3.11 Cyclone (Second Sight/Varunastra all content cleared!)


Rightclick go brr hehe

T16 rare 100% delirium clear
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I love the varunastra. I play it every league. I noticed a complete dearth of builds in 3.11 for this beautiful unique (understandable, with how easy harvest makes crafting foils). This build utilizes an unused unique (0 builds on the poe.ninja ladder and scales it with an unpopular keystone (also 0 builds on the poe.ninja ladder!).


People still use Varunastra?

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No, nobody still uses varunastra. It's a bad weapon. There are zero builds using varunastra on the poe.ninja ladder, and only 2 on the delve ladder. One of them is me!



Then why are you using varunastra?

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I like the item, the aesthetic, the idea. It's a completely dead unique item, especially now that people can swing 700+ dps foils, but it'll still do 1-3m shaper DPS depending on your gear. For me, that's about enough.

It's also relatively consistent in terms of items required, minimizing the time I need to be spending on trade. I play this semi-SSF style where I buy the sword early on and just...ignore the trade forever. Unfortunately, since I do rely on a capstone unique, this makes the build not SSF viable. Or HC. Or...yeah. One man's love for his sword.



Build Concept
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Varunastra needs all the love it can get, being a 300 dps sword. It accepts all one-handed melee weapon modifiers, which lets us scale varunastra with intense amounts of critical strike multiplier. Added phys damage on jewelry slots helps to alleviate the low base damage of the weapon.

The Dance with Death keystone frees up a diamond flask slot and makes bossing more consistent in the absence of flasks sustain from say, a hunter's belt, cheapening the build significantly. However, because of this, we cannot use a helmet. We use an elegant hubris jewel dedicated to Asenath. Rolls are not so important, but getting max life or evasion is always nice. Some notable rolls to look out for include life, evasion, and phys as cold, but the jewel only touches 2 notables, so don't go broke on it.

We have a small amount of crit

Varunastra counts as any weapon, allowing us to run both close combat and nightblade.
Defences
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We have some, I guess? Some layers of RNG roll, Infusion to reduce 10% phys damage taken, and potentially 15% phys as fire from a properly rolled elder armor. The build has high natural sustain due to Vaal Pact. We also have 150% effective elusive. 6k life with the ability to get more nodes is nice.


Items
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Helmet
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Go to pathofexile.com/trade, search helmet buyout minimum 10 mirrors, go and buy that and use that. Yes. Efficiency! Also, what are you doing here

Weapon
The keystone item, build does not work without it. 28% it in syndicate, it needs all the help it can get. None of the harvest enchants benefit it since the phys damage % on it is so low.

Not as good as a +2 min frenzy charge shield with proper defenses, but good enough. Provides stun and curse and freeze immunity. Start spinning before clicking strongboxes to prevent getting frozen. In the Sirus fight, this item helps you dash safely through beams if you start channeling right before he fires.

Armor
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6L elder armor, important part is attack crit. We need all the base crit we can get. Crafting guide: Buy a cheap 6l with a free suffix and harvest slam crit on it lol (1-2 ex cost)

Gloves
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I run Asenath's gentle touch. I had it drop en route to farming brutal restraint, and found that it helps solve many of my issues. It provides me a defensive curse on hit, provides blind, and proper packclear since cyclone's AOE can feel a bit small after all the nerfs.

Boots
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Anything with life and tailwind Crafting guide: Ess boots for life or movement speed and harvest slam crit on it

Jewelry
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Emphasis on shoring up defences and getting crit mult. 30% reduced pride reduction lets us run more auras without having to invest in expensive Elreon crafts. Slam a warlord amulet with add an influenced mod and annul all the junk you don't want. Pick up one accuracy mod somewhere so we can cap accuracy

Jewels
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We run Brutal Restraint
in the upper slot to pick up Dance with Death, and a Largethread of hope next to Golem's Blood to pick up:
Harvester of Foes
Swift Skewering
Blade Dancer
Hatchet Master
Art of the Gladiator

for some of the most efficient skill pointery known to PoE. Also, cluster jewel slot down below. We run a mace cluster jewel for fortify on hit. Crit/Channeling medium jewels for more crit mult and unholy might. Small life jewels, we need hp help

Flasks
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We go vroom, have a bleed flask on hand. Surgeon's for more charges. Onslaught + Quicksilver for faster mapping. Bottled Faith for crits.



Links
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Cyclone-Impale-Close Combat-Nightblade- Infused Channeling-Awakened Melee Physical Damage This setup lets us cap impale chance and gives us intimidate from awakened melee physical damage.
Dash-Blood Magic-Second Wind Don't leave home without dash
Pride-Blood and Sand-Dread Banner-Enlighten Standard auras
Maim-Flesh and Stone-Portal Maim stacks with flesh and stone.
CWDT-Tempest Shield-Ancestral Protector-Steelskin CWDT1 with tempest shield 1 if you wanna press steelskin manually. I'm a lazy fook.


Path of Building
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https://pastebin.com/XxkNg93g Focus on picking up the claw and generic and life nodes while levelling. The build can get much more DPS if you sacrifice 1k hp if you unspec the Scion circle for Feller of Foes/Claws of the Falcon for an additional 80% crit mult.


Levelling
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Focus on claw nodes first and level with a claw.


Bandits
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Alira until you have resists settled, respec into kill all


Map Mods
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Everything but reflect phys without the proper preparation. You can get through no leech maps with caution, but it's pretty annoying. Reflect ele doesn't hurt you so much since your effective crit chance is >95% and the ele damage taken is really little, even with 15% gained as fire.


Content cleared:
Uber Elder
Sirius
U Atziri
SuperUberLab
Cortex
Delve Bosses
Delve:320 and going
Harvest Bosses

EDIT: Added PoB at https://pastebin.com/XxkNg93g
Last edited by Foxheartsune on Jul 25, 2020, 11:39:17 AM
Last bumped on Nov 12, 2020, 8:05:55 PM
It warms my heart that there's at least someone who remembers (and even uses!!) the Varunastra.
I love this item and it always brings me nostalgia.
I'm not into cyclone but it was still interesting to read about how you can create Varunastra build in current patch.
Thank you for this guide and have a good day ^_^
In hate we trust.
Where's the second sight in this?

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