[1.0.5] Death's Oath Staff Marauder - Flicker Strike/Cyclone (with a video)

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Breakfast wrote:

Have you tried running Blood Dance boots? You lose a bit of DPS but gain up to 7% bonus HP regen. With just Blood Rage, you typically bounce around near max Frenzy stacks, so with the Blood Dance frenzy charge on kill, you should be topped off almost always (except for maybe rares and unique mobs).

If I was running blood rage with any other skills, blood Dance boots would work, but since I'm using flicker strike, the charges are "consumed" very fast so the boots wouldn't be a reliable source of life regen. Also, I'd not only lose dps (15% attack speed at max charge count) but also life, resists and defense. Finally, if the life regen provided by the blood dance boots was reliable, they would only save me 2 passives points. The 3 other life regen passives kinda have to be taken anyway to get other passives.

I am building a life build with death's oath using a one-handed axe and shield. Also using the abyssus unique helm since i am a crit build(with the added armour from shield, getting high damage reduction should help with the 40% extra damage).

Hers's the build

Will be using a full quality blood rage with life leech for high life leech.


Wanted to know your thoughs on my plan.

Sounds good to me.

I made some minor tweaks to your build :



Since you are going with a shield, I suggest taking some shield nods. 3 well-placed passives would give you an additional 12% chance to block and +40% defense from shield defense. That's huge. If you are gonna use the Abyssus, you'll need that extra defense.

To compensate, I'd drop the 2% life leech passive. With the life leech from both Death's Oath and Blood rage, you won't need the extra 2%. I'd also drop the +30% fire dmg with weapon (Lava Lash). Unless you are planning to run Anger, I don't think you'll be getting that much extra dmg from that. Finally, I'd drop the Precision passive (20 dex, +10% accuracy) near templar starting area. You already get +56% accuracy and 94 dex elsewhere from other passives and the Death's Oath provides another 40-50 dex.

Finally, I wanted to say that I'm impressed by the Axes passives between the Duelist and Marauder starting areas. With only 10 passives points, you get +152% physical dmg, +56% accuracy and +4% attack speed. Wow !

You won't have dps problem, that's for sure. I'd even consider not using the Abyssus helmet. 40% increased physical dmg is big penalty and the extra dps may not be necessary after all, even with a 1h weapon.

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Breakfast wrote:

+50 stats also seems pretty damn cool for a PotCG build, which I'm running. I'll have to try picking up a Death's Oath.

What's a PotCG build ?

Edit : Nvm, found my answer. Pillar of the Caged God Staff (Unique).

As much as I like Death's Oath visually, I think it's just not worth it.

A rare astral with +life/resist/armour is probably better for this build.
If not, I'm almost certain that an off-colored Carcass Jack will make this build better.

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lucksickle wrote:

As much as I like Death's Oath visually, I think it's just not worth it.

A rare astral with +life/resist/armour is probably better for this build.
If not, I'm almost certain that an off-colored Carcass Jack will make this build better.

I already mentionned earlier in this thread the reasons why I think the Death's Oath Chest is perfect for this build, I'll quote myself :

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Velkor wrote:

(...) there are still many other good reasons to use the Death's Oaths : the huge amount of armor being one of them. Also, for my build, the attack speed, the strenght and the dexterity provides a huge dps buff. The dexterity also provides +10% evasion. The Int allows the use of the vulnerability curse and provides a little bit of extra mana. The Astra Plate implicit mods provides +12% to all resists. Finally, the 450 chaos damage to nearby enemies (630 dmg with vulnerability) is also an extra dps boost for the character. The fact that it bypass energy shield is another plus. The huge amount of life leech is just Icing on the cake

All those pros for what cons ?

-The need to get high chaos resist. But this con is also a plus. Chaos resist is useful by itself. Its also useful to run blood rage without consequences. Blood rage provides a nice bonus to dps (attack speed) and survability (life leech).

-The need for life regen. A grand total of 5 passives that, together, provides +5.4% life regen. 2 of those passives are almost mandatory anyway. So, 3 passives.

So, no. For this build. A rare Astral or an Carcass Jack wouldn't be as useful.


Btw, I've been asked to provide the 1.0 build update. Here it is :

1.0 Death Oath Staff Flickerer

Btw, the character is now level 83 and is doing very well. I have approximately 4700 life and 12,000 armor (18,000 with Molten Shell) and also a nice amount of evasion (5000?).

I run 2 auras : Determination and Hatred. I had to give up 2 Auras : Purity and Grace. For particularly hard maps, I can replace Hatred by Grace. I replaced Purity with resist nods. Together, Diamond Skin, Diamond Flesh and Sentinel provide +34% to all elemental resists, more than Purity. If your resists are maxed, I also suggest to pick up elemental adaptation for the +2 to all resists. Its right in the new build path.

Other tweaks :

I removes the passives points in Staff block and put them in Staff Crit%, knockback and duration. The passives invesment for the Staff Crit+Knockback is lower (3 vs 5), provides extra dps and defensively, its arguably just as good if not better.

Also, I've found the best way to deal with physical reflect maps : Cyclone. So, I switch Flicker Strike with Cyclone (both are green gems so its perfect). Then, I switch Melee Splash with Added Fire damage (both red). Since Cyclone is dealing reduced physical damage at a much higher attack speed, the high armor of the character is much more effective against its reflection (the added fire helps too).

Cyclone is also the best way to deal with "Vulnerability", "Reduced Max Resistances" and "Reduced Life/Mana regen by 50%" Map. Since Cyclone doesn't "require" blood rage, I run these maps with Cyclone and without blood rage. It works very well.

Hi,

saw your build and I find it very interesting and refreshing. and I just started a new toon in nemesis to find that your build is extremely tank and awesome.

but I am abit confused with your gems setup. and I plan to go cyclone instead of flicker strike. is it possible to show me how to link all the gems? and look at the gems on your gears some of them seems weird and don't really make any sense, but then i'll still a noob ><

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meteoric wrote:

Hi,

saw your build and I find it very interesting and refreshing. and I just started a new toon in nemesis to find that your build is extremely tank and awesome.

but I am abit confused with your gems setup. and I plan to go cyclone instead of flicker strike. is it possible to show me how to link all the gems? and look at the gems on your gears some of them seems weird and don't really make any sense, but then i'll still a noob ><

If you want to maximize your dps with Cyclone, I would use the following support gems : Faster attack, Increased Critical Damage, Increased Critical Chances, Melee Physical Damage. I personally use Added Fire Dmg instead of Faster Attack but only because I don't want to change the socket colors combo I use with Flicker Strike. So I need to switch Melee Splash with another red gem and the one that works the best is Added Fire Dmg.

Concentrated Effect would increased the dps a lot (certainly more than Crit Chance), but the reduced area of effect cannot be compensated by the passives from the build, so I don't recommend it.


Other than that, you need to reserve sockets for the Vulnerability curse. You can link it to blood magic and reduced mana cost to make it easier on the mana.

Also important : Hatred + Determination + Reduced mana. The green socket used for Hatred can be use for Grace when needed.

Blood rage isn't mandatory if you use Cyclone as your main skill and not Flicker Strike. But if you use it, its good to link it with increased duration and faster casting.

You may want to use a single target skill instead of Cyclone for bosses. Heavy Strike, Double Strike and Frenzy (if you have at least 4 charges) are all good choices.

Other skills options includes a Cast on damage taken setup, a totem (rejuvenation or Devouring totems are nice) and a defensive curse such as Enfeeble or Temporal Chains.