[3.0] Dreamfinder - Fast Clear / Fast Bossing / All Content
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TL;DR: Combine the clear speed of Spectral Throw or Frost Blades, with the insane single target potential of Blade Flurry.
Concept in detail Spectral Throw has great clear speed, and is fun to play as you try to zip around getting more hits out of your bladed boomerangs. In my experience, bossing with it can be a pain outside of bosses like Shaper that like to stand still a lot. Blade Flurry is one of the highest potential boss killing skills right now. Its drawback is average clear speed, even with lots of investment. So, what if we could use both of them, with no need for gem or weapon/gear swaps when you hit a boss? We accomplish this with Tempest Binding: This helm grants us a pseudo six link, which we'll use for clearing with ST. That leaves our chest open for a six link Blade Flurry. Ice Bite grants us frenzies, and innervate buffs your Blade Flurry. We can take advantage of these buffs while running Elemental Focus on BF. In mapping it feels very much like a bow build, with similar clear speed but it has the advantage of Whirling Blades, Fortify and safety in close range, keeping Vinktar shock up easily. Pros
Cons
Offense: 80k+ GMP Shaper DPS on Spectral Throw 1M+ Shaper DPS on Blade Flurry With min/maxing and expensive gear this could easily be over 1M Shaper DPS, hile having high clear speed. Defenses: 70,000 + evasion or about 80% chance to evade attacks 46% chance to dodge spells 15% chance to block from Dual Wielding 20% reduced damage from Fortify 13% Less Physical and Fire Damage taken from Arctic Armor 20% of phys taken as cold, if you're running Taste of Hate This video is old, but Nugi explains evasion very well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqWxZX1QDak&t=170s Essentially, with this high evasion and layers of defense it's extremely rare to take consecutive large hits. All Guardians down
Path of Building
Passive tree
Ascendancy
Pathfinder gives us a lot of Flask Effectiveness and helps us keep them up during bosses. Also, elemental penetration works well because our damage is split between multiple types. Finally, status immunities mean we only need staunching on flasks. Raider could work, but we're already short on points on the tree. That version would drop crit in favor of Elemental Overload and Frenzy Charges, and has a much lower damage ceiling.
Current Gear in Harbinger
Gear Choices
Dreamfeather lets us scale defense and damage with evasion. Pathfinder can easily hit 70k evasion with flasks, so dual wielding these grants a ton of damage. Pretty hard to beat for a 1c weapon. This high % increased generic damage is doubled by dual wielding them, making flat added damage our most valuable stat. Static Electricity placed in the socket between Ranger and Duelist for a ton of flat lightning damage (80 dex in range). This is important because the % increased attack damage on Dreamfeather behaves a lot like Facebreakers or Doomfletch, flat added damage yields much larger returns than %increased ones. If you choose to use Frost Blades for clearing, you'll want 2 of these. Projectile speed and Penetration are worth the jewel slots. Dropping Static Electricity will hurt your Blade Flurry damage a fair bit, though. We need a lot of Intelligence for Elemental Weakness. This is a cheap way to get it until you can drop a resistance on gear for an intelligence roll. Either of these are fantastic for evasion scaling. QotF is BIS for Lab farming, and can be nice in low tier maps for speed. Perfect Form is most likely best for mapping/bossing, where whirling blades can be used instead of move speed most of the time. Free Arctic Armor, Phase Acro, and maybe the most underrated stat: Evasion is increased by UNCAPPED Cold Resistance. Drop your Quicksilver flask for Taste of Hate to really push the numbers here. BIS for evasion scaling. Three Step assault could be comparable on Raider where you can maintain onslaught/phasing. Spell dodge is also a huge EHP boost. Can run Bisco's for juicy mapping. Hinekora's Sight is a good defensive option for bossing. A rare with flat elemental + crit multi and life is best for damage. Stibnite and Jade with Pathfinder push evasion to absurd levels. Vinktar for leech. Atziri's Promise is a cheap damage and toughness boost for mapping, we take advantage of both phys and elemental scaling. Taste of Hate is probably a better choice for Guardians/Shaper, as it's similar DPS but more defensive and synergizes with Perfect Form. Chemist's prefix is great here, if you can get it. Swap in Quicksilver and Life Flask for Lab Running.
Gem Setups
Chest 6L: 5L: Drop either Ele Focus or Ruthless Added Cold provides slightly more DPS than Added Lightning, and we're already doing enough lightning damage to leech our whole life pool instantly with Vinktar. Ruthless doesn't look impressive on paper, but keep in mind it's per skill use, not per hit. Tapping BF twice, then channeling makes it active for the whole channel. There's no visual indicator, other than the clear difference on a boss's HP dropping so you'll have to feel it out for your setup. Helm - Clearing Skill
Spectral Throw
+ Either
Frost Blades
+ Either
Chain is great for low tier speed clearing, or maps with lots of obstacles. Added cold is more consistent in T15+ maps. Auras/ Golem Level 21 Grace is a lot of damage and survivability. I recommend leveling lots of them in your offhand. Quality doesn't matter much as it's only AOE, meaning you only need to level to 20 then Vaal. Curse/ Power Charge Generation This generates power charges on bosses, and keeps them cursed. Less curse effect does hurt this setup on Shaper/Guardians though. In that case, Frostbomb is more consistent damage, but worse at power charge generation. Lvl 9 Ele weak is around the same INT requirements of Conc. Effect lvl 20. High level Ele weak requires a lot of int, can only be supported by really good gear as you'd need to drop a resist for an INT roll. I used Vorici jeweler method to 4B my Atziri's steps, so I won't need to recolor if I upgrade my gloves. Rolling these colors on evasion gear would be extremely expensive otherwise. CWDT I put this in a weapon, the high STR requirement makes rolling 3R easy. Ancestral Protector turns out to be more DPS than Warchief for us (the Less attack speed really hurts), and also buffs ST. Mobility Standard mobility setup in one weapon.
Bandits
Help Alira. Resists, crit multi and flat mana regen are worth more than 2 points.
Enchants
The Blade Flurry enchant isn't necessary, but it helps. Ice Golem effectiveness is similar DPS, but having to keep a golem alive makes it less consistent. Reduced Grace reservation with a lvl 4 Enlighten can help you fit in a Purity of Ice, but I don't think it's worth it. Attack speed enchant is amazing for mapping. Elemental Penetration or Lightning damage enchants are a lot of dmg for bosses (very close numbers between the two), if you prefer.
High End Upgrades
Culling strike corrupt on Dreamfeather is a huge boost for bossing. The mod is global, so all attacks and your totem will cull. Elemental Weakness on hit corrupt on gloves is a huge QoL upgrade. This removes the need for a curse on hit setup, and the need for high int. With these, you could use the free slots to run assassin's mark curse on hit with your herald of ice to automate power charges during mapping. Or add to your CWDT setup.
Leveling
Leveling is very easy as either spectral throw or frost blades. Grab some of these uniques to make it easy: Also Prismweave in the belt slot. Upgrading to these will get you right up to mapping/Dreamfeathers: Blasphemy + Poachers Mark or a Thief's Torment will take care of mana and life on hit until you do enough damage for leech. Our tree doesn't need to change while leveling. I recommend rushing Sentinel and Nullification for resistances.
Uber Lab Farming Variant
This build is based on Jelbishi's Dreamfeather Lab Farmer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ly_hLfFZ6is, With just a Queen of the forest and flask swap this character can also be a very fast full key Lab runner. Leveled from 75 to 79 in Uber Lab with this setup, will be testing gems and gear to find what feels best.
Progress updates
Pure Cold
Acquired a Taste of Hate, so I decided to test out a more cold-oriented version of the build, using Frost Blades for clear. With chain, it's much faster at clearing, but damage falls off in T15-16 due to the less multiplier. At that level, Added Cold felt much more consistent. Chain is really noticeable in maps like spider forest where obstacles often block projectiles, chain can go around them. Multistrike + Chain makes for some really relaxing farming. Going this route, It would be beneficial to focus cold damage with frostbomb, and maybe hrimsorrow to convert blade flurry as well.
6 Link
I colored and tried to link 3 Perfect Forms, kept hitting 5 link, so I bought a 6 Link when it popped up on trade. This is a massive buff for Guardians. All down deathless, except Chimera, those adds are nuts. Also got this enchant. Running the numbers, Ice Golem effectiveness is close in damage, but this damage is up even when your golem dies. Next step will be upgrading jewelry to get some juicy flat damage.
Update 9/18 - Guardians Down
With more levels, I'm farming up to T15s comfortably.
Downed all Guardians on a 5 Link but I wouldn't call it smooth. Thinking it needs more leech on tree, or a 6 link for Guardians/Shaper. The less curse effect on Ele Weak is really noticable here. Our damage is split between lightning and cold, so Frost Bomb is actually more DPS (it's a flat -20% Cold resistance debuff, not a curse), but orb of storms is better for generating power charges. Also, to alleviate some of the need for INT, I switched to a level 9 Elemental Weak (quality is important here). That puts it just under the 111 INT we need for Concentrated Effect vs 150+ for higher levels. That allowed dropping the int jewel, and adding a second static electricity. Losing the Dex is actually a DPS loss for this build, so overall this setup feels better. Will test some more.
Update 9/15/2017
I've been testing combinations of skills and damage types. Swords have so many options for skills this build could be a versatile base depending on your preferences. Also Dreamfeather's generic attack damage doesn't limit us to any one element. For clearing I tested: Spectral Throw, Cyclone, Frost Blades, Flicker Strike and Wild Strike. Cyclone was too mana hungry, and we don't have enough frenzy generation to support Flicker. Wild Strike worked surprisingly well, but operates mechanically like a Concentrated Effect Blade Flurry (ie. very close melee). Frost Blades is very close to Spectral Throw. The downsides in my testing were that you're giving up 2 jewel sockets for Fight For Survival. That means in a lot of cases we're cutting Static Electricity which really reduces the effectiveness of Vinktar and our survivability. Going this route would probably be best as raider, pathing over to duelist leech and focusing on Frost Blades exclusively. Spectral Throw compliments Blade Flurry well, Giving you reach far past melee range. Having both is especially beneficial in tough bosses with adds. Conc. Blade Flurry and Slower Proj ST can both feel pretty bad for dealing with add phases. Being able to toss out blades at the adds while DPS'ing the boss feels really good and enables efficient multitasking in boss rooms. Attack Speed from Blood Rage was nice, but with Vaal Pact if you run out of things to kill you're gonna have a bad time. The build needs STR and INT(about 70). Currently using a Heavy Belt for STR, and Fertile Mind for INT. We're giving up a jewel socket, but going through the numbers, it seems like having Ele Weakness is more damage than a jewel, anyway. An expensive solution to this would be Ele Weak on hit gloves. Running T12-13 for fast clear right now. Have done T15 with the current 5-Link setup. Working on Linking/ Coloring Perfect Form before attempting Guardians. Last edited by Icaros on Sep 25, 2017, 5:53:42 AM Last bumped on Oct 21, 2017, 7:55:45 PM
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Check out my build, maybe you will get some information there:
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1800535 | |
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ya the tempest is a great helmet that makes it so even with one handed weapons you can easily have a clear skill and single target in chest setup.
im going to be making a build like this myself probably utilizing hyaon's, because they're so damn powerful at such a cheap price tag. | |
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Updated with lots of new testing info and current gear setup.
" Thanks, there's definitely some good ideas in there. Not intending to "rip off" anyone's build here, if that's even possible. Hoping this combination plays uniquely and effectively enough to be its own thing. " I agree. Also ran numbers on Hyaon's, but that would really work best on Raider. Even with the reduction to the damage taken mod, it's a bit scary for bossing if you have more than a few frenzies. Would be interested to see what you come up with. | |
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How can I level with this?
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" You can level as ST most of the way, using 2 of these for huge ele damage: Use added lightning, added cold and Elemental Damage with Attacks, and you'll be fine on damage straight through to Dreamfeathers. Also, Wake of Destruction boots are a huge damage boost for leveling, and cheap. | |
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Are there any ways to increase your life pool but still have good dps? 5k hp is a little too low for my comfort zone.
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" We get the Scion life wheel, and most of the good clusters on the right side. For the most part, right side builds that have more than 5.5k life are usually wearing Belly of the Beast or Kaom's. Your best bet is probably dropping the stuff near true strike or Bravery/Art of the Gladiator, but in both cases you'll lose a lot of DPS. | |
" I see, thanks for the quick reply! Does that mean this build requires a lot of dodging or are you able to burst enemies quick enough that they don't hit you? | |
" In general as a life build, you'll want to dodge telegraphed slams. For example, Shaper slam can do upwards of 10,000 dmg. Manually dodging with Whirling blades occasionally makes sure you keep fortify up, anyway. That said, we have: 70,000 + evasion or about 80% chance to evade attacks 46% chance to dodge spells 15% chance to block from Dual Wielding 20% reduced damage from Fortify 13% Less Physical and Fire Damage taken from Arctic Armor 20% of phys taken as cold, if you're running Taste of Hate This video is old, but Nugi still explains evasion very well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqWxZX1QDak&t=170s I'll add this as a defense section. In general for mapping, I do kill things fast enough not to get hit. Worth noting, this isn't going to be the videos you see on Reddit of deleting Shaper in 1 second. We're using 1c weapons, those are using mirrored and legacy gear in standard. |
