Life based high armor dagger crit flicker

You can level with spectral throw or with double strike or however you like up to when you can get multistrike.
You can start flickering as soon as you get the multistrike gem. You will need to use blood rage and hatred aura and also you will need this links:

flicker - melee splash - multistrike - ice bite (+ melee physical damage if you have 5 link)

to keep up with the mana you will need to have the Spirit Void notable and to use Rallying cry gem + potions.
This is some awesome and cheap leveling gear for flicker strike:
You will have to keep Grace gem in some spare gem slot to level it up for when you get to level 60 and equip Abyssus helm, also you must have the Iron Reflexes keystone by then. If you want to level with Herald of thunder and curse on hit you might need some lightning damage on gear as the HoT damage alone will not always be enough to shock when you kill especially around when you start mapping. By then you should have the Call of the Brotherhood ring and a 6 link chest.

While leveling most builds it is recommended to start with the defence points and then go to the damage ones but with flicker you must have enough damage to 2-3shot most mobs at all times. When i started maping i had 2700-ish HP and i had almost all dagger nodes then i just took what seemed needed for the moment balancing that way offence and HP/armour

6 link: flicker - melee splash - multistrike - melee physical damage - physical to lightning - ice bite

With PtL gem we will shock all the time; also it makes 2/3rd of our damage elemental so we will not oneshot ourselves on reflect. Also we need to freeze the enemy mobs so we can get the frenzy charges from the ice bite gem. We are not using Hatred aura so we are doing that with this:

4 link: frenzy - faster attacks - melee physical damage - added fire(or PtL)

PtL gem for more damage because shock stacks or added fire for more life and mana leech.
We need good single target attack for high HP mobs/bosses and we also need secondary way to generate frenzy charges in emergencies. Be careful - with added fire you can like twoshot yourself on physical reflect and with PtL you can kill yourself on elemental reflect mobs.

3 link: Herald of thunder - curse on hit - assassin's mark

MORE damage on crit curse, also power charge generator

unlinked:
blood rage, grace and

manually casting this gives us some good mana regen and also good damage buff and having it on the link with CodT + IC + increased duration will make it last a good 12-13 seconds.

We can defend against attacks by various ways:
-we can evade
-dodge
-block
-mitigate with armor, endurance charges and fortify
-use immortal call
-we can just not be there when the attack lands

With flicker strike most of the time we will teleport somewhere else before the mobs manage to land a hit on us but when there is only 1 target or when the mobs manage to hit us it will heart a lot; even more so because we use the Abyssus helm with its physical damage taken penalty.
I think most reliable way to defend against attacks with this build would be to mitigate them with armor so even if we get hit 2-3-4 times in a quick succession we will not die. I am using Grace aura with Iron Reflexes keystone and i am using this jewel on the jewel socked between Mind drinker and Blood drinker: and that way i can take good armor nodes in the shadow area.
Manually casting Enduring cry with 3 max endurance charges and chaos golem buff gives us 16% flat damage reduction added to armor and cast on damage taken + immortal call + increased duration gives us around 3 sec. physical immunity acting like sort of insurance.
I am using fortify on this link:

4 link: cyclone - whirling blades - fortify - faster attacks (or chaos golem for the additional added % physical damage reduction or even life on hit for safer disengages with cyclone)

We need a way to go out of danger because jumping around with flicker is unpredictable; you never know where you will end up. Cyclone makes us stun immune so we can reliably go out of the middle of big packs if we end up there without frenzy charges; whirling blades helps when we need to go out of that spot we just killed 6 flame bearer blue mobs at once (just an example). Whirling blades (and cyclone) also makes triggering fortify on engages (disengages) really easy. We whirl in a way that we hit 1-2 mobs and then we start flickering. And with cyclone we do not worry about clicking with the mouse on that tinny mob over there - we just spin and we hit whatever.
I recommend keeping whirling blades and cyclone gems at low levels for cheaper mana costs.