Hi guys,
once again I present you another Warpath build I made for the current patch. Since Armour was signficantly buffed in 0.8.2, I decided to capitalize on that and take boardman’s Bleed Paladin on another big spin. What does it bring?
- Well over 10k Armour while fighting
(We could reach 15k or more, but honestly after ~9k it becomes quite inefficient to keep stacking Armour) - Almost 75% Block chance with over 70% damage reduction
- Another 40% flat damage reduction by Wings of Argentus
- 100% Crit Avoidance
- 2k Health
- Good leech and pretty much a full heal everytime you kill ANYTHING
- 60% Endurance
- Frailty on Hit for further up to 18% damage reduction
- Resist cap
- High movement speed for fast farming
- Maximum Spin to win, and I do mean it! Every skill spins! Spinning shields, spinning Holy Sigils, Spinning Aura animation, Warpath and Volatile Reversal spins back time itself!
- (Optionally) Aurora’s Time Glass for another huge layer of defence
- And last but not least… very good DPS for a build as tanky as this one
There even is some decent Ward generation when blocking (which happens all the time), so the build truly utilizes every defensive layer there is… apart from Dodge, screw that, we’re tanking the hits like true men!
Interested? I bloody hope so! You can find the build here:
Note that since lastepochtools isn’t perfect yet, it won’t take into account most of the stats and resistances gained passively by your skills, like Holy Aura, or the insane amount of Armour and Block Effectiveness the Ring of Shields provide.
Alternative for Arena
This version introduces one of the awesome new Uniques, the Aurora’s Time Glass. It’s very rare, but if you happen to find one, this introduces another valuable defensive layer. Since it conveniently has Endurance on it, the only other piece you have to replace are the gloves for Grusader Gauntlets, for the Void Resistance implicit. Also replace the Hybrid Health for Frailty on Hit. You’ll lose some Physical Penetration and Damage, but the Aurora at least supplements the lost Attack Speed. I would not recommend going this route when farming Monoliths, as far as I can tell you don’t need this extra layer of protection there and should rather go with the higher DPS version. Also removed the Movementspeed nodes from Warpath in favor of some Time Rot Chance for some little extra damage reduction, which makes more sense than Speed in Arena in my opinion.
Lootfilter
https://pastebin.com/3GJxvQu1
Warning, I set it up very strict. It hides almost everything you don’t need for this specific build! White and Grey items are for shattering. The white ones have rare Affixes, mostly +1 on skill level for any skill in the game. Grey items have at least 17 Tiers in total which just makes them good for getting all kinds of Shards over time, feel free to adjust the number of Tiers required yourself. Violet items have very rare affixes required for this build and should also be shattered for the shards. Blue items are potential canidates for the build and have at least 1 desired stat on at least T3, or T2 for some rarer items. Those can then be used for crafting the specific items you need for the build. The Shield and a specific exalted Axe are highlighted red. The Axe MIGHT be better than Undisputed if it has all the right and very high Tiers and rolls that I specified in the filter. Idols keep their original Color, but you’ll only see Idols with potentially useful stats. All Uniques, Set items and Exalted items will be shown.
Gameplay wise, well it really isn’t too complicated. You can put Ring of Shields on autocast and forget about it, or press it once it comes off cooldown every 15 seconds. It actually lasts 16 seconds so you’ll have 100% uptime. You can either ignore the Sigils as well and let them spawn on their own thanks to the Last Wish node, or you quickly press it 4 times in a row and then immediately use Volatile Reversal to get all your mana back! This guarantees Sigil uptime, even when fighting bosses. Speaking of Volatile Reversal, you want to use it as often as possible, but at least once every 4 seconds. It applies insane debuffs to enemies which more than double your damage output, as well as granting you 30% Attack Speed and even gives you your Mana spent on the Ring of Shields back every time! Holy Aura can be completely ignored as well if you wish so, but you might as well activate it every now and then when fighting bosses. No worries, your buffs won’t go away if the active part of the skill is on cooldown. Otherwise you should always be spinning, not only because you’re gaining more movement speed while doing so, you’re also getting a chunk of your Elemental Resistances and Armour.
Passives, most should be self explanatory. I picked up the majority of the Resistance nodes, every piece of Block Chance I could find, one point in Holy Symbol just to keep triggering the Prayer passive (the healing itself really isn’t needed, Undisputed and the leech keep you capped all the time) and the rest is just stats.
Idols, lastepochtools still uses the old layout, but basically you just want stuff that improves your Bleed. Bleed on hit is always great, Bleed Duration is amazing, Physical Damage (over time and flat) is good and you can also plug resist holes with the 1x1 and 2x1 idols.
Monolith Mods, there isn’t anything that comes to my mind that you absolutely cannot deal with. I would recommend though to avoid the Dodge and Less Damage at High Health Mods if possible, since those make the Monos quite a slogfest. Marked for Death should also be respected as you’re not overcapped everywhere, but the tank should still hold fine overall. Health Regenerated when not Hit recently should absolutely be avoided when planning to fight a boss soon, as this mod can make some bosses pretty much impossible to beat. Since you’re Crit Avoidance capped, its best to pick Mods which increase Crit Chance as this is nullified by the Avoidance.
Tips
- If you’re still gearing up and want a quick fix for your resists, there’s a Suffix for the Shield which increases ALL Resistances
- Since we have 15 points in Forge Guard, you could toy around with Manifest Armor, but personally I dislike it because it dies all the time
- If you dislike the Sigils of Hope and just want to keep spinning without interruptions until there’s no tomorrow, replace it with Juggernaut Stance. This will reduce your DPS a bit, but makes you even tankier
- If you manage to get more than ~6000 Block Effectiveness while fighting, you can replace the Dawn Shield base with the Ironglass Base, which has higher Block Chance, but less Effectiveness, which like Armour suffers from huge diminishing returns after a while, so at some point you rather want the extra Chance instead.
As I already said, this build was inspired by Boardman’s Bleed Paladin build. If you have questions, feel free to ask!
Edit 1 - C̶h̶a̶n̶g̶e̶d̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶b̶u̶i̶l̶d̶ ̶a̶ ̶b̶i̶t̶,̶ ̶g̶o̶t̶ ̶r̶i̶d̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶s̶o̶m̶e̶ ̶S̶t̶r̶e̶n̶g̶t̶h̶ ̶b̶e̶c̶a̶u̶s̶e̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶d̶o̶e̶s̶n̶’̶t̶ ̶i̶n̶c̶r̶e̶a̶s̶e̶ ̶B̶l̶e̶e̶d̶ ̶D̶a̶m̶a̶g̶e̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶%̶A̶r̶m̶o̶u̶r̶ ̶i̶n̶c̶r̶e̶a̶s̶e̶ ̶i̶s̶n̶’̶t̶ ̶w̶o̶r̶t̶h̶ ̶i̶t̶,̶ ̶n̶o̶w̶ ̶g̶o̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶D̶a̶m̶a̶g̶e̶ ̶o̶v̶e̶r̶ ̶T̶i̶m̶e̶ ̶%̶ ̶i̶n̶s̶t̶e̶a̶d̶.̶ ̶B̶u̶t̶ ̶f̶e̶e̶l̶ ̶f̶r̶e̶e̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶a̶d̶d̶ ̶m̶o̶r̶e̶ ̶S̶t̶r̶e̶n̶g̶t̶h̶ ̶i̶f̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶ ̶w̶a̶n̶t̶ ̶m̶o̶r̶ ̶A̶r̶m̶o̶u̶r̶ ̶r̶e̶g̶a̶r̶d̶l̶e̶s̶s̶,̶ ̶j̶u̶s̶t̶ ̶a̶s̶ ̶I̶ ̶s̶a̶i̶d̶,̶ ̶a̶f̶t̶e̶r̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶ ̶c̶a̶n̶ ̶c̶o̶m̶f̶o̶r̶t̶a̶b̶l̶y̶ ̶r̶e̶a̶c̶h̶ ̶~̶9̶k̶ ̶w̶h̶i̶l̶e̶ ̶f̶i̶g̶h̶t̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶b̶e̶c̶o̶m̶e̶s̶ ̶v̶e̶r̶y̶ ̶i̶n̶e̶f̶f̶i̶c̶i̶e̶n̶t̶.̶ ̶ This is wrong, Strength in fact does increase Bleed damage, thanks @Gilavar for the explanation! I put the Strength back and in return got rid of some overkill Armour% and finally capped Poison Resist. Also optimized some passives and skillpoints.
I will post the updated build once I made it very far in the Arena.