HOWA Venom Gyre Trickster

general mapping:
-flipped through maybe 6 different atlas strategies with ease, so regular t16 content is fast as hell and nothing even got even close to killing the char other than eldritch gaze wrath of the cosmos comboed with some rippy altar mods.
-twisted/formed farming was plenty fast. not as fast as a reverse chill type build, but still fast and can wipe the floor with most mods on high quant height of hubris + captive interest invitations without worry.
-100% deli is doable but not great.
-made it to level 98 naturally by mapping and a simulacrum or two.
-purchased my way to 100 from there in 5 ways so full disclosure, I didnt get 100 naturally.

side content:
-heist is okay. ghost shroud let me run through agility lasers safely, but i prefer move speed builds to whirling blades in heist.
-did a few wave 30 simulacrums. some with death, most without.
-blight ravaged maps were easy. plenty of damage for those big bosses.
-logbooks were solid. main issue is that there are a few mods that really fuck with the build that we'd like to avoid, so slightly suboptimal even if it can do them

bossing:
-uber maven (took two attempts to be deathless). first one had suncaller asha in the boss phase. i could outdps it with frost bomb down, but man was it not fun. can't whirl on top of the brain without taking the laser, and doesnt have the gigadam to be able to onetap the brain with just one whirl combo, so had to just sit and spam gyre. couldnt die though cause polymath would top me off on every boss kill so it was just a war of attrition that my attention span lost so i whirled the brain to pahse it and paid for my sins. still got the kill but one death per boss phase isnt pretty. second attempt had no consecrated ground though and was a breeze. suppress all the spells, evade the attaks, ghost shroud to recover when hit, and overleech to tank degens. very comfy.

-uber shaper (deathless). have to be careful about your whirls since the shaper beams hurt a lot, so getting whirls off through beams and clone beams is nontrivial. otherwise easy. ball phase is more than doable thanks to ghost shroud giving us extra lives, and regular shaper balls are the same. can tank a few thanks to ghost shroud. have to be awake for the fight for sure, so not easy, but plenty doable.

-uber uber elder (deathless). shorter ball phase and fewer beams means its functionally easier than the uber shaper fight. elder does damage with hits which ghost shroud negates. didnt try tanking a doughnut, just sayed in the circle. chain and fork and split and whirl make sure no madness propogators slip by unnoticed so the ground was super clean the whole fight.

-uber sirus (one death). all the teleporting and immunity phases suck ass, especially since it wastes flask uptime, but sirus during phases where you can dps stands still for a long time which is great for whirling blades. CI and overleech makes ground degens less spooky. have to be careful of die beams since you only have 3 shrouds to tank with, but otherwise pretty safe.

-uber cotex (failed). rolled anti-crit damage on the map as well as extra phys as lightning on the map. so i lost around 7/8ths of my damage and was taking extra damage. was pretty doomed tbh, but thats how the random map mods work.

-other two bosses i didnt try. didnt farm any eldritch content this league before yesterday. eater of worlds probably pretty easy with overleech helping tank the "stand in the circle" mechanic a bit and ghost shrouds as well as evasion + suppress trivializing the rest of the mechanics. has good dps uptime too since eldritch bosses are relatively stationary for us to whirl on. searing exarch might be a bit tougher though since ball phase has the potential to just wipe us. ghost shrouds will help a bit, but think that will probably spell death if you dont have hot hands for dodging.

-maven invitations: got them all done with over 70 quant on the invitation with height of hubris + captivated interest. only one that was close was the forgotten which i did with -aura effect, +aoe, and +onslaught. got bonked by the dude that spins in circles with beams. just absolutely sent to the shadow realm. died once to the twisted. just got dunked on and onetapped.

pobbin
explanation of configurations:
-we have frenzy charges from mark mastery.
-elusive starts at 225% and reaches 175% before withering step cooldown comes back, giving an average of 200%.
-we have energy shield overleech so leeching energy shield is always true.
-woke pen gives us lightning exposure.
-brittle ground is functionally always up for bosses since we will be whirling at least once every two seconds anyway.
-projectile distance is tricky. I'd say youre probably around distance 20 or so in most cases, but the big boss dps comes from whirling blades in which case your distance is 0. that'll be slightly unfair for dps calculations since point blank should at full effect for your whirl blade dumps, but for the sake of being fair about it i think having it at 20 is for the best.
-always use guardian/pinnacle boss setting.
-vaal grace off.
-flasks are just the ones we'll have active during extended fights since they refill.

watch the video you dingus >:|

but for a text based description, you throw a gyre or two to kill a pack, then run to the next pack and whirl once or twice to kill it with the stacks you got from the first pack. rinse repeat. woke fork plus chain lets you clear out dense packs with ease. while whirling and throwing gyres, hold down withering step to rest your elusive effect. in sticky situations pop vaal grace.

for bossing, throw gyres, which with our curse effect and snipers mark will generate a ton of gyre blade stacks. then whirl about four times on top of the boss. drop ancestral protector for extra attack speed if you want. map bosses will usually die in one whirl combo. pinnacle bosses will take a few combos. uber bosses will take a fair few combos.

whirling blades automates application of brittle ground and tornado, so you just have to focus on holding down withering step and watching your blade count to keep dps up. you get into a nice rhythm of doing a few gyre attacks then dodging then a few whirls then dodging. pretty clean stuff. be careful whirling over degen ground though. leech helps but ghost shroud wont save you and the uber pinnacle boss degens don't fuck about.

lvl 90
lvl 100

the tree basically builds itself. first, we use split personality so chart out a long path to a far away cluster. we are projectile claw build, so our large clusters will have fan of blades and we want two, so that locks us into another cluster along that path somewhere.

from there, we are doing hybrid CI ES with evasion, so we need to pick up ghost dance and suppression to fill in the spell deficiency in our defensive layers, which incentivizes us to path down the outside of the ranger area.

after that we are polymaths with nightblade, so we pick up any mastery that makes sense (we get 14 of them in total). this mastery sniping eats up our split personality juicing a bit, but is worthwhile.

from there youve got like 11 points remaining so its just picking up efficient points and optimizing pathing a bit.

one thing i will note on tree that i think people sleep on a lot is instinct's 50 es on suppress. it's super strong since it effectively works like a -50 flat damage taken that applies at the end of all other mitigations. completely trivializes a lot of the fast-hitting low damage spells the game can throw at you like ball lightnings and thorns from shavronne for example or the fire tornadoes that delirium spawns. it looks like a little meaningless stat but it puts in a lot of work and i highly recommend it on suppress builds if you can fit it in. you dont even need to be ES based like this build is for it to work, you only need to have 50 es to get full value from it.

uniques:


rares:



rare jewels:

edit: Entropy Vessel replaced with


flasks:


trinket:

main 6 link: divergent venom gyre, woke fork, nightblade, crit chance, woke lightning pen, woke edwas

+1 chain and +2 fork feel pretty mandatory for the build to clear like butter and not like a limp pool noodle. get those first. the other woke and alt quality and level 21 stuff can wait. in fact, probably don't even run the build without having those two lined up. its just not the same. the bread to your bread and butter combo.
other gems dont have to be woke really. just something to buy to give a little gas here or there.
alt quality nightblade is less than a 1% damage boost for us so use it if youve got it but dont worry about it.

boss bonker & movement: whirling blades, faster attacks, CoC, tornado (lvl 1)
procs your tornado while releasing blades on your bosses for gigadam. the butter to your bread and butter combo.
leave tornado at level 1 if you dont want it to kill you on phys reflect maps.
faster attacks to attack faster. lets us drop our gyre blade load faster for effective dps and also travel around areas faster. good shit.

auras: grace, wrath, disc, enlighten 3
put these in your 90% reservation helm and you can fit em all with the masteries
if you dont have reservation corruption, replace grace with flesh and stone. flesh and stone is still good, its just not as bonkers as grace is for us since ghost shroud exists.

marking: snipers mark (21), mark on hit (divergent if lvl 21, else normal quality), enhance, portal
lvl 21 snipers mark brings 4 proj split to 5. very nice. lvl 20 mark on hit is 21% reduced effect which brings us below a breakpoint, so dont bother with alt quality unless you have it to level 21 which is 20% reduced and back above a breakpoint. enhance gives a bit of damage, then portal goes with enhance for the cast speed QoL.

utility: flame dash, withering step, precision (lvl 1)
precision gives a bit of crit and activates watchers eye mods for low reservation cost. flame dash takes us over chasms and through beam attacks without taking damage so is nice to have. withering step resets our nightblade's elusive effect, keeping it high all the time.

flex: ancestral protector, ???, ???
ancestral protector gives attack speed so its solid.
??? and ??? can be whatever. cwdt cold snap, cwdt immortal call, cast when stunned frost wall, cast on death portal. lost of stuff works.

hand of thought and motion + astramentis + ghostwrithe + le heups.

thatll take you to level 60 easily and you can stick with it and just grind your way to 65-68 at which point you can start equipping your proper gear.

i just followed the scuffed polymath split personality pathing even while levelling and it was fine. theres enough random life you can pick up along the way to make it comfortable and respeccing them will cost fewer points than youll get for free in the campaign so no worries there. was a smooth experience overall. ghostwirthe is definitely a fun new levelling unique to use.

heres a pob with how I levelled it. Definitely freestyle with it though depending on what you have in your stash like running tsalios sign instead of le hueps or whatever else. Was just pulling gear out of unique tabs and such and it ended up working out well enough. Swap lightning pen for crit. Etc.