[2.5] Greedy Roomba - MF Blade Vortex Assassin (63/329) - Atziri Viable - Solo T10+ (37/40) [Videos]

Great guide, will be following this build next, however I do have a question.

There is argument on whether Ranger - Pathfinder is now the best class for BV, any thoughts on this? I understand that overall more DPS can be found via the Shadow - assassin.

Pathfinder is the best class for all the endgame bosses that are on the Atlas now, it can facetank them easily with Vinktar's + Overflowing Chalice + Taste of Hate, some use Rumi's as well - they get endless charges and have up to 50% flask effect increase.

The only downside to Pathfinder is the gear cost: 4-8 exalts in flasks alone and then if you go CI you either have to have crafted/farmed your own gear or pay for current meta gear. It's not such an issue now, the league is wrapping up and prices should be dropping.

The other issue I see newer players having with Pathfinder is that the early game damage is quite low and the endgame damage only scales to high levels once they have all the flasks, whereas assassin is an easy starter build, it'll get you the damage without having to play flask piano.

That said I finally switched to CI and can now face tank the Minotaur, it's crazy going from 5.5-6k life all the way to 11.1k Energy Shield and actually gaining DPS, the only downside to going CI is the mana cost doubled and the potential to be stun-locked, which can be fixed with Kiara's flask. The cost of gear more than doubled though, but it's an endgame version of the build, I crafted the majority of the gear myself - I only bought the boots, amulet, helmet and shield.





Managed to do Shaper first time dying 3 times on the final phase, second time I only died once

Well the build is now officially "Mirror Viable" - this just happened while I was messing around on Standard with my old legacy gear, my heart only just stopped pounding!

Trying to make sense of the BV nerf in the 2.5 patch notes:

"

Blade Vortex has been refactored. Instead of separate hits for each active blade, the blades now increase the frequency at which all enemies in the radius take damage, and the amount of damage they take. The skill now has a base hit frequency of 600ms and has 10% increased hit rate per active blade. Its damage has been reduced by 30% at all levels and it deals 30% more damage per active blade.

^This assumption of the way that faster hit rate works may be wrong, it could just be 200% faster hit rate at 20, so 200ms or 5 times per second.

The blades deal 30% less base damage, but the biggest thing is that each blade gives 30% more damage, instead of 100% added damage that it used to be. With 20 active blades that's 600% more damage base damage as one hit opposed to each blade giving full damage which would be 20 x 100% base damage. This makes reflect a lot more punishing.

New: Base x 0.7 x (1 + 0.3 x 20) x 5 = 24.5 x Base
vs
Old: Base x 20 x 1 = 20 x Base

Summary: Blade Vortex now hits 5 times a second instead of 20, has 30% less base damage and each blade gives 30% more damage. It also means that instead of 20 hits at 100% base damage you would be hitting at 5 hits with 600% damage making reflect hurt a lot more (4.9 times more reflected damage).

Note: This is my preliminary understanding, I may be wrong!

After the 2.5 patch, would you say this build is still viable? Just started playing again today and am looking for a nice magic find build to start me off with.

It's hard to tell, the reduced hit rate was definitely noticeable when I tested in dried lake, although the damage felt the same you had to sit on top of mobs long if the first hit didn't kill. I'll do a quick test in a high level map and update this post with my thoughts.

Update: You hit less often making clear speed feel clunky, it's okay once you get used to it, but definitely slower than before. Leech is higher, but you hit less often - generally against bosses with 20 stacks up you leech rather fast still.

Elemental reflect mod is still manageable, even though the per hit damage is 4.9 times higher, it can be a bit spiky but I managed to do it without flasks up. I'm not sure about physical reflect though, probably best to swap to full elemental damage using Physical to Lightning and Moonbenders Wing for that.

As a result of doing 4.9 times more damage you also do a large deal more cold, meaning that it's even possible that some bosses get frozen now and almost everything shatters.

I have some questions regarding the gems in this build.
First off, when should I use Flame Dash or Whirling Blades?
How can I use Hatred and Haste if both costs 50% mana pool?
Is Hatred a must-have? If so, why?

Sorry if these questions were already answered, 47 pages, too much reading. =D

BTW nice guide, very detailed and organized.

can blade vortex crit? or can it not crit?
Basically why take all the nodes on the passive tree for spell critical hit chance, but then ALSO use controlled destruction?

is it because critical chance gets too high? because of power charges?

"

juniorademir wrote:

When should I use Flame Dash or Whirling Blades?
How can I use Hatred and Haste if both costs 50% mana pool?
Is Hatred a must-have? If so, why?

I use both Flame Dash and Whirling, mainly whirl most the time for mobility but whirling blades can't go over ledges or over gaps so I use Flame Dash for that.

The auras you use are just Hatred and Blasphemy + Warlord's Mark, I just put other aura gems as rewards you can get if you want to use them, also using a Vaal Orb on the Haste gem can turn it into Vaal Haste, which has no mana cost, it just need to have soul charges.

"

namad wrote:

can blade vortex crit? or can it not crit?
Basically why take all the nodes on the passive tree for spell critical hit chance, but then ALSO use controlled destruction?

Yeah BV can crit, using Controlled Destruction only takes off 100% crit chance, it doesn't make the crit equal to zero. Without it the skill has a crit chance of around 85% and when you put CD in the crit chance goes down to around 77% but you get the 40% more damage, which works out to be higher DPS overall.

may i ask:

is https://www.pathofexile.com/fullscreen-passive-skill-tree/AAAABAYBAQPuBLMFQgceCPQN0Q5IDlwPqxCSES0RLxGWFr8XsBzcHb4gbiL0IzYkiyaVKPoqCyo4LJwyMjLRM4c1kjY9OuE8BT1fPydBh0GWRUdFfkWdSVFKi0rITLNN41AwUlNTEFNSVUtZbV3yX5hh4mKsY0NqQ2qMavpsC2yMbRluqnBSdf17w3yDf8aCm4LHhG-ExYnTiq-MNo8aj_qQEZMnlS6XlZf0mjua4Ju1naqf36IAotmmV66zsNi1SLXytz64k7mTvG_AVMBmwwnDOsgUzzLQH9D11ELYvdmG217jhOtj6-7r9e987-vwH_DV8h3yRfVv-ej-Cv6P

still ok for iiq/iir setup?

at lvl 80 - which nodes at the top should i ignore to reach the life nodes at the bottom?

i only have 3k life... which is way too low.
But i don't have a lot of item choices with iiq/iir left to gain more...