Ethereal Knives CI/Low Life Flask Based Build

Because of layered complexity, the build guide is presented as simply as possible.

Build Guide Video
Passive Tree
For current gear, jewels and passives tree go here and look for the character Frat_Initiate.

Bandit Rewards don't really matter. If life based take life in normal or else the point. Cast speed in cruel is best by a marginal amount (5% cast speed from alira or 4% cast speed from a shadow cast speed node that doesn't cost 20 regrets to spec out of). If you feel like you can maintain a charges of some type, pick that charge, otherwise take the point.




This is a variant of a flask based build. This build is a spellcaster using EK. Other variants could use other sources of physical damage like from a dagger or claw. The main commonality is the complete investment into flasks. The flasks are the defense and offense of the build.

Here's a tree pathing through all the relevant flask nodes on the tree.
https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAwAAAO4OXBUgJJ0qTSzpLR8tqD8nRA1FfkZxSshMs1SCWlJiWmr6f8aDCZMnlSCbXaKjo--omrGQtAy31r6KwfPI8MrT037bWe968pf2ow==


The main cluster is the "Alchemist" cluster in the witch tree and the Conqueror's Potency unique jewel (available from A2M Felshrine->Crypt quest) which together provide 38% increased flask effect.


Each resistance flask provides 50%*1.38 or 69% resistance to their respective element and 10%*1.38 or 13% to maximum resistance. Continuous smart chaining of each type of flask pushes the character up to 88% all res while only requiring gear and the tree to provide up to 19% resistance pre-flask in merciless difficulty. The Divination Distillate can also be used in place of the Atziri's Promise for an additonal 6*1.38 or 8% maximum elemental resistance to get to 96% elemental resist without the usage of the purity auras or other uniques such as Saffel's Frame and Rise of the Phoenix.



The shield has 32% block chance thanks to the 6% extra block chance. The Rumi's Concoction grants 30%*1.38 or 41% block chance. The Tempest Shield skill grants 3% block chance. Combined, and with no block nodes, the build still achieves 76% attack block chance which is currently capped at 75%.



The 76% block chance is then converted to spell block chance at 70-75% efficiency (depending on the Rainbowstride roll, 73% in my case) for 55% spell block. The Rumi's Concoction then provides an additional (10-15% based on rolls) 12%*1.38 or 16% spell block making for 71% spell block with no invested block nodes. With a perfect Rumi's or a Stone of Lazhwar corrupted with additional attack or spell block, the build can cap on block without any nodes. I took a 2% spell block node on the tree to reach 73% spell block.


The next issue is how to maintain flask charges. The passive tree scopes to:
Primal Spirit: 20% Flask Charges Gained
Druidic Rite: 20% Flask Charges Gained, 20% Flask Effect Duration
Alchemist: 12% Increased Flask Effect Duration (and 30% Increased Flask Effect)
Arcane Chemisty: 15% Reduced Flask Charges Used.
: 20% Reduced Flask Charges Used, (5-15%) 13% Increased Flask Duration

Most of them are also great mana nodes.

Combined this means that the flasks:
Use 65% of charges per use or contain 50% more charges in total.
Last 45% longer.
Gain 40% more charges.
This means the flasks are up 1.5*1.45*1.4 or 3 times as often as normal.

So as long as a somewhat decent clearspeed is maintained, they should be up.


For damage and clearspeed the Taste of Hate and Atziri's Promise provide a substantial damage boost when using physical damage skills. The Taste of Hate provides 30%*1.38 or 41% added cold damage. The Atziri's Promise has two components 25%*1.38 for the physical and 15%*1.38*.85(.41 from the cold damage from the ToH and .44 from the Hatred Aura) for a total of 52% added chaos damage when both flasks are up.

I have a bit of added lightning damage but for a quick number check I have the ratios 1.44 (1 + 44% hatred) damage without flasks to 2.36 (1 + 44% hatred + 41% ToH + 52% Promise) or 1:1.63 My DPS is 25533 without flasks, 41067 with flasks which is a ratio of 1.61 so the math is pretty dead on.



Because of the Taste of Hate I have 30*1.38 or 41% physical damage taken as cold damage, which is mitigated by 88%. The Redblade helmet prefix provides 10% of physical damage taken as fire, which is mitigated by 88%. The Cloak of Flame provides 20% of physical damage taken as fire, which is mitigated by 88%. All in all this means that 71% of the physical damage taken is converted to elemental and mitigated to only 12% of the original damage or 71%*.12 or 8.5% of the original damage.

Because all the damage is converted before the hit is taken and because armour provides more relative protection against lower damage hits, the armour from the granite portion of the Rumi's Concoction is more potent. Since I have 5000 armour the 29% of remaining damage can be treated as if I had mitigation equivalent to having ~17000 armour.

Hopefully all that isn't too confusing.

As I said, there are other ways of doing this exact same style of build with other types of gear and tree choices. I took CI because I thought the damage, leech, and mitigation would be too low to make a life based build work without life flasks but I assume it would work fine. I used EK because I thought it would be too many points to gear towards something like daggers to get enough crit to make the investment worthwhile, but I think that would also work fine. So feel free to copy the build or build around it in a variety of ways. I feel like this style has many abuseable combinations.







Addendum added post Warbands league.

I've only covered in general how the flasks interact with the character but not how the character in general works.

Mana in maintained by the Warlord's Mark curse and Tempest Shield. When hit, on block, Tempest Shield leeches mana and life. On no block, Cast When Damage Taken triggers Warlord's Mark which lets Ethereal Knives leech mana and life. Either way, there will be leech.

The Vaal Pact and Ghost Reaver keystones makes life leech apply to the energy shield pool instantly. Because of the high block rate Tempest Shield will proc when struck 3/4ths of the times dealing, on average, between 6-12K damage per block while leeching 2.5-4.5% of the damage dealt instantly.

Here's an equation. D is Tempest Shield proc damage, B is block rate, R is the mob's resistance, L is the percent amount of damage leech.

D*(1-R)*L*(B/(1-B))=Damage threshold per hit required to take damage. The character is mechanically immune to hits smaller than this because the average leech from tempest shield is greater than the average damage received per hit.

There are a few variables to this calculation. Mobs can have 75% resist (1/4th the damage), be curse immune (2% less leech), and be alone (Tempest Shield does not chain, half damage). This can lower the damage to 1/8th the original value and lower leech (no Warlord's Mark) to around 2.5%.

Solving it out for the absolute worst case, sort of average case, and best case scenario I get...
D=6000, B=.75, R=.75, L=2.5% = 112
D=12000, B=.75, R=.3, L=4.5% = 1134
D=12000, B=.75, R=0, L=4.5% = 1620

So the build can sort of AFK (granted flasks have to be up and RNG has to be average) through hits that deal up to 1000 damage AFTER mitigation which makes this build similar to Aegis Aurora tanks. Not many things in this game deal that much damage. I've killed the Crematorium map boss with only Tempest Shield and no special setup.

Tempest Shield is linked with Power Charge on Crit to generate power charges for extra damage. Currently the build has so much damage that most mobs die before I get hit so power charges are rarely up except in some boss fights.

That's just for Tempest Shield. EK gets 2% life leech from warlord's mark and 2%*1.38 or 2.76% chaos damage leech from Atziri's Promise. Chaos damage makes up about 20% of the total damage which means about 2.5% leech total. With a 50K DPS EK with the Chain support EK can leech between 1250 and 37500 life per second or my entire ES pool per cast, but I don't have 50K anymore because I got to 140K or up to 100,000 life leeched per second.

This is a build of improbable numbers that still exist even after the entire game was patched to destroy them. Capped block (block nerfed in v1.3), 41-71% of damage taken as elemental (Lightning Coil at just 40% was nerfed in v1.3), 5k Armour but effectively 10-15k armour after conversions, 88% all elemental resistance, 400 ES restored on block, 100,000 ES leeched per second, 120K DPS EK with Chain, 250K DPS EK without Chain.

And all it took was a bit of button mashing. 12345.

I don't have quite as many Flask nodes as you, but I'm using CI + Alchemist nodes + Perandus Blazon (20% flask duration) + Poacher's Mark (100% Flask Charge on kill) on my Whispering Ice Character and perma flask uptime on buffed flasks is really nice.

+1, would make this build.

I'm not sure if you ran the numbers on The Magnate, but it occurred to me that it might be an option so I looked into it.

The Magnate provides a substantial 50% increased charges gained in the belt slot. Swapping the rare belt out for it changes your stats so you gain 90% more charges, but the effects only last 32% longer and you only have about 18% more charges available (85% charge cost).

The end result is extremely similar, right around 3x duration effectiveness. So it's the other stats that would make the real difference. A perfect Magnate gives 30% increased stun duration (woo...), 40% increased physical damage, and +50 strength. This works out to 16% increased physical damage over the rare belt, and 10% melee physical from the strength. Almost certainly not worth it compared to how much ES, life and resistance you lose.

What I take away from this is that the "reduced flask charges used" bonus is very, very powerful!

Cool build! Nice to see another Ghudda build!

Have you tried Atziri with this build?

If you're tired of mashing 12345, you should try putting flasks on "ASDF". Makes your hands less tired, especially if you're already using QWERTY for skills!

Wah! I thought my ci ek waas op. Why culling and faster caster casting over added fire and echo though?? I'm confused. SSShhh quiet about the gloves aka maligaros 2.0!!

Daaaaamn Ghudda! I was planning a Flask Build too... but Life Based with Incinerate.



Required items are Lighting Coil, Rainbowstride and Stone of Lazhwar.

Anger, Purity of Fire and Purity of Lightning are the auras used, linked to Enlighten. So 2x -8 Elreon Rings + 4x 5% reduced Mana Cost Jewels are a must to sustain a level 20/21 Incinerate.

Aegis Aurora in combination with high armour helmet and gloves is an option: With the same flask setup as yours I'd get 92/93/92 resists - or complete immunity with Divination Destillate. The ES on block is just nice to have.

I'll use The Consuming Dark for 75% Chaos Damage conversion so I can curse Poacher's Mark instead of Flammability for full bottles all time and 4 Frenzy Charges.

In addition to the converted incoming Physicial Damage, Fortify linked to Whirling Blades will boost that mitigation higher.

5L Incinerate would deal enough damage with Spell Echo > LMP/GMP > Faster Casting > Life Leech. 6th link could be Faster Projectiles. Slower Projectiles instead LMP/GMP for hard bosses.

Sure Cybil's Paw would be great too. But Flammabilty + Fire Pen would be needed. Hmm I'm just not sure about this atm. Maybe the lack of LGoH could be fixed by Vaal Pact.

The only problem I see is getting Life just through helmet, gloves, two (Elreon) rings and a belt. With 190% Increased Life I would barely have 5K Life. Probably enough with that high mitigation huh?

What do you think?

I have made a flask build too, but with CI, aegis, incinerate, and 20k armor to gain back my ES. I have made a short build guide for it: My build

Considering you're up to max block most of the time, why not run a Cybil's? It gives you access to WB as a movement skill as well as some Life Gain on Hit.