FSX90's SpecThrow Marauder (Marauder)
Submitted by FSX90 on March 22, 2014 - 4:35PM CDT
Page Views: 9851
Last Updated: Never
Description
Uses The Blood Dance+Blood Rage to get massive amounts of Life Regen+LeechSuggested Leagues: Standard, Hardcore, Ambush
Passive Skills
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2h Axe - Frenzy (or Double Strike)

Frenzy

Faster Attacks

Multistrike

Melee Physical Damage

Life Leech

Blood Magic
Evasion Chest Gear - Spectral Throw

Spectral Throw

Faster Attacks

Physical Projectile Attack Damage

Lesser Multiple Projectiles

Life Leech

Blood Magic
Armor Head Gear - Cast When Damage Taken

Cast When Damage Taken

Enduring Cry

Immortal Call

Warlords Mark
Armor/Evasion or Evasion Gloves - Auras

Reduced Mana

Grace

Haste

Hatred
The Blood Dance - Utility

Blood Magic

Leap Slam

Blood Rage

Bear Trap
Flasks
Flask Set 1

Life Flask

Jade Flask

Jade Flask

Amethyst Flask

Quicksilver Flask
Bandits
Help Oak in Normal Difficulty - Rewards +40 to Maximum LifeHelp Oak in Cruel Difficulty - Rewards +12% to Physical DamageHelp Kraityn in Merciless Difficulty - Rewards +1 to Maximum Frenzy ChargeGear
Mods to focus on in order of importance:Max Life (You heal more the more HP you have)
Chaos Resist (You deal Chaos damage to yourself with Blood Rage)
Fire/Cold/Lightning Resist (You want to take less damage from everything else)
+Physical Damage (You want to kill things faster)
+% Attack Speed (You want to kill things faster)
+Str (You want to kill things faster (Iron Grip), you want more hp)
Types of Gear.
You want to get as much Evasion as possible. Evasion>Armor.
The way Iron Reflexes works, your passive +%Evasion Rating will give bonus evasion rating, then Iron Reflexes will turn all that evasion into Armor, and then your passive +%Armor will give bonus armor. So in the case of the notable passive Leather and Steel, 1000 Evasion will be 1240 Evasion (24% more), then converted to 1240 Armor, then the bonus armor will give you 1537.6 Armor (24% more), whereas 1000 Armor will just give you 1240 Armor. Keep in mind that Armor gives diminishing returns, so you don't have to focus on stacking lots of it.
Auras.
You don't have to use Grace, Haste, and Hatred.
Other viable options are... Purity of Fire/Cold, Determination, Purity of Lightning/Elements (if you can get enough Int mods on gear). If you decide to run less than 3x 60% auras, you don't have to invest as much passives for Reduced Mana Reserved, and you can focus more on Physical Damage and/or Life. There are numerous nodes that this build passes that is not taken for sheer lack of points.
Guide
The goal for this build is to attain and maintain lots of Frenzy charges. Because of The Blood Dance, each Frenzy charge gives 1% of your max life as Regen. With 6 maximum Frenzy charges (3base, +2 passives, +1 bandit), that's 9.5% of max life that you're regenerating. The Blood Rage also gives a hefty boost to Life Leech which makes you fairly tanky.Spectral Throw is a great aoe skill for anyone using a melee weapon. You 'can' swap it out with another aoe skill of your choice (ex. Cleave/Cyclone/Sweep/Leap Slam), but... why would you? Now I prefer Physical Projectile attack damage over Faster Projectiles, but if you feel like you want Faster Projectiles, go for it. I don't recommend using Slower Projectiles though. Also... You can use Life Gain on Hit instead of Life Leech if you want. Life Leech does better the better your weapon is. LGOH just heals you no matter how much damage you do.
Frenzy is a good skill to have with The Blood Dance. It's a great alternative to Blood Rage for stacking up charges, especially against bosses like Brutus who is always by himself, so it would be impossible to get charges otherwise. There are other skills with a lot higher base damage, but for this build I think Frenzy's utility is considerably better than anything else.
As for leveling... I find that using the Blood Magic Keystone is very effective before you have that 5 or 6 link that you need for using the Blood Magic support gem with multiple 60% auras and a close to max level Reduced Mana gem.