2.4. BV pathfinder survability question.

Do you think the changes in 2.4 will affect the defenses of pathfinder through the changes of the flask interactions?

I want to try this BV-meta hype and was leaning towards Ranger. I don't like ES/CI/LL, nor relying on crit heavily, the poison option seems very nice, and that's granted through the ascendancy. Beside I only rolled two rangers since closed beta, so its about time to try for another one.

Most of the updated theory-craft are for duelist/shadow. I would be playing SC as I retired from HC quite some time ago.

What I wonder is how significant is that the shock flask and fairgraves interaction got fixed, since this was like bread and butter in all the guides for BV pathfinder I found.

not sure what builds you were looking at that ever gave a damn about fairgraves for avoiding shock of vinktars (only flask that shocks you I think so I assume you are talking about it since it's amazing for pathfinder). But yeah, i've never seen a single guide recommend using fairgraves as a helmet. Sounds like an awful idea. If you go pathfinder and play blade vortex and you end up getting your vinktar's you just roll a cannot be shocked flask and that will remove the shock effect and prevent further shock application as well. And since you're ascendancy literally makes it so that you get flasks out the ass while you say, are mapping, you pretty much can maintain 100% uptime on your cannot be shocked flask and even vinktars if you're fast enough. They only made this flask interaction better, not worse.
I fail to see your confusion so hopefully that clears it up and if not then respond with whatever else and I'll see if I know anything else that'll help you here.

(if there are further flask changes than I may be awfully wrong.)
Also, crit is just more damage mate, I can't see why you would consider running BV as non crit when all the nodes you'd pick up for crit are pretty much NOT out of the way to pick up and more often than not I think are right around where you end up going anyway. Furthermore, you don't "rely" on the crit, but it gives you an added defensive aspect of being able to freeze mobs via things like taste of hate and hatred scaling your cold damage high enough to allow you to freeze and shatter things that may otherwise annihilate you (porcupines?). You don't seem to have a very good understanding of how BV and all these things you seem to be so against having as an aspect of your build actually make it just that much stronger. So again, hopefully this sheds some light on that. Even CI is more beneficial than staying life if you manage to muster up the wealth to get the unique flasks and the ES gear for the transition. Instead of having to waste your slots on life flasks, you could be running this for CI, which is pretty ridiculous. Vinktar's, gives you leech, lightning damage to spells and shocks everything in range while the flask is active which can reach 80%+ uptime when played right (This applies to pretty much all flasks you'll be running as CI or LL mind you). Taste of hate, mitigates physical damage for you, gives you % physical damage that scales up to be more than that of hatred essentially making it so you're practically running 2, maybe 2.5 hatreds. And it gives you reduction to being frozen/chilled and whathaveyou. Then you could get Kiaras (this might be wrong if it isn't a flask available outside of prophecy) this solves all your stun issues, freeze issues, curse issues and so on. Your last 2 flasks would be a diamond (rolls your crit twice, allowing for less crit to be taken on the tree, therefore 40-50% crit is good enough prior to charges) and then you could have rumi's (you're playing a pathfinder so again, this is just like 80%-100% uptime on additional block and spell block).
run around, spam blade vortexs, spam your PCoC BV setup every 6-9 seconds (depending on if you get the enchant), basically hit 1-5 or whatever you binded your flasks to every 5-6 seconds for permanent flasks, with the exception of maybe kiara's as you could fuck up and get caught in freeze/stun if you have a dry period of monsters). I mean you could argue this all comes down to player skill but pathfinder pretty much allows you to reach nearly 100% flask uptime and you get much more EHP by making the decision to go CI if you have the option available and the unique flasks are just insane for giving you added DPS and survival.
Whether you choose to play CI or not, or LL for that matter (although probably not really worth unless you're just interested in the investment), i'm pretty confident that shit'll beat out a life version in terms of utility due to dropping life flasks. This is purely for education so you can understand, not to sway you into changing your preference. But yeah, knowledge is power in this game so if you don't know, now you know. Or at least, you know what I think I learned from my own experiences playing as CI BV.
If I came off as a dick through the way I explained anything I apologize as that is not my intent but just the way that I explain things to people. But yeah, think I'm done editing this damn post so I hope this helps you figure out whether or not you'll be playing BV

Great analysis BV and the Pathfinder interactions AgonyEvolved, I just have a question about Pathfinder vs. Trickster. Obviously if someone is rich, then Vinktar's/Pathfinder is the way to go.

If I don't get the big cash money to afford a Vinktar's which Ascendancy would work better? Trickster? Or is it better to just roll a pathfinder in the hope of getting a Vinktar's.

Everything I have ever seen has hinted that pathfinder is the "rich man's build". Due to things like the unique flasks eating multiple ex alone not including gear. Pathfinder is still a pretty good option to start as life based and their is a guide for 2.3 in this thread that will more than likely still be viable with 2.4.
I would say it really comes down to what you want out of your character. Trickster would allow you to gain frenzy charges, have more attack/cast speed and grant you some nice ES for if you opt to go CI as well as some evasion and whatnot.
I'm personally going to run pathfinder as I rather just be able to smoothly transition into CI BV PF and if I stumble upon the unique flasks, it'll only get exponentially better I think. I know there are people planning to start as pathfinder for the new league and it does offer some nice utility. You get poison from just having a flask active, free surgeon's and staunching on everything allowing for a little bit of flexibility in what you choose to roll as mods, and you get the movement speed for activating flasks allowing for more speed which for me was pretty much king when I played my BV pathfinder.

This is just my opinion but I would suggest looking further into it as I haven't touched trickster for blade vortex, but it sounds like a more initially defensive option that allows for more EHP and more cast speed and damage to frenzy charge generation in general mapping, while pathfinder seems like it may scale further with the flask upgrades and a transition to CI due to opening up more unique flask options which imo offers a ton (maybe more?) of offensive and defensive utility compared to trickster

hows poison looking for a pathfinder CI BV build?