[1.2.2] The Dark Knight - Ki's Crit Staff Duelist | 200k+ DPS, 8k Life | Best Melee Clear

This is my absolute dream build! I've been wanting to make a similar build (crit 2H GroundSlam/Heavy Strike with Abyssus + long IC) for a long time, but I never went for it because I wasn't sure if it'd be viable. Unfortunately for me, it does look rather expensive (even the budget versions haha).

That being said, I have a few things I could try to sell on Standard (Legacy BoR, Legacy 970% Facebreaker). I also have 1 6L on Standard (6L Belly) which I could use instead of the 6L Carcass Jack / Kaoms.

1) Do you think trying to buy a good rare Staff is viable? According to poe.trade the BoR could sell for around 9ex, and Facebreaker for 3ex (although I don't know if anyone is buying, I don't really know how to trade well).

2) Also, what is your Chance to Hit typically? What is a good number to aim for there?

3) What is your chance to crit with and without power charges?

4) Have you tested out using ECoMS in this build at all?

5) Do you think the Staff Block nodes are better than more %Life nodes?

If I can pull this off then I see myself playing this build forever haha, this is exactly what I've always wanted!

Thanks for your time.

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Shmez wrote:

This is my absolute dream build! I've been wanting to make a similar build (crit 2H GroundSlam/Heavy Strike with Abyssus + long IC) for a long time, but I never went for it because I wasn't sure if it'd be viable. Unfortunately for me, it does look rather expensive (even the budget versions haha).

That being said, I have a few things I could try to sell on Standard (Legacy BoR, Legacy 970% Facebreaker). I also have 1 6L on Standard (6L Belly) which I could use instead of the 6L Carcass Jack / Kaoms.

1) Do you think trying to buy a good rare Staff is viable? According to poe.trade the BoR could sell for around 9ex, and Facebreaker for 3ex (although I don't know if anyone is buying, I don't really know how to trade well).

2) Also, what is your Chance to Hit typically? What is a good number to aim for there?

3) What is your chance to crit with and without power charges?

4) Have you tested out using ECoMS in this build at all?

5) Do you think the Staff Block nodes are better than more %Life nodes?

If I can pull this off then I see myself playing this build forever haha, this is exactly what I've always wanted!

Thanks for your time.

Hi bro,

1. Without a doubt. I actually saw a 6L 650 DPS staff being sold at 30 ex earlier this week. Best part was it had a suffix spot open to bench a 27% crit chance... Still outside of your budget, but it just goes to show you that staves are so unpopular that even nicely rolled ones are priced poorly, because the market for them just doesn't exist. I suggest looking for staves with good phys%, flat phys, and crit chance rolls, and trying to bench craft hybrid phys% and/or IAS. Even with bad IAS (and bad DPS), if you have good phys rolls, you can make an extremely good flicker build (where IAS doesn't matter as much)

2. I believe mine was 89% on my main and 86% on my budget, but I'll have to double check. Anything at or above 85% is fine. There are a ton of acc nodes nearby to help you out with this.

3. ~59% without any and ~79% with power charges. It's noteworthy that because the base dps of staves is so goddamn high, it scales better with %phys/ias nodes most of the time than crit. But crit is also very good :)

4. I was using it as part of my 6-Link leap slam set up when I was trying out my budget build. I ended up liking blood magic better because I didn't like mana flasking so much. But you can try swapping Increased AOE out and seeing if you like the utility of ecoms better. I think Ecoms is more useful in situations where you don't have abyssus. With abyssus, you generally want to be on IC most of the time, which involves consuming your endurance charges completely. In this situation, Ecoms won't really be enough to get back all of your charges -- you'll have to still use EC a good amount.

5. If you're using rainbowstrides for the nice resist bonus, definitely. Even that withstanding, I like the circles because you can swap your amulet to Lapis for an awesome spell block conversion for things like Piety. I also like them, because both contain phys/acc nodes (each one translates to ~1% accuracy) which I needed.

Thanks for the quick reply buddy!

Alright, I'll begin my search on a decent Staff to start the build on. It seems like since I already have a 6L I might have an easier time finding a non-linked Staff, with the possibility of linking it myself later.

Thanks for all the tips, I'm not really a fan of Flicker as a main attack but I'll play around with it. One more quick question, do you feel that Acuity is necessary to stay alive with this build?

Thanks again man!

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Shmez wrote:

Thanks for the quick reply buddy!

Alright, I'll begin my search on a decent Staff to start the build on. It seems like since I already have a 6L I might have an easier time finding a non-linked Staff, with the possibility of linking it myself later.

Thanks for all the tips, I'm not really a fan of Flicker as a main attack but I'll play around with it. One more quick question, do you feel that Acuity is necessary to stay alive with this build?

Thanks again man!

I think that's a good idea on the staff.

And na, acuities are definitely not necessary. I leveled from 91 to 92 solo on L78 maps using budget gear just to make sure it was possible. But I did die a few times when I tried to use abyssus without an acuities/vaal pact (which is why I ended up swapping it for rat's nest for the budget version). With abyssus it was just impossible to consistently react and leech fast enough when I accidentally walked into huge phys projectile packs without immortal call on (part of the problem was I got so used to having acuities that I played a little recklessly :P). I never tried this, but worst case scenario (or if you really want to try and make abyssus work), try and go vaal pact. You would have to drop blood rage and get life leech on gears (maybe even use gem),

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KiPad wrote:

And na, acuities are definitely not necessary. I leveled from 91 to 92 solo on L78 maps using budget gear just to make sure it was possible. But I did die a few times using abyssus without an acuities (which is actually why I swapped it for rat's nest). With abyssus it was just impossible to consistently react fast enough when I accidentally walked into huge phys projectile pack without immortal call on (part of the problem was I got so used to having acuities that I played a little recklessly :P). I never tried this, but worst case scenario, drop blood rage, get life leech on gears (maybe even gem) and go vaal pact.

Might be possible to keep Abyssus without an Acuity (or Vaal Pact) if you're using a Lightning Coil but capping resistances would be annoying

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Bhai wrote:

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KiPad wrote:

And na, acuities are definitely not necessary. I leveled from 91 to 92 solo on L78 maps using budget gear just to make sure it was possible. But I did die a few times using abyssus without an acuities (which is actually why I swapped it for rat's nest). With abyssus it was just impossible to consistently react fast enough when I accidentally walked into huge phys projectile pack without immortal call on (part of the problem was I got so used to having acuities that I played a little recklessly :P). I never tried this, but worst case scenario, drop blood rage, get life leech on gears (maybe even gem) and go vaal pact.

Might be possible to keep Abyssus without an Acuity (or Vaal Pact) if you're using a Lightning Coil but capping resistances would be annoying

Yeah in fact you can pretty comfortably use abyssus if you are running with a lightning coil, but capping is such a bitch, you basically HAVE to toss your maligaros/acuities, sacrifice either accuracy or chaos resist (which you would have to make up with multiple acc nodes or life regen nodes respectively on passive tree) on your belt/jewelry, and maybe even drop rainbows/atziri slink for higher resist boots. Not to mention the very heightened chance you might get shocked for 50% increased damage taken, basically negating any protection it afforded you from abyssus.

I'd rather just lose the abyssus then go through all of that tbh. Rat's nest is still really really good, especially since you won't be crit capped with this build.

Hmm... so from looking at your gear again, it seems you have a 20% Blood Rage which gives you 10% Life Leech. In order to achieve the same with Vaal Pact, you'd need ... 25% Life Leech from gear/gems/tree. Wow. That's insane :D. When I get to that level I will try the Abyssus out since I already have one, but yeah I might consider dropping it at the end of the day.

How much unreserved Mana do you have, and is the 2% Mana Leech from gear enough to sustain attacks/casts?

EDIT: Nevermind I watched some of your videos, you seem to have about 220 Mana and no mana pots so it looks like the 2% leech is enough! Nice.

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Shmez wrote:

Hmm... so from looking at your gear again, it seems you have a 20% Blood Rage which gives you 10% Life Leech. In order to achieve the same with Vaal Pact, you'd need ... 25% Life Leech from gear/gems/tree. Wow. That's insane :D. When I get to that level I will try the Abyssus out since I already have one, but yeah I might consider dropping it at the end of the day.

One nice part about Vaal Pact is that you dont need to crit in order to access instant leech. Because staff has such a high base damage, your leech will be fairly substantial even on non-crit hits. As a result, you'd probably be fine with less than 25% life leech (especially since 10% LL from blood rage is probably overkill to begin with :P)

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Bhai wrote:

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Shmez wrote:

Hmm... so from looking at your gear again, it seems you have a 20% Blood Rage which gives you 10% Life Leech. In order to achieve the same with Vaal Pact, you'd need ... 25% Life Leech from gear/gems/tree. Wow. That's insane :D. When I get to that level I will try the Abyssus out since I already have one, but yeah I might consider dropping it at the end of the day.

One nice part about Vaal Pact is that you dont need to crit in order to access instant leech. Because staff has such a high base damage, your leech will be fairly substantial even on non-crit hits. As a result, you'd probably be fine with less than 25% life leech (especially since 10% LL from blood rage is probably overkill to begin with :P)

A very good point, although at the same time I probably won't be achieving anywhere near as much DPS as Ki does :P. Nevertheless, it's worth testing out for sure!

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Shmez wrote:

Hmm... so from looking at your gear again, it seems you have a 20% Blood Rage which gives you 10% Life Leech. In order to achieve the same with Vaal Pact, you'd need ... 25% Life Leech from gear/gems/tree. Wow. That's insane :D. When I get to that level I will try the Abyssus out since I already have one, but yeah I might consider dropping it at the end of the day.

How much unreserved Mana do you have, and is the 2% Mana Leech from gear enough to sustain attacks/casts?

EDIT: Nevermind I watched some of your videos, you seem to have about 220 Mana and no mana pots so it looks like the 2% leech is enough! Nice.

With my main build DPS 10% is honestly overkill. We don't have information from GGG about monster armour, but it's pretty damn low. Without taking it into consideration, the amount of leech I actually need to heal my 8k life in one second with my 180k DPS is 4.5% leech. This assumes I were to crit every hit, which I don't, but clearly 10% is more than enough for me :P

For budget build, the amount of leech you need with ~50k DPS or 75k DPS to instant heal 5k HP in one second is 10% leech or 6.7% leech respectively. With vaal pact penalty it ends up being 25% leech or 16.75% leech. Really hard to do without a life leech gem, so you'll have to play around and see if you really need to instant leech all your life in one second. Maybe two seconds is fine, in which case you just need 12.5% or 8.375% leech, which are more reasonable numbers to hit.

The cool/OP thing about acuity is instant leech works with mana, so that is why I don't need mana pots on main build. For budget, I was actually running out of mana every now and then (especially on 50%/no regen maps). I was lazy, so since I had leap slam linked to blood magic, I just leap slammed the mobs to apply curse/get mana back via leech if/when I ran out, but I would suggest you run a mana pot (or a hybrid life/mana flask works as well)