[2.5] Mustard's Raider/Blade Flurry DreamFeather Build

I am going to make this my own build thread. This build is based off of Mathil's dreamfeather spectral throw poison pathfinder, so credit to him for the initial mechanics innovation of using dreamfeather to boost stacked flat chaos damage for high DPS output on a budget (well used to be budget).

a link to his build is HERE


UPDATE
I have now updated this build to reflect my current usage.



First off i'll post my current gear and passive tree. you can see the links of my gems in gear.

Gear





Passive Tree




This is my loadout for a raider BF build. Now i'll dedicate some time explaining my choices and layout.

Gear Explained
My gear is as follows. of course using the dreamfeather sword to boost our chaos damage from high evasion. thus all applicable gear should have the highest evasion we can find. also all applicable gear should have flat chaos damage added, since this is our main source of damage to augment with % increase and % more damage modifiers.

breath of the council is the best stat stick for offhand damage. this will mess with your tooltip dps however since it factors in its lower attack speed even though it doesn't use it. so your attack speed/dps is actually higher than stated with this weapon socketed.
since most of our damage is poison, this is by far the best stat stick.

the next tricky part is the belt. the belt is required. this gives us flask charge duration and most importantly lower flask charges used. this, coupled with Arcane Chemistry passive (which you can view in my tree below) allows us to keep flasks up basically permanently.

cospri's will is BIS for this variation of the build. it is BIS because we have available mana for blasphemy curse since we don't use damage auras, and it gives us free poison, 2nd curse for witchfire brew, and high evasion.

gloves should be highest resistances, hp, and accuracy you can find. evasion doesn't matter here, just get the stats.

boots BiS is atziri step for high evasion, hp, spell dodge and movement speed.

helmet and jewelry will all be connected as to what you can use. this is the best jewelry i had that i could craft flat chaos damage on and retain max resistances. you'll most likely need to juggle around what you use to have in priority:
max resistances, life, some accuracy, flat chaos
those are the stats to aim for

******NOTE*******
you NEED a source for poison. if you do not have and cannot get cospri's will, you can use LEGACY voidheart. if you do not have that, you can use poison support which i'll touch on more of in the gems explained section.
i personally don't like snakebite gloves, but i guess they are an option if you so choose.


Flasks Explained

Flasks are what this build is about. im basically a pathfinder without the ascendancy. my flasks are up 100% of the time.

I run one life flask. its risky, and it does cause me to die, but there you go. until you get your final ascendancy points you will need to change between bleed removal, shock removal, and freeze removal. i currently don't have the last two ascendancy points because i suck at traps, so freeze is dangerous for me because of my current flask setup, however if i anticipate lots of cold dmg i will swap flasks out.

only reason why im running vinktar's is for the shock effect. it double dips and its the highest modifier you can get. the leech is bonus but not the most amazing since we don't prioritize physical damage and i don't have the flat lightning dmg variant.
i have a legacy vinktar's but it is by no means required at all. normal vinktar's works because it still gives shock, and its still a luxury, only adding DPS.

witchbrew and jade flasks are required. the bonus dmg they give is astronomical. as well as jade giving you a crap ton of evasion.

atziri flask is great but not required, and i actually don't use it. the amount of dmg given is not huge because you don't have much physical or elemental dmg to be converted, but the leech is amazing and i believe does apply from your poison damage as well.
the final flask is flexible. i bounce between what you see above, a 50% inc damage sulphur flask, to a basalt flask or resistance flask if im up vs a map mod with like 110% extra dmg as fire/cold


Gems Explained
Here i'll talk about my gems and why i chose them.

first off is blade flurry. not much to speak of here. it is the most superior skill to use right now because it has the highest base damage modifier as well as the highest attack speed by a mile.
since this build is based off poison, this skill stacks it at a super fast rate because of its more attack speed and our high base atk spd of dreamfeather.


this BF build only requires a 5L as long as you have a source of poison. i repeat, it only requires a 5L for all required damage supports.
as of right now there just isn't enough support gems which help this build with damage. since we don't rely on physical damage at all we don't need to use melee physical damage. we still can, but it hardly adds any damage to the build.

BiS supports are: Faster Attacks, Void Manipulation, Added Chaos Damage, Increased Area of Effect/Concentrated Effect.
easily swap inc aoe for conc effect before separate boss fights. majority of map fights you can keep inc aoe socketed without issue.

a 6th link is completely optional. im currently using Culling Strike for its added DPS. 38% inc damage, which double dips, and of course the added "dps" of its execute damage.
you can by all means use all kinds of utility gems here. life leech, endurance charge on melee stun (for bonus phys reduction and CWDT/IC setup), fortify, etc.
*****NOTE******
if you don't have another means of poison, this is where to socket the gem. it requires a 6L however to fit it in. on only a 5L you'd need to cut out Faster Attacks.

Blasphemy one curse of your choice. Witchfire brew will take up the 2nd curse. i constantly run my flasks so i like to use poacher's mark as curse. it #1 reduces their evasion, subsequently raising our hit rate, #2 gives us life and man on HIT, #3 frenzy charges, but that doesn't matter much with raider buff, #4 the biggest reason is 100% flask charges gained. this curse will allow us to sustain our flasks at 100% uptime.
however currently im playing around with temporal chains. it slows people so its like...semi-defensive, but mostly it makes your poison last longer so its quite a large DPS increase against mobs that last long enough.
another benefit to temp chains is its the absolute best to use vs atziri. she has curse reflection, and its actually a good thing to be afflicted by temp chains because it means our flasks last a lot longer. vs a big boss like atziri this is beneficial.

other aura is obviously Grace for higher evasion = higher damage and higher defense.

wither totem is required. get it with as many support links as you can. inc duration is best 4th link but inc aoe works as well.

fortify whirling blades is good. very defensive and great mobility.


Passive Tree Explained

Now i'll go over my passive tree and why i chose certain things.
First off is obviously frenzy charges. we want them all. the more damage double dips, and we're RAIDER which just got a massive buff, so this aids us. it doesn't boost this build tremendously, but it is still a buff. essentially it just means we have slightly more attack damage (doesn't double dip though) and more attack speed with perm phasing/immunity to status ailments, and frenzy charges come easy!!

I ended up getting all flask nodes i could get. i would go up and reach alchemist nodes in witch start if i could, but i can't. so Arcane Chemistry (required), Druidic Rite, and Primal Spirit. all good things.

as much life as you can get. though since its a bit out of the way i almost always avoid the Thick Skin cluster. it gives 22% life but takes a total of 6 passives to get there. thats only 3.667% life per passive used, which is absolutely fucking horrible. do not get that cluster.

depending on your jewelry/helmet and whatnot, you may need to get resistances from the tree. good thing is the two passives south of duelist start, Cloth and Chain, is a great boost in evasion % as well.

******NOTE*******
i've recently changed my tree to what you see now. i used to have less life and spec'd into the chaos damage. this is not required and maybe even not ideal. our damage is plenty and the added life (and subsequently life leech amount) is much more suitable i believe. vaal pact is not required at all.




Now that i got that all out of the way i'll get into some stats. Honestly i don't really want to get into taking screenshots and bullshit, so im just going to post my stats for when im fully self buffed. all flasks, all charges (currently 8 frenzy and 4 endurance).

Offense

Offense is hard to talk about because BF offense is tricky, especially since we're reliant on our poison damage. These numbers are with CONCENTRATED EFFECT linked, aka boss setup. full flasks (shown in gear) and charges (8 frenzy)

Damage Per Hit: 4,200.43
Chance To Hit: 90%
Attack Speed: 7.53
Physical Damage: 819-1280
Chaos Damage: 2264-3561

keep in mind my listed attack speed is lower than it should be because of our stat stick playing with the mods.

im posting the phys/chaos so if you really wanna get into some maths you can kinda calculate our poison damage in theory. but once you add in wither totem increasing chaos damage for both initial hit and poison, and any thing such as that, it gets a little tricky so im not going to bother.

our main damage is poison however, and let me tell you it is substantial. you can watch videos on mathil's dreamfeather spectral throw build showing you the type of damage he was able to get out of it. having played that build myself for a little while, im quite certain the DPS in this build is higher.


Defense

Life: 5,451
Armour: 11
Evasion Rating: 60,146
Estimated Chance to Evade Attacks: 76%
Chance to Dodge Attacks: 46%
Chance to Dodge Spells: 46% (56% with final 2 ascendancy points)
Maximum Energy Shield: 27

lots of life leech to boot. this build feels very defensive and capable.



As of now i have run a number of variations of a blade flurry build. from this version, raider dreamfeather BF, to raider hyaon's, raider flat elemental, raider flat chaos, assassin flat elemental, assassin flat chaos, assassin bino/death hand, assassin dual scourge, and i gotta say this version is by far my favourite.
its more about feel. the dps feels really good even against assassin dual scourge. don't get me wrong, assassin will out DPS you purely because of the 100% poison damage on crit, however we have higher attack speed and will stack poison faster.
the best part about this build in comparison though is our defenses. we are very defensive for how fast we can clear and kill bosses. with better gear i have no doubt you could cap over 5500 hp as i don't even have hp rolled on both jewelry slots and a mid roll on gloves.

i will try to find some time to get some videos up, but i haven't completed all content yet because all content isn't available to me. i know this build can do all content, i know it, im just working towards it as much as anybody else would.

thanks for reading and feel free to post any questions.
*****NOTE*****
before anybody asks, even tho i know someone still will, bandits are oak/passive/frenzy

Poison Immune Content

here i just want to add a quick note about poison immune bosses.
there are 2 guardians which are immune to poison. Hydra and Chimera. i just got a pit of the chimera map which im going to run tonight or tomorrow sometime. for this fight im going to change my loadout quite a bit, but only so that we're not so focused on poison damage. it will overall up our dps and hopefully make us more capable of surviving a long drawn out fight.

to start i am dropping the cospri's will for a carcass jack. its better for the colours, hp, area damage and there is no need for a 2nd curse or hexproof (unless you have it for a mod, to which i'd reroll), or poison of course.

next order of business are our support gems. changed to blade flurry, added lightning damage, added cold damage, weapon elemental damage, elemental focus, and inc aoe/conc effect.
i tested out a number of combinations and this gives us the most DPS.
still on gems, no need for wither totem or temp chains so i kick those for blasphemy warlords mark (leech etc) or enfeeble. i actually don't meet the required 155 int for lvl 20 enfeeble tho, but i would prefer to use it over warlords.

also since we don't poison we don't need breath of the council, so the best option is a 2nd dreamfeather. again i tested a number of options and this is the best.

last but not least is change to flasks. basalt, and actually atziri's promise is amazing here. no need for witchfire brew and we'll drop the sulphur for basalt for added defense.
since we have so much elemental damage now, atziri flask will add a crap ton of flat chaos damage for just more deeps.



can also change jewels, but i probably won't because im too lazy
Last edited by xMustard on Dec 27, 2016, 12:44:24 AM
Last bumped on Feb 14, 2017, 9:48:35 PM
EDIT:
*******NOTE********
THIS POST IS NOT A REFLECTION OF THE BUILD GUIDE OR FIRST POST, THIS IS A THEORYCRAFT FOR ASSASSIN


so upon thinking about things a little further, i figure its because of our flat chaos damage rolls and the dreamfeather swords that make this build so amazing with its damage even though we don't do much to augment it.
then i thought the reason why assassin is so good is because of its critical strike chance and +100% poison damage when applied with a crit....so why not try to combine the two? so i figured a tree and configuration that did.


this is an option for assassins to use dreamfeather swords in place of bino's/death hand or dual scourge. i think it would do the absolute most poison damage out of all the blade flurry builds currently available, to be honest.

Passive Tree

with this tree you get 175% life which is quite good, same amount of life leech with vaal pact as my current setup, just about the same if not more % evasion than current, lots of crit and crit multi.
even with dreamfeather 5% base crit i figure this setup can get at least 91% crit rate. with increased critical strikes gem and 5 power charges this boosts the base critical chance to 9.4%. from the gem, tree, and ascendancy trees we should have a total of +869% for a grand total of 91% crit chance.
this is before any gear increases or possibly using ice golem etc.

this would allow us to stack the best of both worlds. dreamfeathers amazing boost in damage plus double poison damage from assassin. this build also merits at least +217% crit multi before gear as well, which is very respectable.

this would require a 6L with blade flurry, faster attacks, void manipulation, added chaos damage, inc crit strikes, inc aoe/conc effect, and you'd have to have a source of poison outside of the gem. either voidheart or cospri's will.

im going to test this out but it definitely won't be as defensive still...since we can't run endurance charge on stun/fortify or have acrobatics/phase acrobatics.
i guess you could get acro if you sacrificed a lot of passives from somewhere, but ya. pretty neat
Last edited by xMustard on Dec 7, 2016, 2:04:17 PM
can I at least take the time to thank you for this amazing guide?
Hi, thanks for all the info you're providing. You're awesome! :D

I picked up ZiggyD's Perseverance belt


Even though I get ZERO benefit from the damage mod, the Fortify on stun and Onslaught while fortify is active is super sweet (plus a relevant amount of evasion)

Basically I have 100% uptime of Fortify during pack clears as I don't always WB onto them and prefer to stay at a distance or at least outside of melee range. If you go for the Avatar of the Veil side of the ascendancy then you get the free Onslaught, otherwise it's good for permanent Onslaught against bosses (on a 6L with Fortify/Endurance Charge on Melee Stun)

Thoughts on this?

Also Wondering what better, Avatar of the Veil or Chase? Going chase gets us 40% increased damage and 20% additional attack speed on Onslaught.

E: I've decided to go for Veil for now because I already get onslaught and more speed could actually make my game crash due to too many actions too quickly (done this reliably before)

Current Gear


I'll be dropping Snakebites once I can 5L my Cospri's (no luck on Jeweller's to 6s and no chaos left for Jeweller's touch :( You're definitely right about snakes being inconvenient, however once I have the charges up I can clear a map pretty quick.
Last edited by Gryphenprey on Dec 5, 2016, 3:26:06 PM
"
Gryphenprey wrote:
Thoughts on this?

Also Wondering what better, Avatar of the Veil or Chase? Going chase gets us 40% increased damage and 20% additional attack speed on Onslaught.

E: I've decided to go for Veil for now because I already get onslaught and more speed could actually make my game crash due to too many actions too quickly (done this reliably before


its an interesting belt but i don't really like it.
new league stuff is in its whole own 'league', haha, though...because you can really only use as good as you can get. i imagine right now things are fairly scarce as well, but it seems like you're doing well for running this as a starter build.

avatar of the veil is much better, i'd say. 40% inc atk dmg is great but it doesn't double dip. going veil way gives you 6% dodge, 10% spell dodge and immunity to status ailments. you cannot beat that defensively and for me to give that up i'd have to gain something like 30% more dmg (would also have to double dip).

your gear isn't looking too bad so far. once you can replace snakebite though you will need flat accuracy on gear to get around 90% hit rate.
and once you can get flat chaos on your jewelry you'll notice an insane boost in DPS. keep it up
Looks like an awesome build, but I have a few questions:

1) How does this build compare (in terms of damage, clear speed and defences) to a build like this one: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1301888
2) Would you consider this build a good league-starter? I'm currently following the above build (only level 35 but I can probably respec to follow yours) but I am wondering if I will be able to afford it in the long run.

Thanks for the build! :)
"
xMustard wrote:
"
Gryphenprey wrote:
Thoughts on this?

Also Wondering what better, Avatar of the Veil or Chase? Going chase gets us 40% increased damage and 20% additional attack speed on Onslaught.

E: I've decided to go for Veil for now because I already get onslaught and more speed could actually make my game crash due to too many actions too quickly (done this reliably before


its an interesting belt but i don't really like it.
new league stuff is in its whole own 'league', haha, though...because you can really only use as good as you can get. i imagine right now things are fairly scarce as well, but it seems like you're doing well for running this as a starter build.

avatar of the veil is much better, i'd say. 40% inc atk dmg is great but it doesn't double dip. going veil way gives you 6% dodge, 10% spell dodge and immunity to status ailments. you cannot beat that defensively and for me to give that up i'd have to gain something like 30% more dmg (would also have to double dip).

your gear isn't looking too bad so far. once you can replace snakebite though you will need flat accuracy on gear to get around 90% hit rate.
and once you can get flat chaos on your jewelry you'll notice an insane boost in DPS. keep it up


The belt plays out very nicely here it's basically my justification to skip out on Avatar of the Chase. I really like a fast playstyle and it certainly helps :D. I think it would be better in your Assassin Version as the onslaught would help more.

That said, I got my Cospri's WIll 5L and bought a pair of random EV/Life gloves. Also picked up a Witchfire Brew

Spoiler
very nice.

ya im playing around with the assassin version right now and the DPS is like...A LOT higher. like a fuckin lot.
not as defensive as i don't have acrobatics/phase acrobatics, as well as not running endurance charges or having the basalt flask, but the DPS is huge and im running atziri flask for its leech with vaal pact to keep me topped as long as i can keep attacking stuff.
i also have a permanent fortify up in a 4L of blade vortex, inc crit strikes, PCoC, fortify, to keep power charges and fortify up 100%.

so just to kinda highlight the dps difference, the raider version has 3,700 per hit @ 8.3 basically, which is 30,710 DPS, but the damage is very high because of poison.
well the assassin build has 10,760 per hit @ 6.56. thats 70,586 dps, more than double, but its actually better than that.
while we do stack the poison 30% slower, each poison will be approx 180% more powerful, which is MASSIVE. all because of our crit and crit multi. everything else is the same.
not to even mention that i currently don't have the last two ascendancy points that will grant me a periodic buff of 20% of physical as extra chaos (won't be huge) and the permanent buff of 100% more poison damage.

this version is definitely more defensive, and i'd say even hardcore friendly if you can muster the gear together to get a higher lifepool, something over 5k HP.
assassin version is more standard friendly to get super high poison deeps.

im basically going to post the same guide geared towards the assassin version in the shadow sub-forum
Last edited by xMustard on Dec 5, 2016, 11:56:55 PM
I'm actually leveling up a shadow right now in breach. I tried to do a Breachlord run but got thrashed because my damage on Raider wasn't high enough. On Standard I have a 77 Assassin with Bino's/Death's hand that has 3x the damage and more defenses. So I'm leveling him up just to have him there haha. Not sure what I want to do with it yet.

I'm doing 1.4k per hit+9.09 aps right now with 8 Frenzy charges and all flasks up. The only real upgrades I can get are the flat chaos on jewelry and getting a 20/20 Added chaos. Will that make that much of a difference?

I really wanna know how you're getting those numbers. Haha

I respecc'd an assassin on Standard with the following gear:

Spoiler


Even there I'm only getting 4.2k with 5 power charges up. no power charges though. I get much more dps on my Crit Poison BF Claw/Dagger build. Originally started with using Mortem Morsu to apply poison, that was getting around 5.6k 9aps. I changed over to daggers when I got a really nice malicious one and a 6L Cospri's and went up to 6.7k. I have since dropped my DPS a lot and invested into more life. but I had 4k Life and 6.7k avg, now it's about 6k with 4.8k life. but still. Much higher damage and a lot cheaper.
"
I'm doing 1.4k per hit+9.09 aps right now with 8 Frenzy charges and all flasks up. The only real upgrades I can get are the flat chaos on jewelry and getting a 20/20 Added chaos. Will that make that much of a difference?

I really wanna know how you're getting those numbers. Haha


is this with your raider you mean?
well i have all my gear and links posted, but keep in mind my damage per hit is still only 3600 or w/e with my raider. still its the poison stacking we get our DPS from. also for the flasks you do get massive damage from witchfire brew, upwards of 70% increased DoT, and lvl 21 vulnerability which is 30% more DoT as well as 30% increased physical damage taken, and from vinktar's which applies shock which gives us 50% more damage on both initial hit and the poison.
so your damage will be a fraction of what it can be if you're not using your flasks 100% of the time. i still don't really use mine 100% of the time cause it isn't needed on trash unless im running t13+ maps with loads of mods, then i use flasks to clear even trash.

"
I respecc'd an assassin on Standard with the following gear:

Spoiler


Even there I'm only getting 4.2k with 5 power charges up. no power charges though. I get much more dps on my Crit Poison BF Claw/Dagger build. Originally started with using Mortem Morsu to apply poison, that was getting around 5.6k 9aps. I changed over to daggers when I got a really nice malicious one and a 6L Cospri's and went up to 6.7k. I have since dropped my DPS a lot and invested into more life. but I had 4k Life and 6.7k avg, now it's about 6k with 4.8k life. but still. Much higher damage and a lot cheaper.


my assassin build is now posted in the shadow forums if you wanna take a look at my gear/setup there, tho its essentially the exact same gear as raider.
not sure if intended, but in your body armor you have inc aoe linked...are these numbers you're sharing with inc aoe instead of conc effect?? that would make a massive difference

also with my gear i probably have quite a bit more evasion than you, meaning more % increased attack damage from dreamfeathers, which would affect our initial hit damage and thus our initial poison damage calculation
Last edited by xMustard on Dec 6, 2016, 1:00:13 AM

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