[2.5] Explosive Gladiator - Blade Flurry / Max Block - One shot T15 bosses!

Enjoying this build. Here's my setup. I use Cyclone instead of Flurry but its an easy gem swap for either one.




Passive skill tree build My tree is altered slightly for more DPS. Also took a 1-node longer route to Deadly Dilettante because it gave easy access to Cloth and Chain as well as mana/life leech.

HO Tooltips: 4.7K life, cyclone 22K, armor/ev both ~30%

I need more Fire Res but unsure what piece to upgrade for it. Would also like to squeeze in a Fortify gem and Incr Dur for BRage and VCyclone.

Pretty tanky but I do die occasionally to oneshots from mobs and bosses.

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tainium escribió:

Enjoying this build. Here's my setup. I use Cyclone instead of Flurry but its an easy gem swap for either one.

Passive skill tree build My tree is altered slightly for more DPS. Also took a 1-node longer route to Deadly Dilettante because it gave easy access to Cloth and Chain as well as mana/life leech.

HO Tooltips: 4.7K life, cyclone 22K, armor/ev both ~30%

I need more Fire Res but unsure what piece to upgrade for it. Would also like to squeeze in a Fortify gem and Incr Dur for BRage and VCyclone.

Pretty tanky but I do die occasionally to oneshots from mobs and bosses.

Yeah 4.7k life is pretty low. About 6k is where it felt the most comfortable for me. Dropped to about 5.9k for a bit more damage on mine, though. Devotion nodes and a couple at duelist start could give you a solid bump.

Fortify isn't optional. Get it on your move skill ASAP. Shield charge will be much faster for mapping, but Leap is better for labbing. Blood magic means you can move between packs and have full mana when you get there.

I also tried Cyclone, but found the mana issues annoying. Can sustain BF with just one mana leech stat, on a jewel or gloves/jewelry. Probably doable with those duelist leech nodes though.

Nice to see some different takes on the build, though. Glad you guys are enjoying it.
Haven't had much chance to play myself lately.
Assuming the jewel is available, I may run this as league starter next league.

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Icaros escribió:

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Thanks for the analysis! Working through your recommendations now. Up to 5.3K life for now. I want to work Fortify in, as you recommend, but can't find place for it in my setup. I feel pretty tanky but DPS could be better (especially single target DPS), so I'm not sure what to cut for Fortify. EDIT: I did a playtest and noticed that I never get Endurance Charge on Melee stun to trigger versus bosses...and bosses is the only time we'd need that since Red Nightmare takes care of charges while mapping. So I'll see if that opens up some space for fortify somehow.


Tree node considerations for my next upgrade beyond your posted tree. Thoughts?
-A jewel node
-Cleaving for 89% dmg (best DPS option?)
-Bone Breaker is 66% dmg and AOE
-Strong Arm for 49% dmg, atk spd and life
-Splitting Strikes for 46% dmg, atk spd and life leech
-Dirty Techniques? Nice DOT boost and we can use the 3 Dex nodes
-Mana
--Shaper is easy to get; mana and life regen, next to more INT
--Mana Flows is 20 INT and mana boosts for 2 points

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tainium escribió:

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Icaros escribió:

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Thanks for the analysis! Working through your recommendations now. Up to 5.3K life for now. I want to work Fortify in, as you recommend, but can't find place for it in my setup. I feel pretty tanky but DPS could be better (especially single target DPS), so I'm not sure what to cut for Fortify. EDIT: I did a playtest and noticed that I never get Endurance Charge on Melee stun to trigger versus bosses...and bosses is the only time we'd need that since Red Nightmare takes care of charges while mapping. So I'll see if that opens up some space for fortify somehow.


Tree node considerations for my next upgrade beyond your posted tree. Thoughts?
-A jewel node
-Cleaving for 89% dmg (best DPS option?)
-Bone Breaker is 66% dmg and AOE
-Strong Arm for 49% dmg, atk spd and life
-Splitting Strikes for 46% dmg, atk spd and life leech
-Dirty Techniques? Nice DOT boost and we can use the 3 Dex nodes
-Mana
--Shaper is easy to get; mana and life regen, next to more INT
--Mana Flows is 20 INT and mana boosts for 2 points

Jewel nodes. Damage/phys damage/area damage double dip. They're much more damage than it seems.
Same reason why those damage nodes at duelist start aren't very efficient. Melee phys doesn't double dip your degens.

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Icaros escribió:

Damage/phys damage/area damage double dip.
...Melee phys doesn't double dip your degens.

Thanks. I'm trying to learn these mechanics. I don't understand why "phys damage" double dips but "melee phys damage" doesn't. We're using Melee skills, so all of our phys damage is also melee phys...isn't it?

For that matter, I have "phys damage with (weapon X) on my jewels...how does that fit in? It could be neither or both!?

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tainium escribió:

I want to work Fortify in, as you recommend, but can't find place for it in my setup. I feel pretty tanky but DPS could be better (especially single target DPS), so I'm not sure what to cut for Fortify. EDIT: I did a playtest and noticed that I never get Endurance Charge on Melee stun to trigger versus bosses...and bosses is the only time we'd need that since Red Nightmare takes care of charges while mapping. So I'll see if that opens up some space for fortify somehow.

What if I moved Temp Chains to my Lvl 1 CWDT 4L and moved Blasphemy/Enhance/Vulnerability to a 3L? I know Temp Chains is great to extend the DPS of our DOTs, but perhaps we/I can get away with only needing it on tougher bosses/mobs where we actually take a hit? This would help my Cylone mana problems (less mana reserved) and give me more socket flexibility. But this would also drop Chains down to Level 5.

EDIT: This is working well in playtests. Plenty of mana and Chains triggers when I need it. Losing levels/Enhance on Chains doesn't gimp it. Hopefully this holds true into higher maps where the trash mobs might get too tough for my DPS to keep up.

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tainium escribió:

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Icaros escribió:

Damage/phys damage/area damage double dip.
...Melee phys doesn't double dip your degens.

Thanks. I'm trying to learn these mechanics. I don't understand why "phys damage" double dips but "melee phys damage" doesn't. We're using Melee skills, so all of our phys damage is also melee phys...isn't it?

For that matter, I have "phys damage with (weapon X) on my jewels...how does that fit in? It could be neither or both!?

If I understand the difference correctly, "area damage" increases everything: physical, spell, chaos, poison, etc. "Melee physical damage" only increases the base physical damage of the weapon, whereas "physical damage" affects spell, too. Thus, you are losing out on the increase to the other damage types with "melee physical". Basically, the more specific the description, the less it can do. The "with weapon x" on the jewel kind of works the same way. The more specific it is, the fewer items it works with. Of course, the benefit of Varunastra's ability to use any one-handed melee weapon is that you have a much wider selection of jewels that you can use. For example, you could use a jewel that has both "physical damage with swords" + "attack speed with daggers" on it, whereas that jewel would be pretty useless to anyone else.

So, I wanted to post a quick update! Still loving the build. Haven't played much the last week, but I've knocked out a few more T14 maps, got to Level 94, and just wrecked the Breachlord Ul-Netol! I actually was able to facetack him straight up. Didn't think I would be able to, but this build is so tanky that he didn't land a single big hit. My Flame Golem also survived with at least 90% life remaining. Getting through the short Breach Timer was tough, but the key for me was to use Concentrated Effect. You need that high DPS to get kill monsters fast enough. Also be sure to use a long duration life flask with bleed removal to help get through the timer.

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tainium escribió:

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Icaros escribió:

Damage/phys damage/area damage double dip.
...Melee phys doesn't double dip your degens.

Thanks. I'm trying to learn these mechanics. I don't understand why "phys damage" double dips but "melee phys damage" doesn't. We're using Melee skills, so all of our phys damage is also melee phys...isn't it?

For that matter, I have "phys damage with (weapon X) on my jewels...how does that fit in? It could be neither or both!?

Double dipping just means a modifier that applies to the initial hit, AND the damage over time effect. So it's scaling damage twice.
This video goes over some of the math of what that looks like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPVYVSHJcic

TL;DR, your DoT effects easily do 4-5x the damage of the hit that applied them, when you use double dipping modifiers.

Generic Phys damage scaling (not melee phys or weapon melee phys) is important on this build because it scales your initial hit, your bleed, your poison, and also the Gladiator explosions. Those explosions are based on monster health, and also apply more bleed/poison... so it really starts to get out of hand when each monster does an AoE for 50-60% of its life when it dies. That also means map tier and mods like monster life don't matter, because the more life they have, the more damage you do.

I got all my Damage/phys damage/area damage jewels for less than 20c each. Not sure what they're at now, but get them. It's night and day for this build.

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So, I wanted to post a quick update! Still loving the build. Haven't played much the last week, but I've knocked out a few more T14 maps, got to Level 94, and just wrecked the Breachlord Ul-Netol! I actually was able to facetack him straight up. Didn't think I would be able to, but this build is so tanky that he didn't land a single big hit. My Flame Golem also survived with at least 90% life remaining. Getting through the short Breach Timer was tough, but the key for me was to use Concentrated Effect. You need that high DPS to get kill monsters fast enough. Also be sure to use a long duration life flask with bleed removal to help get through the timer.

Yeah Uul-Netol is pretty easy on this. Was only at 96 shards or something so didn't get to try chayula.
For clearing, I always found inc. aoe to be superior on BF because the small splash also applies bleeds/poisons. Kind of like a built in prolif. But it's too small to work like that with conc. effect.

for example:


those modules that add "melee" will not count for the bleed damage.
only those that add chaos dmg will count for the poison

the 1st one is ok, everything adds to the bleed dmg

the 2nd chaos dmg will add to poison

the 3rd one, the melee (with shield in this case) node will not affect the bleed damage, but the others will