Frenzy / Cleave DW Duelist Build

Late game build: Link

The above template is the DW setup I've been working on to prepare for Open Beta. I've seen the tree changes and I don't believe there's anything that changes my plans.

Basic idea is to try and get as much survivability as I can while still having having fast-paced, mobile gameplay.

My current plan is to run Frenzy to be able to reliably maintain five stacks, with Cleave making up the bulk of my standard damage. I'm running Blood Magic so Hatred is hard to support in this build; it's currently set up for Anger and Grace auras with reduced mana to put as little pressure on my total life pool as I can. Lava Lash is in this build both for Anger and Added Fire Damage support gems, but I'm not actually sure the two points are efficient enough to take over, say, the two 10% melee physical damage nodes on the other side of the Duelist start branch. I'm leaving Flicker out of this build so as to be able to more easily maintain full Frenzy charges. Personally I'll be running Whirling Blades for mobility but Leap Slam is also a good choice and has the added benefit of being able to change height levels.

The foundation I posted is honestly pretty flexible and I feel is branched out in a way that makes it easy to modify to suit your tastes. Ice Bite and three 10% elemental damage nodes are easy to reach if you want to increase or change your elemental damage output, there's all sorts of physical damage accessible without any further highway nodes, and there's another 24% life behind the Strength notable if you feel it necessary. There's also an additional Endurance Charge and duration bonus if you want additional mitigation, but I personally tend to only run Warlord's Mark for support.

Feel free to leave comments or suggestions, thanks!

Edit: Here's a video showing progression roughly halfway through the main game (A2, Cruel difficulty) with roughly half the points in the above template spent: Video Link

Edit 2: Here's a 1080p video taken just after that on a much harder map: Video Link

This is just to give you an idea of what it looks like in action - it's not really that awesome, after all this is my first OB character so I'm still using whatever I can scrape together. Unfortunately it also highlights how good this build is at exposing Path of Exile's relatively poor approximation calculations between server and client; between Whirling Blades and very high movement speed you can see how often my position is clearly not well matched with where the server reports I am.

Looks like good, gonna try at open beta.

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HailtotheKing wrote:

Looks like good, gonna try at open beta.

It's good fun. Little tricky I think if you're new at the game; I highly recommend you go straight through all the Life nodes at the start, then turn and get Diamond Skin. From there it's easier to work your way around to what you feel you need.

hey there, very new player here and I was working out my skill tree for my duelist - actually looks very very similar to yours, just wanted to ask

why the +30 int (Savant) ??

I saw also that you picked up Iron Reflexes - I was leaning towards stacking a ton of Evasion + dodge instead of armor, do you suppose that is viable?

anyways I like your build a lot, with the Lava Lash, I had not thought about getting up into that and I'll consider it in mine as well

cheers

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vitalavitalavita wrote:

hey there, very new player here and I was working out my skill tree for my duelist - actually looks very very similar to yours, just wanted to ask

why the +30 int (Savant) ??

I saw also that you picked up Iron Reflexes - I was leaning towards stacking a ton of Evasion + dodge instead of armor, do you suppose that is viable?

anyways I like your build a lot, with the Lava Lash, I had not thought about getting up into that and I'll consider it in mine as well

cheers

The Savant node is there to help cover requirements for certain gems. Anger has a minor INT requirement, and some support gems like Increased AoE Effect or Concentrated Effect do as well (though their INT requirements are even higher and may require the other Savant node to even consider now). It's in a good place too, in that should your gear happen to accumulate enough INT to cover the requirement you only need to spend a single respec point to get it back.

As for Iron Reflexes, truth is I'd have to ponder a while what I'd think of a build without it since that also means removing Unwavering Stance. I don't see any reason why it wouldn't be viable but you need to plan for a significant amount of Block & Stun Reduction stacking. Unwavering Stance is really strong because not only does it remove the possibility of damage stun, it eliminates Block interrupt frames as well. Freeing yourself of this consideration both in gameplay and in terms of gear requirements is very powerful, especially in a build where we're stacking Block up to 37%. On the plus side, if you made the most basic adjustments to my setup to try it, it wouldn't be that hard to respec out of it and into a IR/US setup like mine and you've have the experience to weigh it for yourself. In a game with this many possibilities that is useful.

I am building a build pretty similar to yours too.

This is a very noobish question, but stacking frenzy charges gives bonuses too all your melee attacks and spells right? So for this build, using cleave with life on hit and leech, and all stacks of frenzy charges, you'd be able to tank some pretty heavy hits and/or large groups?

The reason I ask is that I was going to generally use dual striking as my main single target attack and then cleave for groups, but frenzy is looking really viable.

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dustinhacker4 wrote:

I am building a build pretty similar to yours too.

This is a very noobish question, but stacking frenzy charges gives bonuses too all your melee attacks and spells right? So for this build, using cleave with life on hit and leech, and all stacks of frenzy charges, you'd be able to tank some pretty heavy hits and/or large groups?

The reason I ask is that I was going to generally use dual striking as my main single target attack and then cleave for groups, but frenzy is looking really viable.

Yes, Frenzy Charges increase the attack speed of everything you do by 5% per active charge. Frenzy just gains an additional 4% damage and 5% speed per charge on top of that (going up to 10%/10%). I personally also run Dual Strike because even at max charges it's going to do more single-target DPS for less cost and also crits more often at higher quality. I also tend to add Temporal Chains to this build. I didn't mention either of the skills because they aren't necessary additions and I want the template to be flexible for people to modify for themselves; I might expand the whole thing into a guide with more detail about things and go over good optional skills in more detail, as well as stuff like weapon choices since this build easily works for Axes instead of Swords just by switching a few nodes and running Leap Slam over Whirling Blades for mobility.

Will this build have enough accuracy for the endgame? I don't see a lot of accuracy nodes picked up and am curious if there is enough from gear or do mobs have low evasion in the endgame?

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hydd wrote:

Will this build have enough accuracy for the endgame? I don't see a lot of accuracy nodes picked up and am curious if there is enough from gear or do mobs have low evasion in the endgame?

I think there's +24% Accuracy from nodes, plus gear and Dex it isn't too bad. It's build for Swords this way so running slashing swords will give you another +18% per hand which should be plenty. If you run it with Axes instead you'll pick up 16% from the Hatchet Master island for 32% but without the slashing swords' inherent bonus. Still should be easy to cover with gear, or an Accuracy support gem if necessary.

edit - double post