[lld] marauder build
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I know this forum is 99% high level discussion, fuck even in game low level is dead, but I thought it'd be nice to share one of my builds for low level. Probably one of the best melee builds I've played in low level, definitely the most fun. This guide only took like 30 minutes to an hour to make, so even if it doesn't get anyone into pvp, I think it's still nice to share with everyone.
I want this to be more of a guide for how to make and play a character in the same style, and not just a list of items and images of stats. Because of that I went quite in depth into the characters gear and stats. Even if nobody looks at this thread I think it's still nice to post it, for personal use as well. Plus, last I heard, straight up build guides get removed and sent to the build sub-forums, which I don't really want to have happen. This is the main character that I've been playing and optimizing since November of last year. It's a ton of fun to play if you like melee, and it's really fuckin' powerful for a low level character. Has a very good combination of both defense and offense, and with some of the new changes in 3.0 it's become even stronger.
Offensive and Defensive Stats
Character Info:  pretty self explanatory. I'm trying to make a nice shield at the moment, with a perfect Crest of Perandus I'm at 1,826. With the shield I just made, which will probably be upgraded very soon, I'm at 1,881. Need to updade my chest piece before too long as well, which will be another 20 flat life. The attribute requirements are very specific and can be difficult to get. For my build I need 64 dexterity, which is exactly as much as I have with perfectly rolled attributes. Can be very difficult to get since you have to get 50 from your gear alone. Offensive Stats  Just under 10k tool-tip dps on Cleave, could easily get higher. Better swords would help, though not by nearly as much as you'd expect. I'm currently not running Hatred or Herald of Ash, which are pretty massive tool-tip boosts. In reality they don't give enough damage for them to be mandatory for a non-crit build, only adding an effective 100 or so damage each after elemental resistance. I know that because of pvp damage scaling, showing my tool-tip doesn't really matter, but there are other stats on there aside from just damage. You can see my attack speed is pretty insane. After pvp damage scaling I deal somewhere between 400 and 500 average damage per hit, which for some builds can be nearly half their life. My bleeds in my tool-tip are, as far as I'm aware, accurate. If they aren't then they're very close. With the 3.0 release my build got a lot more bleed damage. In 2.6 I was still able to bleed, but the damage wasn't really that significant. I'm at 370 average bleed damage with Cleave, which is pretty solid. Defensive Stats:  Not really much to cover under defensive stats. I'm capped res, any character should be, or at least close to. Chaos res is impossible to stack high, at least permanently. I have a boot swap that I use against chaos builds that I'll get into later. My character is stun immune, which is probably the most important thing defense wise. It also causes me to be unable to evade attacks, but that's not too big of a deal in reality. I get that from my helmet. Since I dual wield most of the time I'm only at 15% block chance. With a Crest of Perandus I'm at 39% with Tempest Shield, which then gets cut to 29% after block pen is accounted for. A rare shield brings me to only 27%, which kinda hurts, but the mods you can get on rare shields now are amazing.
My Gear
My gear is good but not great. I'd say I'm at a point where most of my gear is impossible to upgrade without spending a fuck ton of exalts, which is a pretty good stopping point for me. I'm poor. People new to low level pvp might think my gear is really good, but a lot of it is actually fairly easy to acquire. Everything except for the unique items were crafted by me for this character or another of my low levels. The only rare item that I did not craft myself was the gloves, which I traded another pair I used to have for. I personally like crafting gear myself, it's a nice part of building the character and makes me feel like the build is truly mine.
Weapons
My swords are both T1 %phys and T2 hybrid %phys/accuracy. I got really lucky while crafting them, I only had to use about 100 alterations and a few regals for both combined. You certainly don't need anything that has both %phys and hybrid, but they are nice to have. If you don't wanna spend a lot crafting weapons, then something like this works as well. Alt spam a sword until it has T1 %phys damage, Vicious, then regal. Then you can just craft flat phys at a bench. I used to have a lot of swords like these, but I've given a lot away. They're easy and cheap to make. 2 handed swords work as well, I personally don't have a good one to link, but one of my mates uses a 2h sword and wrecks with it ;^) You can also build using axes. I personally think they're less powerful, but if you want to try skills like Sunder that aren't available to swords then they're your best bet. Decent but definitely not amazing, I've tried them out a bit and they've been pretty fun. I plan on using my 2h axe a bit more, 2h melee is a lot of fun to play. I was going to try crafting a 2nd one handed axe as well to get a better taste of how good they are. I use a bow swap as well. It's nothing special, a decent bow with a pretty shit quiver. If you plan on using a bow with this type of build, you need a lot of dexterity. I have to use a light quiver base to equip my bow, which has a dexterity requirement of 77 as it has reduced requirement rolled on it, not that the roll matters. My bow deals 900 tool-tip damage per second with split arrow, which is alright for a swap. I don't really care enough about the mods on the quiver to re-roll it, so I just left it as it is. If you don't have a good phys bow, a Doomfletch is a pretty good alternative. It scales off of physical damage pretty well, and is very easy to get. A nice alternative if you want a cheap bow for your weapon swap.
Armour
Best in slot helmet for this build. Stun immunity is absolutely insane to have, my character can perma-stun a lot of characters that can't mitigate stuns. It has nice life and phys damage as well, so overall it's a pretty good item. The only downside is that you can't evade attacks with it, but the upsides far outweigh it. A rare helmet can still work, but this is so cheap unless you have a rare Demigod's helm there's no point bothering. Gloves are pretty important. They have the ability to grant one of the more powerful effects you can get, curse on hit. While not required, they can and are very powerful. It can be very hard to get good rare gloves with a curse on hit vaal implicit, but there are uniques that get corrupted frequently that can also be used. There's also a pair of unique gloves, Asenath's Gentle Touch, which grant level 10 Temporal Chains on hit. Very nice to have. Rare gloves also have access to flat phys, life and hybrid life, and strength rolls. Good gloves can give you a pretty huge damage boost. My boots are kinda bad for standard. I could pretty easily get some better boots but I don't really need to. Mine fill out my resistances while having a decent amount of life and strength. Movement speed is good to have, but not required since movement skills like Leap Slam are far better for mobility. Warbands boots with the cannot be frozen are best in slot if you can get them, I use a freeze & chill flask to deal with Arctic Armour chills anyway so I don't really bother. I use a pair of Dusktoes against chaos builds, which is pretty much limited to blight. I also sometimes but very rarely use an amethyst flask for a bit more chaos resistance, though I usually find that it's not needed. It has a shorter duration than some of my other flasks, which I don't really like too much. Against lower level Blight builds this can work wonders, but it's not so great vs some of the standard level Blight builds out there. My chest piece is outdated now as of 3.0, which I plan on fixing soon. You mainly just want to focus on life and resistances. You can get way better than the chest I have, a few people have rare Golden Mantles, Demigod's chests, which grant 25% all resistances as an implicit. As far as I'm aware there are only a few that exist, but they're insanely powerful (and expensive) A 6 linked chest is definitely not required for the build to work, you can get a good chest piece and the 5 linking prophecy for very cheap. There are a few uniques that are cheap and work well. Viper's Scales and Foxshade are both very cheap and strong unique chest pieces that you can use if you can't afford or don't want to buy a good rare chest. I mostly just use shields as a swap-out, but it's probably good to include them. Legacy Crest of Perandus has the highest block of any shield in the game, as well as very high life. Less than you can get on rare shields now, however. My rare shield took like a dozen chaos to roll and isn't permanent, just showing what shields can get in low level. If you want to commit to using a shield and don't want to spec into Resolute Technique, you can use Lycosidae. Not that great for this build, but outside of RT builds it can be insane.
Jewelry
Elreon jewelry is a must have for pretty much any low level character. Having access to free skills is insanely powerful. My main skill, Cleave, costs 0 mana, and my Leap Slam only costs 4 mana on a 3 link. For just about all melee characters you don't need more than 1 or 2 pieces of Elreon jewelry, I personally only use 2. My amulet is really nice. It has T1 life, flat phys, fire resistance, and perfectly rolled master crafted all attributes. It also has T2 strength which is really nice. This alone gives me 34 dexterity and intelligence, most of what I need to equip all my gear. For most melee builds you don't need Elreon's mana mod, so I just went for the best stats for my character. Rings are both Elreon rings. My iron ring is a pretty meh base, but the mods on it are absolutely insane. My coral ring is pretty good, but would have preferred it if I could get T1 life instead of having to master craft it. Flat phys, life and if you can get it, attack speed are all very strong mods to roll on rings. I don't get attack speed on my rings because I feel like I'm fast enough as is, and would prefer to use the suffix slots for resistances. They don't need to be multi-modded either, that just helps cover my resistances. I use a legacy Meginord's Girdle for my belt. Probably best in slot, though you can make some really nice rare belts using Leo's signature mod and some essence mods. It doesn't need to be legacy, but it totally helps. Massive flat phys, life and a little bit of resistance. The strength is also really good, and should never be overlooked. I take a jewel socket in my passive tree, and because I use Cleave in my build, I decided to use an Overwhelming Odds jewel. As far as I'm aware it's the only way to get fortify in low level pvp, but there may be a few other ways. I'm not counting Vigilant Strike because it's garbage. A good 3 or 4 mod jewel would also work, and would obviously be better for a non Cleave build.
Flasks
Flasks are pretty straight forward. For life flasks you want to use Panicked Giants with good suffixes. For utility you can use whatever you want. I personally prefer to use Stibnite flasks as they have the best duration to charges used ratio. A perfect ample Stibnite gets 5 uses which last 6 seconds each. Even though I don't need the effects of Stibnite flasks, they're insanely good for the suffixes you craft on them. I have some Granite and Quicksilver swaps, but that's about it. There are a few uniques that could be good, like Taste of Hate and Lion's Roar. I personally don't think they're worth using though. I usually use 2 life flasks and 3 Stibnite flasks for support, to keep curse, bleed and freeze & chill immunity up.
Skill Gem Setups
My main skill is Cleave. It's by far the best low level melee skill at the moment that you can use with this sort of a build. Lacerate can also work, but it feels too clunky for me. Frost Blades is another alright skill, but is far worse than Cleave. It has the highest damage, it's an area skill, and it has a fucking sick MTX. Melee weapon range does not affect cleave, since it's an area skill. Right now I'm alternating between Maim and Ruthless, both are incredibly strong, and I'm leaning more towards Ruthless. I like to swap them out pretty frequently though. On a 5 link I'd probably drop Ruthless/Maim, and on a 4 link I'd drop block pen. Concentrated effect might seem like a bad choice to some people, but it's probably the best support for the skill. It gives more damage than melee physical does, and the reduction in area is barely noticeable. The only downside I could see is that other Cleave setups would out-range you, but I'm stun immune so I can just move. I use Leap Slam for movement. With the way I've built my character it's incredibly fast. If you were to use a 2 handed weapon on to use a shield you would move a lot slower, so keep that in mind. I just have it on a 3 link using faster attacks and maim. With 2 Elreon pieces it cuts the mana cost down significantly, I can continuously leap without running out of mana. I'm using Haste and Arctic Armour for my auras. I personally think that in low level Hatred is a waste unless you're going crit, against someone with 75% resistance it adds barely any damage. Haste gives a very nice attack speed boost, and Arctic Armour makes the character more tanky. It also chills enemies down if they try to chase you, which never happens because the character is melee. Enlighten is in the link because it's free mana, so why not. I run an Animate Guardian for a few reasons. The gear I have on it grants 40% melee physical damage reflection, which usually one-shots Facebreaker's that try to off-screen with Shield Charge. It has Ghudda's gloves, Shackles of the Wretched, which grant frenzy charges on death. Animate Guardian does not lose it's items if it dies in pvp, but it does everywhere else. You also need to be on a non-pvp-only character to make one, as you have to drop items for the guardian to equip. It's a pretty rare and old-school setup. I absolutely love using a counter setup, I think that if you're melee you absolutely need to have one. I use Vengeance and Riposte, linked to melee physical damage and maim. When they trigger, they can hit for a lot of damage, if they manage to bleed the attacker it can kill them very easily, and does so very often. If you're using a shield you can use Reckoning as well. I'm also a fan of using Flicker Strike. I think you pretty much need to have Flicker Strike as melee, it can make chasing so much easier. The only problem is that it desyncs a lot if you play on a high ping like I do. Most people who have played vs me in team matches will know that already ;^) For my bow swap I use Split Arrow. A pretty decent skill that doesn't require a multiple projectiles support to function. Pretty basic setup, just trying to get as much physical damage as possible. I have over 300 strength, which is why I use iron grip as a support. I only have a 5 link on purpose, because I want to have a single slot for Blink Arrow, which I don't want to be on a 5 link as well.
Passive Tree
My passive tree; The passive tree is very simple for this character. You can take my passive tree and adjust it for either 1h or 2h, axes or swords, very easily. For axes you want to take the melee damage and life node at the marauder start. For swords you want to take the Juggernaut life and armour nodes. For the bandits, you want to kill them all. 2 passives is incredible to have, and none of the bandits offer anything good anymore. If anyone is actually interested in this, or has any questions regarding the build, feel free to ask. You can hit me up either on the forums or in-game if you want to, I'd like to think I'm a pretty friendly guy. If this actually garners any attention then I might think about posting more builds in the future. Character name is I_Made_A_Mistake, for the curious. :^) Last bumped on Aug 11, 2017, 7:41:24 AM
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