64k+ DPS Build Spotlight | VarthDaver's CI Arctic Queen Kongor Flicker

Once again, absolutely stunned with your creativity and ingenuity at making existing builds more all round powerful.

The only quip i have with this one is the low ES as others have mentioned, but once you get an es chest and leave the helm on (imo) .... Armor is probably not so important with such possible high es, vaal pact and also possibility of perma IC. I dont think you can link the endu charge on stun with molten shell, as its ''on melee stun''. You could link it to a secondary aoe attack like the ground slam you already got tho, and keep IC up practically all the time vs something like carnage with extra damage, vuln etc, or tough maps with nasty physical mobs and mods.

Also, I dont consider abyssus an endgame helm for this build because (a) crit multi is wasted (2) it leaves only the 30-60 physical, which is added on top of a 1xx-5xx weapon, so it wont add as much dps as it does to a 1h flicker build, and gaining a vulnerability mod for all that isnt a good tradeoff, imo.

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victortkc wrote:

Just a question, why do you not use Flicker + Multistrike + Melee Splash + Melee Physical Damage + Melee Physical Damage on Full Life + Faster Attacks?

Melee splash makes all the mobs get hit many times so you can clear the mobs faster.

I'm sure he tested it, and it worked out to being better without splash and all the extra fire and cold dmg with added fire / wed. His aps is insane enough, FA could cause more mana issues.

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victortkc wrote:

Just a question, why do you not use Flicker + Multistrike + Melee Splash + Melee Physical Damage + Melee Physical Damage on Full Life + Faster Attacks?

Melee splash makes all the mobs get hit many times so you can clear the mobs faster.

Even though the other poster added, I will address directly. Faster attacks is not a MORE scaling item, but an increased scaling item. This means in theory, it cannot keep up with MORE scaling items as they continue to manipulatively scale.

To be more specific: Faster attacks does not increase the "Per Hit" damage of flicker, it simply allows you to flicker more quickly. One of the weaknesses of a charge based build is that in some instances you only get a limited amount of output until you must regenerate your charges. An example would be if you failed to kill a boss on flicker, faster attacks will only speed up the time until you run out of charges. It does not increase the amount damage done with those charges.

Faster attacks will scale your damage per second vs no faster attacks, but it will decrease your damage per mana significantly. This is not often a metric used in PoE (yet), but it has a large impact on real performance. If you are familiar with cars, DPS is similar to horsepower where DPM is more akin to torque. Most people only ever hear how much Horsepower an engine has, but without enough torque, the car will barely move off the line.

Melee Splash is different, and I like it a lot (make sure to get Quality on it). It excels in solo play, but less in groups. Its particularly good if you have culling, but its not worth the socket to use the gem in this build. It is also very good to use with Vaal Pact if reflect is an issue or you have limited leech.

This skill, however, dilutes the single target killing ability of Flicker. I try to design and play knowing that failure occurs, be prepared for it, and overcome it. In my experience Flicker is extremely strong with mob packs, and I don't think there is any debate to it. Where you can have issues though is single target at lower gear levels (and in groups with other players). That being the case, I will accept a small relative loss in potential speed to be over prepared in the event of limited charges.

This is likely longer a response than you wanted, but I want to add one thing:
Multistrike | While this is a MORE (for speed, not dmg), it is weakening the per hit damage. I would not use this skill, but it provides a VERY important synergy in that you can (and do often) kill three mobs with a single flicker charge. This allows you to flicker with 0 charges and sustain as long as one of the three kills a mob. This ability to "grow" charges can be accomplished by splash, though splash is inferior in terms of single target in comparison.

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mvm199 wrote:

Once again, absolutely stunned with your creativity and ingenuity at making existing builds more all round powerful.

The only quip i have with this one is the low ES as others have mentioned, but once you get an es chest and leave the helm on (imo) .... Armor is probably not so important with such possible high es, vaal pact and also possibility of perma IC. I dont think you can link the endu charge on stun with molten shell, as its ''on melee stun''. You could link it to a secondary aoe attack like the ground slam you already got tho, and keep IC up practically all the time vs something like carnage with extra damage, vuln etc, or tough maps with nasty physical mobs and mods.

Also, I dont consider abyssus an endgame helm for this build because (a) crit multi is wasted (2) it leaves only the 30-60 physical, which is added on top of a 1xx-5xx weapon, so it wont add as much dps as it does to a 1h flicker build, and gaining a vulnerability mod for all that isnt a good tradeoff, imo.

Thank you! I appreciate it, and am glad its helpful to others. ES is an issue here, indeed. I wish I could just buy all the gear I want, but have limited funds.

Updated Gear



There are no 6L of this mace in Anarchy at this time, but I was able to get mine up to 5L which lets me swap in an ES chest. This boosts the ES up 4579 and lowers the DPS down to about 46k and dropping WED. If you were to add Auxium, it would easily push over 5K, and allow more ring flexibility (possibly drop dream fragments).

5L | Flicker + Multistrike + MeleePhysical + Melee Full + Added Fire

I will be updating the build overall soon, one of the comments above made me look at my choice for the weapon itself. Since technically I get by with Death's Oath, I could get by with Voll's crit chest. I temporarily specced into power charges and put ST on weapon swap with empowered concentrated discharge. It only amounted to about 33k dmg and consumed 17 charges (7/5/5), screw that. I think there still may be a synergistic option for Auxium and Voll's Chest as it allowed full power charges almost the whole time. Will let you know if I can make it better.

The other chest I am quite intrigued by is "Fake Shav's" Infernal Mantle. This provides 100% bonus crit, additional fire, and converts fire to chaos. If I can get a 6L mace, I will experiment more with this and WED nodes.

Lastly, while I disagree on Abyssus, I understand most people disagree with me on this. Since every linked gem is MORE, however, this item will still provide the larges single item dps gain of any in game. It currently adds between 10-20k dps. Worth it yet? No.

I did, however notice how amazingly powerful Abyssus is with Quill Rain, It can double / triple the damage output on some abilities. Future food for thought.

Other Chests


Thanks again for the support!

Yes abyssus is powerful with quill rain because of quill rain's base dmg being so low. With this weapon, abyssus don't add a lot. (relatively speaking) You can actually calculate it. 145-552 (133-530 + 12-22 amulet) = 349 average, abyssus 40-60 = 50 average. 60k dps / 349 x 399 = 68595 dps. 8k dps is not worthless I'll admit, but compared to something like a 30-50k dps increase on a 1h crit dagger flicker build, it doesnt seem so worth it.

And im curious ... what synergy between voll and auxium you speak of? It gives mana leech per power charge? Isnt the 2% from the ring enough? For dps, magnate is superior. A 40% increase to physical and 41 str = almost 50% increase to physical vs 30% WED increase, the physical increases also apply to added fire and hatred because they are converted damage. But auxium has a nice chunk of ES, and could let you drop dream fragments.

I wonder what do you mean by splash being inferior to multistrike vs single target. Melee splash has a better damage effectiveness than mstrike, so on a per hit basis, it is stronger. Do you mean because multistrike has more attack speed and 2 free attacks?

thanks in advance for any reply

how do you have 100% chance to hit without res tech?

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bingobill wrote:

how do you have 100% chance to hit without res tech?

Kongor's Undying Rage has "Hits can't be evaded"

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mvm199 wrote:

...what synergy between voll and auxium you speak of? It gives mana leech per power charge? Isnt the 2% from the ring enough? .... But auxium has a nice chunk of ES, and could let you drop dream fragments.

I wonder what do you mean by splash being inferior to multistrike vs single target. Melee splash has a better damage effectiveness than mstrike, so on a per hit basis, it is stronger. Do you mean because multistrike has more attack speed and 2 free attacks?

Great questions, and sorry for the delay in response, been testing a lot lately. You hit it with the fact that it would potentially allow alternate ring usage with increased ES. The 2% is the cap most of the time regardless. I could see Le Huep or the new Ring with Chaos damage as interesting (though not worth the ES loss on the latter).

Also right on the single target as the "two free attacks" drastically increases the damage per frenzy charge in comparison.

I am extensively testing the new stun gem, LOVE it.

Here is a quick YouTube Clip of Triple Charge generation with it and PCoC http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mglhR52IRNw&lch

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VarthDaver wrote:

Here is a quick YouTube Clip of Triple Charge generation with it and PCoC http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mglhR52IRNw&lch

thats so cool! lol

Wow.

+1 to you sir. I wish I had excess currency to try something like this. Looks amazingly fun.

What bandit rewards did you choose?