Official Blender Post! Lets theory craft for 1.2! 123k Cleave DPS!
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!!!THIS GUIDE IS BEING RE-WRITTEN TONIGHT! 8/21!!!!
While I re-write the guide, here is a quick skill tree that I am using for those who are eager to get playing. 1.2 Cyclone Variant Non Cyclone Glass cannon to be included HC Tank variant to be included for Beyond league Sword-only variant to be included OLD CONTENT BELOW! ---------------------------------------  I want to give a special thanks to AXN for crafting the absolute best weapon for the blender build.
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This weapon is not affordable for 99% of players, but if you want the absolute best for this build, this guy has a mirror service for it.
http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/515441 A couple things about this sword: -Nearly perfect damage - This is the highest 1H DPS sword in game right now -High Str Roll -Chaos Resist - One thing with the blender build is that chaos resist can always be tough to get, this has plenty. -Highest Range for a 1H sword - this is huge for cyclone. The only thing this sword lacks is crit, and guess what, the blender build doesn't touch crit. If you want crit, AXN has also crafted the single best crit dagger in the game. Quick 111pt build - Version to use for Dual Strike http://goo.gl/VGOeut 120pt build by Xcellers - Alternative for end game cyclone http://goo.gl/vUiW03 These will change a bit as I get back into the game again.  Hey guys, this is 2P and I want to share my build with you. Over a year ago when melee characters in general and duelists in particular were completely nonviable, I attempted to make a fast moving, fast attacking build that worked. I got to a point where I had a map viable build, but it certainly was less than optimal. A series of buffs to melee and duelists made my build go from semi-viable to incredibly powerful. The took off in popularity, primarily in softcore due to it's risky gameplay (some ran tankier HC variants). The build had some of the fastest clear speeds possible along with insane damage and a unique combination of damage mitigating effects. The build however lacked HP causing some criticism. It was viable in the highest level maps if played carefully. The build primarily used cleave and used whirling blades to move around faster than quicksilver flasks could. The build often achieved over 10 attacks per second with 40k+ DPS. With the introduction of 1.0 many people thought the build was nerfed to the ground with the massive nerf to cleave. I am here posting this to tell you that the build is still completely viable. Not only is it completely viable, it has been buffed beyond belief and is now one of the strongest builds possible in game. It mixes absurd mobility with fast whirling blades and leap slam, with incredibly high HP, with insane damage mitigation and 40K+ DPS with the correct gear. With the release of 1.0, I am having a hard time finding a weakness with this build. It is able to do the most difficult 77+ maps with ease, even without perfect gear.  Pros: -40k+ AOE DPS achievable -Heals from nearly dead to full HP in as low as 1 second -Nearly unkillable, you almost have to try to intentionally get killed when you hit full build. -Highest mobility build in game. You move faster than quicksilver flasks can make you go. -Class Flexible. It can be made from a Duelist, Maruader, or Scion. (Duelist has the easiest time leveling) -Able to farm bosses incredibly fast thanks to DPS and survivability. -All map mods are doable. -Entirely unaffected from both Phys Reflect and Ele Reflect. You still heal incredibly fast on a double reflect map with -max res and vulnerability. -Monsters don't even try to attack you 90% of the time. -The more people with this build in your group you have, the stronger the synergy gets. -No mana concerns if you have the Soul Taker axe. Cons -Late game is reliant on Bringer of Rain and decent gear (70+ maps considered late game) -Can have mana issues early on if you don't have the gear for blood magic gems or mana leech. -No crits -Hard to reach resist cap without speccing into extra resists from the passive tree.  This section is lengthy, expand the spoiler to read it. It explains the core mechanics as to how this build functions.
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The blender build makes use of some great gear synergies allowing you to take advantage of some amazing mechanics. The original idea was to have a highly mobile, insane dps, fast melee character. This was achieved pre-1.0 along with some unexpected tankiness. 1.0 Changes allowed us go from tanky to nearly invincible while maintaining the same high damage and mobility.
Bringer of Rain The primary focus of the build is using the unique Helmet, Bringer of Rain. It works perfectly with high attack speed builds. It gives the equivalent of a 7-Link item. Why is this item perfect for this build? While it has most of the best melee gems built in and absolutely absurd stats on it, that is not why it is perfect. The hidden gem is the built in blind. With over 10 APS, which this build easily achieves, you maintain a constant blind on your enemies. This gives you 75% chance to dodge, without having anything invested into evasion. Mitigation via Armor/Evasion Because of this, we can make use of the passive node called "Iron Reflexes". This node converts all of your evasion into armor, allowing you to use evasion and armor gear to equal effect. It also allows you to pick up awesome hybrid evasion/armor nodes. This gives the build awesome damage reduction, along with awesome evasion which a lot of builds lack. It also allows you to abuse the 2 types of flasks in the game. +3000 evasion, and +3000 armor. If you get a 3000 armor flask with 100% increased armor effect and a 3000 evasion flask with +100% evasion, you can achieve well over 90% damage reduction. That is 90% damage reduction, on top of your 75% dodge. Block/Damage The build also uses dual wield physical weapons. The ranger tree and the duelist tree are loaded with one-hand weapon damage and dual-wield damage nodes. This build can effectively stack more damage nodes than nearly any other build, while maintaining the amazing defenses. Because we are dual wield, we can achieve block chance without a shield. The Bringer of Rain helmet provides block chance, the Dervish node also gives block chance while dual wielding. You can achieve 48-50% block chance without a shield at all. Stuns/Chill Another awesome part of the build is the stuns and chill. We make use of the hatred aura giving us cold damage causing targets we hit to move and attack more slowly. We also hit so incredibly hard 90% of the monsters we hit, even in high end maps are perpetually stunned. Mobility The mobility is another strong point. We have such high attack speed we can use leap slam and whirling blades as our primary way of getting around, rather than walking/running. This gives us the ability to dodge nearly every single monster skill in the game. It allows us to farm bosses and maps incredibly fast. It also allows us to run from a dangerous back instantly. We can ignore monster clipping and fly straight through them. Cast on Damage Taken We also make heavy use of the new gem called "Cast on Damage Taken". Every time we get hit this build drops a decoy totem, casts enfeeble on monsters and casts enduring cry for an armor buff. Monsters don't even try to attack you. With 6 people in a party running this, the monsters continually change targets before even attacking anything. They have 6 players and 6 decoy totems fighting for monster aggro. Monsters usually end up just standing there doing nothing while you shred them. Attacks Our primary attacks will be Cyclone or Dual Strike with Melee Splash, depending on what gear you have or how well you are fairing with mana. Dual Strike /w Melee Splash will give you more damage than you had previously with Cleave. Cyclone will get you similar damage, but will cause more desync. The advantage of Cyclone is that you can make use of Life on Hit, giving you significantly increased healing ability. Cyclone has very high mana requirements meaning if you use it with blood magic, you will drain your life very fast by using it. I recommend the Dual Strike/Splash combo for 90% of people. Use Cyclone if you have the Soul Taker axe, as you no longer have mana concerns at that point. This is the Soul Taker axe. It allows you to cast cyclone on mana without the need for blood magic. It is not 100% necessary, but is very recommended.  Basically here is the defense mechanic of the build: -Monsters are constantly attacking a steady stream of decoy totems. -If for some reason they aren't after the decoy totem, they are enfeebled. -They are constantly stunned and chilled. -If they aren't stunned, you have a 75% chance to dodge the monster's attack. -If you don't dodge, you have a 50% chance to block the attack. -If you don't dodge or block you have 90% damage reduction with flasks. -If they crit through all of that, you have 30% reduced damage taken from crits. -The build gets around 5k hp with good gear. -If they somehow manage to get to low life, you heal from 10% to 100% in about 1 second while attacking. Basically the only risk of dying is on the hardest map bosses with -max res mods. 75+ maps usually results in this build never dropping below 90% HP. 90% of the time I sit at 100% HP, even on double reflect maps.  Early Build Mid Build Late-ish Late Game - My Current Tree 120 Points - Good luck....
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http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgQBAdwDhwUtEdUSIBcdFz4ZLhutG_ohYCXfJ-0ppTGeMgk0kzWSOJY64TwtQKBHfkjuSn1KyE3jTipQUFPfVElXl1hjWNtbr1z5XotfP2BBYEtjcGVNZ6BsRm6qcHJybHKpdO13YngNeK5463rvfNl9dYTZhO-HdojxjM-VZpkrmy2bg565pBmmV6luq8WsWayqtfK2QbcXtz653b2Bvoq-p8APxPbGrsbYypDP-NBH0k3TftSP3ILdDecK51LnY-8O73rv4_Iv8kXz3fZI_MX-Cv6P_rpM_69sxYrwHwSzFE20-aIAI01ANkRyhMSDOO98
Bandits: Normal - Help Oak for 40hp or kill all for 1 passive. Cruel - Help Oak for phys damage. Merc - Help Oak for Endurance Charge or kill all for passive. Notes: -This build can work from the Marauder start and the Scion start. The only big difference is the duelist will have the easiest time leveling up. -We do not pick up Ice Bite. It does less damage than grabbing 2 basic attack speed or phys damage nodes. -We do not grab Unwavering Stance. We use Blind on Bringer of Rain for evasion. Unwavering stance makes your blind worthless. -Iron reflexes is an absolute must in this build as all of your evasion is free from your helmet. Putting the evasion from gear towards armor is much more beneficial. -We do not have blood drinker at the moment. You will need LL from gear. 2% is enough to put you above the leech cap with this build. -After the mid level build, you can pick if you want the defense from the Maruader area or the damage from the Ranger area. -The build is positioned right next to a TON of high resist nodes. You can temporarily spec into resist nodes to reach resist cap until you get better gear.  Here I will go over what skills to be using. There used to be a lot of possible variation to go over, but with 1.0 it has been simplified. The only real variation is in what attack to use. Expand the spoiler to view.
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Dual Strike - This is our primary damage dealer on this build. It does as much damage as the old cleave did. We combine it with melee splash for AOE. I will list the support gems used in order of priority for those who don't have BoR yet.
-Dual Strike (Use in BoR or 5L/6L chest, BoR highly recommended) > Melee Splash - Makes your single target attack hit multiple > MultiStrike - Most important gem for dps. > Melee Phys Damage - % increased melee phys damage > Added Fire Damage - % fire damage added based on physical > Faster Attacks - self explanatory > Blood Magic - Use this if mana leech from gear is not enough for you and you do not have Soul Taker. If you have a BoR, make your 4 links like this: RRRG Dual Strike, Added Fire, Melee Splash, Multistrike Cyclone - Use this skill when you have Soul Taker or have no mana concerns. Support your cyclone in a RRRG or RRGB Bringer of Rain. Cyclone, Life Gain on hit, Added Fire Damage, Weapon Ele Damage or Concentrated Effect. We do not use Multistrike on this skill as it causes your character to recast and re-target the skill multiple times per second. You have no control of the character and you will desync about 10 times more often. You can choose WED or Conc Effect depending on your preferences. You can also try something like Chance to Fear if you want additional CC and survivability on top of the already absurd amount. Leap Slam & Whirling Blades These are your mobility skills. Put these on 3L/4L gloves or boots. Support them with Faster attacks & blood magic. You can sacrifice blood magic if you have Soul Taker. We use both Whirling Blades and Leap Slam. Quality whirling blades will be a bit faster for moving in and out of dangerous situations. Leap Slam is nice for the obvious reason, jumping over obstacles. Cast on Damage Taken This skill is absolutely amazing for this build. You have many options with this. My preferred is a decoy totem, a curse, and a buff. Put these on RRRB gloves or boots. Right now I run my gem setup as follows: Cast on Damage Taken, Decoy Totem, Enduring Cry, Enfeeble. This means each time I am hit I cast a fresh decoy totem and enfeeble all monsters while refreshing my endurance charges. You can change the curse to whatever suits you best. If you lack mana leech and life leech on gear, you can use Warlords Mark as your curse. DO NOT LEVEL UP CAST ON DAMAGE TAKEN! - Leveling the skill itself causes the amount of damage you must take before it casts to rise a lot, meaning less curses, less totems, less charges. You can however level the skills it supports. Auras - Our Primary Auras are Grace and Hatred. Put these on a GGR weapon. These must be supported by a reduced mana gem to be able to use both simultaneously. We use grace as it is the single strongest source of armor for us via aura. It gives us a large chunk of evasion which gets converted to armor thanks to Iron Reflexes. Hatred is about 25% of our total damage. It scales based off of your physical damage, so it is better than any other elemental aura for us. We can swap hatred for purity on tough maps with elemental weakness if we must. We do not need purity for resist cap as the build is so close to so many resist nodes if we need them.  My Current Gear (will be improving):
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Good leveling items:
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Above are a few good and relatively inexpensive uniques for leveling. Wurms Molt/Slither pinch completely take care of resource issues you may have leveling. Mixing a bright beak with a mightflay is enough to carry your dps into the late 60s. I was able to do level 70 maps without issues using just those weapons and a 5L. Aim for primarily armor and evasion gear, as energy shield does not scale on this build at all. Helmet - Aim for a Bringer of Rain. It is by far the most important item in this build. You can get away with a standard high HP, high resist helmet as a temporary until you get one. Chest - Bringer of Rain does not allow us to use a chest piece. If you don't have BoR, aim for a normal HP, Evasion/Armor high resist 5L or 6L chest piece. Amulet/Rings - Go for high resists and HP first with at least 1%-2% life leech and mana leech between all of them. You can also get leech from gloves. Once you have good HP/Resists you can start looking for % attack speed and x-x physical damage as a bonus. Gloves - Go for attack speed, HP, resists, physical damage. You don't need one of everything. HP and resists are your primary concern. Boots - Resists, HP, Movement speed. Belt - Try to get a rustic sash with high resists and HP. A rustic sash gives you % physical damamge. Weapons - Your concern here is high attack speed and high PHYSICAL damage. Elemental damage on weapons does absolutely nothing for this build. Both swords, axes and claws work well. This build does not have any weapon specific nodes on it, so you can mix and match. I am not a fan of dual axes as you can no longer use whirling blades then.  I want to apologize that most of these are just bad quality caps from my stream and that it took so long for me to upload them. Demonstration on how the build performs vs reflect. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gXmonCX-90 Using level 30 weapons + 5 Link showing the build does not require insane gear: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRZ5hAiZyB4 Dominus Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpSw5-EBEFE Piety Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Lk6mKtlfKk AFK tanking Kole (keep in mind this is without the effects of blind as I am not hitting him. If I blind him I gain an additional 75% evasion) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uau4lERqHhA 74 Underground River Map, Ele Reflect, Phys Reflect, Faster Monsters, Low Regen http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFTI8DQYOqQ Currently Uploading: 77 Shipyard, Low Regen, Phys Reflect, Phys Resistance 76 Crematorium run 75 Plateau Map, -max res, added lightning Also watch me stream @ http://twitch.tv/im2p  -Why use Mutistrike with physical attacks? --> The vid kripp made ages ago about physical being bad with multistrike is false. His theory is that more, small hits is negated by armor more-so than slow large hits. This is true to an extent and may have been relevant back when 5K dps was considered a lot for a melee build. Monsters have 1000 armor at the most. We are hitting nearly 2000 damage per hand over 10 times a second. That 1000 armor that monsters have is irrelevant. -Why don't you have a chest piece? -->Bringer of Rain does not allow for one. This downside is resists are harder to obtain because of this. -Should I use cyclone or Dual Strike? --> Use Dual Strike until you have a Soul Taker or are insanely geared. Cyclone is a late game map convenience/preference thing. Don't ever use it while leveling up. CWDT Nerfed - What should I do? --> I personally keep mine at level one. I keep my other gems linked at level 31 requirement or lower. You can level CWDT a bit and see what sweet spot you like. Just don't level it past 5/6 or else you will find it is never cast. (more coming later, I have been typing for hours and want to get this posted) This guide is not complete, but I feel it is at a spot where I can at least post it. Keep checking back to see what changes I make. Thanks for reading! IGN: FVX Twitch: im2P Last edited by x2P on Aug 22, 2014, 5:52:36 PM Last bumped on Jun 21, 2017, 3:22:05 PM
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Have you got into maps much?
Should demonstrate on a top level if you are able to. | |
" I will try to post videos of some 75+ maps tonight. IGN: FVX
Twitch: im2P | |
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Stop trying to make the name "Blender" happen.
ign: Reaver
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I am not trying to "make it happen".
Viewers of the my stream nicknamed it the blender. I made a video guide on the build and it became far more popular than anticipated. It is pretty well accepted as the name of it now. I run into 3 or 4 people a day who call themselves blenders due to the video alone. So it already has "happened". I fail to see why anyone would be upset over a name. IGN: FVX Twitch: im2P Last edited by x2P on Aug 6, 2013, 2:14:56 PM
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Have you tried using Death Rush amethyst ring? The onslaught effect seems really good
merp merp
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" I would love to try one but my geared out character is in standard. The downside is it lacks life and the accuracy is worthless to me. I can get a ring with similar chaos res, HP, x to x physical and all resist. The 20% attack speed will be nice but at my current 11.5 APS, the diminishing returns on it are pretty heavy. (it would put me at around 12 APS) Also I don't walk anywhere so the movement speed buff wouldn't be too good. I still want to try it though. IGN: FVX Twitch: im2P Last edited by x2P on Aug 6, 2013, 2:36:07 PM
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Ooo, finally a full guide. I read through the entire thing and it has motivated me to put more time into my blender.
One question with 6L's, would it not be mana sustainable to use something like Blind instead of WED? El Psy Congroo.
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" blind doesnt have a mana cost multiplier merp merp
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" Using blind would be mana sustainable, but then at that point I would just go to the BoR for the blind and much higher damage. You would need an absolutely godly 6L to make it worth it. Even without a chest piece and BoR I am about to get +30 chaos res and +81 all res once I replace my bad ring. If I ran an amazing 6L with my current gear vs BoR: Cons: I would lose about 6k DPS. It would be about an 8k DPS loss but I have to factor in me using 20% Q gems with a 6L instead of the level 18 gems in BoR. I would lose some HP also. Pros: Possibility of reaching capped Chaos Res, more potential armor. Also my character wouldn't look like a fairy with his red poofy shirt showing. It would also cost around 30 to 50 ex for a chest this good along with a godly helmet. Easier to overcap resists for elemental weakness maps. (still at cap on ele weakness maps once I replace my ring) Since I am able to reach solid chaos res now with other gear and stay capped, I don't see the point in 6L unless someone has absurd amounts of currency to blow. IGN: FVX Twitch: im2P Last edited by x2P on Aug 6, 2013, 3:01:12 PM
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