[3.0] How to Flicker. Terminus Est Trickster-Assassin Edition!

Hi guys welcome to my guide " How to Flicker. Terminus Est Trickster-Assassin Edition!"Thanks KorgothBG and Stracker for their precious helps =).If i be honest im new about this build things :) I just wanted to make a better flicker strike build for who wants to play as trickster-assassin.Biggest advantage of this build is you dont need mana :).But if you want deal more damage you should give up from mana and choose asassin ascendancy.As the title suggest this is a flicker strike guide using the newly buffed unique sword - Terminus Est, which with enough critical strike chance, allows you to permanently flicker around without without constantly relying on kills to generate frenzy charges, that means permanent flickering during boss fights.This will be a very detailed guide that will try to explain everything and answer most questions preemptivelly. In the thread i'll try to answer all your question and help you to the best of my ability and as soon as possible.

INDEX
1.. Skills and Support gems
2.. About the Flicker Strike attack
3.. Buffs and Utility Skills
4.. Passive skill tree (leveling trees + Ascendancy)
5.. The Pantheon
6.. Gear
7.. The Bandits
8.. Leveling Guide.
9.. My Advices

I will add FAQs next days.

1.. Skills and Support gems

Flicker Strike + Multistrike + Melee Physical Damage + Increased Critical Strike + Melee Splash Support + Melee Damage on Full Life

Short explanation




Cast when Damage Taken + Poacher's Mark + Increased Duration + Blood Rage


Short explanation



Herald of Ash + Arctic Armour + Hatred


Short explanation



Leap Slam + Ice Golem + Faster Attacks + Blood Magic

Short explanation



2.. About the Flicker Strike attack

If you have potato computer and bad internet this build will be nightmare for you =).

Basically Flicker Strike teleports you to a nearby monster and attacks it with a melee weapon. Unfortunately it has a cooldown (2 seconds), the good news is that you can bypass that cooldown by expending a Frenzy Charge(which happens automatically if you have frenzy charges). Getting Frenzy Charges is the key for this build. With Flicker Strike you want to be able to attack non-stop so you need to generate Frenzy Charges all the time. This build utilizes two frenzy charge generators - Blood Rage, that will give you chance to gain a frenzy charge on kill and the Terminus Est unique sword that will generate 1 frenzy charge every time you deal a critical strike. Now i must note that when you attack with flicker strike linked to multistrike support gem you perform three attacks but you'll gain only one frenzy charge if you land a critical strike. Basically what this sword does is to sustain the amount of frenzy charges that you've already generated. You should always try to engage a boss with as much frenzycharges as possi. So keep that in mind and make sure that you start a boss fight prepared! Flicker strike has superior clearing speed, and it also provides extra defenses naturally becuase you'll be teleporting around and doing so it is much harder for mosnters to actually hit you. I must say that Flicker is very prone to desync so ... be warned if you play Path of Exile in predictive mode. Usually it's very hard to play flicker strike builds in a party. With the Terminus Est frenzy charge generation it is possible though it won't always go smothly ... and let's not forget that with the ridiculous speeding of flickering around your party members will usually be left way behind. Becuase of that i can't really suggest this build if you are a party player.


Support Gems

Melee Physical Damage - The best support gem when it comes to increasing your damage. A must have!

Multistrike - This support gem greatly increases your attack speed and more importantly it allows you to strike three times at the cost of one attack. That means that you'll spend mana only once per three hit and you'll loose only one frenzy charge to bypass the flicker strike cooldown per three attacks. This build really can't work without Multistrike.

Increased Critical Strike - After all this build heavily relies on your critical strike chance. This gem not only increases it but it also increase the base critical strike chance of which all other increases are based upon.

Melee Damage on Full Life - A gem that further increases your damage. It basically works as a second Melee Physical Damage support gem, as long as you are on Full Life.You'll be pretty much constantly at full life. It's important to notice that when you use Blood Rage your tooltip life will never be full, thankfully after patch 2.6 you'll still be considered at full life so you'll be able to take advantage of this support gem

Melee Splash - Melee Splash is a support gem that can be linked with a single-target melee skill gem to add an area of effect to the attack.



Other options
Added Fire Damage - a great damage boosting gem, though Melee Physical Damage on Full Life just that adds more.
Physical to Lightning - all other options simply give you more damage
Weapon Elemental Damage - all other options simply give you more damage


3.. Buffs and Utility Skills

Blood Rage
Blood Rage applies a buff that deals physical damage to the player over time, while increasing attack speed and life leech. Killing an enemy while this buff is active refreshes the buff duration, and has a chance to grant a frenzy charge.

Herald of Ash
Herald of Ash is a buff that reserves 25% of your mana and in return it increases your damage by giving you extra fire damage based on 15% of your physical damage. Also If you kill an enemy with an attack, other enemies near them will be ignited for the overkill damage (i.e. a monster has 1 life you deal 10 damage to you so the nearby monsters will be ignited for a percentage of the excess 9 points of damage).

Hatred
Hatred provides additional Cold Damage on Physical Damage it reserves 50% of your mana but it won't be problem.

Poacher's Mark
Poacher's Mark is a spell that curses all targets in an area. Affected targets are less evasive, hitting them will grant life and mana, and killing them will result in more flask charges and a chance to gain a frenzy charge.

Arctic Armour
Arctic Armour is a buff that reserves 25% of your mana. It is a great defensive tool with its (8-13)% less Physical/Fire Damage taken when Hit while stationary. With flicker strike even though you are teleporting around you are actually considered stationary most of the time so this is a perfect buff for this build.

Cast when Damage Taken
Cast when Damage Taken is a support gem. It causes a linked spell to trigger when the player takes a certain amount of damage.

Leap Slam
This is your movement ability. Use it to move around faster and to jump over obstacles. Link it to a Faster Attacks support gem to increase its speed, and to a Blood Magic support gem so that you can use it freely all the time

4.. Passive skill tree (leveling trees + Ascendancy)
Maximum life and Critical Strike Chance playing big role in this build.First we're goin life based char.When we started to getting close Level 51 we will pick Damage Critical Strike Chance skills.Don't pick Jewel Sockets until you get higher level like 90.As you can see elemental resistances also important like other issues.I will show you how to avoid (barely) elemental attacks.

Passive skill trees

Assassin

Trickster


Ascendancy
We have 2 option in this way.Assassin or Trickster it is very important.

Assassin deals more damage but it drains your mana and you need to farm armour and evasion.
Ambush>Assassinate>Unstable Infusion>Deadly Infusion

Trickster's Walk the Aether skill don't need mana for movement skills and you need to farm ES and Evasion.
Walk the Aether>Swift Killer>Ghost Dance>Shade Form

There is your two option choose wisely strike quickly =)[/b].

5.. The Pantheon

The Pantheon is a system of divine powers that players can activate for themselves. These powers grant defensive bonuses and become available when players defeat certain gods in Acts 6 through 10. Upgrading a god's power requires consuming a Divine Vessel and any map in the Map Device. Strengthening the Map Boss, killing it allows the retrieval of its Captured Soul from the Map Device. These are used when speaking to Sin to unlock the secondary powers. A player can only have one major and one minor power activated at a time. The bonuses can be freely swapped with no extra cost, as long as the player is in a town.

Major Powers
Soul of Lunaris - the perfect Major Power for general mapping. It grants Physical Damage Reduction and movement speed based on the enemies around you, and the upgrades give you some chance based defenses.
Soul of Solaris - a good option if there is only one enemy around you. You can switch to it, if you feel necessary, right before a tough boss fight .
Soul of Brine King - it will be perfect selection if you have problem with stuns.It will be help you about that.

Minor Powers
Soul of Gruthkul - It gives you 1% up 5% physical damage reduction when you take a hit. Honestly this is the best available Minor power for this build.
It's worth mentioning that Soul of Tukohama seems much better but for some reason you loose the buff when you use flicker strike. That is very inconsistent with how flicker strike works with Arctic Armour for example, i'm not sure if it's a bug or if it is intended, but for now Soul of Tukohama is not usable with Flicker Strike.

6.. Gear

Weapon
In a "How to Flicker. Terminus Est Trickster Edition!" it is obvious that the weapon that we'll be using is the unique Terminus Est Tiger Sword. I think that it is important to note that you want a Terminus Est with a perfect increased Critical Strike Chance roll (75%). In fact the Critical Strike Chance roll is more important than the increased Physical Damage roll. After all this build relies heavily on your ability to land critical hits so the higher the base critical strike chance of your weapon is the better!

Body Armour
Now there are a few great options when it comes to Body Armours.
Daresso's Defiance is a good choice with its build-in Endurance charge generation (though you lose the charges when you take a hit), life leech and + maximum life.
Kintsugi is another decent chest piece - good amounts of maximum life, some fire resistance, and 20% less Damage taken if you have not been Hit Recently.
Belly of the Beast is a excellent choice due to the significant buff to your life, and on top of that it gives some resistances.
Kaom's Heart is a great option with its huge boost to your life.
Lightning Coil - another good chest that provides extra life and a way to better mitigate incoming physical damage... if you can handle the -60% to your lightning resistance.

Helmet
You could use the unique Rat's Nest helmet - it will provide you with good amounts of increased attack speed, very nice increased critical strike chance, extra movement speed and some increased Rarity of Items found.

Gloves
Start with Maligaro's Virtuosity - some attack speed, highest possible amounts of increased critical strike chance for gloves and a good amount of critical strike multiplier. Excellent pair gloves indeed.
If you re rich enough to get Atziri's Acuity it will be good enough for you.

Boots
Usually a flicker strike build uses the unique Blood Dance boots (for the frenzy charge generation and the life regeneration) or the Darkray Vectors (for the extra frenzy charge and dodge) and of course this is still an option here.
You could also use the Atziri's Step boots for a nice boost to your chance to dodge spells and awesome maximum life boost.

Blood Dance will be enough if you're new player or poor =).

Belt
A rare belt with high amounts of life and elemental resistances, maybe some weapon elemental damage is a great choice.
The Retch is also a good option with its excellent maximum life, some cold resistance and flask related buffs. The life leech applied as extra chaos damage is very good once you have Atziri's Acuity.
Belt of the Deceiver will increase your damage, some life and elemental resistances and a 30% reduced Extra Damage from Critical Strikes which is perfect vs. reflected damage. Definitely a great option if you can compensate its mediocre resistances and life elsewhere!
Headhunter of course is in my opinion the best belt that you can wear ... if you can afford it of course (as Korgoth said most likely you won't be).

Rings
Rare rings with life, resistances and physical damage would be perfect (take diamond rings for the increased critical strike chance if your resistances allow it), some intelligence could also be quite helpful if you need it
A Voidheart ring can also be a nice offensive oriented option (again if your resistances can handle it... becuase Voidheart has none).

Amulet
You want a rare amulet with life, physical damage, critical strike chance and multiplier and some resistances, some intelligence or strength could also be quite helpful if you need it.

Flasks
About the flasks you don't need mana flask anymore.
A Life flask with Remove bleeding (and if possible instant recovery)
A Diamond flask that removes the Frozen and Chilled. The "Your Critical Strike Chance is Lucky" (the game rolls twice for a critical strike and picks the better roll, i.e. first roll you don't crit, second roll you crit, outcome : you crit) property of the Diamond flask is extremely helpful especially if you haven't increased your critical strike chance enough
Lion's Roar - a unique flasks that gives you a very nice damage boost and some armour.
Atziri's Promise - an extremely cheap yet very powerful flask. It increases your damage and life leech and gives you chaos resistance.
Taste of Hate - awesome flask that not only provides great damage increase in the form of cold damage (very useful given the fact that this build does not use Hatred, so otherwise you won't have cold damage to shatter monsters thus preventing their resurrection and on death effects) but it also helps you to mitigate incoming physical damage. It is a bit pricey but it's worth it !

Jewels
At last you have 3 jewel slots as Assassin.2 for Trickster.Get more critical chance,maximum life and damage.

7.. The Bandits

KILL EM ALL =)

8.. Leveling Guide
Well until you get 5 or 6 links in sword or armor i think you should be start with Tabula Rasait's 13c average and it provides 6 links.Until level 34 use Ungil's Gauche Boot Knife.When you are level 34 get 2 Unique claws like Mortem Morsu Fright Claw and play with Frost Blades + Projectile Supports + Life Gain it will be enough for you until you get level 51.

9..My Advices
If you find good people to carry you in lab without price don't miss them =) or pay like 2c.

Final Words
I'm new about this forum and build stuf as you can see.Biggest Thanks to KorgothBG for let me to quote some of his works =) and Stracker for helping me about making this build.

Edit:Passive tree changed cause of low hp.

Old Passive Tree DONT USE:

Hatred + Herald of Ash + Arctic Armour make 100% reserved mana how can I make 85%?

"

dosqos wrote:

Hatred + Herald of Ash + Arctic Armour make 100% reserved mana how can I make 85%?

Hatred 25% Herald of Ash 50% Artic Armour 25% you cant get 85%.You will be able to play all of them thanks to Walk the Aether skill.But if you want to use other skills like deal more damage Artic Armour not necessary =).

Wrong post

Hatred 50% + Herald of Ash 25% + Artic Armour 25% = 100% reserved mana. However, I saw it from the threde that you wrote, says total of 85% mana...

Well, I got the idea anyway thanks to walk the Aether right?
And if I knew that flicker is actually movement skill, I would've learn Walk the Aether rather than swift killer lmao

"

dosqos wrote:

Hatred 50% + Herald of Ash 25% + Artic Armour 25% = 100% reserved mana. However, I saw it from the threde that you wrote, says total of 85% mana...

Well, I got the idea anyway thanks to walk the Aether right?
And if I knew that flicker is actually movement skill, I would've learn Walk the Aether rather than swift killer lmao

I'm glad to help you.Meet me in game.

testing this build with my trickster

This build works, no mana management, I do map 6 7 8 without problem, a little difficulty on boss if there's no add but its correct for a flicker strike. Hight attack speed and good clear map. His weak point is lack life, at 82 with full file bonus I am at 3700 with belly, need kaoms heart and headhunter to make 4500, very expensive stuff for endgame, i think its better than slayer two handed flicker strike classic.

come from blade vortex build.

Glad to hear that :).Thanks.

Too little health for late tier maps, but literally DESTROYS everything before T8's.

Some bosses are harder to master/kill because you lack the "facetanking" for specific skills they use and have to quickly leap away.

Loved the build, but won't progress on it because pushing it to T11/T13 is going to be really hard for my budget.