



I am not going to explain the mechanics of Flicker-Strike in depth, but here is the tl,dr:



- auto-sustain frenzy-charges (and in best case power-charges too)

- do as much on-hit-dmg as possible to achieve this

- bypass the 4-second cooldown of Flicker-Strike reliable enough so you wont stop

- benefit from a fast clearspeed and a funny gameplay



So how do you achieve this? Obviously going crit. "Crit?!", I hear you ask? "But why are you not starting as a Shadow then?". The answer on this is simple. Because we cant allow ourselves to wear a Tabularasa (in the name of survivability) and in a new league, 6-linked chests are kind of expensive AND the more damage-links you have to Flicker-Strike the better, we need something that adds an additionial link to our setup. You see where this is going right?



The "Impact" node of the ascendancy-skilltree of the slayer-class does exactly that. Effectively a 6L setup in a 5L chest (that are easy to obtain with a little bit of time investment) but im going to explain this further later.





Pro and Con

Spoiler

Pro:

- fast clearspeed

- funny gameplay

- for a Flicker-Strike build kind of tanky

- possible to build in a new league



Con:

- kind of boring to level to around level 50-55

- not hardcore viable

- not (yet) optimized for party-play, but im working on that

- Abyssus





Sustaining frenzy-charges:

Spoiler

The first barrier we have to overcome is bypassing the cooldown of FS. In order to keep flickering with a not mirrored dagger we have to get around 45-55% chance to gain a frenzy charge on kill (you are able to min-max this to around 35-40% but only bloodrage wont be enough to reliably keep them up) To achieve this, we have limited options:



1. Blood Rage and "The Blood Dance" boots:



This method has proven its viability and the negative effect of both blood rage and "The Blood Dance" counter each other (degeneration effect vs. regerneration per frenzycharge, reduced attack speed vs. increased attack speed). A perfectly rolled pair of "The Blood Dance" with 30% chance to gain a frenzy charge on kill will add up with Blood Rage to a sustainable 55%. On top the boots give some extra movementspeed (that we are not reliant on thanks to whirling blades) and sweet 6% increased damage against enemies that are on low-life. Due their lack of life and resistances I would not recommend this option, but its totally viable.



2. Blood Rage and Poachers Mark



Needlessly to say you put the Poachers Mark in a blasphemy setup because you are always in the middle of the enemies because of how FS works. Assuming you have a level 15 gem without quality, you will have a 53% chance to gain a frenzy charge on kill if you add the 25% Blood Rage gives you. With a 20/20 Poachers Mark (40% chance) and the 10% curse-effect of the Blasphemy gem (44% chance), this can be brought up to a point where you can remove Blood Rage from your setup if your dagger is good enough. But for those of you who are not disturbed by the degeneration, I would recommend keeping it up anyways for the life-leech and the attack-speed. On top you get doubled flask charges if you kill a mob (which is really strong), less chance to evade on your enemies (which basically brings you up to a >98% chance to hit) and some life and mana gained on hit (which adds an additional layer of sustaining your mana-pool). Unfortunately this method makes it harder but not impossible to run maps with curse-immune monsters. I used this setup for a long time but I am testing no. 3 at the moment.



3. Blood Rage and Ice Bite



This is the method I switched to recently because it allows you to run curse-immunity maps again because your blasphemy setup will now be assassins mark which only cuts your damage and not counters your build-enabling mechanic. With capped crit you gain full benefit of the chance to gain a frenzy charge for killing frozen enemies (→ Hatred + Crit) which results in a 69% chance to gain a frenzy charge on kill. With Blood Rage is not necessary anymore at this point, but I recommend keeping it up anyways for attack-speed, life-leech and the ability to run resistance/immunity to status ailments maps.





Sustaining power-charges:

Spoiler

The way you sustain your power-charges depends on the way you chose to sustain your frenzy-charges. For possibility 1./2. you will use the power-charge on crit gem. For option 3. you simply switch this gem for Ice Bite and sustain your power-charges with assassins mark.





Skilltree:

Spoiler

http://poedb.tw/us/passive-skill-tree/AAAABAQBAADuBS0FfQ3RDkgRLxGWFSAV7BaqFr8ZtBvIIWAi6iaVJ58ppSpNKwos4SzpLVUtgy5TNZI2PTrhPdE_J0MxRJ5HBkd-SshM_03jUUxR2lO7VUtVhVb1WhpfsGHiYqxjQ2VNapNsjG1sbqpvnnBScFZ07XTxdf13B3rvfVt944MJhG-ExYTZhaeGs4a0hxOJ04rwjDaOipAblSSX0JoTm7WcpJ2qpcumV6c0rEesZrKAtUi18rkduT69Nr6nv9XAnMMzwzrEgspKypDP3dNv1ELYdti92sHbbtvU44TndOjW6UbxivJF9vz-Cv6P





Explanation:

Spoiler

If you path down to "Art of the Gladiator" through the attack-speed nodes or to "Master of the Arena" through the physical-damage nodes is personal preference (attack speed feels nice, physical damage is technically better). Then you path down and grab "Golem's Blood" and "Cloth and Chain" for both life and hybrid-defenses (because we will go for Iron Reflexes). Pick up the frenzy-charge as well and path upwards to "Sentinal" for more armor-scaling as well as the Scion life-rectangle. Now it goes right into the shadow area and you grab all the dagger-nodes here (From the Shadows, Flaying, Adder's Touch, Nightstalker), the power- and the frenzy-charge for obvious reasons and the mana/life nodes at the right for both your pools and their leech (note that the 0,4% mana-leech from "Mind Drinker" is totally enough).



We do not take Vaal Pact because we need our leech to have a duration (would be 0 with this keystone) to keep up the stun immunity and the life recovery even at full life and for sustaining through boss fights (or to basically every other situation where you have not enough enemies to leech from). Because we will get up to 18,5k armor and the changes to reflect mobs the necessity of this keystone is not given anymore.



I want to direct your attention to the combination of the node "Nullfication" and the jewel-socket right next to it. It will provide you with 25% increased evasion-rating 30% increased armor, 5% increased life and 8% to all elemental resistances with the use of this jewel, with additional 20% increased armor on the jewel itself. Thats a huge point/use-ratio:



http://i.imgur.com/YAa1FCX.png



The evasion/armor nodes come with "X% to all elemental resistances" in most cases, which adds up to 36% in total. This makes it rather easy to cap our elemental resistances with gear that wont cost you a kidney.



In the ascendancy skilltree of the slayer class you take both Impact and Endless Hunger on the right side. This will provide you with an additional link, almost permanent stun-immunity and increased damage/attack-speed while leeching. These effects will not end when you are at a full HP-pool and leeching. The travel-nodes provide you with some attack-leech (not physical leech, this will also leech from your cold/fire-damage).



If you want to use Acrobatics/Phase-Acrobatics instead, this is your tree. Self explanatory:



http://poedb.tw/us/passive-skill-tree/AAAABAQBAADuBX0FtQ3RDkgRLxGWFSAV7BaqFr8ZtBvIIuoj9iT9JpUnnypNKwos4SzpLVUtgzBxMHw1kjY9N9Q6QjrhPdE-zz8nRwZHfkrIS1dLeE2STeNRR1FMUdpVS1WFVvVfsGHiYqxjQ2VNbIxtbG6qb55wUnBWdf13B31bfeODCYRvhMWE2YWnhrOGtIcTidOK8Iw2jX2Nv46KkBuVJJfQmhObtZyknaqly6ZXpzSsR6xmsoC1SLXyuR25Pr02vea-p8CcwOPDOsSCykrKkM_d1CPUQth22L3bbtvU3ajjhOdU53To1ulG7T_xivGz8kX2_P4K_o__3g==

If you path down to "Art of the Gladiator" through the attack-speed nodes or to "Master of the Arena" through the physical-damage nodes is personal preference (attack speed feels nice, physical damage is technically better). Then you path down and grab "Golem's Blood" and "Cloth and Chain" for both life and hybrid-defenses (because we will go for Iron Reflexes). Pick up the frenzy-charge as well and path upwards to "Sentinal" for more armor-scaling as well as the Scion life-rectangle. Now it goes right into the shadow area and you grab all the dagger-nodes here (From the Shadows, Flaying, Adder's Touch, Nightstalker), the power- and the frenzy-charge for obvious reasons and the mana/life nodes at the right for both your pools and their leech (note that the 0,4% mana-leech from "Mind Drinker" is totally enough).We do not take Vaal Pact because we need our leech to have a duration (would be 0 with this keystone) to keep up the stun immunity and the life recovery even at full life and for sustaining through boss fights (or to basically every other situation where you have not enough enemies to leech from). Because we will get up to 18,5k armor and the changes to reflect mobs the necessity of this keystone is not given anymore.I want to direct your attention to the combination of the node "Nullfication" and the jewel-socket right next to it. It will provide you with 25% increased evasion-rating 30% increased armor, 5% increased life and 8% to all elemental resistances with the use of this jewel, with additional 20% increased armor on the jewel itself. Thats a huge point/use-ratio:The evasion/armor nodes come with "X% to all elemental resistances" in most cases, which adds up to 36% in total. This makes it rather easy to cap our elemental resistances with gear that wont cost you a kidney.In the ascendancy skilltree of the slayer class you take both Impact and Endless Hunger on the right side. This will provide you with an additional link, almost permanent stun-immunity and increased damage/attack-speed while leeching. These effects will not end when you are at a full HP-pool and leeching. The travel-nodes provide you with some attack-leech (not physical leech, this will also leech from your cold/fire-damage).If you want to use Acrobatics/Phase-Acrobatics instead, this is your tree. Self explanatory:



Gear:

[spoiler]

Helmet: In order to reach enough damage to keep flickering without a mirrored dagger, you have to wear an Abyssus. After hours and hours trying to work around this I came to the conclusion that I have to live with 40% increased physical damage taken or even more. Damage-wise, the bonuses of this helmet are huge. (Keep in mind: the faster your attack-speed, the more you benefit from the added physical damage. The higher your crit-chance, the more you benefit from the crit-multiplier.)





Chest:

There are several options here:



Lightning Coil for obviously life, evasion/armor-stats which both boost your armor and the twenty-something percent less physical damage taken (it simply converts a portion of the physical damage you are taking into a damage-type that is easier to mitigate (75% lightning resistancs versus the lower 50-60% phys reduction) to take advantage of this you have to absolutely cap your lightning resistance).



Daressos Defiance for life, dodge, life-leech, evasion/armor-stats and the onslaught-mechanic for a further damage boost (which you dont'really need to be honest).



Cherrubim's Maleficience for the best possible life-roll, also evasion/armor-stats and a whopping 100% increased life leeched per second, which is a blessing for a character that needs fast life recovery and revolves around leeching from his insane amounts of damage. (my personal preference)





The rest of your gear should:



1. most importantly cap your resists

2. provide you with as much life/evasion/armor as possible

3. (optionally) should have crit/accuracy stats for squeezing out damage



unique options are:



Gloves:

Maligaro's Virtuosity, Facebreakers



Boots:

Blood Dance, Atziri's Step (if you take Acrobatics)



Dagger:

For leveling I would recommend Mightflay and Mark of the Doubting Knight until you got enough currency for a Bino's Kitchen Knife. After that you can upgrade your dagger for relatively cheap in a new league for a 220+ DPS version (keep in mind that base-crit tops attack-speed here in almost every case). I got mine for 40 chaos (roughly 2,5 hours of farming).



Flasks:

As always: take one or two "of staunching" flasks preferably with a "Surgeons" prefix for always keeping them up (especially with the help of Poachers Mark). The new Basalt Flasks with the "experimentors" mod grants almost 8 seconds of 20% physical damage reduction which is a good counter for the Abyssus mechanic. Lion's roar provides you with a good amount of extra damage if needed and the "Granite" base makes it a perfect fit into our defense too.



IMPORTANT:

Gear with evasion-stats gets double-scaled due to Iron Reflexes and therefore has a bigger impact on your defense than armor-based gearpieces.



My own gear:

Spoiler









[/spoiler]



Gem setups:

Spoiler

Flicker-Strike (Blasphemy/Assassins Mark, current setup):





Flicker-Strike (Blasphemy/Poachers Mark):





Frenzy (to keep power-charges up at bosses that spawn not enough monsters swap added fire damage with power-charge on crit to keep up your power charges too):





Aura:





Blood Rage:





CWDT (the Immortal call is short without endurance charges but long enough to save you from reflect mobs or spike-on-death-retards):





Whirling Blades:





(to keep power-charges up at bosses that spawn not enough monsters swap added fire damage with power-charge on crit to keep up your power charges too):(the Immortal call is short without endurance charges but long enough to save you from reflect mobs or spike-on-death-retards):



Stats:

Spoiler

Flicker-Strike unbuffed: http://i.imgur.com/rxpYBZP.png



Flicker-Strike buffed: (6 frenzy-charges, 4 power-charges, Blood-Rage, Lions Roar... yep 274.800DPS)



Defense unbuffed: http://i.imgur.com/wfUyjFU.png



Defense buffed: (Lions Roar, Basalt Flask)

http://i.imgur.com/lf41jCl.png (6 frenzy-charges, 4 power-charges, Blood-Rage, Lions Roar... yep 274.800DPS) http://i.imgur.com/lcesNQY.png (Lions Roar, Basalt Flask)



Videos: (ain't clickbaiting you into that spoiler, they are coming soon)

Spoiler





Special thanks to my friend Boomstick who has that much patience with a guy that desperately tries to revive Flicker-Strike and helped me with hours of theorycrafting! As someone who loves Flicker-Strike and spent hundreds of hours trying to create a viable Flicker-Strike build after some heavy nerfs I am happy to welcome you to my guide!I am not going to explain the mechanics of Flicker-Strike in depth, but here is the tl,dr:- auto-sustain frenzy-charges (and in best case power-charges too)- do as much on-hit-dmg as possible to achieve this- bypass the 4-second cooldown of Flicker-Strike reliable enough so you wont stop- benefit from a fast clearspeed and a funny gameplaySo how do you achieve this? Obviously going crit. "Crit?!", I hear you ask? "But why are you not starting as a Shadow then?". The answer on this is simple. Because we cant allow ourselves to wear a Tabularasa (in the name of survivability) and in a new league, 6-linked chests are kind of expensive AND the more damage-links you have to Flicker-Strike the better, we need something that adds an additionial link to our setup. You see where this is going right?The "Impact" node of the ascendancy-skilltree of the slayer-class does exactly that. Effectively a 6L setup in a 5L chest (that are easy to obtain with a little bit of time investment) but im going to explain this further later.In order to reach enough damage to keep flickering without a mirrored dagger, you have to wear an Abyssus. After hours and hours trying to work around this I came to the conclusion that I have to live with 40% increased physical damage taken or even more. Damage-wise, the bonuses of this helmet are huge. (Keep in mind: the faster your attack-speed, the more you benefit from the added physical damage. The higher your crit-chance, the more you benefit from the crit-multiplier.)There are several options here:Lightning Coil for obviously life, evasion/armor-stats which both boost your armor and the twenty-something percent less physical damage taken (it simply converts a portion of the physical damage you are taking into a damage-type that is easier to mitigate (75% lightning resistancs versus the lower 50-60% phys reduction) to take advantage of this you have to absolutely cap your lightning resistance).Daressos Defiance for life, dodge, life-leech, evasion/armor-stats and the onslaught-mechanic for a further damage boost (which you dont'really need to be honest).Cherrubim's Maleficience for the best possible life-roll, also evasion/armor-stats and a whopping 100% increased life leeched per second, which is a blessing for a character that needs fast life recovery and revolves around leeching from his insane amounts of damage. (my personal preference)1. most importantly cap your resists2. provide you with as much life/evasion/armor as possible3. (optionally) should have crit/accuracy stats for squeezing out damageunique options are:Maligaro's Virtuosity, FacebreakersBlood Dance, Atziri's Step (if you take Acrobatics)For leveling I would recommend Mightflay and Mark of the Doubting Knight until you got enough currency for a Bino's Kitchen Knife. After that you can upgrade your dagger for relatively cheap in a new league for a 220+ DPS version (keep in mind that base-crit tops attack-speed here in almost every case). I got mine for 40 chaos (roughly 2,5 hours of farming).As always: take one or two "of staunching" flasks preferably with a "Surgeons" prefix for always keeping them up (especially with the help of Poachers Mark). The new Basalt Flasks with the "experimentors" mod grants almost 8 seconds of 20% physical damage reduction which is a good counter for the Abyssus mechanic. Lion's roar provides you with a good amount of extra damage if needed and the "Granite" base makes it a perfect fit into our defense too.Gear with evasion-stats gets double-scaled due to Iron Reflexes and therefore has a bigger impact on your defense than armor-based gearpieces.[/spoiler](ain't clickbaiting you into that spoiler, they are coming soon) Last edited by oOStryderOo on Mar 31, 2016, 12:33:09 PM Last bumped on Apr 6, 2016, 6:34:00 PM