[2.6] - Death Style – EK – Pathfinder

Pathfinder is fast and strong and the Ascendencies are awesome. We want all of them.

We want Master Herbalist, gives free Poison during flask effect, very strong, basically makes a 7-link.

We want Master Alchemist, gives Immunity to Freeze, Shock and Ignite. We need Shock Immunity because we use Vinktars and we need Freeze Immunity. You could get Flasks to solve these problems but we dont want to do that, more on flasks later.

We also want Master Surgeon. The goal is to kill bosses, strong Flasks help us doing that, but they have short duration. We need Master Surgeon to sustain flask uptime indefinitely. It is still possible to do that with spamming crits, more on it later.

We need 10 Ascendency points, but we can only get 8. You could fix this by dropping Immunities and waste flask slots or by giving up on free poison. We dont want to do that either. The Solution has awesome 3D Art. The Harvester. Gives us Flask Charges on crit and more leech and 270 crit chance at lvl 90.

Power Charges are comfortably sustained by a cwdt balde vortex pcoc setup. You can cast it yourself if you want but the automated 5-link works 95% of the time. In addition this setup causes additional hits on the target, these hits can crit and therefore give you flask charges aswell.

One big Problem of EK is the mana cost. You can use Blasphemy Warlords mark but then you lose hatred. The boots lab enchant is the best solution but it is only up for a duration of 4 seconds, enough to farm maps but not for longer bossfights. Luckily we can bring worms to the rescue. The Writhing Jar spans 2 worms, per sip and you can sip 5 times as pathfinder. Its is also a instant ES refill in combination with Vinktars, super useful vs uber lab traps. Hit Writhing Jar, hit Vinktars, cast EK once, and ES is full again. easy game. Since Jar is a hybrid flask which always refills the remaining mana, and activates the boots enchant leech effect, we can even do no regen maps. The Harvest refills it faster than you should drink it.

While sustainig flask charges is easy for things like quicksilvers and the writhing jar, it is much more difficult for Vinktars. It consumes up to 55 charges. The vortex helps but on fights with 0 adds ist not enough. Luckily there is another Flask: The Overflowing Chalice’s gives 100% increased Charges gained by Other Flasks during Flask Effect. Combined with passives and ascendencies and „reduced flask charge used“ on our belt, we can sustain all flasks alwasys all the time. Chalice is also a Sulphur flask which is a pretty underused 40% double dipping damage increase.

For Stun Immunity, use chayula, if you have very good gear maybe valyrium but I highly recommend chayula. The Kiara's Determination Flask does not work either, the duration is too short and if you get stunned once, its basically over, no flask generation, not attacking means no vinktars leech, means you die.

We don’t need a movement skill because we run super fast. This is great to fill up our gem slots with usefull support stuff.

www.poeurl.com/bewT

It is a typical crit physical spell caster tree. Scaling mainly the physical damage, this way we still get good benefits from hatred and herald of ash. Projectile damage and the combinded physica/chaos damage nodes at shadow area still double dip our poison and are therefore the most valuable points.

Most EK builds take the pierce nodes on the tree which are not nessessary in my opinion. In strand everything dies instant anyway.

Mandatory Uniques (minimum for mapping)
Actually none, you can map with only rares. They shouldn't be more than 3c each. If you want you can map with 1 Hand Dagger/Wand + Shield but the Sythe looks much coolder.

Chayula is highly recommended, we run directly into packs, if you get stunned, your dead
The Writhing Char, allows us to sustain our mana by refilling it directly (its a hybrid flask) and by killing a worm and thereby activating the Leech Enchant on Boots
The Leech Enchant on Boots is mandatory. If you don't have it you need Blasphemy Warlords Mark or you need some other gimmicky mana recovery.

Mandatory Setup for Bosskilling

The Harvester saves us 4 Ascendancy points and lets us generate infinite flask charges in bossfights

Chalice increases the charge gain of expensive flask like vinktars

Vinktars gives us insane leech, and shocks our enemies for 50% more damage, if you have very good damage and the boss is shock immune u can try switching it for Taste of Hate