[2.6] "Shuriken Hurricane" Hybrid Ethereal Knives Nova Trickster

Easy Stuff

Some dried lake clearing and Voll https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6u9UZuNd-CY&feature=youtu.be

We choose Trickster as our ascendency class for a variety of reasons. First of all this build is focused on clear speed and fast movements. Trickster gives a variety of boosts to attack and movespeed as well as free movement skill usage. Further, It gives us an additional frenzy charge and the ability to generate charges on kill. This is our main and only source of frenzy charge generation. Finally, it gives us a rather large boost to energy shield and our energy shield recharge rates. It also improves our chance to dodge and evade attacks without investing anything into either. All of these things combine to creating a build that has very good survivability and that is extremely fast.

We use our movement skill whirling blades to fly around the map, stopping to single cast Ethereal knives at each monster pack. Most packs should die from a single cast. Rares will generally take two to three casts. For extremely hard enemies. We drop our wither, spell totem with faster casting to increase the chaos damage we do to that enemy and greatly slow it down. We also can facetank most things with a Sin’s Rebirth flask combined with Vaal haste and our life leech. When facing bosses when you are not leeching health because you have no kills, make sure to use your health potions to prevent draining your health from blood magic. Also if you get frozen or are dealing with cold based enemies be sure to use a remove freeze flask combined with taste of hate. Being frozen or stunned is probably your biggest danger with this build as you are unable to leech.

The Covenant is a key aspect of this build. With recent buffs, it becomes the perfect hybrid chest for our Ethereal Knives nova build. It gives decent energy shield (up to 453), 10 percent increased life, and intelligence for a bit of extra energy shield. What makes is ideal though is that it offers both blood magic to socketed gems and a free extra lvl 15 added chaos damage gem support. This gives us nearly an 8-link in effective gems. We put our primary Ethereal knives gem setup here on a 6-link if possible. This enables us to forget about trying to get enough mana regen or mana leech to sustain casting our expensive Ethereal Knives skill when we choose.

Innbury Edge Another important aspect of our build. Although this does not provide dps equal to that of a great spell damage dagger, it gives us some other incredibly useful stats. First, it gives a 25% damage conversion of our physical damage to chaos damage. This allows us to double dip with many of the shadow passive skill nodes. It also means we take less damage from physical reflect and penetrate armor more easily. The sword also allows us to leech a bit of life from chaos damage. This applies directly to our Energy shield thanks to Ghost Reaver. It further gives 25% increased attack speed which makes our whirling blades much faster, allowing us to clear incredibly fast. Last, it gives us a bit of critical chance which we use to proc our Elemental Overload. Against certain endgame bosses, it can be subbed out for a pure dps dagger but for maps it is safe and does nearly as much dps.

Rare Energy Shield Helmet For our helmet we need something with high energy shield, high life, and good resists. If you can find this with the 40% increased ethereal knives damage enchant it is best in slot. A vertex can also be used here until an endgame energy shield helmet is found.

Esh’s Visage Another perfect hybrid item which also gives us the ability prevent chaos damage from bypassing our energy shield. Without this, we would die very quickly to chaos damage. It gives great life, energy shield, and some nice resists. It also makes us immune to shock and reflects shock back at those who shock us. To make use of the chaos damage does not bypass energy shield, we must keep both our life and mana above 35% at all times. We can do this through clever use of the enlighten support gem on our auras, reduced reservation nodes, and the fact that we basically are not using mana for any of our skills. The way to do this is explained in the gem setup section.

Extractor Mentis . This amulet provides some key interactions for our build. Most importantly, it allows us to recover 1% of our maximum life on kill. This leech applies to our health instead of energy shield unlike leech from our damage dealt. This means that the life we lose from casting blood magic Ethereal Knives is regained by killing monsters. It also makes it even harder for us to die because we have an additional source of leech which is rather significant. Further, it provides a small chance to gain both unholy might and onslaught on kill. Unholy might gives us more chaos damage from our physical damage which is double dipped for a nice boost. Onslaught makes us even faster for yet more clear speed. It does give a chance to give both onslaught and unholy might to monsters around us but because we kill so fast, it doesn’t really matter when mapping. We should get one of these with +1 to maximum frenzy charges if possible for more damage. Against hard bosses, this can be subbed out for Natural Hierarchy or a another good rare amulet.

Winds of Change This simply provides great damage and makes our Ethereal knives spread further with the projectile speed. Because we have so much movespeed from this build and primarily use whirling blades to get around anyway, the reduced movespeed doesn’t matter much.

Brinerot Whalers Like Winds of Change, these provide a great boost to our damage. They also provide good movespeed and extra resists. They make us fully immune to shock when combined with our Esh’s Visage as well. We should get one of these with +1 to maximum frenzy charges if possible for more damage.

Other Gear For our rings and belt, we simply want to find the best combination of resists, health, and energy shield that we can. A good rare crystal belt will be best in slot. For rings we can also add cast speed if we have resists capped. For endgame rings, % energy shield should be crafted with elreon.

Here are the mods you should look for when buying or crafting jewels for this build.
Damage Mods (best to worst)
16% physical damage
16% spell damage while holding a shield
12% projectile damage
12% spell damage
10% damage
8% projectile speed
5% cast speed while holding a shield
4% cast speed
Defense mods (best to worst)
8% maximum energy shield
7% maximum life
Any resists you need
Chance to knockback

The first flask should be a seething divine flask for emergency instant heal. This is my Oh shit button. Use this to survive burst damage that destroys your energy shield and digs into your life. Add a remove bleeding here as well so that you can get rid of bleed effects. My second flask is an experimenters eternal flask which removes freeze. This is a long duration flask that will keep you unfrozen for an extended period of time. It is very useful for Cold breaches or hard hitting cold enemies. Next we use a taste of hate for our third flask/ This help mitigate heavy physical damage, gives us more dps, and further helps us with issues with chill and freeze. Next we use Atziri’s promise for even more chaos damage and leech. This is a perfect flask for increasing dps and leech for our build. Finally, if you have enough money, you can buy a Sin’s rebirth for your last flask. This gives us even more damage because our unholy might will nearly always be up and allows us to facetank melee hits, greatly improving our evasion. It also removes ignites. If you cannot afford this, just buy a normal stibnite flask instead with either ignite or bleeding removal.

4link Cast when damage taken - Immortal call - Flame Golem - Enfeeble
This is our cast when damage taken setup. It gives us short term immunity to physical damage and casts enfeeble on nearby enemies. It also casts our Flame golem for us so that we don’t constantly have to cast it whenever it dies.

3linkWither - Spell Totem - Faster Casting
We use this on bosses and hard single target enemies that are dangerous. It slows them and applies a debuff, allowing us to do more chaos damage to the target. This is our only skill that uses mana but the amount is uses is quite small so you should never have to worry about going below 35% so that chaos damage starts to penetrate our energy shield again.

4link Added Chaos damage - Faster Attacks - Whirling Blades - Fortify
Our movement skill that has faster attacks linked to it so we can whirl extremely fast. It is linked to fortify so that we take less physical damage. Remember to whirl through tough enemies to get the buff. Added chaos is just for damage, you can put whatever you like here instead such as blind.

6link Ethereal Knives - Spell Echo - Added Fire damage - Controlled Destruction - Pierce - Life Leech This is our main damage skill setup. Spell echo gives us great dps and provides a nice double tap effect for clearing waves. Added Fire is a great dps boost based off physical damage. Controlled destruction because we are not crit and the more multiplier adds up. Pierce allows us to max out our peirce change and also as a more multiplier for damage boost. Life leech is key for survivability and will allow deal with most damage sources as well as reflect. It is what keeps you alive most of the time.


3link Enlighten(lvl3) - Haste - Herald of Fire - Hatred
This enlighten is essential for enabling us to prevent chaos damage from penetrating our energy shield. We combine a level 3 enlighten with Either hatred or Haste, and Herald of Fire. We also get 12 % reduced mana reserved from our passive skill tree. This means that even though our auras would normally reserve 75% of our mana, they now only reserve 62%. As such, we are not considered on low mana and chaos damage cannot penetrate our energy shield due to Esh’s Visage. If you do not have a lvl 3 enlighten, it will not work as you will reserve exactly 65% and be considered low mana. I use haste for easy map content and fast clears. I use Hatred for hard content and bosses.

1link Vaal Haste or Vaal Discipline or Vaal Grace
Vaal Haste gives us even more move speed and damage. Vaal Discipline and Grace both improve our survivability vs tough situations. You can pick as you like.

https://www.pathofexile.com/fullscreen-passive-skill-tree/AAAABAYCAQFvAx4EBwceCSAOSA-rES8RUBGWFe0WvxbzGYoajxslG8gdTx8CH0EfxyL0JIsmPCaVKjgqWysKK3gsnC0fLYsvnTW5Nj02xUM2RKtJE0lRSbFLrkyDTLNS7FS9VUtVhVWuVcZWSFxAXGtd8l9qYeJirGqMbAtsjG0ZcNR0gXWedf159n_GgLOCEIPbhEiEb4TFh8uJ4It6jDaPpo_6kUeTH5MnlS6Wi5cGm7WdqqEvotmjo6XLpyunm7DYtMW1SLvjvorC7MM6w23EosgUzxXP3dAf0NDUQtW518_YJNlb34rfsOL35ljpAutj74jv6_DV8Yr1b_ba-Tf5pPsJ_ro=

For my helm, I am using both the celestial hood and banner attachment. For gloves, rigwalds gloves. For boots, minotaur boots and the necrotic footprints. For weapon, a goddess unleashed skin transfer and an acid weapon effect. For chest, steam-powered body armor and steampowered back attachment. For shield, a matua tapuna skin transfer. For the belt, a Belt of the deceiver skin transfer. I also have ethereal stars skill effect and gloom herald of ash effect.

For each league, I design a new build, full character appearance, and guide. My guides are meant to create builds that make the game fun to play and are accessible rather than trivialize the content and make you fall asleep at the keyboard. If you are looking for a build that will make the game easy or able to be AFK farmed, my builds are not for you. For the Legacy league, I created this concept. I hope you enjoy it!