{2.1} Blade Vortex - 200k+ DPS, 5K life, FREE CASTS 100% Uptime Vaal Clarity

Hello hello.

So i have far surpassed what im satisfied with for my blade vortex build. One thing this build features that other BV builds do not is free casts with 98% uptime on vaal clarity. All you need to do is gather enough charges for the first cast, then you're good to go for the rest of the map.

Turns out theres also the absolute most perfect unique for this gem and setup, Apep's Rage. Adding a significant source of chaos damage to spells and an obscene amount of cast speed, my mouth dropped. This is perfect.
The downside is the added cost of spells, but this is easily bypassed by 100% uptime with vaal clarity via legacy chill of corruption jewel!!
Using The Blood Dance boots for added regen from frenzy charges and the ability to hold eight charges allows for 32% MORE damage.

With the current mechanics in this game im always looking for ways to double dip damage sources. This build does it in spades.




the tree is simple. get as much hp, frenzy, duration, and some critical nodes. no mana nodes are required at all since we rely on vaal clarity. this frees up a good number of passives for added damage and as much HP as we can fit in.
Chill of corruption jewel is a necessity. Legacy is obviously better than the nerfed version but the duration is so long either jewel will work just as well, seriously nerfed is fine.



Dual Apep's Rage. Nothing will give you more DPS if you're not dedicated crit build. The added chaos damage is great per hit and scales well with the shadow start passives. The added cast speed allows you to consistently keep more stacks than most other BV builds around. easily sustaining 30+ if you want, but the damage does not necessitate it.

Chest is carcass for the AoE, hp, and resistances. pretty no brainer here.
Helm can go a number of different ways but i like Rat's Nest. gives a good boost of crit, evasion and some movement speed. My second choice would probably be Devoto's Devotion for more movement speed.
Boots are blood dance. I've tested this out against darkray's and others. the regen is too good to pass up. keep them.
Everything else is prioritizing life, resistances, and whatever else will give you dps. You'll need some intelligence somewhere, be it from gear, passives, or the unique jewel like i have in my tree.


Gems are all a matter of what you prefer. You can see all my links on my gear, that is my current setup. I believe this gives me the most bang for my buck, even though my critical rate is lowered a bit.
You can socket poison in here, but its unnecessary. the blades do enough work and don't really allow for DoT to be very effective. also poison damage can kill the mobs thus not allowing you to get a potential two vaal souls for that kill. the added damage of controlled destruction i believe far outweighs even the poison DPS at 50 stacks. i have tested it. it does work, but not optimal IMO.

I've decided to link a second blade vortex with curse on hit. without supporting it with conc effect it will always hit and apply the curse to monsters before you hit them with your main source of damage BV radius. it doesn't last as long tho, so you need to be mindful to cast it more often (just once is good).
Assassin's mark is straight up an overpowered curse. warlord's mark is for the life leech, mana leech if vaal clarity isn't running, endurance charges, and the stuns. its as effective defensively as assassin's mark is effective offensively. best of both worlds right here.

Hatred is the best aura to use. adds a great amount of damage and gives you shatter for vaal clarity to charge up quickly. i have herald of ice and ash as secondary sources of buff damage. combined they give more damage than anger anyway so the added effects are gravy. i activate them once im able to use vaal clarity non stop.
Ash gives you more damage than herald of lightning...a lot more.
Alternatively you could use haste for the cast speed and movement speed. All depends what you want to do. The added cold and lightning damage don't scale with the poison anyway so that is a viable alternative.

Vaal Clarity. your bread and butter. at higher levels this gem will last 26 seconds long duration. plenty of enough time to stack up another cast even in sparse maps. anytime its down, beginning of maps/changing locations, just deactivate anger and use mana until you're able to go free for all. Absolutely incredible

Flame dash for a bit of movement, great for hoping over terrain.

Atziri flask is a must. it adds a crazy amount of chaos damage, aids with leech, and super boosts your poison damage as well. Taste of hate would also be AMAZING to use here, but i don't have one currently.
Again you just need to run up to a boss, or whatever you want dead, with 50 blades spinning already and pop those flasks for instant damage boost.






Now.
Blade vortex allows some snapshotting. You can in fact equip dual apep's rage, cast 20-30 blades, then swap to dual crit daggers and run around for the added DPS.
I've tested this with some half decent spell crit daggers, but i end up losing a massive amount of damage per hit. I benefit most from Apep's rage, but thats just me.

I'll be posting some videos of this build as i make them, now that im satisfied where its at, so you can see the crazy damage, poison damage, and how fast it is. I literally just run through mob packs and don't even look back. Its great.

Build seems fun. Wondering if it's HC viable as you say you are reserving 25% hp and don't seem to have many defensive nodes besides life. Still interesting tho I've been wanting to try vortex out.

reserving the hp for hatred is totally optional. its great against trash and stuff but at any point you can disable it, pop a flask, and go back up to full hp.

im actually changing this build around a bit. since theres an abundance of sockets im going to throw in a BV with curse on hit with vulnerability and assassin's mark. i've tested it, and it works amazingly well.
my curse amulet allows me to unspec the added resistances, so thats 3 added points, and i may look into unspec'ing from blood magic. running hatred is an extreme boost in damage and you shatter everything even with 35% crit rate (basically no need to socket more crit rate).
this should allow me to use my now legacy chill of corruption gem, which will mean i'll have vaal grace, or some other vaal skill up 100% of the time, easy. it lasts over 15 seconds, and with the chill of corruption, if you shatter everything, it will refresh so fast its insane.

im just trying to figure out a new tree in order to grab up hp nodes that i'll be losing when i unspec blood magic. even tho i run dual apep's i should be able to make the mana work perfectly fine, it will be a balance i'll find with testing.

im unsure if poison is really necessary with hatred running as well. again you crit often enough that you shatter everything (this makes abyssal cry useless since you don't need to pop corpses anymore) and i'll just have to test it on higher hp mobs and higher level maps to see if poison really gives much benefit.
it will if the hp of the mobs can merit it, but otherwise it might just be better spent with another socket instead of poison.

after my tree revamp i'll update, but i suspect i'll have acro/phase acro and a 100% uptime on vaal grace, with still at least 5k HP. this should be plenty defenses for most cases.

updated. vastly improved. 100% uptime vaal clarity, meaning free casts for 95% of the map. still have a bit of optimizing to do but it'll mostly improve just defense capabilities.


keep in mind the listed damage, even tho i altered the crit rate and damage to include the numbers from assassin's mark, the listed and figured DPS does not. DPS is probably around 250k, at 50 blades.

couple videos should come later today

main problem with this build is getting used to the timing of things.

you benefit most by popping vaal clarity just before a big pack so you can get almost a full charge right away. its also most beneficial to walk into a boss room with time left on vaal clarity and another cast ready to go, depending on its HP.

i've come across timing it poorly, to where you need to take off the heralds and cast with the mana pot. you can get 30 stacks with the mana pot tho so it isn't terrible, its just slightly less dps.

it isn't too hard to micromanage the auras and mana, but it does take a bit of getting used to. super stinkin' fun tho. saves you a ton of passives on mana and/or hp+a support for blood magic.

Great idea here and nice job. I went one step further with it since BV is so powerful. This is a big WIP for me. I also went Vaal clarity + Vaal disipline 100% up time. My BV shows 25k with orbs, No Flame G, Rumi's, or ToH. Also I am running it with Empire's/Three Dragons/Maligaro's R just my personal flavor. Still have a lot of leveling to do, only 84 but am soloing T13's.

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Echelon1260 wrote:

Great idea here and nice job. I went one step further with it since BV is so powerful. This is a big WIP for me. I also went Vaal clarity + Vaal disipline 100% up time. My BV shows 25k with orbs, No Flame G, Rumi's, or ToH. Also I am running it with Empire's/Three Dragons/Maligaro's R just my personal flavor. Still have a lot of leveling to do, only 84 but am soloing T13's.

probably going to update this today, but i just keep making changes (as i do with most of my builds). i decided to go more glass-cannon and spec out of the duelist side of the tree and plug more into witch. ended up with more crit, less hp, whatever.

have some mana left over now for casts until clarity is ready to go, and can actually sustain even without vaal clarity.
will be looking to run vaal haste 100% of the time, and clarity before bosses to mindlessly stack up. i've tried a NUMBER of other vaal skills, including spark/arc/blah blah blah. lots of them. just don't like how long they take to charge and the added dps is really unnecessary other than BV. vaal haste will be used for its movement speed and cast speed, otherwise vaal grace is the best option for just more defensive power if thats your thing.

vaal discipline has a pretty short duration. just under 8s with 20/20 duration, and for its cost i'd rather have something else running i think.

how do you have 25k DPS? i imagine you're using crit daggers of sorts, but half decent ones i have just make me lose a massive amount of DPS (like 2500).
the highest DPS i can get is replacing inc duration with iron will, with all charges and atziri flask and vaal haste i get 21k dps@6.58 cps

im also searching for a decently priced taste of hate. i don't need a mana pot now. the leech from warlord's mark is enough for me to sustain on mana if i save clarity.


EDIT: im really debating whats better. iron will or inc duration. the duration is great because you don't need to spend as much time casting, but vaal haste could potentially make this up with upwards of +36% cast speed. also there isn't many times if really any that you stand still and stack up 50 blades for 4 seconds. bosses can merit it but even then you're usually standing beside them stacking them up, and already walking in with 30 on the go.

with iron will 19/20 (better than lvl 4 empower even at just 161 str) i gain 508.09 damage per hit per blade. from 2,709.55 damage per hit up to 3,217.64. running around at usually only 20 blades anyway, regardless of setup, that means i benefit most from the most damage per hit.


****test
the highest damage i was able to obtain at all with my setup (completely unsustainable) is vaal haste, atziri flask, blade vortex/conc effect/iron will/added fire/spell echo/controlled destruction, hatred, herald of ash, and righteous fire
33,061.47 DPS @ 6.58 cps (5,024.54 per hit per blade on average)

the highest raw damage per hit was the same setup but phys to lightning instead of spell echo and activating herald of ice as well.
26,457.26 DPS @ 3.92 cps (6,749.30 per hit per blade on average)

in fact righteous fire adds an extreme amount of dps. it isn't worth it at all though, in my opinion, because you would need to use the shield as well as spec more regen. you'd always have it degening and even though you could out sustain it pretty easily you'd be wasting passives and defensive capabilities towards it.

however if you use vaal immortal call (where you cannot die) you could activate it for a few seconds of dps boost. enough for you to be close to death, activate VIC for 2.94 seconds (3 endurance charges/max duration). you'd need to portal out before VIC ran out tho, haha.

skill tree link doesnt work