[1.2.0] CI Iron MF Flicker [Cheap]
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UPDATE: Please refer to this witch guide instead.
IMPORTANT INFO Good news! As of 1.2.0, dagger passives have been drastically improved, with many of the nodes providing additional crit. However, ES is harder to get with the nerf to quality on armor. Nevertheless, this patch has been an overall buff to CI IR flicker (see build breakdown). In order to reach the full potential of this build, you have to play as a witch for 1.2.0. So grab viper strike and fire trap from hillock (as shadow) and roll a witch. As the old guide gives details on a shadow skill tree, use this full witch tree and the old guide on "When to get Keystones and why" to get an idea of how to build a witch. The overall progression remains the same. The main difference about playing as a witch is that you have to grab dex nodes early on and later do a tiny respec of 4-5 points to this final witch tree once you have enough dex. The flicker strike guides tend to recommend expensive or have not as efficient a leveling guide for reaching endgame gear, so I thought I'd share some of my experiences making a flicker strike character from scratch. Keep in mind that I am not a very experienced player (only really started playing when ambush was around), so my build might not be an optimal endgame setup. That said, advice about my current tree/gear is welcomed. 0. Credits: Poutsos' flicker guide The Poutsos' guide was what I used as a basis for planning out my tree. Also, it contains a lot of useful data, especially on what to seek in terms of gear. I recommend reading it first if you have not already. Flickfrap's low life flicker The basis of Flickfrap's tree (both low life and now CI) were helpful in planning out my own tree, with my tree looking almost exactly like it when I started.
Pre-1.2.0 guide
All underlined text are links. 1. Passive Tree and Bandit Choices: Recommended Tree at level 70. Picking up the 2 aura groups north and south of shadow's start is a must-have in order to run 2 auras. Having 2 auras is what makes the build playable.
When to get Keystones and why
Ghost Reaver (cheap anytime): You can get this almost anytime you want. (Can be gotten early as when you have 300 ES). Vaal Pact (after the 2 aura node groups and some crit and damage): Due to the fact that you don't take any life nodes, vaal pact becomes effective fairly early. However, it is a long journey to the south of the tree and so should only start going towards it at lv40+. Chaos Innoculation (2K ES without discipline, usually around lvl65): Chaos Innoculation has really useful ES nodes behind it so your survivability will only be higher when you transition to it. However, you must have enough ES first. Adders Touch (second to last priority): The damage is great, but the skill point commitment to reach it is too high when survivability passives are more important. Iron Reflexes (last priority, useful for reflect and late-game stuff): This is close to Vaal Pact and right next to a frenzy charge. It also has amazing synergy with grace (this aura usually replaces hatred as your 2nd aura in parties), granite flask of iron skin, and jade flask of reflexes. With flasks and grace, you can reach easily reach 40k armor, making physical damage (including from your own reflect) much easier to deal with.
Bandits
Normal: skill point -I picked the +8% to all resistances, but I now think it was a not the best choice as I had to spend 20 orb of regrets to get that extra skill point back. Cruel: physical damage or skill point -I recommend physical damage since it is stronger than most passive nodes you can reach. The extra skill point is mostly for when you have pretty good gear (>20ex). Merciless: frenzy charge My current tree (requires HUGE respec using over half of the 20 free respec points) 2. Leveling and what makes the build cheap yet effective: Searing Bond+Increased Burning Damage is a must-have.
Full detail on what to get to make the build cheap and effective
1. Searing Bond+Fire Trap+Increased Burning Damage
Why this 3-link setup is required
The shadow start area is weak for melee builds, especially when going for ES instead of life. As a result, melee shadow is simply not a cheap and effective cheap starter build by itself. The SB+Fire Trap+Burning damage combo does not require any skill point investment to be an effective way of boosting dps. Since they continue to deal damage after being set, you can use melee skills such as double strike and only reuse them when they time out. They also allow you to continue doing damage when you need to fall back to regenerate ES. 2. Aurseize great for both MF and capping resistances. Together with Eye of Chayula (required), you already have 80 MF without making any sacrifices to go for MF. 3. Discipline is always on (build easily allows for 2 auras once reduced mana gem is obtained)
Why Discipline is so important
Getting 2.6k ES is easy with just 1000ish raw ES from gear (such as: 500ES chest, 150ES shield, 120ES boots, 200ES helm). However, to be playable, you want 3.5k-4k ES minimum. This is where Discipline's 300 raw ES can boost you from 2.5-3k ES to 3.5k-4k.
3. MF Farming:
Merville at lv55ish
Farm a lot of Merciless Merville because it is an easy source of currency and experience with searing bond, fire trap, double strike. Clear packs as you head to Merville, because this is for both exp and currency (also safer).
Piety
Required: 3.5k ES/10k dps Farm piety with an MF culler groups if you are after drops. Soloing will net more exp as flicker with melee splash is quick at clearing packs. You will want to switch to frenzy for the boss in order to avoid flickering away due to poor auto-targeting of portals, when using multistrike.
Dominus+Video
Required: 4k ES/15k dps and a willingness to risk death (or just have 6k+ ES) Transitioning from piety to dominus can seem hard, but it will be much better in the long run. Getting to dominus is quicker than piety and farming him becomes easier as you get used to his attack patterns and using topaz flask. You will want to switch to frenzy for the second phase in order to avoid flickering out of the bleed protection bubble. Potato Cam Video record of a rusty Dominus kill, in 245/20 MF gear. 4. Gear:
General Guideline
Required (numbered by priority): i. Eye of Chayula ii. Anti-freeze (usually flask of heat or Dream Fragments) iii. The Magnate Belt iv. Aurseize Must eventually have by level 70: i. 180-200pdps (if attack speed > 1.4, calculate pdps as if it had 1.4 aps instead) 8.5% crit dagger ii. 5L 500+ ES chest (5L is the important part, 450+ ES is manageable) iii. 150+ ES resistance shield (such as archon kiteshield). iv. Surgeon's Granite Flask of Iron Skin, Surgeon's Jade flask of Reflexes MF Recommendations (having at least 3.5k ES is more important than MF): i. Goldwyrm Nubuck boots ii. capped resistances from setup with rings and helm iii. rings (20+ iir, 200+ accuracy, resistances) iv. helm (20+ iir 100+ ES) Refer to Poutsos' flicker guide for supplemental information.
My Gear
248 iir 20iiq
Flasks
Others
5. Disclaimer Again, I have only played for about 2 months so I am not as experienced as most players. This is mostly a transitional lv70 CI flicker build that is still fun to play. My stats vary a lot according to what setup and gear I am using (such as auras, MF vs traditional gear, and gem setup), but some stats are as follows: 1. 4.5k(pure MF)-6.3k ES 2. 38k(splash MF)-108k flicker 3. 3k-9k(+grace)-20k(+granite)-38k(+jade flask)-41k(+alpha's) armor. 4. 7-8 max frenzy charges Also, I was using fire trap+searing bond+inc burning damage for a very long time. See this old thread for when I had even worse gear and supplemented my 13k charged aoe flicker with it. Advice and feedback about this build are welcomed. Last edited by Zhen on Sep 28, 2014, 10:20:59 AM
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Ty for posting. found some interesting information :)
question tho. How do you get high flicker damage. i can manage like 1k tooltip without charges atm the moment and my tree is quite similar to yours. level 71 atm
Spoiler
http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgYBBX0FtQzyDkgQexEvEZYV1xa_GdUa2x4aIQMnqSgqKwosvy9vMFQzDDvhPs9HBlFHVmNW6lb1XvpfamNDZfFtGXBScFZwu3DVeUh943_Ghq6H24hCjb-P-pAbl9CZV5mamhOdo6Kjpcumf6crpzSxs7TFtUi297k-uXy7fL3mvjrAUcEAwcXB88Lsw23N6teG2RPbGttu29Tb5-L344Tp_utj7BjtQfLh8-r1S_lj_Kv_k__e Going toward iron reflexes now. im not sure on vaal pact yet. My flicker is lvl 17 atm and dual strike is 17 too. with dual strike i can get 10k dps with charges. This is the dagger i have in my main hand. offhand has bit less dps. rest of the gear is ok, i have over 4k ES with discipline and i run hatered as second aura. When i get Alpha's i will be running wrath or grace too. Ty for any info you can give me, to increase my dps :) Id like to get base 10k Flicker or dual strike as im having hard time in maps :( | |
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About the damage:
0. To know your dps with flicker, you have to calculate tooltip damage/time between attacks. However, flicker strike is usually weaker than dual strike and double strike at low dps and only shines because it has better scaling. 1. The crit on the dagger you are using is too way low. I would make getting crit daggers my top priority. (A 8% 160 pdps dagger should cost about 5c and 8.5% crit 170pdps dagger around 10c on ambush).
Spoiler
I personally would never use any dagger with less than 8% crit regardless of the pdps, because your main source of damage and utility comes from crit and crit multiplier.
2. Never use 2 daggers for anything except dual strike.
Spoiler
Dual wielding alternates between the two daggers you are wearing. As a result, you actually do less damage compared to just wearing the best of the two daggers.
3. I'm using 6L'd Q20 gems that are nearly lv20.
Spoiler
Flicker strike in particular gains a lot from Q20 (+80% crit chance) and lv20 (+10% attack speed->+15% attack speed per frenzy charge is huge).
Look at this old thread of when I was level 80ish for an idea of what to get in the meantime. 4. Use Searing Bond+Increased Burning Damage(+Fire Trap) for more damage.
Spoiler
I was still using Fire Trap+Searing Bond+Increased Burning damage until I hit 20k dps with flicker (mostly searing bond). If I remember correctly, Searing Bond alone did 2k damage, which adds 20% more dps at 10k pdps.
Don't think about your skill tree too much until you get better daggers.
As for your skill tree
1. I am really uncomfortable with the idea of getting vaal pact so late, since being CI means you get next to no benefit from leech without it. (Leech rate is capped at 20% life/s, which is about 200ES/s). 2. I would recommend dropping the one-handed damage/arm wrestling to have more skill points to work with. It will eventually go towards the pressure point group (crit+crit mult), but I think your top priority should be vaal pact. 3. If you were lower-leveled, I would say respec to the recommended level 70 tree. I didn't go down the ranger side until I had vp at lvl70. However, this that might be too costly for now when your main focus should be on getting a crit dagger. Last edited by Zhen on Apr 21, 2014, 3:53:10 AM
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Thank you for your reply. I will try and get a new dagger to work with that :) i have played spell build only for the last year and this is my first melee character that i have played :)
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Very nice, I am really willing to try this build as a way of making money AND kill monsters :)
One suggestion: could you make some gameplay videos, so we can see how the build works on the field? (damage, clearing speed, etc.) Thanks and congratz! | |
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Sorry, neither my computer nor my internet are good enough to play and capture a good gameplay video.
The best I could do was this video of a rusty dominus kill (245/20 iir), but it comes in potato quality. Also, although I no longer use the Searing Bond+Increased Burning Damage combo to boost damage, it was a core part of my gameplay up until I got daggers with 160pdps 8.5% crit. Last edited by Zhen on Apr 24, 2014, 3:02:32 AM
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Alright Zhen, I have started my "cheap" bastard CI Flicker Shadow :D
He is lvl 48 so far and I know that there is still a lot to come, but after having a little gameplay experience with him and viewing your video, I have a few questions that need answers. Here they are: 1- Why don't you use Discipline aura? 2- How come you use Blood Rage without draining you energy shield?!?!? 3- What's the skill priority to link on the 5L chest? Regarding the skill links, after reviewing your post and Poutso's several times, I came up with this setup (see if you agree): Chest (6S 5L): Flicker Strike + Multistrike + Melee Dmg On Full Life + Melee Physical Dmg + Inc Crit Dmg . Critical Weakness on isolated socket. Should I swap one of those for Melee Splash? Which one? Shield: Reduced Mana + Hatred + Discipline Dagger: Faster Attacks + Whirling Blades + Blood Rage Helmet: Lightning Strike + Power Charge On Crit + Inc Crit Strikes + Faster Attacks Gloves: CwDT + Enduring Cry + Immortal Call + Increased Duration Boots: Frenzy + Culling Strike + Faster Attacks + Item Rarity Thank you :D (I must say that I have a good feeling about this build :D) | |
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Sorry for the late reply, finals week is pretty busy.
1. I do, in fact, use discipline. (Just not all the time, since 4k ES+lots of armor is enough for a lot of stuff). 2. After you get Chaos Innoculation (immune to chaos damage), blood rage no longer hurts you. 3. Replace Melee Physical Damage for Melee Splash when appropriate. Also, I suggest: 1. Add in Searing Bond+Increased Burning Damage (in helm or boots) because it is quite a lot of damage at lower levels and provides extra protection (distracts mobs). 2. Have Reave and Double Strike leveled up in your Weapon Swap slots (the set from pressing "x") because flicker strike isn't good for parties and bosses. | |
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Finally reached lvl 70.
Just like our fellow Plat0nius over there, I don't see myself reaching 10k damage to go for Piety anytime soon. I only have like 1.5k dmg per use with Flicker and 4k-ish ES so far. One truly big problem: I can't run Hatred! If I run Hatred and Discipline I get only 70 mana left and this is not enough to flicker. My equipment (gotta get a better ring. Flicker should be on chest instead of Frenzy): Flasks (still need several improvements): My current tree (lvl 70): Skill tree What should I do? | |
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Hey thanks for the shout out man. Always appreciate fellow flickers :)
IGN:Flickfrap
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