Life based high armor dagger crit flicker

DISCLAIMER: THIS BUILD IS NOT FOR PEOPLES THAT WANT TO KNOW WHAT IS HAPPENING ON THEIR SCREENS!



Hey guys :)
When i started playing PoE my build was flicker :) and, as you can expect, i failed badly. I asked for advice, googled flicker builds and all i got was "you can do it but you need super expensive gear" and stuff and as me being casual player who is online 10 hours/week at max that was not achievable.

But who cares, flicker is fun! So i just did my best to build my Flicker strikers with the gear i could get. With this toon i am playing now i got to lv 80 in 30 hours and i am clearing maps up to level 76 with no problems. I want to share it here for others that are looking for flicker builds. This is not the cheapest build but it is also not so expensive as other flicker builds are (quote: "you only need just a 6link Shavronne with RRRGGB colors")

Gear you WILL NEED:
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Bino... you can go without it but it is highly recommended to have it for the life regen buff it gives; seriously its insane on this build! Especialy after nerfing the lifesteal in 2.0 that buff will keep you alive in a lot of situations. You can go without it but you will want lifesteal on gear and you will have to click flasks a lot more.


You will also have to be able to get a dagger with at least 8.5 crit chance and lets say 70-220 damage at least. I am not saying DPS but damage! Because daggers with low attack speed and high damage are what we prefer over high attack speed and low damage.
A 6link chest with 2 green 3 red and 1 blue is also a must. You can use 5link 2g3r for leveling but later on it wont be enough.


How does flicker strike works? Pro-s and con-s:
Spoiler
It is a melee attack that teleports you next to your target or if you do not have a target to some target at random nearby. It can be said its half rangered attack. It has a 2 seconds cooldown that can be bypassed by expending a frenzy charge. To make it possible to keep flickering continuously we have to be able to generate frenzy charges at the same time. We can do that with this support/buff gems:

Advantages of the flicker strike attack:
-it is extremely fun!
-high clear speed often limited only by your looting speed
-awesome for single play
-it is extremely fun!

Disadvantages:
-it has a cooldown and to bypass it you need to build around
-to have good enough damage for a fluid flickering build you have to sacrifice some defences
-hard hitting physical bosses (like the dungeon map and so) without mobs around them will be a pain
-its horrible for a party play
-some might not find the fast swapping comics on their screen a good experience; your head might start spinning
-with this build reflect maps will be tricky; you can not do double reflect maps
-with this build i have only 4000 hitpoints on level 87; still not feeling any issues with it, but i also have not run the highest tiers maps yet.


Passive tree and leveling tips:
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This is my tree at the moment at level 87:
This is how it looked at lv 65-ish

Leveling:
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You can level with spectral throw or with double strike or however you like up to when you can get multistrike.
You can start flickering as soon as you get the multistrike gem. You will need to use blood rage and hatred aura and also you will need this links:

flicker - melee splash - multistrike - ice bite (+ melee physical damage if you have 5 link)

to keep up with the mana you will need to have the Spirit Void notable and to use Rallying cry gem + potions.
This is some awesome and cheap leveling gear for flicker strike:

You will have to keep Grace gem in some spare gem slot to level it up for when you get to level 60 and equip Abyssus helm, also you must have the Iron Reflexes keystone by then. If you want to level with Herald of thunder and curse on hit you might need some lightning damage on gear as the HoT damage alone will not always be enough to shock when you kill especially around when you start mapping. By then you should have the Call of the Brotherhood ring and a 6 link chest.

While leveling most builds it is recommended to start with the defence points and then go to the damage ones but with flicker you must have enough damage to 2-3shot most mobs at all times. When i started maping i had 2700-ish HP and i had almost all dagger nodes then i just took what seemed needed for the moment balancing that way offence and HP/armour
To get enough strength for the gem requirements you will have to use this jewel on the jewel socket next to the ranger part of the tree:

Also you might struggle with the intellect; get some on gear if you can and if not you will have to get a +30 intellect point or you will have to play with unleveled blue gems :)


Build mechanics
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Offence:
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6 link: flicker - melee splash - multistrike - melee physical damage - physical to lightning - ice bite

With PtL gem we will shock all the time; also it makes 2/3rd of our damage elemental so we will not oneshot ourselves on reflect. Also we need to freeze the enemy mobs so we can get the frenzy charges from the ice bite gem. We are not using Hatred aura so we are doing that with this:


4 link: frenzy - faster attacks - melee physical damage - added fire(or PtL)

PtL gem for more damage because shock stacks or added fire for more life and mana leech.
We need good single target attack for high HP mobs/bosses and we also need secondary way to generate frenzy charges in emergencies. Be careful - with added fire you can like twoshot yourself on physical reflect and with PtL you can kill yourself on elemental reflect mobs.

3 link: Herald of thunder - curse on hit - assassin's mark

MORE damage on crit curse, also power charge generator

unlinked:
blood rage, grace and

manually casting this gives us some good mana regen and also good damage buff and having it on the link with CodT + IC + increased duration will make it last a good 12-13 seconds.


Defence:
Spoiler

We can defend against attacks by various ways:
-we can evade
-dodge
-block
-mitigate with armor, endurance charges and fortify
-use immortal call
-we can just not be there when the attack lands

With flicker strike most of the time we will teleport somewhere else before the mobs manage to land a hit on us but when there is only 1 target or when the mobs manage to hit us it will heart a lot; even more so because we use the Abyssus helm with its physical damage taken penalty.
I think most reliable way to defend against attacks with this build would be to mitigate them with armor so even if we get hit 2-3-4 times in a quick succession we will not die. I am using Grace aura with Iron Reflexes keystone and i am using this jewel on the jewel socked between Mind drinker and Blood drinker:
and that way i can take good armor nodes in the shadow area.
Manually casting Enduring cry with 3 max endurance charges and chaos golem buff gives us 16% flat damage reduction added to armor and cast on damage taken + immortal call + increased duration gives us around 3 sec. physical immunity acting like sort of insurance.
I am using fortify on this link:

4 link: cyclone - whirling blades - fortify - faster attacks (or chaos golem for the additional added % physical damage reduction or even life on hit for safer disengages with cyclone)

We need a way to go out of danger because jumping around with flicker is unpredictable; you never know where you will end up. Cyclone makes us stun immune so we can reliably go out of the middle of big packs if we end up there without frenzy charges; whirling blades helps when we need to go out of that spot we just killed 6 flame bearer blue mobs at once (just an example). Whirling blades (and cyclone) also makes triggering fortify on engages (disengages) really easy. We whirl in a way that we hit 1-2 mobs and then we start flickering. And with cyclone we do not worry about clicking with the mouse on that tinny mob over there - we just spin and we hit whatever.
I recommend keeping whirling blades and cyclone gems at low levels for cheaper mana costs.


Stats:
Spoiler
damage with charges:


Defence without flasks/charges:

With armor or evasion flask and with endurance charges i go to the armor cap; with armor AND evasion flask as well.

This is my armor with some random high evasion chest just to point out how it would look with the ideal gear:

Gear:
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My current gear:


Flasks:
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Ideally you will want high evasion chest but coloring that would be hard. Belly of the beast gives realy good number HP. I played a lot with tabula tho :(
Evasion on all gear pieces is the best as it scales best with the mixed armor/evasion nodes we get with the jewel.
You also need enough unreserved mana to pay the cost of flicker strike at least twice or it will not always be maintainable (when you do not crit or when your attack misses because then you will not steal enough mana) and you might die.
Accuracy on neck/gloves/ring and crit/crit multiplier on ring and neck.
Frenzy charge can be corrupted on neck and boots and endurance charge on belt.

You can also alter the tree a bit and start as a ranger and go for high numbers of dual wield block with the new Sai daggers; get a rare with a good crit and damage and craft dual wield block on it and instead taking the damage nodes toward the shadow start go for some damage nodes with dual wield block that are anyway along your path already and you go towards 50% block. I have not tried that but i sure wish i do; maybe if i ever get rich enough to get a good Sai dagger :)


Vid:
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrOo9rsncgU

Please do not be demanding towards quality or something else; the video is much clearer compared with the actual experience during recording it. When i watched it i actualy could not believe how much better it was. That is the best i could do with my computer, but the actual gameplay is a lot smoother and i can easy and safe do higher level maps.
Last edited by BGkamaz on Nov 22, 2015, 10:57:54 AM
do you have any clips with the build in action ?

looks interesting...
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1462987
Sorry for the late reply - i was on a vacation last month. Made a video today; edited the guide its there somewhere.

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