Blood Reaper Melee Build Theory - Need Advice

Hey guys,

Kry here - back after a bit of a bit of a break. I am huge into theorycrafting in POE and one of the recent ideas that sparked my interest was The Blood Reaper unique. Now before you say anything this is purely a concept build and a for fun play.

http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/The_Blood_Reaper

Concept is simple: A melee bleed build w/ Blood Reaper

What I need:
1) A skill that provides 100% Physical Damage
2) A way to keep monsters moving as much as possible (due to BR's low damage we want to capitalize both on the swing and mobs taking increased damage while moving).

Options?
Cyclone: Currently my main plan: It is not the hardest hitting attack BUT after some testing it seems to have a decent time and keeping mobs moving. Locking onto mobs tends to force them to move. maybe throw in some knockback for good measure?

Heavy Strike: The king of physical single target damage - Built in knockback. This gem does not seem as clear as say cyclone. Its initial knockback isnt to much but it may be ok with the increased knockback passives. The problem I see here is that while we may be forcing melee back and having them move to us, ranged wont be moving and I see gaps of no attacking causing possible survivability issues.

Sweep: Not as much damage as heavy strike but this skill would have better survivability due to its range. coupled with a KB gem this could eliminate melee threats quite well overall. A quality gem would be required. Again same issue with ranged not moving as often.


Resolute Techniques or Crit?
Another choice I cannot seem to decide from. RT is guaranteed hits and allows us to stack a tremendous amount increased damage. Wont rely on the bleed as much compared to crit. Gearing is quite easy. But also wont deal near the damage as a crit type if their crit chance ever can get high enough.

Crit we sacrifice that initial hit for chance to deal a very big hit but damage will be pretty bad when a crit doesn't go off. Blood Reaper has a low base of 5% crit as well. Gearing will take a bit to get anywhere near a decent crit chance for it.

Another plan to boost damage:

Vulnerability

I plan to use this curse to boost our overall physical damage as well as damage over time damage. The Blood Reaper will double dip from this curse so that is nice. Using an Item like Bringer of Rain will help with defense due to blind



-So anyone have any thoughts on my current ideas or maybe point out some better options I may miss? I know I can run puncture but this is simply about building around a specific unique. Thanks guys!

I cant imagine using cyclone with this axe due to 50% increased mana cost of skills and cyclone linked with blood magic. Wont you kill yourself? Anyways you could use Blood Reaper to farm low lvl maps probably at best, its dps is too low to do anything in end-game

high physical RT and all dot nodes and it should at least work for quest content

hatred
2 mings heart and you could give it a try

since vaal clarity is out mana costs are no issue anymore in fact you can chain VC to obtain 0 mana cost 80% of the time

As mentioned by Shade444, the unique in question is simply too weak to be viable when playing maps. Sure, you could use it, but there are countless one-handed weapons that deal more DPS and allow you to use a shield.

You're essentially gimping both your hand slots for no reason. Any rare one-hander will do more damage than it and allow for more survivability due to using a shield.

Not that this would be effective long-term or late-game, but attach Chance to Flee to something like sweep. You wouldn't have to even move to make monsters bleed'n'run.

Of course, flee resistance/immunity makes this worthless on anything other than normal monsters. But killing mobs by making them run away to death; good for a few lols at least.

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fireinakasha wrote:

Not that this would be effective long-term or late-game, but attach Chance to Flee to something like sweep. You wouldn't have to even move to make monsters bleed'n'run.

Of course, flee resistance/immunity makes this worthless on anything other than normal monsters. But killing mobs by making them run away to death; good for a few lols at least.

Knockback would be an infinitely better choice. It forces all enemies to move again since it knocks enemies back regardless of type.

Chance to Flee wouldn't work on some enemies and additional hits can remove the effect. Since it isn't 100%, enemies would just come back without really moving.

I know this thread is a couple of months old but did you get anywhere with this idea? I had a standard marauder that I got to lvl 79 and did ok with maps. I used heavy strike and RT but struggled to get to lvl 80. I'd love to find ways to extend this character because this axe was a lot of fun to use.