Comprehensive Duelist feedback

One sense in which crit is overlooked, but I haven't really made it work in even this limited context yet. It's tricky.

With access to tons of attack speed, and being one hop away from Ice Bite - crit chance has the potential to provide some very significant amount of defense. Even if its offensive benefit is lacking. Especially in a dual-wield build (fewer crits negated by accuracy)

This is an idea I've had a while, but like I said I haven't managed a really workable cleave build yet so the idea has been useless so far. One step at a time. I'm pointed right at that 206% armour build + determination, still... There's much more crit accessible when you get to really maxing it out. A couple datapoints.

My point of uncertainty: the suffixes "of Ferocity" and "of Penetrating". What gearslots can they apply to? I'm certain they can spawn on quivers, and I *think* they can show up on amulets. Am I correct?
With a 5% weapon, all of these cases.
* Max %crit, built into the center, with qual ICS, wearing a %crit amu and a local %crit 1hander: 28%
* Max CD multiplier, built into the center and the crit node in the fencing circle, with qual ICD, wearing an amu with %CD, and weapons that have %CD: 563%
* Using two 35% rapiers (slow variant): 668%

28%/560% is well enough above the line to make CW perform well. Not interested in arguing about CW in this thread, just providing more data.

Under qual CW:
37% crit
980% multiplier for an acc sword or axe
1180% multiplier for a slow rapier.
That's using 91% for qual CW, and 130% for qual ICD, which are both guesses. I don't know exactly how much those quals are worth anymore.

A bit out of reach, these numbers, but they're possible.
Biggest holdback? You absolutely need a 5L to justify running both ICS and ICD. And the socket configuration doesn't allow for any utility gems until you manage a 6L: ICS-ICD-FA-MPD are all must-haves.

It's true that staves are kind of in an odd place. They're mostly for block and stun - not critical strike. With 6.5% base crit chance (and with a high implicit crit roll, it's like what 8.4%?) and few nearby crit nodes, it's pretty much impossible to make a crit bulid around staves. You still need at least 600-800% increased crit chance or so to get 50% crit chance. Meanwhile, wands are comparatively easy-modo. You only need 500% crit chance to get to the 50% mark.

Hammer Blows is just supposed to be utility. I think it's fine. What we lack are critical-staff node clusters.

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAQUAAJbF5weMEywIesKcDTEnnBSJSsEVIeEEF-EUDxqR8toanVm0GtCUgh0Rr7QguRWnIqJlKyYCROMnr18DLBPyVi8ByWIw2jlwMd3R3jyLbY09LksVPbebN0EJoI9FHY20SUW-nUq2TItLBiVrTmKMJ09pLUVRCzJ6UYdNylqwYTVbPAaMXVWy5mC48Qhh1rxgYke48mURcrVnM5NzZ2J6umfpMtRoFalnamEHqnKypW58wCHefohKyP8VHDfc6bWPsrDHMeLjy_-9KZmA81_tVvNHdxirZVXS62ALjdhmqSXkr9wO-F-yM6oWdgbmPIZ92N97C_Utu7z7MscdwHFW5sLAZPzZm6gSsShgo5ktYbeqXN7V1fNgrNMkJBDdR4vNoeaENbsFoFa0Gi3Y66QiSbQKD1vLQR0RvfupcelP78C7l_eJ_z96I_8opQ6uc3ED95J9zefx0F6TeKvwypGQXM2fUpma-RCluMw6qoDs7waTogwE_oviruVj0FTgIiIf

Is the best level 80 staff-crit build I can come up with at the moment, and it only offers 190% increased critical strike chance, around 40% increased critical multiplier, a poor amount of increased life, barebones accuracy/dexterity and mana regeneration and an okay amount of physical damage/stun duration and increased area of effect.

I'm pretty sure this build would fail.

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anubite wrote:

I'm pretty sure this build would fail.

You need to try a staff-crit build. crit damage is so rarely useful when all your hits are so large. My crits already overkill everything; why do I want CD? I'd much rather have a high crit rate with prolif+shock, a mechanic that will stack up a multiplier for my non-crits.

Stacking crit multiplier on 2H melee builds.... it'd be pretty wasteful. Chance is far more valuable. This is a different paradigm than fast-cast and fast-bow builds. You can't call the build down for its inability to go beyond 400% multiplier (yes, you can get this high). 400% is nearly always overkill anyway, except for those few seconds out of every map run dedicated to the boss.

Haven't done this since the legacy migration.

No, the biggest downfall of the staff-crit build: it's hungry for a 5-link, even moreso than the physi-crit build me and moose were discussing above. In conversion-crit melee builds, you almost need a 6-link.

What do you give up?
Faster Attacks
Weapon Elemental Damage
Increased Critical Strikes
Increased Critical Damage
Elemental Proliferation

Which one? No choice really makes sense; some would pick ICS, but as I've pointed out, the ICD actually does less to help you kill things quickly. You could run a weapon switch, sacrifice ICD on trash and prolif for bosses. It's really tough. Almost need 6, and 4 doesn't fly at all. How do you support that mana cost, without blood magic? It's not impossible, but very difficult.

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anubite wrote:

I made a 2h shadow with high critical strike chance, and I couldn't get to end game maps in default with the build (mostly out of a lack of patience, but the build fell apart at level 50). Even as a Shadow, non-crit-biasing weapons are too hard to work with. Or at least, I couldn't do it. I'd love to be shown wrong by somebody.

http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/42623



Back on topic:

Another issue I have with the duelist is that the weapons it can spec into (early) have boring/useless implicit mods. I am talking about swords and axes.

Swords (except thrusting) have added accuracy. This doesn't make sense to me, as the duelist has access to a plenty of dexterity so he can build up his accuracy from passives very easily. Why have accuracy on a weapon as an implicit mod ? If I think of a sword, the first idea that is coming to my mind is that they should have a chance to puncture on hit, or something more intersting than accuracy anyway.

Axes (I believe) have a hidden IPD mod, which makes them pretty boring, except the unique axe with culling strike.

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Mark_GGG wrote:

There seem to be some interesting points here, and I encourage the community to continue discussing them, but I thought I'd respond to this one in particular - the Duelist should not be able to easily build for crit; in fact they should in theory have the hardest time doing so.
Critical Strikes are an intelligence thing, and the Duelist, being Str/Dex, is the class most opposite to int. That's not to say it should be impossible, but it should be difficult, for th same reasons, and to roughly the same extent as it's difficult for the shadow to build a life+armour tanking build.

If this is the case, can we get the implicit mods on our weapons to not tease us? Seeing these swords (the most popular among duelists) has given me the urge to do a crit duelist but I haven't found it possible (easily) yet.

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You need to try a staff-crit build. crit damage is so rarely useful when all your hits are so large...

I never said I wanted a ridiculous crit multiplier, but you're underestimating the usefulness of crit multiplier. It becomes very useful late game. The base multiplier is only 150%. If you get 100% crit chance, you're only increasing your damage by 50%, making a theorhetical build that ignores crit mult worthless (in comparison to just getting an easy 50% IPD from passives), even if you shock or freeze somebody for a short duration as a bonus. Crit damage of +40% (or making your crit mult 210%) is okay I guess, but I was just highlighting that my build was getting a low crit chance and a low crit mult, meaning, it will suck in any instance you can think of.

Do consider that crit mult is necessary to one-shot rares/blues or monsters that resist the elemental/physical damage being done to them. Or on bosses. Or in PVP.

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No, the biggest downfall of the staff-crit build: it's hungry for a 5-link, even moreso than the physi-crit build me and moose were discussing above. In conversion-crit melee builds, you almost need a 6-link.

I don't disagree. Balancing a ton of stats and crit is difficult with 6L being as rare as they are and support gems being as powerful as they are in comparison to stats you can acquire on items and passives.

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dzordzo wrote:

http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/42623

A cursory glance at the thread only mentions claws/daggers of which I have no interest in, I was talking 2h or two-handed weapons. If there's something in there about that, I'll look later.

As for rapiers, those are intended for shadows, not duelists. Note how Shadows do have direct access to sword passives.

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Mark_GGG wrote:

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anubite wrote:

As for rapiers, those are intended for shadows, not duelists. Note how Shadows do have direct access to sword passives.

They're also for Rangers (they are pure dex). Duelists are free to use them, but I believe the primary intention was they were swords for ranger and shadow.
Them specifically having (global) crit multiplier was partially from that feeling right for something which can be thrust into/through a weak point in armour, but I think mostly because both Carl and I, among others, liked the idea of Rapier/Dagger having some inherit synergy (there were planned notables for this, even), and daggers have crit chance (because they are part int weapons).

I'll grant you, that's one of the cases where crit = int gets a bit more stretched, but the pure-dex swords certainly can't really be considered to be Duelist weapons more than the regular str/dex swords, which don't have the crit.

Now I'm confused even more. So the weapons I see most duelist using are rapier, sword, axe and bow (some weirdos like my mace GS duelist, I'm sure someone is trying a wand/dagger/staff one out too).

Rapier is meant to be a ranger/shadow item because of the crit/dex req. Shadow also has claws and daggers, duelist has a claw wheel, for what reason I have no idea because there's nothing else boosting claws nor enough INT to use high lvl ones without heading to shadow area.

Bow is ranger mostly, shadow and duelist can make decent bow builds but I'm sure it's intended purpose is for ranger.

Axes are a mara/duelist item with high dmg. Nothing about it says it's designed for one or the other as there are plenty of axe passives in the mara area, also some in the templar area.

So that leaves swords. So a class that gets plenty of dex, access to +% accuracy nodes, and a bunch of +% accuracy/+% IPD has their main wpn as something that adds to accuracy?

I was under the impression is was rapiers because of the speed and the crit teased me into trying to do a crit build.

So swords suck compared to the rest of the weapons out there. Wands are awesome, higher base crit chance w/ upwards of 20% spell dmg increase. Maces when combined with GS and the mace stun/dmg nodes makes stun a very powerful mechanic. Even staffs w/ block chance, a few passive and you can match what a DW sword user can get. Claws have LL, which will help alot with survivibility issues I'm crying about. Specters give +% elemental dmg, for a templar this is huge using spells and elemental based melee attacks.

Duelist gets accuracy. Ya...

As this thread continues it gets more depressing.

and stop talking about templars. Go write up your own 8-9 page feedback and talk about them there damn it!