[1.1.0] Facebreaker Cyclone in Endgame

28k dps, 35k armor, 79/79/79/-34 resists
I will typically run this setup.

30k dps, 22.8k armor, 79/79/79/-34 resists
This setup is similar to what I had in Patch 1.05. More dps, less armor.
I may run this on easier maps if I don't feel I need the defense.

28k dps, 15k armor, 88/84/87/-34 resists
My weapon switch Elemental Boss setup. PurityLightning needs a bit of levelling still. Obviously spell block can be improved via passives or maybe Rainbowstrides (I'll work on it later).

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgQAAdwB5xQgFE0XLxmFGYYZihoyGjgabBqPG_okqiXfJy8ppSpNLdIwdTboNuk62D38PydE50ZpR35KyE4qUEdRYFXWVw1YY1ivWfNfP2TnZU1mnmoeajtqk25pbqpvnnB9cql4DXy7fNmApIMJgziE2YzPkFWRzpkrmsybtZ2Ans2iAKQZpKynMKeEqBipbqmVq8WsR6yqtfK2QbvtvJ-9gb6KvqfAD8AawzrFisbYykrSIdJN1e3h2uNq45_rLOw47w7vfPAf8i_z3fZI9tr3Mve--tL7CQ==

Build Concepts:
- Armor is very important for mitigating damage.
- High life leech is necessary to counter reflect.
- Heavy mana cost reduction. Cyclone is all about managing your health gain/loss rates, and cyclone cost itself is one of the largest sources of effective health degeneration you have to deal with.
- High movespeed for better cyclone performance.

Main Keystones:
- Iron Reflex
- Resolute Technique

Build Highlights:
- High move speed + Low cyclone cost = fast, flexible, controllable cyclone pathing
- High armor + Lots of endurance charges for high physical damage mitigation
- High life leech + Physical mitigation to counter reflect
- CwDT + EnduringCry to maintain endurance charges
- ImmortalCall for emergency situations
- 27% Mana Cost Reduction to lower cyclone cost
- 31% Mana Reservation Reduction for aura flexibility

Help Oak in all difficulties.

The gear *used* to be only moderately expensive (aside from the 6L Carcass). Facebreakers got nerfed in Patch 1.0 though, so I imagine the legacy ones will cost quite a bit more these days. The rare items also take a good amount of shopping around to find as it is extremely difficult to find a set of rolls that you are happy with.

Facebreakers are mandatory obviously, preferably a legacy pair if you can afford it. The new ones will lower your dps slightly, but should cost infinitely cheaper.


Abyssus and Carcass (at least 5L) are also required. For the budget-conscious, you can consider linking your own Carcass.


Jewelry *must* have Added Physical Damage and a good bit of life and resists. Get as much Life Leech as possible as well since I find a good amount is necessary to counter reflect.


I recommend a high AR or EV rare shield with hp/resists. Alternatively, a Lionseye Remorse with high armor will also do just fine and will be much easier to find. Saffells is used for cases when high elemental resists are required.


Meginord's is the offensive belt of choice. Alternatively, get a nice rare rustic for hp/resists.


Use any boots you like, but preferably with movement speed boosts.


Use whatever flasks you want obviously. Personally I prefer Bubbling Hallowed life flasks with various status cures. I also usually take 2 Adrenaline Quicksilver flasks with me as well so I can move/cyclone at turbo speed. One of the perks of being an armor freak is that I do just fine without messing with Granite flasks.

I absolutely loathe the IIR/IIQ stats. I don't agree with them in principle, and Facebreaker builds have so many equipment limitations that it is really difficult to accommodate IIR/IIQ. I concentrate on damaging/surviving and leave the IIR/IIQ to the mf cullers in the party.

6L Chest setup:
BloodMagic - LifeLeech - MeleePhys - ConcEffect - FasterAtk - Cyclone

Q20 ConcEff (reduce cost) and Cyclone (AoE) immediately (mandatory)
Followed by Q20 LifeLeech (+Leech cap) (mandatory)
Followed by Q20 MeleePhys and FasterAtk for minor dps boosts (recommended)
Q20 Blood Magic is completely optional

Out of this set, you can consider changing FasterAtk to other skills. Popular choices are AddedFireDmg (good luck getting 4 red sockets on a Carcass) or CullingStrike (mf cullers will hate you).

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Cast When Damage Taken setup:
Lv1 CwDT - IncrAoE - Lv5 EnduringCry - Lv5 Enfeeble

Max L20 IncrAoE as soon as possible to maximize effectiveness (recommended)
Q20 IncrAoE and EnduringCry if you can afford to (optional)
Q20 Enfeeble if you want (optional)

I prefer to leave CwDT at Lv1 so it triggers often.

You may replace Enfeeble with another spell or curse of your choice.

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Auras setup (60/60/60 or 60/60/40/40):
ReducedMana - Determination - Grace - Hatred


ReducedMana - PurityFire - PurityLightning


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Immortal Call setup:
BloodMagic - IncrDuration - Enhance - ImmCall

Q20 IncrDuration and ImmCall if you can afford to (recommended)

I also have a separate Lv20 EnduringCry for manual casting.

Single Reflect (Physical Reflect mob): Zero problems
Like it's not there. High mitigation and leech have you covered. DPS at will.

Elemental Reflect of any variety: Zero problems
Like it's not there. You deal way more physical damage than elemental, so elemental reflect is nothing compared to physical reflect for you.

Lightning Thorns: Zero problems
Like it's not there. Your damage is the low APS high dmg/hit variety. You will significantly outleech thorns damage on every single hit.

Double Reflect (Physical Reflect map mod + Physical Reflect mob): Cast ImmCall before engaging.
Better safe than sorry. Alternatively pull out some damage gems and halve your dps.

Vulnerability map mod + Physical Reflect map mod: Cast ImmCall before engaging.
Better safe than sorry. Alternatively pull out some damage gems and halve your dps.

Combinations with Half-Regen or No-Regen map mods: Not too much difference.
This character is sustainable on leech alone. Sip flask once to give you an initial shot of fuel to whirl into a mob pack. Once you're leeching, your problems are gone.

Blood Magic map mod: Less armor, but you should do ok.
Even without auras, I have 19.4k cyclone dps and 14k armor. All my endurance charges are still there. All my primary skills are either already on blood magic (Cyclone/EnduringCry/ImmCall) or linked to CwDT (EnduringCry/Enfeeble).

Once upon a time I imagined that I could get Static Blows and Elemental Proliferation to work with this build. The rapid attack speed and AoE nature of cyclone seemed perfect for applying shock effects, but I simply could not figure out how to get sufficient lightning damage to trigger shock in the first place.

The problem is that Facebreakers does not crit, so Static Blows is the only way to apply shock. For shock to have a chance of being applied, a minimum amount of lightning damage (1% monster hp?) must be dealt.

I surveyed the Lv67 Lunaris area to get a rough idea of monster HP. From my estimates, normal mobs have around 10k hp, magic mobs have around 20k hp, and rare mobs have around 40k hp. Using these figures, I would need a bare minimum of around 200 lightning damage.

Lv20 Wrath gives 9-147dmg, averaging 78 before Inner Force and 101 after. Equipment-wise, Wakes may help but I could not bring myself to give up so many defensive stats. Skill-wise, Added Lightning may help but the reduced effectiveness penalty on Cyclone is very heavy. Passive-wise, I could not realistically spare enough nodes to amplify elemental damage by the required amount.

I arrived at the conclusion that shock stacking is a futile exercise for our build. If you really want to do it, get a totem or one of those lightning spells. It's easier to not cast anything and just whirl a bit longer though.

I like fast cyclone! I maximize movespeed and always use quicksilver flasks during cycloning...

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I find it baffling people keep insisting cyclone has higher effective dps if you move slowly. This is technically true, but I have to point out that the keyword here is "technically". Practically this does not have to be true.

To understand this, you have to first abandon another common misconception about cyclone which you may or may not hold -- that you must cyclone in a straight path. This is also only technically true. In reality it is very possible to cyclone in curved paths. The key is to link many short straight segments of cyclone together by holding your pointer close to your character when you drag. You must be able to sustain the cost obviously, but if you can, you can move in arcs or even spiral patterns if you wanted to (I assure you it's very possible. I do it all the time).

Now how is this relevant to dps? Damage is a function of the time a mob spends in your blender zone (not your slow movespeed!!). You can curve your path (so the mob is slightly on the inside of the bend) or orbit around a mob to keep it taking dps for as long as you like.

**Never move in a straight line if you want to maximize effective dps.**

The common argument for slow cyclone is that you pass through mobs more slowly and therefore are able to land more hits. If you allow for the possibility of curved paths, that argument is no longer true because you can basically keep a mob taking damage for as long as you choose. Being slow is actually a detriment in this case because you need high maneuverability to be able to constantly make corrections to your path.

There are other strategic benefits on having adaptable cyclone paths too. You can "arc" your entry from the side to catch more monsters. As others have noted, mobs often miss you if you move side-to-side at an 90deg angle of attack. Having a curved path + responsive cyclone allows you to execute this strategy more effectively. At the extreme, I can actually simulate backstabbing mobs by rounding behind ranged mobs to start my cycloning. Keep moving until they commit to their first volley (which they will miss), then start your cycloning while they reload. This is what I mean by manual dodging.

There are two general approaches to getting high dps: (1)increasing base damage, and (2)increasing attack speed. Facebreaker cyclone is based on the first approach, while weapon cyclone is based on the second.

If you look at your character sheet Offense tab for Cyclone, you will notice that high level Facebreaker builds will typically do upwards of 4k-6k physical damage per hit, while attacks per second will range from 2.5-3.5. This is contrasted with (high level) weapon builds which typically do near 1k-2k physical damage per hit with around 8-10+ attacks per second. Weapon builds typically have slightly higher elemental damage components as well (probably 60-40 elemental-physical distribution).

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The game counters high dps using reflect and thorns. The attack characteristics of your build will determine how well you perform against them.

- Elemental reflect has negligible effect on Facebreaker builds because we deal fairly low elemental damage. You only have to watch out for AddedFire, but you should have enough leech.

- Lightning thorns returns flat damage, so it counters high attack speed. Since Weapon builds rely on smaller but more frequent hits, thorns hurts them more than Facebreaker builds. Normally I don't notice thorns unless I AoE a massive number of thorned mobs for an extended period of time (e.g., invulnerable aura). For the most part, thorns are negligible for us.

- Physical reflect reflects a percentage of dealt physical damage. This hurts Facebreaker builds more than Weapon builds due to the diminishing effectiveness of armor. Without going into detail (will discuss separately), the same amount of armor has higher damage reduction against a small hit than against a large hit. This is our weak point. I have found that I can stack sufficient armor/leech to deal with 18% reflect, but double reflect 36% (reflect mob on reflect map) cannot be handled by armor alone. Enduring Cry and most likely Immortal Call will be necessary.

(By high armor I mean 25k+ without granite.)

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So that's all good, but what conclusions can we draw or learn from this?

1. Physical Reflect is something you have to face if you want high dps. You will most likely need Enduring Cry and Immortal Call, so build for them if you want to use them.

2. Vaal Pact, whether life-based or CI-based, is another option. Be warned leech% required is very high and you may not be able to leech enough even with VP. It is also relatively more difficult to boost offense for Facebreaker VP cyclone builds while maintaining defenses.

3. Taking Increased Melee Physical Damage nodes are a bad idea for Facebreaker builds. At end-game levels, you are trying to reduce your physical damage per hit to help ease reflect. Increased Attack Speed nodes are much preferable (even if not as effective) because they increase dps without increasing your per-hit damage. (Opposite applies for Weapon builds.)

You see a Facebreaker build with 6k per-hit physical damage? Don't be impressed. It doesn't perform that well against reflect.

4. Similarly, you can take out your MeleePhysDmg gem and replace it with an AddedFire gem to maintain dps while lowering your physical per-hit damage to help you survive on reflect maps.

For Q1L20 ImmCall + Q1L20 IncDuration:
4 charges = 4.4s
5 charges = 5.5s
6 charges = 6.6s
7 charges = 7.7s (bandit)
8 charges = 8.8s (bandit + 1ring)
9 charges = 9.9s (bandit + 2ring)

For Q20L20 ImmCall + Q20L20 IncDuration:
4 charges = 6.4s
5 charges = 8.0s
6 charges = 9.6s
7 charges = 11.2s (bandit)
8 charges = 12.8s (bandit + 1ring)
9 charges = 14.4s (bandit + 2ring)

For Q20L20 ImmCall + Q20L20 IncDuration + 45% Buff Duration passives:
4 charges = 7.8s
5 charges = 9.8s
6 charges = 11.8s
7 charges = 13.7s (bandit)
8 charges = 15.7s (bandit + 1ring)
9 charges = 17.6s (bandit + 2ring)

For Q20L20 ImmCall + Q20L20 IncDuration + 75% Buff Duration passives:
4 charges = 8.8s
5 charges = 11.0s
6 charges = 13.2s
7 charges = 15.4s (bandit)
8 charges = 17.6s (bandit + 1ring)
9 charges = 19.8s (bandit + 2ring)

(Note the most important factor in extending duration is the number of charges you have.)

Multistrike is awesome. A Q20L20 Multistrike gem adds more melee dmg (+67%) than a Q20L20 MeleePhys (+59%) AND it gives you 107% increased attack speed, which is massive. Even after you take into account the 36% Less multiplier, a multistrike gem gives you an extremely nice dps boost.

You also get autotargetting. Some people don't like this due to desync, but if you have enough dps/survivability to not care, there is a charm to being able to auto-navigate through a map holding down a single key...

A third benefit that is sometimes overlooked is that Multistrike increases your overall dps but LOWERS your per-hit physical damage. This is extremely important for Facebreaker builds because it helps us improve armor effectiveness and improves our ability to deal with reflect. (If you are a weapon user reading this, don't be so happy. It is not so good for you because thorns will kill you even faster than it does already.)

So why don't I use it?

Besides the obvious answer of desync (which in truth I don't really mind since desync or not, stuff just die if they come near me), the main reason is because I don't like the loss of control. That's it. I like my cyclone to be fast and responsive.

Try, and decide for yourself whether you want to use Multistrike or not. Everyone has their own preferences.

Get a Q20, and use it! The increased life leech cap bonus is irreplaceable. Without it, the maximum you can leech is 20% of your hp per second. With it, 24%. Short of Vaal Pact, there is no other way to increase the gain rate.

Either is fine. Choose what you want. Both options have been demonstrated by various Lv80+ characters to be very viable in endgame 70+ maps.

Bringer gives you more hp (maybe 500-1k more?), but slightly lower dps (maybe 2k?). Blind is nice, but a lot of us have crap evasion due to Iron Reflexes so who cares. The endurance charge thing is a gimmick, so don't get fooled. People who have used it report that it did not generate nearly as many charges as they expected, certainly nearly nowhere near full; EnduringCry is still necessary if you want a full set of charges. Use of ConcEffect will also result in slightly smaller cyclone area, so try it out.

Carcass/Abyssus has 120 less base hp but gives more dps (which may or may not be a good thing due to reflect) and area bonuses. Armor values are comparable. Get a 40% Abyssus, but don't worry too much about the Increased Phys Damage Taken mod since it's not going to kill you. This option is also more expensive due to the need for 6L carcass.

As a rough estimate, consider Bringer to be on the same dps level as 5L Carcass/Abyss.

If you are a Marauder, go Bringer cause it looks good.

This is the Lv80 95pt version of CI Facebreaker Cyclone I tried on a different character.

This is the 104pt version of CI Facebreaker Cyclone I was aiming for but will probably never complete.

Gear is mostly similar except you need ES gear, mana leech jewellry, Aegis Aurora, and Rainbowstrides.

I found my ES to be very low overall, probably due to me having crap ES gear. It was very difficult to get my ES to 3k and my dps suffered due to trying to run cyclone on mana. I also could not run as many auras on mana alone, so I lost some armor. Maybe someone can get this to work with better gear.

It was nice being able to run Blood Rage for free. The life leech was invaluable with Vaal Pact. I was surprised to find that even 18% life leech wasn't enough to do double reflect mobs though. Vaal Pact helps, but apparently you will still die if you don't somehow get enough leech or enough mitigation. I gave up in the end after I realized this.

At some point after melee patch 0.11.1, I tested out a Life-based Vaal Pact variation.

Armor and mitigation overall was similar to what I had normally, but the build was really nerve-wracking to play because there was no way for your life to recover except leech. Flasks did not work, and your life does not recover like energy shield does. Little things like burning patches, chaos degeneration, etc. suddenly become very very scary. You have to resist your instinct to run away and remember your only chance of survival is to dive headfirst into mobs regardles of conditions (e.g., you only have 1000 life left...).

I had to give up my evasion shield and use an Aegis so that I had some buffer against small attacks (hence the AR/ES cluster). That at least made the build slightly more bearable.

MeleePhysicalonFull could potentially be used, but I think that was around the time I realized it was a bad idea to boost per-hit dps so high. I was getting ridiculously high single hit damage numbers.

I also had to switch Cyclone to mana-based instead of blood-based in order to avoid killing myself by mistake since regaining life was so difficult. That meant giving up an aura to free up an usable mana pool and spending passives on cost reduction. I also had to use a reduced mana gem, which further affected my dps.

In the end, I figured it wasn't worth it. The build was just way too stressful to play. It works, but the character was too "glassy" for me. Not to mention reflect still hurts if you can't get enough leech, and blood rage was out of the question.

You know that line on your character sheet that says you have xx% damage reduction? It's lying to you.

From the Mechanics thread, DmgReduction = Armor / (Armor + 12*DmgTaken)

Say I do 6000 physical damage per hit and I have 28k armor. I hit an 18% reflect mob that returns... 18% x 6000 = 1080 physical damage before reduction

Actual damage reduction = 28000 / (28000 + 12*1080) = 68.4% (not 75%)
Actual damage taken = 1080 * (1-0.684) = 342 physical damage

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Say I do 6000 physical damage per hit and I have 28k armor. I hit an 36% reflect mob that returns... 36% x 6000 = 2160 physical damage before reduction

Actual damage reduction = 28000 / (28000 + 12*2160) = 51.9% (not 75%)
Actual damage taken = 2160 * (1-0.519) = 1038 physical damage

===> Notice your armor is not as effective against large hits.

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Say I do 6000 physical damage per hit and I have 10k armor. I hit an 36% reflect mob that returns... 36% x 6000 = 2160 physical damage before reduction

Actual damage reduction = 10000 / (10000 + 12*2160) = 27.8%
Actual damage taken = 2160 * (1-0.278) = 1559 physical damage

===> That is a lot of extra leech you need. You are most likely dead with crap armor considering how fast you hit. Armor is not useless. Ignore the damage reduction displayed and get as much as you can. It is true that you need ridiculous amounts for it to be effective though.

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Say I do 6000 physical damage per hit and I have 28k armor AND 3 endurance charges. I hit an 36% reflect mob that returns... 36% x 6000 = 2160 physical damage before reduction

Actual damage reduction from armor = 28000 / (28000 + 12*2160) = 51.9% (not 75%)
Additional damage reduction from endurance charges = 12%
Actual damage taken = 2160 * [1-(0.519 + 0.12)] = 779 physical damage

===> Notice reduction due to endurance charges is a flat rate that remains effective for large hits. This is why Endurance charges are so godly.

Out of curiousity, I took off Iron Reflex to see how it would affect my defenses. One regret orb to settle the age-old question of "Does Evasion suck?" Sounds fair.


1) With Iron Reflexes, I have 27798 Armor and 5% base Chance to Evade.

For 10 hits of 1080dmg each (based arbitrarily on 18% reflect off 6000dmg):
10/10 hits will land
Damage Reduction = 27798/(27798+12*1080) = 68.2%
Expected Damage per Hit = 343dmg
Total damage Taken = 3434dmg


2) Without Iron Reflexes, I have 3495 Armor and 9291 Evasion Rating equating to 48% Chance to Evade.

For 10 hits of 1080dmg each:
5/10 hits will land
Damage Reduction = 3495/(3495+12*1080) = 21.2%
Expected Damage per Hit = 850dmg
Total damage Taken = 4253dmg


Perhaps my evasion bias is too heavy, but it does appear to me that Iron Reflexes is superior both in terms of lowering peak damage and overall damage. For me at least. ymmv

Note Evasion is not RNG. 50% really means 50% will land due to the entropy counter mechanic.

These are fairly standard for melee builds, but I'll just write them down anyway for the benefit of those starting out.

Normal: Help Oak (+40 base HP)

That's not just 40 HP you are getting. That's 40 *base* HP to which you will be applying a ton of multipliers. That's massive. Pretty much mandatory for all melee based characters.


Cruel: Help Oak (+18% Physical Damage Multiplier)

In case it wasn't clear, the 18% is an 18% MORE damage multiplier, not the normal INCREASED variety you see in your passive tree. This 18% is a global multiplier that is applied on top of whatever else you have. Again, this is massive for us and there is no excuse for not getting it.


Merciless: Kill All (+1 skill point) OR Help Oak (+1 Endurance charge)

In the past, I've usually advocated people kill all and get the skill point because well, you can put that skill point anywhere. However, since I usually suggest people get a few endurance charges in their builds anyway, it doesn't really matter. Either choice is fine and probably won't make a difference 95% of the time.

The only times it'll make a difference is 1) if you specifically want 7 endurance charges in your build, or 2) if for some reason your skill tree pathing does not have an immediately accessible Endurance charge node and you want one. Then Help Oak.

With Patch 1.0, the cost of many auras has been increased to 60% and we can no longer run 5-7 auras like we used to. We actually have to think, and choose.

For an Iron Reflex character, I would recommend Determination over Grace. L20 Determination gives me 22756 armor. Lv20 Grace gives me 20986 armor. Running both gets me 33157 armor.

Cyclone blood/mana cost depends on movement speed, mouse distance from character, whether you are click-holding on a mob, pathing, etc. The primary factor affecting cost is how many additional hit checks you are forcing through direction changes. CoC builds should be familiar with this concept.

I estimate that to sustain a frequent-hit cyclone (mouse almost directly over character), you will require regen amounting to approximately 4x the tooltip consumption. 1.5-2x is ok for a sustainable cyclone if you hold your mouse a few cm away.

(Note consuming 4x the tooltip cost does NOT mean you are doing 4x the tooltip dps.)

(Patch 1.06, 21/02/2014)

If you had armour based gear however the build would use less points and would look like this.