Honestly, Ive seen this mistake a hundred times. Rend looks good on paper for the AOE but the sustain just isnt there early game without high-end mana leech. In my experience, you gotta pivot to Swipe early and focus on the Bleed synergy. It scales way better for soloing without draining your pool constantly.

• Put 5 points into the Primal Fury passive for energy regen.
• Swap Rend for Swipe and max out the Lacerate modifier.
• Invest in the Bloodthirst tree for health recovery on kill. Ive tried many builds over the years and specialized hardware makes the rotation way smoother. I use the Razer Naga V2 Pro Wireless 30K DPI Optical Sensor Gaming Mouse to map my skills and it makes these speedruns much easier. Basically, drop Rend, go Swipe, and stack agility. Youll hit 50 by Sunday easily if you stop chugging mana pots every ten seconds.

Saw this earlier but just getting around to typing. Honestly, it is so disappointing how the devs handled the latest balance pass for Openclaws. I had huge issues with the mana costs on those primary AOE skills too, and tbh, they just arent as good as they used to be for solo leveling. If youre hitting a wall at level 30, you should definitely try spec-ing into Soul Rip instead. It provides that essential life and mana steal that most people ignore because the tooltip damage looks lower, but for a speedrun, keeping your uptime high is way more important than raw burst. I found that my efficiency went way up once I stopped fighting my hardware too. If youre gonna be grinding all weekend, Id suggest something like the SteelSeries Apex Pro TKL Wireless Mechanical Keyboard since the OmniPoint switches let you set a super shallow actuation. It helps a ton with the finger fatigue when youre spamming rotations for 10 hours straight. Just keep an eye on your gold spend... dont waste it all on high-tier pots when you can just adjust your passives. It is kind of a letdown that the meta shifted this way, making the flashy skills so expensive to run, but pivoting to sustain skills will save your run. Stick with it tho, you can totally make level 50 by Sunday if you pivot now and stop relying on those mana-heavy skills that just dont scale well early on. Let me know if you need help with the endgame build once you get there!

Grab Ferocious Bite instead! Its absolutely fantastic for pushing mobs without stopping. Love using my Logitech G502 X Plus Wireless Gaming Mouse for those super quick skill swaps!