[3.10] Sovyn's Lazy Pally - Tanky Templar with Max Block

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Xeerdoz wrote:

I started leveling a "lazy paladin". Did some tinkering with the base build and ended up with this.

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More life and armor and a bit less evasion and those sweet crit reduction nodes. Can you see any way I could take shorter routes and optimize the point spending? Or did I mess the build up completely? Gonna use ground slam so that's why "Baptism by Light" is there.

(Of course I'll never get to lvl 90 or so this would require but as close as possible eventually)

We used to go through the Marauder area before the game released, however, it is now better to avoid it. The reduced crit nodes were nerfed a while back and are not very good -- the math was analysed in this thread already.

Also, the ranger area is critical to the build. See the FAQ section about IR for some of the reasons. There are more reasons too.

Here is the 110 point build from the guide, it's the way you want to go: LINK

Ok. What about those 2 life nodes near the Scion starting area (8 + 12)%..
Is 20% life better than getting "Holy Strength" with those 2 points. You get 16% life, 3% increased effect on buffs and 20 STR, which is 10 base life. And more damage would mean a bit more leech and killing stuff faster means you get hit less aswell... albeit the damage increase from 20 STR is quite small but everything counts.

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Xeerdoz wrote:

Ok. What about those 2 life nodes near the Scion starting area (8 + 12)%..
Is 20% life better than getting "Holy Strength" with those 2 points. You get 16% life, 3% increased effect on buffs and 20 STR, which is 10 base life. And more damage would mean a bit more leech and killing stuff faster means you get hit less aswell... albeit the damage increase from 20 STR is quite small but everything counts.

Yes, that sounds fine. It's well within the area of personal preference. :)

There are also the two "one handed damage and life" nodes down near the BM keystone that are not a bad choice either.

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Sovyn wrote:

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GermanosKaraflas wrote:

To sum up, if my math is correct, in my case there is no reason not to go Aspect of the Panther over Berserking, given the extra life and movement speed. But, just to make sure, I am gonna wait until I have 3 skill points, put them all at once in the Berserking triplet, check the DPS tooltip, refund, put the 3 refunded point in the AotP triplet, check tooltip and compare.

Cheers to all lazy Pallys.

In any case, let us know how your heavy strike tooltip is affected when you try both ways -- I'd still prefer the extra attack speed by far though as you will stun or blind more frequently. I also still think you won't have the motivation to go for Sentinel and the life ring near Scion without Berserking on the way. :)

So, here it is finally: http://imgur.com/a/ccyKN

Heavy strike setup: Heavy strike + Melee phys dmg + Multistrike + Faster attacks (yep, no 5l atm)

As predicted, DPS is practically the same with both options, where AotP wins with the most negligible difference ever of 6 DPS (again as predicted).

As a small proof of the true correspondence of each pic to their respective description, please observe the attack time on the tooltip of each photo.

Personally, I am keeping the Aspect of the Panther choice at the moment for the non-damage bonuses, the (probably negligible) bigger armor penetration and the not too big difference in attack speed, but I can see how it is only a matter of preference and I know that later in the game there is the possibility that one of the two options is strictly better (lvl 71 atm), but hey, here is one more option to consider lazy pallies, with (some) proof!

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Sovyn wrote:

Regarding the AOE suggestion, sure, folks can do that if they wish. It would require perfect linking, but not impossible. The guide hints at such a thing for those so inclined:

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I will say you will want to choose only one or two different attacks. If two, choose one for area and one for single targets.

Personally, as a self found player, I find my style works fine for me. I can't use ground slam with an axe, and so far, everything else seems very feeble in comparison to my heavy strike. Reave, Double Strike, and Infernal Blow were OK though. I haven't leveled up all of the attack skill gems to choose from however. Perhaps in the future.

If I'm going to recommend something, it would have to be something that works with most weapon types as that's a cornerstone of the flexibility of the build, and that I find actually helpful to my character. :)

I'll give it some more thought at some point.

I perfectly understand how you need proof or personal experience to actually include something on your guide, recommending something as an addition was the wrong way to put it. I just mentioned it as a piece of information from my experience that could be a helpful shortcut of knowledge to the new and inexperienced like me, who have no prior feeling of various attacking setups and if something works or not, etc.

Lastly, I know that ground slam greatly restricts my weapon choices, but I am leveling a lighting strike on the side in case I find a good axe, although I have no idea if lightning strike will perform as good as groundslam in practice...

Cheers

PS Hopefully, my last wall of text, thanks to all the lazy pallies for their patience.

Edit: Fixed the link as a URL and the quote formatting.

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GermanosKaraflas wrote:

So, here it is finally: http://imgur.com/a/ccyKN

Heavy strike setup: Heavy strike + Melee phys dmg + Multistrike + Faster attacks (yep, no 5l atm)

As predicted, DPS is practically the same with both options, where AotP wins with the most negligible difference ever of 6 DPS (again as predicted).

As a small proof of the true correspondence of each pic to their respective description, please observe the attack time on the tooltip of each photo.

Personally, I am keeping the Aspect of the Panther choice at the moment for the non-damage bonuses, the (probably negligible) bigger armor penetration and the not too big difference in attack speed, but I can see how it is only a matter of preference and I know that later in the game there is the possibility that one of the two options is strictly better (lvl 71 atm), but hey, here is one more option to consider lazy pallies, with (some) proof!

Outstanding work!

Looks pretty close indeed. I may reconsider my position. Since the DPS is the same for all practical purposes, I'm just trying to decide if the extra frequency of stun/blind would be better than the small gain in life/movement speed. Possibly the latter, but I'll give it some more thought.

Can you solo Dominus lvl 78?

I am pretty new to PoE and I am building up a tank from the Duelist starting point and and weighing the merits of the effectively doing (A) this build from Duelist, or (B) doing the Duelist 1H+shield facebreaker build, or (C) the 'other' main duelist tank build (see links below).

B: http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/445390
C: http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/557381

A, B, C can all get the job done defensively, have tons of life and good offense.
I think this Lazy Pally build is the best defensively and is really not giving up anything offensively to B and C... have the merits of the different tank builds been discussed/analyzed? I'd love to hear peoples opinions, etc. ?


Now talking about offense:
(I imagine these questions/considerations have already been address somewhere in this massive thread...)

1) Why no melee splash on heavy strike! That is a massive, massive pack DPS damage upgrade... which also has a defensive boon (faster stuff dies the lower the incoming damage, yes?)

1a) Infernal blow with multistrike and melee splash is awesome... I am playing a blender duelist and even though I have cyclone and dual strike on 4L'ed items well supported, i still use infernal blow a LOT... it is that good!

2) If you have a Bringer of Rain, think you should use either cyclone or melee splash to blind packs (does melee splash hits also have chance to blind?)... blind is such a huge defensive debuff

3) Cyclone... great DPS that scales amazingly at high attack speed. Life gain on hit on cyclone is almost a 1-2k+ heal if you have 3+ mobs to hit.

4) Viper Strike with melee splash? Because my blender dude is self found and I am on economy mode (read: "I am poor and my gear is so-so") I just linked both Viper strike and Infernal blow to multistrike and melee splash on a 4L item.


cheers and thanks for everyone's work on this awesome build.

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xiaxia004 wrote:

Can you solo Dominus lvl 78?

I have not as yet tried the Palace map boss. I doubt I can do level 78 maps with my current gear. As I originally posted this build almost a year ago now, there are many lazy pallies out there using my build that are much better geared than I am, because I am strictly self found, which certainly makes the game harder.

This is a very defensive build so I don't see why not. There are some definite gear checks as one progresses in maps, for any build.

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Cyrdan wrote:

(I imagine these questions/considerations have already been address somewhere in this massive thread...)

1) Why no melee splash on heavy strike! That is a massive, massive pack DPS damage upgrade... which also has a defensive boon (faster stuff dies the lower the incoming damage, yes?)

1a) Infernal blow with multistrike and melee splash is awesome... I am playing a blender duelist and even though I have cyclone and dual strike on 4L'ed items well supported, i still use infernal blow a LOT... it is that good!

2) If you have a Bringer of Rain, think you should use either cyclone or melee splash to blind packs (does melee splash hits also have chance to blind?)... blind is such a huge defensive debuff

3) Cyclone... great DPS that scales amazingly at high attack speed. Life gain on hit on cyclone is almost a 1-2k+ heal if you have 3+ mobs to hit.

4) Viper Strike with melee splash? Because my blender dude is self found and I am on economy mode (read: "I am poor and my gear is so-so") I just linked both Viper strike and Infernal blow to multistrike and melee splash on a 4L item.

Hello, Cyrdan.

You can certainly use Facebreaker with this build, it's mentioned in the guide in fact.

My build has been around much longer than most builds. The main difference is that we stack all of the defenses rather than going totally one way or the other. I think it is the best approach. You can see my FAQ section about IR for more info.

With any straight melee build, the damage is based on your gear and gems. A few more damage nodes really won't make that much difference one way or the other. That's why the lazy pally build focuses on getting the survivability down on the tree.

If you are interested in comparing builds, I suggest taking their final build and comparing it against mine with a program called POE offline skill tree: http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/19723/

This program is safe, and it provides a total of all stats on a tree. Then just compare the outputs side by side and see where the differences are.

You will always find there are pros and cons when comparing builds. I find that, for me, most other builds have more cons vs. this build.

Your questions --

1) I can't keep up with the mana requirements of splash and I don't really care to have a second setup for single targets to compensate for the splash DPS reduction. You may not know this, but multistrike actually cycles through nearby targets automatically, so all you have to do is click the highest life target and the rest just die off. I use the onscreen monster life bars. I only have to click and hold, and re-click occasionally. It's nothing like killing one at a time. But when I have just one target (like a boss), multistrike places all my hits onto that for maximum damage. That said, use splash if you are more comfortable and can keep up with mana requirements, perhaps with a leveled up mana leech support gem. Does not seem to be great when just one or two monsters around, which is a lot of the time. One of the things I left open intentionally in the build is the attack skill gem choice, because everyone likes something different.

1a) Yes, I like that too. Steep mana requirements. I do tend to prefer physical damage overall as it is not really resisted in end game like elemental is. Leeching is better too.

2) One of BoR's best features is the 'free' blind. Yes, it works on splash hits or any AOE, or multistrike's pseudo AOE of course. If you are swinging fast enough, as I do, I think one could hit everything almost at the same time with just multistrike. Cyclone would cover a bigger area but is much more mana intensive and more prone to desync. Splash's AOE size is just sad, I don't notice it being larger than multistrike's reach with the +2 range node we get.

3) Cyclone is great as an opener with curse on hit too. Maybe with blood magic support gem, otherwise you won't have mana for whatever follow up attack you have in mind. Leap slam is also an option for both mobility and an opener.

4) Never been able to get reasonable DPS out of Viper Strike. I'm sure it's possible but this build is not going to take the new damage over time nodes, for example.

I may found something to improve your build. Your 80 point progression build (approximately level 60) has a point in "10% elemental resistances when holding a shield", but not a point in "Diamond Flesh" (12% elemental resistances). It's only a small improve, but every little step counts :)