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

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eyeyue wrote:

Update since it's been a while.

https://pastebin.com/hEQ0KNQV

I managed to farm out an ashes of the stars from eater myself. The excess mana thanks to the mana reservation on the neck, i opted to drop Vengence/Decoy totem for War Banner.

I have between swappping back and forth with zealotry and determination, I'm pushing for 100 with the build so im trying to minimize the number of random 1 shots during mapping. I've swapped from Steelskin to Molten shell given that im over 40k armor now. To deal with bleeding/Corruped blood I am running a flask with that immunity, and i've dropped the corrupted blood base jewel.

I've crafted a "mageblood at home belt" thanks to recombinators

I've combo'd this with the Traitor Keystone Timeless jewel for flask sustain.
Now my flasks has 48% to 73% (flask prefix) increased effectiveness, which gives me 100% reduced curse effect and 5% Life Regen.

I've re-combinated a dagger Minion Damage + Spell skill, i spent too much trying to make a sceptre with the Alva Mod as the bases are more expesnive!I was too cheap to clean out this suffix.

In lieu of inspired learning I have opt'ed for Impossible Escape Jewel for Pain Attunement, which lets me allocate Vampirism, Undertaker (for the life regen), Melding, and a Minion Resist small node (to cap their resists)

That Inspired Learning Tech feels crazy good. Thank you for suggesting that.

That's some very interesting ideas you have and I'd like to delve deeper in what you are doing.

First of all, I feel like you making yourself very vulnerable with some of those changes. And while Traitor keystone I can understand, the Forbidden Jewels are beyond my understanding.

There is no way in a world loosing extra 2500 life Primal Aegis shield is worth 10% damage reduction. Or, at this matter - worth 30% All resists. It really doesn't look like you need any extra resists, especially considering those flasks going. You can drop Commander of Darkness and take better Forbidden Jewel. If you think you are well protected from ele damage, then perhaps Nine Lives one would interest you, although it costs a lot.

And speaking of resists - points allocated via Impossible Escape feels a bit wasteful. Why would you want extra resists for your minions? Are they dying? Or even taking damage at this point. Looked at your gems - you can give your minions so much more upgrading support gems you have in AG/Specter setup. Divergent meat shield and some quality on minion life makes minions pretty much immortal regardless of resists, and you can put those extra points into life.


Besides, its not like you are doing sim 30 or uber bosses, since you are pushing 100, so there is no way those would die.

Undertaker seems wasteful too, as with small HP pool its only 80 regen. Much better to take more life, or more recoup near Vampirism. The more recoup you take - the more powerful it becomes.

But as I said - losing 2k ES from Vanity combined with losing 2500 ele shield from Forbidden jewels puts you into a very low HP. I had this issue back when I was using Xibaqua Glorious Vanity. A lot of mitigation, but tiny HP pool - not good.

On top of that, you got rid of taunt totem AND Punishment curse. In case you forgot - punishment curse reduces enemy damage by 10%
But I can respect not wanting to press extra buttons (actually plan to make a new post about skill bar set up in the future)



Now to the armor. Here is my take on the armor - I'm not claiming I know game better than anyone else, I am just telling you my feeling of playing and tinkering with stats of the build.

Armor sucks. Its a huge bait. Stacking armor is a bait. Even after the changes, its still functions the same way - the bigger the hit - the less effective the armor.

Lets just say you don't really care about small hits. Like at all. They will get absorbed by ES, regened by Aegis Aurora, Recouped, regened, etc. Multiple smaller hits feeds into your block.

What you care about are those heavy big hits. And this is where armor start to fail. Judged by my adventures in Scourge and 300 stacks farming, the big hits you start having problems with come around 10000 Phys damage.

This is not uncommon this league too, as there is a lot of generic damage increase bods on monsters, as well as increased % damage taken on player.

And here is a funny thing.

At 10000 dmg, with all investment into armor, you get 73% phys reduction from hits. Its very much solid! However - Imbalanced Guard puts you to 50% with pretty much no investment. You might think about that. I agree that you might not need damage too much and can drop a damage aura. But there is always option for Vaal Discipline. Again - it adds to your life pool, and its and extra panic button.

Back to taking physical hits - have you considered including Taste of Hate? You are not Mageblood - so you can use Unique flasks. And Taste of Hate is Sapphire. On top of that it massively reduced physical damage you take.

Definitely worth losing 3% life regen.

Another thing you can do, that will add up to this - getting a nice corruption on a shield. Take even more physical damage as elemental. And if you slap Primal Aegis on top, oh man, you will feel it.


And final thing. Since you are not chasing damage at this point - my advice — include Ruins Helion as one of the specters, making your specter pool — They of Tul, Ruins Helion, Host Chieftain. You still get max power charges - just not as fast, and massive damage reduction that dog provides can be a life saver.

Wow thank you for the insight! it is very much appreciated that you are willing to look through the hot mess of a build i've upgrade.

I put too much focus on pushing for level 100 and every time I get those random one shots which deletes my 2 hours of mapping XP, I'm always tilted. I wasnt PoBing every transition i had switched from Imbalanced Guard to Wicked Ward and this whole flask effect scaling, without really looking at the EHP and max hit taken metric.

The forbidden jewels i bought like week 1 and they were the cheapest at the time, and i kinda forgot about looking into those as an upgrade. Now that i've accumulated a bit of currency i will definitely look into swapping those out for bastion of elements.

I had looked into briefly that running a Taste of Hate would convert 22% of physical damage taken into cold and was considering it as one of my upgrades.

I was going to ask how the recoup nodes feel. If i dropped inspired learning for intutive leap i would be able to snag all the recoup nodes from Vampirism and Infused Flesh. (thats like 50% life recoup + the 8% from my ring, total 58%)

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eyeyue wrote:

Wow thank you for the insight! it is very much appreciated that you are willing to look through the hot mess of a build i've upgrade.

I put too much focus on pushing for level 100 and every time I get those random one shots which deletes my 2 hours of mapping XP, I'm always tilted. I wasnt PoBing every transition i had switched from Imbalanced Guard to Wicked Ward and this whole flask effect scaling, without really looking at the EHP and max hit taken metric.

The forbidden jewels i bought like week 1 and they were the cheapest at the time, and i kinda forgot about looking into those as an upgrade. Now that i've accumulated a bit of currency i will definitely look into swapping those out for bastion of elements.

I had looked into briefly that running a Taste of Hate would convert 22% of physical damage taken into cold and was considering it as one of my upgrades.

I was going to ask how the recoup nodes feel. If i dropped inspired learning for intutive leap i would be able to snag all the recoup nodes from Vampirism and Infused Flesh. (thats like 50% life recoup + the 8% from my ring, total 58%)

Oh I'm always happy to steal some good ideas to fortify the build. The belt looks very spicy, I might try to look up what I can squeeze in in that regard.

Recoup is kinda weird.
On one hand, if you have some extra shields from Vanity, Bastion, or ES in general, by the time something breaks those and gets to your HP, you will stack a fair bit of recoup and start regening like mad.

On other hand, you are max block. You don't take a lot of hits ro begin with.

All and all, I think its a worthwile investemnt. If you would take massive hit that would ignite or poison you, or you standing in a degen zone, recoup will counter it with regen. You are not using life flask either, so its a nice source of regen.

Now here is question for you. With this belt + Traitor setup. Hows charges sustain feels on bosses/when you are not blasting 1000 enemies in maps for charge sustain.

From sitting in my Hideout, 1 empty flask slot if i were to trigger the following as an example flasks at once,





It takes about 21 Seconds for the Granite Flask to stop triggering. (Its more expensive because of charges per use)

It takes about 29 seconds for the Ruby/Topaz and taste of hate flask to stop triggering (No duration mod)

It takes about 49 seconds for a Ruby flask w/ 28% reduced charges per use to stop triggering flask.

It takes about 49 seconds for a Ruby Flask w/ +31 max charges to stop triggering flask.

I need to find a boss i can AFK and see how the gain flask charge on hit sustain is with and without traitor

Gonna make a little info post about things I'm currently experimenting with.

First of all - Traitor + Flask Effect belt + Ele flasks testing.

Impossible Escape - Pain Atunment.

Trying to deal with Physical damage. Tanking Ubershaper Slam.

Just want to sing my praises for this build a little bit. I'm still relatively inexperienced with POE (this is my third league, and only 200 or so hours clocked), and its the first time I ever tried to push towards the actual endgame content farm.

Holy Flicker has taken me there with ease, and I have now taken down every Pinnacle Boss fight + Feared + Simulacrum 30. At the start, it was an uphill battle, trying to get the right mix of defense and offense, so I could melt bosses without dying to a random beam/orb. But, with enough farming and testing, it reached a really comfy spot to cruise through maps.

Here's some observations I had running through the league.


And these were my absolute biggest mistakes I believe:


Next step is prepping for the Uber Bosses, which I know will be a massive gear check. Definitely going to work towards picking up Ashes as the next big upgrade, and cleaning up my gear situation. I have an extra +30 Dex node allocated due to my dagger requirements, so I need to find a way to drop it. After that, just a pile of miscellaneous optimizations!

Overall, 10/10 build, would league start again.

Here's a couple terrible gameplay videos I captured showing it off:

Here I am small braining dropping determination for purity of elements and using watchers eye "take phys damage as cold" mod to combo with taste of hate (33% phys to cold).

The missing life flask or forbidden taste flask has felt sketchy, but my journey so far has felt like I've been 1 shot more than degen'd to death.

Of course I have had a few situations where I get chunked to 1k life with no way for immediate regen, I was considering trying to scaling some other unique flasks like Elixir of the Unbroken for the life recovery every 6 seconds (3 endurance charges x 4% *1.48 = 15% life (not sure when the poe rounding starts) and the extra ward layer.

Another silly idea was if the 15% damage taken is leeched as life from cinderswallow behaves exactly like recoup, the I would have 50% from passive tree. 21% from flask, and you can get up to 15% (18% if you life quality) for each ring



I feel like thinking through defense is like a game of risk:
- Hit/Evade
- Crit?
- Damage conversions
- Steelskin
- Primal Aegis
- Ward
- Damage mitigation

"

LuckyHitman wrote:

Just want to sing my praises for this build a little bit. I'm still relatively inexperienced with POE (this is my third league, and only 200 or so hours clocked), and its the first time I ever tried to push towards the actual endgame content farm.

Holy Flicker has taken me there with ease, and I have now taken down every Pinnacle Boss fight + Feared + Simulacrum 30. At the start, it was an uphill battle, trying to get the right mix of defense and offense, so I could melt bosses without dying to a random beam/orb. But, with enough farming and testing, it reached a really comfy spot to cruise through maps.

Here's some observations I had running through the league.

Spoiler

I started with a simple raging spirit build to get me through the acts, until I hit level 53 for Geofri's Crest, at which point I pivoted, early act 10. The start of mapping was simple enough, but the Archnemesis mods really fucked me up, since I was still wearing a Tabula.

Picking up a cheap Skin of the Loyal with a random exalt drop make things a lot smoother in terms of defense, as well as Null and Void for gloves. Add in the Glorious Vanity, and Daresso's Courage, and that gave me a decent start.

My main focus was farming Eater of Worlds for the slim slim chance of getting a natural drop Ashes (still hasn't happened). As I filled out my Atlas, I upgraded to Magna Eclipsis, picked up a corrupted Anvil, and worked on crafting rings so I could get the Shock on Focus enchant without sacrificing resists.

I opted to go for Commander of Darkness as my last ascension notable, and I never regretted it once. The 30% to resists is too huge to pass up, and makes gearing far more smooth, since you don't have to optimize as much on the boots + ring slots.

I gambled my own Skin of the Lords, and ended up with Avatar of Fire, which was a lot safer than any of the bad notables.

My first Pinnacle boss down was Sirus, and I didn't go in thinking I would actually kill it. I got him down on my second attempt, with only a few portals down.

Shaper/Elder were also pretty easy, I made the fatal mistake of doing Maven witness on my first Shaper, and that went about as well as you could expect.

Around this point, I got absurdly lucky, and got a 24ex Forbidden Flesh drop from Eater and instantly flipped it. From here, my build went into hyper mode as I picked up the missing pieces.

1. Empower Support 4
2. Awakened Brutality Support 5
3. Aegis Aurora
4. Asenath's Gentle Touch
5. INSPIRED LEARNING (this thing is so broken, its absolutely getting nerfed)

and I crafted a nice little dagger with recombinators:

Once I had that, getting through the bosses was a cinch, took Maven down on my second try, Uber Elder as well. I even took Feared down on my first invitation, though I used up most of my portals due to dumb dodges in the first wave. Simulacrum was stupid easy, thanks to Inspired Learning. The latter waves got a bit dicey, but quickly wrapped up.

And these were my absolute biggest mistakes I believe:

Spoiler

1. Absolutely my biggest mistake, I was using a level 21 Holy Relic for the longest time, before I realized that Divergent Holy Relic would literally double my DPS. Night and day difference, going from 1.5 attacks a second to 2.5.

2. I needed to swap to crit earlier, I held onto my frenzy monkeys for too long and swapping over to a combination of Host Chieftan + They of Tul was massive.

3. I didn't cap my spell block soon enough, I should have reconfigured my tree to get that quicker.

4. I held on to Magna Eclipsis for too long, before changing to the Surrender. Not only was this a big survivability boost, it was also a decent damage boost from the level 30 Reckoning.

5. INSPIRED. LEARNING. This is mandatory, adjust the passive tree ASAP once its feasible to get it. It completely breaks mapping and makes you unkillable except in the most rare cases.

Next step is prepping for the Uber Bosses, which I know will be a massive gear check. Definitely going to work towards picking up Ashes as the next big upgrade, and cleaning up my gear situation. I have an extra +30 Dex node allocated due to my dagger requirements, so I need to find a way to drop it. After that, just a pile of miscellaneous optimizations!

Overall, 10/10 build, would league start again.

Here's a couple terrible gameplay videos I captured showing it off:

Spoiler

Maven kill, got awful boss RNG with Goddess and Suncaller. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOh7ilF6OI4

The Feared, first time ever trying it, very messy but got it down. RIP Animate Guardian to Atziri reflect. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kRoXdFypF4

Glad you had fun trying it out. Few things I wanna point out about your progress.

1) Check out spread sheet in FaQ about how to maximize your dps. You are missing a lot of it with that lvl 2 static strike.

2) Atziri in Feared doesn't have reflect, AG died from stadning in 2 shaper beams. But you have some balls to go feared without Garb on AG.

That would be my general advice to you - invest into Garb + Kingmaker and alt qual support gems for your AG. It will not only boots your own survivability, but will boots AG survivability through the roof. As well as give you a little bit of DPS

3) Inspired Learning, if anything, is underpowered. Looking how they buffed Headhunter to keep buffs for 60 secounds, but didn't touch IL, makes me sad. Its also only good for mapping/sims, and a waste of many passive points and a jewel slot for bossing.

Its a great boost to push up maps to be sure, but its price massivly rose this league, starting 300-400c day 1.

That being said, GGG did say they plan to change rare mobs next league AGAIN, so we can never know it IL will get better or worse.

4) Spell block and crit as early as you get brittle is a must this days.

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eyeyue wrote:

Here I am small braining dropping determination for purity of elements and using watchers eye "take phys damage as cold" mod to combo with taste of hate (33% phys to cold).

The missing life flask or forbidden taste flask has felt sketchy, but my journey so far has felt like I've been 1 shot more than degen'd to death.

Of course I have had a few situations where I get chunked to 1k life with no way for immediate regen, I was considering trying to scaling some other unique flasks like Elixir of the Unbroken for the life recovery every 6 seconds (3 endurance charges x 4% *1.48 = 15% life (not sure when the poe rounding starts) and the extra ward layer.

Another silly idea was if the 15% damage taken is leeched as life from cinderswallow behaves exactly like recoup, the I would have 50% from passive tree. 21% from flask, and you can get up to 15% (18% if you life quality) for each ring



I feel like thinking through defense is like a game of risk:
- Hit/Evade
- Crit?
- Damage conversions
- Steelskin
- Primal Aegis
- Ward
- Damage mitigation

Purity of elements + Watchers eye seems like a great idea. Its a bit on a low side of power because most of elements doesn't do anything to you. Freeze - immune from pantheon, Chill - doesn't do anything because of Garb on AG, Sapp - reduced your damage, but you are not doing any damage yourself. Brittle - you re crit immune because of Garb, Scorch - you have too much resist to notice. Shock - immune from tempest shield. The only thing left is ignite. And that thing hurts. So there is value in that.

Damage conversion is a massive thing. And for that I highly reccomend you to try out Dawnbreaker. I know it sounds weird, but the the set up with flasks and primal aegis, it is actually STRONGER than Aegis Aurora.

The only thing where it start to get outvalued - is like 100% deli overjuiced maps WITH extra fire + extra damage + attack speed on conq influence. And even then its still good. Just not as much ES regen.

Think about it like that - there is no way you are getting oneshotted or chunked by elemental damage. Not with primal aegis and flask reducing ele damage to pretty much 0. So its gotta be phys. And reducing it by 20% for pretty much free is massive.

Ward is a bait, don't bother about it. Its only really good with Olroth.

Crit - ugh... do you have Garb on AG? Because you really need that like its a free crit immunity.

Steelskin - I like it more than Moltenshell - mainly because it has a much shorter cooldown and active more often. Especially if you invest into quality powered by Ashes.

15% Life leach - is a bit worse than recoup. Unlike recoup Life leech is:
1) Capped life regen at 20% life per second - recoup can stack infinitely.
2) Removed at full life - recoup keeps healing even if you are full.
3) Only works on damage done to your life - recoup works on any damage - ES, Primal Aegis, Steelskin.

If you are struggling with regen, maybe looking up some Surging Vitality megalomaniacs would be a good idea.

Is all the information on here up to date for this season