Comprehensive Duelist feedback

Duelists suck in 3hr and early mid/long term races

Duelist is generally a tank class. While bow duelist is a popular build it doesn’t compare to the popularity of S&B, DW and 2h (sword or my general 2h build that is growing in popularity). With how the game is in its current state, melee has to be tank. When you compare a tank duelist to a tank mara, end game they are very similar. My duelist can stand up to any crowd a GS mara can, in fact, I can argue that with better gear my build will be able to handle groups better w/o the need to reposition for GS because of how sweep works, also don’t need to stun lock mobs to handle them.

To show my point let’s compare some usual duelist builds to panda and kripp’s 3hr race builds. Panda, as everyone knows wins the majority of these 3hr races (shout out to Fayded who is a beast as well but I’m talking mara and he plays other classes more often) and Kripp came in on his 2nd 3hr race and took 2nd breaking the previous lvl record by 2 lvls. His theory crafting before hand on his stream also helped the guy who beat him take the record, of course Panda surpassed that and as more people get involved I think it will be pushed even farther.

So here’s the thread for panda’s 3hr thread, it has his build and everything. Here’s Kripp’s video of him during the 3hr race.

Both go the life/resist route in the beginning. Afterwards they vary, which is why I wanted to include both. Both of the builds, Kripp's 3hr mara build and Panda's 3h mara build work and did/do well. Here’s the build that Axebane and I went back in forth on, he went DW and I went 2h (sticking with 2h axes). Axebane and my duelist build

You can argue for many routes with duelist for the start but we felt that this one got the most life, access to IR and better dmg/speed late in the race.

So to Merveil by lvl 12 (this is a normal for race situations) Panda and Kripp have 39% increased life, 1.9% life regen and 15 AR. While Axebane and I have 34% life, +60 dex (+30 accuracy and 12% evasion) and +10 int. So there isn’t a huge difference here but we have to waste points early on getting stat points while they were straight into life. Also that 15 AR is a pretty big deal as I’ve done Merveil a few times without having any cold resist, not being able to find or craft any. Having an easy 15 AR would have at least helped. On top of that it almost covers completely the jump from normal to cruel with the recent changes. The maras only have to make up a loss of 5% while duelist has to make up the full 20% loss.

Now for Vaal Panda takes a safer route than Kripp does and gets armor mastery, RT then fitness in templar area so he gets 18% armor, 100% accuracy, +100 str (+50 life and 20% physical dmg) and 18% life. Kripp wanted to one shot all mobs so he gets (keep in mind he went to 24, panda goes to 22 and Kripp didn’t have the new skill point in western forest so Panda gets 11 points and Kripp gets 12 from Merveil to Vaal) so Kripp wants the 2 12% life nodes by bloodless. He ends up with 36% IPD, 5% increased accuracy, +20 dex (10 accuracy), +20 int, +40 str (20 life and 8% IPD) and 24% increased life by Vaal.

Axebane and my build gets IR, life and reflexes for evasion being turned to armor, 24% life, 50% evasion (armor) and +30 dex (15 accuracy and 6% evasion) and +30 str (+15 life and 6% IPD)

So as of facing Vaal you can see the compared stats on this spreadsheet.

Kripp and Panda both have more life (all 3 have roughly the same % increased but they have a higher base), life regen and higher IPD (w/ heavy strike Kripp is already doing 100% more dmg than his wpn has).

The all three builds end by getting more dmg, Axebane and I thought we might have an advantage by getting movement speed to help with the final push to the ledge and help to speed up runs once there, assuming we couldn’t one shot everything as easily as a GS build could.

So just from tree stats, Mara’s starting area is much better than duelist. Duelist can go heavier on dmg early but it makes for some tough fights early on. Some other notes, Mara’s can basically fight Brutus as a ranged character. Brutus in a face to face fight is fucking brutal. When I face him I find a long bow in the prison, get and lvl fire arrow from the Hillock reward to kill Brutus as an archer. Mara’s can GS, run away, GS, run away so they don’t need to be a tanky beast. Meanwhile duelist, even if someone decide on a different route than Axebane and I decided on, can only get a max of 24% increased life and that’s it towards EHP, unless they wanted to get str which doesn’t lead to any EHP besides a long route to steel skin. So for a tank class, duelist isn’t very tanky in the beginning.

Some methods of fixing this AoE problem I’ll address later but some easy fixes are give duelist lighting strike MUCH earlier. I think right now the soonest you can get it is in cruel. Being able to lighting strike down the bosses will make life much easier. Also giving duel/double strike or even heavy strike as the first skill rather than cleave, putting cleave as the reward for killing Hillock. Let’s face it, many serious racers aren’t doing much AoE in twilight so we end up having to default attack brutus down. You’ll never see a duelist get first kill on Hillock.

Intermediate/Long races

I’m good at getting into the top ten on day 2 or 3 of these week races and the delay is because of the lull that comes in cruel ruthless. Let me show you. My current build, this is how it looked at the end of Normal , no real issue here, tough but easy. I do find myself dying much more often than I’d like because of the long gap between the 3 life nodes and the life nodes by golem’s blood.

Build by the end of cruel I’m starting to struggle with mana, I get the life in act 1 so by act 2 I’m just get IR, a bunch of stat nodes (mostly useless dex) unwavering stance (big help), finally get BM (THANK GOD!) then start heading to mara area. So all of act 2 I end up with no real helpful nodes besides the keystone nodes.

For Ruthless the going gets a little tough. Usually by the end of cruel my dmg is fine for ruthless, EHP is decent and all that jazz mostly because there’s nothing I’m gaining from the tree during act 2 cruel so I have to slowly grind my way through it. Ruthless I tend to fly through because I have all my resist rings, life on a few pieces of gear and I’ve desperately rolled wpns until I get something that has +75% IPD. But again I’m getting life in act 1 and start travel in act 2 to get resists, which I wish I could get before sin. Ruthless sin is usually a huge problem for me.

By Merciless I’m trying to get to RT asap but also need the extra life to face vaal. With this build I end up facing him with less life than I’d like to.

Now I hate having to travel to the mara starting area. It takes forever and makes me fairly weak during the travel. This is my Standard build when not going through mara. I used this for my S&B and bow build (variations but the same path basically). I really enjoy the idea of staying inside the duelist area completely and going to the middle which is shared ground with everyone. I don’t want to depend on another class for my too much of any build. The problem with my standard build is I wanted more life regen, the resists are awful and I don’t have much access to 2h dmg/axe dmg passives.

My current build (not standard) really takes off late game. Like I said, it’s as strong as the majority of GS maras w/o being a GS mara. The problem becomes act 2 cruel and act 1 ruthless take forever to get through and are pretty dangerous. You could probably see from the ladder my toon name has “HC” at the end, I guess it was wishful thinking because even if I didn’t die when I did (lvl 15 overwhelmed in river crossing) I would have died a few times in act 2 cruel and a handful more in act 1 ruthless. I didn’t die in merciless (even though I was 7 lvls under the map at one point) and didn’t die again until those assholes brutus and fidelitas in maps.

Because of the grind Cruel/Ruthless I have a lower chance of grinding to the top of the ladder in the first day or 2. A mara need some passives that are easy to get, voll’s and suddenly, bam top 10. Even with good rolls I’ll struggle to get through the middle of the game.

So those are some of the hang ups duelist have during 3hr and longer races. Time to look at fixing the tree. (Yes, 1579 words in and we just start with solving the problems. I’m fucking long winded go read a thread complaining about the death penalty being too high if you don’t have a higher attention span “I wanna die 25 times to brutus and not lose an entire lvl!” stfu asshole).

Making the Passive tree better

Like I pointed out in the previous section the beginning of duelist tree pretty much blows. The class is designed to be a tank (as most passives are melee related and melee=tank in this game) but the you need to be lvl 8 to get your first life node, which is only 8%



So let’s mix all this shit up. First, here’s a picture that shows the issues. 4 of the first 6 paths are all damage related. You are left to either get damage or stat points in the beginning. I don’t like getting stat points unless I have to. I can get all stat ammy if I need to, I rather have every node on my tree mean something.



Next image might look a little confusing but bare with me. Let’s start with the red, also labeled “1.” The awesome thing about the mara starting area is you get life right out of the gate, it’s a great idea when making a tank related class. So give the same thing to duelists. Either take thick skin (18%) or the golem’s blood life wheel and move it to the start where the 1h/2h dmg nodes are.

I would suggest doing golem’s blood for 2 reasons. First, removing thick skin from that area could hurt rangers who are pure evasion and need a ton of life. Second, moving golem’s blood makes it a higher investment for mara’s to get high life regen. They end up in the same situation a duelist is in, go all the way to the starting area of another class, or get the lesser regen nodes in the middle. It’s a better balance between the classes. Right now duelist tree is better as a mara boosting area than it is as a standalone class. This will come up often in this section.
The next move is obviously the yellow “2”, which is moving the damage nodes over next to the other damage nodes. This leaves duelist with 4 real options, stats (str or dex), dmg or life, rather than dmg, dmg, dmg, dmg or stats.

The last move is green “3” which is putting the resists into a decent spot. Diamond skin is in a somewhat odd spot. It becomes an easy pick up for mara going from unwavering stance to IR, a small detour for a ranger who only wants IR and somehow one of the most important nodes in the duelist area is the most difficult for duelist to grab. So move that to where the 2h dmg nodes are on the 2nd circle down on the left side. If your intentions are to make it so rangers can grab it easily, move it to somewhere near thick skin. Then take the 3 resist nodes that seem randomly thrown in to the left of the duelist starting area and put them where those 2h dmg nodes are. Also make it all 3 resists with a 10% AR. 6% is fairly meaningless, even with taking both 6%ers. Mara’s can access their 15% AR, templar’s 10% and duelist 15% if they wanted to.

Also I didn’t mark this down in that picture (it’s a mess already and just thought of this while typing rather than when I was making the images) change steel skin to leather and steel. Also drop all the leather and steels to 20% to both. The reason is it will encourage people to use hybrid armors, but won’t discourage people from using one or the other and still getting L&S. Moving it from 30% armor to 20% both either a minor nerf to pure users, a minor buff to IR users and a major buff to hybrid users, having 3 leather and steels will really help get their numbers to a comparable level with pure armor or evasion users.



While on the subject of L&S here’s the next picture. I love that you put another one in, but I’ll never get it. I’m still going to get IR, get steel skin and if I want more armor I’ll go for the 30% armor above the new L&S for 50% armor for 3 points rather than 6 points for 72% on both. While it’s a big difference yes, armor generally sucks and eva is unreliable. It’s nice in medium amounts and extreme amounts between medium and large there’s not a noticeable difference. Make that new L&S two points with the other 4 as optional for people who want to stack with hybrid armors. I can burn 2 points for 32% to armor/eva, not burning 6 when my build is already slow to get going.



I just mentioned IR so let’s talk about that guy. I know there’s a bunch of talk about trying to get rid of it and I don’t necessarily disagree but it’s here so let’s deal with it. I mentioned in my last feedback that most mara’s naturally go blood magic. They are there already so they get unwavering stance, which berserker is right there so why not. Then golem’s blood isn’t too far away. They already have unwavering stance so why not get iron reflex, run grace and get a huge armor bonus for very cheap, with that new AR, it’s even more reason to head over there. It’s 4 points from golem’s blood circle to IR, no reason not to get it.

Before the determination buff I was going to suggest that determination be made a flat mana cost and grace moved to % reserve. The thinking was, most maras are BM while most rangers use mana. % based auras are better for mana users while flat cost are better for BM. Made sense to have the armor aura good for BM users and eva aura good for mana users, well you buffed determination so well that maras might be considering using mana again, or at least using BM gems rather than the passive.

But besides the skills, IR is too tempting and too easy to get for maras. Move it. Either put it near point blank so it’s a higher investment for maras in useless dex (most get RT so don’t need the accuracy and the evasion doesn’t do much for them even with grace). Putting it there makes it a higher investment for duelists as well, while making it easier for rangers. Another solution is swapping iron grip and IR.

This does a few things. One it’s easy for any class with eva to get it (shadow could get IR easier at least), it encourages duelists to head north rather than to the mara area, so they get the life and life regen from the middle rather than mara area. Also it leaves maras to decide on which is better, unwavering stance/golem’s blood/berserker or life/1.2% life regen/melee dmg/IR. There are real decisions to be made rather than one good thing leads to another.

The IAS nodes suck

The first two nodes (6% then 3%) are fine. 9% very early game is a big deal and is noticeable.

This one:


Sucks, all three do actually. It’s 9% for a 3 point investment and late game it’s almost completely unnoticeable. My 2h duelist has 110%ish IAS w/ faster attack gem and 4 frenzy charges. 119% isn’t a big jump especially with these nodes for different weapon types.

[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/0xRJT.jpg[/IMG][IMG]http://i.imgur.com/YG34l.jpg[/IMG][IMG]http://i.imgur.com/lhFi0.jpg[/IMG]

The dmg/ias nodes still aren’t that great but IAS alone are even lower than they are. Bump them to 5% each and make all 3 the same worth as berserker, which helps rangers out and keeps duelist as the by far the fastest class, which is one of their big selling points. Also makes these nodes worth getting.

Give us some crit

This was a big point in my last post about duelists and I thought it was going to be put in before the last tree reset. Why don’t duelists have more crit nodes? It’s the only melee class that has high enough dex to not need RT but doesn’t have crit as a real option. I’ve been trying to plot out a crit build and in order to get enough crit I’d either have to basically become a ranger or be very squishy like the BotW video. I don’t like being so close to death’s door the entire time I play like that guy did. Rather than making us travel to shadow to get crit here:



I’m not saying move heatseeker and that circle but put something comparable in any of those 3 areas, or all three. The issue that arrises from this is rangers will have access to it meaning they can make even stronger crit builds so to avoid this maybe put it on the left side of the duelist tree near the axe wheel or down by ice bite so it’s even, duelist have easy general crit (non-weapon based) so do rangers but both can go deep into the other’s area to get more. Personally I think duelist should have at least 2 of these circles or move two of the ranger’s closer. I think a crit duelist is a very viable build but in the current state of the tree is virtually impossible without being very frustrated.

Ok that’s all for passive tree

Skills

Can’t even bring up skills without talking about how bad cleave is. First it doesn’t have the AoE range of the other melee AoE skills (GS, sweep and lighting strike) so in order to use it you need to be facetanking a large crowd or kiting a crowd to take out a couple guys at a time. At which time most DW duelists I’ve played with just dual strike them down.

Solutions are you either need to give it much higher DPS than the other skills or put in some sort of defensive proc. GS has stun, which with the high dmg nature of maces will stun lock most crowds when the character is high lvl. Sweep has knockback so while you are in the middle of a group, you can still keep them away and do damage, works defensively and offensively (about the same dmg of cleave) and lighting strike you can hit shit on the other side of the screen, you can play basically as a ranged character.

So options for cleave, built in LL, starts at 1% and goes to 6%-10%. I say that high because I run warlord’s mark/blood drinker/blood rage/LL gem on HS for a total of 18% LL. Even still if I’m not careful I can get creamed. Cleave users can’t hit guys behind them like I can with sweep so even if they stack LL like I did, or more, they will still take in more damage.

Another option, have endurance charges proc on hit or on death. Basically what warlord’s mark does, it will really help survivability. Last defensive, no skill procs blind on hit, why not cleave?

For offensive ideas, make it 100% dmg when DW and 130% single wpn. It needs to be the highest DPS melee skill. It has a very limited range and you either need huge EHP or huge DPS. It will read as OP but really it’s what needed to be useful. Proc frenzy charges or even just added IAS every time it’s levels, like 2%.

I’m seeing too many duelists just dual strike down mobs. This looks so tedious to me that I won’t even bother putting cleave on to pretend I’ll use it. I just end up sticking with lighting strike.

Double strike, doesn’t even compare to dual strike. The animation is one of my favorites and I love the speed but it either need heavier damage or some proc on hit effect, I’m still liking the idea of putting blind on something.

Is it really a good idea to have lighting strike shoot off screen? It’s generally a skill for melee and with it you basically aren’t melee anymore. I like it as a long shot but why not have it fade out like freezing pulse does, or at least remove pierce as the quality bonus, put it as projectile speed instead as it seems to be the thing lightning does.
Blood rage, can you make it so you can right click it off like an aura. I’ve had situations with poison stacks on me that I’ve had to TP out to avoid dying from the all the incoming chaos damage.

For the love of god make haste’s lvls useful. I enjoy playing solo most of the time so just adding increased AOE does nothing for me and after a while 10% IAS is pretty meaningless. If you don’t want it to be insanely powerful at higher lvls have each lvl give MS, which is what the mobs haste aura already has.

Whirling blade, leap slam, shield charge and flicker strike all have insane desync and rubberbanding. I’m sure you guys know this by now but I wanted to include it.

So I think I could babble on for longer if I took a break while writing this but I think that’s all of it. If you made it all the way through thanks for reading.

1,if you want to make duelist starting area more tank friendly why dont you play marauder?

if you make duelist a tank you will end up with two same classes,you build duelist like a marauder,why dont you just play marauder?

2,because duelist is not suppose to be a tank,it suppose to be a high evasion,fast attacking class BUT the evasion mechanic is bad,its never better to go evasion over armor because math (fail to evade=taking full dmg=dead),the ideal scenario would be evasion depending on your skill so the best players would never get hit - lets say a skill that raises your evasion ad infinitum depending on how many attacks you manualy (moving with mouse) evade

the changes you propose are not necessary,what should be done is making the duelist evade like Neo,thats how duelist should work - evasion in this game is useless stat,there is no choice between evasion and armor,also duelist should have reworked acrobatics (reworked as in being actually usefull) in his skill area

duelist stats should be like 1500 hp,99,9% evasion,4 attacks per second - imunity/resistance to chaos as a class trait to make use of blood rage/flicker

you build him like mara because there is no other choice but to mirror mara passives skills,you end up with marauder named duelist - thats wrong,not by you but by GGG

I dislike mara beyond the starting area. I don't like the skill and I don't like how easy it is. I do enjoy how polished it is though.

Duelist, from their tree and skills given by quest, are designed to be a tank. If this is the intended design then I think the changes I suggested need to be made. If it's intend to be your way then they have even larger changes to make as hybrid armor will never be able to get insane evasion due to it being a lower base then regular evasion. It sounds like you rather see duelist be a melee ranger.

It's a hybrid character and I purpose getting benefits from both it's neighboring classes. I'd like to have some of the defense that mara has but the dmg that ranger has. I want duelist to be the middle ground between extreme tank and extreme glass cannon. Right now he just feels like a fast mara.

I'm dumb, I forgot a big point. Please tell me you guys are going to come out with different styles of the armor for different classes. Right now I just look like a mini-mara and I don't enjoy it. But the other option is putting on a feather boa and prancing around like a ranger.

I might consider hybrid armor soon but I think there's need to a be a little more work before that.

"

Moosifer wrote:

Duelist, from their tree and skills given by quest, are designed to be a tank.

You're wrong. the Duelist class represents a typical loudmouth, jaunty and loving to provoke the risks - its given from his story and proved by every decision around him: even the starting skill, weak against most of the situations at the strand and near to useless against the single-target boss Hillock...

Moose, either your or my understanding of leather and steel is flawed. I am digging up the patch note.....

Leather and Steel: "24% increased Evasion Rating and Armour"

Right now, my current duelist is only level 33. Call me lazy, I'm a bit burned for the moment. Too much theory crafting. Time for some more theory crafting.

If I take off my boots I lose 73 armour rating / 73 evasion rating. Mouseover on the boots is worth 43/43. 73/43 = 169.8%, or 70% incr rating.

My lv 33 build has 30% armour rating, 40% leather and steel, character has 145 dex (29% evasion rating). 70% armour rating / 69% evasion rating. Consistent.

Leather and steel is already applying to both ratings. Your suggestion to lower it to 20% but make it apply to both ratings is a nerf.

I can't find the patch note for the leather and steel nerf, can you? My impression reading this patch note was that it simply prevents evasion rating converted by IR from double-dipping against both bonuses on a leather and steel node. If you have an 8%/8% node, evasion rating converted to armour gets 8% additive, not 16. Natural armour rating still gets its 8. If you have a 24%/24% node, evasion rating converted to armour gets 24%, not 48%. Natural armour rating still gets its 24.

-------------------------

From a general standpoint.

I don't feel duelists are meant to be life tanks, so I disagree with one of your main points there.

I also very much like how the duelist opening area plays, though I know lack of life is detrimental in the 3hr leagues. However, I think we get plenty enough for late game. Ransag posted a fairly efficient build the other day with 172% life by level 75, which completes both L+S circles and picks up the cheap Steelskin (by opening area). That's not shabby at all. 172% incr. life, 134% armour, 160% or so evasion after dex. And a passable offense on top.

In general I like lots of your ideas, but you have to give a high-defensive build a try. Duelists aren't life tanks. If you want to be defensive, plenty of ways to build into other systems.

Specifically, a combination of moderate block with some low chance to evade should be pretty damned powerful when you also have high reduction and 4-5 endurance. Think about it. That new leather and steel circle should make hybrid gear a lot more appealing. Try with determination instead of grace, that's what I'm going for this time.

give us some crit: maybe. They can't give us terribly much, though. The mid crit nodes are already pretty cheap pickups.

"

Zakaluka wrote:

Moose, either your or my understanding of leather and steel is flawed. I am digging up the patch note.....

Leather and Steel: "24% increased Evasion Rating and Armour"

Right now, my current duelist is only level 33. Call me lazy, I'm a bit burned for the moment. Too much theory crafting. Time for some more theory crafting.

If I take off my boots I lose 73 armour rating / 73 evasion rating. Mouseover on the boots is worth 43/43. 73/43 = 169.8%, or 70% incr rating.

My lv 33 build has 30% armour rating, 40% leather and steel, character has 145 dex (29% evasion rating). 70% armour rating / 69% evasion rating. Consistent.

Leather and steel is already applying to both ratings. Your suggestion to lower it to 20% but make it apply to both ratings is a nerf.

I can't find the patch note for the leather and steel nerf, can you? My impression reading this patch note was that it simply prevents evasion rating converted by IR from double-dipping against both bonuses on a leather and steel node. If you have an 8%/8% node, evasion rating converted to armour gets 8% additive, not 16. Natural armour rating still gets its 8. If you have a 24%/24% node, evasion rating converted to armour gets 24%, not 48%. Natural armour rating still gets its 24.

http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/50242

Ya you're right. I keep forgetting it's not double dipped. My point was to change steel skin to L&S giving duelist 3 L&S to make up for the low implicit values of hybrid armors.

"

I don't feel duelists are meant to be life tanks, so I disagree with one of your main points there.

I think it's awful. The pure classes all start with a choice between EHP or dmg, making it easy and quick to get both. I much rather have that option than to have to slowly build up. I'm generally only interested in races. Having a slow start means I really have to work later on to reach the same point as the people who started well. That's why there's not many duelist in the top 10 of week/3hr races.

I checked some of the 3hr race results, most of them there is only 1 duelist and in most cases he was partying with others.

"

In general I like lots of your ideas, but you have to give a high-defensive build a try. Duelists aren't life tanks. If you want to be defensive, plenty of ways to build into other systems.

I gave high defensive a try and I found out that life is king. In mobs high def is great. Against Brutus, Merveil and Vaal I was getting crushed. Armor just doesn't work well against the really hard hitters so every build is forced to go high life.

I think the most effective way to play duelist is as a life tank. The only reason it's not seen that way is because of how the tree is opened. It's a chicken before the egg situation. Is it really more effective or just the only option we have as of now?

"

give us some crit: maybe. They can't give us terribly much, though. The mid crit nodes are already pretty cheap pickups.

I'm not asking for 95% chance and 1600% crit dmg, I'd like to see 40-50% and 500% though. When I mapped it out I figured I'd be around 20% chance and didn't bother doing dmg because with 20% chance it's a nice bonus but not really something you've built around.

"

I gave high defensive a try and I found out that life is king. In mobs high def is great. Against Brutus, Merveil and Vaal I was getting crushed. Armor just doesn't work well against the really hard hitters so every build is forced to go high life.

If you don't mind, may I quote you on this later? I need to get to endgame again before I can make my point on this.

"

Zakaluka wrote:

"

I gave high defensive a try and I found out that life is king. In mobs high def is great. Against Brutus, Merveil and Vaal I was getting crushed. Armor just doesn't work well against the really hard hitters so every build is forced to go high life.

If you don't mind, may I quote you on this later? I need to get to endgame again before I can make my point on this.

As pure melee I don't see it possible. I'm open to being proven wrong but playing with epsi it seems very true. He had 2.4 life and 12k armor when we were doing mid-lvl maps and died enough that he couldn't make top ten even though Ceto and I did. Oh, epsi is a bow shadow and wasn't taking in nearly the damage Ceto and I were on a regular basis. I had 3.5k life and 6k armor, most of the time I only had 3 endurance charges, getting the 4th around the time we went 66+.

Also, generally I don't like stacking one stat so much anyways. I don't like that as melee my only option is tank, whether it be armor, eva, block chance or life. I like having a balance. I much rather have 5-7k DPS and 2.5k life w/ 3-5k armor and be able to survive most situation, just doesn't seem possible.

"

Moosifer wrote:

As pure melee I don't see it possible. I'm open to being proven wrong but playing with epsi it seems very true. He had 2.4 life and 12k armor when we were doing mid-lvl maps and died enough that he couldn't make top ten even though Ceto and I did. Oh, epsi is a bow shadow and wasn't taking in nearly the damage Ceto and I were on a regular basis. I had 3.5k life and 6k armor, most of the time I only had 3 endurance charges, getting the 4th around the time we went 66+.

Also, generally I don't like stacking one stat so much anyways. I don't like that as melee my only option is tank, whether it be armor, eva, block chance or life. I like having a balance. I much rather have 5-7k DPS and 2.5k life w/ 3-5k armor and be able to survive most situation, just doesn't seem possible.

I played as a duel-wielding tanky duelist on the latest '1 week' of the migration, so I'll try to add upon what you've said.

I'll second how weak 12k armor feels, although I really don't know why your Epsi guy only had 2.4k life, that's REALLY low.

When I was sitting on 12k duel weidling (I had ALL the armor / armor evasion nodes + IR + grace) I had about 3.4k life and max resists.

Things were still chucking my HP, I'm on mumble and on occasion I'm partying with panda, DDT, Coldet, and ect...

The most common comment I got when partying with them was something along the lines of, "I don't know how your still alive." or "Watching your HP bar is giving me a heart attack."

I even had to ask panda to help me with a really nasty map I was trying to solo. You had wimpy little me running around getting hit for 900-1.5k a shot with +90% increased cold damage from mobs while Panda's HP bar rarely moves and he chain-stuns things dead with groundslam. Dire situations in that map merely had us running back a ways to a better positioned area to fight.

After that I asked Panda to take a look at my build, he did, gave some constructive feedback, and then I went out and bought a bunch of regret orbs. I ditched all of the leather and steel nodes, replaced some none-optimal points I had spent, and then put all of the L&S nodes into HP nodes and jumped up to around 4.5k hp and down to around 8k armor.

Current Build

^ to which I believe Panda or someone else said I was basically a marauder without groundslam.

Now instead of being at like 10-30% hp all of the time, I'm sitting around 30-60% hp, which is a lot more comfortable. I'm still getting hit like a truck, but I have a bigger HP buffer to keep me alive.