[3.8] Ground Slam Dualwield Slayer - Stun all content

Hello, Exile! This is my first guide for a build that I was trying to perfect for several leagues. Idea was simple - to create a build that can stun all content without Heavy Strike AOE limitations. And so finally in 3.7 build recived buffs it deserves (actually, sometimes it feels like buffs are too much). We can have stuns, damage and full screen AOE with the most satisfying ability in the game for me - Vaal Ground Slam.

Pros:
+ High DPS (1.5-3 mil depending on gear)
+ High AOE (Vaal ground slam can cover the whole screen)
+ Can stunock anything
+ Cheap to start
+ Can do any map mods

Cons:
- Half of your survivability comes from stuns, so probably not really hardcore viable
- Some of high tier betrayal encounters can kill you
- With all bis uniques getting res capped can be a problem

3.8 changes:
With slayer, pulverise and utmost might changes build was nerfed a bit, but not much.

Current stats:
- 6000 HP
- 2+ mil Shaper dps (without Vaal Ground Slam)
- 77% / 76% / 76% resists
- All charges while mapping, endurance charges on bosses
- 23% physical damage reduction with endurance charges
- 24% reduced damage taken from hits from Fortify

Why Slayer?
Main idea with the build in 3.7 was to push GS AOE to the reasonable limit. Slayer gives a lot of AOE and damage.

Why dualwield?
You can get 20%+ reduced enemy stun threshold with 1h maces. Also, faster attack speed for better feel of the build.

Ascendancy
Spoiler
Overhelm - allows us to use relatively cheap 1h maces with 5% crit and crit multi

Impact - lots of aoe while mapping and 15% more damage upclose (and we want to be close since Ground Slam gets bonus damage as well)

Headsman - just damage and reflect immune

Bane of legends - 20% cull is noticable on shaper and 20% attacke and move speed helps with clearspeed a lot

----------------
Brutal Fervour - can be used instead of Bane of Legends to increase survivability, for softcore I dont think it is needed


POB and passive tree
Spoiler
Path of building

50% more damage to closer targets (GS), 15% more damage from Impact are not counted in POB. Also, Pride is bugged, it is currently counted as increased damage taken instead of more.

Tree


Gems
Spoiler
Body armor:
Vaal Ground Slam - Brutality - Fortify - Melee Physical Damage - Ruthless - Pulverise

Options:
Pulverise -> Increased Area of Effect / Maim if your weapon attack speed is low (or just for faster mapping). In theory Multistrike would be better, but I believe it is bugged right now
Pulverise -> Concentrated effect for bosses if you want to push dps to the maximum

4link 1:
Pride - Flesh and Stone - Maim - Enlighten

4link 2:
Cast when damage taken - Immortal call - Increased duration - Summon Ice Golem

Low level CWDT setup for the lasy

3link 1:
Leap Slam - Faster Attacks - Blood Magic

3link 2:
Ancestral Warchief - Brutality - Melee Physical Damage

I dont use Vaal version because I want to have Vaal Ground Slam as often as possible.

3link 3:
Blood Rage - Blood and Sand - Dash

I like playing with Dash, but it would be replaced with War Banner when I will get level 4 enlighten

1link (add to any 3link):
Precision (level 1)



Gear
Spoiler

Weapons

You want 1H maces with "reduced enemy stun threshold" implicit, 1.5+ attack speed (maybe lower, but I for me it does not feel good without multistrike).
350-380 dps weapons without crit but with crit multi are cheap and will give you more damage than 400-420dps weapons without crit mlti.

Alternatives
Spoiler

Cheap starter weapons. Dont use with pulverise due to low attack speed


Helmet


Alternatives
Spoiler

Only if you want to pust your damage for the limits in the bossfights.

Or rare helmet with a lot of life, "Nearby Enemies take 9% increased Physical Damage" mod and some resists.


Body armor

Any life and resist body armor. BIS would be Rare armor with maim and crit chance, but you can use Belly of the Beast for more life or Carcass Jack for more AOE.

Gloves

Rare gloves with life, resists, 12%+ attack speed. For more expensive version add accuracy rating.

Boots


Alternative - rare boots with life, resists and 25%+ movement speed.
See "Stun calculations" for more info.

Belt

Rare belt with life, resistances and 15% reuced enemy stun threshold.

Amulet

Look for life, crit multi and resistances.

Rings

Craft -mana cost of skills if you can afford it.
Assasins mark on hit helps, but not necessary - I've done all content without it.

Alternative - any rare rings with added physical damage.

Flasks


Jewels

Always use at least 1 Rapid Expansion, 2 is good for maping

Rest are any rare jewels with damage (get as many crit multi increases as you can)


Bandits
Spoiler
Alira is the best


Videos


Stun calculations
Spoiler
I'm gonna use Shapes as my benchmark for stuns. This section will have some general numbers
According to poe.db and poe wiki Shaper has 18 328 731 health (I remember him having 20mil, so idk whats up with it).
All calcualtions are based on formulas from wiki.

We have 88% reduced stun threshold
25% from skill
20% from weapons (can be more)
10% from boots
15% from belt
18% from tree

Witch means that effective Shaper health againts stun would be 16.5% of max or 3 024 240 health.
Since we are pure phys - we can divide this number by 1.25.
So Shaper effective health is 2 419 392.

To have minimum stun chance (20%) we need to deal 10% of effective max life in a single blow and to have 100% stun chance we need to deal damage equal to 50% of effective max life.
20% stun chance - 241 939 damage
100% stun chance - 1 209 696 damage

If we account for 50% more damage to closer targets from ground Slam and 15% more damage from Impact (since it isnt calculated in pob):

20% stun chance - 140 254 damage
100% stun chance - 701 273 damage

Now, this is not exact science - with a bit of testing I found that to reliably stun shaper you need to have around 50% stun chance with average crit (without accounting for Ruthless). Or around 350k damage with crit.

You can check average crit damage in pob:

Last edited by Shleppel on Sep 6, 2019, 2:31:53 AM
Last bumped on Oct 11, 2019, 10:16:23 AM
I wanted to do something similar, nice to see it works out well in the actual game and not just in theory. Like your build, thanks for sharing it, will definitely try it out.
Last edited by sirdond on Jul 5, 2019, 1:04:23 PM
Trying it, very smooth leveling through A1-A3 with two Gorebreaker.

Question: Don't you think Punishment (with Blasphemy) would be better than Pride? You are losing a little amount of more physical damage (35% vs 39% at lvl20), but it gives a 19% AS boost (24% with Q20) which IMHO more than compensates the loss. It would also make Enlighten unnecessary even when using War Banner.
"
halaci wrote:
Trying it, very smooth leveling through A1-A3 with two Gorebreaker.

Question: Don't you think Punishment (with Blasphemy) would be better than Pride? You are losing a little amount of more physical damage (35% vs 39% at lvl20), but it gives a 19% AS boost (24% with Q20) which IMHO more than compensates the loss. It would also make Enlighten unnecessary even when using War Banner.

Glad you like it!

Punishment is generally very bad curse. You need to be hit wilth melee attack to activate it and with this build you will get hit almost only with ranged and only sometimes because you stun everything. And it has 66% less effect on bosses. And locks you out of Assasins Mark on hit.
I would advise against it.
So, I just leveled one to 70.
I did start out with dual Gorebreaker and switched those to dual Flesh-eater at lvl32 and added in Haemophilia at lvl43. The Flesh-eater+Haemophilia+Ground Slam trio synergises so well, they carried me to lvl70 (I used Tabula, but one gem was Onslaught support and one was Stun support, so not really a full 6L damage, and only swapped those 2 out in my late 60s and until I picked up the Fortify nodes). Also Thief's Torment is a huge help if you can get one, but not needed at all.

Skilltree-wise I first went like this:Art of Gladiator -> Brinkmanship -> straight for Barbarism, Bone Breaker, Skull Cracking -> 2 jewel slot for 2 Rapid expansion
From there it's preference if you want life or defense or damage. I wouldn't take crit nodes until lategame.
Overall the leveling was really smooth and fast.
Last edited by sirdond on Jul 6, 2019, 9:12:51 AM
double post, sorry
Last edited by sirdond on Jul 6, 2019, 9:12:35 AM
"
Shleppel wrote:
"
halaci wrote:
Trying it, very smooth leveling through A1-A3 with two Gorebreaker.

Question: Don't you think Punishment (with Blasphemy) would be better than Pride? You are losing a little amount of more physical damage (35% vs 39% at lvl20), but it gives a 19% AS boost (24% with Q20) which IMHO more than compensates the loss. It would also make Enlighten unnecessary even when using War Banner.

Glad you like it!

Punishment is generally very bad curse. You need to be hit wilth melee attack to activate it and with this build you will get hit almost only with ranged and only sometimes because you stun everything. And it has 66% less effect on bosses. And locks you out of Assasins Mark on hit.
I would advise against it.


My bad, in this case I completely misunderstood the mechanics of it, thanks for the clarification.
Had a smack on shaper, it was a really easy fight overall, I could stun him ~95% of the time.
"
sirdond wrote:
Had a smack on shaper, it was a really easy fight overall, I could stun him ~95% of the time.

I updated guide with some light stun calculations - I dont think that stun mastery is needed, it is generally 3 wasted points.
Nice guide, having some fun with it so far. This and sweep are both sleeper skills that are a bit under the radar due to cyclone being so insane right now. Switched in a shockwave gem to try it out. Not sure how it calculates damage wise, pob shows it doing almost as much as the main slam on its own. It seems like it might be more useful mapping to get the proc on the first hit instead of waiting on ruthless to kick in on the third attack. If the damage from selecting ground slam and then selecting shockwave are added together it would be a big dps increase overall but I don’t know if that’s how it works.

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