3.0 HOWA Trickster with some aura effect wow very creative

Kind and curious people keep asking me to give build advice or have an opinion about the build every time I log on, probably because they saw a level 100 CI lightning strike build on the ladder. After about a month of answering random stuff, a friend gave me the bright idea to make an opinion dump and basic guide on the forums to I stop complaining about it to him so here we are. This is not and likely will not be a well edited guide and I do apologize for that

I've been asked over 50 times about general build questions so I put this together. While this is not a great guide by any means, I hope this answers any questions you have.

The main idea of a howa build is to make use of the unique called "Hand of Wisdom and Action"
Basically, with this unique, the more intelligence you stack, the more flat lightning damage you get. Since int also grants % increased Energy Shield, many howa builds stack energy shield on gear and take the keystone "Chaos Inoculation" and this build is one of those. This build is slightly different because it goes for large amounts of aura effect though

Since Int is a good stat... and %damage is a good stat... and aura effect is a good stat... and % energy shield is a good stat, you can't really fuck up a howa tree like this too badly but I'll go over some basic trees

I also won't be going over how to level early sorry, just get a hand of thought and motion and astramentis and face roll everything.


Level 70ish tree for when you get out of blood aqueducts / oasis and are in low tier maps


My level 89 tree looked roughly like this


My level 97 tree would look like this, I technically had a slightly different build with more ES until I switched to something close to the above at 99.

Pierce is for lightning strike, get aoe if you are using an aoe skill and proj speed if you are using spectral throw.

My version of the build pretty much requires a lot of reduced aura effect because I wanted Grace, Wrath and Discipline in the build, more info in Item explanation.


Arrow Dancing is good but optional if you decide to path down there - more info in faq

Another reminder - MAKE SURE YOU HAVE LARGE AMOUNTS OF ATTACK SPEED IN YOUR JEWELS

This is a howa build so yeah... use a howa.


Incandescent Heart gives you the only life leech you need, gives some free and reflect proof damage but those aren't the important part.

Because CI makes you immune to chaos damage, this chest effectively gives you 25% less elemental damage from all hits (including reflect.) For this build, a STR INT hybrid chest is very easy to colour and it is a 4c or less item for near perfect stats... even with its low ES, this chest was VERY good pre-ES nerfs and managed to avoid an ES nerf itself. Compared to a very well rolled 500+ es chest or a ES atziri splendour this is BiS for sure.


A almost perfect rare or a really nice Eye of the Greatwolf beat Astramentis but they are a pain to get and astramentis is almost as good.

Note that if you do not take anything from templar start and have no other strength on gear, a perfect astramentis will put you get you to 140 strength, you will need 155 strength to use a level 20 ancestral protector so either don't level it fully or take strength nodes somewhere, get some on jewels.



They are cheap, solve your accuracy problems, and give you a massive chunk of %increased evasion to scale with stuff like grace and shade form, pretty much BiS but if you are willing, some god tier ES insanity gloves will give you more clear speed



Evasion + ES uniques, they are good enough to use to 100 and cheap. the dodge helps more than you think.

Also Attack speed on kill for boots is the best for clear speed so I recommend trying to get those.



Get ES, resists and INT on your rares. Keep your res balanced for wise oak if you can help it
If you want to min max you can aim for high WED Opal rings but they aren't needed for basic mapping so I never bothered. Get an uber enchanted reduced mana reservation for discipline, wrath or grace helmet for running my aura setup



Replace a flask for a quicksilver for easy map spam like shaped race course, those are the flasks I used for beachheads and mino maze farming


Some jewel examples, if you can't get 4 prop jewels get 14-16%+ attack speed jewels

First off, yes I actually used lightning strike for the majority of my grind to 100. I'll go over the basic skills you can use with howa though:

Lightning Strike: Map permitting this is the fastest clear speed skill you can use, especially good for hitting all 3 bosses in race course and because of that, makes race course boss actually worth killing! Good for solo beachhead, oddly okay for mino maze, complete dogshit for many other maps though so if you like map variety over shaped strats, consider a different skill. Do NOT run multistrike with it if you care about your FPS, I go from 60 to 15 with multistrike. Gem swap to blade flurry if you need more single target bosses (if you care enough.)

Spectral Throw: The popular choice and decent at everything, requires gem swap for easy map bosses and has middling clear speed are its only real downsides

Blade Flurry: Area of effect was nerfed to high hell and back, pretty bleh clear speed but good single target.

Cyclone: Claws are not very good for cyclone but since trickster removes cyclones mana cost this is okay if you like cyclone... should probably use a higher range weapon though

Shield Charge: If you looked at my PoB, you may have noticed that the avg damage is pretty high BUT the range of damage is so high that its awkward as hell to shield charge with. Do not recommend

Charged Dash: Kind of a shitty skill to use in general for non proc / CWC builds. Since this build is pretty immortal during mapping and trickster removes charged dash's mana cost, this is one of the best charged dash builds you can make oddly enough... still not that great though.


Reave: If you don't like vaal grace or haste or really want to play reave, yeah its fine. I don't like keeping vaal reave stacks up personally.

Everything else I have no opinion / it sucks.



No you aren't going to ever get this build to go QOTF Wander/Bow or headhunter EK speed, sorry.



AURAS: Grace, Discipline, and Wrath are what you want but require LARGE investment into the tree and stuff like helm enchant and enlighten to pull off if you are not using a movement skill as your damage dealer. Drop wrath or grace for a purity or herald if you don't have the requirements until you do

I will not go over every support gem or skill choice; If you care enough, go POB it.

Q: I thought CI and ES dead now? Especially CI attack builds! Reddit told me so!?

A; Okay so 3.0 clubbed howa with nerfs: The total amount of ES you could get on a lot of builds dropped significantly, CI lost the nodes behind it, ghost reaver now reduces recharge rate, VP just does not work with ES anymore, and howa itself got changed to no longer give global flat lightning damage and now only gives local damage, albeit at a higher amount... so ES is dead right?

Well turns out with all of the changes you can still get a 8-12k ES character with good clear speed that can do almost every map mod in the game for a comfortable mapping experience with many builds, howa included.


Q: What Pantheons did you take?

A: Brine King and Yugul



Q: What ascendancy points did you take?

A: Walk The Aether for clear speed, Swift Killer for clear speed, ghost dance and shade form because defense



Q: Wait why trickster?

A: You actually have enough ES to run Incandescent Heart as trickster and Walk the Aether lets me not reroll no regen maps and when you run however many 1000 maps to hit max level, reducing map mods you care about is really, really nice. The evasion and dodge are also good but raider also has those so I don't consider it a "plus"



Q: Why no vinktar?

A: It gives a good chunk of damage but you are never in range to shock stuff and I capped my leech rate with the .8% leech from chest so keeping it up is lame and pointless.




This section covers the general sense of why I went with auras and evasion and how I dealt with reflect ect.


Q: Why did you go so far to get auras in your build and aura effect?

A: A combination of reasons... first is its a way to get more flat es from disc, since flat es is semi scarce now this helps. Second is you MUST find a way to deal with reflect now on es based builds. This build uses a lot of evasion and dodge to help in that regard. Since I was getting the aura effect anyway, squeezing in wrath cost me 20c for a helm and 100c to role it for a large damage increase.



Q:How much evasion / dodge are you using and why go for it?

A:Currently have 9.5k ES and 20K evasion without flasks on; 40k evasion with flasks on. With Vaal Grace and flasks on I had 71% Dodge and 65% Spell Dodge. These are REALLY good for extra layers of protection and combined with stuff like Incandescent Heart and Wise oak for elemental damage reduction... this build was pretty much immortal. I survived roughly 80-100 crashes in HC without dying in the middle of beachheads and t16s and breach spam race courses ect hilariously enough.



Q: Whats the lowest you ever saw yourself drop in ES?

A: I never dropped below 3k es once I hit 9k+. When I was grinding I had roughly 10.5k at 98 and never dropped below 4k since 96ish except for 1 time I dropped very low... fucking single reflect sometimes spooks you. Against normal mobs I really might as well had 6k es. Probably dropped low in some of my crashes though to be fair.



Q: Wait you have all this reflect anti reflect shit and you still almost died to single?

A: YES BE CAREFUL PICKING UP RANDOM SUPPORTS AND RUNNING THE SEXTANT "increased lightning damage taken and given" AND SLAPPING THE REFLECT BOSS IN RACECOURSE, FUCKING SPOOKY. For what its worth, under normal circumstance you can the reflect boss as much as you want.


Q: What about arrow dancing? Seems pretty good for this build.

A: With the amount of evasion in this build, arrow dancing makes you essentially immune to attack projectiles it is obviously really good. That being said, when I was still grinding, I felt like if I ever die to something in this game at that time, It would be to those shitty beyond rare flickers so decided against it. Personal choice since you clearly don't need it but its really good, reflect is super safe with it.


Q: I'm in softcore and/or fuck defense! What would you change for me?

A: Drop dodge stuff / vaal grace and use vaal haste, drop some es and get some more attack speed and use a quicksilver even in beachhead or mino maze ect... thats about it really



Q: Why did you decide to play this?

Short Story: Friend bet me I wouldn't/couldn't hit 90/100

Long Story: I'm surprised people ask me this but there is actually a shit story behind this. It was because a friend was acting like "ggg is garbage ES is dead ect" and I called him a retard (enter generic bakedchicken vs raizqt argument here). He ended up betting me I couldn't hit 90 with a CI attack build with some stipulations (must be in HHC, must rush CI and stay CI for entire leveling, I was allowed 1 leveling unique and no restrictions otherwise.

If you have ever seen it before, I was essentially bet 50$ CAD to do a really easy version of karv's CI melee challenge. When I hit 90 he said "Fuck, uh, double or nothing if you can hit 100?"

I bought him some pizza as a consolation prize.

Q: Are you Canadian?

A: ...Yes