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

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mat1k wrote:

Did the changes to told me to, i still have to buy new skin, rings with better hp rolls, i will stay with these boots because i dont want to waste passive points on dexterity. The question i got is you linked me the asenath's gloves but these have no slots and links, should i buy these? i dont understand the thing with gloves, there are none with my link on market

You can use crafting table to craft needed sockets and link even on corrupted items

So, going into the leaguestart preparation for 3.22 I went into the last update posts, including the back in time one which I normally base my leaguestart-setup on if I run this build. Since I got new shield MTX and the Holy Relic MTX anyway, I think it is time to do this build again as it has been one of my favourites of all time. During my research/prep work I stumbled again over the rant-post from you and I wanted to give my input on it:

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I think the last nail in the coffin of my confidence about the build – is a recent Palsteron video. I recommend everyone look at it. I agree with pretty much everything what he said, and this just raises a question – why would you play this build? Its an all-rounder. It doesn’t do anything particularly well.

I agree with a lot of what palsteron said. I agree that it is an allrounder. I also agree that in many instances, especially when it comes to leaguestarting, you are better off with a specialized build. But I wholeheartedly disagree that allrounders put you in a global disadvantage. But more on that later. For now: Even though in general being an allrounder, I think this build is actually one of the stronger setups for two things: Delve and Expedition. When I last played it I EASILY climbed (or rather buried) to around 550 while comfortably killing bosses. In delve-meta there are like 2-3 other builds that are better, but considering how specialized those setups are I think this build, while being also able to do anything else in the game, is pretty strong for that purpose. Also, the explosions basically clear expeditions instantly, you have enough tankiness to withstand the damage juiced expeditions dish out and enough speed to comfortably travel the map.

More into detail on "why play an allrounder", cause this hits way too much at home: Because people like me probably prefer to do different things during a league WITHOUT building 4-5 chars. This is also where palsteron is wrong with his focus on specialized characters. While they may perform better, the sheer time AND gear investment you need to put 2, 3, or even more characters into action is not something that you can overlook; that is if you, at some point in the league, really wanna do everything.

Lets take this as an example:
Up until this league Heist was one of the most profitable starting strategies, netting up to 1.5 divines per hour early league. Lets assume two people of the same skill, second one runs only this build, first one runs a heist starter to finance a bosser and to swap to a high-investment-bow mapper afterwards.

Person 1:
He starts the league with round about 3,5h until heist, then farms heist for the first 14 hours of the league, netting 1.5 div per hour, resulting in roughly 20 divines as a good benchmark to reroll into bossing. Now he needs to get his gear together: Depending on the setup there is approximately 3 hours of buying, crafting, PoB-ing until the gear is ready. Now, he runs another leaguestarter, needs 15min to get 7-league-steps, flasks and gems in place to rush the campaign for another 3 hours total. He, until then, never stepped foot in the atlas, now has to grind through all the maps. Since it is a dedicated bossing character, even equipped with 20 div, won´t be as fast as some speedster. Give it, due to the power, another 8 hours til the atlas is done, which equals about 4min per map without any downtime. Fair assumption I think. Now, lets assume, as early bossing is very profitable, that he is able to generate around 10 div an hour now. If his aim is a endgame mapper, something I always target as a bow-character at roughly 200 div to start off with (due to bow prices, more on that further down), this equals to 20 hours of grinding bosses, followed by another 5 hours of crafting things that are not yet on the market and buying the items, followed by another 2.5 hours campaign run for the bow char, another 1 hour to get to at least 75 and another 1 hour in 5-ways to get to a decent level. We are totalling now: 61,25 hours.

Now let´s look how the Holy Relic start does:
You start with Absolution, one of the most powerful summoner starts and blast through the campaign. Solid overall campaign time is 4 hours, which is a 2.15 til Kitava A5, from there 15min per act and half an hour on top for labs, buying your first gear sets for early maps. Give it another 1.5 hours into the first maps and the first rounds of chaos recipe to buy your geoffris crest, the first tabula (both like done in 30 seconds, I don´t think we have to go into detail THAT much) and continue through early maps up until t7-8. For the sake of it, I assume the same mapping speed as for the bossing-character: While this guy is certainly bigger juiced at that point, he´s probably not that much faster due to the inherent setup bossers are built. Also, aside from that I think 4 min per Map is pretty fair in general. So we would be at a solid 8 hours into the first 60 maps. At this point we also have 60 atlas points and you can spec into a desired farming method, ideally something that can be utilized early on. Essences are pretty strong, but you can revert back to t1 maps without any downfall other than no atlas progression, Strongboxes are a solid Go-To early in a league, you can go into red altars and just keep mapping... I think it is definetely fair to assume that you will be able to produce 1 div an hour at that point with A LOT of mechanics. Lets now assume that you spent just 5 hours without any progress to focus on getting your first currency push, netting with a mesely 1 div per hour = 5 div. This gets you: The Level 21/20 Holy relic, asenaths based on this leagues price, Empower 3, +1 Tabula, Dawnbreaker. That is everything you need to clear T16s very comfortably. Lets give it another 2 hours to overwhaul the rest of the gear as well now. We are at 15 hours total. Now we can finish the atlas on that setup, due to our upgrades we can blast yellows faster and I still work with the 4 min/map mark for comparisons, leaving 55 maps at a mesely 3,7 hours left. After that we can properly setup an atlas strategy which at least gives us 2divs an hour, still on the lower end what I personally am able to produce at that point but we want to keep it relateable. With approx. 42h left on the 200 div map-blaster this gives us another 76 div at the 2-div/h farmrate with 4,5 hours to buy and craft gear - more than fair since this build is far more unique-heavy than a typical ranger-setup. That amount of money instantly enables all and every item for the build and therefore has us endgame-ready at literally the same time.

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And even after dumping divines on top of divines into it – the end result is easily dwarfed by meta builds that just do things better. Sure – you won’t be able to EVERYTHING but doing something well - is arguably better.

While this quote also refers to the paragraph above, I want to specifically focus on the divines on divines part... Because I think you are a bit mistaken here. Meta-builds are notoriously expensive, ESPECIALLY when it comes to bows. A friend of mine always plays ranged dex-based chars (that type of chars is his M.O, not only in PoE but like in every game) and he was looking for a solid physical endgame bow. He didn´t find anything below 100 divines. The prices he encounters literally finance this whole build, and I´m talking super endgame into probably part of the pob-warrior-setup. For one single item-slot. 83 % of the mirror market is purely bows. Those are prices that for a lot of people are just completely out of reach while this build is not only affordable, your items are also very realistic compared to more promoted builds. I have seen guides, especially on youtube, where people took prices of a 3-month old league as a basis to promote a potential leaguestarters, which would cost 15 div if you actually check earlier pricing. It is utterly ridiculous. Allright, short round:

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You can clear maps, pretty fast. But bow builds will do it faster.

For eigher 8x the price or with a lot of deaths in between.

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You can do most ubers. Maybe even deathless. But totem build will just oneshot those in split second.

Cause it is the flavour-of-the-month-meta build, which exists due to an oversight on GGGs part and it will be gone next league, while this build holds strong for like what? 10 leagues now?

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You can do sim 30 – but you will only get 5 rewards.

Which is absolutely good enough, even on specialized Sim-Builds you very rarely reach more than 6 - and you don´t have to go insane by just doing that content.

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You can’t really include MF gear.

Who cares - MF is an abomination of a mechanic that should have been deleted ages ago... It goes against the core principle that you aim to get your character stronger. It is ancient, it is entirely optional and you don´t need it to make money in PoE.

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You can’t do legion well.

Highly specific league mechanic - agreed, if you wanna farm legion do something else. But if you want to farm the other 15 mechanics you´re fine doing it with this build.

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You can do blights, but you can’t go afk in it like golem builds.

"Going afk" and "playing a game" are for me personally complete opposites - no harm done.

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So I’m a bit of depressed at what this build ended up as. Of what the game ended up as.

This build, for me personally, is a fun concept that performs as advertised and can be played literally from day 1 of a league if you so desire, up until the highest pinnacle bosses in the game while performing solid on nearly all parts the game has to offer while also be affordable AND pretty much avoid dying. For me, the way I approach PoE, this is a total win on all fronts. Also, no one sais u NEED to start it - run with some meta leaguestarter, get 30 div, put them into this build and you will be happy af. And to close the loop towards palsterons video that you´ve mentioned: He ended the video referring to allrounder-builds as something that is perfectly viable if you have the knowledge. And even if the playerbase interested in your build is small I can guarantee you we all appreciate the work you put in all the more. I hope, this lightens your mood a bit when it comes to palsterons video.

Best regards,
Vennto

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Vennto wrote:

Best regards,
Vennto

What that? A love letter? What is this signature xD

But for real appreciate your time writing all that. I’ve been feeling pretty good about the build after this league tweaks actually. At least it FEELS good to play. But looking a bit deeper I realize its just a band aid fix of slapping Aegis + Determination. Not too happy to rely on that, but as long as it works I have nothing more to say.

I still have no say in the debate of whether or not this build is good or bad since I literally don’t play any other build to compare.

But regardless of that, I think everyone can agree its is at very least UNIQUE and somewhat viable on top of that. Also a fun one.

I mean if you are not playing this to tell people that you starting as “VAAL FLICKER STRIKE SUMMONER HOLY RELIC NECROMANCER” then idk what you are doing with your life.

But enough of that. I am here to bring some more intel.

POB UPDATE


ANIMATE GUARDIAN EXPERIMENT


BOSSING EXPERIMENTS


NEXT LEAGUE NERFS PREDICTIONS


PLANS FOR THE BUILD FUTURE


So here you go. A bit more info on what going on with the build while we wait for its inevitable destruction.

Decided to revisit 'Interaction with league mechanics' section as there were some major changes to the build, league mechanics AND GGG just dropped Kirac mods. Its still a bit early to do this, since we don't have all keystones, but I will be more focused on actual patchnotes when they drop, and might forget about this part. So gonna do it early.

TL;DR - lot of mechanics valued higher because of addition of shieldcharge - lets you clear faster when on a timer. Some single target mechanices moved down - lack of early game single target damage. Added Essences and Shines - missed them before.

Changes:
Shrines - added
Essence - added
Legion - up, can full clear with shield charge for lots of loots
Blight - up - all you need for that mechanic is Asenath, and Asenath is a fairly common item now.
Hardbringers - up slightly - shield charge lets you do beachhead map faster
Breach - down because it was nerfed too much
Abyss - super down because nerfs
Bestiary - down a bit, but still good for lazy extra enemies
Incursion - down a bit - less value, don't use incursion items anymore
Betrayal - down a point, still good early, added description
Metamorph - down - lack of single target damage early, bad rewards
Delirium - no changes, but you need Skin of the Lord/Loyal + Aegis Aurora to do wave 30
Bossing - up - build perormed well with recent tweaks

Hello,

thanks for the Build and this Guide.
I liked the thought to play a "evil" class like Necromancer using holy skills.

So i took GhazzyTV's Absolution Necromancer Build Guide and aimed to your build.
Leveling was smooth with Absolution and now i changed the build to Holy Relic during white maps.
Lacking some damage atm but the build feels great and is a lot of fun to play.
I did some mistakes with items (Flicker Strike doesnt work on wands -.-") and in the passive skill tree but what do you have a test char for :)

Definetly want to try this one out in the new league.

I did some kind of a leveling Guide with Absolution based on Ghazzy TV's Build and an older Tytykiller Run:



Progression is written in Notes Tab and a the last passive skill tree works towards your white maps tree.

Feedback would be great or if you like it, you can add this to your leveling section.

Greetings

With this build and some improvements, I easily reach level 100 (last two levels in simulacrums):

and solo do all 40 achievements:

So definitely can recommend it for any content. Crucible trees were huge buff, but even without crucible still will be playable good enough.

Welp patch notes are here and oh boy people are mad due to lack of changes.

Me personally – I’m more on a positive side of things. Build will function just as it did last league, no mechanical or conceptual changes. League looking to be fun, many new players to keep economy alive, sanctum – means people be doing specialized builds.
The only problem I have is with a performance patch – and it’s a big one. My game is currently unplayable and if this stays… I might gonna have to skip the league entirely. But don’t worry – I’ll still be around here giving my help to any unfortunate soul that decided to try this build. Even if I personally won’t play.
We still need to wait for 20/20 gems – still can potentially lose a lot of damage from there.
But for now – enjoy new league build cover picture. What can I say except you're welcome!

Now to the changes that affect us.
1) Strength/Intelligence Support Gem - Guardian's Blessing. I see no value in this. If it works like other blessings – it will be limited to 1 aura only. It requires an extra gem slit, but what is more important it requires like 5 link to properly function. We can’t have that. But idk. Maybe instead of feeding frenzy on a golem….

2) Intelligence Support Gem - Fresh Meat. Suppose to give minions 100% inc dmg and unknown Crit chance and Crit damage for 10 seconds after summoning. This is actually interesting in a more way than 1. First of all – you can just summon Holy Relics by hand. 10 seconds is a long time so that is not bad, but they will lose all power charges. Second part is a weapon swap. When permanent minions gain + level they are ressumoned automatically to become stronger. If this would trigger Fresh Meat – it can potentially be good. But we would need PoB numbers for that. Because we gonna need to drop a gem for this.
Overall – expectations are low. While damage and crit are the stats we want, just MORE damage from gems we already use is most likely gonna be better and won’t require extra button presses.

3) Intelligence/Dexterity Support Gem – Devour. People were memeing bout how good it would be with Corpse Pact for 200% attack speed on a flicker build. I don’t see too much value in it for several reasons.
- You do not perform a kill – your minions do. That means you would have to link it to minions and lose a gem slot
- Even if you perform a kill somehow – you’d rather want enemies to explode instead of being consumed
- You lose half of the ascendancy consuming corpses that suppose to shock and chill and give you damage reduction and buff your minion near them
- You consume corpses anyway with 2x offerings. Which is now when I think about it – a valid reason to try out Corpse Pact forbidden jewels.

4) Legion 5 way farmers in shambles. Not like I would ever want that to stay in the game, but that means there will be A LOT less legion jewels. I’m not entirely sure how this will play out. On one hand – less 5 ways, on other hand – emblem overstock means people could just solo farm 5 ways, getting less loot, but more people will be farming so…. Gotta see.
It is potentially a big problem because build relies heavily on Slum Lords stacking…

5) No Breach keystone. Maybe I missed it? Maybe GGG missed it? Anyway – Breach. Breach and Simulacrum are two next best things for XP after 5 way. With 5 way gone – I expect to see A LOT MORE Skin of the Loyal for sale. So that is kinda nice. On top of that some other keystones do a nice synergy with Breach itself, so its not a bad idea to just… solo farm breaches and harvest convert into Chayula breachstones. Big muns.

6) Guardian changes… Are weird. It certainly looks more appealing with 25% chance on“Hit a Rare or Unique Enemy” change. Especially for vaal flicker cuz you get in 25 hits. But Guardian provides close to zero protection to minions, has to use link skills (and those are terrible in many ways), and needs to convert to elemental damage. You could still do that with Triad Grip and lose explosion clear (questionable, but doable). Very much not sure about that one, but at least its something to think about.

7) Temporal chains nerf – why is it related to us – well some SRS enjoyers might visit to try out this build. I doubt it tho – I don’t think this nerf nearly enough to stop poison madness. You still get to poison cap easily.

8) Monsters that are unable to be damaged/targeted no longer Regenerate Life or Energy Shield, or Recharge Energy Shield. Obviously massive for everyone. Much easier times with bosses especially with the stupid “life as energy shield” mod.

9) Map rotation. Glacier is back – the initial area of that map can be potentially cleared with 1 vaal flicker. Maybe with 2. Amazing map to farm. Boss a bit dangerous. Colonnade and City Square still on the map. Amazing for farming with this build.

10) Sanctum. There is a lot to say about sanctum. First of all – Sanctum was a league that I did 40/40 challenges on this build. And the build was not even optimized that time. So yeah, after a certain point of damage – there is no problem doing sanctum even if you have like 20+ afflictions.

However! I never managed to do a no-hit run on this build. This is because damage has a bit of a ramp up time when your Pride not fully stacked, brittle ground is not under the enemy, powercharges are not stacked, relics are not in position. It takes like half a second to kill enemies, but its enough to take some resolve damage.

Other than that – I can see this build doing Sanctums well by the end game or close to end game gear.

GGG also seem to be adding rare monster into the sanctum. This is aids for sure. Some damage effects for sure would be impossible to react. They are also making Sanctum monster to have more life and hit harder. But at the same time defenses affect resolve loss. Hard to say whats its gonna be – since block is not a defense, but my expectations are high fro this build to handle anything.

11) Torment spirits. Torment spirits are one of my favorite mechanics. If they are actually not terrible – this might be a valid end game farming strat for 0mf build to be MFer.

12) Vaal side areas – hard to say if those re gonna be good or not, but this build should not have trouble farming them. The bosses are not too spooky there even with all the buffs and zone mods.

Gonna throw my plans on the league a bit later and hopefully GGG will fix the technical issues or there will be no league for me :/

Hoping to try this build out this league. I loved mooseolini's Holy Relic Guardian and miss the playstyle. Also used to love flicker. Seems perfect.

Btw, performance issues post-patch. Some people are reporting that it dumped cached assets and just playing for a few hours will finally sort it all back out once your client has seen (almost) all of the assets for the first time.

No nerfs always good!
Sad that so many people talk about performance problems. On my laptop game works absolutely fine, my friend with 5-year-old laptop also no problem.

I personally want to play this league with Beyonds and Torment spirits! New keystones and nods look awesome.

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Fire_Archer wrote:

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Thanks for the write-up. I will be waiting your post when 20/20 gems show up.

I'm really interested to try the build. How challenging do you think it would be to hit yellow / red maps with the build for those of us that like to play 24h straight at league start?

My only fear is that in the past 2 leagues I chose a starter that forced me to run 1 day level 60 heist to do chaos recipe to buy some gear cause i was unable to progress in maps given some essences I had from white maps and whatever else dropped...

If I can take the build to farm tier 16 maps corrupted with 8 mods on a decent budget, I'm really hyped to try it.

P.S. Any other MTX besides Exalted Holy Relic and a flicker strike (altough automaton FS doesn't go with yellow HR :( )