Duelist - [3.8 - Blight] The Bloody Tornado Gladiator | From League Starter to Low-Budget MF - Forum

Version History: 3.8 Blight

This build got a widespread buff! Bleed damage got improved by roughly 15%, evasion as a mechanic got buffed, and with anointment we can pick up Growth and Decay for even more damage. I was able to run this as a league starter with absolutely no problems at all by starting with Puncture + Lacerate dual-wielding swords, then transitioning to Tornado Shot + Puncture once I was able to pick up a decent 5-link bow (I got mine at around level 45). The only nerf was, ironically, a buff to Lavianga's Spirit - the 100% increased recovery rate means that the duration of free skills was halved. This just means you have to keep on top of it more, so it's really no more than a minor annoyance.

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Have you, the average PoE-er, ever thought to yourself "Man, I should really try to buckle down and make a dedicated farmer this league", only to have your soul crushed after you spend your entire currency stash achieving a lackluster, damageless Deadeye? Maybe you saw the abyss jewel nerfs and cried out in agony knowing the top-tier jewels would become even harder to find and even more expensive? Maybe you just want a little variety in your build roster, so you can say you're a hipster who runs a bleed-build in the modern meta?
Well, boy oh boy do I have a little abomination for you!

Overview:
This build, simply put, uses Tornado Shot to apply massive bleeding DoTs to mob packs which results in lovely bloody explosions and quick multi-screen monster death, and uses Puncture to deal even MORE bleeding damage on tougher mobs. This is achieved through the Gladiator ascendancy's affinity for bleed, the Crimson Dance Notable, a Delve-modded bleed bow, and a passive tree that gets several strong bleed modifiers alongside a healthy dose of movespeed & evasion. Don't let PoB's janky DPS meter fool you, this thing is capable of doling out some intense damage at all stages of the game.

TL;DR PoB: https://pastebin.com/Z4iqRGcd
And basic information:

Spoiler

Ascendancy Order

Pantheon: Soul of Lunaris and Soul of Garukhan

Bandits: Kill them all

Gem links for Tornado Shot: Tornado Shot-Vicious Projectiles-Deadly Ailments-Brutality-Chance to Bleed-GMP. Swap Vicious Projectiles for Maim or Mirage Archer once you get Vicious Projectiles on your elder bow.

Gem links for Puncture(Single Target DPS for particularly tanky rares/unique mobs): Puncture-Vicious Projectiles-Deadly Ailments-Brutality-Chance to Bleed-Swift Affliction. If you have a 5-link QotF, drop Swift Affliction.

Aura links: Enlighten-Grace-Herald of Purity-Flesh & Stone

CWDT: CWDT-Steelskin

Misc gems (fit wherever you can): Flame Dash, Flame Golem, Vaal Haste

The Pros:
+Takes VERY little currency compared to Deadeye MF builds to get started. You can craft a red-tier viable bow for less than 40c!

+Has Top-Tier clearspeed, rivaled only by traditional Deadeye MFers.

+You inflict bleed on everything; this combined with Gratuitous Violence means every bleeding corpse explodes! No more huge porcupine volleys or delve-bug-death-bombs, not to mention it's SO SATISFYING to watch entire packs blow up in unison.

+Straight up gets a pseudo-copy of Tailwind (without the evasion, but still!)

+Has a built-in solution to the mana problems that tornado shot MF builds usually run into.

+Has amazing Blight clear - the high hp mobs combined with the incredibly high density means a single bleedsplosion can wipe out an entire conga line.

The Mehs:
>This isn't a completely separate creation from the standard tornado shot MF-ing Deadeye, so the overall gameplay is basically identical.

>Maxing out IIQ & Movespeed means you lose a lot of your defensive capabilities - you're a squishy evasion-based bullet after all - but you can easily shift to a more tanky design to suit your fancy. Even then, you can reliably maintain >60% evasion and >40% dodge chance.

The Cons:
-Doesn't have the absolute TOP clearspeed that traditional Deadeye MF builds have.

-Getting your damage up forces you to go all the way to the left side of the passive tree, locking you out of maxing evasion/movespeed/flask effect.

-Every time you die a little twinge pulls on your heart as you remember you're playing what is traditionally an extremely tanky class.

-MF uniques will always be expensive, so ramping up your IIQ still bleeds your pockets dry.

-Cannot run phys reflect maps; bleed avoid maps are doable but can be frustrating at higher values.

Playstyle:
1. Throw out a tornado shot to drain your mana
2. Immediately follow up with 12345'ing your flasks
3. Start running through everything throwing tornado shots into the middle of packs/at your feet/at rare mobs
4. Pop Vaal Haste whenever possible
5. Use Puncture to take out tougher rares/bosses
6. Repeat steps 1-5 until all that's left in the map are blood puddles

My equipment at the time of this guide, which easily runs through T14 maps:

Spoiler

So, how do we do it? (Note: all items/prices are from Legion League)

Spoiler

At the center of this build are these flasks:

Spoiler

Divination Distillate gives a MASSIVE 50% to all elemental resistances and a huge boost to both IIQ and IIR, but it's a hybrid flask which means if both your health and mana max out it immediately stops.
Keeping your health below 100% is not practical and liable to, well, kill you, so we instead use the Soul Catcher flask to lock our mana below full.
Now we have the problem of our mana running out; you can solve this by giving up a gem slot for blood magic, or by giving up a flask slot for Lavianga's Spirit. This mana flask makes all skills cost zero mana while it is refilling your pool - but since your mana is pinned in place by Soul Catcher, you instead get three seconds of FREE SKILLS.
Then you have your typical Adrenaline Quicksilver and Reflexive Evasion flasks for a healthy boost of speed.
As an added bonus, this also means you're constantly regenerating HP from your Divination Distillate, so you've essentially got 100HP/S life regen that works even on no-regen maps!

Always put your flasks in the order I have them lined up - this minimizes your chances of accidentally popping Lavianga's Spirit/ Divination Distillate before locking in your mana with Soul Catcher and wasting their charges/ leaving you exhausting your mana pool in a single attack.

Finally, none of these flasks are expensive at all - 5c can easily get you the full set at decent values.

And for the actual bleed part of the build, this weapon:

You can easily craft a bow like this for only about 20-30c, by buying an ilvl >80 6-link white bow base (preferably an Imperial Bow or a Maraketh Bow), alching it, and then spamming corroded fossils until you get the 60% chance for 100% more bleed damage line combined with a high-tier %phys or flat phys damage roll. You can then manually craft the missing phys damage line and bam, just like that you have a 6-link monster that can carry you through most of the Atlas with ease.

When you're rolling in the oodles of currency you're hauling in, you can upgrade this to an elder ilvl >80 6-link, with both the more-bleed damage line and the supported-by-vicious-projectiles line. This is far more up to chance than the normal craft, though, so it's difficult to give a price range to it - don't blow your entire bank account trying to get this upgrade!

Before you craft your bow at the end of the campaign, just use Quill Rain>Death's Harp>A high damage rare bow to level. It'll all work fine.

For the purposes of tallying expenses, we'll go with a conservative estimate of 35c for a good endgame bow.

You also get to use an old classic, Drillneck!

It gives you everything you want for this build: piercing arrows, attack speed, some life and evasion, and a 50% increase to ailments on pierced targets!
If you really want, you can use a sufficiently powerful rare quiver or Rigwald's Quills, but the huge damage boost Drillneck provides for practically no cost is extremely alluring. 3c will get you what you need.

You want the corruption "Curse enemies with level 10-12 Vulnerability on hit" for your gloves - you can use essentially any gloves so long as they have that corruption, but you'll want Sadima's Touch when you're maxing your IIQ. You can easily grab a non-perfect one up for less than 10c.

For leveling, you can use Ryslatha's Coil (20c)

for a substantial DPS boost, but you should switch over to Bisco's Leash for MF - it's one of the more expensive IIQ-to-cost uniques at 95c, so save it for after your other slots are filled.

For your helmet, always aim for a rare with life, resistances, intelligence, and an open slot to craft "projectiles pierce an additional target" onto for less than 5c. You can buy a helmet that has the tornado shot fires an additional secondary projectile/ two additional secondary projectiles (the difference in even adding just one projectile is insane) for roughly 20-30c.

For your chestpiece, you should use a QotF

A 5 link will suffice for Puncture, so you can fill your chestpiece for just 1c (11c if you jeweller's touch it to 5-links).

For boots, use Goldwyrm for MF (1ex, rather expensive),

a pair of Darkray Vectors (1c), or a decent rare for 5c.

Aim for the lab enchant "10% increased movement speed if you haven't been hit recently", if possible.

Your rings should be fit with decent rares for pre-MF for around 20c

and 4ex will get you two Pariahs/well-rolled Ventor's for MF.

For your amulet, use a decent rare amulet (with IIQ on it, if you can afford it), for anywhere from 10-80c.

Of all your slots, this is the one that becomes the most expensive when switching to the MF variant, so feel free to just keep this as a large life/resist/damage boost even if you're going for MF.

You should also socket a Lioneye's Fall (75c)

Right here

This location gives you access to two more nodes that contain "Bleeding you inflict deals Damage 15% faster" - which equates to a ton of damage on your bleeds. Not to mention they're actually great damage nodes in the first place, and are right along the path to Resolute Technique. You also get 10% chance to gain onslaught for 4 seconds on kill - so, permanent free uptime on onslaught while mapping!

Final tally: 1194c for MF setup (7ex) and 244c for the non-MF setup (1.4ex).
If you get a single exalt while leveling, you've practically paid for 70% of the basic build!

That's all you really need for the core of this build, really. Bleed is very poorly explained in terms of proper calculation, but at its roots it's pretty simple. Speaking of calculations...

Here is my calculated Tornado Shot bleed DPS

And here is my calculated Puncture bleed DPS.
Both of these calculations are using the equipment found above - the numbers could go much higher once you pick up an elder-modded bow.

Useful Links:
I'm shamelessly plugging DankawSL's bleed damage calculator; you can punch in information from PoB's calculations tab and get a proper DPS estimation (one that doesn't look like PoB's pitiful 10-30k Bleed DPS!) All credit for this tool goes to them, and you can follow the link within the document to find them and the OG bleed build they made it for!

PoE DB - for looking up specific corruptions, delve mods that you can't see in PoB, and anything else related to item lines.

Here's the build in action at T2 maps

And here it is at T12 maps!

And Finally...
Thank you for reading! This is my first time posting a build of any kind, so I'd love to hear suggestions/feedback/formatting advice. I made this in the dead of night so I may have glossed over a few mistakes - I'll fix them asap as they get pointed out. Cheers, Exile!

Last edited by Despi on Sep 8, 2019, 5:21:22 AM

Last bumped on Sep 28, 2019, 10:44:41 AM