[3.1] Flicker strike with Cospri's malice

Hi, I'm leveling using ur build.... what pantheons u recommend? Will u update this guide with "final" itens?

ty :)

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Hi, I'm leveling using ur build.... what pantheons u recommend? Will u update this guide with "final" itens?

ty :)

I am using Soul of Ralakesh with captured Drek so i can not be blinded and Soul of the Brine King so i do not get stunned for too long.
With the 80% stun resist enchant from the uber lab i would use the Soul of Arakaali with captured Arachnoxia because the 50% increased Recovery of Life can be triggered by using instant health flask with a bleed removing mod (assuming no poisons on you, witch can be achieved with the Soul of Shakari's 2nd mod). And that 50% faster life recovery also applies to the life leech.
I think pantheons should be swapped accordingly to personal preferences and to what is necessary for the moment.

I will not be doing final items update. I am not putting much effort in the game - i am playing like 10 hours/week at most so i will not be able to upgrade my gear much more than it is now.

Getting 6linked Belly of the Beast would be the best choice for a chest and about other gear pieces i do not think there is suitable unique that could be used over a good roll rare.

About other items - the intelligence requirement for the swords, life and resists, then flat elemental damage is mostly needed. Accuracy rating on higher levels. Elemental damage with weapons can be crafted on the belt if free mod space. Crit chance/multiplier is always good, but flat elemental damage is better on this build.
Any rare gear with a good rolls of some combination of the stuff above would obviously be good.

Hi!! what u think about vaal pact and elemental overload at this build?

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Hi!! what u think about vaal pact and elemental overload at this build?

Vaal pact is definitely good and i am planing on taking it soon.
I am also planning to try Iron Reflexes and Grace, but i think it will be a trade between damage (from Anger aura) and armor, so i will do it when i start feeling i really need more armor.

Elemental overload would be OK for builds that crit once every 5-6 sek, but this build crits all the time and every crit deals much higher than 40% more damage, so it is not good at all. And it also is in a way too distant area of the passive tree, so the talent points you would put in to get there would give you bigger benefit if you place them on something useful instead.

Hi!

Thanks for the build guide, currently playing with this setup. Really enjoying it.

A few questions,

1. I'm not seeing any more than 1 stack of Blade Vortex. Is this expected/fine?

2. Why did you choose the cold spells you did? Discharge seems funny, and Vortex might actually be good if all gems are leveled. I heard concerns about Ice Spear being underwhelming this patch. Why not simply use 4 of the best cold spells?

3. +12% Grand Spectrum jewels are very expensive right now. I can only find +4% for reasonable prices. Should I get other nodes and wait for the price to drop, or is the +4% still worth it?

4. On the level 68 skill tree, why haven't you taken the +1 Frenzy node? Should this be delayed? (Below the jewel to the right of the starting node)

5. I saw you had answered the question about Vaal Pact. Why hadn't you taken it yet? Was there a good reason to delay it?

6. Whirling Blades still feels painfully slow. Is there any way to make it faster? (I've never made a build that uses whirling blades)

7. The gem setup is pretty tight, is this why you opted to skip a Golem?

8. Do you have any more flask suggestions? Are there any unique flasks that suit this build?

9. Are you mostly using cyclone before each pack to trigger Fortify? If this is the case, what if we replaced the Life Gain on Hit with an Increased Duration? Or does the LGoH have another use I'm not seeing?

Sorry for so many questions. Having a lot of fun, thanks for the guide!

Hello :)

All this questions... lol! Glad to see you are having fun :D

Seems i missed to say a lot of stuff in the guide, but i prefer to just show the general idea and whoever likes it can build on it on the way he likes it. But to answer according to my understanding:

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1. I'm not seeing any more than 1 stack of Blade Vortex. Is this expected/fine?

You jump all around with flicker so it is not easy to get hit. That is the reason a melee build like this with zero investment towards survivability can be played. You do not take much hits but all of them are big. It is normal to have only 1 BV stack and its purpose is to apply curse. If things die fast - you do not need curse, but if they manage to stay alive long enough to hit you then everything you jump to gets cursed. I like it that way, but if you like another way of applying a curse just do it!

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2. Why did you choose the cold spells you did? Discharge seems funny, and Vortex might actually be good if all gems are leveled. I heard concerns about Ice Spear being underwhelming this patch. Why not simply use 4 of the best cold spells?

Discharge will consume all your charges. Have not tried it, but melee hits are doing most of the damage on this build and the power charges generation is not that fast; you need to have the maximum of them (cause ascendancy) or your crit drops significantly. Also 6 frenzy charges is 24% MORE damage, so better keep them.
I think Vortex's damage over time does not stack (not sure tho). If you have 2-3-4 vortexes on the same place i think you will do damage only from one of them and the hit damage of this spell is a lot lower than other spells.
I put ice spear there just because i was too lazy to try other spells, but the other 3 spells i am using are the best ones for this or so i believe.

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3. +12% Grand Spectrum jewels are very expensive right now. I can only find +4% for reasonable prices. Should I get other nodes and wait for the price to drop, or is the +4% still worth it?

Grand Spectrums are 108% damage increase. If you can not get all 3 of them it would be better to get something like this:

You will boost your attack damage to similar levels as you would if you have the Grand spectrums, but your spell damage will not get affected. If you can not get something like this then better just remove the points for the jewel sockets on the tree and get some elemental damage there.

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4. On the level 68 skill tree, why haven't you taken the +1 Frenzy node? Should this be delayed? (Below the jewel to the right of the starting node)

5. I saw you had answered the question about Vaal Pact. Why hadn't you taken it yet? Was there a good reason to delay it?

I had problems with the mana around levels 68-70 when i started doing maps. 1 less Frenzy charge = slower mana consumption, and also i did not used frenzy charges at all before i hit lv 68, so i took them right when i got there.
About the Vaal pact - no reason to delay it, i just completely forgot about it until i saw that question to be fair. Obviously, i also never felt a need for it or i would have noticed lol!

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6. Whirling Blades still feels painfully slow. Is there any way to make it faster? (I've never made a build that uses whirling blades)

Sorry :(
Try using leap slam. It is just how Whirling Blades works. To make it faster all you need is attack speed... It used to be faster before some patches, but it was nerfed.

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7. The gem setup is pretty tight, is this why you opted to skip a Golem?

8. Do you have any more flask suggestions? Are there any unique flasks that suit this build?

9. Are you mostly using cyclone before each pack to trigger Fortify? If this is the case, what if we replaced the Life Gain on Hit with an Increased Duration? Or does the LGoH have another use I'm not seeing?

Golems are nice it is just... I am too lazy! And i do not have 2 free sockets for CoDT+golem, so i just skipped it. You can try using another way to curse, or doing cyclone + whirling blades + fortify + faster attacks and you will free sockets for it.

Flasks? Maybe Taste of Hate. Definitely not Atziri's Promise because you will poison yourself. Vessel of Vinktar? I think if you use it its highly likely you will get oneshoted a lot. About other not unique flasks i can not say. I am confortable with 2 health flasks 1 of witch instant, 2 armor and 1 movespeed flasks.

I use Cyclone to do damage when i know i should avoid the random placement of flicker strike and to go out of troublesome monster packs (cyclone gives stun immunity; whirling blades has end animation freeze so its not good - i died some times because of it).
When i get to this situations means i need survivability, so fortify goes there as most convenient. Cyclone without damage support links deals a lot lower damage than flicker, so the lifesteal is also a lot lower, but its attack speed is high enough to be good for LGoH especially when i am surrounded with mobs like on abyss bosses or something like.

Damn! I sprouted a huge wall here... I hope i was helpful.

what bandit did u take ? or did u kill all ?

Bandits? Considering this is a crit build i took the crit one - Alira :)

so i converted my discharge shadow into this build last night, because i wasn't happy with discharge really and i just love flicker. I have been tinkering with it in path of building all day and i think i've made some changes that doubled my dps both in flicker and each cospri, bringing me up to around 740k total, at level 86, with some crappy gear.

1. - frostbolt + freezing pulse + hypothermia, in both cospri's yielded the highest dps (currently i have ice spear in one, had to sell some things first)

2.) the 6th link for flicker that improved dps the most was added lightning damage. because of this actually changing some other links improved flicker dps even more, i'm now using Flicker - Multistrike(ruthless is actually more dps but you really need the extra hits from multistrike to make this work) - Melee Splash - Elemental Focus - Elemental Damage with Attacks - Added Lightning damage.

3. cwdt lvl 1 - blade vortex lvl 8(20%) - curse on hit lvl 20 and then enfeeble or elemental weakness, currently using enfeeble to try and survive and level up some so i can take more life nodes, i just need better life rolls on my gear honestly.

4. switched to cwdt lvl 20 - summon ice golem lvl 20(important if we're dropping increased crit) - immortal call at 15 right now, and then minion life support at 20

5. changed the tree a bit, to accommodate using The Red Dream to help generate endurance charges, which is allowing me to survive with only 4.5k health right now

7. went with atziri's flask and poison immune pantheon-- vinktar's, wise oak, diamond flask(i tested taste of hate on paper and in the game and found atziri's is just way more dps)

here is my current setup for pob:

https://pastebin.com/6LgcAazy

so yeah any thoughts or improvements, we can turn this into a fun beast of a build, i was considering trialing to get the frozen trails route and get more explosions happening, idk

also thought it might help to mention you can use a bow with puncture-accuracy-faster attacks-faster casting-blink arrow to start bleeds and have another fast movement option that can clear gaps-pair it with a movespeed quiver. this let's you cold start on bosses or at the start of the map since puncture gives us bleed always.

update on my variant if anyone is interested, i took some ideas from the guys over at the CoC snowblind build, and melted it with BGkamaz build here, i'm still working the kinks out but it looks freaking awesome if anyone is interested, the frozen trail/snow trail jewels with this build are so cool. still using the grand spectrum setup as well! i just ran a lvl 14 dig alch'd with 49% more monster health and melted it!