[3.0] The Azure Knight, Scion version (Realistic Flurry Conversion build)

nice stuff

but to be fair when comparing different versions:

- bloodlust is for shaper only
- AP can easily replaced by AW or better, vengeance+coh+enfeeble on maps and guardians
- death's hand is almost as good as Rig's and doesn cost much
- darkseer can also be used for blind (if no Kaoms on)
- when dealing damage I am at full life over 90% of the time (incl. other degens than BR)
- when dodging, I get healed automatically from life leech instances in queue (without need to use a flask)
- with Kaoms I am immune to freeze, chill, tempchains...
- the budget version is adressed to casuals that would never get hands on acuity or 400 dps weapons...
- Acrobatics is only one point from the budget version
- my versions also have AA, block and those that dont run Kaoms or US even have Evasion
- I dont need penetration coz 75% of dmg is physical (as long as there is no armourpengem...)
- the budget version has no issues with any reflection dmg
- the sword/statstick version can easily scale to 7k life
- due to high regen I can use whirling blades with blood magic what makes the toon superfast

- I agree that the transition to sword/statstick sucks a lot (coz different build) and that that version is more expensive, but it will scale a lot with investments while keeping up all the practical synergies like overleech and stuff (the gif shows what is possible) coz I dont need VP

anyway, good job, maybe I give it a try with my ancient witch on std ;)

edit: imagine my versions with VP, chance to bleed instead of DofL, a statstick and no need of acuity or bloodseeker... right it would be just like the other bf builds with terrific DPS and pretending to be supersafe, but VP makes any lifebuild pretty unsave, especially when needing anti bleed/heat suffixes on lifeflasks... oh moment, you dont even use any lifeflask...?
so the price is either stacking def layers or getting instaleech without losing regen/slayer ascendancy

conclusion: any build has its downsides, some builders hide them some not...

how do you get healed when moving/dodging? tp?

I agree that outside of leech my build has no other means of healing, and even without VP my life regeneration would be low, making it a lot less safe as a lab runner for example, and necessitating 1-2 life flasks to be swapped for when doing it.

I don't think that freeze and bleed are much of a problem, especially since we both use a diamond flask, so there's one magic, a second one would be basalt which is highly recommended. With more defensive approach and higher life pool, freezes/chill stop becoming a problem as they last less then a second.

Reflect problem that I've brought up was because I don't think that just having 50% is enough since unlike resistances, physical damage mostly comes through, even more with Abyssus. I know you recommend Yugul but to me that is losing out on some other defensive power.

Having said that, im a fan of how you've solved the problem of leech when VP gets finally gutted, as I've never though that building around bloodseeker would be worth it at all, and of course Acuity's are very expensive. Even while we might disagree on what's more important and the way of getting it, at least you do have a way of sustaining Damage on Full Life and don't use super unreliable mechanics like Punishment curse with curse effect enchantment to boost the dps or a 20-50c claw with 5-15ex rings and call it budget gear like some others haha

"

Bristoling wrote:

Yeah, Occultist version is quite tanky indeed with free Enfeeble :)

I have to say I'm surprised, I think you are the first person who's profile I've seen that is playing Light/Cold version :)

"

Bristoling wrote:

Anyway, thank you very much for breakdown of your ascendancy choices, and wow - 6.4k life with Abyssus and without Belly is quite impressive sir :) I'm a fan of more defensive builds as well.

Initially i chose light/cold because it showed better dps during calculations prior getting gear. After reading your post I started thinking about that.

Now I can say the reason is this bad boy:


With my gear (I've 89 dex on boots and ammy) Shapers Touch gives me 117 life from dex, and that is exact same amount you would get from perfect T1 life and perfect t1 ev/life rolls on gloves. Shaper‘s Touch also gives me more dps than rare gloves which would have perfect t1 Phys damage, attack speed and accuracy rolls. Shaper Touch doesnt have resists, but it gives mana from strength which with Alira bandit reward gives just enough mana and mana reg to sustain longer distances whirls. Also with only 89 dex on gear I‘ve enough accuracy to have 90% chance to hit.

Comparison of stats at Lvl 90:


Phys/Light
Eff dps: 4.12
Eff dps against Shaper: 2.47
Life: 6492

Cold

Eff dps: 3.83
Eff dps against Shaper: 2.59 (2.623)*
Life: 6142

*in brackets value with +10 inc phys damage, because my amulet is selected to fit Shapers Touch.

Cold version have 2-2.25 passive points more damage against bosses, while Light/Cold with Shaper‘s Touch have 4-4.5 passive more hp and better mapping damage.

TL;DR version: Light/Cold version with Shaper‘s Touch you can get same amount of life and eff dps against shaper/guardian while saving 2-2.25 passive points and you also dont have to look for mana/mana reg/acc on gear other gear which gives you more gearing choices.

"

Bristoling wrote:

I don't think Bleeding is an issue, but that might be because of my terrible habit of popping all my flasks at once anyway. Remember we can always have Blood Rage in weapons, so that swapping disables it - but still, I'm not sold on Champion. Yes, perma-fortify is sweet indeed, but Taunt only helps defensively our allies. We only get 5% reduction. I would probably take Juggernaut if only for the boost it gives to Immortal Call, if I wanted to be more defensive :)

Hey! Taunt helps to keep my squishy golems alive longer :D

It may be, I only use flasks when I need them. In most cases additional degens would not be issue, it just sometimes sticky situations happen and it becomes additional annoyance.
Well Juggernaut is good defensive option too: IC boost, chill immunity and sometimes Stun immunity, but I prefer Champion because you dont need to be hit ~15 times to get max endurance charges, also it gives slight offensive bonus while you have fortify, so its not purely defensive and fortify works with both phys and elem damages. I like steady 20% phys and ele reduction more than jumpy 0-12%-total immunity to phys.
With Occultist I'd not even dared to try ele reflect map, I even avoided –max res, because even with Yugul, sometimes I got life drops to low-life status from rare ele reflect mobs. Now with Elementalist, Yugul and Fortify I‘d no problems in yellow Ele reflect map with – max res.

"

Bristoling wrote:

Bandits:
Alira, but if your gear is really good (easily capped resistances without compromising life/damage) then 2 additional points are better.

I think Alira is better than 2 passives:
1. 20% crit multiplier = 1 passive
2. 5 Mana reg. You need this to sustain your whirling blades on longer distances without taking mana/mana reg on gear or spending passive points on mana.
3. 15% ele res gives you more flexibility while choosing gear.

Thus it goes to Intelligence: with your passive tree you get 60 + 20-25 from Abyssus. So you either need to get Intelligence on gear to get enough int for Doryani's (113 int needed) some claws like Gemini needs 121 Int. So it's additional reason to go Raider/Elementalist instead of Raider/Berserker.

Hi, l'm running a scion variant with berserker/raider and l was wondering, at what amount of pDPS on claw should I consider swapping ToA for a rare one? (since there is 90% cold damage conversion, and I'm very scared of losing that increased cold damage). Also, does any added elemental damage on weapon contributes to dps output in a meaningful way?

thanks

You can have different different final dps with claws having same dps and crit chance due to how added damage from jewelry and Abyssus work on weapons with different attack speeds. For example I found that my 297 pdps claw with 2.02 attack speed beats a lot of slower attacking 320 pdps but 1.7 attack speed claws on Poe.trade, for example.
Best way to measure your gain would be to import your character into Path of Building and use browser extenstion that allows you to import claws on trade into PoB and compare dps increase per price. Otherwise it takes time to manually "make them" and compare them.
If you don't know how or don't want to do that, then I'd look for a claw with at least 300 pdps or higher, at least 7.2 crit chance and 1.85 attack speed or higher.
I don't know exact prices at the moment as I'm on my phone and can't really check it without spending 10 minutes trying different values :)

Flat elemental damage helps a tiny bit but not a lot, since it isn't increased by all our physical damage on the tree and melee physical gem.
For example, added cold damage on my claw in harbinger contributes to maybe 1-2% of total dps, which isn't a lot and could be ignored. I only craft flat elemental damage on my jewelry that doesn't have any more free suffixes and already has life, because there isn't anything else to put on it. I propably should have slammed it instead, back when exalts were like 30c :)

followed zabonsu build found out quickly that it wasnt working

was thinking of chunking the whole thing keeping only gear

ty mate u saved me a lot of playing hours :)

Thank you and I'm glad you are enjoying Blade Flurry. Thanks for following my build guide, I guess 160% life from the tree isn't for everyone :D

I switched to your build and quite like it, still a bit squishy. Does AA help that much since we have to move so much to avoid attacks? I can't manage my resists well enough to wear the perfect form so I have a rare chest atm. Managing all the skills and flasks is hard af.

Swap weapons, generate power charges, find mobs to generate endurance charges, rush boss, hope he doesn't have a mechanic that outlasts buffs or ToH otherwise die and try again. Drop aw, fb, cast br, pray no mechanic prevents attacks or br will kill you. Power and endurance charges are almost over. Manage 6 release bf + keep flasks up. No health flask so pray for successful attacks and no dot. Oh and dodge everything from the boss and any adds. I have around 4800hp but abyssus says more but im already having problems finding resists much less more life + more resists without losing huge dps or costing double digit ex per slot.

Is there a way to streamline this a little more? Compared to my other characters that are use a flask and attack it's a bit insane.

You cast Blood Rage only once, at the start of the map and before the boss when you swap AoE for Conc Effect.
You can (and should) have Blood Rage in your weapons, so that swapping to alternate set will disable it anytime you want.

"

Manage 6 release bf + keep flasks up

After playing BF for a bit of time, getting up to 6 stage and releasing is automatic and natural. Its a matter of practice. Flasks, you just pop once when you start to attack. Then you pop them a few seconds later when they expire.

Frost Bomb should be in CwDT setup, you don't want to recast a buff every 3 seconds.

"

I have around 4800hp

This is a problem. It comes mostly because you have low amount of life on gear and not many life nodes. Use example tree that is provided in the OP, you have currently only 170% life from the tree, where recommended is +200%. Anything below 5k is going to be extremely rippy with Abyssus.

Your rings are dps heavy, especially steel, but hardly any life on them. Opal also isn't that great, you can get better rings for under 30c.
You don't really need movement speed on boots, so you can sell those and buy some Two-Toned ones or just boots with higher resistances in general and also more life.
Your belt also has low amount of resistances, 100% total elemental resistance and 110+ total life (40 from Leather implicit and at least 70 base on the belt will get you there) is a good start. A tiny bit of WED can be ignored in most cases, especially only 11%.
No +% life on jewels, but that's acceptable as they can get expensive.

All in all - both your tree and gear is more focued on dps, and that's why your survivability is sub-par. Unless you have enough dps to mow down Guardians in 1-2 flask uses, it isn't worth focusing on dps at the expense of life. Get more life and resists on the gear, and forget about the dps. Same with the tree, try to get at least 190% increased life.
Perfect Form is good because not only it gives your free AA, but also great evasion (8-10k) and spell dodge. Once you have 5.5-6k life, evasion, dodge, spell dodge and Arctic Armour, you don't really have to dodge any trash mobs or most boss attacks, only big telegraphed slams. Your character has only 2.5k evasion currently, which doesn't synergize well with Acrobatics. You need more then that.

Last but not least, Alira is in most cases better then 2 points. +15% to all resistances and 20% crit multi is better then you can get on an expensive jewel that might be not 2, but 3 points away.

Thanks for the response,

"

Bristoling wrote:

Last but not least, Alira is in most cases better then 2 points. +15% to all resistances and 20% crit multi is better then you can get on an expensive jewel that might be not 2, but 3 points away.

Hadn't respeced to alira yet, was hoping to avoid the need.

I sent you a PM with some details if you have the time.

"

Bristoling wrote:

"

I have around 4800hp

This is a problem. It comes mostly because you have low amount of life on gear and not many life nodes. Use example tree that is provided in the OP, you have currently only 170% life from the tree, where recommended is +200%. Anything below 5k is going to be extremely rippy with Abyssus.

i didnt even notice the example tree was different from the POB tree.