[2.4] Harvest Blade Vortex - 5L 660k shaper dps, 1.3m boss dps, 67% phys mitigation (no armour)

The Harvest + Taste of Hate + Vessel of Vinktar + Ruby Flask + Lightning Coil

2.4 Update

After having not played the build since 2.1, I decided to take it for a spin again, now as a Shadow (assassin) instead of a witch. None of the gear has really changed, but the build now achieves higher dps than before because of assassin crit nodes and poison. I'll clean up the guide sometime, but here is a quick preview:

Hard new content (to be updated as I unlock more)

Maze of the Minotaur (Vulnerability, Temp Chains, Hexproof): I even forgot to use concentrated effect for this fight, but it's more or less a walk in the park. You can facetank the minotaur by constantly casting BV and using your flasks. No fortify required.

Gear


Tree


Offense

To try and provide the most realistic picture of how much DPS this build provides, I use the Shaper fight as an example.

Let's say the shaper has 45/45/45/20 fire/cold/lightning/chaos resistance. Additionally, the shaper cannot be shocked by the Vinktar effect, reducing the dps of the build, and the shaper has -60% curse effectiveness.

Factoring in the effects of poison over the entire poison duration (with toxic delivery doubling poison damage on crits) and assuming that 20 stacks are maintained, my calculations show that against the shaper you can obtain:

500k DPS using the conversion vinktar, 5 power charge, no aura setup. This is on a 5L of BV - poison - conc effect - faster casting - controlled destruction

660k DPS using the exact same setup above with 20/20 vulnerability linked to 20/23 curse on hit. I currently run 19/0 vulnerability and 20/23 curse on hit.

1.3M DPS using vulnerability if the shaper could be shocked (this would be your DPS against a boss like Uber Atziri).

There are a few ways you can boost the dps even higher, but all come with drawbacks:

- If you constantly attack the shaper during the fight and keep him bleeding, you gain 20% of your physical damage as chaos, which also scales into poison. However, this requires you to press more buttons, and you may have a harder time keeping up 20 stacks.

- If you use an added lightning damage vinktar instead of a conversion one, you gain 20% of your base physical damage back to scale your poison. However, you will leech considerably less, making this less safe.

- If you use an Atziri's promise instead of a life flask, you will similarly gain more chaos damage, which has the benefit of scaling poison. However, you will need to ensure that you are always leeching during a fight, which I would rather not do.

Defense
- 4.9k life at level 91
- 1.2k mana at level 91

Due to the resistance flask nerfs, this build has less mitigation than it did previously. It still sits at 83/83/83 resistances with a guaranteed 67% physical mitigation just from the elemental conversions of taste of hate and lightning coil. Using a redblade helmet increases this to ~75% physical mitigation, but I don't bother.

Just to put things into perspective, the build with fortify on can tank a maximum of:

- 44k base fire/cold/lightning hit
- 22k base physical damage hit (ignoring armour, no redblade helmet)
- 30k base physical damage hit (ignoring armour, with redblade helmet)

While it cannot absorb as much elemental damage as a CI build, the build's physical mitigation is off the charts. Throw in enfeeble and you'll be able to tank crit versions of Path of Exile's biggest physical hits.

Since the build now runs MoM, this makes for an effective health pool of a little over 6k. With your high resistants and physical mitigation, this should be enough to facetank most end game bosses, and I suspect that you can do shaper with this setup.

Everything from here below is from the 2.1 version of the build, but much of it still applies!

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Pros / Cons
+ Permanent flask uptime, for both single target and packs
+ 11.5k tt dps with 5 power charges (maintained with Pcoc, always up)
+ 14k tt dps with 5 power + 3 frenzy (maintained with Ice Bite, less consistent)
+ 27k tt dps with gem swap for obliterating bosses (I rarely have to use this)
+ 40% phys damage taken as lightning, 41% phys damage taken as cold
+ 88/88/88 resistances
+ Nets you 70% physical mitigation just through ele conversion
+ Potential 20% more damage all the time from diamond flask (84% effective crit)
+ 50% more damage if using Vinktar for shock
+ No 6L required to get these numbers (I don't have one myself)

- Costs a bunch and uses legacy items. Wouldn't play in temp league.
- My tree doesn't net a lot of life. I'm sitting at 4.6k at level 91. This is usually fine because your physical and elemental resistances can be amped to ridiculous levels.

Videos


Basic idea


Facetank roster


Links


Flasks:


Gear
Lots of links are still trash left over from previous builds. Basically ignore everything in the Harvest.



Passive Tree


Map mods

Suggestion:
Shadow start better.
6L BV - ICD - Conc - Poison - FC - Echo
Forget the quicksilver, use a catalyst eternal Mana flask
Use attack and cast speed suff jewels --> and then use leap slam + flicker fortify
Use Bloodrage for another 20% ias, and it gives frenzy charge generation for even more as/cs and dmg.
Instead of ice herald use haste for the double speed buff.
Instead of completing life ring and hired killer, take the immediate jewel nodes within the areas, cuz although they result in less life, they are in the end more effective (Perfect jewel mod would be like to --->Spell dmg/Life/Attack&CastSuff/Damage or Allres)

Poison may give you less tooltip dps, but it will do more than added fire, you can also boost it with ; lv1 cwdt wither.

Also Should Consider Bubbling Divine Life flask, better than seething imo.

Lastly, IMO power charges arnt really important when u are already using diamond flask, but you could run skyforth instead of PCoC so you wont have to run another blade vortex, and instead of the coh do cwdt enfeeble so you can mitigate more dps.

These changes will in the end result in more mobility, maintain tankiness (less hp but more reduction), and achieve higher dmg overall.

dude that is a stinkin' awesome setup! congrats!

also, poison will not add more damage than added fire overall. it adds slightly less as a critical build, and even moreso you don't really have or need time for the DoT to tick down either. the straight up DPS boost is better IMO and calculations. however i've done them based on my build.

i like setting PCoC in with the secondary curse on hit blade vortex. really good idea because im a shadow start (for the assassin ascendancy tree which will be CRAZY with this build, so i agree shadow start is better) and i worry about how to keep power charges up against boss fights if i don't go into them with full duration charges already.
usually don't tho because you spend time precasting. by then the charges are gone but a pcoc on blade vortex solves it. problem is i run 2 curses. warlord's mark and assassin's mark so i don't have a 5th link for PCoC...thinking of how i can solve this. will test at a higher level if warlord's is absolutely necessary or not.

great job tho. again i do agree shadow would be most beneficial for the planned ascendancy trees, but i wouldn't doubt they get changed around a bit either. you could easily max out crit rate with BV WITHOUT a lot of crit passives if you just stacked power charges, at 0.5% BASE crit chance per power charge and 10% crit multi per charge...thats too good to pass up.

Just a response to some of SIQI's points:

"

SIQI wrote:

Suggestion:
Shadow start better.
6L BV - ICD - Conc - Poison - FC - Echo
Forget the quicksilver, use a catalyst eternal Mana flask

Poison may give you less tooltip dps, but it will do more than added fire, you can also boost it with ; lv1 cwdt wither.

Poison is great on many blade vortex builds, but I actually prefer not to use it in this setup - instantaneous damage is the name of the game for this build, and you don't really need the extra dps to clear packs. The only place where I see it shining is in boss kills, but given that there aren't any good green gems to swap with it at other times I prefer the BM / added fire swap (which is already not needed 90% of the time). Aside from the shadow start and conc effect, we also don't have great ways to scale the poison, which doesn't benefit from Atziri's promise and actually gets double dip reduced by spell echo.

On a 6L, I'd actually link up Controlled Destruction over ICD, since the 100% reduced crit chance is mitigated by the fact that we get to run a diamond flask. If you don't have a legacy crit amulet like me, perhaps ICD would be better, but you'd have to determine that based on your own setup.

I've played the build with a Mana flask as well before, but the clear speed simply isn't as good without the quicksilver. The build is weakest when it's not leeching off of enemies, so closing the gap to ranged monsters quickly is actually pretty important for survivability. Now if I could color my lightning coil 1G 4B, I might actually consider running the mana flask over a diamond, as I could use ICD / Controlled Destruction as a huge damage link. Too bad coloring coils like that is pretty hard.

"

SIQI wrote:

Use attack and cast speed suff jewels --> and then use leap slam + flicker fortify

Pretty decent suggestion. Perhaps I'll try this sometime, though cast speed actually isn't incredibly important for the build (I can hit 50 blades using vaal haste and vaal clarity for bosses even under temp chains).

It's also important to note that %increased modifiers on jewels are really nice on this build because the tree doesn't net too many of them.

"

SIQI wrote:

Use Bloodrage for another 20% ias, and it gives frenzy charge generation for even more as/cs and dmg.
Instead of ice herald use haste for the double speed buff.

Both possible. Herald of ice shatters are super satisfying, but the Ice bite on them isn't honestly that consistent against tankier mob types. My only concern with running blood rage is the lack of regen to counteract the degen, which could be annoying. Worth trying as well.

With a vessel of vinktar, you could net some %regen nodes on the tree (we already have shaper, and the 1% in templar isn't bad either), which would probably allow you to comfortably run blood rage.

"

SIQI wrote:

Instead of completing life ring and hired killer, take the immediate jewel nodes within the areas, cuz although they result in less life, they are in the end more effective (Perfect jewel mod would be like to --->Spell dmg/Life/Attack&CastSuff/Damage or Allres)

Could you elaborate on this one? If you're pushing for max damage, jewel nodes are great and efficient, but the amount of life that I have on my tree right now is low enough that I see it as the only real issue with the build. I occasionally die to volatile explosions.

"

SIQI wrote:

Also Should Consider Bubbling Divine Life flask, better than seething imo.

Yep, this is what I'd ideally want. I just don't have a bubbling divine of staunching for some reason on standard.

"

SIQI wrote:

Lastly, IMO power charges arnt really important when u are already using diamond flask, but you could run skyforth instead of PCoC so you wont have to run another blade vortex, and instead of the coh do cwdt enfeeble so you can mitigate more dps.

These changes will in the end result in more mobility, maintain tankiness (less hp but more reduction), and achieve higher dmg overall.

Once you get used to the second blade vortex setup, it's basically 5 power charges for free all the time, so I definitely think it's worth it. As you mentioned, dropping the CoH and running CWDT enfeeble is excellent if you want more mitigation. However, it won't protect you from those volatile one shots or massive crits on shocked ground that are responsible for most of my deaths. Also, curse immune mobs will become even more dangerous.

Skyforth... expensive AF. If you have one, go ahead and use it, but you might have trouble capping resistances.

My current build basically doesn't use the 5L in the harvest at all, so if you want to run a 5L cwdt setup (CwDT - IC - IncDur - Enfeeble - Arctic Breath) that would fit great.

"

xMustard wrote:

also, poison will not add more damage than added fire overall.

This is because ppl don't know how to use poison. When i Solo map, i run around with 6-10 BV stack, whirling blades thru mobs, and poison does the rest, there is absolutely no need to be running with 20+ blade stacks constantly.

A 21/20 poison alone, getting boosted by the total 90% skill duration near scion start will give 94.5% more damage when allowed to tick (btw duration gem will also increased poison length), and the effect is overwhelming on bosses. If you have lv 1 cwdt wither, it will boost it even more. The downside of course, is you can't leech life off the poison tick. But the upside is you get more dps in the form of DoT and you don't take extra dmg from elemental reflect.

Now I actually play BV so I know the things I mention below are effective cuz it is reflected in the actual gameplay I experience. Although what I run is double cybil's MoM (also on the witch forum), the principles still apply here. Thus begin my inputs:

Starting to see the value of some of the points you're making, SIQI. Your build setup (with Romira's and Voll's) looks pretty sick, and the main reason I'm not really thinking of switching to it right now is because I don't feel like I need to. I haven't died to physical damage in the last few levels at all (I can tank merc Malachai's slam with just taste + LC), so I'm not too concerned about additional physical mitigation (Redblade helm seems like an easier upgrade for me). CwDT IC is good for mitigating semi bursty phys damage (as well as blood rage), but for my pretty lazy playstyle I prefer to more or less be able to facetank Voll/Malachai/Dom slams. The added resistance and life from belly are good though, perhaps adding just as much survivability in the long run.

Poison would now be my top choice as the 5th/6th link in BV, and I'll switch once I recolor my coil. I forgot about the fact that our increased duration scales poison very nicely when I first evaluated it, so now I'm seeing the larger dps increase you can get with poison. I've also started playing around with a borrowed Vessel of Vinktar, which eliminates the need for BM or mana pots, freeing up a support gem socket in my Lightning Coil. When I get a vessel for myself, I'll spec out of Vaal Pact and probably try running Blood rage for frenzy charge generation. Sounds like it will be awesome.

As for the leap slam / flicker fortify setup, I have yet to test this yet, as I don't want to recolor my Harvest to accommodate the new link colors. When I did try faster attacks - leap slam - fortify in initial testing, though, it was very unsatisfying on its own (Harvest has a miserable 1.15 aps, and leap slam isn't a very fast skill). Perhaps flicker, blood rage, and attack/cast speed jewels would provide more fluidity to the gameplay - I'll see if I can test that sometime.

Also, do you have a link to your guide on the forums? Would be interested in taking a look at it.

"

hypernegus wrote:

I'll spec out of Vaal Pact and probably try running Blood rage for frenzy charge generation. Sounds like it will be awesome.

I'm actually not sure what to think about vaal pact with harvest. Normally I'd say the instant life leech is just too good in overall situations, but then again I remember that you can permanently keep up for bubbling/seething flask and in a sense that is pretty much equivalent to having vaal pact. So you could indeed save a point there, would be interesting to see how that plays out.

As for lightning coil, I know you get alot of that phys mitigation, but then again, a belly could give another 500+ life, which could help out with the elemental explosions etc, and can reconcile the lost phys mitigation with romiras+volls. Also remember, you do have the flask nodes, and that pushes your taste of hate effect to a whooping 39%!! So I really think the LC is just excessive.

Lastly, glad you switched to poison, the atziri flask you use also boost chaos dmg, which then in turn adds more DoT dmg, so don't forget that as well :D

My thread is here:
/1561457

Although I have very low regen, I also run righteous fire, and really I have not seen much of a problem with RF + blood rage degen effect on me, it hurts more in vuln maps but I still roll with it, for some really bad maps tho I would take off RF for extra tank, and again you can always cancel blood rage by a simple weapon swap if you put ur BR gem there.

"

SIQI wrote:

"

xMustard wrote:

also, poison will not add more damage than added fire overall.

This is because ppl don't know how to use poison. When i Solo map, i run around with 6-10 BV stack, whirling blades thru mobs, and poison does the rest, there is absolutely no need to be running with 20+ blade stacks constantly.

A 21/20 poison alone, getting boosted by the total 90% skill duration near scion start will give 94.5% more damage when allowed to tick (btw duration gem will also increased poison length), and the effect is overwhelming on bosses. If you have lv 1 cwdt wither, it will boost it even more. The downside of course, is you can't leech life off the poison tick. But the upside is you get more dps in the form of DoT and you don't take extra dmg from elemental reflect.

Now I actually play BV so I know the things I mention below are effective cuz it is reflected in the actual gameplay I experience. Although what I run is double cybil's MoM (also on the witch forum), the principles still apply here.

i also play BV. while you may be able to run around with 6-10 blades and let everything get poisoned to death, thats also somewhat risky to do since you don't know for sure if they will die or not.
also i just run around with 10-15 blades and everything explodes. this is currently at level 71 with crappy daggers (i've played BV at much higher levels im just raising a new character for it specifically).
also, from the wiki "Spell Echo,Trap, Cast When Damage Taken and Cast on Critical Strike- do not work with Wither"

i did some calculations on my old setup and compared added fire with poison. heres the quote

@Mustard

I think you are looking at poison from a wrong perspective.

To start, the # poison stacks doesn't matter in DPS calculation with regards to poison, the only thing that matters is the initial hit (but in a comparison, your actual initial hit dmg also doesn't matter, for you only have to compare the dmg scaling percentage wise), and the duration that it is allowed to tick. If I fully stacked my blade vortex I get over 800+ psn stacks (pvp tested), but that is irrelevant to dps calc.

With each tick being 10% of your inital hit dmg per second for 2 seconds (Base). At 2 seconds just poisoning a target will net you 20% worth of extra dmg from your single cast, factor in the 125% psn boost from gem you get 45% extra dmg. At this 2 second mark you are already on the same lvl as added fire. Any duration beyond 2s (i.e. vs bosses) will start adding in extra dps, the amount of stacks you apply is irrelevant, only what you get out per cast matters.

Also another thing is, the general clear speed difference really isn't really affected that much, your aoe is only so big, if you wanted super fast clearing you could've chose to play a ranger or team up with one;

With Poison it really is a different playstyle; Poison players with low dmg have to find their own blade stack to time allowed to tick balance, but in cases such as this build with already high base dmg, you don't even need added fire for general clearance, so poison is alot better because it will take down bosses much faster; as faster boss death (ie creama, malachai, academy, etc) translates to less chance for player to be making an error midfight and dying. Also remember, with poison you don't take extra ele reflect dmg as you would from Added fire. You can all the dps in the world and it wouldn't matter if you lvl 95+ and die once every 10 maps; safer play = faster lvling; Poison general clear speed is good enough for me even with lower on-hit dmg than this build so I'd much rather go for complete double reflect immunity and easier boss takedowns than use added fire.

Lastly, for wither, I haven't realized that it doesn't work with cwdt cuz i'm lvling the gem, but I guess that means I can now add in flicker strike to my own setup as well without removing the inc duration off firestorm procs.

And referring back to one of my earlier posts here I think shadow would be a much better start cuz of the phys/chaos double dmg nodes to scale up poison even more. All added dmg effects are based off of the phys dmg, so fundamentally there would be no difference to the elemental scaling unless one has flat ele dmg added from some source.

Updated the guide with some brief info on using Vessel of Vinktar. Running Vinktar/Taste/Quicksilver/Ruby allows us to achieve:

+ 88/88/88 resistances all the time (my new defense vs volatiles/heralds)
+ About 20-30% more damage than before
+ Ability to spec out of Vaal Pact and maintain instant leech
+ More leech than before
+ Ability to use poison gem as 5th link

- Loss of hexproof flask and extra crit from diamond
- Loss of chaos damage from Atziri's promise

Also, for those of you interested in more survivability, swapping the BV - CoH - Ass mark for Enfeeble will allow you to safely Facetank hits like Wasteland Voll's slam (if you have a support build with curse effect applying the curse, you can even tank a crit as well).

I do want to see if I can change out the quicksilver by using Leap Slam / Flicker Strike with fortify, but it's pretty unclear at the moment. Whirling blades is definitely a superior skill for Blade Vortex, it's just unfortunately that we can't use it with The Harvest.

EDIT @SIQI:

Double reflect is not really a problem at all for the build with the Vinktar setup. It basically trivializes all map mods other than "Cannot leech".