[2.4] How to break Faces (CI Trickster crit Facebreaker Shield Charge build)

Disclaimer:

I am playing Softcore and this build is more on the fun side and not the best or very cheap side,
but i think on a budget, this build can do fine up to Tier 10 maps. This is my second "serious" guide, check out my detailed BV guide!


First of my current stats (will be updated as i lvl further):
lvl 84 Trickster
10.7 k Energy shield
0 mana cost of skills
5k armour
62/13 block
75/82/75 res
chaos immunity
70% crit chance + assassins mark with shield charge
<0.28 attack time with shield charge
immunity to stun/freeze/chill and curses
Instant leech
84% chance to hit with shield charge
527% critmulti
27.3k average damage with shield charge (sounds lower than it actually hits)
Over 150k Ancestral Warchief tooltip
5/5/3 Charges (power/frenzy/endurance)

Gear:

Gloves: These gloves enable this build and i did not only want to utilize the 800% phys multiplier, but also the 90 crit multi on this item. You really want to get a 750%+ roll on this because the dmg scaling is insane with ever % you can get. A good corruption would be "curse enemies with lvl x Temporal chains on hit", but that is not really needed.

Helmet: This is a softcore build so i wanted to go ham. This item does not only offer 40-60 flat phys to attacks, which is multiplied by 8 because of our facebreakers, but also gives up to 225% critmulti which is insane. This unique alone quintuples my dmg (x5). The only downside is, that you get 40-50% increased physical damage, which is noticeable vs reflect, but thats about it. It also is a strength base, so we can run a quad red secondary damage setup in there, without spending too many chromatics. Try to get a high critmulti roll and low phys damage taken roll.

Weapon: Get a weapon with high dexterity or strength requirement, so you cannot usually equip it. Then equip some jewellery which give dexterity/strength until you can equip it, then swap the jewellery back to normal. This provides us with 3 swappable sockets to level more gems! Pretty nice trick with facebreakers, i always have my conc effect in there so i dont have to swap to my offhand before bosses.

Shield: A good rare shield with high es, blockchance and res as much as possible. Strength is also a nice stat to have/craft on it.

Amulet: This is mandatory for facebreaker crit builds, since you usually cannot crit with attacks when using facebreakers (only the explosion of infernal blow can crit when using facebreakers). This also allows us to get the efficient crit claw nodes we need, because we are at the top right side of the skilltree, where you can mostly find spell crit only. If you opt for a perfectly geared character, go for a "enemies can have +1 additional curse".

Body Armour: Here we get alot of our energy shield. I crafted a good starter body armour myself, before buying this one unlinked, it was 5l with 680 energy shield. The 6link doesnt add that much damage, because most of our damage is scaled with flat added phys damage on other gear.

Belt: Crystal Belt would be the best base, but rustic is more damage and i like damage in softcore more than defense. Also its cheaper. Try to get alot of Strength on this, together with some resistances and energy shield. Also flask nodes are really nice, but expensive at the moment.

Boots: High energy shield, some res and if you can, movementspeed is really nice with shieldcharge, because it speed scales not only with attackspeed, but with movementspeed aswell. If you have an open suffix, craft strength on it, you will need it.

Rings: Best base is the new Steel Ring base, but you need so many stats on your rings, that you would have to invest several exalteds into them. Stats you need: High accuracy, flat physical damage, energy shield and rest of the resistances.
Also some strength would be nice to get and if you have an open prefix, craft % increased maximum energy shield on them. We need every bit of energy shield we can get.

Flasks: This flask is amazing in my opinion, we dont have to sacrifice a ring slot for stun immunity and dont have to invest into Skyforth. This also fixes the problem of using too many unique flasks, so that you cannot get freeze immunity on a flask. Onslaught is also really nice. Overall a musthave in my opninion.

This is our leech. With huge crits, we are almost full life all the time we attack packs. Vs bosses it might take 2-3 hits to get full life again, but with over 3 aps that is no problem at all. Try to get 25% phys roll.

This is nice vs reflect and also another damage boost. I had this because i played a pathfinder Bladevortex character before, i guess you can also just replace it with a Basalt flask of Iron skin. Less damage but even more defense.

This one is really nice and almost guarantees a crit. It rolls crits twice, so if you have 70% critchance, you have a chance of 1-(0.3*0.3)=0.91 = 91% chance to crit. Also we need one normal flask for bleed immunity.

Last but definitly not least is the Rumi's Concution flask. This boosts my chance to block up to 62%, which is really nice vs reflect. This eliminates almost all downsides of Abyssus. Try to get high rolls on both stats, as we dont convert any blockchance to spells because we dont have the space for that. You could use rainbowstrides boots for some more spellblock, but you loose alot of ES, which is not what we want.

Jewels:
Obvious choice for all CI builds. Put this near "Melding" in your tree. At the moment it gives me a boost of +550 energy shield which is A LOT.

Attack speed for faster Shield charge is only needed on a 5link because faster attacks 20/20 provides alot of attackspeed on its own. Still a nice stat to have. Mainly look for Energy shield and area damage. Also phys damage with claws or just regular damage is nice.
Here is the poe.trade link for ESC: 3mod jewels 4mod Jewels

Gems:

Main 5/6 link:



3Red - 2Blue ( - 1Green)

Shield charge is my personal best choice for mapping, vs bosses i like to use cyclone because you dont get max range shield charge for 200% more damage after the first use. Or kite back every other hit. A little bit clunky to play like that though if you ask me.

Because of CI we are dead if we are not full life. Pretty much a no-brainer.

Another no-brainer. More damage = Awesome!

For mapping the base AOE with only one AOE cluster in the tree, shield charge's AOE is not so great. With Increased Area of Effect support, we hit most of the time the holy pack with one hit. Swap this for Concentrated effect before bosses.

Because we dont use Diamond rings - or i don't at least - this helps alot with critting almost 100%. You can try to get another off-colour on your chest and get life leech support to sustain better vs reflect, but that is really expensive to colour. Also i like damage on softcore.

This improves mapping speed alot, also compensates the lack of movementspeed on my boots and allows me to get more defense and damage on my jewels. Pretty nice to get if you ask me, but by no means worth it to buy a 6l, rather get better bases without a 6link.

Cast when damage taken setup (4link):


3Red - 1Green

I like to get it to lvl 10, so it doesnt trigger when something scatches your feet. Also you can use enduring cry to get endurance charges, so a higher lvl immortal call is more worth.

Very nice vs reflect, bleeding and other physical damage. At lvl 12 endurance charges are fairly nice (about 2 seconds with 3 endurance charges).

This increases the length of immortal call by almost 75% so even without any endurance charges it lasts almost 1 second.

A really nice gem which is included in 99% of all builds. I link it with this setup so it also benefits from increased duration.

Auras (3link):


2Blue - 1Green

Mikaels Calculator

A really nice damage boost for all phys damage builds. I didnt use this until i had a lvl 3 enlighten + 4% reduced mana reservation. I ran a blasphemy curse instead.

A no-brainer in any energy shield build. Provides over 1k energy shield at the moment.

I bought this for 30c, this allows us to run hatred, discipline and a herald. As mentioned above, dont use herald before you get a lvl 3 enlighten. A level 4 enlighten is overkill, because we dont need mana with Trickster (only for totems). It would only allow us to drop 2 nodes in the tree, which is not worth the investment if you ask me.

Totem vs reflect monsters and bosses (4link):


4Red (abyssus is str base and allows us to run this setup)

Scales superwell with facebreakers. Fully buffed this is sitting at about 100k tooltip at the moment. It only dies pretty fast at the moment, so i will try some nodes/jewels with totem life to fix that.

Just like our main setup - a no-brainer.

This one aswell

This is really nice because it inflicts burns vs bosses, which does alot of singletarget damage.

Curse & more mobility (3/4link):


3Blue - 1Green

Freezing and chilling is not only nice to have, but also adds a spicy sound while charging around. Also best option to curse on hit if you ask me.

Curse on hit allows us to drop blasphemy for hatred. Pretty nice!

If you dont have skyforth like me, this is the way to get power charges. A setup with BV power charge on crit could work aswell, but alot of our crit nodes only count for attacks and BV is a spell. So i recommend this setup.

Another gem i like to have in almost any build i play. Getting over walls or small unpassable terrain improves the clearspeed alot. Sadly there is no space for faster casting, because the gems in our weapon are disabled.

Ascendancy:

There are a few choices you can go for, the best in my opinion is Trickster, mainly because of "Walk of Aether" which makes our shield charge cost 0 mana. This is what i recommend getting in normal, mana flasks are a pain if you ask me.
Then go for "Swift Killer" in cruel, this improves the speed by alot! Later you have 6+ frenzy charges.
In merciless its time to grab "Ghost Dance" for a bit defense. Doesnt add that much, but allows to get "Shade Form" in uberlab. +250 Energy shield is simply AMAZING for a tree with 200%+ increased Energy shield. Also some Evasion which is also scaled a bit in the tree.

Bandits:

Normal: Kill all
Cruel: Oak for 16% increased phys damage or kill all
Merciless: Kraityn for +1 frenzy or Alira for +1 power charge

Passive Tree:

Final Skilltree (115p)
My current tree (104p)

Important tips for the tree while leveling:
- Go for Jewel sockets if you have good jewels
- Don't level Energy shield based. Go for all the lifenodes you can find
- Don't go for crit too early, you need alot of crit for it to be impactful
- Wait for lvl 75-80 before respeccing into CI
- Get all claw nodes except the 3 near Vaal Pact before starting with maps
- Don't forget the Energy from Within jewel near Melding
- Rush to Witch area to get the flask nodes. Those help a ton while leveling

Videos:

Coming soon

Conclusion

Thanks for reading through this guide. Please ask all the questions you have below so that i can answer and include them into the FAQ. Also tell me if you see any mistakes in content and language, im not an expert in this game or language and like to learn more.

Thelmon

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Changelog:

FAQ:
Q:You do not have a passive skill Unwavering Stance, and Eye of Chayula Onyx Amulet is gear not provided.
how do you solve the problem of a stunning?
A:Take a look at my flasks, i use Kiara's Determination for stuns, just dont use it when you dont need it, then it works just fine without sacrificing a jewelery.

look cool, looking forward to some footage

You do not have a passive skill Unwavering Stance, and Eye of Chayula Onyx Amulet is gear not provided.
how do you solve the problem of a stunning?

"

Zapadloa wrote:

You do not have a passive skill Unwavering Stance, and Eye of Chayula Onyx Amulet is gear not provided.
how do you solve the problem of a stunning?

Take a look at my flasks, i use Kiara's Determination for stuns, just dont use it when you dont need it, then it works just fine without sacrificing a jewelery.

melee damage on full life take totem HP or yours? (in totem setup) so if he take totem life then need to change that gem IMHO

"

ooDest13oo wrote:

melee damage on full life take totem HP or yours? (in totem setup) so if he take totem life then need to change that gem IMHO

Im pretty sure the player HP counts, not the totem hp. But there are a few opions to change that gem to smth else, like fortify for more dmg and your totem survives longer.

is this shaper viable?

Can u pls add leveling passive three and when i must take CI?

Dude pls add leveling tree :)