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

Low level attack skill summary from Awakening Beta



As you can see, static strike has been toned down a bit. Differences (at level 4 anyway):

-Mana cost +1
-Lost the +12% increased physical damage mod
-explosion deals 40% less instead of 30% less damage so that's substantially worse
-base damage up 4.2%. 114.2% vs. 110%, seems to be the only way they are scaling this now



looks like ground slam has been toned down a little bit too.

-lost the 28% increased physical damage (at lvl8 anyway)
-base damage up 7%



melee splash toned down a little also

- lost the 15% increased melee physical (at lvl6)

- 13% less damage to main target instead of 16%, a bit better here

48% less area damage instead of 45%, slightly worse



molten strike changed similarly to the others.

- lost the increased melee physical mod altogether, 28% in this case

- base damage increased, at level 8 as we can see, it's up 9.8% from before

- mana cost -1



glacial hammer, I'll let you decide here

- increased Physical Damage gone of course, that would have been 28% at lvl8

- freeze chance up 4%, from 21% to 25% at lvl8

- base damage up more than the other skills, 21.2%. Was 130% now 151.2% at lvl8.

So i'm lvl 87 on my pala now, doing maps very comfortably. The biggest changes i'll add to my current gear is either a mana leech ring or gloves so i can add that block amulet.

Recently made a 1k eva vaal buckler with 33% which gives me after buffs over 6k eva.

After getting leech on ring or gloves, what should i focus on? My guess currently is a bit better weapon, but i appreciate any imput.

Oh to remove confusion, the character is ExaltedWrath

Good stuff there Sovyn, seems like there are a few nerfs.

I hear that Static Strike is still fairly good despite the nerf.

Glacial Hammer may be worth looking into as you mentioned earlier.

How about Reave, any changes there?

If there are no changes to Reave it would still be very viable I suppose :)

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Awoudex wrote:

After getting leech on ring or gloves, what should i focus on? My guess currently is a bit better weapon, but i appreciate any imput.

Hi Awoudex :)

I'd probably get some quality on static strike for the aoe size.

An inexpensive Doryani's Catalyst weapon would make your dps much higher.

After that, similar gloves but with a good life roll.

I'd probably take a high life helm over Alpha's too. I don't think the reduced mana reserved is doing much for you there. Maybe a little dps but quite minor I think.

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Stefacle wrote:

How about Reave, any changes there?

I'll make a shadow on beta and find out! I might level it a tad before posting results.

Out of curiosity, i'm still relatively new to the PoE world, why do you level your skill gems to the level you mentioned. In particular, the cast when damage taken triggers. I understand leaving them at low levels to make them proc more, but why leave enduring cry and blood rage only to level 5? Using triggers makes the spells mana cost free so that shouldn't be an issue, is it due to the scaling stat requirements or something? Also when you say less than or equal to your trigger gem for the other skills is that because a trigger gem will only work on those that are less than or equal to it?

Thanks for clearing some of this up, it's an excellent guide, the only thing that is confusing is PoE's strange skill system.

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vladimars wrote:

Out of curiosity, i'm still relatively new to the PoE world, why do you level your skill gems to the level you mentioned. In particular, the cast when damage taken triggers. I understand leaving them at low levels to make them proc more, but why leave enduring cry and blood rage only to level 5? Using triggers makes the spells mana cost free so that shouldn't be an issue, is it due to the scaling stat requirements or something? Also when you say less than or equal to your trigger gem for the other skills is that because a trigger gem will only work on those that are less than or equal to it?

Thanks for clearing some of this up, it's an excellent guide, the only thing that is confusing is PoE's strange skill system.

Hello vladimars, Happy to help clear this up. If my explanation does not clarify please ask that part of your question a different way.

I don't level the cast when damage taken linked to enduring cry and blood rage because there is minimal benefit to doing so with these skills. For example, low level enduring cry does usually manage to keep the three endurance charges going, and we only need the three frenzy charges from blood rage so there is no point leveling the gem as we don't use the attack speed on low life at all and the other benefits are minor. We want this cast when damage taken to fire as often as possible. If we leveled it, it would only fire rarely, which is counterproductive. The cast when damage taken has the confusing limitation of only working with skill gems that are at or below the same level requirement as itself. That's why we have to stop leveling the linked gems at level 5.

The new Ice Crush skill from yesterdays and todays news posts may be worth considering.

Looks to me like it is a melee AOE skill :)

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Stefacle wrote:

The new Ice Crush skill from yesterdays and todays news posts may be worth considering.

Thanks for the heads up on the new details about Ice Crash that GGG just posted.

Looks great!

In Beta I've been using molten strike and reave and such and the non-circular AOE is just depressing because you can't kill most of the monsters that seem to always end up behind you, thus time wasted.

Looks like Ice Crash is circular AOE like Static Strike.

I also like that Ice Crash can be used with a nice variety of weapons which fits the Lazy Pally model.

Of course it remains to be seen that kind of endgame DPS numbers Ice Crash can put out but with all of the other attack skills being significantly reduced (except for maybe the so-so Glacial Hammer), it's a good bet that Ice Crash will be the go-to skill in 2.0 like Static Strike was for 1.3 and Reave for 1.2 before that.

In beta, I received the Fortify support gem from Siosa in the library (normal). Prior to this I was using Vigilant Strike every now and then in between static strikes. Either gem seems to work very well for defense, making all bosses in normal a snap even with junk gear that's dropped (no farming or trading). However, in practice the Fortify support gem is far more reliable at applying the buff than vigilant strike is.

I think combat pacing feels a bit slower than in 1.3, probably due to the increased monster life.

Claws are great.... For example, the one I'm using has 10% life leech on it, which is very nice, and it also has comparable damage to other weapon types of its same level which don't really have a useful implicit mod.

Claws won't work with the upcoming Ice Crash skill. Hopefully Ice Crash will be introduced to a beta quest reward that I can access at some point. Of course for endgame its likely that Doryani's Catalyst will be ideal for Ice Crash but we don't know enough about it yet to be sure. Heck, it might not even be a physical damage based skill for all we know right now.