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

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hitmantb wrote:

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.

just bought a stat stick with area damage, crit multi, accuract and %phys added as fire...and a 20/20 reave gem...and the tooltip dps is still lower than with 2x wasp nest using DS. also IMO the AOE isn't that good anymore...with carcass jack and some nodes it used to go offscreen...now it reaches about the same distance (maybe a little further) as frost blades...and if you are attack in place and using multistrike, you can still hit whatever you need to with frost blades. honestly reave might not be a bad secondary attack for clearing maps though.

overall i think it works and its just a matter of preference when it comes down to it. reave is less damage but hits everything, and the only other thing like that with this build is LS with pierce. LS doesn't auto target. another option is to go back to the original spec before might and influence and support with melee splash, which would still give you a ton of damage but better AOE.

i feel bad for everyone who never knew legacy BoR + the pre-nerf AOE. there was really almost no need to use anything but DS ever.

The in-game tooltip for offhand stat stick is very off. It thinks offhand is being used for alternative attacks, and penalizes it for low physical damage. In reality the hack is the offhand is turned off and you only use main hand, and double dip.

I suggest use POB to see the true damage. Reave will do more single target than dual strike and AOE range/damage. Blade flurry will do double single target damage of dual strike.

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Say_Ten wrote:

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.

Sadly not. I sit there refreshing my BoR filter every 5 min when I'm playing (any DS, LS pierce, HoA, BR, 0 stat requirements) but I've still not seen one. I (un?)fortunately got a flicker strike frenzy dmg on my perfectly rolled BoR so while it might sell it doesn't really help that.

I'm finding the damage not penetrating isn't really mattering that much though, the waves of adds he summons 1 on 1 can almost kill me due to the raw damage. Each phase of the boss itself takes around 3 minutes for me but his attacks are super easy to avoid.

The mobs however just get on you so fast it's dangerous to send out a single (multistrike) lightning strike. I kited them for around 5 minutes without getting hit with lightning strikes when it was safe, but I think it's purely a dps number problem.

Hi i've been using your build as a choice of my first character's build
i just played POE since bestiary release

i've enjoyed so much the playstyle Thanks for the guide its starter friendly

anw i'm currently at lv90 but i'm having difficulties about the survivability
i know i'm still new to the game, sometimes maybe i died bcs of my own mistakes about the mechanics.
but could you help how could i upgrade the build on gears wise for better experience (i've unlocked my profile so you can check on POB), like more DPS without losing survivability...

i was once using touch of anguish and wasp nest but the leech doesn't coverup on bosses
so i decide to use bloodseeker+scourge less few dps but huge survivability boost, tho i still feel squishy compared to my friend using jug(i know that Jug is OP and meta on 3.2) they had higher dps yet even of course higher survivability, i expect this build supposed to have higher dps rather than jug with sacrifice of survivability

im about to bought/craft pairs of 400+ pdps claws but i worry about the survivability if i ditch the bloodseeker + tested on POB 400+pdps claws doesn't give that significant increases on dps compared to the prices i spent

bcs i'm still often died at tier 13+ maps by the mobs
and the life's bar kept making me heartattack everytime IC explode mostly down to 15-25% hp

eventho i already killed whitemap's guardians and elder but i doubt i can do SAP with current dps and survivability since sometimes i got 1 shotted by izaro uber if i didn't facetank him or goddess's green rains leftover after izaro is killed bcs i got no one to leech

Thanks again fot the time.

1) Acrobatic + Phase acrobatic (get rid of the INT points to that claw node, we have enough damage already)
2) Enfeeble (or temporal chains) + blasphemy
3) Use blade flurry or reave with bloodseeker + stat off hand (+50% extra elemental damage / area damage)
4) Most importantly, time to graduate to 6L armor with Starkhonja

My character is 88 and clears tier 13 with eyes closed. Almost same tree as yours.

I bought a new claw yesterday. İt had 7.6 crit and 1.9 APS. The pdps was 290 something. I then divine orbed it, the aps became higher and my pdps too but my crit went a bit lower. I am at 1.94 APS 7.2 crit and 300+ pdps.
Compared to my 1 chaos worth touch of anguish my dps barely went up. Didn't change at all almost (from 26.5 to 27.5)
The claw was worth 1.5 exalted.

I also don't seem to be as tanky as I thought.
4.8k hp, almost 2k armor and evasion i forgot.
Something I'm missing here? I know I need to grab 2 more jewel sockets in the tree but that'll come as I level up.

I do keep my potions up as well.

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PrimusLightNova wrote:

I bought a new claw yesterday. İt had 7.6 crit and 1.9 APS. The pdps was 290 something. I then divine orbed it, the aps became higher and my pdps too but my crit went a bit lower. I am at 1.94 APS 7.2 crit and 300+ pdps.
Compared to my 1 chaos worth touch of anguish my dps barely went up. Didn't change at all almost (from 26.5 to 27.5)
The claw was worth 1.5 exalted.

I also don't seem to be as tanky as I thought.
4.8k hp, almost 2k armor and evasion i forgot.
Something I'm missing here? I know I need to grab 2 more jewel sockets in the tree but that'll come as I level up.

I do keep my potions up as well.

your life would be higher if you prioritized it in the tree. you have all the DPS for the most part right now and you're only level 84. you could refund some points and lose some damage but get a lot more life.

i would start with nullification and the two ES/EVA nodes next to it...that's 3 points. and i would also consider ditching claws of the falcon and the INT nodes for now...that's another 5 points. you could take Constitution and the two jewel sockets you are missing instead. you'd probably have roughly the same DPS, actually, since you can get rare jewels that are OP.

for tooltip dps, the base crit chance is important. i would take .4% base crit over 10pdps in a heartbeat. why did you decide to divine it?

compared with ToA, you are getting a lot more attack speed, which is more defensive in terms of getting life back. you need more life so you get stunned less.

you're also still using a mana flask but you have no basalt flask and you could also consider ditching the 2nd life flask you have for a good stibnite.

life rolls on your gear aren't as high as they could be and your left ring, specifically, could be a lot better (look for flat phys and accuracy). belt is ok but i would buy something with at least the same amount of life and tri resists. this way you can brick that one with a vaal orb with hopes you roll an endurance charge on it and then sell it to juggernaut fanboys.

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hitmantb wrote:

1) Acrobatic + Phase acrobatic (get rid of the INT points to that claw node, we have enough damage already)
2) Enfeeble (or temporal chains) + blasphemy
3) Use blade flurry or reave with bloodseeker + stat off hand (+50% extra elemental damage / area damage)
4) Most importantly, time to graduate to 6L armor with Starkhonja

My character is 88 and clears tier 13 with eyes closed. Almost same tree as yours.

belly + starkonja would be considered,
but BF and reave would make the build out of the context
i'm curious how to upgrade the gears without changing the LS and DS, i'm in love with the skills is too much already

thanks for the suggestion anw

Is this build still good and relevant?
I mean it was posted in 2016.
Life changes :)
Let me know if the build is still good/worst/better/usable etc :D

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Clarzk wrote:

belly + starkonja would be considered,
but BF and reave would make the build out of the context
i'm curious how to upgrade the gears without changing the LS and DS, i'm in love with the skills is too much already

thanks for the suggestion anw

i agree for the most part but i am biased

if i remember correctly, me and another guy tried The Scourge out but it didn't seem worth it, DPS wise. You really just need some more life on your gear. Also, I would ditch Rotgut for Rumi's 100% and also consider getting rid of that eternal life flask for a basalt.

your jewels are ok but could be better with some life on them

as far as skills, the major ass raping we took was when they changed LS to give % lightning damage instead of % chance to pierce per % quality. realistically, LS does so much damage you don't NEED pierce but it fucking CRUSHES when you have pierce. this is why i have bought a couple of BoRs in the past leagues with this enchant. LS is great for damage and it will cover the screen... but the main disadvantage to LS is that it gets blocked by shit and can't go up or down parts of the map. if you happen to get an elder weapon with built in ancestral call (and multistrike is a huge bonus), you can throw LS in your weapon and now it's 5L and even crazier. too bad they fucking ruined the sound of LS as well. it used to sound brutal and now it just sounds like a powder puff.

frost blades is good because it auto attacks nearby monsters when it chains. also, it doesn't give a fuck about up, down or around corners. for this reason, over the last couple of leagues i have been switching back and forth between LS and FB depending on the map. think maps like gorge for LS and cells for FB.

the kicker here, too, is that for certain maps that have corners but don't go up and down (like cells), generally speaking you can whirl in and basically one shot everything with DS. using FB just provides some additional standoff/safety.

currently i'm using frost blades the majority of the time because i have a 40% dual strike damage enchant...but i did buy an LS pierce one as well. so i could swap to that helm and lose some DS damage and then have the option to use either secondary skill based on the map, but ideally i would like to just find another elder claw like i did last season.