[3.9] Trickster Flicker Strike (10 - 15 million Shaper DPS) Awakening Lvl 8 Sirus Down

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sadzo wrote:

Hey,

I'm quite new to the game and I want to try your build as a starter for the next season.

But I have no idea how do you level, I mean with witch spell you want to level to have a smooth leveling before swapping (and should I use another passive tree and respec when i'm level 50 60 ?) for the flicker strike with the weapon and armor ?

Thanks in advances for your reply

I leveled with Frost Blades then transition into Flicker at 51 when I had Terminus Est. You can Flicker sooner than that, but it didn't seem particularly better or worse than other skills. I don't think my leveling was particularly efficient, so you may want to consult a melee leveling guide.

Thanks for the reply!

I have 4290 life, 1110 ES, 16200 EV, and 7500 Armor.

I usually do fine, but die quite fast to endgame bosses (Uber Atziri, Shaper Slam, even normal Atziri occasionally) - maybe just because I'm not good enough at ducking. Anything that has 1) invuln phases and 2) deals high amounts of physical damage, basically (thanks Abyssus). That said, swapping for Vertex makes the whole build feel much weaker.

I haven't tried Fractal Thoughts, will give it a shot if you're liking it.

What is the viability of this build for the next league ? With all the armor changes and shaper items being rarer.

Thoughts on 3.9:

Good
-Multistrike, Melee Physical, Melee Splash, and Blasphemy are getting "Awakened" (PLUS) gem versions.
-Shock values will be easier to apply.
-Easy to adjust the tree to pick up armor pen nodes (15%).
-Nothing used by the build was directly nerfed.

Bad
-Build cost is about to skyrocket. Shaper and Elder items won't be readily available--let alone a Starforge, frenzy corrupted Shaper's Touch, and a precision crit Watcher's Eye.
-Starforge replacements have also had their mods and craftability nerfed.


Neutral
-Monster life has been increased. This will affect everyone across the board and this build probably has enough DPS overhead to deal with it.

Ey man, do you think is viable dual wielding?

Any thoughts on moving to Slayer and generating frenzy charges with bleed from The Red Trail/The Golden Rule now that Endless Hunger was changed back to "unaffected" by bleeding?

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Krafthorino wrote:

Ey man, do you think is viable dual wielding?

Certainly viable. Most of the nodes taken are generic sword nodes so you only have to change around a few points to dual wield one hand swords. Starforge still seems like the best to me due to the applied Shock values, however.

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sexualmonkey wrote:

Any thoughts on moving to Slayer and generating frenzy charges with bleed from The Red Trail/The Golden Rule now that Endless Hunger was changed back to "unaffected" by bleeding?

I don't think this build would translate well over to Slayer. I'm reserving nearly all mana because Flicker has no mana cost. Slayer wouldn't really have much use for Cyclone and Bronn's would come at a higher opportunity cost because there is no evasion to ES conversion.

Slayer will be viable for Flicker Strike, the build will just look a bit different.

Hey - wanted to let you know after our discussion I swapped out Starforge for this:

and it feels amazing. The biggest difference, as silly as it sounds, it that having 100% Fortify uptime means I never RIP to stupid things like porcupines, and the DPS is about 25% better as well. Definitely a comfortable swap for losing ~200 life and shocking from Starforge.

I'm also considering whether I should use the 'can't miss' attribute to it's max and grabbing a Brutal Restraint for Second Sight (blind, + 25% crit chance).

Lastly, now that the chestpiece is much less critical to the build, I'd be super grateful for any suggestions you have on alternatives (maybe some more tankiness, or just save up for Farrul's Fur?).

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TheAmbler wrote:

it feels amazing. The biggest difference, as silly as it sounds, it that having 100% Fortify uptime means I never RIP to stupid things like porcupines, and the DPS is about 25% better as well. Definitely a comfortable swap for losing ~200 life and shocking from Starforge.

I'm also considering whether I should use the 'can't miss' attribute to it's max and grabbing a Brutal Restraint for Second Sight (blind, + 25% crit chance).

Lastly, now that the chestpiece is much less critical to the build, I'd be super grateful for any suggestions you have on alternatives (maybe some more tankiness, or just save up for Farrul's Fur?).

Are you unchecking shock? Looks like a DPS loss of about 2mil.

Ferrul's is a good choice. It's a DPS loss and requires you to pick up Aspect of the Cat somewhere else on your gear, but it's a large quality of life buff for Frenzy/Power charge generation.