[2.1] Sword CoC Headhunting w/Inspired Learning Jewel(s)

We are using Spectral Throw to score many critical strikes in quick order, proccing Ice Spear through the Cast on Crit support gem, further providing Power Charges on Crit. Ideally run the skill in a 6-Link chestpiece using the following gems :

Keep your Spectral Throw at a maximum level of 10. At level 11 it will have increased mana cost and make it much harder for you to sustain. Our damage comes from the triggered spells, so there´s no need to get the attack to maximum damage effectiveness !
Drop Faster Attacks if you only have a 5-link available. The other 5 are more or less mandatory.

This 3-projectile attack will proc a lot of Ice Spears and bring you to max power charges in no time. Ice Spear itself will more or less perma-crit, therefore freeze monsters and also shock them thanks to additional Lightning damage provided by Herald of Thunder. Even with few passive nodes in spell damage this gives us a solid punch to burst through packs quickly.

We have a secondary attack/spell combo of physical nature, in order to protect ourselves from reflected elemental damage and/or increase our damage against cold resistant monsters. In non reflect/resist scenarios, this also provides a fun alternative for close-up melee combat, with a slightly different projectile spread to cover a different area of effect :

Warlord´s Mark provides us with Endurance Charges for some physical damage mitigation (the build has close to no armour and benefits little from Granite flasks due to the Acrobatics Keystone, so some flat %reduction from Endurance charges is optimal), Life Leech for additional survivability and Mana Leech to fuel our many attacks. A great deal for 35% of your mana pool, in my opinion.


Blood Rage provides Frenzy charges on kill, together with a very nice attack speed buff (further increased by Enhance support). We counter the physical damage debuff with 4.4% Life Regeneration from the passive tree.

Added lightning damage on your many crit attacks and spells can shock monsters, increasing the damage they take, and when Ice Spear shatters them, Herald of Ice triggers nice additional AoE cold damage.

Increased Accuracy and Crit Chance...more hits, more crits...it fits.


Our mobility goes through the roof with these skills, thanks to our high attack speed. To save our Mana for actual damage dealing, we link them with a Blood Magic support. Even when making excessive of them, our life regeneration always covers the cost easily.

This is the core of the spec, leaving lots of options for endgame. More attack speed, another Frenzy Charge or Jewel Socket, Evasion, Resistances, Acrobatics, %Life, Accuracy and crit, all within reach to tweak the build to your likings and needs. It can also easily be changed into a dagger build, but I chose Foils for their high attack speed and implicit global crit multiplier.

https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAwQAAdwDHgUtBbUGIAixDdERLxQgFHUWvxvIH0Ej9iT9JpUqCysKMHw1kjY9N9Q64T7PP_xDMUd-TP9Nkk3jTipRR1VLVYVW-lh1W69d8l85Xz9h4mKsY0NlTWyMbWxvO3BSdKB07XXLd9d343gNeWh_K4TZidOK8IwLjDaNfY1-jb-bLZ2qpHily6ZXqW6wq7XyuXy9Nr3mvqfAGsEEwdXEgs2Yz93YvdrB3vjjhOdU53ToZujW6mLrFOyw7T_vDvGK8kX-Cv6P_94=

These are without any doubt the best helmet and gloves you can get for the build. We need to get our crit chance as high as possible, and no other items provide comparable values. Because we perma-crit with Ice Spear and benefit from it all the time, the extra crit multiplier on Maligaro´s is essential. Both items grant attack speed buffs to further increase our proc-rate.


In order to not run out of mana all too quickly we need to reduce our skill cost with one piece of Elreon Jewellery, preferably with additional life. I looked for an amulet because there is no crit implicit available on these, which means we have a bigger pool to choose from. Ideally get a Lapis amulet to further help with INT requirements (we need 159 INT to use level 21 Ice Spear), but you can get the INT from other items, too.


We obviously want Diamond rings to further boost our crit chance. Most important other stats are life and resistances, if possible extra STR for additional life boost. Offensive stats like attack speed/%cold damage/+accuracy are nice but not needed. Extra INT is very helpful with meeting our stat requirements.


Any belt with life & resistances is okay, but ideally take a Leather belt for its life implicit


A spirit shield type with Spell damage implicit is a good choice. A high life roll and resistances are most important, an extra spell damage prefix can´t hurt either, but you can do without. Any other base without spell damage implicit is also okay. Just make sure to get life + cap your resistances. Also, do NOT use a shield with high ES roll, this will be wasted because you never have your ES up due to Blood Rage degen !


For boots, any base type with life and resistances is welcome. Movement speed is a nice bonus always, despite using Whirling Blades for mobility. After all, you cannot use your attacks in town to get from waypoint to vendor ;)


Last but not least, this gets VERY important. Starting as Duelist, we do not get access to many spell damage nodes (except a few in the Shaodw tree), so we need to scale our damage off the available projectile nodes in our starting tree (Ice Spear and EK both benefit from these). We make up for some of this by using the fastest swords available : Jewelled Foil, Fancy Foil, any Foil base with a default of 1.6 attacks per second (and 5.5% base crit), so we get many attacks and many spells per second. The implicit crit multiplier will directly benefit Ice Spear (since perma-crit, this is permanent 30% extra damage for Ice Spear) and to some degree also affect EK.
This approach will give us a lower damage output than we would achieve with daggers. Daggers have higher base crit and can roll spell damage implicit mods. However, I prefer the swords for an additional mobility option (Leap Slam doesn´t work with daggers) and think they provide all the damage we need.
Most important is a high crit chance and high attack speed and rather low physical damage. Preferably the sword has no %increased physical mods, but some added lightning damage, which enables us to shock with our attacks, preparing the monsters to receive more damage from our spells. To a certain degree, we already achieve this with Herald of Thunder, but some extra lightning helps.

Since we lack Armour, Energy Shield and Spell Block, there is no downside to taking the Acrobatics Keystone, which fits the build very well thematically. Phase Acrobatics is certainly another nice option, but I will not consider it before level 90.

Just reworked yesterday to get another Jewel socket and a little boost in dps.
https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAwQAAdwDHgUtBbUGIAixDdERLxQgFHUWvxqNG8gfQSP2JP0mlSoLKwouUzB8Mgk1kjY9N9Q64T7PP_xDMUd-TP9Nkk3jTipRR1VLVYVW-lh1WyZbr13yXzlfP2HiY0NlTWxGbIxtbG87cFJybHSgdO11y3fXd-N4DXlofyt_-4TZidOK8IwLjDaNfY1-jb-bLZ2qpHily6ZXqW6wq7Xyt7a5fL02vea-p8AawQTB1cSCzZjP3dNv1CPYvdrB3vjjhOdU53ToZujW6mLssO0_7w7xivJF_gr-j__e

Just recently changed the gem setup a little bit to include cwdt/IC (now with endurance charges from warlords rather than poachers mark). Fortunately at level 88 the man pool has grown big enough that I dont need the Enlighten gems any longer.