[3.0] The Unshaper | Crit Starforge Heavy Strike | Millions of DPS | Shaper in ~3:30

Hello, first of all thanks for the build!
You know im having troubles with clearing maps could you look at my eq and my skill tree and tell me what do you think, my main problem is that flicker strike stops randomly and im dying a hole lot haha.

Maybe im doing something wrong with gems or auras idk im kinda noob to be honest

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LocoSteve wrote:

Hello, first of all thanks for the build!

You know im having troubles with clearing maps could you look at my eq and my skill tree and tell me what do you think, my main problem is that flicker strike stops randomly and im dying a hole lot haha.

Maybe im doing something wrong with gems or auras idk im kinda noob to be honest

Hey Steve, I think your gear looks fine except I can't see your flasks. I would just be sure to use your starkonja's when clearing the map instead of the abyssus and make sure you've got your doedre's flask equipped. Anytime you go to click your flicker and it stalls, hit that flask. That's all it's there for. You could alternatively put the flickerstrike cooldown enchant on your stark helm but it won't be as immediate as the flask.

Got everything up and running. Still mapping because I need a higher Level. I started with 5L Terminus Est Flicker with Bloodrage but I dropped it now for 6L Starforge Lacerate. It feels MUCH better to run maps this way. Once I get to around Level 90 I will start doing Guardians. I want some DPS nodes and jewels before that. Merc and Uber lab were fun. In Merc Izaro is one hit and in Uber two hits. :D

Is anyone able to tell me why this build feels bad vs shaper?

My unshaper is 92, gear is ok, last improvement might be my rings, which lack a bit of life/damage. My gems are 19ish, with quality for the half I didn't forget to roll over, my jewels have 3-4 affixes, life and damage. I guess pushing it I could have maybe 10% more dps but not much more, maybe a bit more if I fix all my resists to use a belt of a deceiver. Doesn't show but I have a heavy strike abyssus (102/42 I think).

And I can only dps shaper efficiently if all pots are up, totem is up, he doesn't do the wrong phase, I manage to hit him 4 or 5 times to start shocking...

The range on heavy strike is so small that I sometimes get hit by shaper's beam if I don't come exactly on his back. And really often i'm like ok time to dps, and the char decides to walk into a pool before hitting.


Was the showcase video chosen out of a bunch of footage, or do you all destroy shaper?

Any guardian map not perfectly rolled I'd fail to shock and I'm nowhere close to 6-7 shotting hydra like the vid.

For a build that is aimed at doing bosses it doesn't feel as good as I expected. Freaking awful heavy strike range is the biggest issue for me.


Not really great either for mapping, I die a bit too much, doesn't handle breaches well, I don't understand the hype compared to other things I tested.

hello, ive been running this build a while and i enjoy it very much. its just that when trying to clear higher tier maps i notice that i am very "glass cannonie" (as i like to call it). i have no problems killing things yet i feel very squishy, i just wanted to reach out and see if there is something i am doing wrong with the build and i cant figure it out. also i know i do not have uber done yet that comes with the whole squishy factor.

@armydragon334:

I'm new to the build, so others might correct me. A few thoughts though, in rough order of importance:

1. The biggest thing is you probably don't want to clear with Abysssus if you feel squishy. Swap it for Starkonja's, or just a rare helm with life and any needed attributes if you aren't using Flicker. Just swap in Abyssus for non-trivial boss fights like Shaper / guardians.

2. Are you keeping fortify up all the time?

3. Can you identify anything specific that's killing you? Things to watch for with Vaal Pact builds are stun, freeze and physical reflect, as well as general things like certain curses / map mods which everyone has to care about (no leech, elemental weakness, -max elemental resist, enemy crit bonuses, etc.) Either avoid any which are problems for you or find a strategy to deal with them (flask / equipment swaps, rerolling bad mods, etc.)

4. Life could be higher on some slots. Vaal Pact builds live and die by life total since they instant-leech to full as long as they don't die immediately (assuming they aren't stunned / frozen / no leech / reflected). You can get more life on your chest and ring slots for sure, as well as your helm for general clearing. And your belt too if you don't need the extra DPS.

5. If all else fails, drop a DPS flask for something like Basalt with Increased Armor % to combo with Lion's Roar. That will help a ton with any incoming physical damage, including reflect.

Edit: Also, keep in mind Arctic Armor doesn't do much with cyclone since you never stand still.

@tanis0

Thank you for the help i went through and change a number of things up on my build.
defiantly feels a lot better now. I still have one ring that i would like to change out but for what I am looking for there are not a lot of choices out there so ill just wait till one shows up.

Again thank you for the help!

Here is what my set up looks like now.

Im not sure why Im doing such low damage, or why I'm being oneshot by the guardians. Am I doing something wrong with this gear?

Thanks for the nice build!
I killed every contents with this build except Uber Atziri, and run hundreds of red maps.

For end contents, this build should be min-maxed to obliterate everything in few seconds easily.
With short range and slow attack speed of heavy strike, you would need nice control on your character with 'Budget gear'. So I still feel Pheonix and Chimera are difficult than the others.
For Pheonix, if there are map mods like more boss life, he cannot be killed easily in few seconds
which makes me vulnerable to the projectiles of Pheonix minions with - fire max resistance debuff.
So I used fire resistance flask to counter that. But still the toughest one I think.

For Chimera, everything were easy except for the viper minions that use 5k chaos dmg per projectile.
So I swap Doryani flask and Silver flask to Atziri's and an extra Life flask for Chimera.
And I just use flicker strike for comfortable killing Chimera's trash mobs, but heavy strike for the unique ones.

For map clearing, this build is not good as I expected to the normal flickers.. especially on the breach.
And I found out that the flicker strike only with melee splash is the problem. I swapped the arctic armour with herald of ash, and it brings huge improvement on breach clearing even with brutality gem.
There is also a place for Inspired learning,fake headhunter jewel, at the right east side of the passive node which makes map clearing faster & gives stability.

I have started this league with this build. With Bisco's collar and some tweaks, I have run lots of maps only with 5L Terminus flicker up to tier 16 map easily.
I strongly recommend use flicker strike with herald of ash for mapping instead of swapping lacerate or cyclone. It will give huge improvement on mapping speed.
This build is fucking more fun than those lame meta builds like PF wanders and necromancers!

OP you the video you show killing the shaper is def not the gear you have in this guide. I have much better gear than you and hit for waaaay less. THis build is absolute shit no reason to use heavy strike over any other single target build. I down shaper faster with cyclone > heavy strike even with helm enchant/abby and double jewels. IDK why you lie for attention but a lot of people wasted a ton of time farming items for this hoping to shit on shaper but it just shit on our seasons budget.