Elemental Mace + Shield Group Play HC Build (in-depth explanation for new players)
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To make the most of this build consider the following assumptions:
1) Party play is required to get the most item drops 2) You probably can't play with the same group all the time 3) You want lots of items ;) You can't rely on always having a specific set of auras and curses available every time you want to play, but you can build a character that can take advantage of as many different buffs as possible and be effective in essentially every party. This build does physical and elemental damage, can get critical hits, uses mana, can use life steal, can evade and block, has a real HP pool, energy shield, and armour. It gets +30% effect from buffs. Play with any party and chances are you will run into other people with a variety of auras and curses, and you will be able to take advantage of all of them. Since you're not a pet build, nobody should auto-kick you ;) Since you don't use corpses you can play with summoners if you want to. This build is not compatible with Resolute Technique. RT is strong in purely physical builds that ignore crit in favor of high base damage, but it isn't compatible with elemental builds (imo) because crits trigger bonus elemental effects that are extremely useful for all 3 elements. You also cut yourself off from taking advantage of the Critical Vulnerability curse if a party member happens to use it, and shared Power charges. Stats you don't want / care about: Spell damage, cast speed (you use attacks, not spells) Anything that happens "on kill" (you will be with 5 other people...) Primary Attacks Infernal Blow and Lightning Strike. These are very common and easy to acquire, and they work with Maces. The main reason that this is a Mace build is that some Maces (called Scepters) inherently give +10% or more elemental damage, which complements both of those attacks. I am not going to recommend Glacial Hammer heavily though because it isn't as good as LS and IB. If you can fit it in your gear go ahead, but if you have to make a choice between attaching support gems to that or IB and / or LS, pick the latter. There is an aura called Clarity that you will want to find ASAP to help with your mana pool. Once you have that leveled a bit attach a Weapon Elemental Damage support gem to all of your elemental weapon attacks to make them even stronger. The support gem raises the mana cost of the attacks attached to it, so you want to make sure you're not already having mana issues before you do this. To attach it to all 3 you just need any item with 4 linked red slots. This can be any item that isn't your Mace or Shield as they cap out at 3 slots. 30 Points <-- Click me
Spoiler
Getting both Precision nodes will keep your accuracy near 90% until you're past level 20, but you'll want to keep your eyes open for +dex or +accuracy gear from then on. It may not take a lot, but keep an eye on your estimated hit % chance as you level up. You'll have 40% resist just by holding a shield, 48% if you have a Templar friendly kite shield without any gear specific bonuses. This is achievable well before finishing Act 2 Normal. You can easily get Infernal Blow, Glacial Hammer, and Lightning Strike by this point, and Catalyse buffs all 3 of them. If you can get your hands on Clarity at this point it is highly recommended to run it.
50 Points
Spoiler
Zealot's Oath and that 1% hp regen node near the beginning that is now filled in will help keep you from being stun locked since your Energy Shield will be refilling at all times now. The 1% hp regen is optional, but frees you from needing to gear for that stat to get Zealot's Oath working. More regen is always useful, just not required. You will probably want to be dropping Rejuvenation totems at this point to help your parties out, and that will keep your Energy Shield up too, but again, that 1% regen node stops this from being mandatory :)
70 Points
Spoiler
Inner Force, Elemental Adaptation, and Celestial Walker are the big additions going from 50 to 70. Fill in some health nodes that you skipped earlier on the way to keystones while you're at it. Taking the Agility (+30 Dex) node is optional, but you may need it to increase your base accuracy if your gear isn't keeping up by itself. You're pretty much done with the major features of the build now.
90 Points
Spoiler
Time to get offensive! Galvanic Hammer, Bloodthirst, Deadly Precision, and Bone Smasher! If you don't have enough defenses by 70 points your build is not going to work in Hardcore :P You'll die long before you get this far. If you do make it to this point, congratulations, you've earned your blow-shit-up passives. This is also the first time you are actually required to use a Mace / Scepter ;) By level 90 I'm sure you've found a few good ones. If you still don't feel ready to invest heavily in offense you could take the 3 life nodes seen in the 111 build instead, but you've already got a pretty huge amount of defense at this point.
111 Points
Spoiler
Really you could do whatever you want now. I filled in Energy Shield and Max HP nodes because those are never a wrong decision, but really you could use your last 21 points to improve whatever it is you feel like, such as +1 Maximum Power / Endurance Charges and duration, or get another +4% block chance back beneath the Templar start.
Diamond Skin + Heart of the Gladiator Discussion
Spoiler
You can adjust this build to go get those since you want Elemental Adaptivity anyway (fairly unique effect), but I hesitate because they are not unique effects (get both from gear easily) and you have to take 3x regular Strength nodes to get to them. If this build did not already have a metric ass-ton of resist all, it would be more attractive to me, but you'll probably be Normal mode resist capped before you finish that mode without it. HotG is just life + strength, which you can get on gear even more commonly than resist all if you need more of either.
Auras, Curses, Totems, etc...
Spoiler
Aura: Clarity
Curse: Elemental Weakness or Critical Weakness Totem: Rejuvenation Mobility: Shield Charge Clarity will help keep you spammy with your attacks, but you might not need it eventually. It just depends on how your gear works out. You don't have any mana regen talents outside of the initial +40% one, so you may rely on this for a long time. Elemental Weakness will cause monsters who don't have resists to have NEGATIVE resists. This means after calculating your own elemental damage buffs, add another 30%-40% damage on top. It will help you out a lot vs. monsters with Resist All. It will help pretty much anyone you party with who uses 1 element, because they will probably be using their element specific curse (Conductivity, etc...), and that should stack with Elemental Weakness to cause MASSIVE negative resists on most monsters. Make sure you are using the appropriate elemental attack that the monster already didn't resist to get the most out of this, it will be a huge boost to your dps. A crowd pleaser that will make you friends and maximize your dps :) If you are partying with pure physical crit using players though, you might want to use Critical Weakness. It is still a great boost for your own skills since they all get nice effects on crit, and if your party members don't have elemental damage they get nothing out of Elemental Weakness. This probably won't come up very often though, so you'll probably be fine leaving EW equipped most of the time. Rejuvenation Totem is great for anyone except Chaos Inoculation users who don't have Zealot's Oath. Most parties should love you for having it. Shield Charge is a great bug-out skill, so take it :) It does not require a target to send you hurtling across the screen knocking enemies out of your way, so target wherever you want to be and aren't. Add more Auras if your mana can handle it, but this build does not have a lot of mana support. The idea is to take advantage of other peoples' auras, not provide 5 of your own :) That being said, Anger and Wrath are probably easy to support without any more investment in mana since they use a flat amount (not a % reserve) and you'll have some investment in Intelligence. Tempest Shield would work well in this build, but it takes a 25% reserve, so I don't think I'll be running it. On the other hand, Molten Shell seems like a great fit, especially with Inner Force. Other people can't cast it on your either, so you might want to grab it! Biggest weakness of this build? AoE damage. You can dish it out pretty hard with Lightning Strike, but that is still a melee attack at its core and the 3 projectiles it produces only do 70% of the base damage. Get partied with a Conductivity curse user some time though, and then your AoE is just spiffy! The thing is, it doesn't matter if you can't do great AoE damage, not even a little bit. The number of enemy monsters does not scale up with the number of players, and you always want to be playing with 5 other players. Let them do all the AoE damage in the world while you stand next to the elite / boss hammering away with whatever element it doesn't resist for great justice. Now, soloing might be a pain in the ass because of this, but you really aren't supposed to play Path of Exile solo anyway. It is less fun, there is less loot, and you miss out on seeing people permanently die ;) Last edited by EmeraldWitch on Feb 2, 2013, 11:44:41 PM
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So, I was doing pretty great rolling along into L20+, managed to trade for Clarity, and even found an Anger gem on the ground. I actually even assigned IB to Mouse 1, GH to Wheel, and LS to Mouse 2 :) It was a blast.
Then I got 2 shot by a +crit +crit dmg +phys dmg aura rare rock monster that I didn't think could 2 shot me :) This game is crazy. Nothing in that area even hurt me, and then that guy 2 shots me. I don't doubt the viability of this build, but I just learned a harsh lesson about how much nastier the rarespawns are in PoE compared to Diablo 3. |
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