[3.0] [Shaper Video] [SC] Rune's Dark Pact Trickster - The Flagellant.

Rune's Dark Pact Trickster - The Flagellant.



Hi! This is my lvl 97 Dark Pact Trickster in Harbinger league.


Videos:


POB link:
https://pastebin.com/W5457qt6

This build is a compromise between clearspeed and Shaper viability. So the build gear choices are heavily focused on casting speed and attack speed. Crit chance / Multiplier are secondary, but absolutely something I can never get enough of.

From being an agile trickster evasion comes naturally, so this is an evasion acrobatics caster.

Gear and Links to get you started:

This is my main mapping setup.
Special Mention goes to The Flow Untethered here. What an awesome belt, if you are like me and cannot afford a headhunter, then this is the belt for you. Added bonus over Headhunter is that it works great on bosses. The buff has a 50% uptime and is a 20% more modifier to attack, cast and movespeed. Adds tons of survivability, damage and clearspeed all in 1.
I had to make my daggers myself. I would say I spent something like 300c to make both. be prepared to fail alot with Essence of Misery. However 20% cast speed is something like 50+ spelldamage so don't be fooled by the cheap non casting speed daggers on PoE Trade. I suppose if you want to save money somewhere then get daggers wo casting speed. They are supercheap. However that would make the build alot slower and clunkier, altough it would make it safer to play in a way since you wont kill yourself as fast.
I should also mention that if you go Patient Reaper as the ascendancy from Uber Lab you need fire damage on one of your weapons to activate the effect, thats the reason I have it on one of mine.
Boot slots are for 25sec arcane surge, optimally I would have faster casting instead of enhance, but 4 offcolors... soon tho, soon.

Optimised Gear and links:

Gear Swaps:
Special mention goes to Soul Thether here, this belt is VERY powerful when used with Vaal pact + Dark Pact. I First build around this belt when leveling to 93, it adds 2k hp to my pool when mapping. It is not that effective on bosses tho, so when I started guardians I specced out of it.
Shaper's Touch are nice if you cannot afford to make gloves with Essence of Insanity and they go especially well with Soul Tether giving you another 500 or so ES to your pool. However there is no substitute for a good pair of Insanity gloves. I would make this a priority.
When doing endgame bosses I swap in the life/crit amulet, when mapping i use Bisco's Collar
When starting mapping I used a pair of Two-Toned boots I made with Orb of Binding, however a good pair of Atziri's Step is prefered when you manage to fix your resist. The same can be said about the belt slot, if you cant afford it on resist to use a unique belt then just go with a good'ol resist belt until you do.


Flasks:
Nothing special here, haven't even bothered to optimise.
Atziri's Promise is to get more leech on Harbingers and when facetanking

Jewels:
life > multi/resists > casting speed/cast & attack speed/spelldmg/crit chance/chaos dmg. In that order.

PoB Shaper Stats with current gear:


Tooltips:



For bandits go either Alira or 2 passives depending on if you can handle the resist and mana regen wo Aliras help. In the long term 2 passives will be much better.

Passive Tree:

"

Nazdravanix wrote:

Just some tips for those that want to try this out.

Leveling with Dark Pact from when you get it is highly possible if you mange your life flasks well. Single target is a struggle but with some skill you can easily get through on damage alone (4 link until act 8 did me fine.) Just be prepared to port back to town for flask charges on boss fights.

Gear is not cheap but it isn't out of this world expensive either. You can get by on Divinarius easily until you can afford better daggers. Resists are difficult as you incorporate the uniques into the build but running rare boots over Atziri's Step is a big help.

New players beware this build isn't easy to play and it takes good knowledge of the game mechanics and a certain level of mechanical skill and attention. In saying that though if you want to challenge yourself give it a go you will enjoy it.

If you are struggling on bosses when leveling with Dark Pact grab a Vaal Summon Skeleton gem. Makes a huge difference to those bosses where it works.

Thats the rough outline, I would not advice a new player to try this build as it needs some gear crafting and trigger finger handling. As a result it is moderately expensive, but if you can handle it I would say it is VERY rewarding to play.
Superfast, superfun.

Good Luck!

Rune

would 2 divinarius daggers be a good alternative for more area off?
https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Divinarius

Divinarius
Imperial Skean
Daggers
Quality: +20%
Physical Damage: 22.8–91.2
Critical Strike Chance: 6.30%
Attacks per Second: 1.45
Weapon Range: 8
Requires Level 66, 95 Dex, 131 Int
30% increased Global Critical Strike Chance
(50-70)% increased Spell Damage
(80-100)% increased Critical Strike Chance for Spells
+10 Life gained on Kill
+5 Mana gained on Kill
10% increased Area of Effect of Area Skills

Sure Divinarius is not that bad until you can get some cast speed daggers. You don't really need the radius, but it certanly doesn't hurt. They are reasonably fast so good for whirling blades, a much better choice than the slow 1.2 daggers that people are crafting.

However when comparing the following daggers:

The Divinarius drops my dps with roughly 10%. Ofcourse the rolls are not awesome on the Divinarius, they are above average.
But you do have a point, Divinarius is an ok starter weapon. Just be prepared to swap it out for a big boy gun when you got the cash to start rolling Misery Daggers.

Awesome build. Love the trickster, love the flavor, love all of it.

Did you start leveling with DP as soon as it was available or did you use Freezing Pulse/Firetrap for a long time?

Also I'd love to know your bandit choice and the order of your ascendancy points.

thank you i start now a new character with this build the play style looks really like my kind of gaming

"

Brentyfresh wrote:

Awesome build. Love the trickster, love the flavor, love all of it.

Did you start leveling with DP as soon as it was available or did you use Freezing Pulse/Firetrap for a long time?

Also I'd love to know your bandit choice and the order of your ascendancy points.

Thats a surprisingly good question.

This was originally meant as a freezing pulse build, and yes, I leveled as freezing pulse actually all the way to t12 maps before I realised I could not progress. Mainly cause of reflect and low damage. I tried out Dark Pact and a whole new world opened up to me.

For ascendancy order I would say grab Swift killer, then Walk the Aether, then Weave the Arcane, then take whatever you like. Neither option after that adds anything meaningful unless you go MoM and/or use Soul Tether. You can drop Grace and go MoM if you want. I would not recommend MoM for Guardians and Shaper however, but for general mapping it works great and adds an extra layer of defence if you can find the passive points to invest in a couple of extra mana nodes.

For bandits I grabbed 2 passive points. Alira however may be better, mana and resists are a big issue. So yes I actually recommend Alira for bandit choice. It also upens up for more damage on the jewels.

"

Thats a surprisingly good question.

This was originally meant as a freezing pulse build, and yes, I leveled as freezing pulse actually all the way to t12 maps before I realised I could not progress. Mainly cause of reflect and low damage. I tried out Dark Pact and a whole new world opened up to me.

For ascendancy order I would say grab Swift killer, then Walk the Aether, then Weave the Arcane, then take whatever you like. Neither option after that adds anything meaningful unless you go MoM and/or use Soul Tether. You can drop Grace and go MoM if you want. I would not recommend MoM for Guardians and Shaper however, but for general mapping it works great and adds an extra layer of defence if you can find the passive points to invest in a couple of extra mana nodes.

For bandits I grabbed 2 passive points. Alira however may be better, mana and resists are a big issue. So yes I actually recommend Alira for bandit choice. It also upens up for more damage on the jewels.

All really good insight. I'll probably mess around with DP as soon as I can to see how it feels, but I'm sure FP is likely the better option before higher health and gear levels. Excited to see how this plays. Thanks!

"

Brentyfresh wrote:

All really good insight. I'll probably mess around with DP as soon as I can to see how it feels, but I'm sure FP is likely the better option before higher health and gear levels. Excited to see how this plays. Thanks!

Alright, let me know how it turns out!

"

Cool build. I was wondering if you can ascent as an Assassin and have it possibly still be viable. I also was wondering about the boss killing ability the build has. I know you were able to do Shaper, but I was wondering how comfortable you felt doing it, and same with the other guardians.

I may give this build a try, so thanks for the post!

I am sure you can do assassin if you don't mind loosing clearing speed. I see no reason assassin would not work. I picked trickster for the attack and casting speed + easy charge management, and once/if I solve my mana issues I'll get the nice defence aswell. Evasion caster works pretty well on end game bosses. I facetank Minotaur with stibnites pretty easily. Chimera is also easy, Hydra too since i have decent mobility. Only guardian that gives me a little trouble is Phoenix. Shaper is fine really, only trouble i have is the second miniboss. He sometimes freeze me and slam me. And, well as you can see in the video it can get a little hectic in phase 3.

There is no way i can facetank the yellow balls from Shaper. I need to use the mobility in the build to dodge and position myself. It is a fun playstyle, maybe a little challenging, but damage is there no doubt.

This is the reason i stress the use of ambushers and not the slow 1.2 daggers. I need the mobility so I can quickly dodge incoming attacks.

I just did 48 guardian runs and 12 Shaper sets, I die once in a while, but overall I'm pretty happy with it. I still have alot to go on with upgrades. Both my rings needs upgrades, and I would like to get better daggers. I think it is solid overall. But if you are going for a dedicated Shaper build then I am sure there are better alternatives. Maybe Assassin is better for that.
Like I said in the start this is a compromise between mapping and bossing. I wanted to be good at both, not an expert in one or the other.