I wrote this guide first for 3.20, but it got bodied kind of hard for 3.21. I'm gradually returning to make it work again for sometime in 3.23, but this is lower priority than my other two guides.
Feel free to use it for now, though unless you're already okay with tinkering around, this will probably not be helpful as a leaguestarter for 3.23; I expect the league to be well underway by the time I have this good enough for the players that really need it.
Flicker strike is Path of Exile's fastest skill, but has the tradeoff that it's always been among one of the least-accessible. This guide will demonstrate a way to get into using the skill with a build tailored for use as a league starter. You don't need any chase uniques or specific, expensive items to do this, but instead just one unique that most players usually vendor.
Why Flicker Strike?
Flicker strike already has a fair number of fans, and they're generally familiar with its main upsides and downsides of builds using this skill:
+Clearspeed unrivaled by any other skill.
+Capable of almost all forms of content, both clear and bossing.
+Scales extremely well with investment.
-Hard to build strong defenses: relies almost exclusively upon offense as defense, so you can hit a wall at a given tier of content if your DPS doesn't keep up.
-Extremely difficult to control; requires getting used to working with a skill that picks the direction you travel for you.
-Can cause motion sickness in those prone to it.
This particular build, like all, has its own quirks above just the general properties of the Flicker Strike skill, as well as how Flicker Strike's properties apply for its use:
+Extremely affordable: suitable for a league starter in a trade league, and can be suitable for a second character in Solo Self-Found provided you can find 1-2 requisite items first.
+Powerful: can easily hit 1-2 million DPS on minimal investment, sufficient for farming far-endgame content.
+Extremely fast: this build puts the skill's clearspeed to use to be able to get right to farming endgame content at an extreme speed.
-Doesn't do all map mods freely.
-Lower scaling cap: the DPS for this build starts seeing diminishing returns around 4-5 million Pinnacle DPS, and really falls off past about 10 million.
-Not very good for multiplayer outside of boss fights.
What This Guide Does (And Doesn't Do)
While this guide can make Flicker Strike a viable league start build, the extremely high statistically requirements in order to use the skill make it not plausible to level with the skill and then use this build. So this does not include a direct, act-by-act walkthrough for the build. Instead, it assumes that you've managed to make your way to Act 9 or 10, and to level 67. There are some suggestions top make the transition from your leveling skill to Flicker Strike smoother, but ultimately what you do before then is up to you, and theoretically almost any Slayer-based leveling build would be able to swap over to this build once they reach level 67.
Basic Concepts
Flicker Strike is a very straightforward skill: it's a melee strike attack that begins with a "free" teleport to the enemy it's targeting. (behind them if they're close enough) Its upside is that this teleport is rolled into the attack animation, so as your attack speed increases, so does the rate that you teleport. The downside of the skill is that it has a cooldown to it, but if you have at least one frenzy charge to spare, it will consume it to let you use it during this period.
So functionally, any flicker strike build is primarily defined by how it keeps up a steady supply of frenzy charges so it can be continuously used. (note that "minimum frenzy charges" do not help here; as you cannot go below the minimum, these cannot be spent, either) Also, while the skill has a built-in chance to generate frenzy charges on hit, this alone is insufficient to sustain the skill, so you will always need another source on top of that.
Maintaining Frenzy Charges
There's more than a few popular ways to generate frenzy charges for Flicker Strike. With this build, we're using one of the oldest methods: the unique sword Oro's Sacrifice. Aside from being a cheap sword with extremely high raw DPS, it has a mod that generates a frenzy charge for each attack that ignites an enemy.
Do note the wording: you are limited to gaining just one frenzy charge per attack from this effect; a repeating attack is still just one attack, and no matter how many enemies you ignite, it will still only grant one frenzy charge for the entire attack.
Since frenzy charges are a requirement for Flicker Strike to be useful, and the skill gem also has 10% increased attack speed per frenzy charge, (on top of the 4% increased attack speed and 4% more damage we enjoy) it's only logical to try and maximize how many frenzy charges we have.
Class and Passive Skills
For this build, we're going to be using the Slayer ascendancy class. While high-end Flicker Strike builds almost exclusively go Raider, there is a much more substantial minimum investment for those builds. Slayer provides us with four ascendancy notables that are all-around solid for melee, but especially so when we don't have a huge gear investment. You'll generally want to take them in this order:
Bane of Legends: while leveling, and early on, unique bosses are going to be your big speed bumps. Because "More" effects stack with each other, this is up to a 32% more damage against bosses.
Overwhelm: Because Oro's has only a 5.00% crit chance, this is a functional "60% more critical strike chance" passive. Also, since we always have at least 1 nearby enemy while attacking, that extra crit multiplier is significant. And because enemy base crit multiplier is 130%, so in most situations this will prevent enemies from dealing critical damage to you, an important layer of defense.
Impact: This will be taken primarily because you need the accuracy. If you're still at/close to 100% accuracy during merciless labyrinth, you can do this last. Meanwhile, because Flicker Strike always teleports us up against the enemy we're striking, every attack will get the 15% more damage.
Headsman: This is what cements Slayer's clearspeed overall here. The 20% cull is, functionally, a 25% more damage multiplier, with the added benefit of helping skip part of the (often worse) final stages of bosses. (e.g, against Sirus, this is basically 36% more damage on his last phase, where it really counts) Also, the extra movement speed will always be there if/when you need it: when you need to run between packs should you wind up too far away from one for Flicker Strike to just teleport you. We take this last (or third) because this shines best in higher-tier maps, and also our Oro's still gives us a lesser cull ability. (which this overrides)
As for the base passive tree, here is a link to a PoB & separate passive trees to show your progression, starting from level 67, as well as some explanations for why you're doing what you're doing:
Passive Tree & PoB Links
Complete PoB:https://pastebin.com/1FPMq9hy
This PoB contains four separate trees, gem sets, and equipment sets, all roughly intended to be paired up. Each represents the build at one of four progression points: first at Act 9 or 10 (level 67) when you can first use the build, secondly with a few more levels & some mapping-only gear. Third represents a "solid investment" with about the most you can get without spending much, and having 20/20 gems. Lastly is a "Maximum" that represents level 100, and the most you could reasonably expect to spend, including alt quality & awakened gems, well-rolled uniques, etc.
If you want a direct link to just the bare passive trees, they are available here as well:
Keystone - Iron Reflexes: This will be the only keystone we take. In the current meta, armour is very effective. And since we cannot build a particularly big life pool, we need to reduce the size of some bigger his that reach us. (contrary to popular belief, armour is still useful against big hits, and it can prevent you from dying in a single hit that would kill an evasion-using character)
Masteries
As with pretty much all builds, there are a number of highly relevant masteries. The key part is the order that we take them in; some we take as soon as possible, while others require other things first to be worth the passive point:
Sword - 120% increased Critical Strike Chance with Swords, -20% to Critical Strike Multiplier with Swords: This is the biggest directly-offensive mastery available to us, and we'll take it as soon as we take a Sword notable. (specifically Fatal Blade) Given how few options we have for taking crit chance here, this de facto +9.6% chance for a critical strike is quite valuable.
(Deprecated)Accuracy - Precision has 100% Increased Mana Reservation Efficiency: Typically, Dueslists have the least maximum mana of any class; since we'll be leveling Precision to ensure we always have 100% accuracy rating, this means a substantial chunk of our mana will be reserved for this aura. We should take this mastery as soon as we take Acuity; we should already have this by level 67. (This mastery was removed in 3.21)
Elemental - Exposure you inflict applies at least -18% of the affected Resistance: We have few ways of getting strong exposure on this build; this gives us at least a decent amount. Since our only reasonably accessible source of this is the Eldritch Implicit on gloves, we should only take this as soon as we have gloves that can apply fire exposure.
Attack - 40% increased Melee Damage with Hits at Close Range: Since Flicker Strike always brings us to close range, this is basically a flat-out 40% increased damage; pretty hefty, but still a lower priority than the other offensive masteries that are more mechanically important. Also, the only cluster that'll get us this mastery is Tribal Fury, so it has to wait until we get that at the very least.
Armour and Evasion - Immune to Poison if Equipped Helmet has higher Evasion Rating than Armour / Immune to Bleeding if Equipped Helmet has higher Armour than Evasion Rating: Because we're going to be using an armour-based helmet, this makes is immune to bleeding. Couple this with a jewel that has a "Corrupted Blood cannot be inflicted upon you" corrupt, and we will never have to worry about bleed flasks.
(Optional) Two Hand - 10% Increased Armour per Red Socket on Main Hand Weapon: if we're socketing our skill into our body armour, we can color our Oro's to have 6 red sockets, and thus this means means 60% increased armour for one passive point, which makes this an extremely strong pick. If we're much later in our build and have an Oro's with a good corrupt, we might have as few as 3 red sockets, but we'll have 2 green, which will still leave it as a decent pick.
(Deprecated)Armour - Determination has 25% Increased Mana Reservation Efficiency: Once we have an armour cluster (such as Soul of Steel) we should take this; I recommend having it by level 67, but it's also possible to go without. This is also required if we're to try and fit Anger into our build. We'll definitely need this by the time we get an amulet with Anger has 50% Increased Mana Reservation Efficiency to allow us to simultaneously use Anger, Determination, and Precision. (This mastery was removed in 3.21)
Mana - 12% increased Mana Reservation Efficiency of Skills: After 3.21's removal of a lot of sources of MRE, this is a mandatory pick in order to be able to use Anger, Determination & Precision at the same time.
Jewels
While not immediately required to get going, getting some core jewels will be your first upgrade.
Cluster Jewels: This build only really needs one medium cluster jewel: you will want one with the enchantment Added Small Passive Skills grant: 12% increased Burning Damage, so you can have these two notables: Cremator and Cooked Alive. The former is more crucial: it's what allows us to destroy monster corpses on kill, and prevent things from dying to porcupine explosions. The latter is always a really solid passive for anyone using ignites: the -5% to enemy fire resist stacks with every other source that reduces their fire resistance, including curses & exposure.
Unique Jewels:There is only one unique jewel we'll want, and we won't need it immediately. Once we can use Anger alongside our other auras, we'll want to get a Watcher's Eye. Look for any Eye that can get us at least two of these mods, in order from strongest to weakest:
Damage Penetrates (10-15)% Fire Resistance While Affected By Anger
+(30-50)% to Critical Strike Multiplier While Affected By Anger
(40-60)% Increased Fire Damage While Affected By Anger
(40-60)% Increased Attack Damage While Affected By Precision
+(20-30)% to Critical Strike Multiplier While Affected By Precision
(10-15)% Increased Attack Speed While Affected By Precision
Rare Jewels: While we won't be specifically seeking to stack these, we'll almost inevitably wind up with some free sockets that we won't be filling with cluster or unique jewels. For maximizing our offense, we'll want to prioritize mods in this order: increased Critical Strike Multiplier, increased Attack Speed, increased Damage, and increased Critical Strike Chance. Note that the applicable tags for these mods will be "Swords," "Melee" "Two-Handed (Melee) Weapons," and "Fire Damage;" In spite of us dealing fire damage, Flicker Strike is not a "Fire"-tagged skill, so mods that increase critical strike chance or multiplier with fire skills will not help us here.
Gems
Flicker Strike Supports
With Flicker Strike, there's a very clear order of priority for our support gems.
(deprecated)However, it can also benefit strongly from some alternate quality variants; in fact, we can benefit from every single gem in this setup being either awakened or alternate quality... However none of these variants are mandatory; they're all simply clear upgrades over their normal variant:
[list][li](Divergent->Awakened) Multistrike[/li]
[li](Divergent) Combustion[/li]
[li](Awakened) Melee Splash (replace once you have Tribal Fury or +1 or +2 target gloves)[/li]
[li](Awakened) Elemental Damage with Attack Skills[/li]
[li](Awakened) Fire Penetration[/li]
[li](Divergent) Close Combat (use to replace Melee Splash when you have the gloves)[/li]
[li]Fortify (Oro's Sacrifice corrupted implicit mod)[/li][/list]
The only real explanation any gem needs here is that Combustion, critically, increases your chance to ignite: as Oro's only has a built-in 20%, you will need it to get enough to regularly ignite on each use of Flicker Strike, thus refunding the frenzy charge used to use it.
Obviously, this is more than you'll get gem sockets for: the last one is specifically what to look for as implicits on a corrupted 6L Oro's Sacrifice. You only need the first three to get started (you can transition using a 4L as soon as you hit level 67) but this will remain a strong point of scaling as you further invest.
Lastly, due to the timing of this guide, I do not yet have any information on the use of Vaal Flicker Strike; obviously it provides tremendous burst potential that could potentially delete bosses in a single click, however as of yet not even PoB has the gem implemented, so I cannot really provide much better information.
The following are the other link setups you'll be using; we actually won't need all possible gem sockets, so we don't have to worry about having maximum sockets on every item and/or can level more spare gems. Unless otherwise stated, these are all maximum level:
Cast When Damage Taken (Level 1) - Molten Shell (Level 10) - Increased Duration Support (Level 20+) - Molten Shell (Level 20+) - This is an under-rated defensive setup; this build will have high armour, so with slight investment into cooldown (one passive cluster) you have a high degree of uptime that will soak most incoming damage. Having two different copies of Molten Shell lets you both let it proc passively, but also be able to activate it at will right before a known major incoming source of damage; used properly, this alone can prevent nearly all deaths from telegraphed damage spikes & one-shots.
Leap Slam - Faster Attacks - Inspiration - This helps us maneuver around flickering. If you need to cancel flickering to avoid a danger, (such as a pack of bearers) you use this skill, as it's a lot more instant & quick then just trying to walk out of the way.
Anger - Precision - Determination - Enlighten - This is your ideal aura setup. This will require two masteries + an amulet for Anger to bring the reservation low enough. Until then, drop Anger.
(Vaal) Ancestral Warchief - Ancrestral Protector - Multiple Totems Support - While our extreme mobility means totems don't help us in most situations, these provide some basically-free improvements to our single-target DPS (and substantial ones at that); try and pre-place these before a boss becomes vulnerable.
Summon Stone Golem - The slight damage from a fire golem doesn't make sense, and we don't have the INT to use either lightning or chaos golems, so we take this defensive option.
Rufalius, hybrid Aura/Arc/Mana Guardian | Hemorae, TS Raider | Wuru, Ele Hit Wand Trickster
Very little gear is required outright to start, but this will benefit into the mid-millions of DPS with several gear upgrades as you get into mapping:
Weapon
Oro's Sacrifice is the one 100% absolute requirement of this build. Without it, we don't have the frenzy charges to sustain Flicker Strike. You can use the worst possible Oro's and a 4-link setup in your gloves or other slot to begin finishing Act 10 the moment you hit level 67: this alone will delete Kitava near-instantly, and breeze right through the first several map tiers. Getting meaningful upgrades to this is difficult, but once you have the funds (dozens of divines) it pays off. Generally this is the order you want to go in:
6 linked sockets. Getting to 6L is always a huge damage boost. This can also be done on your body armour instead.
A high eDPS roll. Because you don't have much for flat added damage, your total DPS will scale directly with your weapon's elemental Damage Per Second. This will range from 726.375 to 833.125 for an uncorrupted weapon.
Harvest Enchantment replacing quality's effect. Normally quality does nothing on an Oro's; an enchant is thus "free" DPS. 1% attack speed per 4% quality is the best, but it's almost tied with 1% elemental damage per 2% quality. Obviously, combine this with a Hillock bench (or other means) to get your quality as high as 30%. (only 28% is needed for attack speed, as 30% does nothing more)
Corrupted Implicits. There's actually only one corrupt that alone provides an appreciable increase to our damage: Socketed Gems are Supported by Level 10 Fortify. The implicit (5-7)% increased Attack Speed is the next strongest, but is actually worse than the base implicit of 30% increased Elemental Damage with Attack Skills; so any corrupt (including a double corrupt) that does not include the former is basically worse than an uncorrupted Oro's.
Likewise, a not-insignificant benefit comes from our enchantment, which cannot be applied to an already-corrupted weapon, which means we will need to spend the 5,000 Lifeforce to enchant it before gambling, which is not an insignificant amount.
This basically means that you have to have a sword that was enchanted and have good rolls before it was corrupted. The number of such swords floating about will be few to none, so ultimately you may have to gamble heavily to make this yourself. Getting a fortify + attack speed double corrupt is worth around 15% more DPS, on top of the survivability fortify grants. This is an extreme-investment route: getting just Fortify alone is a 2.44% chance on a Vaal Orb (4.89% on a double corrupt) while getting both is a 0.527% chance... And at minimum you're spending 5,000 Lifeforce & a Locus for each attempt.
The only silver lining is that at least you needn't spend anything on sockets/links/quality beforehand, as those can be accomplished using tainted jewellers' orbs, tainted orbs of fusing, and tainted blacksmiths' whetstones.
For all other gear slots, we have a lot more flexibility. Keep in mind, however, that we need to fit in a few mods where we can: not just capping our resists, but getting enough intelligence (111, or 114 for level 21) to use a max-level Combustion Support gem will be tricky. Also, even though we're using Precision, you will likely need to get a few hundred extra accuracy rating from your gear to stay at 100% accuracy when against level 84+ monsters. With that in mind, here's a slot-by-slot breakdown:
Body Armour
Bronn's Lithe. This is an under-rated body; when we're using the Overwhelm passive, no other chest in the game can provide as much to DPS as this does... (thanks to having up to 100% increased damage on top of 10% increased attack speed!) On top of a very sizable amount of evasion, which Iron Reflexes will convert to armour. Until/unless you can find a good corrupted Oro's that provides Fortify Support, you can use this slot to get a 6L; 6L'd Bronn's are going to be cheaper than 6L'd Oro's.
Rare Body Armour. I will allow that there are better defensive options for this build among rare pieces... However I would not really recommend them, as you lose a great deal of offense. Note that the typical route for other melee skills to use an Elder or Hunter-influenced chest for a crit mod is not viable here, as our Overwhelm passive overwrites our base critical strike chance. Similarly, influence mods that'd grant us frenzy charges (the other main DPS source from rare body armour) is superflous while we use Oro's.
Boots
Darkray Vectors - For any Flicker Strike build, this is a great pear of boots; the +1 maximum frenzy charge provides a significant amount of DPS. However, as this build does not use Ice Bite or other things to scale off of Frenzy charges, (such as Precursor's Emblem rings) these won't help our DPS as much as they will most other Flicker Strike builds. Still, they're quite powerful for how cheap they are to acquire.
Rare Tailwind Boots. Since we don't use Ice Bite or other things that tack extra scaling from frenzy charges, we actually will get slightly more DPS out of having Tailwind than we would out of having an extre frenzy charge. Naturally, we'll prefer Two-Toned boots as the basetype, specifically the armour/evasion combination.
Plus, crafted boots here are relatively easy to get for a few divines, and can help with our resists... Ideally, we'll want tailwind + onslaught suffixes. For prefixes, get life if you can, and either an unveiled hybrid movespeed or craft it on yourself. Because of the nature of this build, we don't actually care about elusive.
Helmet
Rare helmet. This is the safe route for this build; you can easily use this to plug a lot of gaps in your resists, Intelligence, or Accuracy, which are all things of concern.
Replica Abyssus. This is somewhat of a risky route: Replica Abyssus will increase our vulnerability to elemental damage, which we're already short on survivability with. However, the huge DPS boost it provides is unrivaled by any other gear choice.
Enchantment: There are two main enchantments we're looking for here: 9% increased Flicker Strike damage per Frenzy Charge is the best, though 40% increased Flicker Strike damage is, for our purposes, almost just as good, and often cheaper. Officially, the breakpoint where they're equal is if you have 5 frenzy charges. Since we don't stack much higher than that, it makes both options suitable.
Gloves
Eldritch-Influenced Armour Gloves. - The ability to get Eldritch implicits on any rare gloves is a game-changer, and makes it pretty accessible to fill out this slot in a trade league. (and not impossible in SSF) With the right Eldritch implicits, we can get gloves that contribute far more than any possible unique (or even other influenced rare) gloves could offer us.
The most DPS-boosting implicit we're looking for from Eater of Worlds influence is inflict Fire Exposure on Hit, applying -11% to Fire Resistance; we have next to no options for applying Fire Exposure, so this is invaluable; on average it'll take just a few dozen Lesser Eldritch Ichor to get this roll. (while there are stronger versions available for using more expensive Ichor, we can take an Elemental Mastery to make it 18% no matter what)
For the Searing Exarch implicit, we have multiple options. (All shown are from using a Lesser Eldritch Ember) The strongest for our DPS will be, by far, Gain 1 Rage on Hit with Attacks, as it will give us a reliable source of Rage. After that, the best options are 4% increased Damage per Frenzy Charge, 10% increased Attack Speed, and lastly Adds (7-9) to (14-16) Fire Damage to Attacks; the second two are very close in power, while the flat fire damage is decidedly much weaker.
Overall, we'll want the Rage implicit for the substantial DPS increase; the others are merely ones to "settle" upon if we run low or out of Eldritch Embers, as they're better than nothing. The only strong alternative to consider is Strike Skills target 1/2 additional Nearby Enemies; this could be considered as an alternative to taking Tribal Fury or Melee Splash, though getting 2 will require gambling with Orbs of Conflict & Exceptional Eldritch Embers; this is very expensive, and overall it's going to yield less DPS than simply spending 4 points on Tribal Fury, and gaining access to Rage through our gloves.
Because these implicits can be put onto any gloves, this gives us flexibility in picking rare gloves that fill out holes in our gear, and then place the implicits on afterwards. It's also important to note that Eldritch implicits wipe other implicits away! If you use Eldritch Embers & Ichor on, for instance, a pair of Spiked Gloves, they will lose their implicit melee damage mod!
As for the explicit mods, these are relatively free: get resists and possibly accuracy as needed to keep yourself capped. Keep in mind that if we're using the appropriate Armour & Evasion Mastery, we effectively get double armour out of our gloves, so we'll want to stack that as high as we can here.
Belt
Belt of the Deceiver. For leveling and early mapping, Belt of the Deceiver is an exceptionally powerful unique belt: since all enemies we hit are "nearby" it's a de-facto 10% more damage multiplier, while still giving us resists.
Rare Stygian Vise. Ultimately, the belt is a slot we will lean heavily upon for resists, so a stygian vise with tri-resist suffixes and prismatic catalyst quality is what we want; influence mods (like up to 10% increased maximum life from Elder or Hunter influence) are a lower priority than upgrading other gear, so it's fine to stick with a belt that only has T1 flat life, very high resists, and nothing else.
Amulet
In order to fit all three of our auras, we will need the amulet mod Anger has 50% Increased Mana Reservation Efficiency (this is a Warlord influence suffix) and then apply 20% quality with a Fertile Catalyst, making that 60%. Beyond that, again, fill out what we can for resists and potentially accuracy rating; this is also likely our best spot to get Intelligence. For the rest of our prefixes, we'll naturally want life; armour and/or elemental damage with attack skills are also nice to have.
Rings
Polaric Devastation. Thanks to this ring, this build has an easy source of covering enemies in ash, which in turn is effectively an almost 20% increase to our DPS, coupled with the crit chance and implicit elemental damage. While it does provides no life, it at least can provide a decent amount of cold & fire resistance. For a catalyst, while it doesn't offer much, Turbulent Catalysts will improve the DPS the mods (by adding +6% to the implicit) and are cheap... And don't hinge on paying a lot for a decent roll either. (as Blessed Orbs are also cheap)
Ring 2: Flammability on Hit Rare Ring. Complementing our Polaric Devastation, we need a ring that provides Curse Enemies with Flammability on Hit. This can be found as a delve-drop mod, but most often is found as a Warlord-influence mod. As with the other accesory slots, the rest of the affixes should focus on getting us enough Intelligence, Accuracy, and Resistances to cap what we need, as well as flat life, before focusing on any other damage mods.
Jewels
While already covered to a small degree above in the passive tree, here's some more specifics to keep in mind when crafting:
Cluster Jewels: for our Medium cluster Jewel, keep in mind that the minor passives do basically nothing for us: we rely on hit damage, not DoT. However, for a 2-notable cluster, we will have the same wasted nodes with both a 4-passive & 5-passive cluster. The recommended method for crafting this is to use one-socket resonators with scorched fossils: rather cheap and plentiful, and shouldn't take more than a few dozen to make one. (Though we should still purchse one already made if possible)
"Basic" (cobalt/crimson/viridian) jewels: Crimson Jewels will offer all the affixes that we'd care about, so if crafting, use that BaseType. The exact list of mods that affect our DPS are (in order of strength from greatest to least)
Prefixes:
+(15-18)% to Critical Strike Multiplier with Two Handed Melee Weapons
(6-8)% increased Attack Speed with Swords
(14-16)% increased Damage with Swords & (14-16)% increased Fire Damage
(12-14)% increased Damage with Two Handed Weapons
(4-6)% increased Attack Speed with Two Handed Melee Weapons
(14-18)% increased Critical strike Chance with Two Handed Melee Weapons
Suffixes:
+(12-15)% to Melee Critical Strike Multiplier
+(9-12)% to Global Critical Strike Multiplier
(10-12)% increased Melee Damage
(3-5)% increased Attack Speed
(8-10)% increased Damage
(2-4)% increased Attack and Cast Speed
(10-14)% increased Melee Critical Strike Chance
(8-12)% increased Global Critical Strike Chance
As can be seen, only one of these has the "fire" tag, so using scorched fossils is not recommended; instead, use serrated. Ultimately though, if trade is an option, always buy a pre-made jewel over trying to craft it yourself.
Abyssal Jewels: We'll likely only use one, to put in our Stygian Vise. A Murderous Eye Jewel will allow us the best selection of mods for our DPS; prefix-wise, the only meaningful DPS mod available is flat fire damage with Sword Attacks; prioritize that or flat life. (Armour or Evasion Rating are the only other prefixes you'd care about)
Suffix-wise, there are, fortunately, more than one mod that will appreciably help our DPS. In order from strongest to weakest, they are (9-12)% to Global Critical Strike Multiplier, Adds (13-15) to (25-28) Fire Damage to Attacks, (6-8)% Increased Attack Speed if you've dealt a Critical Strike Recently, (3-5)% Increased Attack Speed, and (8-12)% increased Global Critical Strike Chance. (I do not recommend either (8-14)% to Critical Strike Multiplier if you've Killed Recently or (15-20)% increased Damage if you've Killed Recently; while both are more powerful than any of the others, they're far too situational, and won't be of much help in phased boss fights)
Lastly, of course, abyssal jewel suffixes are a great place to fill gaps in your gear: a strong accuracy mod here could also replace the need for any on your gloves, helmet or amulet. You can also get intelligence and resists here as well.
Flasks
While there are a number of flasks that can prove very powerful, none of them are required to hold the build together; this you don't need to worry about breaking everything by swapping one flask. Still, you should (usually) be carrying around these:
Cinderswallow Urn. While uptime on this can be hard to maintain in boss fights, this provides us both with a potential source of onslaught, and also makes those enemies we ignite take 10% increased damage. Sadly, none of the unveiled mods particularly help us out too much. However, we do want to get the version that drops with Recover (1-3)% of Life when you Kill an Enemy during Flask Effect; using this during non-boss combat, (where uptime should be trivial with the build's clearspeed) will add a very powerful layer of recovery.
Experimenter's/Surgeon's Jade Flask of the Armadillo. This is our main defense-boosting flask. During most of the game, we should be able to maintain 100% uptime. While at first glance, it might look as if Jade & Granite will do the same, but given how conversion works, Jade will let it benefit from what few sources of increased evasion we have (such as the minor nodes leading to our jewel socket) so it is slightly stronger. Also, these exact mods (which are T1) are not strictly needed; you can make do with lower tiers, but upgrade when you can.
Experimenter's/Surgeon's Diamond Flask of Incision. Since we're crit based, this can help us out a lot. Again, you can make do with a flask with lower tiers on the mods; in this particular case, this exact combination will be extremely expensive and/or difficult to acquire.
Catalyzed Eternal Life Flask of Assuaging. You should always have at least one life flask (two doesn't hurt) as a backup to your other sources of life recovery. This should also be your flask that cures bleeding & corrupted blood. With a prefix that increases recovery rate, an Eternal Life Flask will recover fast enough to prefer it over an instant flask.
Any Flask of the Deer/Walrus/Penguin. This is only needed until you upgrade Soul of the Brine King to grant you immunity to freeze; then you can discard this and replace it with a different flask.
Conditional Flasks. Some boss fights are particularly nasty with a particular ailment; "The Enslaver" and Ignite, as well as "Al Hezmin, The Hunter" and Poison are two big examples. In these situations, keep a similar life flask to your normal one that, instead, gives you ignite or poison immunity. With the DPS you have, 1-2 flasks should generally be enough that they die before you can run out of flasks this way.
Note that some of these necessary types of flask suffix (notably our anti-bleed & freeze suffixes) can be forced onto an existing flask with an open suffix using beastcrafting. The recipe for this is one all players start with, and only requires four yellow beasts. (which you'll have after your first one or two Einhar missions) While these examples will be a lower tier, this is still better than not having them at all.
Pantheon
Given the high defensive power these bring, these are just as critical to your build's survival as your gear:
Major Power: Soul of the Brine King. There's nothing else that, with its upgrades, provides as much a range of defenses against stuns, chill, and freeze that this does. While we're not immune to being briefly stunned out of our attacking, we cannot be stunlocked (which for flicker strike is a fatal situation) Likewise, the outright Cannot be Frozen (With the second upgrade) is critical. as is the 50% Reduced Effect of Chill: if we can combine this with a few jewels with the same mod, this can get us close enough to 100% that we'll hardly notice chills.
Minor Power: Soul of Garukhan. This build lacks some defenses against some common debilitations like shock, blind, and maim; the first two can be particularly devastating against it. This patches up that hole. However, this upgrade is lower priority than the upgrades to Soul of the Brine King; get those first.
Leveling before Flicker Strike
To minimize how much of a transition there is once you hit level 67, you can try to incorporate as much of the build as you can as you go along:
Passives Tree. You can level just filling out the tree to match what it'll be for Oro's, but this could be a bit painful given its reliance on nearby crit nodes (which do little early in the game) and also dealing exclusively fire daamge. (which means you'll have few to no damage nodes that apply to any leveling weapon) Better is to still take some damage nodes you will have to refund later; remember that there's 24 respect points available through the main campaign's side-quests.
Auras. It will take a significant amount of investment (and a higher level) before you'll be able to use the 3 main auras for this build. Until then, you'll run a bit short. A lower-cost alternative to Determination could be Defiance Banner, while a lower-cost alternative to Anger is to pair Flammability with Blasphemy; in fact the latter is highly recommended until you can afford a curse on hit ring.
Sockets. The minimum needed to start with Flicker Strike is 4 sockets: Flicker Strike, Multistrike, Melee Splash, and Combustion, for 2 red, 1 green, and 1 blue socket. This should be relatively easy to get during leveling.
Mapping Strategies
Mapping with this build, at least in lower tiers, is super straightforward. When you're overpowered for your content, this build literally becomes a "hold right-click until you win" experience. In the right maps, you might not have to even manually move: Flicker Strike's own teleport will be sufficient to destroy all (or nearly all) of the monsters, leaving you only to go back for any loot that might have dropped. As you go through, there's a few things to keep in mind:
Reflect. Initially, this is a mod we cannot do. However, because Awakened Elemental Damage with Attacks, at level 5, makes damage from the supported attack be unable to be reflected, this can enable us doing maps with elemental reflect. Note that because our Leap Slam is on a different gem setup, it will need another of this support as well, else it will still get reflected! Another (cheaper) alternative is to support it with a Brutality Support gem, that (assuming you have no source of flat added physical damage) will prevent Leap Slam from doing damage entirely. (and thus making there be nothing to reflect)
Map Layouts. This build does better with more constrained, linear maps with higher monster density; more open maps can leave isolated packs of mobs still alive. The absolute best map for this is Toxic Sewer; barring some side-rooms, you can generally kill >90% of the monsters here in well under a minute. Underground Sea is also good, though it will require some backtracking to get to all the monsters.
A Strict Item Filter. The whole point of this build is speed, so you will not want to be spending much time looting. Whatever loot filter series you use, I recommend setting it to the most strict setting: anything you loot should be something worth backtracking to go get, and you want to be sure of it. Thus you should filter out nearly every single drop.
Party Play. Due to the general squishiness of this build, and lack of strict control over your positioning, playing with other players can often result in you dying more often than you would solo. Thus I do not recommend playing with a party for most mapping. However, special encounters (such as the Coward's Trial Map, Breachstones, or Invitations) are constrained enough that this ceases being as big a problem, and can be places where an aurabot can help as well.
Delving. While GGG themselves suggested that Flicker Strike is a sure way to die during Delving, the truth is... It's actually quite possible to Delve with this build. The skill will have you target invincible monsters in the darkness, but it's not fatal; it's just necessary to have quick reaction times to Leap Slam back out into the light as soon as that happens.
Final Thoughts
This was a guide I actually first put together almost a year ago, after running this build for Scourge League, but never actually got around to publishing. Naturally, as patches have come, this required a lot of tweaking, and ultimately was all but entirely re-written to be correct for 3.20 instead of 3.17. My whole point had been to make what is possibly my favorite skill far more accessible to players that otherwise would never get a chance to enjoy it.
I've also published two other build guides before this, if you are intersted in seeing more like this: a MI SRS Necromancer, as well as a RF Chieftain, both have the added advantage of being usable for leveling, not just mapping.
A special thanks to b0moodc for his help in reviewing, and also to the community at The Forbidden Trove for their encouragement.
Rufalius, hybrid Aura/Arc/Mana Guardian | Hemorae, TS Raider | Wuru, Ele Hit Wand Trickster
One question: Why do you link Inspiration Support with Leap Slam?
The short of it is that I found when spamming leap slam and not hitting enemies for long enough periods, I sometimes ran out of mana. The build has a number of free sockets, so I slapped it in there to eliminate that risk.
Hey, if I only manage to hit a 5 Link Oro in the Beginning, what should it look like? I mean which gems except for Flicker Strike obv :D
Go with the first 4 support gems listed. I have them in order of priority; technically you can run even with a 4L. (or a 3L once you have Tribal Fury, but damage will be anemic)
Is the melee splash support really necessary now that melee splash is on the tree? Feels like slotting in more damage could be better.
It is not necessary as its own gem: the PoB reflects this as well, with only the first of the four setups (which progress in order) using the gem; you want to eliminate it ASAP. Note that if your own leveling build made use of Tribal Fury, you can skip the gem entirely, rather than using it only until you gained a few more levels post-67.
Because of the very high attack speed & multistrike, the single life+mana leech node is enough to keep you capped on leech rate provided you don't cancel out of a lot of attacks in a short period of time, so mana's fine. Spamming leap slam across empty maps can potentially deplete your mana, which is why I put an inspiration gem in that setup. (It serves no other purpose)
Rufalius, hybrid Aura/Arc/Mana Guardian | Hemorae, TS Raider | Wuru, Ele Hit Wand Trickster
Ty for answer.
1) What about take Bane of Legends on forbidden flesh/flame instead rare jewels, don't pick Headsman, and pick Brutal Fevour and Endless Hunger on ascendant tree?
2) What about Kaom Heart chest?
And i wish see your atlas tree pls :)
Last edited by 666FalleN999 on Dec 15, 2022, 5:56:10 AM
Ty for answer.
1) What about take Bane of Legends on forbidden flesh/flame instead rare jewels, don't pick Headsman, and pick Brutal Fevour and Endless Hunger on ascendant tree?
2) What about Kaom Heart chest?
And i wish see your atlas tree pls :)
Going for Forbidden Jewels is a bit more investment than I bothered designing this around; though in that scenario that is not ideal. If you have Fortify (e.g, a vaal'd Oro's for it) then my recommendation would actually be to go for Unstoppable Hero (the Champion ascendancy) for strong defense (including stun immunity) as well as more attack speed; otherwise go for Masterful Form for the +1 Frenzy charges. (the highest-DPS Duelist ascendancy the build does not take)
Kaom's Heart costs you a lot of armour; you definitely want to get as close to 50k armour (the cap for molten shell's effect) as you can, since you use molten shell's brief toughness to deal with predictable nasty parts, (e.g, rare mobs that you won't instantly kill) as you have no ability to avoid attacks. On top of that, Bronn's, simply put, provides more DPS than any other possible chestpiece for this scenario.
As for an Atlas tree, this is pretty flexible. Outside of that I wouldn't use this for uber farming, just about any currently-popular farming strat (e.g, breaches, legion, ritual, essence, harvest, expedition, etc.) works rather solidly with this build. If I had to prioritize, I'd say that this build does particularly well at breach, legion, and ritual, and weakest for expedition, but still quite capable. (mostly just that a lot of remnants can screw it over, and overall it clears expedition encounters a lot slower than, say, my SRS build)
Rufalius, hybrid Aura/Arc/Mana Guardian | Hemorae, TS Raider | Wuru, Ele Hit Wand Trickster
