[3.7] Reave Blitzerker - 2 Mil+ Shaper DPS pre-impale/BiS - League Starter/All Content viable
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This'll be my first written guide on the forums, though I've put up a few build overviews on youtube but was requested a text based format as well, so giving it a shot!
This character was made as a league starter for Legion, not knowing fully what skill to play. I wanted to start off as Flicker, but was uncertain as to the new Frenzy charge generation so I designed a character that could branch off to other skills. Reave has always been one of my favorite skills in PoB, so that is what ended up taking over when Flicker didn't feel very good in the current patch.
Videos
Build Overview/quick map Full Shaper - 5 min including 4 mini bosses - Blade Flurry 2 min Red Elder using Reave First solo Uber Elder - Blade Flurry First 5 way Timeless Legion - Blade Flurry + crash Used Blade Flurry in some of these as they were my first runs and I wasn't sure how well Reave would stack up on the more single target focused fights. As you can see from the red elder though, Reave works out fine and would be potentially pretty insane if I was using the full Impale setup here. I haven't been streaming much recently, but I do from time to time here if you're interested in that kinda thing.
Pros and Cons
Pros:
+ High damage on mediocre gear + Can plug and play just about any skill with some degree of success + Can scale insanely well to late game + Super speeeeedz + Reave is melee but notreally + No longer need Multistrike for Reave to feel awesome Cons: - Can't do reflect maps, and reduced recovery can be sketchy - Slightly squishy, but rarely one shottable - Stacking mechanics can be slow starting in new zones/annoying if they fall off - Melee hype=train too strong, some items can be expensive currently if you want to min/max
PoB
PoB:
https://pastebin.com/TSF8iHBa This is my current character's PoB, not a maximized one by any means. This calculation is without Vaal Warchief up, just normal Warchief, and without Berserk up, or Impale socketed. There is a jewel which you can slot in the far right side socket if you'd like to see the Impale damage for long term goals. (IE: I'm switching when I get a new chest.) TY to Donthecrown for the jewel impale damage idea, go check his guides and stuff.
Bandits/Ascendancy/Pantheon
Alira for bandit, you could also kill all for the skill points but the resists and crit multi are nice. Ascendancy: Crave the Slaughter Rite of Ruin Flawless Savagery Blitz I went this direction just because I really wanted to play with the rage mechanics more, and was not taking crit in my tree until later. I'm not sure if it's the best way to go or not, but it felt fine for me. Flat damage on Flawless Savagery would be huge for levelling early, but does require a bit of crit investment to have decent up time, so up to you. An argument could be made for Aspect of Carnage over Blitz being more damage, but the attack speed feels great for Reave, and we have little downside in comparison to the Aspect of Carnage route. Pantheon: This one's pretty up to you and the content you're doing. I'm currently running Solaris and Ralakesh, but an argument could be made for many different ones.
Gems
6L: Vaal Reave - Ruthless - Rage - Pulverize - Fortify - Impale For QoL and efficient mapping/bossing this has been my link setup of choice. Note: that does not mean the *most* damage, but what feels the best to use to me personally while keeping high damage. Feel free to play with some of these. This is also in the order I'd put them, with Impale being a possible exception. Options here include dropping Fortify, Impale, Pulverize, or Rage for Melee Phys or Maim. Why Rage? I love the faster Rage generation, and as I'll get to shortly, allows me to run Berserk in a "lazy" setup with quite high efficiency. Why Pulverize? A good all around gem, especially for clear with little downside. I prefer the feel of the AoE over Melee Phys. Why Fortify? It's Fortify. You could link this with Leap Slam like the past and try to keep it up, but this is 100% uptime, while losing about 16% more from Melee Phys as the trade off. Up to you, but safer option for sure. Why Impale? Well, Impale scales insanely on beefy targets, giving you upwards of 100%+ more damage. There are some other guides that discuss this more in depth, highly suggest checking them out or just looking at the jewel included in the PoB to see the damage difference as to why. 4l: Vaal Double Strike - Ruthless - Damage on Full Life - Melee Physical Damage These links are a bit flexible, but basically just for Single target/boss nuking. Vaal Double Strike clones are actually crazy damage. Cast When Damage Taken - Immortal Call - Increased Duration - Berserk This setup allows us to run an automated Immortal Call and Berserk when we take about 60% of our life worth of damage overall. Generally speaking, this procs when we take a big hit, giving us big damage reduction from the Immortal Call eating our 3 endurance charges we gain from leaping around. On top of it, it'll proc Berserk which gives us crazy damage/move speed, as well as less damage taken. This may not be ideal, especially for boss farming but for general all purpose play, it feels great when combo'd with our ascendancy and Rage support gem on Reave. You can take Berserk off the link and use it yourself if you'd like, at which point you could run lower level CWDT and IC as well to proc it more often. Auras/Buffs: Blood and Sand Dread Banner Flesh and Stone Pride Dread Banner is great for Impale stacking. Pride is great extra damage all around. Flesh and Stone is both great for survival as well as damage depending on your stance. You can attach maim to it for a better maim at the cost of more mana reservation if you can afford to. Generally while mapping and such I was in sand stance for the blind, and aoe from Blood and Sand. Once I got to a point where my damage felt really strong and I had little risk of death, I just pushed the damage higher by using mostly Blood stance. Blood and Sand is the thing to drop if you can't afford the mana usage. Which is good to note - mana cost on rings/amulet helps with running all these auras until getting a - mana cost chest. Warchief: Vaal Ancestral Warchief - Maim - Multiple Totems Warchief just for the buff it gives us mostly. Also does some pretty crazy work on his own, though. Mobility: Leap Slam - Endurance Charge on Melee Stun Gives us our endurance charges and mobility around the map. Try to leap on top of targets without putting yourself in danger in order to proc the stun. Heavy bossing/Single Target if Reave isn't getting the job done: Swap Vaal Reave for Blade Flurry, and Ruthless for Maim, easy switch.
Stats TL:DR
Stat priority is generally as follows, with more in depth in the gear section: Res cap Life Accuracy cap or as close to 100% as possible without losing out on other stats Crit Multi Flat Phys Crit Chance (I prioritize this a bit higher prior to getting around 50% crit before Blitz/power charges, but up to you)
Gear
Note: My gear is mostly mediocre at best with one or two exceptions, this can be drastically improved upon.
Weapons
Ideally you want two high Phys dps one handed swords. Generally that means Jewelled Foils for high crit/attack speed. I found both of my weapons thankfully, and they've served me well enough until I'm ready to craft better ones. Unique options could include Paradoxica (great end game weapon if you can find good unveils) or Scaeva as a starter. Mainly look for high attack speed/crit chance for suffixes, and high physical damage % or flat physical damage prefixes. From there you can craft on one or two things you need if SSF. Otherwise if you want to multimod your own, there are plenty of guides to explain that since I'll screw it up.
Helmet
For helmet you're looking for mainly High life and whatever resists you need. Ideally you can get a +40% Reave damage or Blade Flurry damage enchant armor or armor/dex base and craft it with fossils. If you want to craft with fossils use Pristine for life rolls and Jagged for "Nearby Enemies take 9% increased Physical Damage 9% increased Physical Damage taken" as a potential roll. Good to note that you can get some stats here if necessary too, like int. Unique options could include Abyssus if you want to go full glass cannon, or maybe Starkonja's.
Chest
You really want a 6l ASAP here. I bought this base for around 30c, then used a few Pristine fossils to get high life rolls. You're mainly looking for high life, and whatever resists you can get. Unique options include: Carcass Jack, Belly of the Beast, potentially Loreweave. Would not really recommend these though personally as it's expensive to get these 6L when crafted rares are better. End game goals are a crafted chest with Pristine and Serrated fossils on an ilvl 86 Elder base that has -15 mana cost to socketed attacks, socketed gems are supported by lvl 1 Maim, and attacks have 1-2% increased critical strike chance. And high life, of course. Maim and increased crits alone would give me around 550k dps currently, for reference.
Gloves
Gloves are pretty standard. High life, attack speed if possible, and as much resistance as possible. Spiked Gloves base preferred. If you're not 100% hit capped, maybe some accuracy. Unique options include: Tombfist, maybe others. I just found a Spiked Gloves base and threw a few essences/Pristine fossils until I got something I was happy with.
Boots
For boots we want high life/resist rolls yet again. If you can get movement speed as well, that'd be great. You leap slam so fast though that it isn't super necessary, just huge QoL for stepping out of mechanics and running around hideout. Boot enchant should be life/mana leech most likely. I still need to get this myself, and suggest farming Merciless lab instead of Uber lab because the .1% isn't worth the time investment. IMO
Amulet
High life/resists if needed. Here I'm also looking to pickup any stats like dex/int that may be needed as well. High flat physical rolls, hit chance, crit multi, and crit chance are all good options. Fit in whatever your budget allows, as multiples of these desired stats start to get very expensive.
Rings
For rings I'm using one shaper ring for the assassin's mark on hit. This gives us our power charge generation to keep our crit chance high even with Blitz charges. Mostly looking for that + high life, and whatever resists/stats we may need yet again. Ideally you can also get some flat physical, attack speed, or crit/hit as well. A good unique option to pair here would be Mark of the Elder, as it will give a huge attack damage increase when paired with the Assassin's Mark ring.
Belt
For belt we're mainly looking at high life/resist rolls yet again. Getting a Stygian vice base to put an abyss jewel in for say, onslaught or phasing on kill would be a great option.
Flasks
Lots of options with flasks. Diamond flask being the most important, then Lion's Roar. Taste of Hate, Atziri's Promise, Sin's Rebirth are all good damage/defensive options. I went with this current setup while making sure to keep a freeze/bleed immunity available for now. Ideally you want shock and/or curse immune flasks too, but I haven't found either to be a huge problem this league as of yet at least. Note: flask options are also why I don't use Brutality in my gem links. Some people do, it's up to you but remember certain flasks won't give you benefit if you can't do anything but phys damage thanks to brutality. Use 3* Hillock on Research for max flask quality from Betrayal when you can.
Jewels
Get a Tempered Flesh for Between Barbarism and Juggernaut, it's really good. Beyond that, look for a Lethal Pride that has good bonuses near the Duelist start. A good one of these is probably better than anything else, and is why my socket shows empty. Mine has a bit of extra life, some crit/crit multi, and extra phys damage which is also why I have cloth and chain.
Levelling
I'm not gonna do a step by step tree, but for levelling just find something that feels good to use which is melee based, find a good weapon, and you'll probably be successful in this patch. I used Perforate in mostly sand stance for quite awhile. I'd wait to switch to Reave until much later with more attack speed, but up to you. Make sure when filling out the tree to get a lot of your life, with a mix of damage and don't go too heavily one or the other unless you're more experienced and you should be just fine. I also would leave sword/dual wield specific nodes till later, that way you can use whatever good weapon you find whether or not it's an axe, mace, sword, 2h, 1h, doesn't matter. As you approach mapping/end of game you can start specializing more closely. Think that about sums it up. I'm sure I missed a bunch of stuff but feel free to hit me up with any questions if you have any. Reave seems like a really strong skill for the current legion mechanics, and might even be a bit underappreciated since none of the big streamers picked it up yet. So, hopefully this helps someone a bit if they're interested in this sort of playstyle as it has worked out nicely for me. Last edited by Socioz#5988 on Jun 22, 2019, 9:05:36 AM Last bumped on Jul 4, 2019, 8:02:06 PM
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i have a question. since im having really made a build of my own ever. but was thinking about trying out same build as this just as scion and then going zerker and slayer what do you think about? only problem is i lose blitz :(
whats your thoughs about that idea? |
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" Blitz is the fun part about playing Zerker, don't do that! |
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