[2.5] Oro's Crit Flicker Assassin - 300k+ dps, 6k+ hp, Low to medium Budget, uber lab viable
Let's assume Kaom's Heart will never be within an obtainable price range for me lol. What did you think of Snowblind and Bronn's as other alternatives?
My two cents on the build. First of all, I really love the build and playstyle... Definitively one of the fastest map clearer imaginable, and arguably my favorite POE build ever. There's something utterly satisfying about warping all over the place and killing things in a quick succession. I changed a few things in the build, mostly due to the fact that I don't have two exalts to purchase a Kaom's heart. Here's my current, work in progress gear at lvl 85, followed by some musings and discussion about the pros and cons of the build and the modifications I did.
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My gear setup is somewhat budget oriented, with somewhat low Life rolls and meh defensive rolls due to me not having much currency to go by. I don't think I paid more than 8 chaos for any part of this stuff asides from the Oro, which I bought five linked already. That said, I think I did get some pretty decent bargain deals on some of these things 9
Obiviously, there's a few changes from your build. I can't really afford gloves with curse on hit vulnerability, so that's out of the picture for now. Can't afford six links either, both buying them or crafting them is out of the equation too.
I'll talk about the Belly of the Beast vs Kaom situation. The main reason why I went for Belly is because I can't afford two exalts for a plate... But I think it's a suitable replacement due to having another potential six sockets, which you can use for survivability skills.
In terms of Survivability, with my current gear, I get roughly 4.5k Hp of hp as of today , with 10% armor, 30% Evasion and 30% Dodge at lvl 85 . Granted, I will continue to improve said value by getting jewels with 7% life, maybe getting a belly of the beast with better life rolls, by getting more HP on each individual piece of gear, Still, it's pretty short of the 6.6 k Hp you're apparently getting with Kaom's heart, but I don't have the budget to affort top gear, so it has to suffice, at least for now...
That said, Belly does has a few notable advantages, most notably giving you access to six sockets you can use to try and offset the somewhat squishy nature of the character.
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Defensive Setup
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I've opted with a defensive setup that features Cast When Damage taken, followed by Warlord's Mark curse to generate Endurance charges, which are then discharged by Immortal Call... I feel this setup is a great way to offset the glass canon and low HP nature of the build...
I also have Vaal Haste and Vaal Grace on the chest plate, which ideally I would link with increased duration if it was a six link / two three links.
The Immortal Call constantly saves my life when flickering into tough crowds, plus giving me a quick indicator that I should heal/retreat/spam flasks... My survivability has improved tremendously ever since I integrated that setup in the build... And I think anyone that's having problems with getting killed too often with this build should try and implement something like this in their build, as it will save you from many hits that would probably be leathal. I tend to pack a Rumi's Concotion to offset the low armor plus give me block and dodge, I also rock a Jade Flask to help with evasion. Can't afford the most expensive flasks yet, but needless to say these two, coupled with the life leech of the build and vaal haste and grace can really help when boss fights start to drag on.
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Unrevved, I get 10K Damage per use with 4.37 attacks per second, 92% chance to hit , with 43% crit chance that gets X 2 when enemies are fully life and 435% crit multiplier.
Once I get my stacks, I get 20k damage per use with 8.5 Attackes per second, with roughly 75% chance to crit... Which I assume is the equivalent of 170K DPS or something... Haven't finished uber lab yet, so there's two passives missing from the tree still too.
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Curse
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I've also left a slot open for Flammability or Enfeeble depending on situations ... Since I don't have a six link, this helps offset the fact that I don't have fire penetration, plus. While technically, that's three curse in a build that only supports two curse at a time, I don't really mind it if Warlord's Mark overrides one of the over curses if it saves my life in a pinch, so it's not a big deal.
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Mobility
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Another thing I added recently is Phase Run, due to me having a couple unused gem slots in my build... I'd rather not carry a quicksilver flask as I feel flicker strike chains enemies fast enough not to worry about movement speed too much. My boots have a bonus 8% speed when no damage was taken, and leap slap is pretty good at traversing long distances somewhat fast too...
But I still really love Phase Run for one reason... Instead of letting your 7 frenzy charges expire after a killing spree, you can consume them right before they expire, granting you 14 seconds of sustained phasing running... Really useful when you hit a dead end and want to get back to a part of the map you haven't explored yet... A pretty good way to turn expiring charges into something more. Besides, it takes seconds to get said charges back when you find a new mob anyway, so you can use them freely for mobility almost all the time without worrying... A great quality of life hack that improves the clearspeed of the build even further.
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Survivability and Endgame
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In terms of survivability, I've been doing pretty well up till T13 ish maps so far with the current setup, my main issue being bosses with huge HP pools and high DPS.... I don't expect this guy to be able to take out the four T 16 bosses, basically...
But I don't think that's his niche anyway... He's not a tank, he's not built for sustained DPS... He's clearly a burst demon capable to chaining kills at light speed.
It's a build that's clearly tailored for clearspeed, with enough burst DPS to take out most maps bosses that aren't inflated on steroids... I have no problems clearing merciless Labyrinth really fast, and I can melt yellow maps like butter. Still haven't tried Uber Lab, although I have my doubts about Izaro due to him being able to oneshot me.
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Maybe too fast at killing stuff....
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Speaking of clearspeed, there's one issue that kinda annoys me with the build... And that is the fact I often get kicked out of the game becaue "I'm performing too many actions too fast"... Luckyly it hasn't happened to me in the Labyrinth yet, but it does suck that the game thinks you're botting because you're basically wiping enemies so fast it's not even funny.
As such, I've grown to try and add pauses in my killing spree. Doing a leap slam, grabbing an item or placing a totem every now and them seems to avoid me getting kicked, but I wish GGG would fix this , because having to constantly think about not going overboard with my killing power sucks.
Worse offender is Eleron's "defend the relic for a minute segments... I pretty much get kicked everytime because it's so mindless... There's nothing worth picking up, and I end up chaining enemies dead until I get kicked.
Anyway, I'll keep ya posted on what goes on with my Oro Flicker... Been doing other builds, but they feel so slow and bland after a flicker....
I wonder why nobody ever replied to this post? It is a well-written consideration of a more defensive build variant.
Is this build only viable if you have oro's sacrifice or can you make it work without it? I was thinking of trying this build in this new league that is coming december. Softcore obviously
The tree would work for other setups or skills i guess - as long as it is ele crit attack based.
In terms of gear the build would become very different. Without the convenient frenzy generation from Oro's, you would probably end up with a flicker setup for pack clearing (+ blood rage/blood dance or some other form of gaining frenzy charge) and then a second attack setup for the tougher single targets that you can't kill without running out of charges. This in turn means you probably can't use Kaom's Heart etc..a cascade of changes:)
Let's assume Kaom's Heart will never be within an obtainable price range for me lol. What did you think of Snowblind and Bronn's as other alternatives?
Well they are not that expensive.:) Even a very casual player can farm a couple of EX per week by doing chaos recipies and doing some trading. But if you really feel you can't get one, then i would look at Belly of the Beast or The Perfect Form (each of them costing a couple of chaos unlinked in sc). I gave some options in the gear section - maybe Kintusgi would be another. My pick would be belly for the raw hp. The main problem with a 50-100 hp chest is that you will be forced to pick up more life on the passive tree.
Is the Flicker Strike helm enchant worth pursuing?
Obviously not the Cooldown one, but one of the two damage echnants? Sure! But this is one of the last things to take care of when getting the build up and running. If you don't have to compromise on the helmet that you use, then the enchant is great to have obviously. Just don't use a shitty helmet only because of the enchant.
I wonder why nobody ever replied to this post? It is a well-written consideration of a more defensive build variant.
Mortiferious' comment indeed deserves more feedback:) I did read through it but i felt like most problems that he mentions and that can be solved were already adressed in the comment section. It's kind of build guide in itself so i didn't consider a reply there an "urgent" matter:)
My 2.3 Build Guides:
Oro's Crit Flicker Assassin: view-thread/1691639
Sire of Ignites Elementalist: view-thread/1703646
Low Life CocSpray Occultist: view-thread/1711959
