[3.5] Say_Ten's Melee Shadow - Murder Everything Cheaply

Hi,

I'm following this build and am sitting on 100k dps, but am not using vaal haste or blood rage.
https://www.pathofexile.com/account/view-profile/Wydeyedetour/characters

I feel like I'm hitting a wall for DPS and survivability. I haven't filled out my passive tree entirely but am getting confused as to how you would manage survivability or ever hit 550k dps without A LOT of additoinal auras rather than improvements to gear or filling out the passive tree.

Any advise on gear to swap, or should I be making use of blood rage if already encountering survivability issues?

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Wydeyedetour wrote:

Hi,

I'm following this build and am sitting on 100k dps, but am not using vaal haste or blood rage.
https://www.pathofexile.com/account/view-profile/Wydeyedetour/characters

I feel like I'm hitting a wall for DPS and survivability. I haven't filled out my passive tree entirely but am getting confused as to how you would manage survivability or ever hit 550k dps without A LOT of additoinal auras rather than improvements to gear or filling out the passive tree.

Any advise on gear to swap, or should I be making use of blood rage if already encountering survivability issues?

Few things I see:

1) Get a Rumi's concoction (Armor & Block on use); this will bump your block from ~27 to around 45 which can really help keep you up, make sure you're popping flasks about every 4-5 seconds
2) Get a Basalt Flask of Heat - super cheap and will increase phys resistance by 15% which will also help you feel tanky; chalice is a little redundant but use it if you like it until you can afford a taste of hate
2) You should be making use of blood rage, the frenzy charges and the leech gained are huge for dps and survival
3) The keys to staying alive with this build are leeching (claws are great for this), making sure you keep fortify up via whirling blades, keeping your flasks up as much as possible, and for particular enemies/bosses make sure you're mindful of where you are. The high Attack Speed of this build makes repositioning very easy.

Since you have two open sockets on one of your claws I'd recommend throwing vaal haste and blood rage in there. Just save haste for bosses and blood rage is pretty hassle-free.

Your passive tree should also be tweaked a little bit. The far left marauder skills aren't superior to the claw tree you neglected.

I've created a PoB with the changes I'd go for at your level (88) : https://pastebin.com/npNiuPi1

Import that build (sorry for the clutter of my own junk), and your dps should go from 227k (where it was initially) to 300k. Lmk if you have any other questions, your gear is solid although I would consider different jewels (phys dmg/multi/life)

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Cøpe wrote:

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Say_Ten wrote:

nice gear though. you should yolo exalt that 2nd ring with only 4 mods and try to get a resist out of it. id temporarily remove the elreon craft and block prefixes by crafting mana on there first. then you remove that shit after you exalt it, etc. if you're lucky you could slam it twice.

Sadly no luck on the exalt crafts, tried with amulet and ring; no big deal though was worth a shot.

So I'm now running a 4L Starkonja and a 6L belly with Dual Strike/Multi/AddedPhys/CritDmg/DamageOnFullLife/Ruthless as a change, I miss the block but the damage and life is a nice bonus.

My Lightning Strike 4L is Greater Projectiles/LS/Multistrike/Onslaught - Think onslaught is worth it? Didn't really need the power charges/curse overlap from Assassin's Mark

Also having a little trouble with managing leech since I'm only @ L89 so skill points are scarce. Damage is solid, life pool and res are solid, just having a little trouble recovering from any big hits at the moment, trying to figure out how to work around it

dont use GMP with LS. LS has insane projectile AOE coverage without any help...use something else that's better. You could use faster attacks to make it faster, maim to defbuff enemies, etc. Onslaught would be worth it on LS because you'd basically have perma-slaught(er).

supplement huge hits with your instant life flask...otherwise you shouldn't really need to use it

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Say_Ten wrote:

dont use GMP with LS. LS has insane projectile AOE coverage without any help...use something else that's better. You could use faster attacks to make it faster, maim to defbuff enemies, etc. Onslaught would be worth it on LS because you'd basically have perma-slaught(er).

supplement huge hits with your instant life flask...otherwise you shouldn't really need to use it

Yeah just been experimenting over the last day with different gem setups. I'm currently being a noob and resorting to ancestral warchief instead of LS right now, but over 1.1 mil PoB Dps (900k without warchief).

Sorry if I've bastardized your build too much, but there's a lot of flexibility with your framework so I've been testing what I can.

The 6L Belly route with damage on full life is pretty disgusting. Had to grab vaal pact in order to compensate but so far this is the best variation with daggers I've had so far (too cheap to buy claws too and compare)

Double post Rip

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Cøpe wrote:

Double post Rip

lol

you can buy 2x wasp nest or even crappier rolled ToA to test DPS/survivability. prob 1c each.

Hi, Say_Ten ! I followed your advice (put Frost blades in my marvelous claw) and I'm still progressing (level 78 right now, made my profile public, thought it was already).

The hardest part about this build was to get the elemental res up, the rings had to get specific stuff on them and this generally comes with a price. But, overall, I'm much much more satisfied than my previous abyss Frost blades build (more life, more DPS, more better).

I got rid of culling strike (did not have the ascendancy node last time) and added Fast attacks instead. More DPS ! The Dual strike on BoR is cool too (though I initially put it in the claw for the Chance to bleed support : the bleeding is ridiculous (1000 DPS according to PoB) but the 44 to 66 added physical damage seemed better on Dual strike than on frost blades : i'm still wondering if inverting the gems would not be better in fact).

About whirling blades, you say you put onslaught on it. I put Blood magic, otherwise I get mana problems all the time (isn't it your case ?). I'd like onslaught...

Could you tell me which part of my equipment you would upgrade, right now (will be for when I have currency, 100 chaos is my wealth right now... :() ?
I tried a 300 pDPS (+150 chaos DPS) claw instead of touch of anguish, and my DPS dropped, much to my surprise. What kind of claw should I get to replace ToA (if it ever needs to) ? I know I have to get an unset ring for the blood rage skill.






And I found this claw (paid for it actually) :

The DPS tool is a little bit better but is it worth the Freeze loss...

Edit : also, why Ice Golem ? PoB says flame or lightning would be better DPS wise.

Which item i must ''upgrade'' and is my Passive Tree correct ?

Upgraded a bit my gear and my character.



New ring (unset, at last !) and the new claw is good.

Path of building says I should be close to 500K DPS when everything is up (flasks, blood rage, auras...). Very satisfied with this character, thanks Say_Ten.

And I hit 5K life ! Yeah !



Though I do not understand PoB very much : it says the opposite of the game DPS tool about where I should put the dual strike. Will keep it on BoR right now. And should get a lab enchant on it too...

I've downed three of the four guardians now- Chimera killed me just now, sadly- and I can't afford another run atm. Or well, okay, his snakes did- chimera himself is easy as hell with this build. Any tips on the snakes? Staying moving is hard with 20 things spitting chaos damage and poison (Which I have no resists for past atziri's promise), and I can't really be hitting them if I keep moving. I know it's about learning, I'm just feeling a little stuck here because those snakes are murder. I would of had him otherwise. With Phoenix/Hydra, those took a few times- but im genuinely a bit unsure how to deal with the snakes- their (Presumably poison + chaos damage) outdoes my leech, as is.

Edit: Someone in-game suggested I slot a decoy totem, so ill try that.