Replica Eternity Shroud Sweep - Berserker

POB: https://pastebin.com/18Mj6B1r

So I wanted to make a build for myself this league as a personal goal, but I wanted to utilize a unique or skill that isn't crazy popular. Eternity Shroud is one of my favorite chest pieces and it's been a while since I've played a melee build so I felt that Replica Eternity Shroud had the legs for something great.

Obvious bonuses with the Replica are the 5% Phys as Extra Chaos per Elder gear equipped and when all gear is Elder influenced, our hits ignore enemy Chaos res. Originally this build started out as a Raider with Voidforge but fell flat because I misinterpreted how damage conversion works when Voidforge converts all Physical damage to Elemental. So a friend was curious to see what the damage increase was like just by switching to Berserker and the choice was perfect because of what Zerker can do.

The build is catered towards being a bosser (at least that was my goal in putting it together) but maps really well also. If you have a Headhunter its hilarious getting so much attacks per second that Sweep just decides to not animate its swings anymore. With that being said, I'll go into some of the decisions that you can see in the POB.

Ascendancy - Flawless Savagery + Blitz: I originally had Rite of Ruin here instead of Blitz because of of the increases to Rage bonus, but since I wanted this build to be a bosser (and namely Maven farming) we can't really sustain Rage well enough through different boss phases. Regardless, Blitz makes Sweep feel so good. Sluggish at first until you hit those first set of mobs but ramps up almost instantly. Aspect of Carnage: More Damage. Crave the Slaughter: Increased Max Rage and rage generation, easy choice.

Offenses/Dmg - So at the end of the day its a phys build utilizing impale. The better your 2-Hander the better your damage will be overall. Originally I had a lot of impale nodes on the tree but as the build evolved to be less glass cannon I dropped them. We do have a Watcher's Eye with +2 impale hits which is nice. Other than that we take some damage nodes like Feller of Foes and as much as the crit chance/multi stuff we can. Rings are Steel Rings with flat phys, crit, melee damage, 1 AssMark Ring, and a "Nearby enemies take X% increased Phys Dmg" mod on the helm.

Keep in mind I have the POB configured to show probably about 85% efficiency in terms of damage output. We don't always have max rage or full power charges.

Defenses - TRANSCENDENCE + Veteran's Awareness is so sick. CaptainLance9 on YouTube (great resource of info) made me aware of this interaction and he can explain in it detail if you find the video, but essentially Transcendence applies our Armour to Elemental dmg instead of Phys and reduces our max elemental res by 5%. However, utilizing Veteran's Awareness from The Front Line cluster jewel we get 20% Phys Dmg Reduction and +10% to max elemental resistances (+1% from a node on the tree) for 81% Max Elemental Res while we have a guard skill up. Molten Shell is a good choice but I personally liked Immortal Call more for the additional phys dmg reduction. Adding on to that, the Adamant and Dynamo nodes/clusters on the tree help guard skill duration and CDR. Currently immortal call lasts me 2.29 seconds and has a cool down of ~1.32 seconds. (Vaal)Molten Shell will last around 8 seconds with this setup, but once again just a preference for me.

Another important aspect to keeping ourselves alive is converting phys damage taken into an element. We do this through our watchers eye with the 12% of Phys damage taken as cold while affected by Purity of Elements (which is also helping us round out our resistances) and the Taste of Hate which is giving another 20% of phys taken converted to cold, which is then being reduced by 20% thanks to Taste of Hate's implicit modifiers. Additional Phys damage mitigation is coming from the belt (during flask effect) which is made through Essence of Horror crafting and maximum endurance charge increases from the tree. Another piece of defense is actually the is the Shade Form when hit from Replica Eternity Shroud. I was hoping this would play a bigger role in our defenses, and while its nice to have, its a 3 second duration that's on cooldown for 45(?) seconds I believe. When it goes off I can't really tell if it was the reason I was able to survive or not. Either way, our effective health pool is pretty high thanks to these defenses but our downfall occasionally is still phys damage.

To remedy that we utilize a good amount of life leech. Both recovery speed and max amount recovered per instance of leech is a really nice addition to the build. 2-3 swings usually gives me enough leech to get hit by something and still not need to worry about the damage.

I mentioned it earlier but I originally had the DPS about 15-20mil higher through some different tree allocations and an Elder influenced Abyssus, but I wanted to die less. I got really annoyed from dying. But yeah the damage can totally be pushed higher with a slight sacrifice to survivability but that'll be up to you choose that.

Overall build cost was probably close to 350ex. The axe I purchased for 180ex off trade, the rare gear (aside from boots) was entirely self crafted. 1-2 from scratch and the rest were about 50-60% completed and I just needed to refine the mods/rolls on the item. This build is seriously a lot of fun and I'm super proud I was able to put this together and reach my goal for this league. If anyone has questions please let me know!

I can hopefully answer some other questions about the build if people have specific questions that I didn't address here

Also, I consider no Sweep MTX to be a criminal offense...