[3.25]The BLOCKMAN

So I leveled this until white maps and decided to drop it, here's my feedback as a noob:

TOUGH leveling experience, very low dmg. At act 5, with Lakishus blade, 1st lab and cyclone on a 5-link the Innocence fight took me a solid 5min. I had almost all my points on offensive nodes as well. I could see things getting slowly better as I leveled but it never felt good enough.

The build feels like a giant puzzle. You need block, phys dps, crit chance/multi, acc, to fix mana, lots of armor so you can plug abyssus and start doing dmg. You are running 6 auras but you still need assassin mark/ice golem/totem/blood rage to get close to good dps.

Btw, what is that shield on your PoB 'budget build'? Life, Life on Block, +15% chance to block/block spell damage. I think that The Surrender is more budget than that.

I have no doubt that it will feel good with crazy investment, but it feels dreadful as a league starter.

same than you when in leveling it was so slowly, dps is really low and sometime i am one shot ... if i block all time its ok but when i take a hit i die( perhaps because abyssus )
i am gonna to switch but i havent got anymore currency to do an other build.. and i am doing yellow map whith lot of pain atm :x

sry for my english

does violent retaliation even gives block chance? it says in the game that ur hits ignore enemy phys def

author said violent retaliation give 25% block chance but when we play we win nothing i stay at 60% block chance & 39% block spell
perhaps whith the old buff you win black chance but atm i have see nothing

I'm so lost because everyone keeps talking about things I can't see anywhere.

Why would Violent Retaliation give block chance? The author never said that, I only see it in replies.

I mean if the build really is shit I'd love to know as I've not played that much so I'm not even past A3 yet lol, but the replies are just so damn conflicting. Seems like half the people here don't understand that they shouldn't be looking at anything on page 1 besides two PoB links.

Can anyone who can actually use PoB and isn't looking at any of the out of date information in the guide comment on how good the build is?

Okay so I'm using this build since day 1.

Levelling was horrendous, but I guess it's all similar with melee skills.

Now I'm in T12+- with AL6.
Here's my gear:


Damage wise it's quite good, tooltip with fully buffed is around 150k. Oneshoting white and most blue packs, rares take longer. Bosses are passable.

I don't die in maps at all to normal content except occasional map/deli boss BUT I'm hitting wall - thus getting oneshot by packs in around 150 stacks of nightmare debuff. But that's of course because of my bad rare gear and low block chance (63% and 25%), I'm working towards some cluster jewels now.

By the way I played similar build but facebreaker one in Ultimatum, that was super tanky and really good dmg wise, blasting through T16 league content. I fully skipped Expedition so I don't know how bad nerfs were, but at least damage was seriously lowered, it seems.

Overall I like the build, but I wish someone could either continue with improving this build guide or create another one as Cyc glad, it definitely has endgame capabilities imo.

Pro tip, use in offhand, make sure aura gems are not socketed in sword and shield, and use it to kill first white mob in a map, then switch again. Been using this trick for a long time ;) Free rampage ftw... sadly you have to recast Tempest Shield though

Here's my POB https://pastebin.com/iqja0CPR, DPS is bloated I know, it's just theoretical max dps for comparison.

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shakkur wrote:

author said violent retaliation give 25% block chance but when we play we win nothing i stay at 60% block chance & 39% block spell
perhaps whith the old buff you win black chance but atm i have see nothing

No he said that Silver Flask in PoB simulate Violent Retaliation, which is frist two affixes of flask, and second part with block is that he simulate that new Tempest shield..

Update on things, Really not running into walls my self personally - Crushing Vast Majority of content - once i get my final 10 levels things will really be more solid than they already are.

I did deviate from some of the skill choices for the moment & Opted to use Other Jewels besides Mage Hunter Clusters for now. Only map mods i can't do is Cannot REGEN Life/Mana(unless i wanna risk no mana moments) & Melee phys reflect.

I can try to help anyone with questions or you can add me ingame/PM. Zoe_Cycloned


My Setup below:
Chance to hit: 98%/82%

What's your spellbock at? How does it feel overall on that front? That's been my main concern about Surrender builds in particular -- it seems like we lost a ton of spell block compared to last league with the Versatile Combatant switch. I loved playing it last league but I haven't seen a feasible way to get near the spell block from last league without a rare shield, and it seemed like it would affect the survivability quite a bit. But I haven't tested it at all this league to know for sure!

Is far from ideal, but this is what I'm using to cover the "spell block" problem until I get better stuff.

In most of the cases is more than enough for everything up to yellow maps. They are cheap and with the anoint (again, temporary) you can run almost anything with 0 fear and have 72%/60% block for most of the map and even 85/60 on occasions.

I'm running Phys Mastery and Yugul to ignore reflect maps (since that thing comes like once every 5th map). Think that only mod that can't do is block and leech related