Help me sort out this build?

Berserker using bloodseeker and retch belt. Could also title the thread "proof that retch damage sucks" lol.

My thought on this being that if I take a lot of damage, I can leech it all back instantly and gain a bunch of extra damage from Retch. The trick of course being to not die while taking tons of damage.

Some thoughts I've had regarding this would be to use a level 22 (empower supported) CWDT with immortal call to help prevent me getting to 0 health. Abyssus and Aspect of Carnage both help me take damage, and I'm also considering ditching most of my resist gear in favor of life and damage since so far I'm nearly always full on life. Level 67 and I've only run up to about T4 maps at the moment so much remains to be seen. Also if I really get going and still need to take more damage I might set up cwdt with righteous fire on a weapon so I can weapon swap cancel it in a hurry.

But the problem I can see I'll run into is that if my base damage is say a nice round 100K, I want to be taking something like 90K dps in damage so I have room to leech it back and get another 180K from Retch. Realistically that's never going to happen, but it would be cool if I could get some substantial fraction of that amount. This would be for tanking and burning down bosses only of course. Normal and magic packs are no real concern.

Would like to get some input on gear choices and skills/skill setups to optimize this thing as much as possible without spending a bunch of exalts on it. Let's say absolute max of 5 ex on standard. I know I'm not too good at this stuff so I'm hoping you guys can tell me where my major screwups are.

Link to my current gear and planned skill tree in path of building here.

Nobody? Bueller? Bueller?

Ah well...

So far so good anyway.

The character (Bebre, if you look at my characters) has been a blast to play so far. Made it to maps with only 7 deaths which is about 10 or 15 less than usual for me. Yeah, I'm terrible at POE...

I didn't have a lot of time to play last night but managed to run a couple maps at least. T5 and T6, which I ran at level 67-69. Unrolled since I'm just getting a feel for how this guy works. Nothing impressive for most people I guess, but that's miles ahead of where I usually am with a sub-level 70 character. Clear speed isn't great (melee, right?) but boss killing feels really safe. Once I get latched on I can just burn until he's dead. I mostly stay full health the whole time, but will take an occasional hit for half my life or whatever. But my health is leeched back almost instantly and I can see that spike the bosses health bar. I DEFINITELY need to be taking more damage so I can deal more, and it looks like I can comfortably take a lot more damage than I have been so far.

Tonight I'll try swapping some stuff around. High level CWDT/Immortal call, CWDT with righteous fire should be fun... Also want to grab a Doedre flask to deal myself a savage hit on demand. If all that works out ok I'll see about buying some jewelry, gloves and boots with very high life rolls and damage mods and I'll disregard resists completely.

So no interest at all? Oh well.


I did have a bit of fun playing this one last night. Changed my gear and gem setups, then proceeded to learn that I take plenty of damage even with resists capped. Got flattened a few times with resists in the 20's and 40's, not so much after I got them back up where they're supposed to be.

Also I tried out my CWDT/Righteous fire setup one time in Blood aqueducts just to see how that would go. I was hovering over the weapon swap key and sure enough, soon as RF popped I hit weapon swap to cancel but it was TOO LATE! Pretty much insta-killed myself. Was so damn fast I just had to laugh.

On the other hand after I got all that dumb shit straightened back out I successfully ran a few rare t8-t9 maps. Even completed a few Zana missions with ease in spite of being 4-5 levels lower than the maps I was in. Also at just level 70 I facetanked the hell out of Merciless Izaro to pick up Aspect of Carnage. Whoop! That felt good.

DPS is starting to look respectable (TO ME!) with 98K dual strike in hideout/no flasks or charges. And I'm pretty well done taking life nodes on my tree and have switched over to taking crit nodes, which have been boosting the hell out of my tooltip DPS. I have bunch of those coming up, and I haven't even taken a single node on the claw wheel yet, so loads of DPS seems to be coming my way. In fact, mmm... I could probably get a nice stat stick boost with this build since dual strike uses anything but wands. Or maybe I can find a nice global crit/crit multi dagger or something for my off hand. Guess I'll have to do some experimenting with that now.

The DPS Retch adds to my Berserker is just like a 200% reflect to the mobs I'm fighting, which I don't think adds up to a crazy amount of damage. But it's a very fun belt for me because of the utility. The 60% increased flask duration and 15% movement speed during flask effect mods paired with a Rotgut flask make for a lot of good zoom zoom, and I love that. Having somewhat decent life and a bit of cold resist save it from being terrible. There are probably several belts that would be better for this build, but I'll probably stick with the zoom zoom and reflect thing for a while.

Maybe after the leveling slows down I'll try this build again as a slayer.