Octavian's Spectral Shield Throw Deadeye. MF Shield Throw, 60%+ Quant.

I decided to go for a Deadeye with this build, with the goal being to scale clearspeed as much as possible. Tailwind is the main reason this ascendancy is a good choice for this, with animation speed scaling being an almost entirely new way to approach speed, working as something of a more multiplier to things like attack, movement, and cast speed. The rest of the ascendancy choices comprise Fast and Deadly in order to augment accuracy, and Far Shot into Ricochet for coverage. The full, current version of my tree can be found in this Path of Building link -

https://pastebin.com/XXMpckbw

I've also put together a few leveling trees, with suggest itemisation and gem setups. Those are linked here, with one at level ~40

https://pastebin.com/9dxkzGy5

This one uses Ewar's Mirage and Frost Blades, which isn't how I ended up leveling as I prefer to level with the skill I'll be using in the endgame, and so suffered through shield throw from early levels. However, I wouldn't recommend it, as shields are very low dps early on, not really picking up until later (another thing which I think put some people off the skill). Frost blades works just fine, so give that a go to start with.

This second tree is around level 60, and is using SST.

https://pastebin.com/11hNMbj0

Mutewind Pennant is the first half-decent shield you gain access to, and would be where I recommend switching to SST if you'd like. The onslaught on warcry is nice as well.

For bandits, go for Alira. Crit is good. Res is very helpful in an MF heavy build.

For endgame gearing, I've chosen to focus on a quantity stacking, magic find route. This is not strictly necessary, however, shield throw has good enough base damage that with proper scaling it is very possible to make it still shred any tier of map even with quite a bit of quantity focused gear. Lets start with the most important bit, the shield. You've got a few options here, but its gonna be hard to beat the pricetag on a Magna Eclipsis, the single best unique shield for DPS in a crit shield throw build.



Aim for one with as high an armor roll as possible, since this translates into damage. Your other options for your shield slot are going to be a quite high armor/evasion shield, but without the ES from magna, you'll have to make up crit elsewhere. I've done this with an elder body armor with base crit to attacks. This is the shield I've subbed in currently -



which I crafted using Deafening essences of dread until I hit an acceptably high %armor roll. Again, magna is so good that it is only about 10% less dps than this, and still comfortably able to clear everything I need it to. This upgrade is very much icing on the cake.

Next, your mainhand. You again have two options here - for lower tier maps (up until about tier 11) you can easily use a Cameria's Avarice, provided you can swing the strength requirement. This is the prophecied version of Cameria's Maul, which has the affix "trigger level 20 Icicle Burst on killing a frozen enemy". Icicle burst is a 100% physical to cold converted projectile attack that has ridiculous base projectile speed. This makes it incredibly synergistic in our build, and as such can be a valuable addition. However, giving up the weapon slot is harder to do in higher tier maps, where a powerful shaper-touched statstick would be your more desired option. The statstick I currently use is linked below - aim for something with at least one phys as extra mod and some multi. Rapier bases have multi as an implicit, and thus are quite nice.



Alright, lets get into the MF gear core. This stuff won't be new to anyone who's played an MF build or two in the past. The boot slot is taken up with Goldwyrms, rings will be two well rolled Ventor's (which will be most of the cost of entry to the build if you're concerned with cost) and the amulet will be either a Spinefuse talisman or a Shaper Touched amulet. I've gone with the shaper amulet in order to more easily get a good total Int roll.



On your ventors, prioritize 8+ quantity minimum, a decent res total, and a decent life value. Ignore rarity. On your goldwyrms, aim for as high quantity as you can afford.

If you have the correct watcher's eye, it is possible to also make use of a sadima's touch in this build. The one you're looking for is the physical damage converted to cold while affected by hatred affix. This is the one I currently use -



The helmet slot is taken up with a lightpoacher, which provides a significant amount of secondary coverage, augmenting clearspeed even further. You essentially need one with the extra secondary projectiles enchant for shield throw, which is usually fairly cheap. Also, you want it to specifically have a single abyssal socket.



For the belt, I'm currently using what I consider to be a highly underrated belt, The Tactician. This does mean I need to get strength and int rolls in a few places to activate it, and if I ever get around to farming up a HeadHunter, I think I'd switch over - but I've got too many projects this league to focus on that. In the meanwhile, Tactician is so damn good that it stands in just fine. This is the item for anyone not familiar - the prophecied version of The Magnate.



There are a few abyssal jewels in the build, and they're fairly simple. Since shield throw is incapable of using any weapon-specific damage scaling, most of what abyssal jewels offer isn't useful. However, there are some rather nice utility effects you can pick up, and lots of flat life is good. A few examples -



Things like strength, res, and int are all useful. Movement speed, crit chance, and even %increased damage on kill scale the build quite well as well. %physical gained as fire if you've crit recently is the holy grail, but quite expensive, especially with a good life roll.

For the body armor, I've opted for a rare chestpiece. To start with, a cheap corrupted six link with the right colors and usable life and res rolls is a great option. Once you want to fully optimize though, and switch off of magna onto a higher armor/evasion base, then you'll want an elder-touched chestpiece with base crit to attacks. These can get very pricey, with the one I purchased running me around 400 chaos. I wouldn't settle for less than t1 elder base crit, since just sticking with the magna and regular 6 link until you can get it works fine.




Last but not least, flasks. This build takes good advantage of two unique flasks, Atziri's Promise and Taste of Hate. The utility flasks besides these are a Diamond and Quicksilver, with a single life flask thrown in. If Taste of Hate is outside your price range, a Sulphur is a good option, since %damage is something shield throw lacks.

Lets start with Spectral Shield Throw, the main attraction.

The links I use for SST are, in order of importance -



Cold Penetration is hard to come by for SST, since you can't use anything that specifies penetration with weapons. Also, while Ele Focus is better damage than either of the crit gems, Herald of Ice is very strong, so freezing is good. Speaking of Herald of Ice, this is my setup -



Both curse on hit and onslaught do very little to nothing at all in terms of increasing mana reserved. The assassin's mark makes crits more reliable, which is great, while also providing power charge eneration. Onslaught gives us onslaught. Onslaught is good.

The next gem setup is variable depending on whether you're using Cameria's Avarice or not. If you are, then use these gems, socketed into the avarice -



This setup gives great coverage and damage, which causes the avarice to easily one-shot whatever it touches in lower tier maps, which is really where you should be using this weapon.

If you're using the statstick option, I'd recommend putting in a simple cast when damage taken.



Speaking of socketing things into items, lets go over lightpoacher real fast. Lightpoacher got nerfed pretty hard at the end of last league, but still makes a lot of sense in any build that can scale enough proj speed for it to still have good distance. This build is one of those. To that end, I use Faster Proj in the supports along with Chain and Inc. Crit for reliable crits.



For movement, a fairly standard shield charge setup is used. Shield charge is particularly good with deadeye, as tailwind stacks work extremely well with it, and you can generate them while charging about the place.



Auras consist of the earlier mentioned herald of ice as well as a Hatred. On top of that, I would suggest a Blood Rage for frenzy gen and faster attacks as well as Rallying Cry, since the animation speed scaling from Tailwind makes rallying cry almost instant.