Dual-Wielding Melee "Dream" GB Pathfinder — Possible in early access? (Leveling + early maps)

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evilstarship#1007 wrote:

This sounds similar to my build at level 39, but I haven't really tried using totems - I will probably give this a try. Mace strike hits hard and I like stacking attack speed for it. I think that 8% and 10% melee damage branch along with Heavy Weaponry can be improved upon when we can path to better damage from dual wield (12% damage when dual wielding - nodes you allocated) and bleed nodes (16% damage when bleeding), perhaps.

So I got to 36...

Rotation is:

Rolling Slam - Overpower/Lacerate
Bone Shatter - Impact Shockwave/Bloodlust
Sunder - Brutality/Execute

When needed:

Mace Strike - Rage/Martial Tempo
Leap Slam - Fist of War/Jagged Ground/Envenom
Molten Blast - Magnified Effect/Ignition

Herald of Ash is always up.

STR is at 123 with 808 health and 50% armor. I still feel squishy since armor needs a big upgrade, its not in a good spot atm. DMG just doesn't feel good compared to other classes either. I started a monk and I'm just mowing through stuff and it feels smoother to play.

Here is a link to the passives I've taken so far passive wise:
https://maxroll.gg/poe2/passive-tree/l7xsm0vl

Honestly I feel like with the way armor is in a bad spot and how you take allot of dmg during your slams I'm going to shelf my ranger for now, I really thing swords is going to be where its at when it comes to a ranger duel wield, think maces will be for the tank builds.

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Krohm#7627 wrote:

armor needs a big upgrade, its not in a good spot atm.

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Krohm#7627 wrote:

Honestly I feel like with the way armor is in a bad spot

And we don't even use as shield, so our armour isn't even going to be that huge. Our ascendancy won't really help us there except for some free passives. I think we need evasion instead of armour tbh

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Krohm#7627 wrote:

DMG just doesn't feel good

I'm thinking about trying a dex/str variant of this build - might have to drop RT and Giant's Blood and spend on some crit and accuracy. No dual big clubs anymore though. I'm nowhere near RT and Giant's Blood yet anyway

I wonder if Cast on Melee kill would work, I haven't got it yet

I'm level 76 gembling legioner now

Able to make 100k dps with crit build with advanced warpick. Going for max rage + berserk + attack speed and crit.

For defence i use pure evasion for now, with acrobatics, and have 50% leech. But 2000 hp buffer seems joke. If evasion dont prok it is insta death 😂

Interesting that we may have a bug with crit damage multiplier on dual wielding. On my right hand i got 500% bonus, and off hand get somehow 1000+

Run geralt of ash, couse overdamage on crit is massive. But clear speed is very low anyway.

Need somehow to get massive life bar and it will be perfect. Leech insta heal anything but death, so i just need to absorb some damage.

Very fun way to play really.

For unique best is onslaught buff from ring or helmet
Waiting for some devine to test it

Need some more info, and then i repost it

Level 54 Update

OP updated with screenshots and much more skill gem details.

Made it to Cruel at level 49.

This is my skill tree so far: 54 Melee Pathfinder

Somewhere at about level 40ish, life leech on weapons and support gems becomes available that change how this build plays. Its been picking up speed ever since and feels pretty good right now.

- I kept the life leech nodes and I rely on it to heal a lot of the time now.
- Picked up two maces with high phys damage and life leech. Keeping weapons current is very important. I also have +3 melee skills on my weapon.
- I picked up a jewel with +1 rage on melee hit, which means I am usually on 20-30 rage. This felt like a big buff, definitely get yourself one of these
- I set up leap slam to generate shock. I think this could be improved, it does not yet always work reliably. However when combined with innervate on boneshatter I get two new damage buffs stacked here. I keep leap slam at the highest level possible since it is my opening attack in battle. I am curious about adding more reliable shock gen to this build since its a nice damage boost for us.
- Started using scavenged plating to bolster defenses slightly.
- Hoping to find an onslaught helmet soon to try out...

Battle skill rotation
1. Leap Slam into the middle of enemies
2. Infernal Cry
3. Mace Strike / Armour Breaker until stun indicator appears
4. Boneshatter as finisher
5. Repeat or throw in some Rolling Slam / Volcanic Fissure / Sunders for fun

On bosses we just maintain broken armour and hit them with mace strike, which rapidly heals us as long as we continue to do physical damage to leech life. We can also throw in plenty of leap slams to try and get a shock bonus.

Skill gems

Dual mace strike - martial tempo - brutality - life thief (left click)
DPS: 4059
We focus on physical damage bonuses wherever we can get it on gear and the result is a fast attacking health siphon that hits harder than any of our other skills. Single target DPS.

Armour Breaker - break endurance - armour explosion - close combat (middle click)
DPS: 1120
For quickly breaking armour in one click, and triggering an explosion and giving you an endurance charge.

Boneshatter - impact shockwave - innervate - heavy swing (right click)
DPS: 978
Finishing move that explodes large groups of enemies. Sometimes gives us innervate if we've killed a shocked enemy.

Leap Slam - lightning infusion - conduction - cursing current (Q)
DPS: 941
Opening attack that hopes to inflict shock for a big damage bonus and innervate buff from Boneshatter. Sometimes I use this a couple of times to get shock, which spreads to the whole group at once due to cursing current.

Rolling Slam - Lacerate - aftershock - rage (W)
DPS: 668
Good for softening up a large group and generating some rage. Not used much.

Infernal Cry - Magnified Effect - Raging Cry - Premeditation (E)
Our main warcry and buff.

Volcanic Fissure - Ignition - Fiery Death (R)
DPS: 556
Fun for spreading some flames around and hopefully triggering some explosions on death. Often paired with Sunder.

Sunder - Fist of War - Fire infusion (T)
DPS: 1411
Mostly used to cleanup enemies or when they are stuck in a bottleneck.

Herald of Ash

Scavenged Plating - splinter - persistence


Next up

I am grabbing a few more bleed nodes and then focusing on strength nodes as we approach Giant's Blood. I am not entirely sold on bleed yet; I will continue investing in it but if it doesn't appear to add much I may end up dropping it for rage investment instead.

Rage seems like it could be useful to invest in too - or even shock generation (if we can find it somewhere).

Respecced into Giant's blood and sitting at 327str so not able to equip the best maces yet but my damage is up to 5883 DPS on mace strike - went up about 1000 as soon as I equipped a 2 handed mace in 1 hand, its huge. Had to let go of some crit and bleed and armour break nodes. Giant's blood makes this build hit like a truck and the life leech overheal seems to keep me alive.

At this point, the concept of the build feels complete to me.

It works: we can dual wield massive clubs and be a Melee Ranger.

From here, there are many possible build variants we could experiment with as we approach endgame, to find something viable. Bleed, leech, rage, attack speed, attack damage, crit, RT, stun, shock, jagged ground, str stacking, evasion, dodge, armour, poison, armour break, charges...

Right now, as long as I'm attacking, HP rarely ever drops below 100%. I leech far too much hp and Fast Metabolism makes sure this works even when I am at full HP.

I only have about 1700hp so far though. Seems like we can't rely on life leech forever (some enemies will easily hit for over 1700 later on). More str is my focus right now.

Freeze/Slows seem to be my main danger so am looking for ways to solve that, maybe with ascendancy pts.

My evade and armour chances are still hovering around 25-35% which isn't the best.

This build felt really weak from levels 25-40 but now I feel incredibly overpowered and nothing can kill me. In hindsight, I would only pick up life leech nodes after this starts appearing on gear and we can pick up level 2 support gems like Life Thief. It made a huge difference around about level 40. THere should be a respec at level 40.

I don't think this overpowered feeling will persist until endgame - I'm incredibly curious to see how we handle endgame tbh.

Anyhoo I'm having a lot of fun, dual wielding 2 handed clubs feels great

Edit: now at 9400dps with new weapons
Edit 2: now at 15000dps with even newer weapons, starting maps.
Edit 3: Now at level 70 on a tree close to this. 28000dps fully buffed. Struggling with map sustain - life + armour just aren't doing it

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Edit: now at 9400dps with new weapons at level 64 on a tree close to this

Just a heads up the passive tree you linked is empty. Very cool build idea, might try it out but it does sound like suffering till lvl 40ish.

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Zovvi#1372 wrote:

Very cool build idea, might try it out but it does sound like suffering till lvl 40ish.

I think the biggest mistake there was probably investing in life leech too early. Should probably hit more damage nodes instead and respec around level 40. Added a note about this to the OP and updated with a newer link

Mapping is tough going with armour and life.

An ES version of this build could be interesting

I can't actually get the above ES variant out of my head. I feel like we need it now as we approach level 80.

We obviously are facing a life/armour EA meta right now that is completely angled against our build succeeding into endgame mapping.

The coming 15% armour buff in the next patch ... won't do much for us, honestly ... its not great.

Melee/Maces/Life/Armour are in a truly bad place in EA and there's no end in sight.

I expect us to receive a buff at some point via a proper balance patch, but that's obviously not on the horizon yet.

What can we do in the interim? Genuinely asking the community for any advice here!

Right now, I am wondering how much gold it would cost to reset almost my entire skill tree and give this ES variant a shot (I am not sure I will have enough gold so it might mean I focus on saving up some gold first!). Edit: a bit of research and it seems it might be 500-700k for a char in the mid 70s(!!!). ouch, I think I only have 150k

I think we can get a Ghostwrithe to add a huge stack of ES from str without needing to invest in int at all, which is the key to this approach, I think. I've been inspired by Kripparrian's ES Titan build here, which also runs ES without any int.

For me, the idea for this build has always been centered around "dual wielding melee ranger". That's the goal here.

Damage isn't a problem. We absolutely melt everything ever since we went Giant's Blood.

However when dual wielding we are kinda hurting for defenses.

We don't have evasion or block - we don't have a secondary line of defense here.

I see life leech as attractive here but I'm not sure we have much of this in reach if we go ES and take the northern route around the passive tree. It doesn't help us maintain/recharge ES either.

Maxing resists then, feels to me like it becomes SUPER crucial for this build I think, since we have no second layer.

If any of you have kept this build going into endgame/maps I am keen to hear your experiences.

It'd be great to add evasion to this build. It would help so much. I am not sure how we add that without investing in a lot of dex and we need quite high str investment for our weapons so there isn't a lot to spare on dex

So please do tell me your ideas, fellow exiles :)

Things I cannot wait to be released for this build: Swords, and I dearly miss the Raider ascendancy...