[3.24] Holy Flicker Strike Necro [League start > All content] Back in time! PoB cleaned up
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Blast from the past event is almost up and thus its time for me to test all the new tweaks and adjustments done this league.
Extra difficulty, fresh start and item scarcity should put the build to the test in preparation for next league. Whatever I gather I will add into the main page PoB after events are over. Discord link is renewed for anyone who wanna torture themselves with this build https://discord.gg/GGGPGS2DuW Gonna hang around there, track my progress and answer questions to anyone who gonna start this one. Things to try out: Tweaking early game auras to free space for Energized armour jewel Test Energized armour jewel as replacement for Skin of the Loyal Test Vaal EQ to see if it performs well in low DPS compared to other trigger methods Test couple of new farming starts - going for early blight and [REDACTED] Last edited by Fire_Archer on Dec 4, 2023, 9:02:17 AM
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The event goals are done so let me highlight some details how it went.
Recap First of all – level 90 and 2 void stones acquired. With tweaks done to early stages of the build I didn’t die once in the maps. The only death was from Exarch balls (obligatory and unavoidable, thanks for giving relics collision GGG) There was pretty much close to no item upgrades on the market so I just keep sitting on divines I farmed up. I did manage to get myself Aegis Aurora and Asenath but only for like level 88 or so, just so I can fast and safely finish leveling up. Other things that I’ve bought: Trigger weapon Level 21 holy relic gem Tabula rasa Minion cluster Energized armour jewel Magna Eclipsis (parts) +1 skills amulet Armour cluster Leveling
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Leveling with SRS as usual. It’s a bit slow, but does not require you to craft or think about anything. All you need is 3-4 link and you good up to the maps.
Switching to relics can be done as soon as you can get/equip trigger weapon, have Geofry helm, have 4-5 link chest plate and have 2 labs done. So around level 50-60. Arcane Will notable is now a part of the build as its just a better Clarity with no mana cost. Use it as soon as you can. Solve all mana issues for SRS and Relics alike. Animate Guardian can be used starting from level 15 gem, given that you have proper items to equip him with. Assuming its league start – you prolly don’t have that and its better to upgrade yourself first. Animate Guardian at this stage does not require boots or gloves at all. Just shield, weapon and chest. Armor Cruncher specter performed okay, however, it can only curse one target per attack, can miss, has no AOE. I find it better to self-cast a curse instead, unless you are REALLY socket starved. Demon Harpies show up really fast and people will share them with you in no time. So there is no massive benefit for using Armor Cruncher. Maps (white to yellow)
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Absolutely no issues there, blasting with rampage gloves fast and easy.
Combination of Daresso’s shield and Anvil amulet makes up for a safe run. Inexorable passive notable amplifies this effect. To equip Daresso’s shield you need 70 dex. Grab it from passive tree, refund later on. I made a mistake of giving my Animate Guardian Dying Breath. While it does give you extra bit of DPS, the utility Sin Eater provides is far more superior. Especially in early game when people do not have Divine Vessels and you can’t get freeze immunity easily. Ignite immunity also nice to have to not bother about crafting your flask at all. Keep AG with starting gear up to red maps at least. Maps (early red)
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At this point things start to get a bit dangerous. The lack of upgrades from the market also takes an effect
The main thing about this stage is to always keep your block values up. Try not to get it below 68% at least. Why is that a thing? Because at this point you kinda want to replace both Anvil amulet and Daresso’s shield. You want to get Magna Eclipsis to stop sudden elemental bursts and +1 amulet to get more DPS. To keep your block up you can use Rote Reinforcement cluster jewel and Testudo anoint, optionally Rumi’s if you absolutely have to. You also wanna use Energized Armour jewel as with this setup it will give you about 5k extra armour. Maps (red t14+)
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Pretty much same as early red maps, but at this point lack of dps start to get more and more noticeable.
You should seek for upgrades in damage at this point. Nothing more to it. You can still do pretty much everything that is not build disabling, its just gonna be slow. Another thing to look at this point is Chaos resistance. Poison and extra damage as chaos in red maps…. Hit really hard. Look to get to 40-50% at least Farm exarch for orbs to get brittle gound if you didn’t have it already. You can do uber lab at this point no problem – do that to give your minions a bit of survivability and get bleed removal with bone armor. Monster healing (combined with low dps, especially on maven encounters or expedition) can become an issue. Moontouched Miscreation specter proven to be a VERY GOOD solution to this, as its frost bomb scales with AOE you take for relics and tags pretty much everything. However, to use it, you sacrifice power charge monkey so its up to you. Power charges are active all the time, while healing reduction is only good against monsters that heal. But from my perspective, healing mobs take longer time to kill. So it’s a decent tradeoff. At this point you should have 2x Demon Harpy and Moontouched Miscreation/Power charge monkey. And that would be it. Gonna add tweaks to the main PoB a bit later (when not lazy) For now – here is a raw PoB of my even character if anyone wanna take a look. https://pobb.in/OZlhbynCd70S |
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Main PoB adjusted to reflect more progression steps, less cluster jewels now needed, and early game should feel a lot tankier.
https://pobb.in/1fomnMb9tqvH Few things to point out Pob itself is designed around trade league. You are not expected to have every single item at any given stage of the build. You can do just fine with a starting gear in t16 maps. So don't stop progressing if you lack items that are listed as needed for t11, 14, 16 or above. Just keep in mind you eventually want to get there. Energised Armour
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 Literally 11k armor from 1 jewel at cost of about 7% dps. That is a bit crazy. The jewel itself costs like 2c at league start because no one wants it. Replica Dragonfang
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 Not gonna lie, Im a bit scared adding this one to PoB. It might just get nuked by GGG. Still, gotta pay some respect for the 80% damage boost Asenath's Gentle Touch
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 Asenath provides this build witha MASSIVE clear speed boost and QoL during maps. But it is very important to understand that it comes at a cost of unable to curse. Resulting around 20% damage loss compared to single target oriented golves. It doesn't matter too much at later stages of the game when your damage is high, but it can screw you over if you managed to grab this gloves early. That being said - you should absolutely grab this gloves early if you can. You just gonna have to have another pair of gloves for when you go for bosses. Idealy Vixens. And in case Vixens cost a lot - I added Budget Vixens gloves into the items. Again - events (such as upcoming Shifting stones) - is a good way to try out new builds before league satrt. You can also always swap to any other witch build if yo udidn't like this one. Discord is open for questions and tips if you have them. Looking forward for GGG to destroy my PoB with patch notes. Last edited by Fire_Archer on Nov 16, 2023, 5:50:05 AM
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" Good build 2 leagues in a row for me. I easily reach level 100 and 2000 rating in tota with it, push delve and simulacrums also. Farm a lot of divines and league items. I'm still lazy to do all achieves this league because tota don't stack with mapping and I was focused on league mechanic (need some tatoo and omens for my character on standard). I will do some achievements to the end of the league. For tota I use 2 life flasks. More invest to minion and character life and es. damage enough for killing bosses and every warrior if needed. " Hope they doun't. ) Last edited by Murmuüre on Nov 25, 2023, 3:22:32 PM
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Okay fellas lets count our loses and get high on copium.
 There are fair bit of nerfs and most of them are related to quality of life (making then much much worse) than to stats. And while its still might be mitigatable (inhales copium) with possible new alternative gems, the mid-to-high budget versions are gonna take a hit. But I’ll start with a bit of a positive note here by saying – At least we are not RF, ah? AH? And a bit more positivity – the early progression remains RELATIVELY same and should still be a smooth league start and 2 watchstones at least. Now… lets list all the BAD things that happened
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1) Alternative quality gems removed from the game. This results in a sweeping power loss across every stage of the build – from early game to end game setup. This is a big matter so it needs to be broken down:
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- By far the worst part of this is Desecrate. Not having Divergent Desecrate means you CAN NOT ACTIVATE 2 OFFERINGS ON BOSSES. This results in potential 30% dps loss on a single target.
- Divergent Holy Relic removal comes second. Not only it’s a 10% dps loss from get go, it’s a massive nerf to quality of life when fighting Temporal bubble monsters. Those lil’ shits put regular relic on such a long cooldown that it makes me wanna kill my relics in game, to resummons them, instead of waiting for their cooldown to recharge. - Punishment curse lost ~5% dps from quality change - Anomalous Meat shield lost ~4% dps - Chaos golem lost 2% phys reduction - Bone offering lost 1% of each block 2) Enchants removed from the game. All of them. Gloves, Boots, Head. This – again – results in QoL loss more than anything
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- 2% life regen loss on Animate Guardian from boot enchant. Self explanatory – less regen – less tanky AG
- 40% inc damage of holy relic enchant loss – that is another 5% single target DPS gone. - Useful gloves enchants like the one that creates reflection of you or chills enemies are gone 3) Ashes of the Start and Replica Dragonfang’s both nerfed for mana reservation. Also both of them will be MORE desired by any other build, so not only they are worse but will be more expensive. This is mostly end game setup nerf and I can’t really say how quality change will affect the build with Ashes before PoB updates. So gotta wait on that one. Mana reserve is a drastic nerf though, and while with Dragonfang’s its manageable, Ashes gear set WILL require changes. You gonna have to use very specific Megalomaniac with mana reserve or mana cluster (and miss out on valuable notable - ~6% dps loss) TL;DR – thousand of little cuts across all the progression. End game setup should lose grand total of 25% dps, a tiny bit of tankiness, fighting temporal bubble will feel VERY BAD. What can we do about it? - not much.
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1) Losing AG enchant hurts. But you can simply mitigate it by corrupting bunch of Leer Casts to hit 2% life regen on the head gear.
2) Mana reserve loss from amulets nerfs can be mitigate with mana cluster jewels And that’s it. There is nothing more we can do for now. Everything else would require some changes either in gem setups or items. But hey, its time for copium! Surely they will add alternative version of Desecrate and Holy relic, surely. And its not gonna be something useless like adding elemental damage to relics like they did last time! Surely they understand that everyone who played relics as main skill were using pure phys relics and stacking quality to raise the trigger rate. Right guys? Guys?... Surely they understand HOW IMPORTANT is extra corpse from desecrate is. What can we potentially get with the league and how do I feel about league content Right… so… Ultimatum
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Hard to say before we see new Ultimatum modifiers. But from the Ultimatum league itself it was super free for this build. Pretty much everything that can be thrown at you this max block build can mitigate, block or be immune to.
Big circle, many monsters, relics can AOE everything down with ease. Temporal bubble remains concerning. Also get your Chaos resist up for toxic cloud! Affliction AOE enemies in darkness down, get a nice boost to map IIR/IIQ. Should be easy. Ascendancies… well I don’t find them too interesting because it all comes down to extra buttons. But lets quickly go through them
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Warden (Good):
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Enemy radar – nice QoL
Tinctures – culling strike at cost of the flask slot? Could be very much worth it. Other options are interesting too. On hit flask charges and flask effect? Yes please. Very good stats. Barkskin – prolly not that useful to us, but gotta see. Warlock (Mediocre):
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Ravenous – damage reduction tied to tedium of dropping corpse and pressing button on it. Not that great.
Blood magic – no Dark effigy – we don’t know 3 curses. Kinda bad. Because it eats the curse slot. The only interesting one is Pacify that give 20% more damage and full damage immunity. At cost of extra button press. Not bad. Primalist (under the question)
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Howl of the Horker barb – doesn’t work. We consume all corpses
Extra inventory slots – okay I guess?.... 3 weaker ascendancy points. This is interesting. Depending whatis in the pool we can absolutely tap into some juicy passives of other classes. Guardian regen, Hierophant mana reserve, Inquiz conq ground, Occultist explosions, Elemntalist shock,ignite, area of effect, Necro minion damage on top of our own. Just gotta see what gibs. And a quick summary/tl:dr of the whole thing Build will be the same(good) at league start, nerfed (but not too much) on later stages. High chance of being un-nerfed if GGG introduces alt-qual gems back. Ultimatum and Affliction should be ez content for the build. I’ll be making another post (and updating the main picture) closer to the league start – with my plans for the league, updates to PoB (hopefully) and some words to people who are interested to try this build out For now – have this insight on patch notes. I think its fairly safe to league start with this even despite all the nerfs. Optimizations done last league to early game should carry a long way |
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Have to post to thank for this build. I'm new player, but have had fun learning game with this build. I think guide is well enough written that even beginner like me could use this build. Except didn't even look into Animate Guardian, just used Shield Charge for movement in place. When got some key items build felt so good for mapping.
Playing on HC, got mid yellow maps until Izaro slammed me to standard :D Gonna just double down next league. I like that you do these update post here in forums, I have enough discord servers as it is :) Btw, have you tried Quick Recovery node instead Arcane Will? Went for that, as in HC hp is nice. Or is build later stages so mana hungry that you need Arcane Will? Anyhow, loving the build so far, looking forward how it shapes up in upcoming league. | |
" Quick Recovery gives 3 mana regen, Arcane Will gives 15. For when you are leveling with SRS its pretty much mandatory. Once you switch to relics - not so much. Glanced over your build real quick. 57% block is what got you. I assume you are SSF? Well, I'd say sit in low level heist and farm for uniques. Anvil, AG gear, Daresso, all make life a lot easier. But if you wanna just try with just a tree - Agressive Bastion + Inexorable passive rings instead of Quick recover and Combat Stamina. That will give you massive block boost and phys reduction. Roll Kirac for Unique maps and hope to hit double The Twilight Temple and get yourself Magna Eclipsis. With that you should be set for life. And if you somehow manage to corrupt into Energised Armour - that's like a HC wet dream come true. Check out early stages in updated PoB Last edited by Fire_Archer on Dec 1, 2023, 7:25:11 AM
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" Man, thanks for the tip. Have to see, if mana is good enough without some mana regen node, but gona try your suggestion. Did leveling with Absolution. Also gona look more into heisting next league. Im not playin SSF per say, but just casually soloing, Im in trade to have that option, but rather try farming stuff myself first. Last edited by Ezk1 on Dec 1, 2023, 4:23:35 PM
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" You can try using Corpsewalker and Brittle ground boots on the AG. Not the best solution, but it at least ensures both offerings for bosses. Besides that, try not to overdose on copium and pray for transfigured gems to fix it. | |
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League starts just in a few days, so I might just post my league plans.
Also enjoy new league cover picture. I know there is at least one person who comes here for just the picture.  So… Plans for affliction As usual Im gonna try to start on launch and not fall asleep mid acts. God I hate leveling. Speaking of leveling – SRS been massively nerfed if using Infernal Legion+ Minion instability. So plan#1 – Level with Absolution. This is going to be pain to me, because I’m gonna go in blind, using just Vennto’s leveling guide and having no practice. And hopefully integrate it into main PoB guide. You should prolly start with Absolution too. Plan#2 is to rush maps and do 2-3 watchstones. I’m not a very speedy person so that might take a while. Luckily build was unchanged up to that point with all the crazy stuff they added. Once there – you regular expedition currency farm. Plan#3 is to unlock all the atlas. I originally planned to spek into Abys in a special way. And hopefully farm some Omnomnom jewels. With Ultimatum at hand though… I’m not sure now. I guess by that time people will figure out if Ultimatum is good or bad. Plan#4 get to the build end game setup to comfortably blast maps and harder content. From there… I kinda want to experiment a bit with magic find again. Unlucky for me that the league itself AND meta archetypes are all about MF too, so finding proper magic find gear that I could force into the build without too much loses would be REALLY HARD. Still. Its something I wanted to experiment with for a while, so plan is to do that. Plan#5 is to experiment with Animate Guardian items. I already have several ideas what could be done differently for different purposes. For example Ylfeban's Trickery to completely remove curse limit from the build. Thunderfist+Shock Conflux on a helm for 30% shocks coming from AG. Plan#6 – experiment with Beacon of Madness. Interesting boot and we mitigate a lot of its downsides already. With some min maxing extra explosions could be a part of the mapping build. Or I can go with elemental conflux. Kinda looking forward to play with those boots. Bonus plan – Milestones. What is Milestones? Well it’s a step by step notes on when and why you should upgrade items, switch to different skill set, upgrade your AG or look for certain trades/crafts. Build over the course of the progression changes a fair bit, and there is no instruction when and why you should change this or that. I’m not sure if I want to make them BEFORE league launch or after. Most likely after because there is a lot of changes. Also maintaining those with league changes gonna be… hard. So there is that. My plans for the league. I also gonna make yet another post right before we start (and hopefully get alt-qual gems back :copium:). Post gonna be for all the (unfortunate) people who decide to start this build with me. Some tips and advices for the upcoming league, nothing too important. Last edited by Fire_Archer on Dec 4, 2023, 12:45:12 AM
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