[3.5] Flicker Striking VENDIGO Spectres! Crazy strong, crazy fast, crazy fun! - T16 video added

Concept:

Hey, I get it. All the other cool necromancer kids have spectres that shoot out lasers and fireballs and crap from range to clear the screen, right? And melee specs are no good because they move slow, clear slow, get stuck on terrain, and get smacked around too much, right? All that may be mostly true, but that’s not the case for Wraeclast’s coolest melee mob, a tundra creature so lethal that his body odor alone can incinerate most map bosses. Meet the fabulous and mighty Vendigo, a long limbed, hyper-violent, bearded assassin that moves and kills at the speed of light and can’t be stopped by anything, not even a silver bullet.

Vendio Fun Fact #1: The Vendigo is so fast that it can flip off its bedroom light switch and be fully under the covers before the room goes dark.


Pros:

1. Vendigo clear quickly.

Like all good spectre builds, you just need to zip around the map humming your favorite song and enjoying the carnage. The Vendigo can flicker strike up and down ledges, across chasms, and through cell bars, and even go off screen to get a head start on what comes next. How cool is that?

2. Vendigo are really tanky.

Once you get the regen and life leech minion nodes and unlock Soul Weaver on the ascendancy tree, the Vendigo just won’t die. They are the tankiest of the flicker striking mobs and need no babysitting or Convocation saving. Just worry about keeping your squishy witch self safe, and they can flicker strike all over the Shaper and his Guardians and never lose even a single dirty, blood encrusted, Vendigo fingernail. Can’t hit what you can’t see, right?

3. Vendigo do physical damage.

Unlike the cool kids with their elemental spectres, not only can you make great use of the powerful Hatred/Generosity combo, but you also get to cash in on the awesome Unholy Might buff that your Vis Mortis gives for tons of extra chaos damage.

4. Vendigo are cheap to outfit.

You don’t need a six-link or even a five-link for your Vendigo. You can pick up a dirt cheap one-handed Shaper weapon with lousy mods to powerfully pseudo six-link your long bearded buddies. You can probably do the whole build for the just the change you have in your pocket right now.

5. Vendigo make the best use of Victario’s Charity.

Using Necromantic Aegis with VIctario’s Charity is a classic minion master combo that works well with many different summons, but the Vendigo can turn those gained frenzy charges into lots more sweet flicker striking goodness.

6. Vendigo are crazy fun!

Having fun is why we are here, right? I’ve run my marauding pack of Vendigo all over Wraeclast, and I never tire of watching all their flicker striking shenanigans. Vendigo are almost too cool for words, and it’s always great fun to watch them perform their deadly art.


Cons:

Well, there’s just one. You will certainly lose friends over the jealousy that overcomes them when they see how cool your new Vendigo buddies are, all nifty places they are taking you, and how much crazy fun you are having. But it’s like your momma always said, “If people leave you because your new friend is an insane, frozen, bearded, teleporting, killing machine, then they were never really your friends in the first place.” Thanks for that deep wisdom, Mom. Indeed, truer words were never spoken.

Vendigo Fun Fact #2: Slaughtering Exiles is something that the Vendigo only does in his free time. His day job is selling frozen treats, and he can often be seen driving around the Ascent in an ice cream truck covered in human skulls.



Defense: Go Life or Energy Shield?

Energy Shield is a good fit for minion builds because you don’t get hit much, and it’s easy to back off, let the shield quickly regen, and then keep going. Also, ES is in a good place right now, and people are crafting things with ridiculous ES stats, and our Vis Mortis gives only ES so it seemed a shame not to invest in it.

I went ES with Chaos Inoculation because it seemed like I was seeing more chaos damage than usual when dealing with the Syndicate encounters, and I’m currently sitting at 7.5k ES. It’s been working great for almost all content, but there are a couple things to be aware of. You don’t have flasks to chug, so long, multi-stage boss fights in tight spaces can be tricky as you are allowed less mistakes. You can use Vaal Discipline as your emergency button, but unless there are a LOT of adds during the fight, you will probably only get one use out of it. Also, you will need that Vaal Discipline charged and ready all the time, so I wouldn’t suggest using any other Vaal skills and definitely not the Unending Hunger threshold jewel which gives a great buff to your specs but keeps you from gaining Vaal souls yourself as your specs consume them instead.

Life and hybrid life/ES builds work just fine also and even better in many situations. In fact, I usually go the life route when doing any minion builds and run either Vaal Haste or Vaal Summon Skeletons for boss fights. It’s up to you.

Vendigo Fun Fact #3: There is only one known way to capture a Vendigo. You have to find a hole in the ice and set a saucer filled with human blood right next to it. When the Vendigo arrives and bends over to lap up the blood, you should quickly run up behind him and KICK HIM RIGHT IN THE ICE HOLE.



Getting Four Spectres:

To get four Vendigo, you will need a Vis Mortis. You will also need a Bones of Ullr or some fossil crafted boots with the spectre mod. For the Vis Mortis, you don’ t need a six-link or really even a five-link, but try finding one with all six sockets because summoners can always make good use of more sockets. You can put on the Vis Mortis at level 59.

For the boots, you can get Bones of Ullr starting at level 22, but when you get to level 70 and have some cash, you can buy or fossil craft something with better stats to provide that extra spectre. If crafting, use a pair of Sorcerer Boots for your base if you are going energy shield or a pair of two-toned boots if going with a life build. I’m no crafting expert, but what I did was combine a Dense fossil for energy shield affixes with a Bound fossil for minion affixes and also a Shuddering fossil for speed affixes into a resonator. The spectre mod is easy to roll that way, and then just bench craft whatever is missing on it whether it is energy shield or movement speed, or just add some more resists if you got everything you wanted. If you are going life, use the Pristine fossil instead of the Dense fossil. For me, crafting was cheaper than buying someone else’s crafted boots. I made four pair, kept the best and sold the rest.


Vendigo Fun Fact #4: Little kids wear Superman pajamas because they are in awe of his amazing powers. Superman himself wears Vendigo pajamas for the very same reason.



Gearing Your Vendigo:

Going for a pseudo six-link by using a Shaper one-handed weapon will give you a very early, very strong, and very cheap six-link for your Vendigo army. Later you can even seven-link them the same way.

Shaper/Elder weapons have many affixes which start with “Socketed gems are supported by____ ”. Often three, or even four, of these affixes will appear on a low level item with otherwise lousy stats making it pretty useless to most builds, but a very cheap and very strong power boost for a summoner who wants to slot a minion gem in it.

Here are the combinations available:

Shaper One-Handed: Maim, Melee Splash, Faster Attacks, Increased Critical Strikes, Added Fire Damage, and Elemental Damage with Attacks

Elder One-Handed: Melee Physical Damage, Multistrike, Chance to Bleed, Poison, Increased Critical Damage

These weapons can be equipped as low as level 54 but many more will be available at level 60. Pick any three supports off of either list and you should be able to find something cheap that will suit you. Make sure that you check the items requirements and that you have enough strength and dexterity to equip it. Some of these have very low requirements but some can be quite high also. I chose to look for a Shaper weapon with Maim, Melee Splash, and Faster Attacks, and I found what I needed without much searching for 5 chaos and pseudo six-linked it by adding my Raise Spectre, Minion Damage, and Multistrike gems. Later I was able to get a Shaper one-hander that also had Added Fire Damage on it giving me a seven-link and a nice late game boost. If your weapon isn’t already loaded to the gills with mods, you can also bench craft increased minion damage and minion life on it, so be sure to check and see if it will take it.

By the way, if you ever do caster spectres, you can also pseudo six-link with Shaper and Elder wands and daggers which can have caster supports.

In addition to your pseudo six-link weapon, you will also need the unique shield Victario’s Charity. Once you get the Necromantic Aegis notable passive, your Vendigo will stay covered in dots as they attack very quickly and generate many power and frenzy charges which they will all share. Since they use Flicker Strike, they can consume the frenzy charges to avoid the Flicker Strike cooldown and maintain some crazy continued flicker assaults. While not as cool, they also get the other benefits of packing the shield which includes a chance to block, some extra life, and some more resists.
Beyond these two core items, the only other boost from your gear that the Vendigo will need is either a Bone Helmet or any helmet with the Lab enchant that gives spectres 40% increased damage. Either will do, but look for one that will give you plenty of ES or life, whichever you are going, and also some resists.

The rest of your gear should be devoted entirely to keeping your bony witch butt alive, so look for ES or life, resists, and if available, any boosts to strength or dexterity so you won’t need to burn passives on the skill tree to pump those up.

Vendigo Fun Fact #5: If at first you don’t succeed, then you are definitely not a Vendigo!



Gem Links:

Raise Spectre – Minion Damage – Multistrike (Maim, Melee Splash, Faster Attacks, Added Fire)

Flicker Strike with Multistrike and Melee Splash is amazing. The Vendigo will rapidly teleport around doing aoe damage everywhere they land. You don’t need increased aoe support. They will obliterate packs without it. Gems in parentheses are gained from the Shaper item that makes our pseudo six or seven link.


Summon Skeleton-Spell Totem-Minion Speed-Minion Damage-Melee Splash/Melee Phys. & (Vaal Discipline)

The venerable skeleton totem is old school summoner witch goodness. You can drop it once, and it will crank out a small army of skellies to help you drop a boss. It can also keep you safe on a map with a really wicked set of mods because the skellies can body block for you also. If you are facing something really nasty, throw the totem forward first. If you find that you are only using it for extra boss damage, then trade Melee Splash for Melee Physical Damage. I socketed the skellies in my Vis Mortis with a five-link, but you don’t lose much if you just four-link it. My Vis had six sockets, so I also stuck my Vaal Discipline in it, too.


Arc-Curse on Hit-Temporal Chains-Enfeeble

I picked up Whispers of Doom off the tree for double curse, and I also took Elemental Equilibrium which I trigger with Arc. It lowers the cold and fire resists of everything it hits and lets the Vendigo do a lot more damage with their Hatred aura and also the Added Fire support once I seven-linked. If I’m facing a really high health boss that has curse reflect or immunity or near immunity, then I will pull out the curses and swap in a Culling support gem.


Hatred-Generosity-CWDT-Flesh Offering

Hatred with Generosity is a great buff to the Vendio that lets them crank out loads of cold damage. I have a CWDT trigger get set at level 1 to trigger a level 8 Flesh Offering that gives the Vendigo a 24% attack speed buff whenever I take the least bit of damage.


Flame Dash-Desecrate-Faster Casting-Convocation

All of these benefit from faster casting so I linked them all together.


CWDT-Immortal Call-Increased Duration

Keep CWDT as level 1 and Immortal Call at level 3. Level up Increased Duration all the way. Socket these in your shield.

Vendigo Fun Fact #7: Every night after he goes home, the Vendigo relaxes on the polar bear skin rug on the floor of his igloo. The polar bear isn’t actually dead though. It’s just too scared to move.



Jewels:

Every jewel should have life or ES on it, whichever you are going. As early as you can, look for Ghastly Eye jewels that also have 6% Blind and 8% Taunt. One of each will help keep you alive. After that look for increased minion damage or added physical damage for minions.

Vendigo Fun Fact #8: When Bruce Banner gets really angry, he turns into the Hulk. When the Hulk gets really angry, he turns into a Vendigo!



Flasks:

I went ES with CI, and these are the flasks that I used. I always like to get an Ample Quicksilver Flask of Heat so that nothing can stop me or slow me down when I want to ‘meep meep’ like the Roadrunner and run away. Degen will keep your energy shield from restoring even after backing out of a fight so the next most important flasks to have are an ‘of Staunching’ flask for bleeds, either Basalt or Granite, and a Ruby Flask of Dousing for burn. With CI, you won’t need to worry about poison or a curing flask. I also took an ‘of Warding’ flask for curses and a Topaz Flask of Grounding for removing shocks.

Vendigo Fun Fact # 9: The only thing that can cut a diamond is another diamond….or a Vendigo!



Levelling:

While levelling my witch, I got Magma Orb as the reward for my first quest and linked it with Volley which I bought from Nessa after bringing back the Medicine Chest. Later I vendor crafted a +1 fire gem wand for it. I used that until the minions could clear quickly on their own.

Minions aren’t great at low levels, but I got Raise Zombie and just kept recasting it when one died. I also got Summon Skeletons and linked it with a Spell Totem. They got a lot better as I kept allocating minion passives. Prioritize getting the minion life leech and minion life regeneration nodes to keep your army alive.

For Bandits, I always help Alira for the resists and to make gearing easier, but just kill all if you don’t want to go that route.

You can get Desecrate as a reward for completing Chamber of Sins. Equip it at level 16 and keep levelling it even though you don’t need it yet. You can use Raise Spectre at level 28. You can either use the reward gem you get from killing General Gravicius or buy one with quality from another player. Quality will add up to 20% minion speed to it. Like your Desecrate gem, equip it and keep levelling it even if you aren’t ready to use it yet. The higher level your Desecrate and Raise Spectre gems, the higher level Spectre you can raise, and that will be very important later. You won’t see any Vendigo until after you kill Malachi at the end of Act IV, but you can raise some random spectres to help out if you want to play around with the gem before then.

After killing Malachi, get the Multistrike gem as your reward and then head to The Ascent to meet your new Vendigo friends. For your first four-link, do Raise Spectre, Minion Damage, Multistrike, and Melee Splash. You can rock that until you can equip your Shaper weapon for the pseudo six-link. Keep desecrating and raising new specs as you complete the acts to keep your Vendigo at their maximum level.

Do your lab runs as soon as you can. Ascend to Necromancer, take Invoker first and then Soul Weaver, which is when things really get fun. After getting Soul Weaver, the only Vendigo I ever lost was one that died on a particularly nasty trap in the Uber Lab with nothing around to leech life from. You can drop your zombies once you notice the Vendigo doing all the work and the zombies always showing up late to the party. Get Commander of Darkness next. For the last ascension upgrade, I would recommend Bone Sculptor if you run skelly support like I do.

Once you get to maps, get the highest level spectres that your gem will allow, and once it can raise max level specs, either buy a T16 map off someone or bum a T16 or Shaper portal on chat. If ever the maximum level of corpses that your Desecrate gem can generate is behind that of your Raise Spectre gem, then just get a cheap unset ring that gives +2 or +3 to socketed gem levels to temporarily house it so that it can do the job.

Vendigo Fun Fact #10: When a Vendigo wants a Rhoa egg, he doesn’t check their nests. He just starts ripping Rhoas apart. Vendigo really know how to make breakfast fun!



Passive Tree:

https://pastebin.com/nGkbAYzK

At level 90, I still have unallocated minion passives on the tree because when it comes to passives, as with gear and jewels, I put priority on keeping my scrawny self alive.

Vendigo Fun Fact #11: The Vendigo is never happier than when killing something. He puts the laughter in manslaughter.



Late Game Fun:

The Vendigo should be able to take you as far as you want to go. They clear T16 quickly and with no problems, and they never die even when up against the Shaper's Guardians and the Shaper himself. The big boss late game fights are all about knowing the fights and having good enough mechanics to keep yourself alive while the Vendigo do their bloody work.

Here's some pix and video of the great fun the Vendigo bros and I had:











Link to video of the Vendigo slapping around T16 Phoenix: https://youtu.be/Np8sd6gtlio

Hope you enjoyed my guide, but when you are out there wrecking Wraeclast at the speed of light with your mighty marauding Vendigo squad, don't bother thanking me, just thank the Vendigo!

Grebble :)


Vendigo Fun Fact #12: Before he goes to sleep every night, Chuck Norris checks under his bed…for Vendigo!

Nice build. Could you upload a video?

yeah it would be nice to see the build in action ( some t15 map clear and guardians would be very cool). I am currently running boring SG but i am open to something new.

Sound fun but a video to demonstrate what those Vendigos can do in high tier maps would be nice.
I'm in doubt of their DPS against high tier bosses. Won't be fun if it takes 5 minutes to kill Mino :)

https://youtu.be/Np8sd6gtlio

Thanks for suggesting a video. I really should have thought of that myself.

Here are the Vendigo playing around with the Phoenix, and I updated the guide with the video link also.

Not sure about Mino, but they do the Phoenix in sixty seconds so it's probably pretty similar.

Fun, fun, fun.

to test these vendigos i need to level up the gems first, i'll post when it be done

Have you thought about Undying Grapplers? (I know the build is about Vendigo) The do flicker strike as well as discharge. Since our shield gives frenzy charges for flicker we can utilize the power charges for discharge. Seems like a strong combo. Enjoying the build so far and have been experimenting with spectre's and spectre combos.

Grapplers are really cool, but the Vendigo have been on my list of cool mobs that I want to party with for a long time now. Those long armed, bearded, ice ninjas really crack me up.

On the stats side, the Vendigo are more tanky than the Grappler and have higher base flicker damage, but that Grappler discharge has to be really sweet though.

There was a nice Grappler spec build from a couple years ago that I looked at before making mine. It works differently and gears differently than mine, using ice bite, and poacher's mark for charges and accomplishing a seven-link buy six-linking a Wideswing for more aoe. I'm sure it was pretty cool, but I wanted to go a different route and try out a different spectre that hadn't really got any attention yet.

http://poedb.tw/us/mon.php?n=Leaping+Spider

Hi. what about spiders that use flicker? How do they compare? Thanks

I actually used the Leaping Spiders from Act 2 once I got Raise Spectre and until the end of Act 4 when I was able to raise some Vendigo. They do the same thing, but the Vendigo are tankier and do more damage.