mathil doesn't usually keep his stuff updated on forums or reply, so im going to give my insight after playing this game for over 3 years and playing this build for some months now. this is my take.
First off all i'll post my current gear and passive tree. you can see the links of my gems in gear, tho one weapon just has leveling gems in it and doesn't have decoy totem/vaal skill or anything
Now i'll dedicate some time explaining my choices and layout.
Gear Explained
My gear is as follows. of course using the dreamfeather weapons to boost our chaos damage from high evasion. thus all applicable gear should have the highest evasion we can find. also all applicable gear should have flat chaos damage added, since this is our main source of damage to augment with % increase and % more damage modifiers.
the next tricky part is the belt. this belt is required. this gives us flask charge duration and most importantly lower flask charges used. this, coupled with Arcane Chemistry passive (which you can view in my tree below) allows us to keep flasks up basically permanently.
cospri's will is BIS for this variation of the build. either spectral throw or blade flurry, doesn't matter which, it is BIS because we have available mana for blasphemy curse since we don't use damage auras, and it gives us free poison, 2nd curse, and high evasion.
gloves should be highest resistances, hp, and accuracy you can find. evasion doesn't matter here, just get the stats.
boots BiS is atziri step for high evasion, hp, spell dodge and movement speed.
helmet and jewelry will all be connected as to what you can use. this is the best jewelry i had that i could craft flat chaos damage on and retain max resistances. you'll most likely need to jungle around what you use to have in priority:
max resistances, life, some accuracy, flat chaos, %WED
those are the stats to aim for
******NOTE*******
you NEED a source for poison. if you do not have and cannot get cospri's will, you can use LEGACY voidheart. if you do not have that, you can use poison support which i'll touch on more of in the gems explained section.
i do not recommend snakebite gloves. you will need rare gloves for resistances, life, and accuracy
Flasks Explained
Flasks are what this build is about. im basically a pathfinder without the ascendancy. my flasks are up 100% of the time. difficulty is having too many unique flasks means i can't have all the required mods to take off bleeding, freeze, shock, and curses.
I run one life flask. its risky, and it does cause me to die, but there you go. i often change between bleed removal, shock removal, and freeze removal. right now i don't often die to bleed because of my life leech with vinktar/atziri flask, unless its corrupted blood and im not careful. if i get too many stacks of corrupted blood without the bleed flask, im dead.
freeze is dangerous as well, but right now the shock added damage taken is too much so i make sure to null it out.
only reason why im running vinktar's is for the shock effect. it double dips and its the highest modifier you can get. the leech is bonus but not the most amazing since we don't prioritize physical damage and i don't have the flat lightning dmg variant.
atziri flask is great but i'd say not required. the amount of dmg given is not huge, but the leech is amazing and does apply from your poison damage as well. if anything, i'd swap this out for another life flask with bleed/freeze removal or if necessary for basalt flask against heavy phys dmg like Izaro.
i need to get more in the habit of not relying on this flask TBH, and use another life or utility flask when the times call for it.
witchbrew and jade flasks are required. the bonus dmg they give is astronomical.
i don't run silver flask. i used to, for the onslaught effect, but apparently the duration is overrode by our lower duration ascendancy proc. AKA its basically useless. only useful vs bosses but the bonus from onslaught really doesn't augment our damage enough to merit a dedicated flask to having onslaught, so skip it. it isn't a huge loss.
Gems Explained
Here i'll talk about my gems and why i chose them.
first off is blade flurry vs spectral throw. i played the spectral throw variation with a specified spectral throw passive tree, including loads of projectile damage (which double dips the poison damage as well) this worked great!! however once blade flurry came out, i got a gem lvl 13 from vendor and plugged it into my sockets without changing anything else. i had less support gems augmenting its damage, no passives augmenting its damage and it SEVERELY out performed its damage.
it also out performs its range when using conc effect as opposed to using slower projectiles with spectral throw. this means its safer to use as well.
i highly suggest using blade flurry over spectral throw. this is my suggestion after testing both setups. the damage is at least 3x better, and the longer the boss lives the higher the damage gap becomes because BF stacks the poison at a MUCH faster rate.
if you choose to continue using spectral throw that is your choice, and i'll still cover that in this section.
BLADE FLURRY
this only requires a 5L. i repeat, it only requires a 5L for all required damage supports. this is a HUGE bonus over spectral throw variants. as of right now there just isn't enough support gems which help this gem with this setup. since we don't rely on physical damage at all we don't need to use melee physical damage. we still can, but it hardly adds any damage to the build.
BiS supports are: Faster Attacks, Void Manipulation, Added Chaos Damage, Increased Area of Effect/Concentrated Effect.
easily swap inc aoe for conc effect before separate boss fights. majority of map fights you can keep inc aoe socketed without issue.
for a completely optional 6th link, im currently leveling up my life leech gem. Life gain on hit im pretty sure would be better than life leech in this case, though its difficult to test. other optional support gem options are utility gems, such as Stun, Knockback, IIR, IIQ, Blind, Additional Accuracy, Culling Strike, and my personal favourite Endurance Charge on Melee Stun. BF always stuns, so you'll constantly have endurance charges up which is a big boost to defenses. Also allows you to run CWDT immortal call with EASE. by far the best defensive option.
however you could also roll fortify. i have fortify on whirling blades already, but its a bit of a pain to try to remember to keep it up all fight etc. so instead you could link this to your BF in place of endurance charge on stun for 100% uptime on fortify, which is 20% flat reduced damage taken. better than 16% reduced physical damage (tho no supply for immortal call)
*****NOTE******
if you don't have another means of poison, this is where to socket the gem. it requires a 6L however to fit it in. on only a 5L you'd need to cut out Faster Attacks.
Blasphemy one curse of your choice. Witchfire brew will take up the 2nd curse. i constantly run my flasks so i like to use poacher's mark as curse. it #1 reduces their evasion, subsequently raising our hit rate, #2 gives us life and man on HIT, #3 frenzy charges, but that doesn't matter much with raider buff, #4 the biggest reason is 100% flask charges gained. this curse will allow us to sustain our flasks at 100% uptime.
other aura is obviously Grace for higher evasion = higher damage
wither totem is required. get it with as many support links as you can. inc duration is best 4th link but inc aoe works as well.
fortify whirling blades is required. very defensive and good for you.
rest of my sockets are basically null and void to look at, but keep in mind i will be running endurance charge on stun so i will be making myself a CWDT setup and placing it in the weapon. i will also be taking out my stand alone frenzy attack since raider will be able to sustain charges against single target easily now, and place decoy totem with my flame golem.
I chose flame golem because the damage double dips, and i have enough accuracy/attack speed.
Spectral Throw Gems Explained
if you really don't want to use a severely OP gem that is Blade Flurry and want to stick with the slow and horrible spectral throw, then this is where i'll talk about its gems.
5L is required but 6L is ideal, of course.
spectral throw, faster attacks, added chaos damage, void manipulation, GMP/slower projectiles, pierce.
if you don't have legacy voidheart or cospri's will, poison will be your 6th support. i'd keep faster attacks in this case, but you could also sub faster for poison and keep pierce. pierce is only used because of its 19% more modifier, which does double dip. you would also sub GMP for slower projectiles against bosses.
not much else to talk about here. those are the required supports. nothing is better, everything is worse. again you need a source of poison so if you want to use spectral throw without cospri's/voidheart you have to have poison here, and it will be worth it.
Passive Tree Explained
Now i'll go over my passive tree and why i chose certain things.
First off is obviously frenzy charges. we want them all. the more damage double dips, and we're RAIDER which just got a massive buff, so this aids us. it doesn't boost this build tremendously, but it is still a buff. essentially it just means we have slightly more attack damage (doesn't double dip though) and more attack speed with almost perm onslaught, and frenzy charges come easy!!
for the BF version, which i am now, you can take out all projectile damage. this does nothing to aid you. we also suck at physical damage so that doesn't boost you at all either. the best boost you can get is CHAOS damage, second best would be attack damage or DoT. just not physical damage, or physical attack damage...those are wastes of passives.
I ended up getting all flask nodes i could get. i would go up and reach alchemist nodes in witch start if i could, but i can't. so Arcane Chemistry (required), Druidic Rite, and Primal Spirit. all good things.
as much life as you can get. though since its a bit out of the way i almost always avoid the Thick Skin cluster. it gives 22% life but takes a total of 6 passives to get there. thats only 3.667% life per passive used, which is absolutely fucking horrible. do not get that cluster, EVER.
depending on your jewelry/helmet and whatnot, you may need to get resistances from the tree like i have. this eats up a lot of passives which is very inefficient but necessary. do anything it takes to get maxed resistances. if i upgrade my jewelry with better stats and still keep the flat chaos dmg, then i will remove these passives and allocate them elsewhere.
2.5 CHANGES
I will be making some changes to my build and setup in 2.5. changes to make it more defensive, adding hopefully some more life, more consistent and constant leech with vaal pact, and just a lot more mitigation with immortal call CWDT setup etc.
i will be changing my jewelry around. this will cost some coin to do optimally but i need more life and resistances along accuracy and retaining my flat chaos damage. this will give me freedom for change in other areas, such as...
changing my helmet to alpha's howl. this will allow me to not be frozen and run blasphemy curse/grace and include arctic armour which this build SCREAMS for. while moving you drop ground ice which will slow enemies from getting to you, and while you're stationary (like casting BF) you gain phys and fire reduction. PERFECT.
i will also most likely permanently drop the atziri flask and include a bleed/instant recovery on low life life flask.
oh another change, i think i mentioned it earlier but not here yet, is since we won't have problem retaining frenzy charges vs single target as RAIDER...keep in mind this is for RAIDER...i am going to remove my stand alone frenzy gem, put my portal gem in its place, and put decoy totem with my flame golem totem + minion HP.
this should allow me to stand still for some moments and cast and get a bunch of poison stacks on bosses like the guardians or izaro without getting focused fired.
finally will be passive tree changes.
soon as we get the respec, i will be taking out the path to the north chaos damage nodes and spec some defensive options. my option for BV/endurance charge on stun and CWDT immortal call setup will become basically required in order to reduce those pesky 1 shot potentials.
new tree will look similar to this. getting an endurance charge, mana/life leech and vaal pact while retaining needed intelligence and hopefully more hp as a whole (depending how jewelry upgrade goes)
all in all these changes should add approx 49% physical damage reduction into the build. 16% from 4 endurance charges (also raises resistances too), 13% from arctic armour, and 20% from basalt flask. defensively this build should be a pretty big monster now. not the highest life pool, depending how your good your jewelry is, but not horrible. LOADS of evasive mechanics and a very respectable physical damage reduction rate. i am satisfied.
would these defenses make this hardcore viable, anybody know? be looking at 5-5.5k life, 75% evasion, 40% dodge, 46% spell dodge, 49% physical damage reduction, cannot be frozen shocked or bleed.
Wow thank you so much for the detailed explanation. I am not a pro player I just started this build few days ago and I am at level 60 but I guess I will wait til Friday and respec the tree to the one that you showed. Could you be so kind and update your post after the patch gets on for a final confirmation of what should be done and if there are any changes.
so....alternatively, with the endurance charges and such, you can manually set off immortal call if you want with Doedre's Elixir. it will set off a lvl 1 or 2 immortal call with ease. problem is the 3 second immortal call cooldown. your immortal call duration is 2.44 seconds with lvl 2 CWDT/lvl 4 IC and 4 charges.
this could be abused for almost permanent IC uptime, so long as you keep getting the charges. its more difficult to get charges on bosses, since they have higher HP you can't stun them and thus you don't get charges. with a crit BF build it would be much easier but you'd still hit the same wall.
any boss with adds tho is gravy train. stack up the charges on them and cast IC with no cast time or mana cost just by chugging the flask.
mathil doesn't usually keep his stuff updated on forums or reply, so im going to give my insight after playing this game for over 3 years and playing this build for some months now. this is my take.
First off all i'll post my current gear and passive tree. you can see the links of my gems in gear, tho one weapon just has leveling gems in it and doesn't have decoy totem/vaal skill or anything
I'm curious why you would ever drop all the proj damage nodes in lieu of using the strictly chaos damage nodes? Double dipping hasn't gone away, so scaling both the phys and chaos of the initial hit as well as the poison seems far more sensible.
These are the changes I'm going to be running. A few minor optimizations and mostly cutting things that aren't as important to Raider versus Pathfinder (most of the flask nodes), plus one or two notables I was surprised weren't already accounted for, like Aspect of the Panther.
I hope that when the world comes to an end I can breathe a sigh of relief; because there will be so much to look forward to.
Last edited by ogresamanosuke on Nov 30, 2016, 7:41:47 PM
I'm curious why you would ever drop all the proj damage nodes in lieu of using the strictly chaos damage nodes? Double dipping hasn't gone away, so scaling both the phys and chaos of the initial hit as well as the poison seems far more sensible.
because on my setup im not using spectral throw, im using blade flurry. i do talk about spectral throw, but my main points are as to why blade flurry is by far and large better than spectral throw in almost every way. damage, atkspd, range, mana cost...the only thing spectral throw has over BF is mobility since you can jump from pack to pack killing everything with just a few casts.
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Would you take Point Blank once you have 6L and that Mustard?
when i used spectral throw i never did take point blank, no. it is only beneficial for single target while using slower projectiles, since you have to get so close anyway, and it significantly slows down your clear everywhere else.
you definitely can, but i never did because i wasn't doing shaper/uber atziri with that variation anyway. it would be worth the cpl extra passives for those bosses tho as it would drastically raise your single target DPS.
on another note, again my BF raider version of this spectral throw pathfinder build - i will most likely skip the buffs to onslaught and get phasing with my respec.
reason is, onslaught really doesn't buff this build a whole lot. the only thing the right path adds is some atk spd, which will be changed, 20% attack damage (doesn't double dip) and onslaught buff which is just 20% attack speed and 20% movement speed. this will be changed to be 40% attack speed and 40% movement speed, sure, but going the phasing route will net you 6% dodge, 10% spell dodge and most importantly immunity to elemental effects.
my variation of this build has difficulty spec'ing flasks to get rid of vinktar shock, bleed, and freeze, so having immunity to elemental status ailments makes this quite easy. could even also grab up poison, ignite or curse immunity as well (depending on scenarios).
40% attack speed is large, but BF already gets 60% MORE attack speed, so fk it. ALSO onslaught is just a guaranteed proc ON KILL. where as with the phasing route you also have phasing at max frenzy charges, which is basically going to be always.
you can essentially say raider will always be immune to status ailments. this is MASSIVE and definitely should not be overlooked.
Last edited by xMustard on Nov 30, 2016, 8:04:33 PM
im a returning player and im wondering how viable this build is as a league starter? can you just run generic 1handers until you can afford the dreamfeathers or is that out of the question?
im a returning player and im wondering how viable this build is as a league starter? can you just run generic 1handers until you can afford the dreamfeathers or is that out of the question?
well i'd say it can be a league starter. however when you start a character it doesn't need to always look like what your end goal is. for instance, you can raise a ranger and use bows because they're super efficient and easy to level then make your transition at any time.
if i were leveling, i'd probably use blade flurry for a number of reasons. #1 its ranged. #2 its aoe. #3 it still has great single target damage. #4 its very low mana cost, and im talking VERY low. this is ideal for leveling up.
even if you want to do the spectral throw version, blade flurry would be best to level. if you do use BF then you're limited to a sword claw or dagger. basically anything would do. whatever gives you the highest DPS either physical or elemental. it really doesn't matter.
great unique weapons to use would be Goredrill, The Tempestuous Steel, Mortem Morsu
of course the best thing to do is get gear like the ignomon because of its huge flat elemental damage added, and just go to town.
leveling up you just do what it takes. get dreamfeather whenever you can afford it. a big aspect of this builds damage tho is witchfire brew and shock (vinktars) so it isn't exactly a very cheap build for a 1st go around, but the main mechanics do still work when its not fully optimized. should be fine
Alright so I'm really trying to figure out how to get this build to roll well as a league starter.
xMustard, your second tree looks really nice IMO. I reacted to the first tree having a bit low life. Going to the life wheel while picking up the flask nodes is a nice addition and gives us free evasion on the way.
How much damage will we lose from skipping the chaos nodes though? Pherhaps Atrophy is overkill for endgame. Maybe someone better at calculating damage could look at it. An option then is to grab Written in Blood and go for the lifewheel earlier in the leveling (and pick up Arcane Chemistry too, of course). Atrophy would then be the last few points we'd get.
I'm super tempted to play this as a Raider but the thought of Cospri's Will being too expensive worries me. Looking at standard prices now it's going for several ex. I haven't played in a good while so I have no idea how rare/expensive it was in the Essence League.
How viable would it be to run Blade Flurry without Faster Attacks until we have a Cospri's?
Raider would mean racecar attackspeed and movement speed which would be fun, but one less gem slot to play with until you have a 6L. Pathfinder would give free poision from the first ascendancy and allow us to use Queen of the Forest for even more movement speed. I'm gonna try to calculate which would give the most movement speed at 40-50k evasion rating.
Do you guys think it is going to be a dramatic change if we stick to the original build as showed with gear and tree even though after the patch? I dont see so much changes affecting it or maybe I am wrong?
How much damage will we lose from skipping the chaos nodes though? Pherhaps Atrophy is overkill for endgame. Maybe someone better at calculating damage could look at it. An option then is to grab Written in Blood and go for the lifewheel earlier in the leveling (and pick up Arcane Chemistry too, of course). Atrophy would then be the last few points we'd get.
I'm super tempted to play this as a Raider but the thought of Cospri's Will being too expensive worries me. Looking at standard prices now it's going for several ex. I haven't played in a good while so I have no idea how rare/expensive it was in the Essence League.
How viable would it be to run Blade Flurry without Faster Attacks until we have a Cospri's?
Raider would mean racecar attackspeed and movement speed which would be fun, but one less gem slot to play with until you have a 6L. Pathfinder would give free poision from the first ascendancy and allow us to use Queen of the Forest for even more movement speed. I'm gonna try to calculate which would give the most movement speed at 40-50k evasion rating.
you will lose some damage not going for the northern chaos nodes, but losing damage in favour of leech, life, and defenses is well worth it because we already do so much dmg.
keep in mind that vaal pact is optional. it is only one extra point, but it still isn't required i wouldn't think. to run poacher's mark we get life gain on it, and you can easily swap endurance charge on stun for life leech or more LGoH which is already instant leech, since we can't stun bosses to get those endurance charges anyway.
vs bosses that do not have any adds, this is exactly what i would do. swap it out for life leech or LGoH or fortify.
cospri's will is expensive, that is the only thing. it by no means is required though. you can run any chest with high evasion and just use poison gem instead of faster attacks. that should not be much issue at all. dreamfeathers have high base attack speed and blade flurry already attacks super faster. faster attacks is great but the poison is REQUIRED.
cospri's will cost you just about the same as a legacy voidheart ring if you're playing standard.
think of it this way. pathfinder does give you free poison, but depending on how many frenzy charges you end up with (i currently run 8 on this build) raider can give you 24% attack damage and 34% attack speed, which is comparable to the faster attacks gem.
they both have immune to status ailments but with the raider buffs its much easier to sustain raiders version, just being at max frenzy charges, which will literally be all the time.
so almost either way both will save you a gem socket. it is no issue skipping out on faster attacks for poison as raider.
queen of the forest is great, but keep in mind you don't really need the movement speed because we use whirling blades which is based on our attack speed, which raider has abundance of.
QoTF is still great tho for high evasion and resistances. to skip out on cospri's won't be a big issue regarding the poison, but more so for the curses. dual curse is great especially with poacher's because it sustains your flasks. you'd still want 2 curses because you'll be using witchfire brew for the insane dps boost it gives you.
you could easily set up a curse on hit setup for another BF gem, just BF, curse on hit, w/e curse, inc aoe. so even THAT isn't a huge issue, if you can find a source of getting another curse (either ring or corrupted amulet)
