Dual-Wielding Melee "Dream" Ranger — Possible in early access? Giant's Blood Pathfinder? (WIP!)

Wanted to post an update as I close in on level 40 (I'm at 39), there's a lot on my mind...

As some of you mentioned this build feels pretty good at low levels — better than the equivalent warrior, probably due to the bounty of early attack speed nodes which makes it feel way less slow than a warrior.

I must say I absolutely love this aspect of the build. We are essentially a speedy warrior...

However I would be interested how people are finding this build as you approach the end of Act 2. Me? I hit a HUGE wall.

It felt like a really steep gear check for me, and although I hear this isn't uncommon for people playing other builds, it felt like a pretty severe wall for this build. I don't think I quite had good enough damage on my weapons from about level 32-36ish when I was in the Dreadnought zones at the end of Act 2. I also felt like I needed more defenses from the tree (my defensive gear was stronger than my weapons). It was a real slog to get through these zones (and then I beat the boss first try — but the trash mobs in these zones were a huge huge difficulty spike for this build for some reason — might just be my gear?).

But then ... first few zones in Act 3 we are fine again and its all easy sailing again, no issues yet. For some reason those end Act 2 zones had me seriously stuck for a couple of gaming sessions.

Is this worth worrying about or is this pretty normal?

...

So I started to look at the tree I've suggested as well as the tree I've ended up with at lvl 39 which diverges slightly into some defenses, and consider a few questions:


1. Do we have enough defenses on the passive tree?

I think the answer to this is a resounding No.

So I am considering picking up some armour nodes or combined armour / evasions nodes (even though we don't have much evasion as a str build there are some nice notables), or even more life regen.

Some of the below questions are geared towards perhaps swapping some passive points into more of these types of defenses.

Interested to hear if people can identify high value defensive nodes for this build — what would you suggest? (eg: I like the "defend with 150% defense against attacks from more than 6ft" node which we can grab for 4pts)

2. Is investment into life leech actually worth it for this build?

I sort of imagined that life leech would work great with a dual wielder to syphon life while we are attacking with our high AS.

However, it feels like life leech is mostly a late-game mechanic to me?

Even with + attack speed some of our attacks tend to be kinda slow (eg: Sunder is a great occasional screen clearer when we are fighting armoured troops but its SO slow) and life leech is (so far) pretty difficult to find on gear. I suspect its a higher level mod that at level 39 I'm only JUST starting to see on gear (Question: does life on hit or kill benefit from life leech nodes on the tree? I assume not but I don't actually know)

Life leech on a skill like Sunder is honestly pretty worthless because you're not leeching while you're doing that long windup ... but enemies will be hitting you during this time. That said, I am not sure if sunder or other slow wind-up moves will become a long term staple of this build (It seems to shred high armour enemies though) since our faster AS lends itself to faster attacking skills I think. Not sure.

I am considering modifying the build to not invest into life leech anymore — or at least it might only get invested into at much later levels.

Thoughts on something like this, which instead invests into armour instead of life leech?

3. Can Giant's Blood really work for us? Is it worth it?

I have been looking at the numbers and feeling nervous about this especially without an ascendancy that supports us here.

Let's see what we have on this tree:
- 320 str
- +10% stats (brings us to 352)
- Endgame 2h maces — for example the Expert Temple Maul (with the highest AS) has 193str req — so will require 579str...
- 12 % reduced reqs means this will drop to 510str

So we need to find about 152 str ... from our gear I guess!

I note that gear with 35-45 str IS common enough on gear over level 50ish, and will also benefit from +% stats on the tree. If we can find 4-5 pieces with this much we will fulfill our str requirements.

That's not that far fetched but it might not happen until we are pretty late-game. Maybe if we demote life leech on the tree, we can focus on +stats nodes earlier?

But we are still going to have a harder time with this compared to some other classes with better access to str notables on the passive tree or with %stats or %less reqs on their ascendancies.

However I can't say I'm ready to give up on this just yet — there's just something really awesome about the idea of a ranger dual wielding massive clubs, so I'm not quite ready to totally rule this out since I still think it should be possible.

4. Is Bleed good? Would it be worth it?

I notice we have access to a huge number of bleed nodes near our paths. They often offer +16% damage to bleeding enemies which is higher than even our 12% dual wield nodes, maybe there might be a bleed-focused variant of this build?

...

Keen to hear people's thoughts on these 4 questions?

I expect this build will still change quite a bit more before we strike the right balance here but any feedback from the community is awesome ... I think we are creating this build together :)

One more thing — I am changing my support skill gems all the time and can't seem to settle on any truly game-changing combo's there. I will update the OP with my latest skill setup this evening when I have time to log in — its a bit different now at level 39 compared to what I have posted.

But I am equally keen to hear from the community about your skill setups (even from warriors using similar skills), and whether you have figured out any killer combinations.

In general, I've found that all the elemental infusions are great dps for us on most skills. And martial tempo is incredibly strong on almost everything.

I used to use rage but I've knocked it back. Its hard to build unless we pair it with martial tempo on something like Dual Mace Strike which has high base AS. I don't think its worth it - and we aren't investing into it on the tree either.

One thing I tried to get working was reliable Innervate, which could give us a nice 35% damage bonus. Getting reliable shock was the challenge there even using lightning infusion and the shock chance support — it didn't work very reliably so I swapped it out. I definitely have my eyes open for more buffs we can stack in this way though.

So I've been following your build some but I'm only level 14 atm. I'm at the spot in the passive tree where I took the increase to duel wield dmg but skipped the life leach because when I hold shift to look at it, it says no skills affected. So do we get life leach then and what skills does it effect? That's confusing for me cause if none of our skills are affected then its a waste to take it.

I know I have life on hit on both my weapons and its like duel mace strike spam
with the weapons, rage and Herald of ash. It going its pretty nice on the bosses so far for me.

I do know I did not like the expanse support gem on rolling slam, the cooldown bothered me so I used Ignition.

Right now I'm just doing rolling slam, bone shatter and then some infernal cry for my rotation. I just picked up some skill gems so I'm not sure what I'm going to take as a 4th ability atm

I'm trying to catch up :) so I can also try stuff out, right now I'm just trying to get back to where I was in act 2 with my war.

Hey, very interesting start !
I'm all the more excited that I'm currently trying pretty hard to build around the Olrovasara Torment Club (https://www.poe2wiki.net/wiki/Olrovasara), ideally dual wield them, and to my great surprise the only dual wield builds online at the moment are Giant's blood ones.
I'm afraid it would end up as monk in order to get the elemental dmg bonuses but it looks like we don't have the right tools to build around it right now.
Anyway, I'll keep cheering for you in the meantime ;)

Quick note that I’m away over the holidays so won’t be able to progress much, if at all. I have a handheld with me that can play it but I way prefer mouse and keyboard. Back home with my PC in the new year.

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Krohm#7627 wrote:

So I've been following your build some but I'm only level 14 atm. I'm at the spot in the passive tree where I took the increase to duel wield dmg but skipped the life leach because when I hold shift to look at it, it says no skills affected. So do we get life leach then and what skills does it effect? That's confusing for me cause if none of our skills are affected then its a waste to take it..

Yeah I agree and am having similar thoughts about life leech. In my comment above I suggested a tree without it which instead focuses on armour. I think that’s probably where this build is headed!

I’m also getting very curious about bleed!

Thanks for everyone’s feedback, this is very much still a WIP and I massively value hearing from you all about how you are finding it so far! I will definitely take all commentary on board, it will change the build, especially if anyone can report any gear/skills/passives that feel strong :)

This community is awesome :)

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Demonarque#3241 wrote:

Hey, very interesting start !
I'm all the more excited that I'm currently trying pretty hard to build around the Olrovasara Torment Club (https://www.poe2wiki.net/wiki/Olrovasara), ideally dual wield them, and to my great surprise the only dual wield builds online at the moment are Giant's blood ones.
I'm afraid it would end up as monk in order to get the elemental dmg bonuses but it looks like we don't have the right tools to build around it right now.
Anyway, I'll keep cheering for you in the meantime ;)

Very interesting idea! I would be worried about finding 2 of those clubs given they only drop from one enemy, but I could be wrong, maybe it’s easy enough to trade? (I didn’t check)

I think that a variant of the build could probably be put together that reaches up towards the monk instead of towards the warrior, focusing on elemental damage and probably some extra accuracy since we won’t be grabbing Resolute technique if we travel that direction instead. We also won’t need nearly as many stat nodes since we wouldn’t take giants blood either. Might even look at some crit nodes since we aren’t taking RT too

Certainly interesting! Would be a pretty big difference on the passive tree. Keen to hear how you go if you do decide to give it a try!

Update now that my ranger is 21

I took shockwave totem as my 4th ability and socketed it with Magnified Effect and Persistence. When I get swarmed by mobs or need a body blocker/some extra dmg for boss fights its been nice.

Rotation is still just rolling slam, bone shatter and then infernal cry and shockwave totem if needed. Then I always have Herald of Ash up.

STR is at 97 with 548 health and 50% armor. I know keeping up to date on weapons is big for me, think for endgame gear will be really really important.

Here is a link to the passives I've taken so far passive wise:
https://maxroll.gg/poe2/passive-tree/u6enq018

Honestly I feel like a dual wield mace strike spam cause it hits for 637 dmg atm. I've really just be concentrating on 1h dual wields since maces are supposed to be slower but hit harder.

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evilstarship#1007 wrote:

I’m also getting very curious about bleed!

I am also, I'm wondering if a bleed build with just concentrating on 1h is viable.

Any update?

it's pain but i try to get dual 1h with max atack speed to work. Trying bleed and leech right now, but DMG seems low compare to just 2H with shield

"

Krohm#7627 wrote:

Update now that my ranger is 21

I took shockwave totem as my 4th ability and socketed it with Magnified Effect and Persistence. When I get swarmed by mobs or need a body blocker/some extra dmg for boss fights its been nice.

Rotation is still just rolling slam, bone shatter and then infernal cry and shockwave totem if needed. Then I always have Herald of Ash up.

STR is at 97 with 548 health and 50% armor. I know keeping up to date on weapons is big for me, think for endgame gear will be really really important.

Here is a link to the passives I've taken so far passive wise:
https://maxroll.gg/poe2/passive-tree/u6enq018

Honestly I feel like a dual wield mace strike spam cause it hits for 637 dmg atm. I've really just be concentrating on 1h dual wields since maces are supposed to be slower but hit harder.

This sounds similar to my build at level 39, but I haven't really tried using totems - I will probably give this a try. Mace strike hits hard and I like stacking attack speed for it. I think that 8% and 10% melee damage branch along with Heavy Weaponry can be improved upon when we can path to better damage from dual wield (12% damage when dual wielding - nodes you allocated) and bleed nodes (16% damage when bleeding), perhaps.

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Simply_trup2#1729 wrote:

it's pain but i try to get dual 1h with max atack speed to work. Trying bleed and leech right now, but DMG seems low compare to just 2H with shield

Haven't played in over a week, I am still at level 39. For damage I was thinking about dumping life leech nodes and going for bleeding instead. But if our damage remains bad, since we have high attack speed I wonder if dropping RT and taking some melee crit nodes would make sense for this build instead. I have no idea yet if cast on crit/melee kill/ignite/freeze/shock could be a factor for this build yet. Some would require some int investment

I'm also concerned that armour might perform poorly in endgame and wondering if we can find some novel solution for defense :/

I wonder if there's a unique that might enable this build through some novel mechanic