[2.1] Flander's Flasky Blade Vortex [Uber capable, cheap]

Get life everywhere! All of the build's unique items (except flasks) have a good amount of life, and you should prioritize it on every other piece of gear with the exception of your dagger. Obviously, cap your resists. I like to over-cap them by 29 so I can ignore Elemental Weakness curses. For dps, stack physical damage, spell damage, and cast speed. Keep in mind that Blade Vortex is a spell, so if you see something about an item or talent increasing physical damage of *attacks*, it's not going to work. Similarly, on jewels, beware of mods such as "X% increased Critical Strike Multiplier with One Handed Melee Weapons." Though we're using one-handed weapons and dealing physical damage, we're still casting spells, and this mod will not help us.

Here's what we want for the complete, Uber-killing version of the build:
Primary attack (chest): Blade Vortex, Spell Echo, Faster Casting, Physical to Lightning, Blood Magic, Concentrated Effect / Increased Area of Effect.
Travel/Fortify (boots): Whirling Blades, Faster Attacks, Blood Magic, Fortify.
CWDT setup (shield): Cast When Damage Taken, Immortal Call, Increased Duration.
Vaal Buffs (dagger): Increased Duration, Vaal Haste, Vaal Grace.
Aura + Curse (helmet): Hatred, Blasphemy, Enfeeble, Enlighten.
Heralds + Golem (gloves): Herald of Ash, Herald of Ice, Blood Magic, Summon Flame Golem.

Note that the gloves aren't 4-linked, since we really don't want Blood Magic supporting our heralds. If you already have 4-linked gloves, an orb of fusing will reroll the links. (Fortunately, it will not do the same to a six-linked item).
I don't usually run with Herald of Ice on. It's only there for the double oversoul fight in the Alluring Abyss, since my strategy involves burning them down before they can harm me. For that fight, I turn off Enfeeble and turn on Herald of Ice for a little extra dps.

Surgeon's prefix wherever possible, except maybe for a Panicked prefix on a second life flask. Even with the big surgeon nerf in 2.1, Blade Vortex hits so often that you refill flasks very quickly. I used some combination of five of these:


The big one, of course, is the damage-conversion Vessel of Vinktar. Between our Physical to Lightning gem and this flask, 70% of physical damage gets converted to lightning damage, and 30% of that is leeched back instantly. While active, assuming you've got more than a few blades hitting something, you'll be nearly unkillable. The obvious exception is anything that can one-shot you, which is a big concern.

The combination of Blade Vortex's natural synergy with the surgeon's prefix, the Retch belt, several flask clusters in the passive tree, and a good combination of flasks is incredible. I can't imagine that Vessel of Vinktar is going to continue in its present form for long; it's that good. It's like a firehose of incoming life, and its downside is pretty easy to get around: always use a flask with the Grounding suffix in conjunction with the Vessel of Vinktar. I usually opted for a ruby flask in this role, though sometimes a diamond flask. Don't rely on a health flask for this; their effects end when you're at full health.

Added Fire Damage gives quite a bit more dps than Physical to Lightning. Why not use it? Vessel of Vinktar! We want a ton of lightning damage. But until you get a Vinktar, go with Added Fire Damage.

Acrobatics wrecks a lot of the benefit of using a shield. Why a shield, then? Life. We need a ton of it. Damage avoidance isn't perfect; stuff hits us occasionally. We need to not get one-shot in order to benefit from all our buffed flasks. Intelligence-based shields can still have a bunch of spell damage and spell crit, so that takes a lot of the sting out of not getting a second dagger.

Why Enfeeble instead of Warlord's Mark? First, I had framerate issues with Warlord's Mark and Blade Vortex. Second, it's yet another layer of protection against the dreaded one-shot. Much better than the endurance charges from Warlord's Mark.

Passive Tree at Level 94
Get the Increased Skill Effect Duration nodes as soon as possible. Next priority is increased Radius of Area Skills. Take life as needed, and finish off with crit and flask and jewel nodes.

Blade Vortex is a killer leveling skill. Great clear speed, great single-target damage, so easy to use. Mana is always going to be a challenge, but once you get Blasphemy + Warlord's Mark, that gets easier. Here are some landmarks on the path from "First character in league" to "Killing Uber Atziri."

-Get to Act 4 Merciless with whatever gear you find lying around. Try to avoid spending much currency, since you're saving for a Tabula Rasa. At this point, I like to grind the Dry Lake for a while to get levels and loot. The difficulty of Act 4 after the Crystal Veins is a huge jump.

-Get a Tabula Rasa. Put a Blood Magic gem in there and reserve all your mana with Hatred, Herald of Ash, and Herald of Ice. Keep leveling Blasphemy, as you'll eventually go back to it when you can afford a level 4 Enlighten.
-Get a pair of Atziri's Step boots and an Atziri's Promise flask. Cheap and incredibly useful.
-Get a Divinarius.
-Get another Divinarius? Some caster dagger, anyway. No need for a shield in your offhand until you're really looking to push your life up into Uber Atziri territory.
-Get a 5-linked Carcass Jack. Retire the Tabula Rasa.
-Get a level 21 Blade Vortex gem.
-Get a Retch.
-Get another Carcass Jack and try to 6-link it. If it 5-links, sell it and profit. Get another Carcass Jack and repeat until you get a 6-link or you can afford a 6-link.
-Get a 6-link Carcass Jack!
-Get a Vessel of Vinktar, and switch out Added Fire Damage for Physical to Lightning.
-Get a level 4 Enlighten, and retire Herald of Ice. It's time for the gem setup I laid out earlier. You lose a bit of damage, but gain incredible survivability with Enfeeble.


All this while, climb map tiers until you're sustaining Tier 10 map runs. Don't be afraid to spend a little currency on maps if you have a run of bad luck with map drops. Try some maps that are typically avoided, like Jungle Valley or Torture Chamber! Use extra Vaal map fragments to help with map drops; they make a real difference. Using them and paying attention to maximizing item quantity on your maps is the difference between stalling out in tier 8 maps and sustaining tier 10 or 11.

Somebody told me that Uber Atziri is like regular, only with twice as much health and damage. Maybe twice as much damage is right, but I learned the hard way that everything in the Alluring Abyss has way more than than twice as much health as stuff in the Apex of Sacrifice. It's more like triple or quadruple.

I decided I was ready for Uber when I had 6000 life, 17000+ tooltip dps with Concentrated Effect, and could smash through Tier 15 maps with no trouble. Also, of course, I had run regular Atziri dozens of times, and it was completely trivial. To prepare for Uber, I operated under the (flawed) assumption of doubled life and damage. I did a regular Atziri run with Herald of Ash linked to Blood Magic, so half of my health was reserved. That seemed like the easiest way to simulate everything doing double damage. I also swapped out my Level 21 Blade Vortex for a lower level one to halve my dps. That would simulate everything having doubled health. I did fine. Well, turns out I needed to use an even lower level Blade Vortex.

Despite my flawed preparation, I beat Uber on my first try with a couple portals to spare. My first Uber kill with any character! The axe dropped :)

Coming soon!