[HC viable] Oro's Sacrifice - Elemental "Flickerfucking"

I recently made an attempt to solve the Oro sacrifice puzzle. At lvl 78 with a leap slam/cyclone/molten strike build+ elemental proliferation I could leap slam into a room and instantly melt everything. My counter to the swords curse was to get long lasting immortal calls (Im now playing with a 2h hammer 8s immortal calls), which is where my oro build fell short, finding it difficult to stack endurance charges with oro.

The bottom line that caused me to give up, was that the swords dmg did not impress me enough with all the passives trying to maximize the weapons dps. Skill gems all buff melee phys, which is completly useless for oro, so while I have a combo that does 22k on a phys build, only does 8k with ele. I feel most of my damage is comming from ignites, which may as well turn the 8k into 16k, however its just too unreliable for a cursed melee. Soo in all, on top of the swords curse, it wasnt a *fair* tradeoff.

That said, this was probably the most fun ive had in the game. the Avatar of fire and destruction! If only skills could benefit from more then just melee phys. I didnt get the chance to experiement with Vaal molten armor which can be extremely strong. And if there was a way to keep up endurance charges I could see the curse being neutralized, but just stacking armor wont cut it in the end tier of gameplay with this curse(In my experience).

I had a naging feeling that a energy sheild might have been a better way to go with the hit and run and let things burn to the ground -spec and its very possible to start with a witch, but I digress. Besides ES I thought maybe Lightning coil could be a viable curse breaking solution. Kaom's heart would be interesting with 40% more fire dmg

I hope you have better luck later in the lvls, I think theres a way, but I cant stress enough how my boss killing dps was a big sadface as they can 1shot my 4.4k cursed hp. thank goodness I has tons of speed to *hit-ignite* and run before killed.. and thats where it ends.

Hello everyone and thanks for replies!

@mekaniklas, It is a good choice to switch out clarity for anger when you go blood magic with flicker strike, but you'll have to adjust your mana reserves a bit to make up for the increased cost to maintain all auras (I'm missing 1% mana so I'd have to go for Champion of the Cause to do that despite dropping clarity)

The support gems above a 4-link is just theoretical, since I don't have higher yet but would be a possible option.

@WishTrinity

I took Oak for normal (cant go wrong with +40 base hp)
Skill point for cruel (nothing really useful)
Skill point for merciless (again nothing useful, perhaps an extra endurance charge can be used but idk)

@iDemographic
The power of the sword isnt the highest, but it gets the work done, so to say, at least from my experience.

About Lightning Coil, I've been considering it for some time and I think that it would help me boost survivability and offset oros drawbacks.

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mekaniklas wrote:

Hi

First off really cool build. I enjoy it a lot.
I have made a few changes in gem setup and auras though.

Im running a 6-link so i swapped melee splash for bloodmagic so I can keep flickering constantly. And instead of casting the curses myself i linked them to a lvl 1 cast when damage taken.
I also swapped clarity aura for anger since i don't need mana anymore.

The reason for these changes is that with the previous setup i sometimes flickered into a lot of packs and without the curses i died.

Thanks for a fun build idea


-Cheers

how do you leech life like this? because u will be burning ur hp to attack and w/o a life leech gem also.

For my case, i went with a mana leech gem with fire pen. relying on doryani and warlord's mark to leech

i have just enough life regen to support my attack and with doryani and warlordsmark i do fine. I have 3 panicked life flasks and a granite if things get intense.
I also cast a high lvl flamability before attacking

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Genusi wrote:

Hello everyone and thanks for replies!

@mekaniklas, It is a good choice to switch out clarity for anger when you go blood magic with flicker strike, but you'll have to adjust your mana reserves a bit to make up for the increased cost to maintain all auras (I'm missing 1% mana so I'd have to go for Champion of the Cause to do that despite dropping clarity)

The support gems above a 4-link is just theoretical, since I don't have higher yet but would be a possible option.

@WishTrinity

I took Oak for normal (cant go wrong with +40 base hp)
Skill point for cruel (nothing really useful)
Skill point for merciless (again nothing useful, perhaps an extra endurance charge can be used but idk)

@iDemographic
The power of the sword isnt the highest, but it gets the work done, so to say, at least from my experience.

About Lightning Coil, I've been considering it for some time and I think that it would help me boost survivability and offset oros drawbacks.

Hi again

I have a lvl 18 reduced mana and that allows me to run anger also. But i only have 6 mana left so its a tight fit...

Updated OP with new info!

I happen to have a few oro's and gang's sitting in my stash collecting dust and a templar toon with reset passive so I decided to give this a go since I never had a flicker dude and always think its cool but I hate to maintain blood rage and stuff. So far I have cleared up to 72 maps no issue WITHOUT a cloak of defiance or lightning coil.

Couple thing I like to mention is without special mitigation item like CoD or Lightning Coil is hard hitting physical boss is countered by high level molten shell, arctic armor and manual trigger immortal call. Fire boss is simply running purity of fire and ruby flask. Also I got a cheap 6L str based armor for cheap so I didnt bother with ST and when with Flicker-Multistrike-WED-Melee Splash-Fire Penetration-Life Leech. The life leech + arctic armor makes the spec a lot more "reckless", and the spec has lower base damage with AA makes elemental reflect completely unnoticable.

The only problem with the spec is that even with almost 1/3 of the passive spent on fire damage and running with a 6L the tooltip dps is barely at 2.5k (with melee splash ofc) even accounting for the fire penetration the damage is still on the lower end especially when this build does not crit. It takes significantly longer to clear mobs with high hp. With the limited gear selection you are basically running on papar armor with negligible physical reduction as well as negligible evasion with 0 block, life gets a bit tougher when you flickering into a pack of bears that each hit they do takes 60% of your life and you are basically face tanking all their hits (that hits 20% harder) and it really gets hairy. Luckily running a 20q life leech is helping in that regards with a granite flask with stun resistance. I do get stunned ALOT flickering into high physical damage pack like a magic bear pack.

I am currently 78 (started at 68) and I am having a blast with this flicker build without having to deal all the blood rage bs and having to hunt down some expensive unique and a gg dagger.

I really wouldnt play this in HC unless I can find myself a good 5L/6L cloak of defiance or lightning coil.

Also I swapped out chance to ignite gem after picking up all the chance to ignite nodes with gear it gives a base line of 41% chance to ignite which is plenty. And I run high level clarity full time and really have no mana issue with flicker spam while AA is running.

Lastly, the problem with this build like many other elemental melee builds is that GGG nerfed the crap out of elemental damage scaling now ele damage just scales terribly. Physical damage is the king with facerolling life leech and mana leech on gear you wont even have to dig into mana regen or EB/ES nodes just so you can sustain your offense. Physical also can go with crit and has easy access to Vaal Pack which basically turns any physical flicker spec immortal. On top of that with all the INT/Mana nodes saved, physical flicker can go into max block/spell block, Ondar's with Acrobatics and Phase Acrobatics...

IMO problem is elemental damage is over nerfed, has no leech from gear that complements elemental damage well, and well oro's 2H so theres no way for you to block for any meaningful amount.

But I am really having a blast because I hold down my right mouse button and I am wrecking shit with flicker without having to deal with blood rage and get a kill... just hold down the flicker button and it just works.

I just found this thread and decided to post my Oro's Pure Flicker build. I self leveled to lvl 86 using flicker and infernal blow, using Gang's and a Mokou's Embrace for proccing ignite early on as well as using Chance to Ignite. I just today 6 linked my Oro's. I also had a friend give me a Kaom's Heart (good for life/damage, bad for resistances and armour). I use Gang's Momentum for ignite and damage, and a Doryani's Belt for leech/damage. Devoto's gives me the dex I need while giving attack speed and no damage drawbacks.

Here is my current skill tree:
As you can see I have backed off a few elemental damage noeds in favor or more life. Life sits at 4858/5451 running clarity.

I use Flicker(lvl6) + Multistrike + Faster Attacks + Melee Splash + Fire Pen + WED

*I experimented using Cast on Melee Kill + Detonate dead and not using Splash or Faster Attacks. DD is still nerfed to oblivion even with all the fire nodes and elemental nodes taken.

I run Determination & Anger. Clarity with a Blood Magic Gem, and a mid lvl (lvl 8) Arctic Armour currently.

Stats are as follows without any buffs besides auras active:


It's a shame the evasion from Devoto's is wasted but it is nearly mandatory if building the tree this far away from dex nodes.

The biggest thing to balance is damage+leech with armour or some other mitigation. I tried to go full blown with each and neither seems workable. I use CoDT with enduring cry and Warlord's Mark. The leech given from Warlord's in the greatest gift to this build as far as curses go.

I just cleared Shipyard so this build can go into late game mapping. NOW, that being said, there are many many things and mods he simply can't do, and the extra link on my Oro's provided a HUGE boost to both damage and survivability. I can also swap in Life Leech gem with Fire Pen when needed.

Gear with flat +fire damage as well as +% Elemental damage boost your attacks greatly, of course they can be expensive (not to mention having to make up resistances from Kaom's, Devoto's, and no shield.)

If I could, I'd run dual curse with flammability but that would just be icing on the cake at this point. Calculable DPS is just under 22k and that does not account for penetration and ignite status bonus damage. All in all it is my favorite build and have been tweaking it since Domination. The only thing I could ask for more is if I could corrupt 1% Fire Leech on my Oro's (but I don't have the balls to try it!)

Hello everyone and thanks for reviving this build again! :)

I will try to update the build for 1.3 - it has been buffed a bit with more ignite chance, so flammability and chance to ignite are no longer mandatory to proc ignites. Flammability may still be desired for it's damage boost, though.

Ill look into what can be done to make oro's templar safer and optimize a bit and update the main post with some 1.3 stuff.

@GameLucky21, I never got my hands on higher than 4L with my Oro's so I'm still sitting at flicker + multistrike + WED + chance to ignite in a corrupted CoD. I, however plan to switch chance to ignite out for faster attacks, then add fire pen and lastly melee splash (thus removing spectral throw entirely). While not being able to get a 6L persists, spectral throw will be included to help stay at range (which helps with dangerous rooms and aids the fact that I'm trying this to be a HC-viable character).

I have the idea of just getting a devoto's and one dex node from the tree and run atziri's foible to meet dex requirements for Oro's, also granting more mana regen for AA. Still this is a theorycraft in progress.