Reave area damage

Should be some simple ones.

1) Does reave do damage in the full area or only the moving edge? I.E Depending on my increase in area do i need to position properly to maximize dps or can i stand and swing?

2) Conc effect or multi? Seems more personnel preference, with conc effect and slayer scion i get around half the screen at 4. Depending on the answer to question 1 i might swap to multi (plus access to awakened).

1) It deals identical damage within the entire area before the whiffy edge graphic. In regards to positioning, just try to get yourself in a relatively open area and point yourself to the largest mass of monsters. The 6 stage (20% quality) reave version should then hit most things in a big frontal cone up to the edge where you see the graphic.

2) Reave is generally played as a chaos or physical version. The chaos version stacks strength with replica alberon's boots. The physical version runs impale passive nodes (and possibly some of your gear bonuses) to get 100% impale, which it combines with the fastest attack speed possible, which of course includes the multistrike support gem.

I ran a 12 mil DPS impale physical reave slayer last patch with support gems of brutality, melee phys, multistrike, pulverize, and impale. With good enough crit running a high crit sword (and the other necessary passives) you can swap pulverize for increased crit damage support.

Auras were flesh and stone, blood and sand, pride, and precision to generally boost attack, AOE, and crit damage. Fortify chance was provided by a rare chest implicit, so you don't have to sacrifice a 6link support slot.

Thanks for the reply!

A lot of what you said towards a higher end build makes sense as they have been thoughts of mine, dreaming where i could take the reave idea. I don't know why but i am loving how it works, hate the mtx tho >.<


https://pobb.in/j6bSuKwOvas6



This is my scuffed homebrew at the moment, < 10d investment, this is my first league so i am trying to find something i like playing and trying to figure out how to build higher end budget characters. The idea was to use haemo gloves for the explode to map fast, and it works so far but lacking massively in the single target department. With conc effect the reave edge matches with my flesh and stone aura size so it makes easy to use and almost half the screen already.


Thoughts on some small changes? I am leaning towards more crit/swap fortify/figure out determ+pride. Thanks again tho! I am new and out of my depth xD

1) The overall preference towards reave is that it is the only physical damage dealing attack skill that has an inherent (with stages) big AOE without requiring additional passive points (tribal fury strike cluster bottom left) or warcry shenanigans (slam abilities). Therefore, having a big beefy AOE and doing as much physical damage within that AOE is probably the best idea. That means lots of phys bonuses, lots of attack speed bonuses, 100% impale chance, extra impale modifiers (if possible from stuff like watcher's eye jewel), and any sources of crit you can get like a sword and passive points.

2) As mentioned before, multistrike is pretty much superior to all other support gems for impale builds, so swap concentrated effect for multistrike, or get a rare fortify chance eldritch implicit (eater of worlds) on your chest so that you can swap the fortify support for multistrike.

3) Your current gear is overall fine. I don't see the point of the attribute amulet because even builds that stack a certain attribute don't use this neck. A "carnage heart" unique amulet with good rolls is probably a better choice. It still gives a lot of raw stats, adds some all res, a bit of damage, and the life leech frees up life leech requirements anywhere else on your gear and tree. Extra attributes for your build generally serve no purpose beyond gear/gem requirements, so stop the attribute passive cluster near the bottom left too.

4) I am not familiar with playing scion but I do not see the advantage in this case. Your current tree is clearly mostly beelining down-left to the duelist/marauder boundary which could be achieved by just direct starting a slayer or gladiator ascendancy. The slayer generally gives you way more raw hit damage for attack builds, while the gladiator is superior defensively (lucky block) and the bleed pops greatly speed up map clearing, while not requiring your current unique glove bleed pop thing (rare gloves are then superior).

5) Relating to point 3, direct starting as a slayer or gladiator ascendancy means you can path your passive tree initially bottom right from the duelist starting area to pick up some powerful passive clusters like mana efficiency, life + ailment avoidance, and spell suppression.

6) You can probably do without purity of the elements. Freeze immunity and chill reduction is handled by fully upgraded brine king pantheon. Shock effect can be greatly diminished through the minor pantheon choice (forgot the name) combined with some flask effects. That leaves ignite ailmet and in most cases you can just power through it with life leech, endurance charges, and life potion. Without purity you can then free up a big chunk of mana reservation for pride (requirement for any phys damage builds), and with some additional reservation efficiency haste aura (unless you get it from merc).

7) Pair vitality and/or precision auras with arrogance support (enlighten still works then too as additional support) to free up some mana reservation. These are the common choices for arrogance support because a flat transfer to life reservation hurts much less to your life pool than a big percentage cut.

8) You need way more block nodes and a different choice of nodes. Block is pretty much king for surviving in maps because a blocked hit is no damage (unless you take glancing blows but that is a terrible keystone). Drop the current pathing to the testudo shield node and pick up the "as the mountain" cluaster near the bottom left. Then pick up the block mastery "attack to spell block conversion". Also pick up the "aggressive bastion" shield cluster further up the bottom left side. Finally, pick up "verastile combatant" keystone near bottom center to convert excess attack block to spell block. If you are a pure gladiator at this point with its lucky block node, you would have 90% attack block and 88% spell block and laugh at most map encounters.

9) Change your eater of worlds eldritch helm implicit to the one with extra mana reservation efficiency. Doing this, doing the arrogance support mentioned before, and picking up the bottom right reservation efficiency passive cluster (leader of the pack) will allow you to fit another 50% reservation aura in.

10) Try to get a "attack damage" (or attack with shield, or sword) cluster jewel with "fuel the fight", "feed the fury", and "Martial prowess" passives. I see that you have fuel the fight but all three passives are huge for an impale build because again the general idea is to attack as fast as possible.

11) You need a source of rage generation for attack builds. Based on your pathing the best choice is probably the "veteran's wrath" cluster near the bottom left. You can easily get this by dropping the nearby attribute cluster.

12) One final point. You need to hyper focus on what your build is about and minimize deviations that go into other scaling factors that provide little if any benefit. This is a general guideline for all POE builds in endgame. In this case, you are impale physical with some bleed pops. The bleed damage is largely irrelevant, so only the bleed chance matters. That means pathing towards something like "physical damage over time multiplier" (near center of tree) is largely pointless compared to picking up something more useful like an extra jewel socket (in your case the one near bottom left near the endurance charge node).

Thanks for the actual good replies! I have been some what wanting this kind of detailed response in regards to a lot of poe, most of the time i just get told im bad and to follow someone elses ideas.



I guess some better explanation that might help you understand certain choices of mine you covered. As this is my first league, semi blind (no guides) but i do have over 1k hours over the years, been practicing in settlers for this league. I wanted to find an archetype i liked (scion) and make it work from league start to top tier min max, and complete my 4 stone, either this league or the next.



What i have settled on is mostly sunder/cyclone, path choices are dictated by future switches in build, purity of elements for example is easier to fit into a build with low budget. I can swap things around to make it work without but i find i lose to much in other areas, swapping out of purity of elements i reckon is more min max. The jewel that sets ailments to shock avoidance etc. I know i am wrong on some ideas but ye where i am at haha.



Anyway - You caused me to go fiddle with the build before i read your post so here is an update. https://pobb.in/Vpqx6Nu_ZTdz . The idea currently is to use pathfinder + crit + proper flask setup for a budget mageblood build, its kinda working on bosses for better uptime so far!. The haeomophila gloves are there for pops in maps mostly, they work great paired with the double curse setup. Future change will be a pricey devastor cluster then swap the gloves out for something good.



O ye and astramentis is just so damn good for making any build work early and normally cheap.

In the end it's your build and you are playing it and the goal is to have fun. I took your most recent linked POB and played around with it with minimal changes, leading to improved offensive and defensive results.

PASSIVES

1) Removed northeast pathing to jewel socket through spell damage nodes (no benefit). You don't need enemy physical damage reduction from unnatural instinct jewel because the physical cluster mastery takes care of that for a single point (see below). The other bonus of this jewel is not worth the loss of passive points.

2) Removed allocation into "battle rouse" mana mastery cluster near middle of the tree. Mana cost reduction of attack abilities is cheaper to achieve through points described below.

3) Change jewel socket near center of tree into a light of meaning version with physical damage bonus. This is pretty cheap still for a few div and a big offensive benefit.

4) Removed nearby attack mastery cost reduction bonus. Not necessary.

5) Going further down left removed the accuracy mastery cluster because accuracy is solved more cheaply through various methods.

6) Going further down-left, switched physical cluster mastery bonus to 50% enemy physical damage reduction removal. This pairs with the notable in this cluster to solve all of your enemy physical damage reduction needs for hits.

7) Removed rage cluster here relating to armor because the "veteran's wrath" rage cluster near bottom left is better use of points.

8) Picked up frenzy and endurance charge nodes near bottom center for big offensive and defensive benefits cheaply.

9) Picked up versatile combatant keystone near bottom center to get spell block with other block changes described below (points 10 and 12).

10) Changed nearby aura mastery bonus to +1 max elemental resistance from reserved life and mana, because you now have reserved life from arrogance precision (see gear point #2 below).

11) Moving up-left across the tree picked up "as the mountain" block cluster with the attack to spell block conversion mastery.

12) Changed "aggressive bastion" shield mastery cluster bonus to extra attack block from your shield block item rating. The previous intimidate mastery was useless because your "awakened melee physical damage" support gem has a chance to intimidate on hit.

13) Picked up nearby "cannibalistic rite" mana mastery cluster and its efficiency mastery. For just three points this solves your attack mana cost issues without requiring other items or masteries or whatever.

14) Picked up endurance charge node nearby since more charge generation should not be an issue for you.

14) All the previous changes freed up a bunch of passive points that I focused on the most efficient further damage gains ("show node power" option near bottom in path of building window)
- I took the "dismembering" crit cluster near the bottom left for 3 points.
- I took the "blade of cunning" sword cluster near the bottom left for another 3 points.

GEAR

1) Changed your helm implicit to "eater of worlds" one with more mana reservation efficiency.

2) Changed precision aura to level 20, linked it to arrogance support and unlinked it from herald of purity. Herald is still there on a separate enlightened gem list.

3) The previous two gear changes allow you to also run "blood and sand" aura in blood stance, which also grants more damage from "flesh and stone". You don't need the sand stance version of "flesh and stone" with your improved defenses. I put the blood and sand with the new herald of purity gem group with its own enlighten gem. Blood stance is now specified in your POB config options.

4) This updated config has 92 unreserved mana which is plenty enough to constantly attack with reave, given your listed mana leech rate and the allocation into the "cannabalistic rite" mana mastery cluster.

SUMMARY

https://pobb.in/36edtsNpsJT0

- you now have 61% spell block in addition to 68% attack block
- you have 2 more endurance charges
- you gained around 2+ million DPS on the "combined DPS" vaal reave number with minimal config changes aside from the mentioned blood stance, this is the path of building number change, not the number listed on the pobb.in export
- you lost some life but this can be overcome through better life rolls on your various rare pieces
- you lost some armor but this is overcome through better rolls on your gear

This is going to take some time to digest and take in, thank you so much, this is what i need. I guess more explanation for some of the gear that looks weird etc is just budget >< i am farming 16s/16.5s on this toon and tweaking it as i go/can afford, ive been testing on shaper with each major update for practice and to see where the build sits. Think with the changes you've noted and some better play i can get my first 4 stone, so thanks again!



The build directions/ideas/my fun - I want to "speed run", or at least catch upto everyone elses pace, with my own build/progression path. It's a fun idea, aspects of efficient campaign leveling, map prog, builds and gear.

The last few months of settlers was figuring out the campaign/what skill and build to use, i haven't had much time figuring out what i like for endgame and how to get to the ideal build i would want. Avoiding the obvious meta skills to add another limit, reave seems decent early so far but slams/cyclone might be easier to gear. I haven't had much experience on the right side yet also.



Lastly: Sand stance i like it cause it's shotgun protection, and melee/spell mitigation, thoughts? And i noticed the phys mit on the pob is around 12k, whats a good number to shoot for early?


E: Absorbed some knowledge and made suggested changes, https://pobb.in/18_B-lkpD55k , bunch of my gear needs fixing (gross paradox) but i am very happy with the tree now thanks! Did a map before and it's actually disgusting now haha.