[2.1] Flaskman! - 350k+ DPS Flask Crit Facebreaker Infernal Blow! [Atziri Viable, 2:30 Gorge Run]

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WELCOME TO THE

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[2.1] Na na na na na na na na na na na na na na FLASKMAN! [CRIT FB IB w/ FLASKS]
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BUILD GUIDE!
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My name is Abiss, and I present to you the first iteration of the Flaskman build.

(Please bear with me through any grammatical or other errors - this is my first build guide.)

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Why Flaskman?

Well, my guildmates saw me going on and on about this build everyday, introducing it to everyone and anyone who dared ask as a "Critical Facebreaker Infernal Blow build utilizing Flask nodes for amazing defense and offense!". Yeah, quite a mouthfull.

Then after a couple of days of "coming to the rescue" of people needing tough boss kills or help with clearing hard maps, some of the guildmates started responding to such requests in my stead...

Which went a little bit like this:

"Can anyone help me with XY BOSS, please?"

"Sounds like a job for... FLASKMAN!"

"Na na na na na na na na na na na na na... FLASKMAN!"

So, the legend of Flaskman was born. Or something!

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Videos:



• Clears maps up to and including Tier 15, though the bosses at T15 are somewhat tough.
• Easily does normal Atziri, but I have not tried Uber, as she's famously tough for Melee builds.
• Easily does everything T14 and below, with pretty much any map mod.
• And I mean any map mod (reflect, minus max resistance, curse immune, blood magic, etc.).
• Uses no legacy item.
• Uses no corrupted items/gems.
• Uses no Enlighten/Empower/Enhance.
• Uses no Elreon jewellery.
• Has no insane chroming costs for off-color sockets.
• Passive tree pretty much complete at level 90.

PROS:
• VERY Tanky: This is the combination of Fortify, 41% Physical damage taken as Cold, 70+% Block and 25+% Spell Block, 88+% to all Elemental resists, easily positive Chaos resistance, near 10k Armor, and some (15-20%) Evasion. All of these are up WHENEVER YOUR FLASKS ARE - which brings me to the next pro.
• 100% Flask uptime: utilizing ALL the flask nodes on the skill tree, along with The Retch unique belt, we get up to a whopping 8-9 seconds of uptime for our flasks! And pretty much any pack of whites will refill them again!
• INSANE Damage: Facebreaker is already known for its massive damage output, and using the power of flasks and Crit, this damage hits some insane levels. It got to the point where I had to drop 2 damage gems in my 6-Link to survive reflect... But it did not affect the clear speed one bit. Why? Next pro.
• ONE-SHOTS WHOLE PACKS: When you crit, you one-shot everything up to Rogue Exiles and some less tanky map Bosses. And with Crit being at 57%, you crit A LOT.
• FAST CLEAR SPEED: Because of every pro above this one - good DPS and mobility equals fast clears.
• FAIRLY CHEAP: Most of the gear we use are uniques, the most expensive probably being The Retch, which you can comfortably substitute with Meginord's Girdle, losing like 3 seconds of flask uptime, but that's hardly noticeable outside of boss fights. A 6L is a luxury, but all you need is a rare one with some life and resists, which is only around 1-2 EX. The build functions with a 4/5-Link (with 4L you lose Fortify, with 5L you lose Increased AoE).
• FAST AND STRAIGHTFORWARD LEVELING: Put on a pair of Facebreaker gloves at 16 with Meginord's Girdle and some other gear that adds Physical Damage to Attacks (rings, amulet, uniques) and you can level with this build with no respeccing needed ever.
• NO MANA ISSUES: The Flask nodes we take are also Mana nodes, so you can forget all about your mana issues!
• EXTREMELY SATISFYING TO PLAY: From oneshotting packs to bigass explosions, everything about this build is FLASHY and FUN.

CONS:
• EXPENSIVE FLASKS: To get the most out of the build, you NEED a Taste of Hate, a Vessel of Vinktar and a Rumi's Concoction. These together can cost around 4-6 Exalted orbs. The build still functions with cheaper flasks though.
• MELEE: You do have to get up close and personal, which means you might die a lot if you're not well-geared or experienced.

Offense in numbers:

• ~253000 or 253k with flasks up and Increased AoE gem
• 51% Crit with 6 Power charges and Increased AoE gem (60% Crit with Blasphemy Assassin's Mark aura)



• ~292500 or 292.5k with flasks up and 6 Power charges and Increased Crit strikes gem
• ~62.5% Crit with 6 Power charges and Increased Crit strikes gem (~71.5% Crit with Blasphemy Assassin's Mark aura)



• ~346500 or 346.5k with Vaal Haste




Defense in numbers:

• ~4.1k Life
• ~10k Armour
• 88% Fire/Cold/Lightning Resistances (without purities!)
• ~41% Physical damage taken as Cold Damage
• ~70% Block
• ~25% Spell Block
• 20% Reduced damage taken (Fortify)



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GEAR SETUP:

Required Items:
• Gloves: Facebreaker
• Amulet: Rigwald's Curse (Put it on at 60, with Abyssus)
• Helmet: Abyssus (Put it on as soon as you can, it gives you MASSIVE DPS)
• Belt: The Retch (Put it on when you start mid tier maps, helps with Hard Bosses)
• Shield: Great Old One's Ward (Put it on as soon as you can, it gives MASSIVE DPS)


• any 4, 5 or 6L body armour (I have only tested the build on a 5L and 6L.)
• boots with life, movement speed and resists
• rare rings with high Physical damage, high Accuracy and Life (and resists if needed)


IT'S VERY IMPORTANT THAT YOU USE JEWELLRY (Rings and amulet) WITH HIGH PHYS DAMAGE! Don't use Rigwald's Curse until 60!

• Unique Jewels: Pugilist Viridian Jewel, Martial Artistry Crimson Jewel, Conqueror's Potency Cobalt Jewel
• Rare Jewels: you want jewels that increase Melee Physical Damage, Crit, Attack Speed etc.


Optional Items (if you can afford losing the resists):
• Any unique body armour (I used a 5L Daresso's Defiance for a long time, Carcass Jack is also a good option)
• Atziri's Step or Blood Dance unique boots
• Meginord's Girdle unique belt



(For a long time, I used the three unique items listed above along with a rare shield with resists, life and a physical damage mastercrafted mod from Haku.)

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Flasks:

Flasks are the bread and butter of this build. Since we take so many Flask effectiveness and duration nodes, our flasks last a whopping 8-9 seconds and have around 38% MORE effectiveness.

What this means is simple (credit for explanations goes to Ghudda):

Each resistance flask provides 50%*1.38 or 69% resistance to their respective element and 10%*1.38 or 13% to maximum resistance.

The Rumi's Concoction grants 30%*1.38 or 41% block chance and an additional (10-15% based on rolls) 13%*1.38 or 18% spell block chance.

For damage and clear speed the Taste of Hate and Atziri's Promise provide a substantial damage boost when using physical damage skills. The Taste of Hate provides 30%*1.38 or 41% added cold damage. The Atziri's Promise has two components 25%*1.38 for the physical and 15%*1.38*.85(.41 from the cold damage from the ToH and .44 from the Hatred Aura) for a total of 52% added chaos damage when both flasks are up.

Because of the Taste of Hate we have 30*1.38 or 41% physical damage taken as cold damage, which is mitigated by 88% from our Cold Resistance.

The Vessel of Vinktar converts some more of our Physical Damage to Lightning, which helps against Physical reflect, and provides us with instant Leech, thus eliminating the need for Vaal Pact. It also grants 50% more damage to mobs due to the Shock and gives us a massive amount of leech - 41.4% Life AND Mana Leech!

For the same or greater damage numbers than me, I recommend you use the following flasks:

In Elemental Reflect, Minus Max Resistance or Elemental Weakness (or all of these!) maps, we have to swap out either the Rumi's or Atziri's flask for a Ruby Flask of Grounding:


If you can't afford the Taste of Hate and Vessel of Vinktar, I recommend you use a Topaz Flask and a Lion's Roar unique flask instead, or any other flasks of your choosing.

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AURAS:

We mainly use two auras:
• Hatred - because it adds an insane amount of damage.
• Blasphemy Assassin's Mark - because it adds a ton of Crit Chance and grants us Power Charges.

Secondary:
• Herald of Ash - in Curse Immune maps, we swap Blasphemy for Herald of Ash.

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Gems:

• Main attack: Infernal Blow - Melee Splash - Melee Physical Damage - Multistrike - Fortify - Increased Critical Strikes/Increased Area of Effect (I swap Inc AoE in for faster map clears, and Inc Crit in for tough bosses)

• Movement skill: Shield Charge - Faster Attacks - Fortify (It's as fast as Whirling strikes)

• Aura 4L: Hatred - Blasphemy - Assasin's Mark - Herald of Ash (We swap Blasphemy for ele prolif in Curse Immune maps and run Herald of Ash instead)

• CWDT Setup: Cast When Damage Taken lv20 + Immortal Call lv20 + Increased Duration + Vaal Haste

• Free Links: Summon Ice Golem + Blood Rage + Increased Duration + Flame Dash
(the golem adds much needed Accuracy and Crit chance, and if you don't use Blood rage, can effectively blind mobs with GMP + Blind; Flame Dash lets us move over ledges and gaps)

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Bandits and passive tree:

Bandits:
Normal: Oak (life)
Cruel: Skill Point
Merciless: Alira (power charge)


Current Passive skill tree at level 91 (Talisman Softcore):


Passive skill tree at 90, without using Inspired learning, Blood Rage and Vessel of Vinktar:


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Leveling:

You should start your leveling process with:
Infernal Blow + Melee Splash + Added Fire

Add Multistrike to your links as soon as possible. You can replace Multistrike with Melee Physical Damage, Faster Attacks, etc. But its ability to auto-select a new target is a bit to much to pass by.

When you get a 4L or higher and level 38, use the following:
Infernal Blow + Multistrike + Melee Splash + Melee Physical Damage

If you have a 5L or 6L you can add Increased AoE and/or Added Fire.

Run Hatred for more DPS, and if you have the mana, Herald of Ash.

The most important item mod you HAVE TO get is Added Physical Damage to Attacks! This will dramatically increase your damage, so look for good rings and amulets, or uniques with this mod.

Items that will really speed up your leveling are:

• At level 1:


• At level 8:


• At level 16:


It's easy from here on, just upgrade your rings and amulet with stuff like these:


You can also use a Foxshade body armor for even more damage during leveling:



As far as the skill tree is concerned, I recommend you go for the Flask nodes first, then branch out into Duelist, then the Scion life wheel, then Ranger, and lastly grab the Crit and Claw damage nodes.

This means you should avoid using Rigwald's Curse until you have a lot of Crit nodes on the passive tree, since a Phys damage amulet will do much more for your damage.

Skill tree progression:


Passive skill at 21 points - go directly for the Witch Alchemist cluster:


Passive skill at 40 points - go to the Ranger Flask and mana nodes:


Passive skill at 60 points - go to the Life nodes at Scion, Witch and Duelist:


Passive skill at 80 points - continue picking up Life nodes, start taking some Crit nodes:


Passive skill at 100 points - start taking the Claw nodes:



Use your skill points for Jewel slots whenever you get good jewels. Use your 5 jewel sockets wisely, amazing jewels will skyrocket your DPS.
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Credits for the awesome pictures used in the title go to KorgothBG! Thank you for letting me use them!
Kudos also to Paragon1, who helped me bounce some ideas and gave me a fresh perspective!

Guess I'll reserve this, just in case.

Scroll-scroll-scroll-scroll FLASKMAAAAAAAN :D :D :D You took your time to wrote this novel. GG !

Haha, yeah well, I figured it was worth the write! ;D

Added a video, will upload better ones tomorrow, but this'll have to do for now, it's laaaaate as fu-.

IMPRESSIVE BUILD!! Good Job!

That aoe is amazing, I've been looking for a rigwald's curse/FB for sometime now and the retch takes path of drinking to new heights. How are you able to to instant melt mobs like that? Is it just a side effete of critting with a massive damage base infernal and Iaoe?

Do you have issues especially on higher or vuln maps due to abyssus?

Would definately like to see how this progresses on TSC.

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lesun02 wrote:

IMPRESSIVE BUILD!! Good Job!

Thanks, much appreciated!

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Nephalim wrote:

That aoe is amazing, I've been looking for a rigwald's curse/FB for sometime now and the retch takes path of drinking to new heights. How are you able to to instant melt mobs like that? Is it just a side effete of critting with a massive damage base infernal and Iaoe?

Do you have issues especially on higher or vuln maps due to abyssus?

Would definately like to see how this progresses on TSC.

Yeah, the AoE is like nothing I've experience before, short of CoC Discharge.

It comes from Increased AoE affecting both Melee Splash AND Infernal blow's explosion, which translates into the massive AoE you can see in the video.

I haven't had any issues on higher maps at all - I'll upload some videos of tanking mobs and doing hard Tier 12-14 maps with different mods. The block, armor and Physical damage taken as cold all work together to mitigate the increased damage you'd take from Abyssus.

Can i ask? Why not marauder bro? He has more unarmed damage right? so..... teach me master!

And i saw that u use jewel for claws? why?