What's the best skill for 1h weapon+shield setup?

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MCSMvsME wrote:

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CookieVortex wrote:

I agree Infernal blow is best for 1h. Cleave owns when dual-welding.

It's not viable in end game, you just oneshot yourself on reflect.

it is true that reflect from infernal blow is fatal, but the op is also planning to run high block and eva, which both counter-acts the reflect damage. Im curious to see how effective it is though.

My favorite is Soul Taker with Dominating Blow + Melee Splash + Melee DMG + Added Fire + Faster ATK + anything else you want. It's really OP and your support gems will support the mobs too. I run maps up to 75 smoothly but not sure about 76+ maps as bosses have too much HP, but they summon minions so that could help too. DPS is slightly lower than other builds but it's mostly physical dmg which means blood rage will give good lifesteal. Does not work without Soul Taker though because of the insane mana cost.

Lightning Strike is good for range and good for me too as I have tons of +ele dmg on gear. It's safe to fight vs. end game bosses especially ones you have to move constantly (like in Crematorium). I used this in place of Dominating Blow to fight vs bosses often, because of its superior range. Use Weapon Ele DMG in place of Melee Splash for this.

Infernal Blow is not good for me. I killed myself too easily on ele reflect mobs using this. Not smooth at all, but the dps is pretty insane. However I find that end game dps isn't really a problem, just use 6L and enough auras you will have decent enough dps.

Double Strike is good too if you use dagger.

Otherwise, Heavy Strike can be a good option if you prefer high damage. The knock back is a little annoying at times though.

I prefer not to use Multistrike because some bosses we have to move to avoid their hits at times, and Multistrike locks the character in place. On top of that, some mobs die before you hit them 3 times and you still get locked in place which wastes time.

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sleepydragon wrote:

My favorite is Soul Taker with Dominating Blow + Melee Splash + Melee DMG + Added Fire + Faster ATK + anything else you want. It's really OP and your support gems will support the mobs too. I run maps up to 75 smoothly but not sure about 76+ maps as bosses have too much HP, but they summon minions so that could help too. DPS is slightly lower than other builds but it's mostly physical dmg which means blood rage will give good lifesteal. Does not work without Soul Taker though because of the insane mana cost.

Lightning Strike is good for range and good for me too as I have tons of +ele dmg on gear. It's safe to fight vs. end game bosses especially ones you have to move constantly (like in Crematorium). I used this in place of Dominating Blow to fight vs bosses often, because of its superior range. Use Weapon Ele DMG in place of Melee Splash for this.

Infernal Blow is not good for me. I killed myself too easily on ele reflect mobs using this. Not smooth at all, but the dps is pretty insane. However I find that end game dps isn't really a problem, just use 6L and enough auras you will have decent enough dps.

Double Strike is good too if you use dagger.

Otherwise, Heavy Strike can be a good option if you prefer high damage. The knock back is a little annoying at times though.

I prefer not to use Multistrike because some bosses we have to move to avoid their hits at times, and Multistrike locks the character in place. On top of that, some mobs die before you hit them 3 times and you still get locked in place which wastes time.

I can get crits yeah, but I will lose so much survivability, and I won't reach Nightstalker cluster that gives 120% crit chance. In addition to this, I'm life based and can't run melee on full life like CI folks.



Currently I'm using HS + Faster attacks + life leech + melee physical + added fire + melee splash. Got 5600 DPS. But it's with 2h, I'm looking for shield and 1h now.

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Fedoras wrote:

it is true that reflect from infernal blow is fatal, but the op is also planning to run high block and eva, which both counter-acts the reflect damage. Im curious to see how effective it is though.

Not effective at all. Let's say you will block/evade 100 of this nuclear explosions from bosses, rare monsters, but 101 will kill you. The only way to survive is to have insane fire resist close to 100%. I don't want to play like this.

You can use Lightning Strike without ever using crit. It's great for its dps and range already. Hell I use LS with Resolute Technique and I'm fine with it. Keep in mind that the "Projectile Damage" is always 30% lowered than the tooltip dps, so though it may show higher dps than other skills you only really get those dps if you hit the mobs on melee range.

Also you're overstuffing yourself with both Evasion and Armor. With the new change to Evasion, I'd say pick Evasion and max out block chance and just ignore Armor. Use all pieces that has evasions on it, don't use Armor or hybrids. Most likely hybrids won't give you much Armor anyway. Added % on top of so little Armor won't help, and you still have to sacrifice Evasion to go for hybrid pieces.

However, if this is intended for Hardcore play, I'd still recommend getting Iron Reflexes. It's still the best reliable source of defense for now, and you will benefit fully from both % Armor and Evasion nodes (providing that you pick pure evasion gears). Unless you feel adventurous enough to push your luck with GGG, in which case you can max out evasion/block in hope nothing bad will happen.

After abandoning Armor you can go for Acrobatics, for even greater source of dodge.

You can probably lay off the mana node and simply reserve all of them using % reservation, and use Life + Blood Magic gem, or a good source of mana regen if you got some mana left after reservation. Melee skills are usually cheap, so you can use them with as low as just 50 mana (providing you got some mana leech source), and use blood magic gem on curses / totems / whatever else.

1 thing I noticed is that specialized weapon nodes usually give more dps than nodes that say "one handed weapons". Therefore pick a weapon of choice (preferably close by to your tree vicinity, maybe 1h sword?) and try to get as many nodes as possible in order to get the best dps boost. If you want to use Axe (maybe for Soul Taker?), extend your tree a bit to the left side and you will have a bunch of axe nodes ready for use.

P.S. Also take that insane 15% attack speed node, it's really good! And 2 melee damage nodes at the starting point of Dualist too, which gives you flat +12 life as bonus.

2 sleepydragon

1) About atmour and evasion
Yeah I agree, got 4400 armour and don't feel I need much more... But now I have Kaom which gives me 6300hp and 200+ hp regen, without it I will need more defence.

Btw after the patch game is much easier I remember the days I was scared to face Brutus in dungeon map at 80+ lvl with 10k armour unbuffed and 40K+ armour with flask.

I was also planning to try this build with spellblock from uniques + aegis aurora. Will take nulification and hybrid es/ev to increase es.

2) It looks like I can really keep lightning strike in mind. I will try it maybe.

3) Acrobatics is really bad, because with enfeeble, blind from bringer of the rain I already will have insane chance to evade. 50% armour reduction don't worth it, maybe if I reach 10k armour at least I will use it. Anyway it takes to much nodes to get.

4) Mana management. I really hate direction the game come with this. All this blood magic gems and OP uniques. It's really stupid and need good rebalance, I want mana based hero, without this tricks to use 200 mana worth skill setup without cons.

5) Berserker node. Yeah the single node is very good, I agree. But I already got plenty of attack speed in this build. Then look at the path I take to get armour and hubrid defences nodes. It's awful, 4 points wasted! and then I will be forced to pick this op node.
Now look at the ranger's tree at the start, see this 3 nodes with aspect of the panter?

It gives so much only for three nodes and 14% attack speed included.

Yes I was just saying if you went down to take Armor / Evasion nodes then you can take Berserker with just 1 point. Otherwise you can disregard it.

To be honest I hate using Kaom because of the lack of 6L. Unless you use 2h of course. And Kaom is not even cheap.

You may want to pick up Endurance Charge for 2 more points. Endurance Charge provides 4% physical reduction regardless of damage, so it may benefit better than Armor nodes for higher damage which you really care about given your low base Armor.

As for Acrobatics, I was under the impression you would be using full eva gears. Then you won't have to worry much about Armor penalty. If you use hybrid gears then don't use it.

As for Mana, you can always use Clarity. Pick up gears with some mana regeneration rate or mana steal too, maybe a ring? Most of melee skills have very low mana costs so these should regen you more than enough. Some more mana consuming OP skills like Dominating Blow is obviously not intended to use with max damage build except with special mechanics like Soul Taker. I wouldn't even use it with Blood Magic because if you can attack 3 times per second, that's a self damage of 600 dmg per second, which is a lot.