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

Maybe the entire point of Pathfinder is not permanent unique flasks...

But we can make a decent enough count about how quickly does one need to kill a boss to have VoV and ToH last the entire fight.

Let's take this decent belt as an example


With current tree and all flask nodes one can get 46% increased duration and VoV and ToH will take 20 charges to use, so one can use 3 full cycles. With duration increases that goes to 6,132 sec per cycle, but let's use 6 seconds to have a round number anc count for reflex losses and etc.

With 3 cycles and 6 seconds they will currently last 18 seconds.

Pathfinder will increase duration with extra 16%, which takes one cycle to 6,804 sec, but let's count that with 6,5 seconds.

With 3 cycles and 6,5 seconds flasks will last for 19,5 seconds.

Now add Master Surgeon and let's use that 50% crit and 2,5 charges a second as a counter.

During one flask uptime one would with 50 blades and 2,5 charges a second get 16,25 charges. But bosses move and sometimes you don't have 50 blades, so let's use 15 charges.

So every flask uptime will net 3/4 of a flask uptime with Master Surgeon.

Use initial 3 uptimes and you will have extra 2,25 uptimes. During that 2,25 uptimes you will get 1,7 new uptimes. During that you will get 1,3 uptimes and etc. Someone could count this better if they want to, but in any case it will be a long time.

Then many bosses have adds to kill and well one could live a few seconds without flasks in between also.
With a good enough build you will have way more than enough time to take out any boss.

These changes are not a problem for BV. On the other hand some other skills will have more troubles with dropping Master Surgeon to 10%. But Pathfinder is far from dead. I actually do consider both of these nerfs to be quite well thought out by GG. Pathfinder would be too good with current BV and 20% Master Surgeon.

ya honestly if pathfinder can't keep unique flasks up 1v1 then there is no point in this build. don't get me wrong, im still going to exploit the shit out of unique flasks and 3 uses and all that jazz, but the whole point to pathfinder was to get master surgeon's and keep uniques up during boss fights.

however it still may not be as bad as people are saying. with poacher's and druidic rite you still get 120% charges gained. this is included on surgeon's i'd assume since its just "charges gained" and not "charges gained on kill". this means you get 2.2 charges instead of 1 every time it procs.

with 50 blades up, 50 hits a second, and 10% chance to gain a charge you're looking at 5.5 charges a second on average with a 50% crit rate (easy to have). this isn't bad at all considering with the increased duration your flasks should be lasting 7 seconds long so long as you have a belt that gives duration as well. so before your flasks run out you should be able to get 20 charges no issues. this is with 50 blades though, which you probably won't always have up.

so lets say with a more realistic 30 blades. thats 3 charges every second. so 7 seconds to replenish a use. should be okay as long as you ensure you have at least 50% crit rate (might need to run PCoC for 1v1s) and decent crit. this may mean using consuming dark is out, you need that crit dagger baby.
right now my VofV/ToH and atziri's promise lasts just over 6 seconds. should be just about 7 seconds with pathfinder. rumi's will last almost 8 seconds, and any other utility flask will be lasting just about 10 seconds.

i do however think they made those changes specifically because of this interaction. BV also because of on hit effects (like poison). should still be able to keep unique flasks up for i'd say like 5 uses in a row. about 30-35 seconds worth of flasks. if that isn't long enough to kill what you're after, than ya you're shit out of luck i guess

EDIT: i think the changes are well thought out for BV, but not pathfinder. right now i'd say pathfinder is only worth it if you're using blade vortex, no other skill. again you can easily keep up flasks 100% of the time with any build right now, ESPECIALLY without poacher's mark, but even without it. its stinking easy.
the power of unique flasks are as much that you don't need pathfinder, especially if alchemist nodes are not nerfed in numbers (they're definitely still there). you'd be better off getting any other ascendancy class for added power, like assassin for BV crit rate, rather than pathfinder for any other build that happens to use these flasks.

100% agreed. Also the big trade off is that you could always port out for refill on flasks on hard bosses like Uber if you really need to.

So unless you are consistently speed farming T13+ bosses or trying to do Uber run service (which was the goal for me for this build in Ascendancy) - it's a waste to try and maintain unique flasks 1v1.

90% of people are not even playing T14+ or Uber maps.

Leveling to 100? - you are skipping bosses anyway.

So if you do not need to maintain unique flasks 1v1 - Pathfinder really has no use. And if you are even trying to do this, Blade Vortex is pretty much the only skill you can use.

Sigh, this was such an interesting class but now I can hardly see anyone taking it.


Also, Scion Ascendant - what the hell guys:

- 50% increased flask charges gained - umm, oO I haven't done the math yet but I'm thinking for regular map farming 50% increased flask charges gained would be even better than 10% surgeon's?

- 25 increased damage during flask effect - nice

- 50% chance to avoid Freeze, Shock, Ignite adn Bleed during Flask effect - ok so on average popping 2 flasks will remove Shock (VofV) and Bleed (which Master Surgeon's did)? holy oO

- 4% reduced elemental damage taken during flask effect

And then you coudl take a teleport to Witch start xD.

RIP Pathfinder Jan 2016 - Feb 2016 *sniff*.

ya scion pathfinder is very good. however you couldn't get witch start and pathfinder ascendancy at the same time. not enough points. can get 2 ascendancy traits or one ascendancy and one start.

for trash mobs 50% more flask charges gained would be WELL above and beyond 10% surgeon's, even with blade vortex. no question. either way though it isn't necessary.

im running a build that has flasks without any unique belt (really amazing rare one though) and without poacher's mark and im easily keeping flasks up 100% throughout maps. i do run out vs tough bosses though, but so will pathfinder, so whats the point?

im not really sure what to do with this build. you can still get 3 uses and alchemist nodes with whichever ascendancy class you take. so choice is yours i guess. i'll be browsing to see whats best.
depending how poison is changed, Master Herbalist probably isn't even worth the points, and you can just use Consuming Dark for added poison damage anyway. the added flask effect and duration is great, but again it isn't really needed except on 1v1.

Scion might be the best go around. Occultist is pretty sweet too especially if you use consuming dark/pyre/added fire for massive chaos damage. otherwise just go assassin i guess.

nothing lost yet. It's not confirmed to be half the hits on BV.
But the sad truth is that ggg would never buff a gem with double the damage.
So basically there is only little chance for this build.

actually assassin looks pretty awesome in this deal now. you can essentially do any combination you want. if you focus on power charges generation through deadly infusion you could grab up toxic delivery for an added 10% to extra chaos (more poison as well). with 6 power charges you have a base of 9% crit, meaning with my current tree i would end up with 84% crit rate on BV. PCoC would be needed, somewhere. skyforths obviously would be ideal but eh whatever.

you could also forgo the poacher's mark curse for something like vulnerability or warlord's or whatever else you want, since flasks won't be the issue any longer.

ya IMO the best bet is to not make this as ranger anymore. shadow or witch or scion is best bet. i'll probably roll a shadow now if i continue with BV at all. we'll see how other changes affect things.

but wielding consuming dark/pyre/added fire will probably be the biggest damage as well. the automatic poison with as much chaos damage as you'd end up with (seriously like 8,000 per hit) your poison would be pretty great. even though you'd get half as many stacks if BV is changed how we think it is, its still extra damage for not much investment.

"

xMustard wrote:

however it still may not be as bad as people are saying. with poacher's and druidic rite you still get 120% charges gained. this is included on surgeon's i'd assume since its just "charges gained" and not "charges gained on kill". this means you get 2.2 charges instead of 1 every time it procs.

I actually always thought Flasks Charges Gained didn't affect Surgeon's mod. So I just went to test this and double check as there was not a lot of discussion of this in the past nor confirmed by devs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfpMbanr3oU

And confirmed that it doesn't impact Surgeon's flask generation.

EDIT: Actually, on closer look at Poacher's Mark, the gem description says "Hitting cursed targets will grant life and mana, and killing them will result in more flask charges and a chance to gain a frenzy charge." Despite the more general wording in the stats it lists out, I guess it makes sense for Poacher's to not work. The Magnate belt and Druidic Rite + Primal Spirit would result in 90% flask charges gained. This could possibly work, but even if it did I'm thinking decimals are just truncated directly and won't provide an extra charge. I don't have a Magnate to test this, is anyone able to?

"

Ceryneian wrote:

So unless you are consistently speed farming T13+ bosses or trying to do Uber run service (which was the goal for me for this build in Ascendancy) - it's a waste to try and maintain unique flasks 1v1.

90% of people are not even playing T14+ or Uber maps.

Leveling to 100? - you are skipping bosses anyway.

So if you do not need to maintain unique flasks 1v1 - Pathfinder really has no use. And if you are even trying to do this, Blade Vortex is pretty much the only skill you can use.

Sigh, this was such an interesting class but now I can hardly see anyone taking it.

This is exactly how I feel as well. Even with everyone saying Pathfinder OP before, very few people would actually take it since full-time unique flasks for the highest content (boss fights) in the game is actually quite niche and did require a fair amount of investment on top of shortening the life span of your 1,2,3,4,5 buttons on the keyboard...


If the fastest hitting skill in the game (by a large margin) can't achieve perma-flask with Pathfinder, then Pathfinder really has little value now.

hmm so poacher's didn't affect surgeon's, interesting. i do feel like the others, druidic rite and magnate do, but eh im not interested in testing. it just confirms it won't work, honestly.

now im just thinking of replacement. consuming dark got nerfed to 50% conversion, which would still end up giving you a free poison though. maybe dual wield consuming dark daggers (if theres no legacy versions created) and use assassin to make up for the loss in crit rate from using spell crit daggers. this solidifies dual wielding though, which kinda really sucks for your ES rating. could probably drop a bunch of crit on the tree though and pick up more ES nodes/ES from jewelry.

i don't know. we'll see. guess i have another ranger to figure another build out with. guess i'll get cracking on that.

EDIT: actually what might be an amazing combination with blade vortex and consuming dark/poison would be Assassin's Noxious Strike. depending on how good "Maim" is, it states you have a 30% chance to cause bleeding on hit with attacks, 40% chance to cause poison on hit against bleeding enemies, and 50% chance to cause maim on hit against poisoned enemies.

if the wording is intentional that means BV does hit, and could cause maim with a 50% success rate against poisoned enemies, which would be everybody. another just massive boost in damage, again depending what the hell maim is all about.

Well my prediction was completely wrong - Alchemist unchanged xD. This is going to get interesting.

If you don't have problems maintaining flasks -> just skip the Pathfinder notables and stack as much increased flask effect as you can.

All your flasks are up the entire map anyways -> might as well increase their power instead.

Unless of course you are trying to save flask slots (and need bleed / shock removal).

Still - 50-55% increased flask effect? lol. 60% block from a single Rumi's flask? lol.

"

xMustard wrote:

hmm so poacher's didn't affect surgeon's, interesting. i do feel like the others, druidic rite and magnate do, but eh im not interested in testing. it just confirms it won't work, honestly.

now im just thinking of replacement. consuming dark got nerfed to 50% conversion, which would still end up giving you a free poison though. maybe dual wield consuming dark daggers (if theres no legacy versions created) and use assassin to make up for the loss in crit rate from using spell crit daggers. this solidifies dual wielding though, which kinda really sucks for your ES rating. could probably drop a bunch of crit on the tree though and pick up more ES nodes/ES from jewelry.

i don't know. we'll see. guess i have another ranger to figure another build out with. guess i'll get cracking on that.

EDIT: actually what might be an amazing combination with blade vortex and consuming dark/poison would be Assassin's Noxious Strike. depending on how good "Maim" is, it states you have a 30% chance to cause bleeding on hit with attacks, 40% chance to cause poison on hit against bleeding enemies, and 50% chance to cause maim on hit against poisoned enemies.

if the wording is intentional that means BV does hit, and could cause maim with a 50% success rate against poisoned enemies, which would be everybody. another just massive boost in damage, again depending what the hell maim is all about.

Assassin looks to be one of the more solid choice for BV now, if BV hit rate will indeed get hit (PATCH NOTES PLZ). Noxious Strike would work (assuming Consuming Dark + Chaos Damage somewhere), but I don't think the trade off would be worth it since Maim is only a -30% movement speed debuff.