Help with scaling damage

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Hitman473107#7521 wrote:

When it comes to the weapon, it's not bad at all, it's the elite version and has one of the highest damage that a unique mace can provide. Maybe a crafted mace would give more damage? I don't know, but if it would, what would be the numeric differences and how would that impact the final damage? I'd say that not by much.

This right there is wrong.


Everything you do scales off your weapon. Upgrading your weapon is THE most important factor in the entire calculation. You went for maces (which are very slow by default) and you are locked into 1-handed weapons.
So its gonna be difficult to get a good enough weapon to start dishing out real dmg.

A weapon like that wont just drop, you will have to craft it or trade or accept that bossfights will take some 20 minutes. Killing trashmobs instantly isnt a relevant factor in this game, thats expected.

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Gladiator is also in rough shape as an ascendancy at the moment. You are getting no damage from it at all and the point on exploding enemies is mostly wasted.

But what about the aggravated bleeding extra damage? And the excellent ability to use block as a defence mechanism? I wouldn't play anything else when it comes to its survival ability, which even in this case, barely manages to hold its ground, given the lousy state of this game, in terms of difficulty.

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Everything you do scales off your weapon. Upgrading your weapon is THE most important factor in the entire calculation. You went for maces (which are very slow by default) and you are locked into 1-handed weapons.

From what I know, you can only block with one-handed weapons. Wearing a 2-hander is like signing your death sentence. And when it comes to the flat damage a rare mace could provide, give me some examples, so I can compare how much of a gain it would have. Would your rare mace have twice the flat damage, by any chance, so I can reach at least twice the final damage that I mentioned (which would be 200k)?

Build review:

As someone else mentioned, Gladiator seems like an odd choice for ascendancy.
Gladiator right now is only useful if u want to play a bleed build or u wanna do something weird with the Weapon Master Keystone.
The Block nodes are pretty strong, but if u don't go bleed u don't get any additional damage.

I'd advice either switch to a bleed slam build, but that will require more research to get to know how ailments and bleeding specifically in PoE works, or change ur ascendancy to Champion or Slayer. Those are better options for hit based builds. Slayer only if u want to go two handed, which u should also consider, because those weapons have alot more base damage.

Next thing is ur main skill, which seems to be ground slam? Ground slam as someone mentioned doesn't have a very good damage multiplier. It is usable, but will always be worse than alternatives. Earthquake (especially for bleed) or Earthshatter are really good slam attacks. When u're using a slam it is also more or less mandatory to buff them with Warcries. Those are huge damage multipliers and they can be automated aswell. I'd suggest using autoexertion with at least Intimidating and Seismic Cry.

Get rid of faster attacks in ur main skill, it's not a very efficient support gem and doesn't scale slams well. Slams profit from slow but large hits. U can scale attack speed later on, when u have enough points spent into Warcries.

Use an Axe, Two handed best, instead of a maul. Axes have the most DPS and therefor scale the best. They also have some nice masteries and can get Rage more easily.

Which brings me to the next topic -> get Rage and sustain it. Rage is a resource that gives u up to 30% more melee damage. There are several nodes on the Tree that give Rage on Hit ect.

Get rid of Haste Aura, it's a pretty inefficient Aura compared to others. If u're using Autoexertion u'll have to reserve Mana for ur Warcries, so u probably can't run more than one 50% Aura. U have to decide if u want more damage or defense on that part. It's either Pride or Determination. I'd probably go for the latter, because u need survivability without ur previous block.

Last but not least, as I wrote before, get a good rare weapon. It's really not hard to find something that does double or even triple of what ur Mace does right now.


Once again, those are rough pointers. I think u want to do the build urself, so I won't lay out a planner for u.

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Hitman473107#7521 wrote:

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Everything you do scales off your weapon. Upgrading your weapon is THE most important factor in the entire calculation. You went for maces (which are very slow by default) and you are locked into 1-handed weapons.

And when it comes to the flat damage a rare mace could provide, give me some examples, so I can compare how much of a gain it would have. Would your rare mace have twice the flat damage, by any chance, so I can reach at least twice the final damage that I mentioned (which would be 200k)?

While 700 pDPS one-handed Maces do exist, those would be incredibly expensive.
However, they would essentially double your dps output.


I dont need to give you any examples. You can simply go to the trade site, look those weapons up, copy the stats (there is a button to copy to clipboard), then import it to PoB, equip it and check the numbers.

Its irrelevant tho cuz I highly highly doubt you´d be able to afford such a weapon anyways and crafting a weapon like this is going to take so many attempts, its hardly worth going for it.


Gladiator in its current state is a zDPS archetype that has high survibality as long as RNG decides you do actually block incoming hits.
Thats unfortunately pretty much all it does.

Ive seen some Retalition builds that abused the shield you are using cuz those Retalition skill had the "lucky dmg" tagline, which means the shield is gonna allow thise skills to roll twice as well and thus deal more dmg on average.
But thats an entirely different approach compared to what you are doing.

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I'd advice either switch to a bleed slam build, but that will require more research to get to know how ailments and bleeding specifically in PoE works, or change ur ascendancy to Champion or Slayer.

But that's exactly what I did. I benefit from the bleed and the block, both amazing in the Gladiator class.

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Next thing is ur main skill, which seems to be ground slam? Ground slam as someone mentioned doesn't have a very good damage multiplier. It is usable, but will always be worse than alternatives. Earthquake (especially for bleed) or Earthshatter are really good slam attacks.

I don't see much difference between GS and Earthquake, except that Earthquake doesn't decrease the enemy's stun threshold (like GS does). I also invested in stun, so Ground Slam is the best choice that I saw when I was looking what to use. I think that I chose well here. Same for Heavy strike, since it reduces the enemy's stun threshold and also has a high chance to deal double damage.

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Get rid of faster attacks in ur main skill, it's not a very efficient support gem and doesn't scale slams well.

I disagree, attack speed scales everything well, especially since it's applied on the final damage output. For example, 1.5 attacks instead of 1, means that you get 50% extra out of your final calculated damage. It also means faster reaction times against constantly moving enemies. If you're slowish, they usually move out of your range and it ends up in a miss. I think I chose very well here too, in terms of overall usefulness. Same for the Haste aura, it also provides movement speed, which is invaluable in a lot of cases.

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Last but not least, as I wrote before, get a good rare weapon.

Maybe I will, but that's what I said to the other user, I need an example, just so I can compare how much the gain will be. I doubt that I'd ever be able to do anything more than just double my current output. Even 1 million damage seems like a fantasy when it comes to this game, but I'm open to be proven wrong. With actual numbers, not obscure claims.

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While 700 pDPS one-handed Maces do exist, those would be incredibly expensive.
However, they would essentially double your dps output.

Ok, so if you double 100k, you end up with 200k. What else is there to add, so I can reach 1 million at least?

https://pobb.in/2bo2vt21UnpC


Its still not very good but I swapped a lot of the useless passives out, gave you impale, gave you pride aura and put in some cheaper rares for damage and resists along with eldritch implicits.

Sitting around 770k combined dps with impale after being in combat for a few seconds. Needs a little work with mana still but much better than before.

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gladiatorpie#3317 wrote:

https://pobb.in/2bo2vt21UnpC

Would be 1.1M if you ticked close range box in config to get the groundslam bonus dmg.

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Its still not very good but I swapped a lot of the useless passives out, gave you impale, gave you pride aura and put in some cheaper rares for damage and resists along with eldritch implicits.

I sincerely doubt it, but many thanks for the effort. Pride aura is equal to another support gem, nothing more. And it's not always efficient, since you'd gain its full bonus only if enemies stand 4 seconds next to you (or you next to them). And you lose both attack and movement speed from Haste. Thus, you end up with pretty much the same thing, except the movement speed and the faster reaction times in your attacks. There is nothing useless in the passives I've chosen, as I mentioned earlier. There are no skills there which grant you a different multiplicative layer (such as "more damage"). Impale might be useful, I might just try to see if it fits anywhere for minimal loss. If you're talking about equipment, you need to provide actual numbers. For example, this mace has 2x more damage than your current one. This armor somehow gives you 100% extra global phys dmg bonus, etc. Still very far away from even 1 million, if you ask me. Not to mention 20 million or 240 million, as I've heard people claim.

EDIT: although Impale is just a washed-up version of bleeding. It just does 10% of the initial damage, even if it stacks for a while. Aggravated bleed does 210% damage. It seems that impale isn't even worth the fuss, struggling to raise the chance, but I'll try to see if it does some good.