DPS, ES and defences, all for just 3 points. This is non-negotiable skill. 119 points<-- click for skill tree If you have mana leech, you can refund Mind Drinker as I have. If you don't you would leave the point in their if your mana regeneration is not keeping up. Key Nodes to work towards - Chaos Innoculation - Vaal Pact - Infused Shield -Ghost reaver - Unnatural Calm This is how the build would look If you was totally maxed out (bar one or 2 options you would have). Now, the reason I put a 119 point build up, is not because we are all going to be getting there soon, but rather to just show the options available - after the key stones, it is really your choice what you wish to work on and what order which will usually be gear dependant. For example, want more ES? You would work on the ES nodes above conduit. Want to increase Critical multiplier? You have the Throatseeker ring. I would strongly recommend that Twin Terrors, Infused shield, Blood Thirst are not skipped, everything else is rather optional. I have decided not to go for Water dancing as, although the keystone itself is very good, the 2 nodes to get to it are sub par nodes compared to other options. You could go for the Blademaster ring at the bottom, especially if you feel low on res allowing you to pick up Diamond Skin. Beserking is not a good option for this build as the attack speed per node (to arrive at it) ratio is not efficient enough due to the pathways this build is taking. Before making a decision, look at what your character has and what would yeild the most DPS. Also, when making a investment, compare how that 4 or 5 points could be invested differently on the tree and see what it is providing per node, to make a decision as to what is truly most effective. You also have the option to unpoint some of the nodes at the starting Duelist area like the beginner attack speed/Physical damage nodes, if you want to work on other things for your build – it is very flexible to what you need, to make it work with your gear. The point as to when to get Chaos Innoculation I would state would be in Merciless and only when you have atleast 1,000-1500 ES. This usually has been enough to survive through the quests to level more. It is possible to get this with gear found, but hopefully you can trade for some on the way to help you get there. It is useful to setup the points so that you are able to learn both Chaos Innoculation and Ghost Reaver at the same time. Vaal Pact is also very important to spec as soon as you start doing semi-decent DPS relative to the monsters. If you feel you aren’t leeching fast enough to manage, just skill Vaal Pact, it is only 1 point away in the build. Again, while working towards this setup, feel free to use skills like Lightning strikeb – but make sure to put Cleave/Dual strike and support gems on links, or on off-hand weapons, to make sure they level up. Mixing, evasion, armour, and ES I personally got an ES/Armour chest and high armour belt, because I think, instead of focusing on one, balancing it a bit helps overall. Evasion is great against bosses but not so great against mass mobs, while armour is great against mass mobs but not so great against big hits/bosses. Having weapon block, some damage reduction and evasion, means damage is a lot more controllable - not too spikey, allowing you to life leech quite easily even against big packs of mobs. There is no right or wrong here though, and sometimes you can’t be picky – as things can rack up high in price. Due to getting Body and Soul and the Nullification ring, both armour and evasion will be boosted. Why Chaos Innoculation? Because I am tired, as you are of HP nodes and I am sure attaining gear with +life like 90% of players is pretty boring. Also, don't you just hate poison/chaos damage? I do my friend and looking for chaos resist gear is a snoozefest. Chaos Innoculation gives you the ability to go certain nodes on the skill tree (DPS wise) which are not easily accessible for hp build. When you go a HP build, your crits are usually lacking and you are kind of forced to go the resolute technique build to be DPS efficient. I tried theory craft HP alternatives but it is very difficult to attain the level of phys dps as a Chaos Innoculation based duelist. A lot of ES nodes also provide a lot of armour or evasion and resists, which is pretty useful too. You also get to use Blood Rage for free as you are chaos immune – so you no longer need to look for life leech on gear and you get free frenzy charges. If you go HP build with Inner Force, do note that Blood Rage will deal additional damage a second, so you will need to have sufficient regen to combat it. And lastly and probably the more frustrating issue, HP builds usually end up with low dex and intel, very strength heavy. You can get decent dex but it is rare to get the intel required. This results in all sorts of mana issues as many of you guys have probably experienced. With a Chaos Innoculation build, it means you will have at least twice the intel of HP based duellists. As a result, mana issues are much less problematic. The intel does not go wasted, as it increases both mana and your energy shield. Every 2 intel is 1 mana, every 5 intel is 1% Energy shield. Something to note about mana Your mana regen is based on your max mana pool, with a regen speed of 105% per minute. So 100 mana pool means 105 mana regen’d a minute, 200 mana pool is 210 mana regen’d a minute etc. Mana regeneration is applied multiplicatively against the base mana regen (but multiple sources of mana regeneration are added together additively). So, if you get 100% increased mana regen from your gear/nodes, you will end up getting back 210 mana for each 100 mana you have, per minute. Now, you can see having a higher mana pool = more mana regen’d. BUT, there is another thing to consider. No matter how much DPS you do, you can never leech more than 12.5% of your maximum manapool a second. So if you have a 100 mana pool, even if you deal 20,000 damage, you can only leech 12.5 mana a second. It will still continue to keep regen’ing at that rate till all mana is leeched, but it will stop once your manapool is full. These 2 factors are the main reason people who go HP builds end up with mana trouble, low mana pool = low amount regen’d and not enough leeched back. Here, Chaos Innoculation does not suffer as much and you do not need to have Blood Magic to have a good time. Blood magic reduces the viability of a lot of aura's so I think it is worth making mana work for your characters. Weaknesses of CI It is important to understand some things about CI. Ailments such as burning, shock, chilled/freeze are based on damage dealt compared to your max HP. As you are CI, you technically have 1 hp, but for ailment purposes it will use what your HP would have been had you not used CI. The duration of these ailments is based on how much % of damage the mobs have dealt to you relative to your HP. As a result, compared to HP builds, you will get these on you for a lot longer durations. Shock and freeze as a result is the killers for CI build melee. You could use a Fairgraves to make yourself immune to shock and dream fragments to make yourself immune to freeze when you are in special maps or their are special mobs which these would be very situational to use in. Other than that, as these durations are still based on the elemental damage dealt, high resistances will go a long way to make sure you don't melt. Similarly, chance to be stunned is operated on your HP before CI - this is why this build heavily recommends Eye of Chayula to put a stop to this altogether. With CI you do get an additional stun check, everytime you are about to be stunned - their is a 50% chance it won't stun you - so at least you have this to fall back on if you don't have an Eye of Chayula. Reflect damage No one likes it, but as you are not with Unwavering Stance, you have some tricks to fight against it. First, you can use Warlords Mark in these instances, to add more lifeleech to your Blood Rage, to tackle it a bit better. Not always good to do, it is situational. Secondly, armour reduces physical reflect - and you can evade it as well. Here is why Granite flasks of Iron Skin/Reflexes combined work very well at dealing with reflect mobs. You can even run determination aura instead of some of the DPS aura's to increase effectiveness of armour in these situations. Hardcore viability Anything you can do in softcore, you can do in hardcore, provided you have the patience. If you are playing hardcore, you will just have to be just that more careful, always have max resistances (could mean running purity) and either a dream fragment or 2 granite's of heat up as - the risk of death is so high when using cleave. A focus will have to be put on energy shield nodes above the Conduit skill. I would use Lightning Strike and a good shield for a while before you are adequately geared up to use Cleave safely. What skills does this build revolve around? - AOE SPAM Cleave Why not Lightning strike? Beacuse it isn't manmode enough and won't reach the DPS heights and clear speed of cleave (although it is a lot flexible/safer). Cleave with life leech and vaal pact with high DPS goes through mobs like a hot knife through butter. There is a certain satisfaction whirling-blading into a group and watching a big crit strike happen and seeing everything die instantly. - SINGLE TARGET Dual Strike As dualweidling, the DPS of this will outweigh that of all other abilities end game. Earlier on, you may use other gems like viper strike/Elemental hit before you get better geared and level'd. - BLOOD RAGE This should always be up when you are CI. I personally have linked it to faster cast so it can be reapplied a lot quicker. Please note, currently, the quality bonus lifeleech is removed once it refreshes after a kill, so rebuff it just before fighting a big mob/boss to get full life leech amount. GGG are away of this bug but it is on low priority to fix. You should level this to level 17, to gain the maximum base life leech. - CURSE Enfeeble Why not Warlords mark? Because Blood Rage will provide all the lifeleech you need, manadrinker provides the mana leech and this adds much more reliable survivability. Warlords mark as a % chance to give you endurance charges and life leech goes up to 7% but it still doesn’t cut it. With a quality enfeeble, you can get up to 69% accuracy reduction, 39% lower crit chance, 39% lower critmultiplier, 34% reduced damage. If that isn’t insane, I don’t know what is. There just isn’t a curse which compares. Technically, if it is a quality gem, level 1 is good enough, but if your mana allows, leveling it is by no means problematic as I haven’t had any issues myself. - MOBILITY Whirling Blade With Faster Attacks it is as good as it gets for mobility – but you don’t have to link it to faster attacks as this build provides a lot of attack speed. You can also use Flicker Strike but I don’t think it is required. - AURAS Hatred, Discipline, Wrath, Grace – Main ones to use Anger, DeterminationHaste - Optional - Your choice really as to which you can afford to use and preference. Purity – Situational, especially with maps with extremely high ele damage/ele weakness curse. Having a level’d Purity is very much worth it, the DPS loss of substituting one of the other aura’s will not impact you too much when dealing with spell casting mobs. It is good to over-resist and have +max resists in many situations so don’t knock it! Clarity is just not a requirement for this build, it is okay to use early game for leveling purposes, but it isn’t to be used end game. Link all aura's to high level reduced mana gem's. It is very important. Also, do not pay extra for quality mana reduced, the quality bonus is not a mana multiplier and as such does not reduce cost of aura's! - SUPPORT GEM's For Cleave, you should have melee physical damage, melee physical damage on full life, increased critical strike chance and increased critical strike multiplier. If you have a 6L, you can link those 4 to both your Dual Strike and Cleave. If you want a truly epic Cleave, you can add Concentrated Effect and then put your Dual Strike into a 4L helm/boots/gloves. This would increase your Cleave damage dramatically, but will reduce it's AOE. Weapon of Choice This build is based around physical damage and swords. Axes can be used to as no weapon-specific node has been selected but they are usually slower. Attack speed is very important as having a stream of life leech is better than having it in chunks. When looking for weapons, it is advisable to try find ones which get you at least 200 physical DPS. To calculate DPS, add the min and max damage of the item, divide it by 2, then multiply by attacks per second. e.g., if a weapon has 97-197 damage and an attack rate of 1.9, the DPS of it would be ((97+197)/2)*1.9 = 279.3, pretty nice DPS! Having elemental isn’t a bad thing so to say, but this build will increase physical damage a lot more than it will any elemental damage, so priority should be on physical damage dealt by weapon. Oak Quests Normal - Skill point Cruel – 6% Attack speed or 12% phys damage Merciless - Skillpoint or frenzy charge Pretty straight forward to be fair. Expected DPS? Here is my Cleave/Dual strike DPS at level 74 with buffs/auras up.  When I get to around level 80, will update this image as it will definitely shoot up! Gear Like most melee builds, this will be gear dependant. Early game, there is no requirement to have duel weild up, using shield for defensive purposes is better (even though you will go through some duel wield nodes). Karui Ward amulet, Redbeak sword, The Magnate, Wanderlust and Quill Rain bow are all very nice items early on to level quickly. As time goes on, this is what should be prioritised on each gear. Helm Can be ES, ES/Armour or ES/Eva. What you are looking for accuracy. Do not underestimate accuracy Most people see it as an undesirable stat, but it is required for DPS, it adds DPS and it will add survivability (as misses mean monsters live longer, so they deal more damage and you leech less life). Ideally, having 200+ accuracy on a helm is a very good step in the right direction. Other than that, mana and resistances combined with high ES/defences are what is needed. This one is straight forward. Amulet Eye of Chayula is in my opinion, hard to replace. I have bought many good amulets with many exalts, but cannot be stunned is just too powerful – it adds survivability as well as DPS (as you don’t get stunned, not just when hit, but when blocking). If you can get this, get it as soon as you have CI, it is a completely different gaming experience. Belt Magnate is nice for DPS, but ideally, having a belt with ES, high armour (armour can go up to 400) and resistances are the best. You can also get weapon elemental damage, which will increase the damage provided by Wrath, Anger, Hatred. Weapons Have been discussed above previously Chest Briefly mentioned this before, but there is no best, you can get a pure ES chest, ES/EV or ES/AR. They all have their pro’s and con’s. You don’t need life so look out for attributes and resistances primarily. Gloves Maligaro’s is probably the best DPS glove available due this being a crit based build. Ondar’s clasp/Slitherpinch are cheaper options which are very useful in terms of utility. There are some nice crafted gloves out their too, with decent ES/resistance that can be used. Boots The easiest boots to use is probably Sin Treks. The good thing about it is that it provides a lot of evasion (400+) and around 80 ES after quality. You can get A LOT better boots now with the recent patch. Ideally, getting tri res 150+ es boots would be the best thing to try achieve with intel/mana mods. Rings Dream Fragments and Le Heu of All are the two unique rings which are useful for this build, the former simply because freeze is probably one of the biggest killers of melee, while the latter due to it’s all rounded stats. With rings the desired stats are - Resistances - Physical damage / Elemental damage (although this is a phys build, it is still a desirable mod) - Attack speed - Accuracy - Weapon elemental damage (for auras) - Mana, mana regeneration - Attributes - Energy shield With rings, you have quite a lot of flexibility as to what works with you. Just avoid life and chaos resistance. Flasks Granites and more granites. Try find surgeon ones as you will crit a lot and get at least one of heat (unless you are running Dream fragments) and one of warding (to remove curse). My Gear (will update as I improve)
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Gameplay videos
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THESE ARE HEAVILY NON-OPTIMISED, did these in a rush with some wrong gems, some wrong auras on/off, but they are just to give you a small idea of potential, sorry about the crop on the ledge one, but that is pretty much how all ledge/dock runs are - you kill everything superfast. Ledge run (I have done a lot faster, around 1:30, but I think that is still slow) Solo merciless Piety These are at level 70, but could have been heavily improved, Will add updated video’s and hopefully some high level maps. Trying to get myself to level 85-90 so I can show some very impressive video’s. Will be updated regularly. ign KlearSpeed 1.3 Torment - Scion Kinetic Build Guide (HC Viable) http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1146976 Last edited by iMbaQ#2112 on Mar 16, 2013, 12:13:01 PM
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Amazing build imo, indeed u have invested heavily on it but looks like it was worthy. can't really think at the moment how to improve it other than cyclone like u pointed out, depending ofc how the skill will work (if it gets interrupted when hit or not, mana hungry etc).
Overall I just can say great job, will definitely give it a try and see what happens with crappy gear heh. No Pity... No Mercy... No Regret.
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What do you do about being frozen / shock-stacked all the time?
IGN: skizzy
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" Against frozen i have two surgeons granite flask of heats. Also have 1 of warding, 1 iron skin and 1 of reflex. The idea is due to your mobility and insane lifeleech, you just have to fight smart, seperate mobs if needed. Whirling blade with the attack speed you get with this build is very useful. ign KlearSpeed
1.3 Torment - Scion Kinetic Build Guide (HC Viable) http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1146976 |
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I'm new to the game and currently my build has the same nodes as yours and looking through your choises this is gonna be my guilde to my build.
I see you don't take daggers because of cleave, but with Cyclone (if it works) you can use daggers. Would you consider using daggers then or are swords still the best choise? |
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Its a great build from what I've seen.
Partying with iMbaQ, he was able to farm docks in next to no time. The survivability is drawn hugely from Blood Rage and the sheer damage output of the build. PS... love that Main Hand Sword mate. wonder where u found that! :p Just for try for see and for know -2013!
She corpse exploded the corpse of the boss... |
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" I'd like a video of you soloing a level70+ map. IGN: Zeldoon - 88 Duelist
Archdoon - 66 Ranger Selling All the equipment on my 88Duelist http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/308598 |
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Seems a nice build man!
From now on I'm leveling a Blood Rage/HP/Armor Duelist, but wanted to make another with mana for the upcoming cyclone skill and more aura diversity. CI is really interesting, so I think I'll try this build for my new char. Just wondering, how u leveled until CI? You got any HP node and drop it after CI? ♠RaGoN♦
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How viable would you say this is for HC? What weaknesses are there of the build, things that the build can be improved on?
Been trying to come up with a CI dual wielding witch build. Yes I know, very sub optimal, but I'm a glutton for punishment and I like the witch model/uniqueness better. Some great ideas in the guide, I'll def look into some of your passive choices/skills/etc and try to see what I can come up with. IGN- Vyvanne | Voxxvi (Tempest League)
Vyvanne's Odds and Bods Boutique - http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1311497 |
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you should make some build breakdowns, like 30, 60 and 90 pts
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