[2.2] Blade Vortex FLASK MASTER. 88% All Res, 75/75 Block, 500-800k DPS, INSTANT LEECH

Passive Tree

Emphasis is on duration nodes. Its important to grab all of them because you'll actually be able to sustain 50 blades. Without all duration nodes you won't be able to. This is only noticed on bosses when you can spin up the max amount of blades in preparation to maximize DPS against the boss. However vs trash mobs it also aids in clear speed since you won't have to stop and spin up blades as often.

As you can see, the Ranger start is going to be used for the Ranger Ascendancy tree, but its other massive benefit is the Druidic Rite passive. 20% flask charges gained, and 20% flask duration. This applies to ALL flasks.

Grabbing up as much HP and jewels as you can without wasting too many passives. Ending up with %143 HP it isn't going to be rocking 5k HP, but you should be above 4,000 with double HP Coral Rings and Leather Belt. You can also sacrifice whatever DPS gear for added life slots. However its important to note you'll want double curse somewhere. I find the best slot for that is boots, meaning really the only REQUIRED unique is Windscream.

Passive Tree, keep in mind my Jewels. I need to use the unique jewel that turns intelligence to Dexterity in order to use max level Blade Vortex. You can also grab up dexterity on Rings and Gloves if need be.

This is my current gear on my current build on a Shadow. The Blade Vortex DPS really comes from weapons. You want Platinum Kris because of the 80% global crit implicit. I've crafted both of these daggers (and many others) all myself for real cheap. You can even roll MAGIC daggers with just 2x spell mods like 80% inc critical chance for spells and x-x cold/fire/lightning damage to spells and be absolutely fine damage wise. You want two of them though. This is where the majority of your critical increase is boosted from.
Spell damage is inherently better than x-x damage to spells, but i find it extremely difficult to roll. It is easiest to master craft this mod. The best mod to master craft, the ideal mod, is crit chance to spells since you can get upwards of 66%. Not a massive loss from a dagger with even 109%.

While this build is a critical build, it is not IMPERATIVE to have the highest amount of crit chance as possible. This is the beauty of Blade Vortex. You have so many blades out at once, and they all hit twice per second that even with 20% crit chance you'll be critting all the time.
This is why Facebreakers are preferred to Maligaro's. If you have legacy Mali's, by all means use them, they're probably better. Either way can easily be swapped for Rare gloves for more resistances/life/dexterity.

Again Windscream is somewhat required. In some way you want dual curse, i don't care how you get it, but you want it. Everything else has just been acquired by myself through years of playing in Standard. 6L is not required, and Carcass Jack is ideal but not required.

Best in slot rings are double HP coral rings. I don't get much HP anywhere else. With 143% hp via tree and this current gear i think i would sit around 4,300 HP. My current spec on my Shadow has +135% hp and has over 4,100 right now.

So this is in a separate category because it might get lengthy. Again this build is based around flasks. Increased Flask effect, charges, and duration is a priority. Hence the Ranger start, Pathfinder ascendancy, Poacher's Mark curse, and Witch Flask nodes.

Combining all of these aspects we end up with unique flasks that last for 32% longer, are 30% stronger, and charge 120% faster than anybody else. This is a duration of 5.5 seconds as opposed to 4.2 seconds. With the increased charges from Poacher's Mark+passive it essentially means as long as you're killing things, your flasks are ALWAYS up. And this isn't even considering Pathfinder's Master Surgeon which gives surgeon's mod (20% chance to gain a flask charge on critical hit).

Your flasks are always up. These flasks are chosen because of both their offensive and defensive capabilities. Except Rumi's, its purely defensive.

In order of important, i'd say Vessel of Vinktar is FOR SURE #1 priority. Taste of Hate otherwise, and if you want DPS than Atziri Flask, if you want defense than Rumi's. For your 5th flask you can use anything you want, including a DIAMOND flask which Pathfinder node will apply surgeon mod onto....incredible.

Vessel of Vinktar: This flask is straight up overpowered. The leech you get is INCREDIBLE. I can out leech Righteous Fire WITH EASE. Like...its not even close to lowering my HP as long as im hitting something. Like for instance...Atziri? Pop RF, pop #3 (vessel) and my DPS almost doubles while my survivability doesn't go anywhere. Once flask runs out, or is close to, i just pop a Dousing flask to turn the burn off.
(i currently don't run Rumi's, but will come ascendancy patch).



Taste of Hate: Another amazing flask. Boosts the DPS an immense amount because it isn't just 30% added its 39% because of our flask nodes. This also means the physical mitigation is 39%. So you essentially have a legacy Lightning Coil in flask form at any time you want at the tips of your fingers. Again, up 100% of the time as long as you're hitting the button and killing mobs.

Atziri's Promise: Super cheap, and super amazing. Especially coupled with Pathfinder which will allow any HIT to poison. This includes spells because spells do hit. They apply on hit effects, which will now include poison. This flask boosts your Chaos damage, and thus poison damage by a ridiculous amount. Also gives you 2% of your chaos damage as leech. Maybe not the most significant, but useful, especially when coupled with Vaal Pact (see EXTREME Defense section).

Rumi's Concoction: Now this is hilarious. Purely defensive option (most likely not necessary in the least). With my 40/15 legacy version, i end up getting 67% block and 19% spell block. amazing.
With my current version Rumi's 29/15 i still end up with 52% block and 19% spell block. 15% block chance was already there from dual wielding.
In addition to that, we end up gaining about 5,000 armour, giving me 33% physical reduction. This would be on top of the 20% reduction from 100% active Fortify.

So lets jump into my gem setup. For my DPS build i run Hatred/HoA for damage via % from physical damage. This scales with Blade Vortex's physical spell damage and not the physical damage from your daggers, so even though the damage effectiveness of blade vortex is only 15%, the damage boost is extreme especially over a number of blades.

Vaal Haste and Clarity are linked with increased duration. I do not normally use, or need to use them, while clearing trash. I use these primarily to pre-cast before bosses. I will end up losing my charges, but i can sustain 50 blades for awhile when im standing still, and for about 5 seconds with movement. Vaal Haste lasts 15.78 seconds and Clarity lasts 25.51 seconds.

Curses are applied via another blade vortex. Since this BV doesn't have conc effect it will almost always hit before the other and thus apply the curses. Curses used are Assassin's mark for the additional crit chance, damage, and sustain via mana/hp on kill.
Poacher's mark is my second choice. This is important. This curse gives you +100% flask charges gained on kill which is how i can keep my flasks up 100% of the time without The Retch unique belt. Giving us frenzy charges is just gravy at this point.

Blade Vortex. Increased duration and spell echo are an absolute must. Concentrated effect is your biggest DPS booster, with Controlled destruction being your second. Last socket is whatever you want it to be. It can be damage from Added Fire, Phys to lightning (more leech), added lightning damage, added chaos damage, poison, inc crit dmg.
It can be utility like PCoC, innervate (always shock nearby enemies with vessel). Or survivability with Life leech.
I DO NOT recommend you socket Increased AoE. The reason is the radius will surpass that of your curse on hit, thus things will die before your curse is applied and you will not get power, frenzy or flask charges. Inc AOE is a no-no.

Flicker Strike is a very easy and awesome way to quickly jump to packs, and jump to packs from elevation changes (whirling blades can't do this). Its just a great and essentially free addition that benefits clear speed.

Whirling blades is used for movement through the map, obviously, with fortify so its up 100% of the time. Summon flame golem gives you more damage boost than ice, and i personally don't care to use chaos. Righteous Fire is there in case i want a massive boost in DPS vs a boss i want to take down instantly, like Atziri or something. Vessel leeches through the burn and once the boss is dead or the flask charges are used up i just pop a dousing flask to turn off RF.

I'll be calculating some DPS for this build based on my current build via Shadow, level 80. The damage should be VERY close and yet even more so with that level 90 passive tree proposed above and additional poison DPS.

First off is how you correctly calculate Blade Vortex DPS. There are many posts and threads saying how to do this, but the CORRECT way to do it is such.
Blade Vortex sheet information shows your average ONE hit per blade multiplied by your casts per second, giving you your listed DPS. So the easiest and fastest way to find your true DPS is to divide your sheet DPS by your casts per second. This gives you your average hit per blade. Each blade hits twice per second, so you take your average hit per blade and times it by 2, and times that by however many blades you can actually sustain. In my case i use 15 and 50. I run around with 15 blades but i actually can sustain 50.
So again, its BV sheet DPS / cps x 2 x amount of sustained blades (max 50).

My damage is calculated with 5 power charges, 3 frenzy charges, flame golem, flasks up, and my current jewels but WITHOUT curses factored in. Sheet dps does not factory in the benefits of Assassin's mark curse and i currently don't want to bother calculating that in as well.
Casts per second is set at 4.29.

WITH PHYSICAL TO LIGHTNING (current setup)
Sheet DPS without RF: 31,469.38
Average Damage: 7,335.52
DPS @15 Blades: 220,065.6
DPS @50 Blades: 733,552

Sheet DPS with RF: 49,455.77
Average damage: 11,528.15
DPS @15 Blades: 345,844.5
DPS @50 Blades: 1,152,815

WITH ADDED CHAOS DAMAGE (most likely 6th link come Ascendancy patch)
Sheet DPS without RF: 29,528.46
Average Damage: 6,883.09
DPS @15 Blades: 206,492.7
DPS @50 Blades: 688,309
*Approximate Poison DPS: 290 damage per stack per tick. Upwards of 29,000 damage per second for the first second. Additional damage of 116,000 over 4 seconds (duration of first applied poison stacks).

Sheet DPS with RF: 46,413.51
Average damage: 10,819
DPS @15 Blades: 324,570
DPS @50 Blades: 1,081,900
8Approximate Poison DPS: 456 damage per stack per tick. Upwards of 45,600 damage per second for the first second. Additional damage of 182,400 over 4 seconds (duration of first applied poison stacks).

As calculated, with flask and charges my current defense sits at 4,116 HP, 621 ES, 100% fortify, 67 block, 19% spell block, 39% of physical damage taken as cold damage, and INSTANT life leech.

I do still die while playing, but its because im not used to this type of playstyle. I almost never used to use flasks so it takes awhile to get used to playing this way.

Passive Tree

What we end up sacrificing is the flat damage instead of the crit and crit damage. Reason being is its much easier to sacrifice. Since you want the Witch Flask nodes anyway, the crit is right there, the power charge/spell dmg per charge is right there. You can't really save as many passives by sacrificing that so...well...we don't.

ending up with 188% hp it should be very easy to reach 5,500 hp if not 6,000 depending on gear. Acrobatics is unneeded since you have many other defensive aspects in play which will be spoken of in other sections.

Since you're not heavily sided towards damage, your gear is VERY versatile. Again you want another curse by whatever means you can get it, but otherwise every slot is open. Feel free to place Lightning Coil as a chest piece, or just a GG rare with massive HP and evasion (or armour, or ES!). Whatever you can find and want.

Gloves can be anything with resistances and life, or again maligaro's or facebreakers. Since DPS isn't priority you're open to anything you want.

Boots can be whatever you want. If not Windscream than feel free to use Atziri Step for lots of life and spell dodge, including a huge evasion boost. Socket Rainbowstrike to capitalize on block from Rumi's if you want, or again just end game rares for resistances/HP/movement speed.

Rings are whatever you want. Amulet is whatever you want. Belt is whatever you want. Though i always suggest double HP coral rings and leather belts, thats just me.

Daggers are covered above. You can easily make due with magic Copper Kris if you want. Hell with this you don't even need to dual wield but feel free to pick up a shield. You could easily max block with a shield, lazhwar, and rumi's combined. 75/75 no issue. boom.

On Blade Vortex i think your damage should be set in stone. BV, inc duration, spell echo, conc effect, controlled destruction. But your 6th link can be whatever you want. Life leech, whatever. Feel free.

Curses. Keep poacher's mark for the flask charges but assassin's mark is not a necessity. Its a great way to gain charges but feel free to use PCoC as a 6th link and run Warlord's Mark for leech/charges/stuns.

Auras are up in the air too. You do gain a great deal of damage from hatred and herald of ash, but feel free to use whatever you want. Your damage will be great no matter what since you can sustain 50 blades on bosses. Trash is almost never an issue.
Run Grace, Discipline, whatever you want.

Vaals. You could probably keep Vaal Clarity and Haste in order to pre-cast 50 blades only on bosses, but through maps you could most likely and quite easily socket Vaal Grace and keep it up 100% of the time.
You could almost keep all 3 up 100% of the time if using Chill of Corruption jewel as well. But feel free to add in another layer of defense from Vaal Grace. More power to you.

Replace Flame golem with chaos golem.

This is somewhat hard to calculate since i don't have the same passive tree or anything, but i'll do my best. Essentially im going to take my current setup above, remove my facebreakers, a 6th damage support, replace my 2nd dagger with rathpith globe, and not use my auras or charges. Oh i'll also remove my amulet, since its a DPS amulet.
This is what my damage will be calculated on. Also will not factor in RF at all, but will use all 3 flasks.

Sheet DPS: 7,659.94
CPS: 3.88
Average Damage: 1,974.21
DPS @15 Blades: 59,226.3
DPS @50 Blades: 197,421

As you can see, its still very significant and easily obtainable DPS. Your defensive tree will be quite a bit different than mine, but i imagine you will have at least SOME DPS gained from gear or auras too. I took it ALL OFF and essentially just used one weapon, my passive tree and flasks and i still have almost 200k max dps.

with both daggers my max dps goes up to 253k.
with one dagger but auras/flame golem, my max dps sits at 271k.

Essentially its better to give up the 2nd dagger for a very defensive shield than to give up the auras. You won't be able to gain as much defense from auras as you could a shield anyway, especially something like Rathpith Globe.

Well, this again will be difficult to calculate in theory but i'll do my best.
Since the DPS test above basically stripped all my damage gear away, you can use whatever gear you want to gain defenses. Use your best combination and slap it together.
Shouldn't be too hard to hit 6,000 hp with HP available on almost every gear slot and 188% from tree. With double HP coral rings, double HP leather belt, high HP gloves/helm/shield and chest, this should be obtainable.

On top of that you can have upwards of max block/spell block pretty easily, with Rumi's up and no shield nodes required. Approximately 30-35% phys reduction just from Rumi's alone, but also 39% from Taste of Hate (could also include lightning coil here), not to mention those flasks also raise your resistances to converted damage element.

Fortify is always up. Vaal Grace could always be up giving you another layer of defense. You could incorporate life leech and endurance charges via Warlord's Mark pretty easily as well. The tree i showed has vaal pact in order to consider this, and for Atziri flask instant leech from chaos damage.

What else...oh right. The instant life leech from your lightning damage because of vessel of vinktar. Yeah, this build is tanky enough to be in hardcore FOR SURE. Let me list is out.

Physical Reduction: 45% (endurance charges and rumi's)
Evasion: 55+% (just from one Jade flask of reflexes)
Block: upwards of 62% (with non legacy rumi's active and rathpith globe. no passives spec'd)
Spell Block: upwards of 52% (with non legacy rumi's and rathpith globe)
Dodge: 34% (vaal grace 100% uptime)
Spell dodge: upwards of 50% (vaal grace 100% uptime and atziri step)
Vaal Pact with 2% life leech and 2% chaos damage leech (warlord's mark and atziri flask)
vessel of vinktar 39% lightning damage instant leech (with the lowered DPS, average leech of approx 2,070 hp per second @15 blades. 6,900 @50 blades).

https://www.pathofexile.com/fullscreen-passive-skill-tree/AAAAAwIBm43OqAG873pEDcjw9qMVICzphrMA7ipNPydfmFltzzLTfn11_roJM9E24iy748SilwYZisM6JIsPqxa_bWy1SOtjES8rCl3yKgtwUg5IEZYHHpUu8NVJUY_66_XDCbmT8h1cQFS9Fe2Wi9W5f8aTJ76KoS-iow_EO3y4ykyzIG5QMNteRX4OXGr6ytO0DOq6DXxXySj6gscdvjOHA-7Q0F9q0B_v620ZIvRsCxFQNbmnK9lbwfNcinvXm7WExS2LH8creCycBUJBltD1rrMbJUuu6QJqjPVvyBSi2bDY

This is for level 90. Bandit rewards will be Point/Physical DMG/Power Charge
the life is not needed since we'll be running with low life. the resistances are not needed because its extremely easy to cap them via flasks and gear here and there. the Physical damage IMO is ideal because of using so many bonuses to DPS which are directly proportional to your physical damage, like double mings, hatred and herald of ash.

Again gear is very versatile with this build. You can essentially do whatever you want. 5L i would say is mandatory, 6L is great obviously.

either a rare high ES chest with a 2nd mings and using coruscating elixir, or a 6L shavs with a resistance ring and atziri's promise. you choose which you can afford and is most feasible to you.
i will test it, but i believe both options will be very close in total ES amount and DPS.

Best in slot boots are Skyforth, of course, but 99% of the game does not have these so use Rainbowstride. these will give you decent movement speed, ES, resistances and cap your block for both physical and spell.

Amulet should be a Lazhwar corrupted to give a second curse. the second curse is optional tho definitely ideal. if you have another amulet that gives a second curse, you can use it and use rathpith globe but your total ES will take a hit from having a lower ES shield.

Shield should be high ES, resistances if you can grab em, spell damage also is great to have, but primarily a 400+ ES shield because it will be the bulk of your ES gained.

Rings can be a mixture of whatever you want. want some added DPS? grab up some ming's. the chaos resistance is great too. if you want some added crit you can grab up some resistance diamond rings. you can use Doedre's for a 2nd curse if you want. whatever.

Gloves are whatever. voidbringers, maligaro's, facebreakers, or just rare ES. whatever you have, want, and can use.

Helmet should be high ES also. this should fill any resistances you're missing. you really only need a maximum of 40% for each since flasks will fill in the rest.

Belt will be The Magnate. the extremely cheap cost, increases physical, added strength and massive +50% inc flask charges is absolutely best in slot. cannot beat it.

4L
vaal haste
vaal clarity
vaal grace
inc duration

lots of vaals. you should use Chill of Corruption for one jewel slot, meaning you'll be swimming in vaal souls. you could easily keep vaal grace up 100% while mapping. pop vaal clarity and haste before boss in order to pre-cast 50 blades. clarity lasts over 25s and haste lasts 15.57 seconds.
alternatively you could drop vaal clarity since you can cast with essentially full mana from the leech of VofV and socket something else, or just run both vaal grace and haste 100% of the time with ease.

4L
blade vortex
curse on hit
assassin's mark
*poacher's mark

if you have two curses, you can use whatever second curse you want. Warlord's mark is a great second option for consistent leech, endurance charges and possible perma stuns. Vulnerability will be a great DPS choice since with Pathfinder your BV will always poison. Or you could use enfeeble/temp chains, whatever.
if you don't run a 2nd curse feel free to move this to a 3 slot, or throw in inc duration so you don't need to cast it as often. inc aoe is unnecessary since main BV has conc effect, the CoH setup always hits first.

4L
whirling blades
faster attacks
flicker strike
fortify

movement. flicker strike is amazing to jump to mobs, stick right on top of mobs, and to clear elevation changes that whirling blades can't, like stairs, cliffs etc.
flicker strike is actually phenomenal with blade vortex. it can make it so you don't need ANY increased aoe from gear or passives because you're instantly on top of mobs.

3L
discipline
blood magic
summon flame golem/portal

if you don't want to swap weapons to create a portal then you can replace golem if you want. discipline and blood magic is how you'll create your low life.

3L
herald of ash
hatred
enlighten/righteous fire/portal

these are your buffs. can socket whatever you want. if you want to turn on RF for massive DPS boost vs single targets you can socket it here. the extra mana from enlighten doesn't really add a whole lot, so whatever you prefer.

6L
blade vortex
inc duration
spell echo
conc effect
controlled destruction
*PCOC

PCoC is best in slot to keep your charges up and crit rate high to ensure your charges refill the fastest they can, but definitely before their duration runs out.

Flasks will be obvious. stated above if you read it.
Vessel of Vinktar is a must. for DPS and the obscene leech, this will keep you alive at all times forever.
Taste of Hate for some phys mitigation, including reflect, higher res and crazy amounts of added DPS
Rumi's Concoction to maintain your 75/75 block. also raises your physical mitigation with a massive amount of additional armour.
Diamond Flask best 4th slot. to keep your DPS high, flasks full and to do one of the following. Either alt it with dousing if you plan on using RF in order to turn it off anytime you want, or Grounding to negate VofV shock effect, OR of Heat so you have some freeze immunity. Most likely of Heat will be best in slot.
of Warding would be best vs Atziri, then you don't have to worry about curses.

The 5th flask will either be Coruscating Elixir if you're not using a shavs, or Atziri's Promise if you are using a shavs.