Flay' Flicker Finder - 800,054 DPS, 50/390MF, fast clear speeds. [New pics in MF gear/FAQs]

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LoPan wrote:

Spoiler

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Sicyo wrote:

Hey!

Firstly, thanks for the guide. I've been playing for about a month or so now and haven't done an ES character or used daggers, but I love Flicker (First character was 2H flicker duelist) so this build interested me a lot.

I had a handful of relevant uniques sitting around so I figured I could jump right in. Brightbeak for leveling, Perandus Blazon, Mightflay, Crest of Perandus, and a Zahndethus' Cassock too.

I flew through normal faster than I have on other characters and am heading to Cruel Piety right now. I had a little bit of growing pains at the end of act 2 and start of act 3 but I found a dagger in my stash that I forgot about that replaced Mightflay. Also switching to Discipline helped a lot, and I imagine it'll get much better once my Reduced Mana gem levels up and I can use more auras.

However, I had one question - did you ever try a crit dagger flicker build with life instead of ES?

I've seen a lot of CI and low life dagger builds but not many life ones, it just struck my curiosity and I didn't see anything like that noted in your FAQ section. I don't have a high level character laying around that I can just build to test but I figured you might have looked into it.

I would suggest reading the Ops post in its entirity before asking that question.

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celeritas wrote:

Spoiler

In terms of this build specifically, if you go life you can't reserve it all with auras, so you lose 3 auras + pain attunement (quite a big difference). Crown of Eyes (no life there) and RF probably have to be dropped too. Wondertrap no longer works either.

More generally, life vaal pact is not very nice, particularly with blood rage. The CI version doesn't have any downside to those two. This version takes 3 or more times less blood rage damage and can always pop the gem out of the socket to regen ES in an emergency.

Also, life usually requires quite a few more nodes than ES. We have roughly 12 ES nodes here. I don't think it would be easy to get an equal amount of life in 12 nodes. It's even more pronounced compared to the CI version, since they have the unmatched 12% more node.

Oh riiiiiight, low life build. Thanks for reminding me of the build focus guys :)

I do this thing where I mull over builds in my head throughout the workday/commute. There's a part of me that questions everything to make sense of it. And that part makes me wonder how effective a dagger crit life build would be. And when I can't find that answer in the thread or via google, it's pretty easy to just ask here if it's been tried.

Other than the low life part of the build being impossible without ES, wouldn't it still be pretty effective? I know it's not what this build is about but there's a pretty active community in this thread, I figured someone would have tried that build at one point.

I did give my thoughts on that too, not just that the low-life part wouldn't work. Do you see it differently?

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celeritas wrote:

I did give my thoughts on that too, not just that the low-life part wouldn't work. Do you see it differently?

Spoiler

In terms of this build specifically, if you go life you can't reserve it all with auras, so you lose 3 auras + pain attunement (quite a big difference). Crown of Eyes (no life there) and RF probably have to be dropped too. Wondertrap no longer works either.

More generally, life vaal pact is not very nice, particularly with blood rage. The CI version doesn't have any downside to those two. This version takes 3 or more times less blood rage damage and can always pop the gem out of the socket to regen ES in an emergency.

Also, life usually requires quite a few more nodes than ES. We have roughly 12 ES nodes here. I don't think it would be easy to get an equal amount of life in 12 nodes. It's even more pronounced compared to the CI version, since they have the unmatched 12% more node.

I guess what I'm getting at is that I've got two other characters that I leveled with Flicker in mind. One is 2hand using a Staff (level 66 templar) and the other is dual wield (80 duelist) that I've since converted to dual strike/cyclone for easier map groups. 2Hand Flicker can solo farm pretty easily and has that same sort of one-hit-all-the-mobs quality that dagger crit flicker seems to have.

I'm wondering if ES, CI, or Low Life is really necessary, especially since I've seen a couple people post how many chromatics they've thrown at shavronne's in order to get 5 off-color sockets.

Sure, it's cool to get nearly a million dps, but do we need that and ES to be an effective dagger crit flicker? Could a life build farm just as effectively with less risk of death and possibly less expensive gear?

Don't get me wrong - I'm not criticizing the build. I'm just theorycrafting :)

Sblaks build is designed to blow things up so quickly that no other in game factors really matter. Enemies do 0 dps when dead and all that :D. The main thing, from my experience and what I can see (I don't have $ for shavs + crown yet) is 1 shotting yourself. You might be safer with life, but you would not be able to use wondertrap, which would seriously gimp your MF.

That being said, I think life is definitely viable. Probably the best way to do it would be to do it in Sblaks style (uber high dps) would be to use Phoenix/Saffells and set it up similar to an RF build, going for a stable RF. You could go for arctic/MoM/EB, but that would really be another build entirely, you would probably end up with 10-20k dps instead of 200k.

Even the RF build doesn't really work that well though because you lose out on auras... and losing hatred/wrath is a big chunk of dps.

So maybe possible to run life, but you will not farm as well as Sblak's would (no way I know of to get 300+ IR) and getting the auras to get 100k+ dps would be tricky. Really different build...

On lower level maps crit vs. non-crit probably makes little difference, but on higher ones it makes a big one IMO. Not only to make sure all white mobs are one-shot, but for magic, rare, and the bosses too. It also lets us freeze and shock most enemies.

Low life is certainly not "necessary," there are probably more CI builds out there than us really. ES is not "necessary" either, the flicker skill still functions with life. It's just a question of what's best. The low-life build here pretty indisputably kills stuff faster and can run more MF than CI or life versions. The CI version is to my judgment superior defensively to life. I've run life vaal pact before (albeit not flicker) and it was really sketchy, especially with blood rage. And I had 30 or something chaos res, which isn't that cheap.

The only advantage to life is stuns (but chayula is fine if you're not going for best dps anyways) and status ailments (but ditto dream fragments). I don't think that makes up for chaos immunity, actually recovering health between mobs, and less passive investment with CI.

Less expensive is arguable, but 4k+ ES with CI is not tough anyways.

As for 5-off shavronne's, that's ideal, but 4 is perfectly functional.

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celeritas wrote:

The CI version is to my judgment superior defensively to life. I've run life vaal pact before (albeit not flicker) and it was really sketchy, especially with blood rage. And I had 30 or something chaos res, which isn't that cheap.

From what I've read, life leech with vaal pact comes in before reflect hits, is that still found to be true?


Also, were you daggers (or other 1H) in that situation? Could just switch weapons to cancel blood rage, right?

Maybe I'm discounting blood rage damage because I didn't have trouble managing it on my other two characters and haven't gone Vaal pact on the new dagger character yet.

Leech is applied after reflect, and always has been as far as I know (certainly since before 1.0).

Yes, switching weapons (and recasting) is a pain in the ass and waste of time though, and precludes running auras in a hand slot. There's also taking a hit from a mob (or from yourself with reflect) right before finishing off the pack, regardless of blood rage.

Anyways, even if that's not an issue, I'm still not sure what makes life any better than CI. Sure, it may work, but there's a big difference between working and working well. It might even work well (though I question that from what I've heard and experienced so far), but there's also a big difference between working well and being optimal.

I have actually tried a life version of the flicker. Of course it is doable. But there are two huge downsides to it. First, you can get high enough ES without taking very many ES nodes. To get a survivable amount of life, you have to get life on gear of course, but also some life nodes. Getting those is hard to get while getting all the dagger / crit nodes. I think it is more effective to get the ES which is right next to shadow and witch, mixed with the evasion nodes, than to get increased life nodes.

The second big problem is blood rage, doing about 4 times more damage. While it is not huge, it does make some of the maps a pain when you have to run around. It would be closer to running RF and bleeding out in about 20 seconds. Unless you get chaos resist, of course. But then you are going for chaos res and life, and life nodes, which is more of a pain than just getting ES nodes.

This build would be effective as a middle range more defensive flicker, and could level without stun and freeze problems. But you would lose some DPS and defense especially from not running the 3 auras on life. That is so huge that the resistance to stuns and freezes does not make up for it. Which auras do you pick? Hatred and Wrath for DPS? Then you lose Grace and some defense?

The point is that you don't gain much from going life, but you do lose a bit. It is doable, but after fiddling with it for a month after a pure CI flickerer, I went back to ES because ES and low life is perfect, for 54% increased attack speed from Blood Rage, and because of the extra MF with the MF boots, and the 3 extra auras. Nothing life gives you compares to those.

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celeritas wrote:

Leech is applied after reflect, and always has been as far as I know (certainly since before 1.0).

Yes, switching weapons (and recasting) is a pain in the ass and waste of time though, and precludes running auras in a hand slot. There's also taking a hit from a mob (or from yourself with reflect) right before finishing off the pack, regardless of blood rage.

Anyways, even if that's not an issue, I'm still not sure what makes life any better than CI. Sure, it may work, but there's a big difference between working and working well. It might even work well (though I question that from what I've heard and experienced so far), but there's also a big difference between working well and being optimal.

You are wrong, with Vaal Pact life leech is applied BEFORE reflect. Just make an experiment - hit a reflecting mob while having full HP and 18%+ life leech. If you're right, after hit you will remain with full HP. If i'm right, you will lose some HP, regardless of your life leech.

You're right, however, that for dagger-user ES is much better, than life.

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Sblak wrote:

Spoiler

I have actually tried a life version of the flicker. Of course it is doable. But there are two huge downsides to it. First, you can get high enough ES without taking very many ES nodes. To get a survivable amount of life, you have to get life on gear of course, but also some life nodes. Getting those is hard to get while getting all the dagger / crit nodes. I think it is more effective to get the ES which is right next to shadow and witch, mixed with the evasion nodes, than to get increased life nodes.

The second big problem is blood rage, doing about 4 times more damage. While it is not huge, it does make some of the maps a pain when you have to run around. It would be closer to running RF and bleeding out in about 20 seconds. Unless you get chaos resist, of course. But then you are going for chaos res and life, and life nodes, which is more of a pain than just getting ES nodes.

This build would be effective as a middle range more defensive flicker, and could level without stun and freeze problems. But you would lose some DPS and defense especially from not running the 3 auras on life. That is so huge that the resistance to stuns and freezes does not make up for it. Which auras do you pick? Hatred and Wrath for DPS? Then you lose Grace and some defense?

The point is that you don't gain much from going life, but you do lose a bit. It is doable, but after fiddling with it for a month after a pure CI flickerer, I went back to ES because ES and low life is perfect, for 54% increased attack speed from Blood Rage, and because of the extra MF with the MF boots, and the 3 extra auras. Nothing life gives you compares to those.

Thanks for sharing your experience. I figured someone must have tried it and I was just curious of how it went, rather than just "it's not as good."

I don't know why this post was so hard to find before, but we've got Mark here stating that leech indeed comes in before reflect.