3542

I have been dawdling a lot at 8 hours only lvl 24. But I am playing supercautious hardcore as my first bow character ever, so I know I have no idea what I am doing and haven’t planned skills or tree at all beforehand. Maybe I should do that.

Edit: more than a dozen chars over lvl 90 already, hahah

3543

Rip Cleave dream. Switched to Sunder because the clear speeds simply can’t compare. Also got a little lucky and dropped an exalt which I traded for Jack The Axe + Bringer of Rain. ~18k dps at level 68, needless to say I’m flying through the leveling process. One of the strongest league starts for me personally.

3544

Down again.

3545

Was able to get into DC. Texas showing down.

3546

Trying out an Essence Drain Trickster for my first toon. Level 35 so far after about 6 hours, just hit Dried Lake. When you get the rotation right, mobs sure die pretty quickly, though bosses can be a little slow. As per usual, way behind the gear curve as I only bother sorting my stash once damage and survivability start to feel compromised. Not been particularly fruitful on the currency front so far, either.

3547

I’m loving the map rebalance. I’ve always enjoyed running less popular indoor maps like necropolis but the new exp distribution now makes them a viable option for grinding.

3548

Boy, Essence Drain does some damage. Might be the smoothest run to Oriath I have had.

3549

I’ve started many ED characters but I always run out of steam before they get going. My memory of these characters is that in the beginning it’s a little clunky (I have vague memories that you cast Contagion then ED, right?). Is that the way it works still? Also, around what level does it get rolling?

3550

Got my HC SSF Sunder Duelist past Kitva part 1 today. I’m more or less following this build, but playing SSF means taking a few extra nodes to cover gear limitations. Diamond Skin/Cloth and Chain for resists, for instance, and Spirit Void for mana leech.

Despite those gear limits, the only real danger has been Kitava and an encounter with Quetzerxi (boss in corrupted Abandoned Dam area). The lightning spam of the latter nearly got me as I hadn’t yet maxed out my resists at that point.

Should be interesting going through Acts 6-10, as I only played in the regular league last time. First time through on a HC character.

3551

Really liking the abyss cracks. Nice challenge and reward system.

3552

Looks like some kind of meme build to me. I don’t get duelists who path to the right to ranger area. Not to mention all those wasted pathing nodes just to get Bloodless. And his gem choices - ???. Why concentrated effect. Melee on full life??? I get it, those make dps look nice on the charsheet but in practice there are much better options available. Especially at only 33% block chance, and that’s with 2x Scaeva equipped (8% block in offhand)!

Also Hatred, HoA and conc effect all have pretty steep dex and/or int requirements. I’m surprised this guy didn’t shove Blasphemy in there too. He did go with Arctic Armor though, wow.

And banking on all those flask nodes as a RT duelist, I have to ask again - WHY. And why did he ignore one of the best dw clusters in the game that is right there under the duelist start?

Here’s my planned tree: link

I got pretty much everything I wanted with this tree. All the block nodes, all damage, life, and jewels within reach. Quite flexible too, you can easily drop some nodes and extend the tree to the scion life wheel or to some extra jewel nodes. Also very easy to adapt to a different weapon or dual wield (don’t forget to swap Violent Retaliation for Outmatch and Outlast too if that’s your preference). I used a similar build in the last league with two swords and it worked great (50% unbuffed block, almost capped with Rumi’s). And BM negates all the mana issues. Extra elemental damage (HoA, Hatred) on a 1h RT build is there to pad the dps stats, in practice the numbers fall off a cliff when it actually matters (boss fights).

Gearing is extremely easy because I go full phys so most of my gems are red - currently using Bringer of Rain (MPD, FA) with Brutality, Sunder, Chance to Bleed and Multistrike. You can swap CtB for Ruthless but I ran the numbers in PoB and they’re about the same, plus I prefer a less spiky dps curve. If you’re using a standard 5 or 6L instead you drop FA first or eventually replace it with Ruthless. Conc effect is reserved for people who think that getting inordinate amount of int on your gear is somehow fun.

In other slots I use Leap Slam + Fortify + FA, Vulnerability (self cast) + Blood rage + Increased Duration, Enduring Cry in a random slot. I still have to slot in cwdt + tempest shield to reach the block cap if I get hit.

edit: forgot to include totem. Ancestral warchief + brutality + melee physical + bloodlust.

3553

Pretty much. Group some mobs, throw some contagions, fire off ED then watch them all die. Drop more contagions to try to keep the ED debuff going if you can. Drop a Wither totem on elites/bosses.

Started to feel nice I guess mid-30’s. Still only 3 linked on Contagion and ED for the moment. It has felt like a fast run thanks to the Victario’s Flight boots that were nice enough to drop. The Karui Ward Ammy is certainly helping as well.

Need to read up on the mechanics to optimise my rotations though, I don’t always feel I am getting it quite right, or doing everything right to spread the ED debuff efficiently.

3554

Thanks for the info, @Bateau. I’ll probably incorporate most of your suggestions, since I haven’t started going to the right on the tree yet anyway. Well, other than Spirit Void, and if I decide to go Blood Magic I’d be ditching that anyway. I’ll miss Hatred and Herald of Ash, but it’s a reasonable tradeoff to avoid mana management.

3555

My last character ran ED with 3x totems (blight and wither). Pretty crazy.

3556

You can grab Hematophagy (next to Crimson Dance) instead of pathing to the right to the leech nodes. I didn’t put Hema on my tree that I linked above because I’m still testing it - so far it feels pretty great for single target leech though, which is why I initially took it anyway. For regular mapping it’s not needed because axe leech nodes + blood rage are enough.

3557

My view of it is that it’s boiling down to trading damage/life for block/armor. Perfectly acceptable.

Plugging in a skeleton into PoB has the comparison at

  • +15% more DPS (before the ele conversion stuff, which is still useful)
  • +8% more life (even with your tree taking Blood Magic)
  • -25% block (100% more, so it is a big deal)
  • -30% armor (but armor is useless)

Also this is why PoB is really fucking amazing. Which also would show that the south DW cluster is really shit and you should travel east if you’re DWing =p

(also @ineffablebob )

3558

Are you comparing my 1h+s tree to the his dw or? I don’t get it.

Give me pastebins.

If you’re going right to the ranger as duelist just for the dps then all I have to say is - play a raider instead.

3559

https://pastebin.com/13jkaDxW

Have at it. Do need to futz around with switching items and trees (can do that on the bottom to the left of reset, just found out about that).

True that the original build doesn’t seem to be making the most of the gladiator ascendancy, so it probably might have been better as a raider traveling west.

3560

I think I prefer the one-hand-and-shield anyway, now that it’s been suggested. Playing HC, the extra defense is well worth the reduced DPS. In a regular league, I might go the other way.

3561

I threw the nodes around a bit, added auras (+ele weakness) to your version, then compared to bleed and the bleed pulls ahead in dps by a few k (even more after you factor in vulnerability). I think you forgot to account for Crimson Dance in your original comparison, you have to multiply that number by 8. It basically comes down to investing 100 int+ to get a little more frontloaded damage (although with 100% ctb the bleed stacks up fast) and the ability to use elemental/chaos flasks.

If I feel like it I’ll create an item template from my old dw gladiator later so we can play around with PoB a bit.

@ineffablebob: if you want to be extra safe you can also swap sunder with cleave. One of the quests gives you access to threshold jewels and Overwhelming Odds is one of them.