[3.25] Holy Flicker Strike Necro [League start > All content] All content is done. PoB updated

Why are this gods important? Followed up by

TL;DR - Harvest craft the jewels, take this gods, and you will be elemental ailment 'unaffected'. Not immune, you still will be socked, chilled and ignited, but it will have no effect on you.


TL;DR - Collects stones of Lazhwar as you go then corrupt it. It costs nothing. You might roll something good. Then slap anoint on top of it. Or just buy corrupted one for cheap, and anoint it for a decent upgrade.


TL;DR - freeze flask removed, bleed flask added. Bleeds are scary, yo!

TL;DR - the game feels boring to play, the build feels as a shadow of its former self.

Rare monsters with random one-shots is a bane of my existence. Because damage of the relics nerfed so much, it takes half a minute to kill fat rare monsters. And during that time, once in blue moon, your block will fail and 6k HP with endu charges, fortify and other mitigations will be not enough, because said rare also randomly rolled a crit. And you will die.

And it feels super boring to play against that too. Its not a boss, it doesn't have mechanics you could dodge or avoid. Its just a empowered monster that only autoattacks, but hits super hard and attacks fast. So you kinda just standing there... and waiting for it to die. And hope it doesn't randmoly kill you.

The feeling of progression is also gone, as every next ugrade brings nearly nothing. Getting + to levels, empower, better weapon or chest is barely notiable boost in stats.


When I was making this build, not dying was a top priority. Its more invested in defences than damage, and seeing it fails just because we are 'slower' now, really makes me ask myself - why am I not just playing something with 1.5k life and 20 mill DPS.

Flasks... Are still used as piano. Nothing changed other than flask being empty more often than not. I have nothing to add to this. I wasn't using flask too often before, now they feel like not worth using at all.



Ailments. Later in Ultimate league I said how good that you can get semi-immune to ailments. Well, turns out - you can't.

The effect of shock stacks with itself as we can now see from the debuff. So if you reduce 30% shock to 15%, some other source of shock will add to the first one and you end up at 50% anyway.

So unless you have 100% ailment effect reduction, you are as good as having 0% in most cases.

Same goes to ignite duration. If you don't have 100% reduced duration - you are dead. I've been ignite for 20+ seconds while having 70% recuded ignite duration on me. So take it from the tree and the Pantheon - easy 100%.


Bleed and Poison - just kills you right on. Most of the time - even before you can press the flask to remove it. Flasks that auto use, will just run out of charges trying to remove bleed or poison over and over, because - once again - it takes some time to kill rare mobs. And they can bleed you 5 times over during that time even through 75% block.

Unlike with rare monsters, fighting bosses is pretty fun when they get to use more than 1 mechanic during fight. I'm sure there will be issues with things like Shaper and Maven Void Zones that just fill up the arena because you are not killing boss FAST enough. But overall.... Good stuff!

Rampage was not affected by nerfs in any way, and combined with Spiritual Bound notable, it destroys everything when clearing maps.

Null and Void are insanely powerful as they remove ailments from you as well as make you immune to phys damage. That means not taking bleeding damage.

The build still levels fast and smooth, zooms in maps and feels pretty tanky. Was a smooth road to T16.

Expedition monsters with Ward are vulnerable to us, as we first hit with Static strike that barely does any damage, and only then Relics trigger.

Mana nerfs are more than managable.

Cursed Crypt (map where you can get seond Holy Relic) is t3 and can be done early.

1) Null and Void solve a lot of problems with ailments and bleeds as well as give you great clear. Get them ASAP.

2) If you have enough Dexterity - Use Poacher's Mark - it gives you life, mana, as much damage as vulnerability, and also makes your Relics generate frenzy charges. I used it early, then switched to Vulnerability due to lack of Dex.

3) Skitterbots give as much damage as Zealotry, but cost less mana. I was using those up to the very end game. You should too.

4) New Flask mod - Flagelant - resores 1 charge if you are hit. And you are hit a lot. A lot lot. It refills charger real fast - try rolling for it.

5) Forbidden Taste will kill you. Its hard to use even at 60 chaos res. Don't do it. Try getting Panic Life Flask instead. Or Blood of the Karui.

The game feels clunky to play, and I suppose its not a secret to anyone.

Starting out with this build felt smooth though. Leveling with SRS and early mapping with SRS+Holy Relic felt good. Rampage gloves combined with Spiritual Aid was blowing everything up.

The problems started in yellow maps and early reds. T10-T11. Rare monsters and map bosses were just taking too long to kill.

You would still be pretty much invulnerable due to the high block, but standing next to a rare for 2 minutes and tickling it down was straight up boring.

A bit later (T11-T13) even more problems started to show up, as ailments, bleeding and poison started to outright kill me.

Random ignite, random bleed would kill me on spot. I had to take 100% reduction to ignite duration and make 'Use on bleeding' bleed flask (that, at that time, would just go empty instantly)

Having full 75 Chaos Resistance would essentially do nothing to Al-Hezmin poison as 1 stack of it would just kill you anyway, regardless of your resist.
Had to make poison flask and use it just for him...

Getting Null and Void gloves helped a lot to mitigate things, but the build itself felt pretty bad. At least compared to what it was.

Fixing up some survivability problems, however, didn't fix anything in regards of lacking damage.

It was not until I got Empower level 4 in +1 to socketed gems Tabula it stoped feeling super bad, and started feeling just bad to mediocre.

League contents? You can forget about it.

Blight - you can't do it. And I don't mean blighted maps. I mean encounter. Enemies will either kill your relics and then you, or just march to the pump with you having no damage to stop them.

Delirium? Funny. You most likely won't get past 1-2 rewards.

Betrayal? You can maybe tickle down one attacker, the rest will run away, you have on damage to kill them.

Incursion? Oops! You are out of time even if you just go and try to kill the temple architect alone. Oh and you won't kill him in time anyway.

Expedition - actually doable, as long as you don't touch any remnants or runic skulls and just go for chests. But then you get almost nothing out of it. Log books? Better just sell them, like you do to blighted maps.

Harvest? - You are dead in 0.5 second of the lag as mosnters spawn.


At that point the correct choice would be skipping any master you find in a map and just alch and go. It was very... very sad.

Until the saviour came.

Investing 6ex (that I got from pretty much doing chaos recipe and few lucky drops) into those gloves unlocked most league mechanics for me. Suddenly you can even do blighted maps, as Asenath effect lingers and procs from tower attacks.

Suddenly you can clear up incursions by lowing up packs of mobs around the boss and killing them with that damage. Even push to 5 delirium rewards.

The next stop would be getting lvl 21 Relic gem, or lvl 20 Divergent Relic. The DPS was the same and Divergent version was lot cheaper.

At that point the damage was kinda okay to deal with bosses, but I had to constantly swap Increased Area of Effect support for a Meat Shield. Just because it takes longer to kill the boss than to do a gem swap. This is tedious.

Why Meat Shield and not Predator you ask. Well that is because... you relics will die. A lot. The main survivability on relics comes form minions leech. But since relics do shit for damage now, they also don't leech enough to stay alive. Not to mentions they now have 25% less HP. Meat Shield help at least a little bit with mitigation.

Having that set up I came across another issue. Mana. Mana managment was terrible. Relics would die an you can't resumon them. Bone Offering would not activate because Static Strike on a 4 link would cost like 20 mana, and you only have like 100, with Bone Offering require you to have 80. 2 Attacks and suddenly you can't block anyone.

I was using Summon Skitterbots over Zealotry to help the mana issues. It was barely. Barely enough. Oh and no mana to use War Banner in that set up either. That being said Skitterbots ARE better than Zealotry in terms of DPS, up untill you get Shock craft on the ring.

Fixing mana issues with aura swap and some flat mana regen on a ring/jewels, I was at the point where I could attempt doing T14-T16 conqs and Elder guardians. A5 Sirus was also very much doable.

Not Shaper Guardians though. Those would oneshot me randomly, as it seems that things that I could previously face tank last league would just murder me.

And lets not fogert the Maven healing... That thing was disgusting. Relics barely do 1-1.3 mills DPS, and she would just heal all of it up. Frost Bomb on the Trigger weapon was (and still is up to today) mandatory to have when dealing with anytying Maven related.
I bet GGG will nerf Frost Bomb too - as it gives too much power with no investment.

At that point, the next step would be getting +1 to gems corruption on the chest, for that sweet sweet +30% more damage.

And here comes another issue. Because of how little people play this league, the market was empty. Most of my gear I would have to craft myself.

This would include the corruption of the chest. I think I run like ~10 temples with corruption altar till I finally got it

Getting that and some clusters, the damage started to feel about as much as in early stages of pre-nerf. Reaching up to 2 mills DPS, I took down A8 Sirus, Shaper, Elder, Simulacrum, Formed, etc. Read belows about that.

The clear speed felt divine, packs of mobs blowing up with Asenath and rares dying relatively fast. Map bosses, even with Maven, didn't felt like issue anymore. The build finally felt good.

Only took like 15ex+ of value to make it work, eh?

Elder Guardians - Done. Twisted - Done.


Shaper Guardians - Done. Formed - Done.


Shaper - Done. Witensed by Maven - Done.


Elder - done. Witensed by Maven - Done.


Sirus A5-A8 - Done.


Atziri - Done.


Simulacrum - Done.


Maven - Done.


Oshabi - Done. Harves bosses - Done.


10 way invetations - Done.

As you can see I hit insane fracture on my weapon. Locking in Alva mod means I can roll +1 to all spell skill gems by chaos spamming. I'm also looking to Veil craft it so I would have Trigger on 4 second cooldown instead of 8.

My shield is good, having 2 stats I need (ES on block and 12 spell block) and has a goo life roll on top. But the base is not the best and I'm going to Awakener orbs 2 shields with ES and Spell Block with a good base and hope to get something good.

I'm also thinking to replace my Amulet. Again - with Awakener orb on 2 amulets with 7% Spell block and +1 to all int gems. Will lose 8 spell block, will get ~10% more damage. That would not be worth, but I think I can get spell block up from other sources, like alt qual gems and get it to at least 70%. Maybe more.

I'm still missing reflect rings. Not sure how to go about that yet. Market is dry, crafting them myself would be tedious. And I really need them to do Atziri/Feared.

Gloves with Vulnerability on hit for a fair bit of damage. You pretty much just need a decent life roll and Vuln. In my case - also some int.

And just look at those great (not) rings I got!

Still, its enough to mitigate Atziri reflect and not go negative on life or resists.

Fairly easy fight, the damage is enough to phase Shaper and Elder pretty fast, and then its a dodge game.

Nothing to say about it. The damage can be on low end, so she might go into annoying invulnerability phase and keep you waiting.

Surprisingly a hard fight. Not sure why. Prolly because of the timer, as when 4 of them spawns, they just fill up arena with too much crap.

I actually had to do them twice, as first time I failed it because of rolls on invintation.

Second time I did them unrolled and deathless. They don't have enough damage to kill you that way, but still take a while to kill them. With rolls the fight can get really nasty.

Nothing special or hard about the fight. The hardest part was to get 3 ex to buy the map. The second hardest part is to know boss mechanics and not stand in the deth zone. Other than that, with damage I have, Cortex went down pretty fast. Boss only did something dangerous twice during the whole fight.

Nothing special about that fight either. Just remember- don't stand next to him when he spins. Just wait it out. That's it.

The first attempt of doing feared was a failure.
In 6 portals I managed to take down Atziri and Shaper.

The fist two bosses I had to deal with were Atziri and Cortex. That alone was pretty rough as 2 of the easiest ones (Chayula and Elder) were locked to the very end.

I was hard focusing Atziri over Cortex, and it looks like it was a mistake.

Because as soon as I killed her, Shaper spawned, leaving up Cortex and Shaper.

And arena that was more void zone than solid ground at that point.

Having low damage and having Shaper and Cortex stay in a fight longer meant they covered everything in degen that kills you in 3 seconds and massively slows you.

That also means you can't really touch them, as they would place said degen zones under themselves and stand there, while you can't come to them in melee range. And during that time they would just spawn even more void zones.

The plan for the second attempt would be - ignore Atziri, focus down Cortex/ Shaper. Yeah Atziri is dangerous, but most of her abilities are blockable, her ignites don't exist. Her bleed is dangerous, but flasks might just deal with it.

1) Switched amulet corruption for +1 curse. Why? Well I explain it down below.


2) With extra curse in hand, I thought to myself, why not use Poacher's Mark
Surely -20% phys damage reduction is great for bosses! My relics do pure phys damage and on top of that would be able to generate Frenzy Charges! That's huge 12% damage boost on its own and + armor strip.

Sound cool, right?

Well turns out bosses don't have armor to begin with. There is no physical damage reduction to strip. Or rather almost no, but Divergent Pride takes care of it.

Frenzy Charges on relics would be a great boost to damage though, so its still an option.

But then I realized there is another curse that is better.

3) Got an Unset Ring with extra slot for a curse.


Punishment is insane. Boss takes 80% more damage when half hp. That's a huge multi. And it helps to burst bosses down, as they are more dangerous the lower HP they are, adding new mechanics to the fight.

And on top of that Punishment reduces enemy damage by 10% when they hit. Just everything you would want.

4) Turns out PoB does not calculate damage gained from Predator Support correctly.

To put it simple, Predator support is straight up worse than Meat Shield and it requires you to press a button to activate it on one target only.

5) Swapped Predator to Meat Shield, and Predator activation button now bound to the Punishment curse. Hand cast. For even more effect.

What was single target mark before, now is AoE curse that makes enemies take more damage, and explode when killed. Great not just for bosses but for dangerous packs of rares, like expedition events.

6) Reading more into why bosses have no armor, and looking up how the flask nerfs made this build very much vulnerable to physical damage, I came to a conclusion.

Trying to scale armor is pointless for this build. And since the only actual armor scaling we had was mostly from a high armor shield...

Well I replaced it for Energy Shield base to scale energy shield more.


7) Finished making an Ultimate Weapon, messing up with some meta mods, Leo Slams and Veiled Chaos Orbs.

Get +1 curse on amulet
Get Ring with slot and slot in Punishment curse.

Swap your Armor Shield to Energy Shield Shield.

Get godlike weapon

Never use Predator Support for bosses, use Meat Shield instead.

And then maybe, just maybe, you can do all content in the game.

A terrible fight made me use 5 of 6 portals.

Once again I was unlucky to spawn both Atziri AND Cortex as my first enemies.

This is straight up terrible, as Cortex boss fills up the arena with void zones and then chars the ground so you can't possibly see those zones.

Charred ground also makes you not see w/e Atziri is doing and you just have to hope that block will carry you.


As I planed I burst down Cortex fist. This helped a lot. In fact, first 3 portals I wasted was trying to kill Cortex. Once he was dead the fight got lot easier.

Last 2 portals were used... well honestly just because I was not trying to focus at that point.

Atziri went down with ease, Chayula died next, causing no issues, then Shaper and Elder spawned, with Shaper sniping me with a beam 2 times.

I already did Uber Elder fight with Maven, deathless, so last 2 death were just me not playing properly if anything.