[1.3] Uber Disfavour: flexible 2h cycloner w/ high dps/aoe, atziri-viable, cullability

Don't know what to do with that Atziri's Disfavour rotting in your stash? Want to have a build with super-high AoE, great DPS, high tankiness, and flexible gearing? Want to be able to fight Atziri with dual Andvarius rings and still have capped resistances? Want to be able to cull with your weapon swap in groups running 77+ maps? Want 71+k DPS with good AoE or 42k+ DPS with great AoE, all from a non-crit toon? If so, then this build is for you!

Genesis

If you just want to know the details of this build, you can skip this section.

A while back, my barrage CoC toon (ShatterChuck Lite-style) netted me a Hope fragment, then a kind soul ran Uber for me and a Disfavour dropped. After researching a bit, CrimsonMidget's Disfavour Cyclone build looked like the perfect way to take advantage of it.

I used my free respec from an old marauder, scrounged for gear in my stash, bought a few missing pieces, and started destroying maps. Along the way, I bumped into Purely_Amplified who was adapting his cycloner from Soul Taker to Disfavour. He was several levels above me, but I always had higher DPS with CrimsonMidget's build. He'd figure out how to beat me, then I'd level up and beat him again. Eventually, Purely_Amplified figured out how to make the build described here work. After running a lot of maps together (me with CM's build, PA with his), I decided to switch. Much of this was due to me hitting a wall with gear. I just couldn't improve the toon much without spending a lot of exalts to keep my resistances and stats up enough.

I've been running this build for a few months now and it's definitely my favorite build so far. I can go tanky and destroy stuff. I can swap some gear and cull 265/43 while still having good life and capped resistances (but low dps with Reaper's Pursuit). My normal solo mapping mode is to use the Disfavour, have capped resistances, and use dual Andvarius rings for 160/0 mf. As a bonus, this build has even wider AoE than CrimsonMidget's. I can sometimes do offscreen kills above the top of the screen with Herald of Ash proliferation.

To be clear, CrimsonMidget's build is fantastic. As part of writing this guide, I leveled a brand new character to 88 following his. His build is a little tankier (1k extra life), has almost as much DPS as this one, and it still has good range. CM's also a nice guy.


Core Ideas and Items

This build centers around Atziri's Disfavour. I suppose you could use another weapon, but you'll lose a lot of DPS. A 6-link is best, but it's still viable with a 5-link, at the cost of 30-60% less dps (multiplicative).


This build runs Cyclone off mana instead of blood magic (gem), allowing it to get huge DPS boots from full-life bonuses. It uses the skill tree to provide core defenses, AoE, and mana cost mitigation. This is in contrast to blood magic (gem) builds that stack DPS on the tree and rely more heavily on gear and buffs for defenses.

Although not required, this build can fully benefit from Daresso's Salute (not required) amulet. Since this build isn't CI-based, we don't care about the 50% "reduced" hit to energy shield. But since we use Vaal Pact and have a small ES barrier, we're almost always at full life, and thus the huge speed and DPS boots from the amulet apply. Most importantly, we get that extra +2 melee weapon range.


Since this build gets up-close and personal with mobs and bosses alike and it needs a lot of nodes in the southwest of the skill tree, we use Resolute Technique. We lose a little bit of crit, but don't have to worry at all about accuracy.

To help maintain full-life status, this build uses Vaal Pact. This is slightly unusual for a non-crit build, but we path right past it to get to the duelist mana and range nodes, and it definitely helps survivability. This is in contrast to blood magic (gem) builds that tend to stack chaos resistance, life regeneration, and use Blood Rage for tankiness. Both build types love to stack tons of life on gear and on the tree.



Pros

  • Absolutely fun to play. I thought melee was lame before making this character.
  • Tanky: >4k life with Carcass Jack, >5k life with Kaom's Heart
  • Fast: depends on your gear, but for Atziri farming I run at +60% move speed
  • High DPS: in high defense mode, 57k tooltip DPS with Concentrated Effect, 33k tooltip DPS with Increased Area of Effect. Much higher DPS is available for those who are willing to use Abyssus.
  • High AoE: stacks range bonuses to directly hit a big chunk of the screen with Cyclone itself, adding proliferation from Herald of Ash on top.
  • Flexible gearing options. You can swap out items to maximize life, DPS, AoE, extra sockets for Vaal Cyclone, etc. Purely_Amplified and I have rather different gear and the build works great for each of our play styles (see his comment post below for his gear links).
  • Has enough resistance to use dual Andvarius rings (optional) and still have your resistances capped.
  • Works great for killing Atziri. Depending on your skill level and gear, you can even run Atziri with MF gear on.
  • Doubles as a MF culler with mid-level MF (265/43 in my case) that is capable of running high level maps in a group. I am regularly in 77+ party maps in full cull mode. Parties love having effective cullers in those maps.
  • Reflect-immune. When playing this build, I notice reflect mobs when I see party members dying around me. Reflect maps do require swapping in a life leech gem. Double reflect may require turning off Hatred and/or Herald of Ash (though Hatred hurts party members much more than you).



Cons

  • Too flexible and fun: If you have poor impulse control like me, you'll try culling a little too much in rippy situations and occasionally not make it out alive. Purely_Amplified is more disciplined and levels just fine.
  • Low culling DPS: culling DPS with a 5l Reaper's Pursuit is only 3.8k. This is plenty for farming Sacrifice fragments and for being the party culler in high level maps, but it's not enough to solo-cull entire high level maps.
  • Not super-cheap: by the time you're around level 90, you'll want:
    • a 5L or 6L Atziri's Disfavour (7-10 exalts + socket and link costs)
    • a Kaom's Heart (7-10 exalts, non-legacy) and/or Carcass Jack (1+ chaos + whatever you want to spend on sockets and linking)
    • Daresso's Salute (3-10 exalts), absolutely not required, but it's very nice to have.
    • various other bits of gear that cost a few chaos to a few exalts apiece. But, there's a lot of freedom here: if you can afford the Disfavour, you probably have most of what you need hiding in your stash or other toons.
  • Bad at PvP: although you can usually beat level 75 PvE player at level 92 in Leo missions, you'll usually lose to better players and/or actual PvP players.
  • Soloing or carrying a party through some bosses like Megaera in the Crematorium is sketchy. Note that this build does handle most bosses just fine, including normally-nasty ones like Spinner of False Hope in Jungle Valley (even its super-rippy level 77 Zana-daily version, if appropriately geared).



Skill Tree

109 point maurader tree

Purely_Amplified's character is two levels above me. He took the remaining node on the Scion life wheel plus Path of the Warrior.

This build could also be done from a Templar or Scion start. Templar would waste a few nodes on life regeneration. Scion would take more elemental resistance, but it's not really needed. Scion would also give very early access to mana regeneration. I recommend sticking with the Marauder start.


Gems

Disfavour Gems

For general mapping, I use these gems in the Disfavour: Cyclone - Increased Area of Effect - Melee Physical Damage - Faster Attacks - Added Fire Damage - Melee Damage on Full Life. All benefit from quality, so it's helpful level up an extra set of them in the weapon swap or unused sockets if you don't have 20q gems yet. If you only have a 5l, drop Added Fire Damage. If you can't sustain the mana costs yet, replace a red gem with Blood Magic. Tooltip damage is around 33k with massive AoE.

For hard bosses, I replace Increased Area of Effect with Concentrated Effect. If I really want to maximize tooltip DPS, I get >62k with dual Ming's Heart rings.

For reflect maps (especially double-reflect), I use Life Leech instead of Added Fire Damage or Full-life.

If your life is a bit low (<5k) and/or you're not super-speedy yet, Life Leech is helpful for the Atziri trio fight. You can out-leech the physical damage pool with this setup (if you're careful), but these days I just stick with Increased Area of Effect.

If you're in a degen-heavy area, consider dropping Full-life for Life Leech. The former won't do you any good unless you can stay at full life and Life Leech will make you tankier.


Weapon Swap Gems

In my weapon swap, I use Reaper's Pursuit for culling. It's only a 5-link and has Cyclone - Faster Attacks - Melee Physical Damage - Item Quantity - Item Rarity. In the 6th socket, I keep my spare Life Leech gem for emergencies. This isn't particularly optimized.

Alternatively, use your weapon swap to level gems. If you run out of good things to do, get 6 sockets worth of items from Haku with +6% quality to gems. Use this to level up Enlighten, Empower, and Enhance gems.


Chest Gems

If you're using Kaom's Heart, this is easy: no gems.

In my Carcass Jack, I have Vaal Cyclone - Added Fire Damage - Life Leech - Concentrated Effect - Blind - Faster Attacks. This isn't optimized, but you'll notice it's defense-oriented since you're sucking in massive mobs and it's a shame to die when doing this. Stun or higher damage gems might be better. By having Concentrated Effect here, it's easy to swap it into my Disfavour in an emergency for boss fights.

Alternatively you could probably setup a great Vengeance + ??? system on your chest. If I were playing in the 2.0 closed beta, I'd try out Vigilant Strike with Curse on Hit.


Other Gems

I have a standard Cast When Damage Taken - Enduring Cry - Immortal Call - Increased Duration setup in my helmet. I happen to use level 10 CwDT in the helmet I use for Atziri-tanking with Kaom's Heart. I have a level 4 setup for mapping with Carcass Jack. Standard advice applies here.

In a 3+ link item, you should have Herald of Ash - Hatred - Reduced Mana. Use whatever you want for the 4th link.

You should have Leap Slam somewhere. It's nice to link in Faster Attacks but not necessary except in the most impatient mapping groups.

Otherwise, I like to keep a portal gem and use the remaining spots for leveling gems.

Vengeance or CwDT + Curse on Hit + a curse might be worthwhile.




Mapping Gear

One of the great things about this build is that it stacks enough resistances on the tree that you have a lot of freedom on what to wear. Purely_Amplified and I actually have rather different gear in half our slots, and that's just fine.

Weapon

There's only one end-game choice here. Get a 5 link or 6 link Disfavour. The 6th link yields 30-60% "more" damage and makes it easy to swap in a Life Leech gem for those nasty double reflect maps.

As discussed in the leveling section, there are lots of good choices for what to use until you hit level 75. Personally, I'd make sure I had a 6 socket Disfavour prior to leveling a new character. When leveling my test toon using CrimsonMidget's build, my DPS shot up 800% (in a "more" sense) once I equipped my 6 link Disfavour at level 75. This build should scale damage from other weapons a little better, but the jump to Disfavour will still be very dramatic.

If you want to cull too, Reaper's Pursuit is the best choice. Here's my semi-good one with 5 links and non-optimized gems. Someday I'll figure out a good high-mf crit reaper build.



Flasks

Most importantly, you need a Saturated Eternal Mana Flask, preferably "of Craving":

What you want here is a large total amount of mana recovery, but spread over a very long time. 99% of the time I don't touch this flask. It is important though for some boss fights where you need to do the constant skill restarts to increase damage and hug the boss. It's also very useful in half-regen maps (especially the extra leech).

For normal mapping, I use:

It's handy to have an instant-flask, a high-life flask, some anti-freeze, and a Quicksilver. Atziri's Promise adds a nice damage boost and good life leech for bosses or scary Vaal Cyclone mistakes. Adjust these as you see fit. I sometimes end up with different life and quicksilver flasks without noticing.


Chest

If you just care about tankiness, get a Kaom's Heart:

If you're super-rich, get a legacy one (200+ exalts). I'm not.

If you value flexibility and/or AoE range, get a Carcass Jack:

You'll have less life than with Kaom's, but wider AoE. Tooltip DPS is about the same with both chests.

For leveling, it's fine to use a Tabula Rasa or a rare chest. Life and resistances are useful.


Amulet

The best amulet for this build is Daresso's Salute:

As discussed elsewhere, this build doesn't care about its one downside (reduced energy shield), but all its bonuses are great. It supplies a great set of resistances, relieves some pressure on the tree to get dexterity, it provides extra weapon range, and it gives significant speed and damage boosts on full life. The main downside is that it's a league-specific unique, so it can only be obtained from legacy purchases or via chancing with Zana's map mods.

If you don't have Salute, amulets are a good way to get extra Intelligence and Dexterity (need 109+ for both for your Disfavour gems). They're also a good source for life leech, mana leech, extra life, and resistances. Stuff like attack speed and item rarity are also nice. Use it to work around your other gear needs.


Belt

The physical and fire versions of Doryani's Invitation are great belts for this build:

It's the easiest way to get damage boosts, life (from strength), resistances, and leech all in one nice package. Doryani belts are best-in-slot for so many builds, that it's good to have one anyway.

If you don't have an Invitation, use a belt to round out your character. Strength, life, and resistances are the most useful mods for rare belts.


Boots

Rare boots are generally the best. 30% move speed is especially useful. It's pretty much necessary to survive Atziri's flameblasts. If you're mapping in high level groups, you'll have trouble contributing without at least 20% extra move speed. As a melee tank, your job is to stay in front of the party and suck in the mobs. Otherwise, stack life and use boots if you need resistances.

Here are my boots. The only useful stats are move speed, life, and lightning resistance. The rest are trash for this build. If I had high tri-res boots, I'd probably be able to safely run even Elemental Weakness maps with dual Andvarius. Note: vitality is useless for this build, I'm just doing gem leveling here.


If you really want to use a unique pair of boots, Atziri's Step is probably the best choice. They have great move speed, can have high life rolls, and give some spell dodge. I used to use these:


If you're going to buy some boots though, just get a pair of rares with move speed and whatever resistances you need.


Rings

In a certain sense, you don't even need to wear any rings at all, but you want to. You should be able to easily massively overcap your resistances through other gear and this skill tree. As needed, use rings to:
  • cap your resistances if you have terrible boots, gloves, helmets, amulets, and belts.
  • magic find: dual Andvarius!
  • increase DPS: damage mods, Ming's Heart, etc.
  • extra life leech
  • extra mana regeneration
  • extra mana leech
  • intelligence and dexterity


For normal mapping I actually run with dual Andvarius rings. My uncapped resistances are 96/89/81/-60 in this mode, though I could do better if I bought better boots. If you you don't mind ripping once or twice (or are more skilled than me - hint: you probably are), you can reliably do full clears of Atziri with dual Andvarius the whole way through, including all boss fights.


For hard bosses, Elemental Weakness maps, Atziri bosses, etc., I currently use Ming's Heart and a rare ring with extra mana regeneration and life leech. Note that Ming's Heart synergizes well with Atziri's Promise flask. The extra damage it adds is turned into even more leech. Having good mana regeneration or leech reduces the need to use a mana flask.


Other rings I've used in the past and/or use for situational needs are:



Helmet

Here you have a ton of flexibility, and some really good options depending on your play style.

When using dual Andvarius gems, I use a good life and tri-res helmet. If I had better resistances on boots, I wouldn't need this good of a helmet. If I didn't want to cull, this helmet is way more than I need.


In full tank mode with Kaom's Heart, I find Devoto's Devotion works well. I found this one culling with the rare helmet. The attack speed bonus outweighs the damage reduction, the defensive stats are great, the chaos resistance is handy, and the move speed is incredible, especially combined with +30% move speed boots and Daresso's Salute's extra 10% move speed. It provides no resistances though, so I can't keep my resistances capped with dual Andvarius rings and my mediocre boots and gloves. The extra speed helps a lot with Atziri: I can do deathless runs with it.


Purely_Amplified likes using Abyssus for the stats and DPS boost. Abyssus scares me, so I don't use it. I'd rather have high magic find if I'm going to take risks instead of higher damage.

Alpha's Howl is reasonable if you have one lying around. Unfortunately, this is a 1-aura build, so it only boosts Hatred while giving a little larger mana buffer.


Gloves

Lastly, gloves are another slot with a lot of options. Useful mods include intelligence, dexterity, resistances, damage, life leech, and mana leech.


Below are the gloves that made CrimsonMidget's build viable for me again. If I used them on this build, I'd need to use the ring slots for mana and life leech. This would hurt my magic find abilities.




Stats


Here are images of the offensive and defensive stats for several gearing choices, sorted by DPS.

Abyssus + Kaom's Heart + Conc. Eff + Atziri's Promise = 71.4k dps, +6% radius

Purely_Amplified likes using Abyssus, so I'm including its stats. I have a bad roll and it scares me, so I never use it.



Devoto's Devotion + Kaom's Heart + Conc. Eff + Atziri's Promise = 67.6k dps, +6% radius

Boss killer mode.



Carcass Jack + Conc. Eff. + Atziri's Promise = 63.8k dps, +26% radius

Has ridiculously overcapped resistances and about the same DPS as with Devoto's Devotion and Kaom's Heart.



Abyssus + Kaom's Heart + Conc. Eff = 60.5k dps, +6% radius

Purely_Amplified likes using Abyssus, so I'm including its stats. I have a bad roll and it scares me, so I never use it.



Devoto's Devotion + Kaom's Heart + Conc. Eff = 57.2k dps, +6% radius

Boss killer mode when I forget to use the flask.



Carcass Jack + Conc. Eff. = 54.0k dps, +26% radius

Has ridiculously overcapped resistances and about the same DPS as with Devoto's Devotion and Kaom's Heart.



Devoto's Devotion + Kaom's Heart + Incr. AoE = 33.6k dps, +81% radius

Normal tank map clearing mode.



Carcass Jack + Incr. AoE = 31.8k dps, +101% radius

Has ridiculously overcapped resistances, crazy range, and about the same DPS as with Devoto's Devotion and Kaom's Heart.



And here are stats for culling with decent dual Andvarius rings, a decent Reaper's Pursuit, and 20/20 iir and iiq gems.

265/43 MF

Normal tank map clearing mode.



Carcass Jack + Melee Phys + IIR + IIQ + Incr. AoE = 3.8k dps, +36% radius

This is my current culling setup. DPS is fine for soloing Vaal fragment farming and for culling in a well-run party. Not viable for solo high maps unless you like ripping.





Atziri

This build is quite Atziri-capable. I'm not very skilled and can clear Atziri deathless about 1/3 of the time with this build, including once in a 2-person group (me carrying the other guy who hid outside boss rooms). In comparison, I never came close to being able to run Atziri deathless with my barrage CoC with 83/75/82 resistances (but could always beat her with a few deaths) or with my Tornado Shot + Puncture Trap characters (could never get past the trio). CrimsonMidget's build is a bit better for killing Atziri due to having an amazing >6.3k life with decent life regeneration; however, my deathless success rate is about 1/3 with it as well (CrimsonMidget himself is much more skilled, he can do the whole thing with one life flask and no other flasks).

Here's how I do my Atziri runs:
Trash Mobs and Current Gear

I use this gear. With Devoto's Devotion instead of my mapping helmet + dual Andvarius rings, My resistances are actually uncapped, but the mobs are easy enough to clear that this doesn't matter. They just melt and I get extra drops. I would not try this with Reaper's Pursuit: the mobs are only easy with Disfavour.

Before starting a new non-boss area, I setup the flasks I want to use for the next boss fight. With the wrong flasks, you'll rip to bosses.

As said before you don't have to use this exact set of gear. The fight is just a bit trickier with less move speed, less range, and/or less life.


Duo

For the duo, I use the following flasks. Having anti-freeze, anti-shock, and topaz flasks is what matters the most.


Dual Andvarius is sketchy with these guys unless your resistances are capped. With my current gear, I either swap on my mapping helmet or I go back to my tanky rings:

I should buy some better boots and/or gloves.

Both Concentrated Effect and Increased Area of Effect work well on the duo bosses. I'm slightly favoring Concentrated Effect at the moment.

If you're new to Atziri, bring the first down to near-death, then go kill the second, then return to kill the first. If your DPS is high enough (say >50k), then just kill the first one immediately. The trick here is that they start doing their high damage attacks and spells the second time they pop up. By hurting one then killing the other, you can often sneak back to the first and kill it before it gets really dangerous.


Trio

As anyone who's done Atziri knows, the trio is the hardest fight. Fortunately, this toon handles the trio very well, once you understand how to manage the fight. You need to have the right flasks, the right positioning, fast move speed, and kill them in the right order and in the right places.

For flasks, I currently use the following. Note that I have multiple anti-bleed flasks and ruby flask. These are important for surviving the cycloner. You will die very fast without something similar.


If you don't have enough leech (through gear, passives, and flasks), you may need to swap out a red gem for life leech. I'd swap out the Full-life one instead of Added Fire. This fight has a ton of degen damage, so it's hard to sustain full life status anyway. With a level 20 leech gem and leveled up damage gems, you can actually stay at near-full health while in the middle of the black physical degeneration pool, as long as you have lots of mobs to leech off of. Do not stand there if they're gone!

If you have capped fire resistance, you can do this fight with dual Andvarius.

I generally use the Increased Area of Effect gem instead of Concentrated Effect. IAoE does enough damage, it allows me to kite from further outside the massive degen pools for safety, and it makes it easier to leech off mobs. Just be sure you still kill the bosses in the right order if they start to clump up.

Devoto's Devotion makes this fight much easier. With it, you are basically running with an always-on quicksilver flask. You can do it without Devotion, but you'll have to be a lot more careful. Prior to using Devotion, I'd die about once per run to the trio. With it, I only die if I manage my flasks poorly. I don't even bother swapping in life leech anymore.

For the fight itself, kill the spiky lady first (there's a ruder name I'm sure you've heard). She's the one in the middle. Try to avoid her spike rain. Try to kill her either dead-center in the zone or along one of the edges or corners. Don't kill her near the entrance. If you rip, you'll want that area free of the physical degeneration pool. Once she dies, get away from the area. A large very high damage physical degeneration pool will grow around her body. It'll consume about 1/4th of the whole zone (unless you killed her in the corner, then she'll only fill up about 1/16th of it).

After the spiky lady, kill the dual striker. He's the one with two big arms that likes to light himself on fire. Be careful to not over-use your flasks. Use the mobs to help regenerate them if needed. Try to kill the dual striker either near the spiky lady's body or in the very opposite corner. His body will create another degen pool and you want to maximize the amount of degen-free area for the final boss. Don't kill the dual striker near the entrance (same reason as before).

Save the cycloner for last because he's the easiest to manage when fully-enraged. The main danger with him is the bleed damage. He's basically you: high physical damage, massive range, and bleed using Cyclone. You need at least one anti-bleed flask, I prefer 2, if you're new, have 3. Unless you're really confident of your leech, avoid the black degeneration pools. Note that they're often invisible. If you hug the walls, he doesn't cyclone as much.


Atziri

The final fight is about timing and flask management. Devoto's Devotion isn't necessary but it helps a lot when manually dodging the flameblasts and storm calls. If you're an Atziri pro, just skim the flask recommendations and do what you'd normally do.

Here are the flasks I now use. Note that I no longer use the mana pot because I have enough mana regeneration. If you don't yet, keep the mana pot. You'll want a topaz and ruby flask plus ones to regenerate life. Other options include a quicksilver flask (especially if you don't have as high move speed as me) or Atziri's Promise (I haven't gotten around to trying it yet).


There are 3 phases to the fight: Atziri herself, the "ads" phase, and the split form.

When she's alone, don't attack her till she initiates an attack herself. If you do and have high DPS, she'll instantly switch to another phase. Once she does attack, you want to be using Concentrated Effect and do as much damage as possible. If you have an Atziri's Promise, take one big gulp of it. If you have Reaper's Pursuit on weapon swap and she's down to <10% life, go ahead and cull her. If you have enough DPS (>45k???), she won't have a chance to spawn the massive dual flameblasts, making your life much easier. Figure out the timing of when you need to run vs. attack. Watch some videos, rip a few times, and you'll get it. It's tricky to do right but much easier to understand than the trio fight.

When she spawns her zombie ads, immediately open your inventory and put your Concentrated Effect gem in place of the Increased Area of Effect one. With Increased AoE, you'll be able to clear them easily. With Concentrated Effect, you'll miss half of them and they'll heal Atziri. Once you see the zombies stop spawning, quickly switch back to Concentrated Effect. If this doesn't make sense, just watch one of the videos later in this post.

For the split form, stay far away from the one holding up a mirror beside her head. You'll one-shot yourself if you attack her. Otherwise, just pick one and kill it. Now's a good time to take the other drink from your Atziri's Promise flask. If you kill one of the split forms, the flameblast will harmlessly disappear, but the storm calls will still go off. You still need to dodge them.

Other than that, the final fight is about learning the timing, not panicking, and managing your flasks well. This build is tanky enough to let you make one major mistake, but only one (until the next zombie add phase when you can refill your pots). If you're able to stack >6.3k of life, you gain the ability to make two major mistakes.




Uber Atziri

Purely_Amplified has killed Uber Atziri in 3 out of 5 attempts with an expensive version of this build. Here's an outline of how:
  • He got super-lucky and yolo corrupted +1 gems onto his 6-link Carcass Jack. He has since sold it, so doesn't think he can replicate the Uber fights with his current +1 Tabula Rasa.
  • In Disfavour, he replaced Added Fire Damage with Life Leech.
  • For rings, he used dual Ming's Heart. This brought his life down to 3600.
  • He used Abyssus.
  • He used two Taste of Hate flasks, two Atziri's Promise flasks, and one mana flask.
  • In the +1 Carcass Jack, he had Leap Slam, Curse on Hit, Culling Strike, Poacher's Mark, Empower, and Faster Attacks.
  • His other gems were arranged more like is shown in his first comment to this post
  • His peak DPS was an astounding 166k.



Gameplay Videos

deathless Atziri service run: You'll see the build in action and how well it works for someone with modest skill.

I can make some more videos if there's demand.


Leveling

Start with Facebreakers (requires level 16). They are cheap and effective. You can delay taking the few axe-specific damage nodes till you're ready to switch. Alternatively, you can use a decent rare axes or one of the uniques like Limbsplit (requires level 13), Wideswing (18), Kaom's Primacy (58), and/or Reaper's Pursuit (68). Use whatever works and doesn't cost a lot and/or that you can resell later.

Use whatever chest you like until you're ready to get a Kaom's Heart or Carcass Jack. Tabula Rasa is great until you have a linked Disfavour.

Until you have enough mana cost mitigation, use the Blood Magic gem instead of Added Fire or Melee Damage on Full-life. You'll lose out on some damage and all the full-life bonuses, but that's fine for leveling.

For leveling passive points, I'd rush to Resolute Technique and the Unrelenting cluster, rush to Vaal Pact, Mana Flows, and the Scion elemental resistance nodes, then fill in the remaining ones. The particular ordering will depend a bit on your play style and what leveling gear you're using.


Bandits

Both Purely_Amplified and I respecced existing characters that had received life (Oak), physical damage (Oak), and endurance charges (Oak) from the bandit quests.

Kraityn or passive points are options too, but Oak's rewards work well.

If I had a new character I'd probably do Oak, Oak, kill all.


FAQ

  • Why not Unwavering Stance? Cyclone makes you stun-immune while it's active, so Unwavering's stun immunity only applies during the brief pauses between Cyclone invocations. It's also helpful to keep at least some evasion ability. Based on some helpful in-game conversations with CrimsonMidget, apparently Unwavering somehow actually makes desync worse.
  • How can you sustain the mana cost of Cyclone? We do so by stacking a lot of passives on the tree to significantly cut the cost (Versatility cluster, Unrelenting cluster, Righteous Decree cluster) and increase mana regeneration (Mana Flows). We also need about 2% mana leech (easy to find or craft on random gear). Finally, we need a single mana flask for the rare cases where we drain it too quickly.
  • Why not take Bloodless? in PvE mode, life leechers are pretty rare, and those that exist die fast enough to not matter. It saves one passive point to take more nodes in the Scion life wheel instead. That said, these are probably the nodes I took next starting at level 94. Other possible choices are the Battle Rouse cluster (reducing mana issues even more), taking Elementalist to boost DPS and make gearing even more flexible, the mana regeneration nodes near the templar start (though life regen is wasted), etc.
  • Why are you using Vaal Pact? Vaal Pact provides instant leech, making it easy to maintain full-life status for 10% increased movement speed and 109% increased damage, assuming you have at least a 5 link and/or Daresso's Salute. It also makes us totally immune to reflect from mobs and tanky against reflect maps (though I usually swap in Life Leech just to be safe). If using Ming's Heart, chaos damage isn't that big of a deal, so the situational loss of full life status to things like the Atziri chaos dart mobs doesn't matter much (they're easy enough to kill without the bonuses). The main downside of Vaal Pact is we lose all life regeneration. It also doesn't make sense to run Blood Rage since it will prevent us from maintaining full-life status. We just use health pots like everyone else. The lack of life regeneration and reliance on leech and pots for health is the main reason this build is bad at PvP. Too many players can avoid hits and/or have taken the Bloodless node. This isn't an issue in the core PvE game.
  • Why don't you die to the mirror boss in the Atziri split form with such high range? I use Concentrated Effect for that part of the fight, not Increased Area of Effect. It's not a problem even with Carcass Jack, Daresso's Salute, and the range passives.



Acknowledgments

A big thanks to the people who made this build possible:
  • Uginator ran Uber Atziri for me after I got my first Hope drop from a CoC toon. Disfavour dropped and made this build possible. He's closed his Uber service shop, so don't spam him.
  • CrimsonMidget's Disfavour Cyclone guide was the best one I found for my budget. In writing this guide, I leveled a brand new character to 88 using his build and it was a blast. Crimson was kind enough to answer a bunch of my questions ingame when testing out this build. For example, with his input we dropped Unwavering Stance.
  • Purely_Amplified figured out the skill tree for this build and how to make it work on mana with the full-life bonuses. He's also a great party member.
  • bjax wrote the underappreciated Looty! extension for Chrome. It makes it much easier to sort out tricky gearing problems using items already in your stash.


2.6 BLS Berserker budget shaper farmer build guide: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1882710
Last edited by MoldyDwarf on May 20, 2015, 2:19:49 AM
As mentioned in the original post, I originally made my first Disfavour cycloner using CrimsonMidget's build guide. I was having a lot of trouble upgrading gear because I was locked into pieces that gave high resistances and dexterity, and it would have been expensive to fix this. I respecced and regeared into this thread's build after Purely_Amplified figured out how to solve the mana problems and add some nice DPS boosts.

Before writing this build guide, I wanted to do head-to-head testing versus ChrimsonMidget's build, so I leveled a new toon from scratch. This new toon's gearing was easier because (a) I learned a few things and (b) because I culled some great stuff with Purely_Amplified's tree that helped a lot. Here is a quick summary of that new toon using CrimsonMidget's very fun build.

Stats with the traditional build:

  • character level: 88
  • life: 6318
  • energy shield: 115
  • unreserved mana: 67
  • merciless resistances: 76/76/76/42
  • physical damage reduction: 20%
  • chance to evade: 17%
  • life regen/second: 307.4
  • move speed: +65%
  • dps with 20/20 increased area of effect: 26,892.3
  • dps with 20/20 concentrated effect: 45,713.8


My gear with the traditional build.




Notes about the traditional build:

  • very tanky
  • this is my first toon that could do deathless Atziri kills (if I'm careful)
  • leveled very quickly
    • but I already had great gear, much of it culled with this thread's build
  • better at pvp than the build in this thread
    • high chaos res helps against poison arrow builds
    • life regen is very useful in pvp since leech is unreliable there
    • high move speed with Devoto's Devotion
  • gearing is tricky
    • need tons of resistances from gear to not die
    • need tons of dexterity from gear to run Blood Rage
  • relies on the Blood Magic gem and life regeneration to combat the high mana cost of 6-linked Cyclone
  • less tempting to do rippy culling since you just can't use Andvarius with this build (well maybe it's possible with mirrored gear)
  • when your player gets stuck, you know it's due to desync, not to being out of mana


Skill Tree


  • 2.6 BLS Berserker budget shaper farmer build guide: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1882710
    Last edited by MoldyDwarf on May 20, 2015, 8:56:13 AM
    I'm using this post for culling gear updates.

    I'm now level 95 and mostly use this character for pure culling. I cull at 441/82 with a non-legacy Divination Distillate flask. If I wanted to spend some more serious ex, I could definitely improve it more.

    Spoiler




    Since my movespeed is lower with this gear, Briskwalk was the easiest way to recap my resistances and get a small boost to movespeed. The gem slots are purely for leveling gems.

    I use Increased Area of Effect in good parties that stay grouped and protect me. I cull a lot more that way. For weaker or less reliable groups, I use Concentrated Effect for more survivability and so I can actually kill stuff when I get abandoned by everyone else.

    In order to use the helmet, I have to use Purity of Elements to stay capped. In good groups, I turn off Herald of Ash and Hatred. This makes it easier to keep my mana and life from having "full" status. This in turn makes it easier to use the Divination Distillate flask. If I'm in a group where people are using both Vitality and Clarity, I'll just give up on the flask and go for more DPS.
    2.6 BLS Berserker budget shaper farmer build guide: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1882710
    Last edited by MoldyDwarf on Jun 28, 2015, 11:10:05 PM
    reserved
    2.6 BLS Berserker budget shaper farmer build guide: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1882710
    Hey, this is OneHungLow, and yea, countless hours and exalted figuring out the mana problem, but man oh man, getting that bloodmagic outa the 6l was SEXY and HUGE DPS! very fun build. very hard hitting build. biggest reason i loved it was im a dive or die kinda player, hence the abbyssuss :D if im not attacking ill probably die, but if im cycloning or leaping, im hitting so hard life is never a issue :D

    nice write moldy, very nice man, props!

    Keep the killn real!


    Last edited by Onehunglow on May 20, 2015, 1:59:31 AM
    Thanks for this really nice build and guide!! I think I'm going to respec one of my toons after the Awakening reset..
    Hello, i got some questions :) I am nearly ready to gear up my toon.I got 6l Atrizi, normal Kaom's Heart and 5l Carcass Jack.

    First of all why we are not using bloodmagic node from talents ? Why to use mana.

    Why we are not using life again on hit 20/20 and lvl 3 enhance gem rest is 20/20 inc aoe / cons aura / cyclone / melee to pyhcial dmg on axe slots ? (replacing MTP with faster attacks for more speedy clearing )

    Lvl 3 enhance on axe is looks good boost also could not understand very well about life leech and life gain on hit.

    Is mana using cycloners are better than life spenders (blood magic node ) ?

    Honestly i could not choose between mana or life spender cyclone.

    Waiting your reply m8,thanks for your time.
    "
    Harfbaz wrote:
    Hello, i got some questions :) I am nearly ready to gear up my toon.I got 6l Atrizi, normal Kaom's Heart and 5l Carcass Jack.


    Nice, that's plenty good enough to start.

    "
    Harfbaz wrote:
    First of all why we are not using bloodmagic node from talents ? Why to use mana.


    By using mana, we're able to get huge DPS boosts from full-life bonuses. Daresso's Salute and the Melee Damage on Full Life give huge DPS increases (+70% increased phys dmg AND 49% more phys dmg, with double-dipping via added fire dmg), but bloodmagic ruins those bonuses. Things like bloodrage also prevent full-life bonuses.

    Bloodmagic is definitely a viable alternative. If you want to go that route, definitely check out CrimsonMidget's build.

    You could also do a hybrid of our two builds. I'm in the process of redesigning my tree to be pure DPS instead of letting me also do culling (I can now cull at 411/91 in maps (with a good group) by swapping gear, and I still have capped resistances).

    "
    Harfbaz wrote:
    Why we are not using life again on hit 20/20 and lvl 3 enhance gem rest is 20/20 inc aoe / cons aura / cyclone / melee to pyhcial dmg on axe slots ? (replacing MTP with faster attacks for more speedy clearing )


    I don't have a lvl 3 enhance or empower gem yet, so I haven't been able to test those options.

    There's no need for life gain on hit or even life leech, except in very high degen areas, map reflect, and in some PvP battles. By killing stuff fast, we can almost always stay at full life without any trouble by just using a little bit of leech on gear (I usually use 3-5% phys leech), and the occasional life flask (I always keep 2 life flasks equipped). We're able to stay at full life (and get the big dps bonuses) without those gems 99% of the time. That said, feel free to use either of the gems if you're too squishy right now. I use life leech in Vaal Cyclone since it's a scary skill to use without it.

    I personally like to swap between Concentrated Effect and Increased AoE instead of using both at the same time. That way I can get really big AoE when I need it (e.g. for the Atziri healing phase, for PvP where I need the range, and for easy trash mobs). When I just need to kill bosses, I can go full power with Concentrated Effect, not wasting a slot on Increased AoE. Other people really like to use both together; it's perfectly valid to do that too.

    I'll have to try Faster Attacks. My guess is that it'd be a significant nerf. I run hard enough maps that I need the damage. Caveat: when I do Sacrifice Fragment farming, I actually put on my culling gear and can one-shot Docks mobs with 4.5k DPS. That's a situation where being faster is good.

    "
    Harfbaz wrote:
    Is mana using cycloners are better than life spenders (blood magic node)?

    Honestly i could not choose between mana or life spender cyclone.


    If you don't trust yourself to stay at full life most of the time, go with blood magic. If you hate carrying a mana flask (for half-regen, no-regen, and emergencies), go with blood magic. If you love bloodrage (and its nice synergies with chaos res and Atziri's Promise flask), go with bloodmagic. If you hate Vaal Pact, bloodmagic might be better.

    If you want +70% increased physical damage (with double dipping from elements), *and* 49% multiplicatively *more* damage (with the same double-dipping), then using mana lets you get it (via Melee damage on Full Life and Daresso's Salute). You can get all of this with higher DPS and cheaper gear (but lower life) than bloodmagic builds. It's cheaper to gear this build because so much damage comes from the full life status that we can afford to add more +30% stat nodes and a massive amount of resistances on the tree, in turn freeing up gearing options a lot. Bloodmagic builds are much more reliant on DPS on the tree, so gearing options are much more constrained.

    I'm in the process now of figuring out how to ramp up to Uber battles. To do so, I expect to stack resistances and flat physical damage on all my gear. I'll drop the resistance nodes on the tree in favor of DPS nodes. There are a lot of them available for scaling up my DPS. I'm being a bit slow with this research because frankly I love having a character that is strong enough to be welcome in 78 leveling rotations and with some gear swaps has enough magic find to be a good Dominus split-run farmer. I can swap a subset of the gear to be able to have good magic find in high maps (with a supportive party). The flexibility to span the range from culler to party-leading tank with a single toon is so much fun.

    Whatever you choose, please report back after you've hit level 85 or so. I'll be interested in hearing what your experiences are.
    2.6 BLS Berserker budget shaper farmer build guide: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1882710
    Last edited by MoldyDwarf on Jun 7, 2015, 11:28:35 PM
    Hello Moldy,


    Thanks for answers, i already followed your build and i am around 77 now.I got all lıfe and mana nodes but i got mana problem also got 1 question, why we are using vitality aura while we are using vaal pact ¿ (life gen. not effects )

    I am trying to open 3 auras, hatred - herald of ash - grace or haste but i can not open third one :)

    I dont have mana supporting gloves and still got 661 mana.Also i got some other amulets and rings but still i could not manage mana.Are we opening third aura, cyclone looks eating mana much. %1 leech mana ring is not enough to handle but its fine time to time with mana potion.But still mana is problem, am i missing something in here :) also what about dynamo node ?

    Damage is very high ! also clearing speed is insane :D even i do not have ready gems all around lvl 17 with non quality.

    Clearing speed is higher then my dual wield static elemental templar :D I love my other toon too but input dmg is very high :)

    In game help is welcome, i want to make this toon stable.



    Last edited by Harfbaz on Jun 8, 2015, 3:52:41 PM
    "
    Harfbaz wrote:
    Hello Moldy,
    Thanks for answers, i already followed your build and i am around 77 now.I got all lıfe and mana nodes but i got mana problem also got 1 question, why we are using vitality aura while we are using vaal pact ¿ (life gen. not effects )


    Oh, I was just leveling the gem for an alternate character. Don't use vitality with this toon.


    "
    Harfbaz wrote:

    I am trying to open 3 auras, hatred - herald of ash - grace or haste but i can not open third one :)


    That's right. You can only get 1 aura and two heralds. I usually run Hatred and Herald of Ash. It makes the mana pool bigger. If I really need DPS, sometimes I'll add Herald of Ice, but it doesn't add very much.

    I find I don't need Grace or other defensive auras, especially with Kaom's Heart.

    "
    Harfbaz wrote:

    I dont have mana supporting gloves and still got 661 mana.Also i got some other amulets and rings but still i could not manage mana.Are we opening third aura, cyclone looks eating mana much. %1 leech mana ring is not enough to handle but its fine time to time with mana potion.But still mana is problem, am i missing something in here :) also what about dynamo node ?


    I have 704 total mana and 288 unreserved with Hatred and Herald of Ash.

    Try to get at least 2% leech on gear if you're having trouble with just 1%. You should be able to get a total of 2+% leech on gear pretty cheaply. It's easy to master-craft too if needed. When I'm in cull mode (and thus have low DPS), I find I need more like 4-6% mana leech.

    You could certainly take the Dynamo node if that makes gearing for you easier.

    "
    Harfbaz wrote:
    Damage is very high ! also clearing speed is insane :D even i do not have ready gems all around lvl 17 with non quality.

    Clearing speed is higher then my dual wield static elemental templar :D I love my other toon too but input dmg is very high :)


    Yep, that's part of what makes this build super-fun. You can even keep up with insanely fast mirrored nuke builds with 30% move speed boots, Devoto's Devotion, and a quicksilver flask in 78 chains with this build (or any other decent Disfavour build).

    "
    Harfbaz wrote:

    In game help is welcome, i want to make this toon stable.


    Sure, PM LumpyThump. As long as I'm not busy, I'm happy to help.

    "
    Harfbaz wrote:

    ...gear posted...


    Your gear looks like you have a good start. Part of what I like about this build is that it works with decent gear like yours, not just excellent gear (like what I now have due to culling with this toon).

    You have a lot of life leech on your gear. That's really good.

    You have a few pieces of gear with life regeneration. Since this build uses Vaal Pact, those are wasted stats. I suggest replacing one of them with something that has good mana leech. The cheapest solution for right now would be to get a pair of Slitherpinch gloves. They'll give both mana and life leech along with some dexterity (which might free up a +30% dex node on the tree if you've taken one). There are lots of good glove options for 2-5c on poe.trade.
    2.6 BLS Berserker budget shaper farmer build guide: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1882710

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