[3.7] Divine Ire Trickster - "Can't Touch This" - 56% Spell Dodge / 67% Evasion / 39% Block

UPDATES


[3.7 Quick Update]
Trickster was hit with a few nerfs in 3.7, rightly so, as the Ascendancy was (and still is) extremely powerful. Despite these nerfs, Trickster is currently (as of 6/18/19) showing 22% of the playerbase on PoE Ninja.

Overall, all that was lost with my build is 10% spell dodge (so down from 66% to 56% - which is still over 1/2 of all spell hits!)

Ghost shrouds also restore at 2s instead of 1s (which I never found to be much of an issue, it was very rare you'd ACTUALLY get hit even 2-3 times in a row for them to all drop off. We also lose a bit of attack/cast speed, but we already have so much as a Shadow/Trickster, you won't notice much of a speed decrease - still very fast.

DPS was not touched whatsoever, so DI/Chaos conversion shenanigans still hit like a truck.

May want to consider building around the Vaal Timeless Jewel keystone - Corrupted Flesh. Grants 20% of Max Life as extra ES... this is a ton of extra EHP potential for an already strong Hybrid build.

Also, the new Flesh & Stone Blind Aura is EXTREMELY STRONG. I would consider switching from 2x 50% auras to 1x 50% aura, herald of ice, and flesh and stone (may need an Enlighten or some reservaiton nodes.)

Unfortunately I'm not spending too much time revamping this build as I am playing/building other melee-based characters this league. Spells are still absolutely very strong.

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Wanted to share my variant of Divine Ire Trickster, which utilizes The Perfect Form and hybrid Life/ES/Evasion to enhance a "tanky" playstyle.

I see many other theorycrafters using Staff / Staff nodes, which actually provides much more DPS. Duskdawn and Disintegrator are very strong choices. Dual Wield statsticks is the highest potential DPS for this type of build, but at the expense of some block/ES. Cerberus Limb is a great option for life leech, and is a very cheap yet strong option.

*** My build is purposefully created with the intention for good offense/defense balance. It is much tankier than Eternity Shroud/Staff variants, still pumps out excellent damage, and as such is NOT a "glass-cannon". It's more of an armored railgun!

Currently running T16 maps with zero issues, Guardians and Red Elder are no problem. Uber Elder DOWN.

PROS:


CONS:



What can you expect from this build, and how does it differ from other Divine Ire builds?
While this build does not pump out the most ridiculous high-DPS/glass cannon numbers as Staff or Dual Wield variants, I specifically enjoy builds/playstyles that offer a reasonable degree of tankability. I often build each league with the mentality of "I want to be able to facetank a pack of mobs" while still disintegrating everything with higher-than-average DPS.

My Divine Ire hits (at 20 stacks) still average on PoB at around 2.7 million. While this may be less than some staff/DW variants (that can clock in average hits of 4-5 million as staff, or 7-12 million as DW) it's more than enough to obliterate all content. Eternity Shroud variants are typically overkill for all content unless you just really want to sacrifice defense to kill bosses a few seconds faster.

Damage with 1 Wither Stacks:


Damage with 15 Wither Stacks:


Most other builds, however, don't utilize about 7K EHP (EB/MOM) with 56% spell dodge, 50-60%+ evasion, and about 40% block + FORTIFY since I'm able to use Shield Charge. As such, not being limited to only Flame Dash offers supreme clearspeed for open-layout maps and Delves.

I was also pleasantly surprised how strong the Ghost Shroud mechanics really were - acting like a mini Kintsugi. Having 3 shrouds up, alongside Tukohama pantheon, Arctic Armor, and Infused Channeling all add up to very respectable damage mitigation despite having practically 0 armor and no endurance charges.

I believe my build would be very well suited for deeper Delves, for this reason. As it stands, I feel quite tanky even in T16 maps - even to the point where I can pop a FREEZE strongbox, and sit there tanking the entire pack during the freeze duration without dying. I haven't really been able to do this on most other (non-Jugg) builds.

While I don't play Hardcore, I would imagine my variant would also perform quite well. I'd switch your shield to an Aegis Aurora for some very high EHP, additional armor, and pick up some of the Shield Defense nodes on the tree. With Cerberus Limb, Aegis Aurora is actually quite ridiculous.


[ 3/17/2019 Update ]
I spent an excessive amount of hours this weekend testing a variety of weapon/skill options, which all only required small reworks to our skill tree. Uber Elder is DOWN!

1) Staff Build /w Duskdawn
https://pastebin.com/XagswXQs



2) Staff build with Storm Burst
https://pastebin.com/tbuDT2u7



3) Back to Divine Ire, 1H + Shield ~ "The Final Form"
https://pastebin.com/qJ6vDfwd

While I initially tried multiple decent statsticks, including a multimodded dagger I made myself... I found one major issue with this type of build. Relying only on Atziri Flask as our only life-leech source is mediocore at best. For most content, lifeleech is irrelevant since we 1-shot everything/dodge most attacks. But for some content you really want the reliable leech.

One option would be to drop one ring for a Warlord's Mark ring, but it would be a considerable loss of DPS. The other best options I found were:

Valako's Sign
Berek's Grip
Cerberus Limb

Of these, I did testing for Valako's & Berek's and it just felt like the amount of damage I was losing (it was a notiecable chunk) wasn't really worth the leech I was getting. Also, since both leech types had a requirement - that target was shocked - made it inconsistent. A lot of stuff gets 1shot so you never get to apply shock, and then leech... so most of the time you still aren't leeching.

I settled on trying to make it work with a high-rolled Cerberus Limb. While it's a huge DPS downgrade from a well-rolled multimodded statstick, it's cheap, and provides 100% uptime of life leech. A good chunk of this "lost damage" was made up for not having to swap out a Brotherhood ring. In addition, it gives a bit (like 4%) extra chance to evade from our Lunaris shield.

(Also, if you are HC or just into being an absolute TANK... Consider running Aegis Aurora. If you pick up just a few of the Shield Defense clusters, with Cerberus Limb, you have a TON of extra ES/Armor)

20-stage Divine Ire comes out to 2.7 million average "hit." While not as high as the Staff variants, it's more than enough for all content, and I prefer the QOL/tankiness of having a shield.


PATH OF BUILDING:

Overall Build Ideas / Thoughts / Theorycrafting:



MY CURRENT SYNTHESIS CHAR POB:
https://pastebin.com/qJ6vDfwd


Changes/Thoughts:
I'm quite happy with this final form of the skill tree, did a lot of optimization and everything "feels good." This build is very point-starved so it was hard deciding what to keep/take. Going EB/MoM was a huge plus - It allows for a good split of damage going to both Life and ES simultaneously, and we can leech directly to both. Not having to worry about mana means no need for aura reservation reductions, mana leech, or Enlighten. Also, Ghost Shrouds instantly restore our ES when we're hit, so our added MoM "buffer" is always plentiful.

GHOST SHROUDS
Eldritch Battery + MoM allows full mana reservation and usage of ES as mana.

When you are hit with Ghost Shrouds active, you restore 5% of your evasion as Energy Shield.

This restoration occurs AFTER you take damage from the hit.

So for example if you have 20,000 evasion, this restores 1000ES per ghost shroud.

If you have 5000HP and 2000 Shields, and take a 6000 damage hit, you are normally left with only 1000 Life and 0 Shields. Instead, as Trickster, you are left with 1000 Life and 1000 Shields. So theoretically your "EHP" is higher than it looks, since your shrouds provide you with some extra buffer. This allows you to continue casting/leeching to both your Life and Shields at the same time, since both take damage simultaneously with MoM/EB.

Not to mention having Ghost Shrouds reduce ALL damage you take (similar to Kintsugi) and make you stun immune.

LEVELING
Check the PoB skill trees, I added a "Low-level" and "Mid-level" tree. Click the dropdown menu at bottom-left of skill tree to change.

https://pastebin.com/gTx0K45F

Basically, you want to rush over to Elemental Overload for leveling, as your crit/crit multi will be too low to utilize, and EO is very easy to maintain for a big damage boost. You want to respec out of it later on when you start filling out your life nodes + picking up important crit nodes. If you feel squishy, pick up MoM + Mana nodes for a considerable EHP boost. Otherwise, just reserve most of your mana for auras.

I would highly suggest picking up an Obliteration Wand for early leveling/early mapping. While you lose the ability to Shield Charge, the damage/clearspeed it offers is considerable when your gear is weak... and it's practically a free item. Grab Atziri's Step ASAP since they are cheap, 5L Perfect Form is absolutely more than fine for all content up to including T16.

Core items are: Cerberus Limb, 2x Brotherhood Rings, shield with 30%+ block (use a rare shield or Lionseye if you can't afford Lunaris), Atziri's Step.


Watcher's Eyes / Auras
This build is quite flexible in terms of what auras/Watcher's Eyes you plan to use (or can obtain). I was lucky and snagged a Wrath + Zealotry Eye for 3ex - most single-wrath eyes will cost under an ex.

While I initially wasn't sure about dropping both Heralds of Ash and Ice, it turned out that Zealotry was very powerful! This is primarly because the Watcher's Eye now provides ARCANE SURGE when I hit rares/uniques! (Which is a big damage boost, since we can't run ours linked to Flame Dash due to no mana usage).

This is why PoB will show Divine Ire as a 7-link with Level 1 arcane surge. Note that it only procs on Rares/Uniques, so will always be up on bosses, but less so on trash (not that it matters since it all dies in 1 hit).

In addition, it puts Consecrated Ground under our targets... which supposedly now increases "crits taken" by "increased" 100%. This doesn't show on PoB, by the way. This is a HUGE DPS increase - plus you get extra regen while standing on the boss.

Other DPS options are any single-mod eyes that buff Hatred or Wrath. If you want more defenses, you can also go with Discipline and/or Clarity for more ES.

Suggestions:
Strong
Wrath: Gain % of Physical as Extra Lightning
Zealotry: Enemies effected by Consecrated Ground take % Increased Damage
Zealotry: Gain Arcane Surge when you create Consecrated Ground
Zealotry: % Increased Energy Shield Leech (More of a defense/HC option)

Less Strong
Wrath: % Increased Lightning Damage
Wrath: Increased Critical Strike Chance
Hatred: % Increased Critical Strike Chance
Hatred: % Increased Cold Damage
Zealotry: Cast Speed
Zealotry: % Increased Crit on enemies effected by Consecrated Ground


CURRENT DPS
Still using a Cerberus Limb - a proper Dagger/Sceptre statstick with multimod would increase overall DPS by about 15-20% - at the cost of losing life leech.

As it stands, my "20 charge beam" hits for an average of just over 2.7 Million Damage (Note - this is not "DPS" - as PoB only shows the actual damage of the one beam hit after channeling to 20 stacks). The "channeling" portion of the DPS (stuff that zaps things around you) is about 440k DPS.

It's typically more than enough to wipe out a trash pack with just tapping the channel button for a split second, to build 1-2 stacks, and releasing. A full channel does some serious damage - Easily oneshotting all map bosses under T15. I've even oneshot a few T16 Elder Lair bosses with good RNG. Betrayal members in T16 maps are obliterated in 1-2 beams.

In addition, Divine Ire will zap nearby targets during your channel. Although the range is quite limited if you run Conc Effect, it's decent damage output and more importantly, will freeze anything trying to get to you!

BANDIT:
Alira

PANTHEONS
Minor: Tukohama
Major: Solaris or Lunaris
(I prefer Solaris as it's effectively 8% reduced elemental damage taken since the "not hit recently" portion is basically always active due to our evasion mechanics, also mitigates stuff that tends to kill you the most - crits, bosses and AoE attacks)

EXPENSIVE?:
I was running red maps using just an Obliteration Wand, a mediocore 6L chest from Chains That Bind set, and mostly just rares. Atziri's Steps are dirt cheap. Only mandatory uniques are the 2x Call of the Brotherhood. I leveled using a Princess Sabre. Wave of Conviction from acts 1-7, then it fell off a bit so I switched to Divine Ire.

ASCENDANCY

The idea behind Trickster for this build is to abuse Harness the Void, which adds a considerable amount of Chaos damage alongside conversion mechanics.

To be brief, each time you convert to another element, it checks to "add" that kind of damage to your build.

So initially, Divine Ire is 50% Physical and 50% Lightning. As such, you gain X% of this damage as Chaos. Once you then convert it to lightning, it adds more damage. Then you convert from Lightning to Cold, and it adds on some more extra damage. Finally, you get a slight extra increase from Herald of Ash, alongside more extra chaos damage. The majority of your damage comes from Harness the Void alongside "Gain % damage as extra % damage" mods - such as on weapon(s), necklace, Eber's Unification, Hatred Aura etc. The large majority of your damage is Chaos, with secondary being Cold (which allows for freezing/shattering).

SUGGESTED ORDER:
Harness the Void -> Ghost Dance -> Escape Artist -> Swift Killer

Benefits of Trickster:
The reworked Ghost Shroud / Escape Artist mechanics support a playstyle of ES/Evasion hybrid. As such, a Hybrid approach seems to offer the most EHP (over pure CI, or pure Life). There are numerous %ES/%EV nodes to grab, alongside %Life/%ES nodes, making this quite efficient even with mediocore gear.

I am currently sitting at 5070 Life and 2260 Energy Shield, despite having 0 jewels equipped. So figure 7K+ effective although 8K+ i'm sure is very easy to reach with some better tree optimization/jewel sockets, etc.

A key note is that since we have a considerable ES pool, it allows for Ghost Shroud "mana" (ES) restoration based on evasion. We get 5% of our evasion rating restored as Energy Shield when hit, with a ghost shroud. My base Evasion is 15,000 UNFLASKED - and about 26,000 with my Jade Flask popped. Not running Grace aura, either. I know these aren't the highest evasion values, but it's enough to feel like it's not being wasted: At 5%, that's 750 ES restored whenever I'm hit, or 1300 with my Jade flask up. With 3 charges up at a time, replenishing every 1 second, that's essentially 2100-3900 more "energy shield" that hits need to burn through (unless you are oneshot). Plus you are leeching a small amount to ES continuously.

As it stands, I rarely get hit anyway - rocking a massive 66% chance to dodge all spells! Plus 63% chance to evade attacks, 39% chance to block attacks, and 3% chance to block spells... that's a lot of layers of defense that stuff needs to get through to hit me. Not to mention you don't lose any ES% since you get Phase Acrobatics without pathing through Acrobatics on the tree. If you really want to screw over bosses like Minotaur, throw in a Blind mechanic (maybe linked with Storm Brand, or via Stibnite Flask)

Also, you get free Arctic Armor for 13% Physical/Fire mitigation, and an extra 8% less damage from Physical & Lightning from Infused Channeling Support. Each Ghost Shroud stack also reduces the damage you take by 3% - so that's 9% extra reduction if you are at full stacks. This is roughly 30% reduced physical damage taken, despite having literally 0 armor. If you run a Taste of Hate, an additional 20% is then put towards Cold. You can also run Soul of Tukohama for 8% more while channeling, and Soul of Lunaris/Solaris for extra.

Lastly, despite being a spellcaster build, Trickster is surprisingly high in attack speed. Whirling Blades / Shield Charge is RIDICULOUSLY fast, due to all the extra attack speed you get. I've played numerous Raider/Pathfinders in the past, and Trickster has just as fast/comparable movement-skill speed.


SKILLS:

6L: Divine Ire + Physical to Lightning + Infused Channeling + Arcane Surge (Energy Leech) + Hypothermia + Concentrated Effect

*Note if you have another means to obtain Arcane Surge, such as Command of the Pit or the Zealotry Watcher's Eye, you want to drop it for Energy Leech.

*** NOTE - If you have already picked up EB + MoM you CANNOT use Arcane Surge in your links, as you don't spend any mana.

4L: Hatred/Wrath/Zeal, Herald of Ash, Herald of Ice
(Depending on your Watcher Eye)
You can reserve 100% of your mana.

3L: Whirling Blades/Shield Charge + Faster Attacks + Fortify

4L: CWDT + Tempest Shield/Golem + Immortal Call + Increased Duration/Golem

3-4L: Spell Totem + Wither + Faster Casting (Optional + Multi Totems)

1L: Arctic Armor

Fill out remaining slots with Vaal RF, Flame Dash for cliffs, etc.

I also run a 3L: Storm Brand + Curse on Hit + Elemental Weakness
(Ideally, for endgame sake, you probably want a corrupted glove with this curse implicit)

(IF YOU CAN'T GET A 5B1G PERFECT FORM, DECENT SUBS ARE (RED) ADDED FIRE / COLD TO FIRE, (GREEN) ICE BITE / ADDED COLD

Current Gear (SYNTHESIS)

Item Choices
The Perfect Form is this build's primary focus: You gain 30% Spell Dodge without having to path to/through Acrobatics (which reduces your ES%). This stacks with your 20% from Trickster Ghost Shrouds, and 16% from Atziri's Steps... for basically no effort you have a full uptime of 66% Spell Dodge. This mitigates a large majority of dangerous damage in PoE: A lot of the time, stuff that kills you are elemental/spells... not physical/attacks.

Cerberus Limb is a great mainhand that provides more than enough DPS for all content. It's also a safe option in that you have 100% uptime of leech. If you are not great at keeping up flasks, or during long boss fights with few adds, you may struggle to have enough leech.

A perfect multimod dagger will perform the best in terms of DPS - in fact, dual wielding two would be the best DPS (even over staffs) but is obviously very expensive. You lose Cerberus Limb leech but... everything dies instantly anyway, including Guardians and T16 map bosses.

You also get FREE arctic armor which not only reduces damage you take... but will drop Chilled Ground everywhere you walk (great defensively and for easier Hypothermia procs).


FLASKS:

Required:
1) Seething Divine Life Flask of Staunching (Required to remove bleeds)
2) Diamond Flask (of Warding or Reflexes)
3) Atziri's Promise (Huge DPS increase since we scale both Physical and Elemental damage, and provides our only source of Life Leech unless you use a Cerberus Limb

Optional Choices:
1) Taste of Hate (More damage, physical mitigation)
2) Sin's Rebirth(Want more evasion? Why not Smoke Cloud/Blind stuff? - Probably better to just get an abyss jewel with %chance to gain Unholy Might on Kill)
3) Jade Flask (Provides about 12% more evade chance and doubles the ES% restored by Ghost Shrouds)
4) Sulphur Flask or Sorrow of the Divine (Consecrated Ground now provides 100% increased crit for enemies standing in it, so this might be worth considering, and is what I'm currently trying - Sorrow of the Divine also throws in Zealot's Oath, which gives me 210 ES regen per second.
5) Basalt Flask (of Warding, Iron Skin, or Reflexes)

Now Legacy:
[spoiler]***** - The new flask, Bottled Faith, is likely VERY strong. Consecrated Ground provides 100% increased crit, alongside the 2% base crit the flask provides, and effectively 10% MORE damage... plus 40% INCREASED damage from the Sulphur flask... and the added regen on top. Provides some serious damage. Have not tested it yet, but I imagine it may be worth considering using, if you can figure out what to drop. Maybe the Jade Flask.[/spoiler]

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Hopefully this gives some people a fun build to try or helps provide some thought into your own build(s). Any comments/thoughts are appreciated.

Hey just wanted to drop by and say I like the way you think! I'm the author of a Duskdawn variant in which I also abuse conversion mechanics, and the dps really is nuts. I think your build looks really good man, I was thinking of trying a dual wield version but I like that you're using Light of Lunaris & going full on evasion, seems really tanky and lots of dps!

You should use an elder ammy w/ non-chaos as extra chaos, and for shaper/elder you should use Ele Focus instead of Hypothermia as you'll barely chill them anyways, even with huge hits from Divine Ire. And I agree that the Scion life wheel probably isn't worth it, I'd maybe go up and grab the purity of flesh wheel and the damage nodes around there.

Would Impulsas be a good chest option for this build?

The Perfect Form gives a lot of defensive options but trying to roll 5 blue sockets on it is gonna cost me a ton of chromatics lol.

Edit: Just saw the new unique chest 'The Eternity Shroud' seems like an interesting piece too.

"

an1drag0n wrote:

Hey just wanted to drop by and say I like the way you think! I'm the author of a Duskdawn variant in which I also abuse conversion mechanics, and the dps really is nuts. I think your build looks really good man, I was thinking of trying a dual wield version but I like that you're using Light of Lunaris & going full on evasion, seems really tanky and lots of dps!

You should use an elder ammy w/ non-chaos as extra chaos, and for shaper/elder you should use Ele Focus instead of Hypothermia as you'll barely chill them anyways, even with huge hits from Divine Ire. And I agree that the Scion life wheel probably isn't worth it, I'd maybe go up and grab the purity of flesh wheel and the damage nodes around there.

Yea - I looked over your build, which looks great! - I do believe the Duskdawn version does provide more DPS than 1H + Shield. However, I did some testing and Dual Wield (2x Statsticks) seems to provide as much/more DPS, although you lose some block and ES. Also the benefit of statsticks are you can multimod/craft some nice Daggers and still use Whirling Blades. Although this will be way more expensive than a Duskdawn.

I know Flame Dash is pretty viable now (I ran a Disintegrator BV char last league), but there's just that added QOL benefit of being able to whirling/charge around... not to mention you lose out on Fortify when using a staff, so you have to take that into consideration for tankiness. As Trickster, Shield Charge is RIDICULOUSLY fast.

I'm actually working on trying to craft a decent Chaos% Elder necklace now... but obviously hitting on with good life/resists will take some time/currency. Also need some good jewels, and while my statstick is pretty good, I need a proper multimodded statstick.

Did some tree revisions dropping Scion life wheel, as it's just too many points wasted traveling. Updated main post - this variant seems better optimized, and it allows you to pick up a few extra Jewel sockets, so should be stronger once you can afford some decent jewels. At lvl92 you can either go for 4 jewel sockets + Alchemy cluster, or 5 jewel sockets.

https://pastebin.com/xnhuFZZT

"

The Perfect Form gives a lot of defensive options but trying to roll 5 blue sockets on it is gonna cost me a ton of chromatics lol.

Actually, the 5-blue offcolor was surprisingly easy to get. It's a misconception that it takes a lot of chromes, since you can actually force the colors MUCH easier using the Jewelers Method.

I was able to 5-blue my chest in less than 600 jewelers. The 6th socket can be green, which makes it practically guaranteed - at the worst 2-3 rolls. I didn't use a single chrome.

6-offcolor is MUCH more difficult/expensive, since you'd have to reroll 5socket/6socket to hit it. Fortunately this build uses only 5 blues.

If you absolutely don't want to try this, I imagine Loreweave is still a stable option. Impulsa would be fine for extra clear but considering you already 1shot all packs, and have built in Herald of Ash + Herald of Ice (explosion/spread ignite) the clear is already fine.

Well written guide!

Standard weapon option:

Added a build/skill tree variant for using a STAFF.

https://pastebin.com/icbtHMNT

Note that using a staff will drop your Life/ES since you lose out on a shield. However, overall DPS with a staff is much higher than any 1H + Shield combination (i did a lot of PoB testing).

A Dual Wield statstick setup will beat out a Staff for DPS, but this is really only with very good multimodded sticks, which will cost more than a Duskdawn. Disintegrator is also a viable option if you have at least 3 total shaper/elder items (it beats out Duskdawn).

Underlining everything does not do service to your guide, just saying. Harder to read/ hard on the eyes.

What order for ascending?

Hello I have come back to this game after gone for a while, may i ask whats the leveling tree for this build?

"

Necrothunder wrote:

What order for ascending?

I did Void, Ghost Dance, Escape Artist, saving Swift Killer for when I can do Uber. It worked well. If you're not on Hardcore you might prefer switching Escape Artist and Swift Killer for more DPS but you'll be pretty squishy until Uber lab.