[3.16] Ashriel's Flaskoholic Poison Bladevortex Pathfinder

With 3.15 huge buffs to Pathfinder, in form of beeing able to FINALLY trigger Flasks, I present to you the golden middle between sleeping away as a Necromancer and actually playing the game:
Blade Vortex Pathfinder without Flask Piano!!!

Build Idea

It is actually a really simple concept:
-Activate Blade Vortex
-Run with 150km/h through enemys
-See them dying to crippling poison while running in slowmotion and infecting their allys when they die
-Notice your left hand slowly recovering from clicking overload
-Profit
Actual mechanics (for these who want a short overview)

-Your Blade Vortex has a Duration of almost 10 Seconds in maps, allowing a rather chilled Playestyle
-Usage of Temporal Chains Aura + Aspect of the Spider to slow down enemys resulting in a huge defensive advantage (eventhough this build isnt squishy either)
-Still running very fast relative to your oponents through Flask scaling + Quicksilver Flask and Withering Step
-Various defensive mechanisms, such as proper evasion + Wind Dancer with Elusve and WITHOUT vaal grace, 100% spell supression with 55% damage reduction, Petrified Blood, Endurance Charges, high level IC, overcapped resistances EVEN CHAOS, easily 5,5k HP+ and auto activated Forbidden Taste to prevent oneshots
-Your Flasks never run out. Massive increased Duration, 100% increased Charges gained which results in gaining 6 Charges each 3 Seconds alone through Natures Boon (For Health Flasks it gets up to a whooping 14 Charges each 3 Seconds!), 2 Charges on Crit every 100ms, and of course doubled normal Flask Charges gained. They nerfed Flask Charges gained? Can't see that.
-Poison Prolifration through Master Toxicist resulting in smooth mapping.
-Still solid bossing, escpecially bursting with 2 Vaal Blade Vortex Charges + Plague Bearer
-Aliment Immunity later on if done right, Stun immunity with boot enchants and Bleed(Also Corrupting) + Poison removal on Healthpot usage
-Perma Phasing, what can stop you now?

Pros and Cons

Pros:
-low budget entirely possible with enough option to evolve into budget and very smooth progression while at it
-Very good mapping and clearspeed
-no glasscannon
-Very op Health Flask
-No cheese mechanic to trick you into playing this, it actually works :D
-Moving while attacking
-You don't run out of Flask Charges while bossing if done right
-Spreading Poison is simply satisfying
-you can keep Flasks checked in Pob ;)
-no expensive core unique

Cons:
-Meele
-Many might have played Poison BV before
-Bossing is more than possible, but there are better options ((only) 1,5 Mil non burst dps)
-Main sustain comes from Healthpots, if you dont like using these, this build isn't for you :)
-Attributes need to be compensated through gear

Many would ask at this point: Why no Assassin?
There are so many advantages but the basic answer is simple: With Pathfinder we are far more reliable in dps uptime and survivability. I'd trade these for a little more burst dps anytime.

Now for the actual Guide:
Bandits

kill em all!

Pantheons (Important!)

Major: Soul of Solaris
Reduced Damage taken, only get critted every 4 seconds, its literally broken

Minor: Soul of Ryslath
Since this build is all about Flasks this is a nobrainer

Many tend to ignore Pantheons, but they are mandatory defensives for this build so make sure you upgrade your Pantheon

Ascendency

1. Natures Boon
Flask Charges are your lifeline and the reduced Elemental taken is a sweet bonus

2. Master Toxicist
Poison Prilferation is so so good

3. Nature's Adrenaline
This is just a step inbetween, MS is a sweet Candy and attackspeed helps with Fortify generation

4. Master Surgeon
This is a really sweet one. Basicly blood and corrupted blood immunity and you regenerate 6% life whenevery you gain charges. During mapping this happens so often it would be a waste to not take.

The: 'But aren't the other Ascendencys better' section

Veteran Bowyer: we aren't elemental, so no
Master Alchemist: Huge nerf, no Aliment Immunity anymore and since we can get it elsewhere it's a pure waste
Nature's Reprisal: A little Chaos conversion, cute. Thanks but i wont miss the 2k dps increase.

Gemlinks

Body armour:
Vaal Blade Vortex - Unleash Support - Efficacy Support - Unbound Aliments Support - Void Manipulation Support - Deadly Aliments Support
Explanation
You can pick up Vaal Blade Vortex for literally nothing from other players. This is the core gem for our build. Unleash is the core support gem since it allows you to cast multiple Bladevortex instances in one go without losing up on damage.
Efficacy Is a very solid support since it gives us additional duration on both our Vaal and normal skill on top of a good damage boost.
The other 3 are just the best damage options you have and should be switched out for their awakaned counterparts later on.
Chance to Poison Is another solid option, if you haven't got your chance to poison to 100% yet which is mandatory for us and shouldn't be neglected over raw dps.

Gloves:
Divergent Plague Bearer - Anomalous Withering Step - Increased Area of Effect Support - Enhance Support

Of course you can drop the alternate Quality and Enhance Support till you got the money.
Explanation

Plague Bearer gives us a nice burst window. Use it on tanky packs and Bosses. The Divergent version gives us even more damage and is totally crazy combined with Enhance Support.
Withering Step is our main Movement skill and boosts our damage aswell by debuffing our enemy.Here aswell even stronger in Anomalous Quality combined with Enhance Support.
Try to get Enhance level 4 later on for even more damage.


Boots:
Immortal Call Level 15 - Cast when Damage Taken Support Level 13 - Increased Duration Support - Lifetap
Explanation

This is our "Oh shit" setup. Huge damage mitigation and even crazier combined with endurance Charges. Not usable manually. Keep the maximum Gem level as it is, otherwise it might not work.
color="#ff0000"]Lifetap[/span] is for saving our mana and making sure it always activates.
Just make sure it is triggered last so Immortal Call always comes through


Weapon 1/2:
Temporal Chains - Blasphemy - Increased Area of Effect Support
Explanation

This is our Temporal Chains aura, works really well together with our Blade Vortex range wise and keeps the dots on enemys running for longer in addition of letting them run and act much slower in return ;)


Helmet:
Anomalous Petrified Blood - Divergent Herald of Agony - Enlighten Support - Malevolence

Of course Enlighten Support is not needed, just Quality of life and can be dropped first. dont use Malevolence without enlighten 4 and Charisma on tree later tho.
Explanation

Petrified Blood is one of our main Damage mitigations, multiplying our HP times 1,2 or 1,225 for Anomalous version. It effectivly puts a Dot on us instead of a part of the damage taken below 50%, what we can more than easily outheal with our Health Flask.
Herald of Agony gives us more damage, Chaos Restiance in combination with our Gear and 20% Chance to Poison, upgraded to a whooping 40% if taken the Divergent Quality, which should be taken asap.


Weapon 1/2:
Portal - Flame Dash - +1
Yeah just take here what you want :) possible even linking sth and taking a mana potion, dunno yet gotta test it out!

Gear

This build has 4 Core uniques, none above an exalt and you only need 10c weapons to start, mostly not even these.

First of the Uniques:
Weapons:

Ignore the Corrupted mods for starters and they are really cheap even at league start and a nobrainer for this build.

Necklace:

This item provides us with a huge duration increase buff while mapping aswell as a free temporal chains aura.
You don't need to have these stats, i just started to minmax a little recently.
Also a huge buff if you get your hands on a headhunter. 20% more headhunter buff duration is HUGE.
(Old Annoint tho)

Gloves:

Aspect of the Spider works really well together with Temporal Chains and is therefor a good addition to this build.

Unique Ring:

For this ring look for these stats, since it will give you most of your chaos res and a good damage boost. However as with the necklace, dont try to get exactly these stats and the implicits, since i minmaxed a little.

Now for the rares:
For boots/belt/second ring and body armour there is a general rule of thumb:
Get hp on it and use it to cap resistance. To cap chaos resistance you will need to have 1 halfway good chaos res mod on one of the rares.
Once you got there you are good to go.

However there are some things you can play around with:

Getting Despair as Suffix on a Ring will free up a valiable flask slot.
I also like to cap my Attributes with a craft.


A standart choice to cap resistances. However a Leatherbelt will do the trick for starters.


This is a standart boot choice. Look for movement speed and a free suffix for this to get aliment Immunity or at least closer to it for now.
I won't got for Tailwind boots for this build since you got enough movementspeed already and it decreases your Flask and Bladevortex Duration.

This ones are good starter boots i highly recommend to get the additional Curse from start.

For helmet, im going to update some good mods, just make sure you take a dex helmet :)


Another crazy good item, i crafted it myself this League. Both mods "+1 Curse" and "Endurance Charges when hit" can also be achieved elsewhere however I choose to but these here.

Again, dont replicate these Items, look for what you want, get life and resistance on them and the rest is optional.

look below for my gear progression guide for more detailed information.

Enchants/Annoints


Eternal Labyrinth Enchants to go:
Helmet:
"Withering Step inflicts 3 additional Withered Debuffs"
I know Bladevortex is the main skill, still withering is far too powerful to overlook

or

"Plague Bearer Buff grants +20% to Poison Damage over Time Multiplier while Infecting"
20% Multi is op

Gloves:
Dont enchant, either corrupt them or leave them.

Boots:
"80% chance to Avoid being Stunned if you've Killed Recently"
makes you 100% stun immune during mapping combined with skilltree

Belt
"Enemies Withered by you have -6% to all Resistances"
Skip the Resistance Catalyst. This is a huge dps boost

Annoints:
Necklace:
"Serpentine Spellslinger"
Relativly heap and huge Damage boost.
If you go for Withered 15 Stacks or so (Enhance level 4, Helmet Enchant and +1 glove corrupt), instead go for "Corruption"

or

"Whispers of Doom"
If you cant get the additional Curse elswhere

Gear & Flask Progression

Now we talk about the important stuff, when to equip what.

Map start
Once you finished the story and want to start mapping, your first priority will be getting elemental resistance cap and as much hp and chaos resistance as you can.
You can also start buying

uncorrupted for cheap. 5 link Chest is more than enough at this point aswell.
Also drop Temporal Chains for now, since you cant equip it yet manawise.

Your Flask setup should look something like this:



And! Witchfire Brew(Sadly no link available for me)

try to get Freeze immunity on life flask, Atziri's Promise is only here for more Chaos res.

Unique Ring and Amulet

As this Chapter says, the next step is equipping and buying

The stats itself aren't that relevant, just try to get the Chaos res on the ring and you are fine.
Now you can start equipping

since your Chaos res can handle it by now (should be above 50% with flasks)
And Temporal Chains aswell, since it doesnt cost anything now.
For that to be effective, you need to be able to use 2 Curses. For that I highly recommend using

or Windscream, as they do the same.

Gloves and Chaos res

The next goal ist to get

And getting some sort of Chaos res on your gear and im talking about 70%++, so that you can drop Atzriri's Promise for

Trust me this flask does so well in this build, a huge lifesaver and can be critical in some situations. You really only have to fight against dots by now and your Flasks can handle these more than good.

Remember there are some adjaciant Nodes on the Skilltree which grant +12% Chaos res each if needed.

Cluster Jewels and normal Jewels

Now you can start worrying about Jewels juicing up your game.
Please look them up in my PoB, that will be pretty selfexplaining.
Large Cluster are usually about 1 EX, Medium at 30 C and small ones are really cheap.

Freeze/Chill Immunity

You need 2 of these things: Get this craft
on either your boots and/or helmet and/or equip the small cluster jewel with "Elegant Form".
You miss a total of 30% and 2 of either do the trick.
This can be upgrade through jewel enchants (ignite/shock avoidance) to ful aliment immunity!
Now you can switch your health Flask enchant from Freeze Immunity to:

Despair on Hit

Now we worry about getting some sort of Despair on hit, either through a Ring Suffix such as

Or corrupted gloves. Both will be very expensive, but we will be able to drop Witchfire Brew for a Jadeflask:

which is much more useful.


Endgame Flask Setup:


Other Upgrades

The first one is simple: Get a 6 link armour

Then try to get rid of the boots, they suck statwise. Either switch to the amulet annoint mentioned above or buy/craft a chestpiece with the additional curse mod.

Try to get any source of "endurance charges when hit" on your gear.
The 2 simplest methods are: Getting the chest affix or getting a small cluster jewel with "enduring composure" which does the same trick. You lose a valuable jewel slot and 2 Passive points though.

Level 21 Vaal Blade Vortex

Headhunter



Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpr_EMQsNNs

This is a random Hydra run. It isn't scripted in any way, i just Alched the map and ran it. By accident there were damage reduction Rituals on it.
Please notice, that due to the nature of poison, we start stacking from new each time Hydra spawns again. If she wouldnt disappear at start the fight would last about 10 seconds at absoulte maximum :)

Sadly my PC is lagging due to recording aswell, so sorry for that and the poor quality :D

Shaper Beam outheal footage
https://youtu.be/cFeS2AH9Jo8
(Yes these pots are really op)


Leveling

Firstly, take a bow any arrow you like and shoot em all up.
Just test around with bow gems, take what you find most fun for you so it doesnt get boring.
Take chance to poison support for leveling tho, as you need it later.

Level 12: Now you have 3 ways to actually level. First of all you can go for the kinda lackluster bv leveling till 38.
the other 2 are: Poisonous concoution or Toxic rain, both with chance to poison and lesser mult. projectiles.

Level 38: Buy unleash support from other player, your game begins now. stack chance to poison and damage over time as much as you can.

Yes thats all for leveling guide, maybe in the future i will post some good leveling uniques.


Cold Iron Point substitude

Since Cold Iron Point is kinda expensive this league i give you a guide for making a small substitude you can make yourself till you get there.

-First do this vendor recipe for +1 phys spell gems:
-Normal Rune Dagger/Sceptre/Staff/Wand
-2 or more quality Skill gems with a combined total of 40% quality & the
Physical tag

The craft Damage over time or Chaos Damage from crafting bench.
finished


Path of Building: https://pastebin.com/K9jxQrC9
this can have alot more damage, i went for the QoL version here

For new League Mechanic, i will post some good and bad mods for us ranking them once i actually get a chance to see them for myself

For questions contact me on Discord: Ashriel#2448

Latest updates:
-Lewveling Tree yet updated again 23.10.21
-Leveling Guide updated for level 12-38 24.10.21
-Cold Iron Point substitude 24.10.21
Last edited by Ashrielll on Oct 24, 2021, 4:39:43 AM
Last bumped on Jan 21, 2022, 7:03:50 AM
Very solid build. I've had the chance to try it out as a starter and really like it! And it was very easy to scale from start to red maps. Very good build.
Thanks for the feedback! glad you like it :)
Hi,

I made this build but somehow have 0 damage atm.

https://www.pathofexile.com/account/view-profile/Oupsimdead/characters/WeLateAgain

Might be due to gem levels? Maybe i'm doing something wrong !

Enjoying the playstyle though !

Thanks.

Best regards,

Joyride
Greetings, thanks for playing this build first of all!

The main problem i see is, your chance to poison should be really low with that setup, probably 50-60% if i have to guess, and you lack half your damage with that.

simple solutions to that is, to get the "Toxic strike" cluster next to "Wind Dancer" or in that poison node in top right the 15%.
the simplest solution though is to get the alternate herald gem and chance to poison on jewels in the long run. if i remember correctly that alternate gem is rather cheap.

Hope i could help and thanks for the feedback!

Edit: Ah yeah forgot, that you can check your chance to poison when you chose your bladevortex at character. everything below 100% is worth increasing and above 100% is total waste.
That low poison chance could lead to running through packs without poisoning anyone, that can be rather frustrating i can see :D
Last edited by Ashrielll on Aug 18, 2021, 1:02:53 PM
Hey ! this seems interesting ! what have you achieved with the build% sirus? how are logbooks? cheers
Hey! First of all im kikda average when it comes to playing this game and i got this build to level 96 without much caring. I die rarely and my highest level until now was 92/93ish.

The achievments I have made this league were:
-My first sirus A8 ever, deathless.
-All shaper and elder guardians + their maven invitations. All without much problem.
-solo simulacrum clear, deathless (also first one i ever did)
-all logbook bosses down on like 83+
More to come, including shaper/elder etc

Logbooks are really chilled, i try to not overdo the damage mods on monsters and skip chaos resist.

Hope i could help^^
Gonna give it a try.

Thanks for the guide.
www.deviantart.com/van1sh3d
I don't have much currency but i want to give this a try !

But it doesn't look crazy expensive to get started so i might play it sooner rather than later !

cheers
Last edited by DrillahKillah on Aug 22, 2021, 6:10:41 AM
happy to hear that!
Drop a feedback if you have questions or something :D

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