Flicker Strike Warden - Cheap and Effective League Starter and SSF-Friendly (100M DPS, 6k+ life)

This build is based around lot of different scaling mechanics to achieve high DPS and defenses while using cheap/common uniques that are easily available during league start and is also SSF-friendly.

POB: https://pobb.in/1rHBaNZuXb9L

Terminus Est is used for charge generation and Hrimsorrow for full cold conversion, utilizes a lot of less damage taken modifiers for defenses, we have overleech and petrified blood for better recovery, so you can level up with frost blades and make the switch as soon as you have those two items (level 51+).
Terminus Est has very good attack speed and critical chance but suffers heavily from the small flat physical damage, so we make up for that with Bloodthirst support and a high HP pool by going for Utula's Hunger body armor, as most of our desired uniques do not have any life modifiers on them. Naturally, we use Petrified blood to enable Bloodthirst and also get overleech without needing to go with the Duelist/Slayer ascendancy.

For defenses, we stack a lot of less damage taken modifiers that go well with Flicker: Fortify, Flesh and Stone and Arctic Armor (we're considered as stationary while flickering).
All the less-damage taken stacks results in about 50% less damage taken from hits.
The high life pool (6k+) provides us with great defense against one-shots and substantially increases our leech rate from overleech, instant leech and life on kill (from Utula's Hunger).
This huge recovery helps deal with heavy DoTs that is usually one of the hardest things for Flicker builds.
Arctic Armor also gives us freeze immunity, so we can use other Pantheons early on such as Araakali to deal with Dots and chaos damage more easily.

With Warden we make use of the Oath of Winter to make sure we're freezing everything including Ubers, so Heatshiver is perfect as our helmet as we're garanteed to get the 30% extra cold as fire.
The freeze is a huge defensive layer on this build, it freezes everything in maps including map bosses, legion generals and rogue exiles.
Usually it is hard to freeze tanky rares and bosses with Flicker Strike because of the low average damage and lack of investment into freeze duration, but Oath of Winter allows us to bypass all of that and permanently freeze any enemy.
Freeze also got buffed in 3.25 to allow 50% action speed reduction on Pinacle Bosses, and that makes a huge difference.

This build wants to apply as many ailments as possible due to Taming, Yoke and to stack Warden's Unbound. The cold conversion already covers chill and freeze, Heatshiver covers Ignite and we get shock from Yoke or some flat lightning damage somewhere else in our gear (ring, prismweave or boots implicit) until we can get it.
We can optionally get Brittle by getting brittle gound on our boots implicit instead of increased action speed, it is better for total DPS but overall makes the build feel slightly slower during mapping.
If you're using brittle ground, you should move for a brief moment after flicker to apply it because it does not get generated automatically during flicker, and that is why using the action speed implicit is more comfortable for mapping.

For the belt, Prismweave can take you quite far at the start (lots of flat damage, increased damage and some resistances, also covers your shock and ignite if you haven't got Yoke and Heatshiver respectivelly)
and you can get some nice double corrupts from trade to further boost its power until you can switch to a high-rolled Darkness Enthroned and two high-end abyss jewels
(you'll want high life and crit multi on them, and you can easily cap stun immunity and fix your resistances with them).

For rare jewels, we usually aim for high life rolls, crit multi and life recoup (very powerful coupled with Petrified Blood)

## Buffs
We use Herald of Purity with Guardian's Blessing support and Hatred to get a big boost to our DPS.
Herald of Purity gives us more physical damage and generates minions on hit/kill, allowing us to use Guardian's blessing to get Hatred for only 25% more reservation and giving it a big aura effect boost.
Due to the minion requirement, we need to constantly activate Hatred in maps and bosses after getting at least one minion summoned.


## Warden
Warden's advantage over other melee ascendancies is the additional ticture and the uptime of them.
At 12 stacks of mana burn they deactivate and last for another 6 seconds, providing nearly 100% uptime at all times without suffering from mana issues.
Being able to invest into tincture effect is also another scaling mechanic unique to Warden, providing a lot of DPS for just a few points.
The tinctures allows us to get a lot of penetration and attack speed, enabling us to be faster than Slayer and Trickster variations despite not investing much into frenzy charges.
The downside is that you really need to manage the tinctures uptime and Unbound is also another skill you have to press on your bar, so it might put off some players due to the multi-button playstyle.

## Tinctures
We'll use Prismatic and Oakbranch (rage) tincture with penetration and attack speed suffixes, and increased effect/mana burn rate prefixes. It is important to get lvl 85+ tinctures because that is when we can roll the tier 1 suffixes.
We're using Oakbranch because on Warden we don't have a lot of access to Rage generation, and it enables us to use Rage vortex of Berserking for additional utility and recovery.
It helps us quickly ramp up our Rage on bosses as it generates 6/7 rage per 0.5 seconds, and we can also ramp power charges with power charge on crit support very easily.
We don't use Rosethorn (crit chance) because it gets very easy to cap critical chance since Terminus Est has a lot of base critical chance already and it removes some avenues of easy crit chance we can get instead (diamond flask/bottled faith).
They are easy to craft, you should just buy the base with lvl85+ and try to get the t1 suffix with alts/augs and if you don't get the correct prefix, try to annul it and try again until you get it, any tier of prefix will suffice.

## Rage Vortex of Berserking
This is the main reason we're using Oakbranch tincture, once we get two ticks of rage (generating 10+ rage), we can activate this to get it starts and maintain it for a very long time as long as we keep the tinctures active and are hitting something.
We can link a lot of utility gems such as power charge on crit, culling strike, life gain on hit, bonechill, etc.
I recommend power charge on crit to always keeps us maxed out on power charges but it is not absolutely necessary since we can also get them very reliably due to Assassin's mark 5% chance.
The rage vortex pairs perfectly with Flicker strike since we're always on top of the enemies, and helps us generate charges and unbound stacks faster.
Normally, we can only get a positive frenzy charge every 2 seconds due to Flicker strike's cooldown, but with the rage vortex it allows us to generate a frenzy charge with every crit of it,
ramping us to max charges in just a second or two rather than 6+ seconds.
Rage vortex also helps us make use of Vaal Flicker Strike because it'll help kill trash mobs during its duration and maintain our leech going so it is much less risky to use Vaal Flicker Strike.


## Frenzy Charges
We don't have Farrul's Fur to provide us with Frenzy charges at the start of maps, so we use a Redeemer's influenced shield with +2 Minimum Frenzy charges in our weapon swap, so we can swap to it and swap back to instantly generate 2 charges, which will provide us with enough time to get us going.
Since Warden does not get extra benefits from frenzy charges like the old Raider did, we also do not need to focus on getting extra charges like Slayer as they do not provide substantial gains for this build
and end up suffering from the diminishing returns of linear scaling as other mechanics. This makes the build more suitable for SSF, but also means it has a lower ceiling on trade league.

## Endurance Charges
Endurance charges are very powerful but we don't have ways to generate them easily. The best way to get them is to get a +1 minimun charge/% endurance charge on kill ring to generate them during mapping.
You can also awakener's orb a +2 min endurance charges shield with the +2 min frenzy charges shield to generate them during bosses.

# SSF

In SSF, we make a few changes due to the uniques we need. Since it is harder to get Utula's Hunger on SSF and a good fortify corruption on Terminus Est, we use Bronn's Lithe as our body armor because it gives a lot of damage and is easy to find (t4 unique),
and can be easy to get good corruptions once you start farming temples. It enables us to get high flat life on rares and allows us to get the +15% suppresion and life masteries that we can't get when using Utula's Hunger.
Make sure to make your 6-link on Broon's Lithe and put your Flicker Strike on it to benefit from the +5 levels.

The rarest unique is Heatshiver which gives a lot of dmg due to Warden's easily freezing even Uber bosses. The Taming is not hard to get and provides a lot of dmg and resistances.
Yoke of suffering can be obtained as a high-end goal by farming the Fortress map, but since we're probably not using Utula's Hunger we can get a good mileage with an Agate amule with high crit multi, life amulet and attributes.