ELE LIGHTNING STRIKE - ALL T16s, Shaper, Uber Atziri, HOGM, Chayula, Elder

hi, i want to know grace and purity , which aura is better with this build?

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finalsakura wrote:

hi, i want to know grace and purity , which aura is better with this build?

Hi there. It all depends on your gear and stats. If you have a lot of evasion (approx. 50% chance to evade is what you should aim for) and over capped resistances, then you do not need Grace or Purity.

I run Grace to compensate for the no evasion from my shield (Rathpith Globe).

If you are doing a map with elemental weakness or -max resistances, then purity will help to give some res and increase your max res as well.

The best offensive auras to use are Hatred and Haste.

Hey Tiurakh -- first off I just want to say that I LOVE this build. It is my first "real" character (got a fireball witch up to ~60 but didn't like it) and I feel insanely powerful when playing this character. I'm level 79 now but am unfortunately pretty poor and haven't gotten very lucky with my drops. For this reason, I can't afford a BoR or Rainbowstride. In a way that is OK because it means I still have a ton of potential with this character but I'm really getting impatient since I know how much better things will be when I get a BoR. So at the moment the most I have done is 67-68 maps. I breeze through them pretty easily but am afraid to try more without some better gear. With that in mind, would you mind looking at my stats and gear and tell me if there are any glaring issues with any of them that I should fix? I've probably spent about 1ex total on all of this gear and have a few GCP left over so if there is something major (and cheap) that I need to change I might be able to do it. Thanks!






PS: Any reason to think the build won't stay the same after 1.0? Are you planning on updating this guide pretty quickly after it comes out with anything you think should change? Thanks again for this build -- so much fun!

Hello, I want to thank you for posting this guide, it helped me a lot. Before this I didn't think that evasion based melee characters are viable end game. My previous eva chars used cleave (it was before melee splash was good) and if I managed to get reasonable survivability, my damage was so low with cleave and died around cruel act 2 - merc act 1. (I play hardcore only) After that I stopped playing PoE, beacuse the lack of time, and when I came back, I saw your guide, and it helped me to keep my faith in evasion based melee characters.

So I started a character named 'LetsGetOneShotted' (yeah, I like those kind of character names (my previous one was OooopsDied, and she died to cruel Vaal, my fps is under 10 during that fight :/ )), in the Onslaught league. I managed to kill merciless Brutus before the end of the league, and atm I'm level 59 in act 2 (killed Merveil at level 51). So I'm pretty proud of myself, altought it's likely that I will die to Vaal. (that's why I post here now :D)

Stats:


Gear:


Passive tree:


I like the build very much, and I feel myself more confident, than with my armor character. (imo evasion is much safer at this point)

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Nalroc wrote:

Hey Tiurakh -- first off I just want to say that I LOVE this build. It is my first "real" character (got a fireball witch up to ~60 but didn't like it) and I feel insanely powerful when playing this character. I'm level 79 now but am unfortunately pretty poor and haven't gotten very lucky with my drops. For this reason, I can't afford a BoR or Rainbowstride. In a way that is OK because it means I still have a ton of potential with this character but I'm really getting impatient since I know how much better things will be when I get a BoR. So at the moment the most I have done is 67-68 maps. I breeze through them pretty easily but am afraid to try more without some better gear. With that in mind, would you mind looking at my stats and gear and tell me if there are any glaring issues with any of them that I should fix? I've probably spent about 1ex total on all of this gear and have a few GCP left over so if there is something major (and cheap) that I need to change I might be able to do it. Thanks!

Defense Stats

          Gear          

PS: Any reason to think the build won't stay the same after 1.0? Are you planning on updating this guide pretty quickly after it comes out with anything you think should change? Thanks again for this build -- so much fun!

Hey Nalroc, thanks for the post. I've had tons of fun playing my character and writing the guide, and glad to hear you are enjoying the build as well!

Your gear is great! The only thing I would change are the gloves - I would look for some that give you some life as well. Ideally for higher level maps (74+) you will want 2.5K+ HP to feel safe on those maps with the build, however 2.3K should be fine - just play safe and don't go crazy on map mods =).

Your stats look great as well. Only issue I see is that you have a lot of Block/Stun recovery - I would unspec from these nodes and put them into life. We do not really need Block/Stun recovery as this build hardly gets stunned, you also need a lot of the recovery for it to be effective. Please note that the Block Recovery is only played when you block a hit that would have stunned you.

Don't be afraid to try harder maps! The build is deceptively stronger than it appears and you will be at full life the majority of the time. In very hard situations your HP may drop suddenly when you take a heavy hit, but the regen with Life Gain on Hit is very fast. I actually feel more comfortable once I have taken a heavy physical hit, because I know the next subsequent hits are guaranteed to miss due to evasion's entropy counter. This is counter-intuitive, but is part of what makes it exciting to play!

Having Blind makes our Evasion insane, and max regular block and max spell block (with a high life pool) will make your character nearly impossible to kill. Not having BofR or Rainbowstrides is not a huge deal!

Here are some solutions that might help:
Bringer of Rain
- The key behind BofR is that it is a 7L with the Blind support. You can achieve the same effect if you have a 6L chest, and use Smoke Mine or a Flame Totem linked with Blind separately. The Smoke Mine is great for melee. Link it in a 3L with Increased Area of Effect and Increased Duration. Just Flicker Strike into the front/middle of the pack, place a Smoke Mine, and quickly detonate it and fight under the cloud. The ranged mobs at the back may not be covered by the cloud, but Ondar's Guile will keep you safe from ranged mobs even without Blind
- Alternatively place a Fire Totem linked with Blind and GMP behind you or to the side of the pack, this will Blind them almost instantly while providing some good DPS and distraction
- If you are playing HC/want to be super safe - use Enfeeble as well. Enfeeble is very similar to Blind as it reduces Enemy Accuracy by a lot, and it also reduces their damage
- This method will give you less DPS than using a BofR (BofR adds 20-30 physical damage - which is a lot of damage given all the % increased physical damage nodes), however by NOT using Bringer of Rain you will be able to get a lot of flexibility for your defense style on the chest and helm and can choose between pure evasion, evasion + energy shield, various resistances, etc.

Rainbowstrides and Spell Block
- Evasion builds work great against physical attack enemies, however our evasion does not apply against spell damage bosses, and this is when we need a lot of spell block/spell dodge, and high elemental resistances
- The good thing is that there are very few dangerous spell damage bosses
- Once you get your max regular block, Stone of Lazhwar will get you to about 38% spell block. With 20% spell dodge from Phase Acrobatics - you will have ~50% chance to avoid spell damage. This is a good amount of spell avoidance and will be fine for the majority of maps except the following very hard spell bosses: Temple Piety (Level 71), Mageara (Level 76 Crema) - for these you will need maximum spell block and I recommend you swap to a Saffell's Frame shield or Rathpith Globe shield. Be careful with Saffell's because you cannot keep your regular block when you use that shield
- For Shrine Piety (Level 77) and the General (Level 77) - these bosses have heavy spell damage, as well as heavy regular attacks. Using Saffell's could be dangerous against these bosses since you cannot block their melee/ranged attacks, I would recommend skipping these bosses unless you have both high regular block and high spell block
- Please take care on the Jungle Valley boss room - their EK burst is a spell and does a lot of damage if you have low chaos resistance; their regular attacks and the other mobs in the room all use physical attacks. You should be fine with ~50% chance to avoid spells and high regular block, just make sure you use Enfeeble in this room. Also, this is counter-intuitive but you WANT to be in the middle of this boss room surrounded by as many mobs as possible - your Life Gain on Hit and flask recharging will be off the charts when you are hitting and killing all those mobs around you. Just focus the boss and the splash will kill surrounding mobs very nicely
- You should be fine with the other magic damage bosses: Kuduku, Flame Doggies on Cells, etc.


About the upcoming patch. Yes I will be keeping an eye out and will actively update the guide! I am excited for all the new changes coming in. Our path on the tree should NOT be affected too much as we do not go through the center. The tree should stay the same unless they rework some of the Ranger nodes i.e. dodge, or the key starting nodes (Heart of Oak, Aspect of the Panther). I really hope they make it possible to get Phase Acrobatics for Spell Dodge without having to go through all the Acrobatic nodes.

I will also keep an eye out for the new skill gems and new support gems to see if anything can be incorporated into the build. Here are some thoughts I have so far:

Curse on Hit new support gem: would be linked to Enfeeble/Temporal Chains (whichever curse you prefer to use) so we do not have to stop and curse in fights. With melee splash, whole mob packs will be cursed very easily. I'm sure this does not have to be linked to our Double Strike at all.
Cast on Crit: not much we can do here as we do not rely on crits.
Cast on Melee Kill: may use Detonate Dead here, but I think this skill gives problems against reflect. Right now the build is immune to reflect, so I will have to test Detonate Dead against reflect packs to see if it works with this build.
Cast on Death: think this is more for minion builds
Cast when Damage Taken/when Stunned: these would be good to link to Enduring Cry / Immortal Call / Decoy Totem / Conversion Trap(if possible)

I really wish there were a Cast on Block or Cast on Evade support gem, but I think I know why GGG will not implement these: there is no trade off or "negative" trigger with Block and Evade. With the other new support gems you have to take damage or be stunned for the support gem to trigger. With Evade and Block - you will take no damage, so you will be getting all the upside from the support gem and its links but the trigger will have no downside =).

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Gergoo2 wrote:

So I'm pretty proud of myself, altought it's likely that I will die to Vaal. (that's why I post here now :D)

I like the build very much, and I feel myself more confident, than with my armor character. (imo evasion is much safer at this point)

Hi! Thank you for the post. Good to hear you are liking the build. Vaal can be intimidating, but he is really not that hard. Here are some strategies that might help:
- stay close in melee range (this way you avoid the rock falls and the ice shots)
- the slam has a long wind up, just move to the opposite side of Vaal when he starts the slam (be careful as sometimes he does 2x slams in a row!)
- for the laser - when he starts shooting the laser just run in a circle around Vaal, it would be almost impossible to get hit this way

I have updated FAQ in guide regarding Bringer of Rain alternatives, I have also added a further map boss section, and a math section with some calculations at the end of the guide.

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Ceryneian wrote:

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Gergoo2 wrote:

So I'm pretty proud of myself, altought it's likely that I will die to Vaal. (that's why I post here now :D)

I like the build very much, and I feel myself more confident, than with my armor character. (imo evasion is much safer at this point)

Hi! Thank you for the post. Good to hear you are liking the build. Vaal can be intimidating, but he is really not that hard. Here are some strategies that might help:
- stay close in melee range (this way you avoid the rock falls and the ice shots)
- the slam has a long wind up, just move to the opposite side of Vaal when he starts the slam (be careful as sometimes he does 2x slams in a row!)
- for the laser - when he starts shooting the laser just run in a circle around Vaal, it would be almost impossible to get hit this way

Thanks for the advices, but my problem is that my graphics card is pretty bad, and I have like 8-10 fps during the Vaal fight, and I can't really dodge his slams, so usually I use traps to deal with him but it takes ages, and in merciless his rocks are quite dangerous. That's why I hate that fight so much :/ During the Piety fight my fps is the same, but due to Ondar's Guile her Ice form is not a problem, and usually I can easily run or granite during her fire form.

Bit of background: Got a level 77 dagger ranger doing this now, skill tree is mine, concept is OP's. Currently using both acro keystone and darkray vectors, though none of the nodes beyond acro. Skills are DS, splash, multi, added-fire in a Rain. Took her through some maps, though not the higher ones I usually host. That'll happen on the weekend.

Got some thoughts and experiences, would like some comments.

1. Running blood rage, did not see the need to use LoH gem.

2. I must've missed the actual math in your post on acro, but I would have thought 46% dodge is significant relative to 0% dodge, in terms of EHP, and increases in significance as chance to evade decreases? Supposing I don't manage to reach 50% displayed chance to evade.


3. Tried it out with a 320dps claw too on a noncrit build. Worked like a dream, though dual claws cyclone still felt like faster killing. Maybe I'll offhand some other claw and try that out. Why not make a dual wield build? Not hard to reach 66% dual wield block. Offhand an Essentia and keep the LoH gem after all, that'll make max block on hybrid defenses...dang, I really want to play with the permutations of this.

4. At the number of aps I was putting out, capped mana leech was insufficient. Not a major problem as I spent some few seconds running between mobs and it recharged then, but still. (A note that my builds usually stack IAS like crazy and the weapons I was playing with have 1.8aps, so this is probably not an issue with most?)

And some general things.

5. Culling on flicker really necessary? Things die quickly enough anyway.

6. It's not a good idea to drop too many DPS nodes for HC play, because then there's insufficient damage. IMO. I got stabbed really hard by this one, one of the times. Also, I tend to think the best defense is a really good offense. Faster you kill them, less hits you have to take.

And a question!

7. This weekend I'll be throwing the similar gem setup on a CI crit character using Carcass Jack to try that out. Links are RRGGB. She's got no evasion to speak of, though. How do you do this build without evasion?

whoa whoa whoa whoa.
where was this post when i was struggling so hard with my build to figure everything out and work out all the kinks?

my build turn out to be VERY similar, other than me being dual wield.
Here is my current passive tree.


right now im sitting at 45% evade, 58% block, 29% spell block, 20% spell dodge, 46% dodge (using darkray vectors and 8 frenzy charges).
as of right now i can literally facetank anything except the unique temple map. That map i need to reorganize my gems slightly and take it slow. That map is insane tho.

My current hp is just 277x hp also, as i need to start optimizing my gears and gaining high rolls. I have more % hp than your tree tho i don't use a shield either, but i should be able to get over 3k hp myself as well.

This is my current gear


As you can see i use frenzy as my main attack (mostly for fun). when i think i'll be taking damage i swap out melee damage at full life for added fire damage, slightly less DPS. when i think i need the extra survivability i trade added fire damage for life gain on hit.
When i REALLY need more survivability via leech i use dual strike/multi/melee splash and life leech. This ensures my bloodseeker hits with every cast instead of alternating weapons as frenzy does.

I was struggling with that last part for a couple of days thinking of what i could do. Basically i ran the temple map and got absolutely pwned until i put dual strike/life leech, then i could survive. However in order to obtain frenzy charges you're almost forced to use Blood Rage.
I want to use frenzy as my main attack because its just hilarious. With those weapons i have 14.65 attacks per second and its funny as hell. With 2x spiraled foils with over 2 attacks per second each i have over 18 attacks per second. When i run blood rage at low life with haste im over 20 attacks per second. It is GLORIOUS, but thats just for fun.
The problem with frenzy is again, it alternates weapons. With multistrike that means 3 hits with bloodseeker 3 hits with soul taker. That provides a gap in my survivability in certain maps where im not instant leeching.

I thought up of a couple of scenarios i could do.
#1: use a jeweled/spiraled foil with pure physical DPS + soul taker, run frenzy with LGoH
#2: use the same weapons as #1 but spec vaal pact and use frenzy/life leech
#3: use bloodseeker/soul taker and spec vaal pact so the life leech from bloodseeker is added to soul taker, as well as being instant
#4: use a 6% dps claw/soul taker with vaal pact, just like above.

The basic solution to my problem is just run Dual strike/life leech and use BR with my current weapons. that will give me enough leech to survive anything but 1 shots (since its mathematically an improbability for me to get hit twice in quick succession), since i'd be leeching my entire hp pool almost instantly.
But again, i don't want to use dual strike/BR unless im forced to (then i can), i want to use frenzy.

I obtained a high physical foil in order to test the difference between bloodseeker+added fire damage vs foil+LGoH and the dps was actually lower, despite being quite a bit higher physical damage numbers. The % physical damage bonus from added fire damage is enough to covercome it, and the LGoH is not as effective as the % damage instant life leech via bloodseeker, so i concluded, right now, that i'll just continue to use bloodseeker for the instant leech with frenzy and when i need more leech i'll just add LGoH to give the soul taker's cast turn instant leech also (albeit not as much).


After reading this thread a bit more im almost tempted to respec out of some block chance in order to get more DPS. My current DPS is a little displeasing at 20.3k frenzy with 8 charges and melee on full life, and only 19k with added fire damage. However DPS is really only an issue in parties and against bosses.
I have not run any really high level maps yet to test myself, but any normal map up to level 71 i have run with all map mod variations without a single problem.
I am currently unaware if i'll have serious problems with the lvl 77 piety fight or something of that nature however. I think in that case a higher DPS to get the fight over with would benefit me more than anything else.

Question regarding your calculations on evade/block/dodge and the like: do you know the proper order of operations? My experience seems to suggest accuracy, evasion and dodge are calculated first and if something breaks through then it figures if its blocked or not.
I came to this assumption by standing afk in front of a melee statue while PMing a friend. He would obviously miss and miss and miss then when he did make contact it was blocked. He actually damaged me twice out of like 30 swings or something, but anyway i am curious on the order on which things are calculated.
This would effect on which end things have a diminishing return. Im not real concerned considering i do not have max block, and the max i'd spec for is 60% anyway (30% spell block) so i see the dodge chance as being very significant, as well as allowing my evasion chance to slide lower than 50% as it currently is.