Lv96 Poutsos' Flicker Nuke - Outdated

Hi Poutsos.

I studied a new tree close, and for me, Shadow's stating area is pretty dead. Witch's starting area - a straight path of fat ES nodes - is obviously musthave for any CI build, and Shadow's general physical damage nodes look pale for melee. A shame, really.
For unknown reason, GGG also decided, that STR area should have more crit clusters, than INT area.....

All that doesnt hurt build very much, but feels pretty lame.

Django - Hey man. The Rampage tree with with S&D was intented for people with not as good gear. So i was assuming no auxium or a good amulet. S&D gives yous blind on rampage, so with eye of chayula it would be a good source of survivability, even with low evasion. You have pretty decent gear though. If you have a really good amulet, feel free to respec to the standard version of the tree.


MK3 - Long time no see man. Well i beleive the shadow starting area is pretty decent. It is definetely better than The Witch for leveling, cause he has some HP around combined with damage, and has zero wasted points, like the one with 40% mana regen. Now for endgame i do not know if the witch would be better. I think if had a witch instead for level 96, i'd try influnce instead of shadows Physical Damage points, which is a quetion of 20% stronger auras vs 57% physical. The shadow would definetely have higher DPS, while the witch would have a bit higher ES.

Heya Poutsos,

Thanks for the answer. Leaves me with two more questions atm..

1) How do you make up for the lost dex nodes? If I respec I lose about 76 dex, i can't unequip my onyx ammy atm or I'll have 4 dex short (need 146 for double strike/flicker/bloodrage). If I respec I cant imagine what trouble im in.

2) Why enhance on whirling blades, and not faster attack?

Thanks!

first of all- loving this build !
secondly, im joining to the questions above with a couple of my own:

1. I didn't see mana leech on your gear nor on your tree, add to that the fact that u dont have a sustainable power charge source(to get mana leech from auxium)- how do u keep up with your mana pool for spamming attacks?

2. Does 'Melee Damage on Full Life' utilizes the fact that you're a CI and thus you're always on full life (1/1) ? or do u use it because due to life leech + your damage bursts you're virtually always on full life (full es) ?

cheers!

Ok guys, i am glad you are enjoying the build. Keep in mind that i do not play PoE anymore, so i might not be updated on what works best currently so do not follow blindly what i am writting on the forum. I will answer the quetions so, and that's how i did it and worked for me for months.

1) About dexterity, i get a 30 dex passive and have some dexterity on one of my rings. Other than that, if you indeed go for unwavering stance(standard tree), then the blind that shadows and dust provide is useless since you won't be able to evade anymore. So it might be a better option to use maligaro's instead, and they provide some dexterity also which will come on handy.

2) Enhance was to augment my life leech from blood rage, and as a bonus, it did give some attack speed to whrling blades as well. However to really worth it you have to hace inner force as well, and by 1.2 i dumped inner force, so enhance is not that important anymore. Go on and use faster attacks on whirling blades.

3) CI counts as always being on full life, so you always get the effect of that gem :D

4) About mana leech. For starters i always carried at least one doedre's elixir on me to get charges when i really needed them instantly. Apart from that, my backup attack was either lightning strike or a second flicker strike, and i was using power charge on crit on them combined with increased critical strikes. So these attacks always had 95% crit chance, and ohitting with them was pretty much a guaranteed power charge, if not on the first hit, definetely on the second one. Especially when i used a second flicker i was just spamming abit the charge generator and then switched to another. The transition was pretty smooth, you didnt even realise it. Having said that, since my damage was so high, alot of times, especially on easier maps, i was just replacing increased critical damage on my main flicker with power charge on crit. It did not mnake all that much difference since the damage was already too high. However, sacrifising a gem on lower levels will make you lose considerable damage, and i do not recommeded, that;s why on my lower level skill trees i always take mind drinker that gives a costant 2% mana leech.

Hope this helps.

whoa what you quit? :[

Hey man, build looks really solid and a lot of fun. I've got a life based shadow that I've been experimenting with different skill sets (was originally dual strike but decided to try a shield). Gave molten strike a go but really, REALLY like flicker. It is a bit difficult to run on life though, especially when you got no chaos resist lol.

So I have a lvl67 Scion that I haven't respecced after 1.2 patch yet, that I was thinking of adapting to your skill tree, as I'm too poor to drop 60+ regrets on my Shadow!

Here's the tree I was thinking of using (for my current lvl)


And here's what it will look like at ~80


I have some mediocre ES gear on a CI witch that I'll move over for testing purposes, until I get some better gear.

Any major flaws/holes you can see with those trees, or more efficient routes etc?

I've already concluded that in the meanwhile poutsos, but thank you so much for confirming and still putting an effort in this thread. I'll leave you to it then, enjoy a life outside POE ;-)

I did respecc now, lost about 2-3k dps, but I have a feeling the respecc works better for flicker. I have less physical damage, but alot more critchance. Since the min-dmg of the dagger is so low, It's like I actually deal more dps with the extra 10% crit.

I also replaced abit of gear, now time to get some maligaro's then!

Currently equipped gear


I bought this shitty neck for now for a chaos. It's really awkward but there's not a single 40%+ multiplier neck on poe xyz on rampage. So I bought a ilvl80 jade neck and I'm crafting it myself now. Hope I get lucky!

riseonix - Yeah man, i actually quit around early June, logging on propably once every 2 weeks. Then when 1.2 came out i played abit for a few days to test the chages, and then requited. I think i will get back for act 4 though :). And i will definetely rework the tree on the next skill rebalance.

Yllib - Thanks man. In the past, we had worked some life builds with some people, with bringer of rain(legacy), and blooddance boots to offset the degen of bloodrage. It worked really well, but it will always be inferior to a well built CI version. Other than that your trees are looking quite solid. It is not a big deal but if you go this way :


With the same points you get 6% more ES, abit more mana, and you have 3 great more ES passives to get in the future. But it is not a big deal. Other than that you definetely wanna grab Mind Drinker(2% mana leech) if you do not have some mana leech on your gear, or auxium. Even with auxuim i recommend mind drinker for the lower levels. Also when you get a 6L with the right colours, if you do not have atziri's aquity, you will definetely need some reduced mana reservation passives. But with a 5L you will be good for the most part without them.


Django - Your gear is pretty decent, even the amulet. Apart from that, since you 've been playing rampage tell about how rampage actually feels. Because even without blind, if you get unholy might frequently, then it might worth it holding on to shadows and dust. I mean 30% MORE chaos damage is crazy.

Hi Poutsos,

Actually I've replaced them now with Maligaro's. I was nevery truly convinced on the rampage part. Sure the buff is nice when it happens, but it's so short.. You need to kill 30 monsters to get the first buff, then another 35 or so for the next. So it's a 3-4 sec buff every 10nish seconds. Thats a 30% dps increase, 4 out of 10 seconds. At max. The problem is that you're not always killing monsters when the buff is active. Sometimes you're walking towards a new pack, or you just finished killing a big pack and u are finishing some leftovers.

With the equip of maligaro's I gained 500 white dps, 2% of that was critical hit chance. I'm at 70% critchance now and it's just.. more pleasant to be honest. I was in doubt with the blind, it does remove a big bunch of damage and I think it's the best use those gloves have. The damage bonus, not so much.

I hope someone can prove me otherwise, I'm not that much of a theorycrafter. It's just my own findings while travelling the path to 90.

Cheers