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

Dual strike, lighting strike and any skill without weapon restriction, don't benefit from this NEARLY as much as reave/blade flurry.

With dual strike you are attacking with both weapon at same time, with lightning strike you will alternate between main hand and offhand, and stat sticks usually have very low PDPS.

Reave/blade flurry using main hand only (offhand is "turned off" with a mace/axe, so you can put all of your stat allocations on that into extra elemental damage, global critical multiplier, area damage etc) is just so ridiculously OP. Imagine a 400DPS mainhand, and +60% extra elemental damage offhand and you get something like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DC8QNHikg48

Even without crazy gear, I just can't justify using dual strike when this kind of cheese exists. The "extra" keyword broke the skill balance for melee.

You seem to have changed your layout a bit so I can't find your flask guide anymore. strange

So would you say using reave is effective then? Just switch out 2 skills like in the said video?

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Say_Ten wrote:

if you're 67 already, i would buy a cheap BoR and use that since, when compared with a 4L belly, you will probably double your DPS.

Wouldn't that increase mana cost of DS a lot? I currently don't need that much of a DPS. I will optimize it when I get to mapping.

Anyway, I got this for 3 alts

Rarity: Rare
Demon Trap
Cloth Belt
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Requirements:
Level: 48
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Item Level: 76
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24% increased Stun and Block Recovery
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11% reduced Enemy Stun Threshold
+273 to Armour
+7 to maximum Energy Shield
+89 to maximum Life
+30% to Fire Resistance
+38% to Lightning Resistance
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Corrupted

Nothing special, but enough to cap my resists

I also got a Le Heup with 28% resists and +26 to all stats.

EDIT: Just tried BoR, and got my damage to 72000

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PrimusLightNova wrote:

You seem to have changed your layout a bit so I can't find your flask guide anymore. strange

So would you say using reave is effective then? Just switch out 2 skills like in the said video?

Give reave and/or blade flurry a try with bloodseeker and offhand mace/axe/sceptre with at least 30% extra fire/cold/lightning as elemental, plus 20% area damage or global critical multiplier. You should be able to buy both under 5 chaos combined. Try to play with the filters a little on poe.trade to get highest possible elemental damage bonus on offhand without jacking up the price too much.

You will do more single target damage than dual strike with reave and much more AOE damage/range.

You will do 1.5-2x more single target damage as dual strike with blade flurry depend on how you manage the charge to 6 / release cycle.

It is just not possible for dual strike (or any other melee skill) to compete with an offhand stat stick that does not get used for the main attack. So you have a super high physical DPS mainhand that gets boosted by a super low physical DPS offhand with huge extra elemental damage and takes no penalty. It is the best melee set up by a long mile until it gets nerfed.

Same exact tree as Say_Ten is fine, although I am really liking swapping out some points for acrobatic talents, I don't notice the damage loss as much as durability increase.

I also like blasphemy and enfeeble aura instead of herald of ash (the video suggested temporal chain aura, not sure which one I like better, with blood seeker if I don't get one shot, I don't die).

Finally I put fortify into my main attack skill so I can blindly map like a Champion. We have a squishy class and getting hit without the buff up is one of the biggest reason for death. When you are grinding maps it is very easy to miss a whirlwind. Getting hit without the buff up is the biggest cause of death.

Leveling is all about avoiding deaths, so I love this defensive set up for an offensive class. Damage is taken care of with reave/blade flurry + stat offhand.

what do you think about the Noxious Strike node, its kinda synergy with wasp net

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Any advice using this build against Chimera boss? Every other bit of content under this seems pretty easy but I am struggling hard against the waves of summons. The boss itself is a joke but the summons seem to deal 95%+ of my health and stun into a fatal followup from another, and they all move ridiculously fast, have instant leap attacks, and are so tanky I can't fight them with lightning strike. Dual strike seems to be instant suicide due to how hard they hit/stun.

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BigBlappa wrote:

Any advice using this build against Chimera boss? Every other bit of content under this seems pretty easy but I am struggling hard against the waves of summons. The boss itself is a joke but the summons seem to deal 95%+ of my health and stun into a fatal followup from another, and they all move ridiculously fast, have instant leap attacks, and are so tanky I can't fight them with lightning strike. Dual strike seems to be instant suicide due to how hard they hit/stun.

do you have pierce on LS? if not, try reave. its definitely easier to thin them out before trying to faceroll. otherwise you could try the bloodseeker setup and see if you can faceroll with that.

Hi. Can you pls put your final skill tree in the first post pls?
Because i tried to rebuild but you have some differences between 100p skill tree and your "passive skill tree".

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msearch88 wrote:

Hi. Can you pls put your final skill tree in the first post pls?
Because i tried to rebuild but you have some differences between 100p skill tree and your "passive skill tree".

the "final" tree is at the top of the guide. did you see that?