Staff Flicker strike build (low budget, health; 1.3)

Hey :)
I play mostly flicker strike since i started playing PoE. I always start fresh leagues with a flicker striker; all of them had in common the expensive gear i need to be good at hard 77-78 maps - i had too low damage or i was just dying too easy. I decided to try building the way i would with dual daggers but to go with hard hitting 2hander as that would make it doing same average damage with cheaper gear and would allow me to drop some damage nodes for defences. It works realy nice and i decided its worth sharing. Please forgive me if the build is poorly writen.

Pros and Cons of flicker strike


Passive tree

I love the Shadow and thats the main reason i started there; you can easily start as Marauder/Scion or you can adapt the tree to something else but you might lack Dexterity nodes and crit chance (shadow is away from staff nodes but you get a power charge and some descent critchance/multiplier; also the mana leech is awesome.
To level just use some hard hitting twohander and try to get bloodrage and multistrike to lv 24 when you can start using them; maybe use Clarity if you need more mana; Carnage Heart amulet is also realy good for leveling. You should get to the staff nodes around 45-50 lv and after that get the other crit nodes. Get as much health as you can; I had around 3200 at lv 66; now at 77 i have 4300 and it feels just enough.

Gearing Choices

My gear:

Even with my leveling staff i managed to clear maps up to lv 69-70 and the main problem was the low critchance more than the low dps on the weapon. Also i used tabula untill lv 75. This build is easily doable with cheap gear; main thing is the HP to stay alive with that abyssus.

Edit: I Tried replacing abyssus with rare helm with life and resistances for more survivability and replacing some HP nodes with damage ones. It works just fine damage wise as long as i can do 5.5-6k average damage; Just to compare: with abyssus out of town and with full charges i do 13 800 average damage and i hit 8.2 times every second (same atackspeed without the abyssus).




Stats with auras but no charges:

I aim for high phys + high crit chance staff; atack speed is also good as it keeps you alive but after some point it is not essential (hegemony will go awesomely well i think i just cant afford it).Life is a must. If possible accuracy on gear if not - on the flicker link. Max resists ofc; also i focused on gear with chaos resists. If you can not get gear with high chaos resists use the Blooddance boots to beat the degen from bloodrage. I think a Belly of the beast chest will go extremely well but i dont have 6link staff/belly. Crit multiplier on amulet is nice, also + 1 frenzy charge corruption on amulet/boots is realy good.

My links

I played a lot with different secondary atacks; tried frenzy too but its not realy useable. Main weakness of flicker strike is that you die realy easy when you start the fight and you have no charges to continuosly jump and on bosses when you cant lasthit to generate charges and bypass the flicker cooldown. So far i found most useful in that regards cyclone, sweep and heavy strike. Sweep helps in the 1st case when i stop jumping in the middle of the 'angry mob' - it does some damage enough to kill and make me frenzy charges and it also pushes them back from me; also it helps on ele reflect - i do not have to replace that phys to lightning. And that heavy strike helps on the bosses if they live when i am already with no charges; generaly i use flicker once and then heavy strike untill flicker is off cooldown then use it again. Right now i am thinking of replacing heavy strike with melee phys damage support on the sweep to test that out.

Immortal call is a must. CoDT must not be too high level if you use the Abyssus helm because you will get biten for a big chunks of HP. For me manualy casting enduring cry with spell echo works realy well. Also i have 10% chance to generate endurance charge when i crit (that 'smashing strikes' talent in the staff circle)
Right now with 4 endurance charges and 0 quality gem my immortal call lasts 7 seconds.

Starting as shadow while building around staves is an odd choice. Why did you pick that combo?
You are forced to travel to the opposite site of the tree, whereas a templar-staves or shadow-dagger build could utilize the weapon passives that are located right in their areas. One would save a lot of passive points that way.

Thats true indeed but starting as shadow or going that way still have its advantages i think.

Originaly i started shadow because the lots of crit chance and multiplier nodes there (and because the shadow is cool!) and i also get 1 more power charge. Right now i am hesitating to go for crit multiplier points betwen shadow and witch and next to the 2nd frenzy charge next to the ranger or to go for the flat damage nodes at the start of the marauder. Also the frenzy charge (and the 2nd one too if you go towards the ranger) itself is a big bonus too as staves are generaly lot slower than daggers (not to even mention dw daggers) and i need more frenzy charges to jump faster as my survivability depends on it in a big way. Mind drinker is a sweet bonus too; i do not need mana leech on gear with it.

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BGkamaz wrote:

Thats true indeed but starting as shadow or going that way still have its advantages i think.

I know that starting as shadow has its merits. That's why i ask why you picked a staff as weapon. The staff you are using ain't that good to justify building around it. So why combining two things (shadow + staves) that don't complement each other well?

Just an example:
Flicker needs frenzy charges (to bypass cd and for the additional attack speed bonus per charge) but you only can pick one in the tree as you are forced to travel to the templar side of the tree.

I think thats something i should have posted in the build lol :(
Played flicker with daggers and there was a brick wall at 75-76 lv maps i could not pass with my gear no matter my approach with the build. Tried going iron reflexes and grace, tried going without the abyssus, tried acrobatics and at higher level maps i always end up dying too easy or not having enough damage.
I decided to try using a hard hitting 2handed weapon that also has good crit points on the passive tree and thats the staff. Right now i am clearing easy alched lv 77 maps and the only problem i have is when i have enfeeble but it only slows me down.

Besides whats wrong with jumping and smashing with a stick like Oak? :)