[3.10] Flick it good - starforge and impale and dps and stuff. Yes, it's flicker strike

Don't play it in 3.11

https://pastebin.com/Tzc6Jfvy

This is the concept build only, with 0% gems for example.

You can import my character called FoulLanguage, which is a more optimized version (for me it shows close to 12M shaper DPS without the shock effect)

This is also an impale build, so you'll need the community fork
https://github.com/PathOfBuildingCommunity/PathOfBuilding

Weapon



It's a good time to mention that this is not one of those super fast 20+ attack rate flicker builds. This one goes a bit slower, but hits much much harder. This way we don't have to worry about running out of mana.
Starforge is an easy choice here, has the best possible DPS for a 2 handed physical build. Well, probably you could get a crazy good Exquisite Blade with all the good rolls, but even then the DPS difference would be balanced out by starforge's shock effect, so pick this, and don't ask questions.

Side note: I have a 6link double strike here, but I pretty much only use them for conquerors. The damage is more than enough to go through regular bosses without them, so you don't need 2 6links if you don't want to, or don't have the budget.

Helmet



It's a mostly crit melee build, so abyssus will get us a ton of DPS. Rare or unique, nothing really comes close to its effectiveness. The flicker enchant is not required, but it also gives us a big boost, considering we have 9 frenzy charges, it's a *MATH RESULT NOT FOUND* damage boost. I got mine for 7ex, which is quite a lot, but it's one of the biggest damage boosts if you're min-maxing.


Body Armor



While flicker strike could work without any additional frenzy generation (especially as a raider), I prefer to have a 'safety net'. Plus this way, you have no worries during segmented boss fights either. Also, the cat skills grant you some extra damage, and you get a decent amount of HP from the armor as well, so you're getting more than just frenzy charges. If you're really adventurous you can drop it in favor of a bronn's or even a kaom's heart if you want something different. But I can't guarantee anything with those.

Gloves



+1 maximum frenzy charges is pretty much a must. It's cheap anyway. Get a murderous jewel into it and you'll get more damage than you could get with a pair of spiked gloves. The reason why I use the single abyss version is because a) the double abyss version costs like 15ex, b) I don't know where to put my golem if I lose an extra slot. If you're swimming in exalts, you can get the dual version. I'm not sure it gives you that much damage anyway.



Some alternatives could be Offering to the serpent (for overleech and attributes), Atziri's acuity (for vaal pact) or Shadows and Dust (mana leech and rampage). However, tombfist is cheap, and an abyssal jewel can help you get your accuracy maxed out, which for me is a must.

Boots



In the PoB I have average res rolls on everything, so I added an evasion boot there. That's more of a defensive pick, and for those times where you need a spot for resistances. With that said, a tailwind boot is probably close, if not better than a darkray, but definitely more expensive. So darkray is a good middle ground. The 5% life corruption is just an extra. Usually you can pick one up for 3-5c, so it's worth to get it if you can.



Amulet



Damage wise one of the best choices, and it gives us a lot of attributes too, which we will need. This is a spot however, where you could go with a very good rare, if you have the budget.
As anointment, pick one of the life ones. I chose constitution, because that gives us the most HP, but Discipline and Training is also very good and costs a lot less (although with the build's budget, it shouldn't really be your biggest concern). If you want some extra evasion too, Bravery is a decent pick too.
If you're fine with having life that starts with a 4, Dismembering or Disemboweling both give you a big damage boost (Dismembering also has maim chance, so that's probably better). Blade of Cunning is also a good choice.

Rings



This is definitely not the best setup. Getting Aspect of the cat and Assassin's mark on hit on the same ring will cost you a lot. So it's better to put the two on separate rings. As to why we get them is simple: Aspect of the cat is needed for frenzy charge generation (with Farrul's fur), and Assassin's mark on hit is a nice way to get a good damage boost without needing to have an aura. Vulnerability is also a good pick, but it's a slightly less damage boost.

You'll also need to get most your resistances here, and this will need to be the place you pick up the extra strength you'll need for the build (well, this or the belt).

If you have all the money in the world you can probably work a Precursor's emblem into the build here. Mostly you'd want +1 maximum frenzy charges, or Increased damage per frenzy (you know, the expensive ones). Since Aspect of the cat also gives us power charges, some rolls there are also acceptable (but usually not cheaper).

Belt



No surprise here. There's probably a way to get a Rustic sash with some influences to be more effective, but I'm too lazy to look into that. Get resistances and health. The rest doesn't really matter.

Flasks



Get the life flask of your preference, I won't judge. I have an abyss jewel that prevents corrupted blood on me, so I pretty much never need the bleed immunity from it, but you never know. Probably curse/poison immunity is a better pick, but if I die, I don't die from these ailments or whatevers anyway.

Lion's roar is a no brainer, and if you pair it with an extra armor roll on one of your other flasks, you can get a decent amount of armor while your flasks are on (~9-10k). Evasion will still be our primary defense, but it's a nice backup. If you don't want it, you can pick attack speed instead.

What you will need is a jade flask and a flask (it doesn't have to be the same) with increased evasion (preferably one with 90%+). When you pop your flasks your evasion should be maxed at 95%.



Other than that, get an anti-freeze flask, offensive or defensive, it's up to you.

Cluster and regular Jewels



For cluster jewels, you can pretty much pick anything for the small passives. If you miss attributes or resistance, or just want to add some chaos res, you can add a decent amount here, especially since we use 3 passive small jewels.

Deep cuts is an obvious pick since we're rolling with impale. Martial prowess gives us some extra accuracy (and good damage), and Feed the fury is one of the best damage notes. Other than Deep cuts though, you can pick other big passives if you want.

Same goes for the medium cluster, but Precise commander and Basics of pain give you the most damage. Picking up some extra crit multiplier is also a good idea. Btw, you can pick 5 passive medium jewels, you'll still only need to use 4 skill points to get everything.

As for the small clusters, pick one with 3 passives, just to squeeze some more health out of them. Picking Fettle is probably a better choice, but I chose Natural vigor just for that extra evasion.

On to the regular jewels:
The 1st one here, I only got because I did some miscalculation on the resistances, and since I needed an extra jewel to fix it, I just picked the mana leech here. Otherwise it's preferred to pick the small Mana leech passive from the tree, next to Arrow dancing in the bottom right corner of the tree, or just add it through one of the rings.

Otherwise you can pick pretty much anything from the crit pool or sword/melee/two handed damage pool. I recommend picking increased life as well.

Watcher's eye: We need the extra impale chance for pride to get 100% impale chance. If you have the budget, ADDING (ie not replacing the other one) the 'Impales you inflict last # additional Hits while using Pride' roll is probably the best single damage boost to the build, but currently it's out of my budget, so I don't have it (if you're lucky it starts from 40ex)

As mentioned before, you don't need 2 6links. I added a dual strike just to get the absolute max damage you can get, but it's really not necessary for pretty much any character the game has to offer. With that said, it's nice to have the boys, so getting a 4-5 (or 6 I guess) link version can't hurt.

You can see the links in the gear section, if you're a visual type, sorry for the plain text here.

6L Flicker strike
In order of importance:
Flicker Strike (duh) - Multistrike - Impale - Brutality - Fortify - Melee Physical Damage/Melee Splash (for bosses/clearing, I'm usually lazy to swap gems, but we have plenty damage with splash too.)

4L Auras
Pride - Dread Banner - Flesh and Stone - Enlighten
We need to link them so enlighten affects everything. Lvl 3 is enough, at least I never had mana issues. If you have a lvl 4 enlighten I guess that'll do too.

3L Cast When Damage Taken
Cast When Damage Taken(lvl 11) - Steelskin(lvl 16) - Summon Flame Golem(lvl 13)
You can choose different levels if you want, just make sure that your CWDT is on a high enough level to actually activate the skills. I don't really recommend going under lvl 14 Steelskin though.
You can cast your golem yourself too if you want (in that case get lvl 20 ofc), and you can use other golems too (I heard that fire golem can cause framerate issues for some), but this one gives you the most DPS.

Totems and whatevers
Ancestral Protector - Vaal Ancestral Warchief - Vaal Haste - Leap Slam
If you want to use a totem during clearing, I recommend the Protector, so you don't need a separate bind for all the totems when you need them all at once. Totems and Vaal Haste are mostly for bosses only, but you can pop them any time you want. Obviously you don't need to link any of these.

6L Vaal Double Strike (optional)
Vaal Double Strike - Impale - Brutality - Melee Physical Damage - Maim - Ruthless
This is an optional damage boost against bosses (mostly conquerors only). Additionally, on Sirus I switch this to a Frenzy setup, so I have a skill that doesn't fly all over the place, and is more predictable.

Quick T15 Coral ruins map for Pantheon soul (production level 200)
I was my usual Pepega self, so I forgot to put down my totems, so the boss lasted a little longer than usual

So, to showcase the single target damage:
Al-Hezmin final kill

If you missed it earlier, here it is:
https://pastebin.com/Tzc6Jfvy

There's a community PoB fork, you can use, which supports impale:
https://github.com/PathOfBuildingCommunity/PathOfBuilding

If you don't want to use it, keep in mind that we have 6 impales to stack with 100% chance and 68% increased effectiveness, so impale gives you a 2.008 damage multiplier (so the DPS you see in regular PoB is only half of the damage we deal).

When I leveled this build, I just used split arrow with fire arrow for single target, since that's what the game gave me. I really think that leveling with a bow skill (or spells if available) is better than pretty much any melee skill.

However, if you want to use swords, get Cleave as soon as possible. Cleave has pretty good single target damage, and thanks to its "built-in" splash damage, you don't need an Acestral call support or anything similar to get clearing done.

With the introduction of Second wind support, if you want (I don't recommend it, I think cleave is a better skill until level 51) you can quite safely use flicker strike from level 38. Just get a two handed sword (you can usually get a 5link one for 1c early in the leagues), and remember that essences exist. Lower tier Contempt essences cost about an alch, and they guarantee one good roll for your sword. Just use flicker with melee splash, multistrike and second wind support, and you should be good to go. Unfortunately this means you're not getting the max out of your flicker, but that's the early melee build life. If you picked Way of the Poacher first, you can probably drop the second wind support, and get some more damage.

Once you're at level 51 however, I highly recommend switching to a Terminus Est and Flicker strike. TE is cheap and a 4link is enough to finish the story line. Just use an Increased Critical Strikes support and if you can, pick the crit nodes from the tree early, and you should be cruising through the rest of the game without issues. You can also use an Ungil's Harmony for extra crit chance. Have a Frenzy skill ready, just in case, but you should be fine outside of segmented boss battles.

Once you get to level 69 (haha 69) Farrul's fur and the Aspect of the cat will handle all your frenzy charge needs. However since it might take a while to get the currency for them, sticking with a 6L Terminus est (costs about 60-80c usually) is a more than viable option. I'm pretty sure, you can clear all content with a TE setup as well, but you can definitely get to red maps without any issues.

Penis