[1.3] [Pony's] Cheap CI FlickerStrike Shadow - Physical to Lightning!

Hm.. is 2.9k ES enough?
were u able to take a few shots before leeching back all the ES?

So I rarely watch builds on the forums, but since I am making a similar build (more tanky version) I thought I'd look and see what others have done. Now I have a question, in your passive-tree you have projectile nodes in the beginning, mistake or something behind it?

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Cruward wrote:

So I rarely watch builds on the forums, but since I am making a similar build (more tanky version) I thought I'd look and see what others have done. Now I have a question, in your passive-tree you have projectile nodes in the beginning, mistake or something behind it?

guess its a mistake? since below it is one hand damage.

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ep0nymous wrote:

Since Crit is so OP it's essential to run as close to 95% as possible. The benefits of status ailment (freeze, shock and poison etc) are HUGE. This coupled with the massive raw damage increase means it's optimal in terms of DPS to get my x% crit dagger to run close to 95% in full flight. I have added and removed crit chance passives as required when I change my dagger and am currently 94.5% chance to crit with the current passive tree I linked. Also, please note I have updated the passive tree to include the APS and phys nodes you mentioned. My current tree includes them. Previously I had used the Int nodes to get away from the shadow start point as quickly as possible in order to pickup Crit asap. Now I have respec'd 'Haste' etc as you pointed out.

Crit is OP indeed, but:
1. Without good accuracy, your REAL crit chance (i.e. chance to score a critical hit to an enemy) will be far from 95%. For example, if your hit chance is 80%, and your crit chance is 95%, then your REAL chance to score a critical hit will be just 60.8%. I dont think you will be satisfied with it.
2. If you're eager to pick as many crit nodes as you can, why dont get Unwavering Stance and go further, to Deadly Precition and Disemboweling clusters? Those together add 260% increased critical strike chance, for 14 points invested. It is 18.57% per node, more than "common" critical strike chance node. And you also get some extra damage and AS there.

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ep0nymous wrote:

Current shield is based primarily around Spell Damage (CrownOfEyes turns shields into Inc Damage)and Res not ES

This means my ES gains from off-hand aren't great so stacking off these with passives isn't optimal at this time. The ES passives I have taken are usually coupled with either EV or +Res% increases. With Flicker EV is actually REALLY helpful since you rarely ever get swung at more than once and if you can evade that 1st incoming attack you will almost certainly kill the mob before it attacks a 2nd time meaning a good chance to evade greatly reduces you ever taking any damage. Great for Mobs, not so good for map bosses...

CWDT+IC does the same job as evasion, but it's completely reliable and needs no investments at all (aside from one 4-L). So, why care about evasion, if you can stack ES instead?

If you want to utilize Crown of Eyes, you will probably want to make your build around it, and it will differ from a "normal" CI build. To fully utilize its power, you'll need Shavronne's Wrappings, and that means you will have much less ES from your chest. So, shield defences nodes will retain their power - despite you will use a weaker shield, you will use a weaker chest too. You can do math yourself, if you want.

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ep0nymous wrote:

Still considering this. Adding Crit and Phys damage to a necklace would be awesome but at the expense of 6 passives I'm not so sure. Unwavering also means you ALWAYS get hit. So Chayula is 'unwavering stance' without the 'cannot evade' curse. And the +all attributes and added rarity is nice to have. If I were to throw down 40ex on a good necklace I'd certainly do some good theory-crafting with unwavering but it would be stiff competition against 'chance to evade'.

I've got my amulet for just 3 exa (IDK how much it's worth now, though), it overwhelms Chayula is almost every aspect, and well-worth 6 points.

As for evasion:

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ep0nymous wrote:

I find CWDT IC doesn't proc enough to save my bacon all the time and without End-Charges it's never up long enough to ensure immortality. I could possibly generate more End-charges to overcome this. As for EV, as I have mentioned before I find it REALLY useful to negate that 1st swing. I encourage Sin Trek boots for mid-game builds which should give around 2400EV standing. Put a Inc EV % on one of the pots and this should boost over 3K which is the 'sweet-spot' before serious diminishing returns start to really kick in. I don't want to drone on about EV, it's not great, AR and ES are better to have if possible, EV is a nice-to-have, a free benefit of many of my ES passives.

Have you tried to put CWDT+IC+ID+EC into 4-L, all max quality? Also, dont use max-leveled CWDT. I use level 7 instead, to match EC breakpoint. It procs every time i need it, and usually doesnt proc off various small elemental damage. It depends on your ES pool and damage of enemies, though. I have 6k ES. With less ES pool, you will probably want to use CWDT of llower level.

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ep0nymous wrote:

Chance to hit a lvl84
mob is 81%. Chance to hit an actual mob I'm likely to encounter is pretty much a certainty. This build picks up so much Dex in traveling passives that I needn't ever actively go picking more up. I consider added accuracy a complete dump-stat when chance to hit is already pretty much maximum.

1. If you level exceeds 78, then your chance to hit is displayed against level 78 mob.
2. Hit chance is tricky thing. Some enemies have low evasion, and some - pretty high. Tough enemies (champions, bosses) usually have more evasion, that normal mobs. So, i dont think you can state for sure, that you need accuracy no longer.
3. Accuracy bonus from dexterity is very low, in fact. Max accuracy roll on item is 400, which is equal to 200 dexterity. So, two items with good accuracy roll can easily double your accuracy rating. And with 3 items, you can even triple it! Accuracy is also a much more significant than you think, as it's checked TWICE before your hit can be scored as critical.
4. I dont think your main goal is farming Docks or Lunaris. Every good build should be able to face high-level maps (75+), and to face those, you WILL need more accuracy for sure.

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ep0nymous wrote:

Outside of Mind-drinker I've only needed to pick up another 2% leech elsewhere (gear) to sustain flicker. At 4% leech of roughly 16k physical (per sec) I get plenty of mana back, the only issues are occasionally the rate of leech particularly on '50% reduced' maps. Usually this is overcome in a large extent by the blue pot which is used with all other pots every encounter. NB flicker cost is usually about 80Mana. With this I can run Purity and Hatred no issue.

Hold on there! No matter, how high your mana leech is, you cant leech more than 20% of your max mana per second. For me, even 2% from mind drinker is enough, for example. But if your Flicker Strike costs 80 mana, and you have 6 frenzy charges with 1.2 AS dagger, your AS will be at least 7 attacks per second, so your mana consumption will be around 187 mana per second, and you will need 900+ mana pool to sustain it. How can you get that amount without investments into mana? Unless you use those OP gloves from Atziri, you will have problems with mana.

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ep0nymous wrote:

Yeah I did, it's there in the 'Build Basics and Gems:' muck. NB I also normally run Purity as well.

I would prefer Discipline over Purity, because 300 ES pool is much harder to get than 27 allres. It reserves more mana, though, but since you need higher mana pool anyway, is doesnt matter much, unless in 50% regen maps. For those, you can either remove 1 aura, or revise whole build.

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MortalKombat3 wrote:

To stack shock on boss, you should deal a good amount of lightning damage with your attack. A mere 1-50 damage from ring wont do.

Shock is very much a nice-to-have and I can gaurantee that even a TINY amount of added ele damage will stack really well against bosses. To test this, try adding a tiny amount Fire damage to your flicker and watch how much burn you inflict. Simply because your APS is so high you'll apply short periods of status ailment sufficient to stack multiple times on bosses.

Thanks again for your thoughts. You obviously have plenty of experience with flicker, if you have some spare time add me to your /friends list and we can do some in-game build work.[/quote]
Ignite (caused by fire) is MUCH different from Shock and Chill/Freeze (caused by lightning and cold respectively). Ignite duration is fixed, no matter how high (or low) your fire damage is. Its damage will scale from fire damage dealt.
Not so for Shock/Chill/Freeze! Their effect is fixed, but instead, their DURATION is based upon (lightning/cold) damage dealt respectively to enemy's max HP pool. Every 1% of enemy's HP dealt as damage, will have base shock/chill duration for 0.276 seconds, and freeze - for 0.1 seconds. And if duration of ailment falls below 0.5 seconds, then enemy wont be affected by it at all! So,to inflict shock, you need to deal at least 2% of enemy's max life as lightning damage, after resists taken into account, and against bosses, it isnt an easy task as their HP pool and resists are huge. You can freeze them, however, as Hatred adds a BIG chunk of cold damage to your attacks. But without a good portion of lightning damage, you cant rely on shock.

If you want to make some further work on polishing build, just feel free to send me PMs on forum. I rarely come into game ATM.

P.S. I dont want to insult you, but your shield with 168 ES is utter crap, really. A bit of extra damage isnt worth such massive ES loss. For me, any shield with less than 300 ES isnt worth mentioning as endgame one for CI flicker.

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Cruward wrote:

So I rarely watch builds on the forums, but since I am making a similar build (more tanky version) I thought I'd look and see what others have done. Now I have a question, in your passive-tree you have projectile nodes in the beginning, mistake or something behind it?

Good spotting. Whoops, my bad.fixed.

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ep0nymous wrote:

You're def on the right track with your build and you'll get the final tweeks right in time, don't get too caught up with the DPS info as that can often lead you toward APS which is sometimes a mistake (long story).

I just wanted to touch on the Bino's Dagger thing. You are already going to be doing poison through 'Adder's touch' and since poison doesn't stack (like shock etc) you'll get no ADDED benefit from the daggers explicit mods. To this end it's really only good for it's great crit and good phys stats. If you are going to spend 20ex on a dagger you can certainly get better phys and similar crit on a good rolled Kris or Demon Dagger. I'd rethink this spend a little if I were you.

Working hard on the tweaks.
You are right, by few less Exalteds I got a new dagger.

It's only 1.20 AS, but it's ok.

With this dagger and 5 Power Charges, I reached 95% crit chance with Flicker. woot.
The other skills are like 70%+. The base is 61% I guess.

I took out Arm Wrestling and Crystal Skin, spec Ondar's Guile and crit multi nodes.
Damn!!! Ondar's Guile is amazing!
I'm running Hatred and Grace (can run only 2 auras). I get 50% Chance to Evade with Grace, 52% with Frenzies, and 95% cap for projectiles. I mean, I can stand in front of ranged mobs and dont get hit at all!
With this respec and new dagger, I fell like a new char lol.

Current tree:

im at level 60-ish now and feeling pretty squishy , esp with the abyssus on.
How much ES should i have before i switch to CI?

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Randomed wrote:

im at level 60-ish now and feeling pretty squishy , esp with the abyssus on.
How much ES should i have before i switch to CI?

2k should be enough for 55-60 level. Later, it should be increased to 3-4k, at least.

What do you do in maps (70+) when you flicker into a phys reflect pack?

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Fragthorn wrote:

What do you do in maps (70+) when you flicker into a phys reflect pack?

Me? I dont care, even if i flicker into reflect pack in reflect map, or in Vulnerability map...
I have high enough ES (compared to my peak damage) to survive.
But if you use Abyssus and have a small ES pool, you'll die, obviously.