[3.2] The Flickster - Kitava's Feast Trickster Flicker
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Do you feel like killing things from far away just isn't the same, yet having to run behind every stupid thing that wanders through Wraeclast ends up being annoying? Do you sometimes wish you could just teleport around hitting mobs in the face with a BIG F*CKING AXE until they explode in a thousand little pieces?
Or maybe you just love to get those hipster points, and always dreamed of playing a Resolute Technique, Axe-Wielding, Phys to Cold conversion Flicker Strike Trickster. Either way: you're in the right topic. Featured videos: T15 Colosseum Run T13 Terrace Run Table of contents 1. Build summary 2. Pros and cons 3. Required uniques 4. Useful uniques 5. Other gear and jewels 6. Ascendancy 7. Passive tree 8. Gem Links 9. FAQ 1. Build summary As stated in the title, this is a Flicker Strike build using the Kitava's Feast axe for a pseudo 7-link. The 7-link setup has the downside of being mana heavy, but since Flicker Strike is a movement skill we are able to cast it for free. Our Frenzy charges are generated through the use of the Red Trail boots + Golden Rule jewel combo. The self-inflicted bleed is mitigated through a 90% cold conversion, and countered by the increased life recovery of Patient Reaper. PoB code: https://pastebin.com/DPBVis4T I'll just put this here for now, as I don't have the time to properly upgrade the guide at this moment: if you ever use a Headhunter with this build, be sure to run the upgraded Soul of Shakari pantheon - you'll kill yourself otherwise. Also, consider an anti-bleed flask for the Bloodlines packs that inflict bleed stacks. Just be aware that you can't use this flask in any other moment or you'll stop your own bleed and stop flickering. 2. Pros and cons Pros: + Fairly tanky: up to 6.5k life and 40% dodge/30% spell dodge chance + Resolute Technique: no need to worry about accuracy on gear + Flicker kills mob packs really quick, and the level 25 Melee Splash guarantees a big area of effect + Destroys enemies on kill, avoiding some on-death effects + Has a BIG F*CKING AXE + Scores quite a few hipster points Cons: - Needs many uniques to work - Doesn't scale much with heavier currency investment - Destroying enemies on kill can be a problem in Bestiary - Flicker strike can carry you to the weirdest places - Forever alone: no one wants to party-play with a flicker - It's an end-game build: you'll have to go through the story with some other skill, or use a weapon swap frenzy 3. Required uniques
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Melee Splash is absolutely required for a flicker build to work. Getting it for free on our weapon means we can use another support gem instead. It's effectively a 7-link. Also, it's a BIG F*CKING AXE that has an awesome face. Every flicker build has to generate Frenzy charges in some way. The Red Trail boots allow us to gain a Frenzy charge on every hit as long as we're bleeding. This means we can stay on full charges even against bosses. [Allan add the Golden Rule Jewel] The only caveat with the Red Trail boots is that you need to get hit to start bleeding. This simply isn't realiable enough to work in-game. The Golden Rule jewel corrects that, allowing us to self-inflict bleed. If you were to go full physical damage, self-bleeding would hurt - and by that I mean you'd kill yourself in a few seconds. Hrimsorrow converts 50% of our physical damage to cold - other 40% end up being converted through our skill tree. With only 10% of damage being physical, self-bleed won't be a problem. You can also use Hrimburn, the fated version of Hrimsorrow. It makes no difference. The thing with bleed damage is that it is much higher when you're moving. That's not a problem when you're flickering around - flicker strike counts as being stationary. But run to the other side of the screen to pick up that sweet exalt that dropped, and you might end up dead. Bloodgrip negates the extra damage while moving. On top of that, it adds a fair amount of life regen. 4. Useful uniques
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Almost 1.5k extra life, at the cost of having no sockets. We don't need those sockets anyway, but the life is a game-changer. If you can afford to do so, get one. If you can't get your hands on a Kaom's Heart, another good option would be a well-rolled Loreweave. The Maximum Resistances roll is what makes this chest. It has to be 80%, or it's just not worth using. Critical Strike Chance and Mana don't matter at all. All other rolls work on a "the higher, the better" base. A budget option would be a Belly of the Beast. Or simply a rare with as much life as possible, if nothing else is attainable or you can't get resist capped otherwise. A good amount of life and attack speed. Starkonja's is the only unique helmet I'd consider using on this build. It's not a game-changer though, so you might as well just use a rare helmet with life and resists. Intimidated enemies take 10% extra damage. That makes this belt a good option for basically every build that gets near enemies before hitting them. Then again: getting a rare belt with life and resists (and maybe elemental damage with attacks) is also a good option. Note that the flasks linked here are legacy. Current versions have lower possible rolls, but are still really useful. Flasks give a lot of extra damage on Path of Exile. The three linked here are the best you can get for this build. Start with Atziri's Promise, since it's really cheap. Get Lion's Roar second for the biggest damage increase of all. Finish with Taste of Hate, which is quite costly, but also helps defensively. Yes, a bow. Quill Rain is the fastest bow in the game, and can be a great weapon swap to use with the Frenzy attack (frenzy + faster attacks + GMP + blood magic) while you still can't reliably inflict bleed on everything. You can even try to use Flicker Strike through the story - use Blood Rage and Poacher's Mark + Blasphemy as a way of getting charges while mapping, and the Quill Rain weapon swap to get the charges on boss fights. 5. Rare gear and jewels
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First of all, make sure you are resist capped. Depending on how many uniques you use, this might be a bit tricky. High life rolls are also really important. After those are covered, you might want to get intelligence to be able to use Enfeeble (83 intelligence needed) and Elemental Focus (111 intelligence needed). Besides that, just get some damage rolls - attack speed, flat phys, increased cold or elemental damage are all good.
For jewels, try to get 7% life and two damage rolls. 6. Ascendancy
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a) Swift Killer: increased damage per frenzy and power charge. We don't have any use for the power charges themselves, but will end up getting them while mapping, and the damage increase applies anyway. It's the best ascendancy to start with, since the charges help while leveling.
b) Weave the Arcane: allows us to Flicker and Leap Slam for free. Not only this negates the problem with the Flicker Strike mana cost, it also allows us to reserve all our mana with auras and heralds. c) Patient Reaper: the increased damage over time is actually bad, since it makes us deal more damage to ourselves. But the increased recovery rate of life is great - it affects regen and leech, and will basically always be active, since every enemy we kill will be bleeding. d) Harness the Void: extra damage. Nothing more. 7. Passive tree
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8. Gem links
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Flicker Strike - Multistrike - Melee Physical Damage with Attacks - Elemental Damage with Attacks - Cold Penetration - Elemental Focus
Main attack. You need Multistrike for it to work well. Elemental Focus can be swapped for Maim if you don't want to get as much intelligence. But you'll do more damage with Elemental Focus. Leap Slam - Faster Attacks - Culling Strike - Fortify Movement skill with some added utilities. Try to keep fortify up at all times. Cast when Damage Taken (lvl 1) - Enfeeble (lvl 5) - Frost Bomb (lvl 1) There is no curse that would really make a huge difference, so I like the extra defense from Enfeeble. Low level so I don't have to self-cast. Frost Bomb decreases cold resistance from targets, and this results in a big damage boost. Since it doesn't last long, it really has to be used with CwDT. Ancestral Warchief - Blood Magic Blood Magic is necessary, as we have all our mana reserved and this is our only skill that isn't a movement skill. Arctic Armour / Hatred / Herald of Ash or Aspect of the Spider Arctic Armour reduces damage taken while stationary (all the time while flickering). Hatred is a huge damage boost. Herald of Ash is a smaller damage boost. If you're on Bestiary, Aspect of the Spider seems better than Herald of Ash against bosses, and would be my first option (not tested in-game, since I'm on standard). 9. FAQ What's the highest tier of maps this build can do? Everything up to tier 15 works fine. A few bosses might be a bit harder since we don't have that much control over our positioning. But you should be able to do them all without too much hassle, since we have a good amount of life and damage. Guardians are an entirely different story though. The lack of control from flicker hurts a lot on these fights, and we don't have enough damage to get them down quickly. I do not recommend trying Guardians with this build. It's just not made for it. More questions and other small changes to the guide will come in the next days. Chris Wilson took my soul Last edited by DanutMS on May 3, 2018, 12:50:05 AM Last bumped on Aug 13, 2018, 3:09:39 PM
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I like the idea of this. The bleed degen looks awful though. I reckon its a better build if you only get 1 of the 20% conversion nodes from the tree and grab a 29% hatred cold conversion watcher's eye. 99% cold damage, means the bleed will be from 1% of your damage.
E: Also no primeval force? Tree is so close to it. Last edited by AronIrulan on Mar 26, 2018, 8:50:04 AM
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" It's not nearly as bad as it seems. With the increased recovery from Trickster, the life regen is higher than the degen, so you don't even notice you're bleeding. The only negative side is that when you get hit, the regen will not help as much on getting life back (since your effective regen will be total regen - bleed degen, and so the end value will be positive, but small). But then the leech is more than enough. As for the Watcher's Eye, this build has been done on standard, and prices for Watcher's Eye there are proihibitive. Right now there's one for 14 exalts with 26% conversion, one for 20 whose seller is afk and one for 120 exalts. I just assumed prices on Bestiary were about the same, but now I see they're signigicantly cheaper there. I'm not convinced it would be worth the 3-4 exalts + giving up the damage from another jewel though, since it is already negated by the life regen. It would only give a bit more regen for when you've taken a hit. In any case, I'll give this some more thought, and add something on the build about it. As for Primeval Force, I feel the other points picked were more necessary or gave more damage. If I had points to spend, I'd put them on Hatchet Master, which gives the same 3.2% increased damage per point, but without the need to have a flask active for it's full effect to kick in. Chris Wilson took my soul
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did you mean to take Point Blank in the skill tree? says you leveled it up in the passive skill tree link.
Last edited by laturnup on Mar 29, 2018, 2:53:54 PM
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Well I've played the duelist variant of this build last season and it was pretty successful looking forward to trying this out as a I currently have a headhunter lying around
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" I just checked it, and neither the provided passive tree link nor the PoB tree have Point Blank selected. Have you not clicked it by accident when you opened the link? " The idea behind the build works well with pretty much any class. Duelist has the advantage of being able to overleech (assuming you played a slayer), but I feel that the extra life recovery from Trickster also makes up for some smooth play. And playing flicker with a Headhunter is really nice (well, everything is, but given how fast you can teleport around the map I find flicker to be one of the cool skills to use with HH). If you do play the build, let me know how it went. EDIT: So I got the opportunity to use a Headhunter with this build, and it turns out you can kill yourself with it due to the Golden Rule jewel. I did not know that before as I had only played on other builds with the item. My bad. Chris Wilson took my soul Last edited by DanutMS on May 3, 2018, 12:18:58 AM
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Well with the changes to slayer this you can no longer use the red trail + Golden rule to infinitely flicker anymore as slayer got bleed immunity which disappoints me but im currently leveling the character i will be using for this build
EDIT: So Far So Good The Only Thing I've Ran Into being an issue is the same problem I had with last season with toxic mod off rares pretty much forces me to a run an anti poison flask once I upgrade my rings i will probably drop Carange for your amulet or Impresesnce Current Gear
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Last edited by VsDreaMz on Apr 6, 2018, 11:29:46 PM
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Im a bit confused, is this build still viable or any good? As i see ur current item buid is difference
with one in this guide, could u update it? | |
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using this gem with the build on BSC its nice, only 2% phys damage
Last edited by laturnup on Apr 9, 2018, 4:40:38 PM
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" RIP Flicker, it was fun while it lasted. Interesting that you mention issues with poison. I never cared much about it - just used a normal life flask to heal back and that was it. On the other hand, I do die a lot on all my chars, maybe I should start paying more attention to that. As for the Amulet I suggested, it's there to help against the higher damage you take when you run. If this is not a problem for you, then Impresence might be better. " I'm not sure what you mean. The build has been designed on the current patch, so yes, it is still viable. As for the second part, if I understood it correctly, you're asking about my current characters? If yes, I do am playing another build in Bestiary, that has nothing to do with this guide. But the character that was used for the build is on Standard, and still has all the gear for the build. Check out the character "FrostBladesAssassin". " That is one sexy jewel. Yeah, it makes things better, for those who can afford. Chris Wilson took my soul
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