[2.6] Terminus Est CoC [Flicker Strike/Cyclone] [Life/Evasion] Over 1M DPS

The Build
A build that uses Blade Vortex strengths of high leech and poison stacking, without dealing with the mechanic of keeping it up constantly while mapping. With the new buffs, Terminus Est is one of the few weapons with a baseline high crit chance. This means that it's extremely easy to crit cap with Assassin ascendency with minimal investment in to crit chance. It also sports free frenzy charges and movespeed, which benefit both versions of the build. Add to that fact that the weapon itself has a pretty nice attack speed and decent damage, and it fits perfectly for the build, even if you don't use flicker strike.

Videos
Spoiler

T11 Strand Cyclone: https://youtu.be/UtjYt5__IC4
T10 Mesa Flicker Strike: https://youtu.be/TirXWmPAibU


Why should I play this build?
Spoiler

This build is good for you if you:
- Want to play with Flicker Strike/Cyclone, but want better single target
- Want to play Blade Vortex, but hate the mechanic of keeping it up
- Want to play a one hand build (it's possible)
- Like movement based builds

This build is not good for you if you:
- Hate unethical poison
- Hate playing life and evasion because those are too ethical
- Are conflicted with ethics
- Don't like life based Vaal Pact


Pros
+ High damage and good clearspeed
+ Flicker Strike version can hold down RMB in breaches and not care
+ Cheap to get started (there is only one expensive item and it's not required)
+ Flexible with skill choices
+ Can facetank leech all but the hardest of content
+ Every ascendency and gear upgrade is a huge boost in damage, so you get that high feeling when you can now trivialize content that was previously tough

Cons
- Is a life build that doesn't use Kaom's
- Is an evasion build that uses Acrobatics
- Flicker Strike version can be hard to control
- Cyclone version doesn't pick up any AoE so can be slower in wide open areas
- Feels weak without a 5L, and doesn't truly abuse it's power without a 6L/Cospri's

Gear
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Required Uniques
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Flicker Strike version will not work without this weapon. You don't really need it for Cyclone version, but not many things will beat it. After the buffs, it is a very strong weapon in it's own right that a lot of people miss because it was always associated with flicker. At almost 400 pdps, it's not a very strong 2-H weapon, but it makes up for that being one of the few high aps + crit weapons available. On top of that, it provides movespeed which is great, and free frenzy generation which is very nice.


Recommended Uniques
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These gloves are absolutely amazing. It's like a physical based Herald of Ice/Profane Bloom. It also pairs nicely with Assassin's 30% chance to bleed. It greatly enhances the build's AoE clearspeed.

Great life, attack speed, crit chance and dex for accuracy. The only thing it's really missing is resists. You can use a rare helm instead if you need resists, but I highly recommend using a Starkonja.

Belt of the Deceiver's buff made it a very good belt. For purely attack based builds, Meginord's might be better, but the %physical damage here is better. On top of that, you get decent life, all res, reduced critical damage taken and Intimidation. Intimidation is a flat 10% double-dipping more multiplier to your damage, like a mini-shock, which is why this is one of the strongest offensive belts in the game. The reduced critical damage taken doesn't do much regularly, but it shines best in crit map mods. Plus, it protects against the one detriment to Vaal Pact Evasion based builds which is a massive hit one shotting you.

Cospri's Will is an amazing item. Dual-curse, free poison, and hexproof-immune. This is the one and only expensive item in the build, and you really don't need it to push red maps.


Other Gear
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Rings you want life and res. Accuracy is nice. Pretty standard fare.

Life and res. Movespeed is nice to have, but flicker doesn't really care about it. Cyclone cares about it, but even then you can live without it if you get enough attack speed.

The damage slot. Life, crit chance and crit multi are the important stats. Anything else is gravy. Try to get an int base if you can, as you'll need ~10 or so int from gear/jewels.

Before Cospri's any Evasion chest with life works. I bought a 5L Assassin's Garb for 1c and used an essence of greed on it. I happened to just find this 6L on a decent evasion base which is why I have a 6L. A random 6L evasion chest will cost anywhere between 15-35c depending on the base. A life roll is really all you want on it, so you don't need to go crazy on crafting it. Just use a T5 Greed (2-3c) and hope for a decent evasion mod and maybe a res.


Flasks
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Bubbling Divine of Staunching is the best IMO. Bubbling because it gains a lot more value than Seething with all the flask nodes we take. Blood of the Karui is really nice in the earlier stages as it will heal for over 2k life/sec. The healing output is there in conjunction with Vaal Pact, but sometimes too many stacks of Corrupting Blood can overwhelm the flask in higher maps.


Once you get a Cospri's, you'll want to replace the Basalt with a Witchfire Brew or go double blasphemy or a CwDT setup.


Jewels
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Best damage stats in order:
Life
Physical/Flat/Chaos/Area (area more so if cyclone, less so if flicker)
Global crit multi
Attack speed (with swords will give the highest range)
Global crit chance
Resists (can be hard to cap with gear if using every unique)

Other useful Stats:
Accuracy
Int (need ~10 or so from gear/jewels)
Physical Attack damage leeched as life (flicker/cyclone does about 1/3-1/2 total dps)
Physical Attack damage leeched as mana (can be nice for hexproof maps pre-Cospri's)

Useful Uniques:
Ring of Blades, if using EK in CoC setup



Skill Choices
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Flicker Strike vs Cyclone
Flicker Strike
+ Braindead
+ Faster
+ Lots of fun with breach + beyond
+ Higher hits/sec mean it's better on one target
- Can take you across the map forcing you to run back if you didn't kill everything or something dropped
- Hard to focus down a target if other mobs are around
Cyclone
+ Easier to control where you want to go
+ Extra gem link and gem slot
+ Higher damage potential
+ Procs Haemophilia better for more consistent pack clearing
- Less hits/sec means you really need to get high atk spd and crit

This build was originally designed for flicker strike, and it works amazingly well. But I'm really anal about missed mobs (usually rares) and jumping three screens away in an instant that it was really starting to wear on me. I tried out Cyclone and it surprisenly worked extremely well without changing anything. The only difference is a slight aura change and a minor 7 point passive tree change.

Blade Vortex vs Bladefall vs Ethereal Knives
Blade Vortex
+ Better consistent leech with higher hits/sec
+ Easily keeps up full frenzy/power charges due to number of hits
+ Good poison stacking
+ Shares area tag with Bladefall and Cyclone
- Ramp up time
- Won't reach more than 15 stacks at the highest
Bladefall
+ Burst damage, multiple waves can stack on one cast
+ Good AoE coverage
+ Most visually pleasing spell
- Slight delay between cast and hit
Ethereal Knives
+ Instant burst damage for instant leech
+ AoE coverage with the jewel
+ Farthest reaching spell
- Requires the jewel
- No pierce can make it meh in high density situations

We're picking two spells, and I recommend at least Bladefall for it's consistent AoE coverage, high damage that can stack on bosses, and the multiple waves can provide some nice delayed leech. After that it's between BV and EK. I haven't actually tried EK + jewel myself, but it sounds really solid if you find the ramp up time for BV to be annoying. This change will make it better on general mapping where you're only getting 4 or 5 BV stacks and EK does more damage, but worse on bosses where you can get 10+ stacks and BV is doing more damage. BV also is able to easily sustain full power charges with only the Assassin ascendency, whereas this might be harder without it (you'll want to use a cwdt-bv-pcoc setup). I personally think BV + BF is the perfect combo of boss killer + mob killer.


Gem Links
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[Flicker Strike]-Cast on Crit-Multistrike-[Spell 1]-[Spell 2]-Poison/Conc Eff/Void Manip/Inc Crit Dmg
Use poison if you don't have Cospri's. If you do, any of the other 3 will work. Conc has the highest damage, but has the obvious drawback. Void and Inc Crit Dmg are about the same, and really depends on your crit chance which will pull ahead

[Cyclone]-Cast on Crit-[Spell 1]-Spell 2]-Poison/Void/Inc Crit Dmg-Fortify/Life Leech/Faster Attacks
Same blurb as flicker. You also get that extra gem link which you can put a second damage gem if you want. You don't really need that damage, though, so I prefer using Fortify or Life Leech. You can also slot in an Inc AoE gem if you want (possibly AoE for maps, swap to conc/inc crit dmg for bosses).

CwDT-IC-ID-Ice Golem

Leap Slam-Faster Attacks-[Fortify] (if not using on Cyclone)

Blasphemy-Warlord's Mark

For flicker strike, Arctic Armour + Herald of Ash
For cyclone, Hatred, Grace, or double blasphemy (or a purity) + enlighten + Herald of Ash

Vaal Lightning Trap

Everything else is really up to you with whatever you want to do with your free links/gem slots. You should have around 7 free slots with at least a 4L. Some stuff I've used or would be useful:

Orb of Storms/Ball Lightning or Cyclone (linked to Leap Slam) if using flicker strike to get frenzy charges at the start of a map
Spell Totem-Wither-Faster Casting
Vaal Grace/Vaal Haste
CwDT-Bladefall-Ethereal Knives-Controlled Destruction/Life Leech (set at ~2/5 health trigger)
CwDT-Arctic Breath/Ball Lightning-GMP-Blind
CwDT-BV-Curse on Hit-curse (can only do if not using BV in main setup)


Skill Tree
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29 Points
53 Points
80 Points
104 Points
Flicker Final
Cyclone Final
You can also opt to drop some nodes for Phase Acrobatics, but I can't really justify it for 4 points. If it was only 3 points, then I'd take it.


Ascendency
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Deadly Infusion -> Toxic Delivery, no surprises here


Bandits
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Oak -> Kraitlyn/Oak -> Alira


FAQ
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No questions have been asked
Last edited by dragonsroc on Mar 15, 2017, 1:24:14 PM
Last bumped on Sep 8, 2017, 10:21:42 AM
Can you post your current character? I'd like to see your stats.


character is dragon_flicker

It's not even fancy. I don't even have my uber ascendency yet cause I haven't found all the trials. The most expensive thing about it is the 6L on a mediocre base that I found. You could buy one for like 30c and use an essence of greed on it like I did.
Last edited by dragonsroc on Mar 13, 2017, 11:51:58 PM
http://imgur.com/TdwOJtY

This is what I get for damage life using my rares and Cospris.

This is 5-linked Terminus Est(Nearly Maxed Rolls)

Flicker - CoC - BV - BF - MS

Also, I don't get near the life you have but that might be because my amulet doesnt have 70+ life on it.

I must be doing something wrong?
Last edited by Cynderous on Mar 14, 2017, 12:41:40 AM
"
Cynderous wrote:
http://imgur.com/TdwOJtY

This is what I get for damage life using my rares and Cospris.

This is 5-linked Terminus Est(Nearly Maxed Rolls)

Flicker - CoC - BV - BF - MS

Also, I don't get near the life you have but that might be because my amulet doesnt have 70+ life on it.

I must be doing something wrong?


Damage looks fine. Remember that there are 3 different skills doing damage, so you can't just look at one stat. On top of that, Bladefall hits multiple times per cast, but PoB doesn't account for that. With whatever that skill is, you're probably getting ~120k DPS. If you want to be a tooltip whore, you need to use a 6L Cospri's + shock + wither totem + vulnerability and 20/20 gems. I get over 1M dps in total with that, even only putting in a 10 stack BV.

Using a Cospri's and all the other items in my guide, you should sit around 5k life at lv85. Not sure what level you are, but levels matter a lot to life builds.
Last edited by dragonsroc on Mar 14, 2017, 12:51:27 AM
Sitting at 84 right now. So Throatseeker isn't required?
"
Cynderous wrote:
Sitting at 84 right now. So Throatseeker isn't required?


I'm not sure why you'd ever take Throatseeker if you aren't an ES build in that area. It's really out of the way.
Nice build. I will try it for sure. look fun.

2 question for you.

What about the end game ? First id say that i never have done any guardien or shaper or uber atziri. What my chance to kill at least an guardian with that build ??

And do you think Rat's nest can be good v Stark ? (i got one on my char atm)= a great 6l evasion so i could wait for cospri
I haven't done any guardians with this build yet, but I've been able to do T14 maps including a solo Death and Taxes with 2 people in the instance. All done without my uber ascendency which is a major damage boost. Using the gear shown which is worth ~1-1.5 ex.

I thought about Rat's nest over Starkonja, but don't think it's worth it. You don't need the extra crit, and the movespeed doesn't matter either unless you're using Cyclone. But Starkonja's 100 health (300 after increases) is way better than the extra crit you don't need. The high dex is also very nice for accuracy. The build is already using 0 health chest/gloves and no shield, so you really need that health from Starkonja. As a bonus, you're going to find Starkonja's with enchants way cheaper than Rat's nest. Especially since Mathil's Mortem build recommends Starkonja so lots of people will be enchanting them.
Last edited by dragonsroc on Mar 14, 2017, 2:30:01 PM
How would you say this build compares to your vortex/blight build post nerf? Also whats the HC viability of this build. Those bleeds in your cyclone video almost ripped you

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