[3.8] The Zoominator - [Blade Vortex] [All Content] [Top 25 Lab Speed Runner][League Starter]




UPDATES FOR 3.9 - Once GGG has the new skill tree, I will update the guide below to reflect those changes. Doesn't look like anything has drastically changed for this character. It will be my league starter for sure as it has been for the past 6 leagues :D

THERE ARE 2 NEW VIDEOS OUT ON MY YOUTUBE OF THE BUILD IN 3.8


My Level 90 character in Blight League doing Uber Lab in 3 min 51 sec

My Level 90 character in Blight League doing a Tier 16 Hydra map /w 1 dumb death


3.8 Initial Thoughts:

This build is the master of versatility. Being able to speed run through labyrinth typically ending in top 25 placement, tier 16 maps, Shaper, and Elder; so versatile. This build makes an excellent league starter as most of the gear is simple to acquire and cheap. This build is designed to slowly ramp up in gear. i.e. Getting a 5L, then essence worm, etc. Then upgrading to a 6L. 20/20 gems. and so on. See the progression section gear showcase for my upgrade paths.


Pros and Cons


PROS

350%+ movement speed (400%+ is possible with a few gear changes)
Able to evade most attacks due to the extremely high evasion rating we have while flasks are up
Able to do all content in the game (have not tried Uber elder yet though, should be doable with proper flask management)
Basic leveling gear is cheap even at the start of the league
Almost 100% flask up-time
Able to do all map mods except reflect (ele and phys)

CONS

Low health pool comparative to other builds (4k Health, 1k unreserved mana for MoM. However, our hybrid flask fills these two very fast when your low on either.
Won't 1 shot bosses, even with optimal gear it still takes a few seconds.
Getting the exact colors for the armor can be quite difficult (I have provided a few different methods and alternatives to the colors I suggest in the gem section below)



Playstyle

Mapping: Charge up your blade vortex to 10 stacks, run into pack, hit all flasks (except health pot). Cast orb of storms in packs of enemies to get power charges. Stand there until blade vortex murders the enemy (typically you can run through white mobs and they die in 1 hit). If its a boss swap out your inc aoe gem for conc effect. Use vaal blade vortex during mapping for hard rares, and of course for the boss. If you are feeling squishy at the time, use charged dash to get fortify up.

Lab: Prior to entering lab, swap to running gear. Enter lab. Pop smoke mine and detonate it, hit phase run and then pop all your flasks except the health pot. Run to the exit of the area hitting your flasks and phase run as required to keep your speed up. As while mapping, using fortify can save your life, use it when you feel squishy.

Izaro fight: Position yourself as close to Izaro as you can. Swap back to your damage gear. Charge up your blade vortex to 10 stacks. Before izaro hits you, pop all your flasks. Cast orb of storms to get arcane surge up. If you are particually squishy, use charged dash to dash through izaro ending up beside him. Typically you will be able to dodge his attack, if you can't we have enough health pool with life + mom to mitigate 1 hit. Sometimes you will just get 1 shot, this doesn't happen very often to me. Perhaps once in 20 runs, if that. You still need to dodge huge attacks, this character isn't invincible. BEWARE OF THE REFLECT LIEUTENANTS POSITION AT ALL TIMES. You will end up 1 shotting yourself.



Full Video Guide with Timestamps


Gear Progression Showcase for 3.8


After 12 hours, here is the gear i killed kitava in act 10 with. I really should have recorded it.



After 30 hours this is the gear I had. Recently used vorici method to create my ideal armor and linked it in 59 fuse (rip my future luck). Did uber lab with a 5L and it works great.



and this is the one I linked.





About two and a half weeks later. Gear is finalized.





End game gear in 3.8 Blight League

Please see the gearing explanation section below for a full breakdown of the gear and why I chose what I did.




Gearing explanation for 3.8 Blight League


This gearing explanation is based off my final gear in 3.8 Blight League.

Main Weapons (For boss killing):


Ideal Weapon Stats: 2 X of physical damage as X mods, spell damage, spell crit added X to spells, cast speed.

Ideal Shield Stats: +1 level of all physical gems, critical strike chance for spells, and any resistances required to be capped using main weapons.

Switch Weapons (For running from point A to point B):

These two items are used for running throughout the lab when you are not attacking Izaro. Phase run gives us an extra 15% movement speed. An alternate to the allure claw and shield is the Gryphon. I did not go this route though as I didn't want to rely on killing anything to gain the bonuses, but it will give you more movement speed overall.

Helmet:

Devoto's for this build is a must as we zoom zoom everywhere and need all the movement speed we can get. Enchant wise I chose Smoke Mine Grants an Additional 30% movement speed. However, any enchant that directly affects the skills we use will be beneficial such as Blade Vortex Damage/AoE/Duration, Smoke mine, or phase run.

Armor:

Queen of the forest is essential as most of our movement speed comes from our evasion rating. Coloring this armor to our ideal colors(3B2R1G) can be quite difficult and expensive. It is NOT necessary to have these exact colors, I have provided alternate colors in the gem setup section.


Belt:

Life+Resistances+Reduced Flask charges used. Reduced flask charges used must be at 20% so that our 2 use flasks will now have 3 uses.

or


For extra ZOOM ZOOM!

and of course for mapping, nothing beats

or for some extra sexyness


Gloves:

The new maligaro gloves are amazing! At least a 100% crit multi increase vs. what we would normally have. The additional crit chance is great as well. These are however "league specific" gloves now to legion league. However with the addition of scarabs, this isn't really an issue. The vulnrebility on hit is not necessary at all, I just purchased it for 1.5ex and couldn't let it go (very good deal).


Boots:

Huge evasion rating, Life, Spell Dodge. For the enchant try to get movement speed if you haven't been hit recently.

or

For extra zoom zoom you can use (ignore the gems in it please)



Rings:

Essence worm is used for our 50% mana reservation grace aura. For the 2nd ring I chose to use an unset ring as there was no other place to put herald of ash into my gear. The ideal ring would have life+resistances+cast speed+ X of physical damage gained as X (Last one is not necessary, but would be very nice damage wise if you can accomplish it).

Amulet:

With the addition of the 300% constant crit multi gloves, the negative effects on this ammy are negated. Gives a ton of crit, life, mana, and even some stun recovery. Excellent!

or


For extra ZOOM ZOOM!

Flasks:

In my opinion this is the most important part of the character. For the health flask you want a Catalysed Hallowed Hybrid Flask of Staunching as this refreshes your health and your mana in a pinch. With the extra flask effectiveness for life flasks we have, the gain is more then our life pool. The overflowing chalice allows us to gain flask charges while we are zooming around due to our ascendancy choices. The remaining flasks are fairly self explanitory. Movement speed because zoom zoom, and any way to increase our evasion rating so we can hit the cap of 45,000 for queen of the forests maximum potential. Be sure to quality your flasks all to 20 when you can get enough baubles.

Jewels:

----items----

blahblahblah type this up later


Bandits

Alira for the mana regen, crit multi, and of course all elemental resistances.


Path of Building pastebins



Path of Building Quickie (No PoB Required) - Images


with aoe gem in main links using main weapons


with conc effect gem in main links using main weapons


using all movement speed gear


lvl 100 skill tree


5th place in lab




Step by Step Skill Tree


If you need a 3.8 leveling skill tree. Load this up in Path of Building. Go to "Tree", then go to the bottom by the reset button. Click "manage trees" and a menu should appear with all of your options featuring my lvl 90 character.


https://pastebin.com/m0iH72qS
The skill trees below have been updated as of patch 3.8.1





















Ascendancy

These are just my personal preference and reasoning behind by choices.

Normal Lab - Veteran Bowyer
Damage pen, extra damage, and flask charges? Yes please!

Merciless Lab - Nature's Boon
Chance for flasks not to consume charges, flask charge gain which combined with Overflowing Chalice is insane, reduced ele dmg taken. This is amazing for lab as the majority of the time you will be at full flask charges by the time you get to Izaro. Even killing a tiny pack of monsters should net you full flasks.

Merc Lab - Master Alchemist
Immunity to elemental ailments during flask effect, Extra elemental damage, 20% to cause ailments during any flask. Helps a bunch with getting flask charges again as we gain charges on ailments.

Uber Lab - Nature's Adrenaline
Extra movement speed for end game mapping and labbing.



Pantheon

Major - Fully upgraded Soul of Lunaris:
Up to 8% phys dmg reduction, up to 8% movement speed, projectile avoidance, some dodge, and avoiding projectiles that chain. All amazing stats for this build making it even better at maps and lab.

for more movement speed
Minor - Fully upgraded Soul of Garukhan:
Chance to evade attacks and more importantly movement speed if we haven't been hit recently.

OR

For some extra tankyness when stationary
Minor - Fully upgraded Soul of Tukohama:
Physical damage reduction up to 8% and life regen when stationary up to 2%




Misc Videos of build in action

Guest videos perhaps? If you have played this build in 3.8 and have video of it and would like to share it here, PM me.
If you have any requests of a specific fight or gear set you'd like me to try, please let me know.

My Level 90 character in Blight League doing Uber Lab in 3 min 51 sec

My Level 90 character in Blight League doing a Tier 16 Hydra map /w 1 dumb death





Build Credits

Jelbishi for his older speed farming guide. You can check that out Here





IN PROGRESS OF BEING UPDATED SECTIONS

Skill Gems and Links

see the gear showcase section for 3.8 for current gem links for now until i finish this section





Leveling tips and gear

here is what i have so far for leveling guide, i want to make this more comprehensive so its down here at the moment.

Caustic arrow to level 12
miarage archer, caustic arrow, pierce
buy a vaal blade vortex if you can, makes bossing much easier
Blade vortex + 2 other supports. I used Increased Crit and added cold until i could get added fire (your ideal links would be vaal blade vortex + increased critical strike + added fire + spell echo
get 2 axiom perpentiums if u can
once u get to act 2, use all 3 heralds, you will need to utalize a mana flask until ur regen out regens ur bv costs. The mana sustain gets better over time once u've gone throughout the tree a little bit
at level 38, get spell echo
use spell echo + vaal blade vortex + added fire dmg + increased critical strikes
use charged dash or flame strike
act 6 boss really really sucks now in 3.7, careful
Acquire a tabula (farming blood aqua/channel or via trading)
Acquire atziri's steps 16% evade if you can
Acquire essence worm
Upgrade all other gear to have resistances capable of the act you are in
Acquire hrimsorrows or maligaros gloves
Acquire ungil's harmony
Acquire 2 divinarus
Acquire a devotos devotion
Acquire remaining rares that max your resistances

more to come, this is as far as I can remember.







Last edited by AutoMatrixEH on Dec 12, 2019, 10:30:09 PM
Last bumped on Dec 25, 2019, 12:15:50 PM
Here is the entire guide in 3.6

If you are sure you want to check outdated content click the other spoiler menu.
Spoiler
Spoiler



UPDATES FOR 3.6 - We lose a bit of damage on blade vortex, this shouldn't matter that much in terms of speed for us running lab/maps. Vaal blade vortex also took a hit so it will be less useful on bosses. Good thing for us is that we never get to use blade vortex during lab, so its only when we are mapping vaal blade vortex is useful.


I WILL BE UPDATING THIS GUIDE ONCE I GET THE GEAR ON LEGION. BASICALLY NO CHANGES OTHER THEN THE NODES BEHIND MOM. BOSSES ARE A LITTLE MORE DIFFICULT BECAUSE OF THE AI CHANGES, BUT NOTHING THIS CHARACTER CAN'T HANDLE :D



3.6 Initial Thoughts:

This build is the master of versatility. Being able to speed run through labyrinth typically ending in top 5 placement, T16, Shaper; so versatile. This build makes an excellent league starter as most of the gear is simple to acquire and cheap. This build is designed to slowly ramp up in gear. i.e. Getting a 5L, then essence worm, etc. Then upgrading to a 6L. 20/20 gems. and so on.


Pros and Cons


PROS

350%+ movement speed (400%+ is possible with a few gear changes)
Able to evade most attacks due to the extremely high evasion rating we have while flasks are up
Able to do all content in the game (have not tried Uber elder yet though, should be doable with proper flask management)
Gear is generic and easy to find (The rares for first time league leveling)
Almost 100% flask up-time
Able to do all map mods except reflect (ele and phys)

CONS

Low health pool comparative to other builds
Won't 1 shot bosses, even with optimal gear it still takes a few seconds.
Getting the exact colors for the armor can be quite difficult (I have provided several options for the links so that this isn't much of an issue)



Playstyle

Mapping: Charge up your blade vortex to 10 stacks, run into pack, hit all flasks (except health pot). Cast orb of storms in packs of enemies to get power charges. Stand there until blade vortex murders the enemy (typically you can run through white mobs and they die in 1 hit). If its a boss swap out your inc aoe gem for conc effect. Use vaal blade vortex during mapping for hard rares, and of course for the boss.

Lab: Prior to entering lab, swap to running gear. Enter lab. Pop smoke mine and detonate it, hit phase run and then pop all your flasks except the health pot. Run to the exit of the area hitting your flasks and phase run as required to keep your speed up.

Izaro fight: Position yourself as close to izaro as you can. Swap back to your damage gear. Cast orb of storms to get arcane surge up. Charge up your blade vortex to 10 stacks. Before izaro hits you, pop all your flasks. Typically you will be able to dodge his attack, if you can't we have enough health pool with mom + life to mitigate 1 hit. Sometimes you will just get 1 shot, this doesnt happen very often to me. Perhaps once in 20 runs, if that. You still need to dodge huge attacks, this character isn't invincible.



Full Video Guide with Timestamps


FULL VIDEO GUIDE HERE


Timestamps:
Introduction + A randomly rolled T16 - a few dumb avoidable deaths: 0:04
Lab run with introduction to lab ladders: 4:56
Ascendency Choice: 11:54
Gem Links: 12:48
Passive Tree: 16:38
Gear: 20:29
Final Thoughts: 27:59




Gear Progression Showcase for 3.6

After 18 hours of playtime - slower vs normal cuz league start





After 26 hours of playtime - found 1ex, bought a few essencials




After 34 hours of playtime - quite a few changes - they were cheap except..........



I snagged this baby, my dream armor, unlinked though, but I'll do it!



After about 40 hours of playtime. Linked my armor :D



After one week of playtime. My gear is mostly optimized now.





End game gear in 3.6 Syndicate

Please see the 3.5 section for full explanation of gear choices.




Gearing explanation + End game 3.5 gear (not optimized because I was cheap)


I have not decked this character out, I purchased basic gear at the start of the league and invested my profits into other characters. This is the gear that I was using in the video guide.

Main Weapons (For boss killing):

Ideal Stats: 2 or 3 gain X of physical damage as X mods, spell damage,cast speed, spell crit, added X to spells

Switch Weapons (For running from point A to point B):

These two items are used for running throughout the lab when you are not attacking Izaro. Phase run gives us an extra 30% movement speed from these two items. An alternate to the allure claw is the Gryphon. I did not go this route though as I didn't want to rely on killing anything to gain the bonuses.

Helmet:

Devotos for this build is a must as we zoom zoom everywhere and need all the movement speed we can get. The dex helps a ton as well. Enchant wise I chose Smoke Mine Grants an Additional 30% movement speed. However, any enchant that directly affects the skills we use will be beneficial such as Blade Vortex Damage/AoE/Duration, Smoke mine, or phase run.

Armor:

Queen of the forest is essential as most of our movement speed comes from our evasion rating. Coloring this armor to 4B1R1G can be quite difficult and expensive (even using the vorici crafting method to get off colors). It is NOT necessary to have these exact colors, I have provided alternate colors in the gem setup section.


Belt:

Life+Resistances+Reduced Flask charges used. Reduced flask charges used must be at 20% so that our 2 use flasks will now have 3 uses.

or


For extra ZOOM ZOOM!

and of course for mapping, nothing beats


Gloves:

Upgraded version of Hrimsorrows. The upgraded version is not a necessity. Certainly the elemental weakness curse implicit is totally optional as well. They convert 50% of our physical damage to cold damage. The goal of my build was to have a variety of elements+phys so that no matter the defense of the monster, they die somehow.


Boots:

Huge evasion rating, Life, Spell Dodge. For the enchant try to get movement speed if you haven't been hit recently.


Rings:

Essence worm is used for our 50% mana reservation grace aura. For the 2nd ring I chose to use an unset ring as there was no other place to put herald of ash into my gear. The ideal ring would have life+resistances+cast speed+ X of physical damage gained as X (Last one is not necessary, but would be very nice damage wise if you can accomplish it).

Amulet:

Look for life+resistances+any missing stats you require for gear+ X of physical damage gained as X (Last one is not necessary, but would be very nice damage wise if you can accomplish it).

or


For extra ZOOM ZOOM!

Flasks:

One of the staples of the build is the flasks as we are a pathfinder. For the health flask you want a Catalysed Hallowed Hybrid Flask of Staunching as this refreshes your health and your mana in a pinch. Atziri flask. The other flasks add evasion and assist with our run speed. Self explanatory.

Jewels:
I don't know how to link jewels from passive tree, it doesn't work for me. However, I chose to grab a watchers eye with % movement speed while affected by grace. More Zoom Zoom! The other gems are X - X is added as X, I feel like these gems give blade vortex a little boost.




Skill Gems and Links

6 Link (Ideal=4B1R1G): Vaal Blade Vortex + increased critical strikes + controlled destruction + added fire damage + added chaos damage + concentrated effect(for bosses) or Aoe (for mapping).
For a 5 link, remove added fire damage.

If you are unable to get 4B1R1G here are some options depending on the colors that you get.
6 Link (Alternative=3B3G):Vaal Blade Vortex + increased critical strikes + controlled destruction + Added cold damage + hypothermia + concentrated effect(for bosses) or Aoe (for mapping).
For a 5 link, remove hypothermia.

4 Link (2B2G): Lightning golem + culling strike + GMP + Inc AoE
4 Link (2G1B1R): Phase Run + Enhance + increased duration + efficacy
4 Link (3R1G): CWDT (Level 1) + Smoke Mine + increased duration + immortal call
1 Links x 2 (1G) (1R): Grace/Hatred/Haste (situational. Lab = Grace, Hard bosses = hatred, fast mapping/lab = haste) + Herald Of Ash
3 Link (2B1R): CWDT (Level 1) + enfeeble (Level 5) + vortex (Level 3)
3 Link (3B): Orb of storms + arcane surge (Level 5) + power charge on crit



Leveling tips and gear

Caustic arrow to level 12
miarage archer, caustic arrow, pierce
buy a vaal blade vortex if you can, makes bossing much easier
Blade vortex + 2 other supports. I used Increased Crit and added cold until i could get added fire (your ideal links would be vaal blade vortex + increased critical strike + added fire + spell echo
get 2 axiom perpentiums if u can
once u get to act 2, use all 3 heralds, you will need to utalize a mana flask until ur regen out regens ur bv costs. The mana sustain gets better over time once u've gone throughout the tree a little bit
at level 38, get spell echo
use spell echo + vaal blade vortex + added fire dmg + increased critical strikes
use charged dash or flame strike
act 6 boss really really sucks now in 3.7, careful
Acquire a tabula (farming blood aqua/channel or via trading)
Acquire atziri's steps 16% evade if you can
Acquire essence worm
Upgrade all other gear to have resistances capable of the act you are in
Acquire hrimsorrows or maligaros gloves
Acquire ungil's harmony
Acquire 2 divinarus
Acquire a devotos devotion
Acquire remaining rares that max your resistances

more to come, this is as far as I can remember.



Step by Step Skill Tree


If you need a 3.6 leveling skill tree. Load this up in path of building.
https://pastebin.com/YhgrDXia
The skill trees below have been updated for 3.6




















Path of Building pastebins

Here is my character in endgame gear: Level 89 character in Synthesis


My Level 91 Character in betrayal

This pastebin has my level 91 character in betrayal, as again it is not optimized, it is just basic gear that i got for cheap. Included in the pastebin is the leveling tree. To access this, load up PoB and go to the drop-down menu where it says reset.
My Level 91 character in Betrayal (not optimized cuz I was cheap at the time)





Path of Building Quickie (No PoB Required) - Images

Here is a screenshot of me in my regular mapping gear. As you can see this differs from the numbers below movement speed wise. PoB is weird, but you can fiddle with it your self with the PoB pastebin in the above section.



DPS/Char sheet with regular lab/mapping gear on


DPS/Char sheet with movement speed gear


Level 100 Skill Tree


2 characters in top 10 uber lab




Bandits

Alira for the mana regen, crit multi, and of course all elemental resistances.


Ascendancy

These are just my personal preference and reasoning behind it.

Normal Lab - Nature's Adrenaline
Extra movement speed for leveling. IF YOU ARE NEW TO THE BUILD. PICK THIS LAST FOR UBER LAB. I like early game run speed so thats why I chose it first.

Cruel Lab - Veteran Bowyer
Damage pen, extra damage, and flask charges? Yes please!

Merciless Lab - Nature's Boon
Chance for flasks not to consume charges, flask charge gain trickle, reduced ele dmg taken. This is amazing for lab as the majority of the time you will be at full flask charges by the time you get to Izaro.

Uber Lab - Master Alchemist
Immunity to elemental flask ailments, Extra elemental damage, 20% to cause ailments during any flask. Really helps with the flask gains.


Pantheon

Major - Soul of the Brine King:
Some stun prevention, block and stun recovery, reduction of chill effects on your character. Getting stunned on a caster is extremely annoying and deadly.

Minor - Soul of Shakari:
Reduction of chaos damage and poison immunity. Yummy.




Build Credits

Jelbishi for his older speed farming guide. You can check that out Here
Last edited by AutoMatrixEH on Sep 25, 2019, 4:13:14 PM
Bump, writing guide today or tomorrow. sorry, had family stuff to attend to over christmas so i could not write the guide in time for 3.5. my bad guys.

Sorry for the lack of updates during the christmas period. Guide is now about 80% complete. Should be finished it today.

::Edit::
All Finished :D

If I am forgetting anything please let me know.
Last edited by AutoMatrixEH on Mar 1, 2019, 4:03:52 PM
Very nice! will definitely try this one out in synthesis.
Hi,

Nice build and video!
Do you have any recomandation gear/gems or any tips for leveling and survivability. I am not used to play as a ranger..

thanks
Last edited by matlebassist on Mar 5, 2019, 8:48:14 PM
Bumparoo for 3.6
"
matlebassist wrote:
Hi,

Nice build and video!
Do you have any recomandation gear/gems or any tips for leveling and survivability. I am not used to play as a ranger..

thanks


Level 1-12 = Pretty much any skill you like to level with. I will be leveling with explosive trap most likely as it does a huge amount of dmg to single targets.
12+ = blade vortex + associated support gems

Of course if you can get the leveling uniques it helps a lot. Tabula, goldrim, wonderlusts, etc.
"
Any updates to the leveling tree?


Here is the 3.6 path of building step by step.

To access the step by step in path of building, click the drop down menu to the left of where it says reset/import tree/export tree.




Here is the pastebin with new step by step leveling. Note: You will need path of building 1.4.130 or higher to view this properly.
https://pastebin.com/WAx19178

Once GGG has put up the new skill tree on the official website, I will update all skill trees to reflect this. During that waiting time, you can use the path of building for now.
Last edited by AutoMatrixEH on Mar 7, 2019, 4:14:47 AM
Can this build quickly and cheaply start a farm labyrinth at the start of the league? Also can it facetank Izaro, buffed Izaro and Argus?
Last edited by Androix777 on Mar 7, 2019, 5:24:54 AM

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