[3.0] Elemental Dreamfeather FB Raider (200k+DPS tooltip,180% MS,75%Dodge/Spell Dodge,80k Evasion)

Path of Building
Actual character
https://pastebin.com/tQ4CE3Tq

Character sheet and dps
With frenzy charges, auras, flasks, golem and Vaal Haste :


The Elemental Frostblade ? Wut ?
I've seen this misconception about Dreamfeather a lot around here, that you should convert Dreamfeather physical damage into elemental damage, then scale it with physical damage nodes, Hatred, Taste of Hate and Atziri's Promise. This is a poor use of this very strong weapon in 3.0.

We now have plenty of support gems and nodes that can scale elemental damage, so there's no point scaling the phys part.
The recent buff to Ice Bite and Added Cold Damage synergize insanely well with Dreamfeather's high base attack speed.
Finally, both Taste of Hate and Atziri's Promise are a lot weaker because of their short uptime against bosses that you can't kill in mere seconds anymore, while taking flask slots, which leaves you with very little room for other flasks (since you absolutely want a Jade and Stibnite flask as well).

Pros
Immune to Ailments, Bleed, Curses, Poison, Blind and Maim
High movement speed that can get even higher with Queen of the Forest for lab runs
Capped attack/spell dodge without Vaal Grace, with ~80k evasion rating and ~5k life
Vaal Pact
Can run elemental reflect maps
Can freeze, chill and blind
Insane clearspeed, decent single-target
High flask uptime
Nothing more expensive than a pair of Dreamfeathers required

Cons
It's not a crit build, so you won't reach millions of DPS even with dozens of exalts of gear.
You might have to refill your flasks in your hideout against T13+ bosses that don't summon adds.
Evasion build, so don't try to facetank big attacks. There's a 95% chance it won't hit you, but if it does, you're dead.
It's a bit weak while leveling until you get Dreamfeathers.
Absolutely not SSF friendly.

Skill tree and bandit
Skill Tree

We completely ignore the nodes that are not scaling elemental damage. Evasion nodes are bad even with two Dreamfeathers, we only take these if they have other interesting bonus or if it's on the way.
The flask nodes are incredibly powerful for a build that relies that much on the evasion given by the Jade/Stibnite flasks.
Some elemental nodes are not required and you can get more life and damage by taking jewel sockets instead, but I like the increased chill effect they give.
You want to put a Frostblade threshold jewel in the first two sockets, and Poacher's Aim in another socket : the pierce will give you much more clearspeed against packs than any gg rare jewel would.
Elemental Overload is absolutely required for any non-crit elemental build. There's nothing even close DPS-wise, even if it's so far away.

For your ascendancy, get Way of the Poacher first, then get Quartz Infusion and Avatar of the Veil : you want the dodge chance and the ailment immunity the moment you start maping, the slight DPS boost given by Avatar of the Slaughter can wait until you can complete Uber lab.

For leveling, the skill tree is straight-forward, go for life nodes first if you feel squishy, or elemental nodes if you feel not powerful enough. Don't take Phase Acro right after Acro, it can wait until lvl 60+. There's no weapon-specific nodes, so you can even level with a bow and Ice Shot.

For the bandit quest reward, Kraityn is the best option, dodge chance is hard to find so we should get it anywhere we can. Attack speed and movement speed are also valuable stats.

Gear
When building an evasion character, my rule of thumb is to not have more than one non-weapon piece of gear without life. Strength characters get 150-200 flat life for free, dexterity characters don't, and we've also lost 40 flat life from the 2.6 bandit reward, so we have to be careful about flat life.
Current gear





Explanation:
Weapons
The whole build works only with two Dreamfeathers. If you have currency to waste you can corrupt them for Culling Strike and/or cold leech.

Helmet
Starkonja's Head has high life, high evasion, attack speed, dexterity for more global evasion, it's BiS and it's cheap.

Devoto's Devotion is for lab runs only if you want any bit of movement speed you can get.

Chest Piece
Hyrri's Ire has no life, but the other bonus more than make up for it. High evasion, dodge and spell dodge, extremely good flat cold damage, even some dexterity for global evasion boost.

Queen of the Forest is an other strong option. High evasion, life, res and an insane amount of movement speed, but you won't be able to reach the dodge cap.

Belt
Dyadian Dawn gives you some of the strength required to equip your Dreamfeathers, it has life, res and life leech that's lacking since we are not going into the Duelist area and only get the Shadow node.

You can also get a rare belt with similar stats plus flask effect duration and/or elemental damage, but it's expensive and the leech is more important imo.

Boots

Atziri's Step has evasion, life, movement speed, spell dodge. Cheap and strong, easy to get a good corruption (dodge chance or extra frenzy) if you don't need a boots enchant.

Three-step Assault is slightly better than Atziri's with onslaught, slightly worse without it. It's an ok choice.

Gloves, rings and amulet
Rare ones. That's where you're getting most of your resistances. You absolutely need a high life roll on each, you can also get some flat cold, attack speed or elemental damage if you have enough currency. Get some strength for your Dreamfeathers as well, or it will cost you one extra passive point to get the requirements

Flasks
You want Experimenter's on most of these to get a ~6s base duration (8s with the flask nodes), except the Stibnite flask that has already a high base duration. It doesn't matter how your flask suffixes are distributed, just try to get the evasion boost on your Stibnite flask, since it will absolutely always be up and it's a huge DPS boost.

If you want to get Onslaught, you can also change your life flasks for a silver flask, or your quicksilver flask for a Rotgut. Personally, I like having an instant life flask, and Rotgut is a single-use flask that will destroy your DPS for a few seconds, so I don't like it much either.


Gem Setup

Main skill (support gem in order of priority)
Frostblade → Added Cold Damage → Elemental Damage with Attacks → Multistrike/Ruthless → Ice Bite → Damage on Full Life

Multistrike is better for pack clearing with the auto target, Ruthless makes it easier to move around and to chill/freeze bosses.
Ice Bite can be replaced by Elemental Focus for more damage, but it's an off color gem for the evasion chest piece, and you won't be able to freeze and chill.
Damage on Full Life is the best last support gem, as an evasion character with Vaal Pact you should be on full life almost all the time.


Aura setup
Grace – Herald of ice (- Arctic Armour - Enlighten)

Evasion and flat cold damage. If you can get a helmet with reduced mana reservation for Grace/HoI/AA and a lvl 3 or 4 Enlighten, you can get an extra aura.


Single target boost
Frost bomb – Vaal Haste – Increased Duration

Less cold resistance for monsters, more attack speed for you.


Movement + Curse
Charged Dash – Fortify – Curse on hit/Cast while Channeling – Frostbite/Enfeeble/Temporal Chains

With your high movement speed, you only need a movement skill to pass over a gap or to get to higher places, the only melee skill that allows it is Charged Dash. You also use it to get Fortify and to apply a curse, either to the ennemies you're hitting with CoH, or to the area you are targeting with CwC.


Golem
Lightning Golem – Minion Life – Minion Resistances

The lightning golem has the best offensive boost, we use some support gems to make it a bit tankier since we have plenty of space.


Free space
There's still a 4L that's free, you can get an Ancestral Warchief in here if you have enough strength, a portal, an enduring cry, a phase run or whatever gem you want to level.


Pantheon
It's a bit underwhelming, but there are some bonus that can be useful to the build

Major God
Soul of Solaris is pretty good against hits that could kill you, the Penitentiary Incarcerator bonus is nice since you won't get hit often and the Lady Stormflay part is not too bad either.


Minor God
You have more choice here. Ryslatha is a huge help to Vaal Pact builds trying to do uber trials and lab, Tukohama is an option if you want to try and facetank bosses (absolutely not recommanded). My go-to node is Ralakesh for the blind immunity, it's not that good but that's still something.


Questions?
If there's anything you want to ask or say about the build, feel free to do so on this topic, or PM me, either on the forum or IG. Thanks for reading.
Last edited by Noisnamalark on Aug 24, 2017, 5:18:56 AM
Last bumped on Sep 15, 2017, 7:41:35 AM


Thanks for sharing this. I am doing the similar build using the dreamfeather. I totally agree that this build should be based on elemental flat damage rather than physical damage. It’s interesting to see you go all the way up to the elemental overload. I would like to try this as well. Just have couple questions below:

Life/mana leech: You got life leech from the belt, how about mana?

Faster attack vs dmg on full life: faster attack means more coverage of the elemental overload, event hough the damage boost may be less than dmg on full life.

Hyrri’s ire vs Queen of the Forest: The queen sees a overall better for me, eventhough the Hyrri has good cold damage, how do you think about this?

Last edited by allforone999 on Aug 18, 2017, 8:04:47 PM
For mana leech, I get a mana leech node near Acrobatics, it's enough to sustain the mana cost of Frost Blades even at lvl 40 (assuming you are not using a Tabula).

The issue with Faster Attacks gem is that the more attack speed you have on your build, the less interesting it becomes. I already get attack speed on my helmet, on my gloves, on my golem, on my skill tree (especially with the Raider ascendancy), on Kraityn's quest reward, and on frenzy charges. According to PoB, a 20/20 FA with my current character is ~20% more damage, nowhere near as powerful as Damage on Full Life. I feel like Elemental Overload is already easy enough to sustain, but since there's still space for some more gems you can get a Orb of Storm setup to make it even easier.

For the chest piece, I like Hyrri's Ire better, the closer you are to dodge cap the more interesting the stat becomes, and the flat cold damage is a ~10% dps boost (it's even higher at lower levels). I already get 180% increased movement speed from the Raider ascendancy, my flasks and my boots, and it's enough to move at a comfortable speed while farming. However, Queen of the Forest is by no mean a bad choice, it makes it easier to cap your res, and you'll get some insane speed, personally I find it awkward to control a character with 350% increased movement speed.
Tell me what the bandit to choose ? I very bad know English !
Completely forgot the bandit, guide updated.
"
Noisnamalark wrote:
For mana leech, I get a mana leech node near Acrobatics, it's enough to sustain the mana cost of Frost Blades even at lvl 40 (assuming you are not using a Tabula).

The issue with Faster Attacks gem is that the more attack speed you have on your build, the less interesting it becomes. I already get attack speed on my helmet, on my gloves, on my golem, on my skill tree (especially with the Raider ascendancy), on Kraityn's quest reward, and on frenzy charges. According to PoB, a 20/20 FA with my current character is ~20% more damage, nowhere near as powerful as Damage on Full Life. I feel like Elemental Overload is already easy enough to sustain, but since there's still space for some more gems you can get a Orb of Storm setup to make it even easier.

For the chest piece, I like Hyrri's Ire better, the closer you are to dodge cap the more interesting the stat becomes, and the flat cold damage is a ~10% dps boost (it's even higher at lower levels). I already get 180% increased movement speed from the Raider ascendancy, my flasks and my boots, and it's enough to move at a comfortable speed while farming. However, Queen of the Forest is by no mean a bad choice, it makes it easier to cap your res, and you'll get some insane speed, personally I find it awkward to control a character with 350% increased movement speed.


Thanks for the reply. Are you in the harbinger league? How much did your glove cost you? It looks mad good to me. I agree that if the rings and amulet and gloves are good enough, the Hyrri will end up surpass the Queen. Can you show your progress on the character (Guardians, haper or Uber Atziri)? Also do you think the golem really beneficial at the end game, I think having a 3-4 link setup on a warchief could be a big boost on the single target.
Yep, I'm playing Harbinger. I got lucky for the gloves, I removed a bad affix with an Annulment Orb, which allowed for attack speed craft.

I'm quite bored of the Harbinger league already so I haven't tried all of the late game bosses, although I did Phoenix today and it was alright, it should work just as well for the other. The single target is decent enough to destroy bosses like Uber Izaro but really isn't what makes this build good, it's more about the clearspeed while having good mobility and very high defences against packs. From my experience, this build can clear any combination of red map mods, except the "no leech" one.

I'm not sure Ancestral Warchief would really help for single target damage, it requires more strength than I have, it doesn't get the cold pen from the jewels, the damage is quite low on a 4L, and it easily get killed without totem life nodes.

The golem is easy to keep alive with two support gems, so there's really no downside to use it if you're not lacking room for your other gems.
whether they play on hardcore ?
I'm not sure if that's what you're asking, but this build is definitely hardcore viable. It has really high defences for a ranger, and even if you screw up and fail to avoid a big slam, you are far more likely to survive it with high dodge chances and evasion rating, rather than 10% extra hp. Having a high evasion rating means that you are also far less likely to get hit by a crit or simultaneous attacks, which are the most common deaths.
Hi, can you tell me the name of mana leech node near Acrobatics? I can find it in the tree.

Report Forum Post

Report Account:

Report Type

Additional Info