[3.2] Elemental Crit Cyclone Raider - Fast, fun, deadly! - Ready for Bestiary league

Here is the gear, I dont know how to link the Jewels, but all of them have %life and mix between attack speed and crit/multi. Im planning on getting a Vessel of Vinktar. My dps is great but there is times where I have to cylone over some rares 2-3 times to kill them. I think my weapon is my next upgrade.

Thanks for checking out my gear








swapping to this during maps

Hey im gonna try this one as my second char on poe as it seems super fun visual/gameplay (loved d2 ww) and i dont rly like 2h for cyclone.

Do you think it can do good as starter for next league?, and is there a way to clear ele resist maps by swaping some gear or is it just impossible? I rly like to have the chance to do everything (excluding non life leech). Im on my way lvling the raider after having a lot of fun/success with my sunder zerker. And i want to see which one im gonna pick to start next league :).

Thanks for the guide btw, nice one.

"

Toffer112 wrote:

Here is the gear, I dont know how to link the Jewels, but all of them have %life and mix between attack speed and crit/multi. Im planning on getting a Vessel of Vinktar. My dps is great but there is times where I have to cylone over some rares 2-3 times to kill them. I think my weapon is my next upgrade.

Thanks for checking out my gear

Spoiler

swapping to this during maps

There are some things you should work on and it's not just the gear. You can make a few simple changes that should make your character much better:

1. Your passive tree is a little strange. I'm guessing you respecced this character from a bow build? You have 7 wasted points on the tree - Lethality (bow crit) takes 4 points and Survivalist (eva and res) takes 3 points. Refund those points and spend 4 on getting Thick skin (22% total life). With the other 3 I'd suggest taking Druidic Rite and one 5% life node. If you need the res from Survivalist, take Cloth and Chain instead - it will give you more res for fewer points.

2. You are not generating power charges at all, this is lowering your effective crit chance by 11%. You should add power charge generation somewhere. There are a few different methods you can use, but the simplest one by far for your current setup would be to buy a Blue Dream. They're actually not very expensive at all, 40-50c at the moment. Place it in the socket by the Scion resistance cluster and you'll have permanent 28% chance to gain power charge on kill.

If you can't afford Blue Dream or don't want to lose a rare jewel there are some methods for passive power charge generation through gem links you could try, the one that fits this build best is
Reckoning/Vengeance-Power charge on crit-(Increased critical strikes)-(Blind)
Put it in your weapon as a 2-3link or replace 2/all of your CWDT links with it. If you put it in your weapon you lose your utility gems but you can put one of them where Tempest Shield is now, it doesn't do very much anyway.

You could also try CWDT-Blade Vortex-PCoC-(Increased critical strikes).

3. I suggest you replace Ruthless with Increased critical strikes in your Cyclone links. This would take your effective crit chance from 56% with power charges to 76%. The on-paper DPS will be lower but I am fairly certain it will feel much better to play for you. You will explode packs more reliably, kill rares faster on average and have much more reliable leech - this last is an often overlooked benefit of a high crit chance.

Once you get better gear and more levels you can get enough crit chance to remain around 70% effective crit without the inc crit gem but for now I really think it would benefit you a lot.

I know that recoloring your Bronn's to 2g2b2r could be a bit of a hassle, so before you start recoloring it you could try replacing your AoE gem with inc crit to see how it feels.

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Alright, now for the gear. It's hard to rate this by importance because all of your gear is pretty decent as is but there's definitely room for improvement in most slots.

• Fix your flask rolls. You should reroll your quicksilver to get the Adrenaline suffix, Heat doesn't do anything for you anyway. Get Warding on your Stibnite and Staunching on your diamond. If you start using an inc crit gem instead of Ruthless you should be safe to stop using a life flask for mapping. Try using a Silver flask, they're really good.
• +1 Frenzy Darkray Vectors are much better than Attacks Vinktar. Vinktar is pretty good for sure but the big problem with it is how unreliable it is for raider. It's fine while mapping but on bosses you pretty much just get to use it once and that's it. Focus on getting reliable upgrades before you get a damage vinktar.
• You should get either a Choir of the Storm or a rare amulet to swap to when you do endgame bosses. Bisco's is great and all but it does absolutely nothing when you're trying to kill guardians or Shaper.
• Your character is a little bit life-starved so I think Starkonja's is definitely the way to go for now. Keep Rat's nest in mind if you want a DPS upgrade later on once you have a bit more life.
• Quality your Herald of Ice to 20%! The %increased cold damage is global, it's actually really important.
• For rings, those are pretty okay but they should ideally have more life. Since you're using Bisco's you need more stats on rings than I do so getting Opals will be very difficult for you.
  If you want to keep using Bisco's I would actually recommend just getting some really good two-stone or Diamond rings, don't be afraid to spend like 1-4 ex on them.
• Your foil is okay but for 2-4 ex you should be able to get one that will give you 5-15% more DPS. I'd say this upgrade shouldn't be very high on your priority list. I'd get +1 darkray vectors before upgrading the foil unless you find a really good deal.

I might have missed something, but that should give you something to work with for now. If there's anything specific I didn't cover just ask.

For linking jewels: there might be an easier method that I don't know about but here is what I do: Remove jewels from passive tree and place in inventory, change instance (go to town and back to hideout), refresh website. Now you can link the jewels from your inventory.

P.S. Headhunter is actually not even that good for this build, it's better for "normal" attack builds like frost blades, blade flurry, tornado shot etc. It does add a little bit of clearspeed but I just use it because it's fun. It's great for Beachhead but in general Belt of the Deceiver really is better.

"

Morenyn wrote:

Hey im gonna try this one as my second char on poe as it seems super fun visual/gameplay (loved d2 ww) and i dont rly like 2h for cyclone.

Do you think it can do good as starter for next league?, and is there a way to clear ele resist maps by swaping some gear or is it just impossible? I rly like to have the chance to do everything (excluding non life leech). Im on my way lvling the raider after having a lot of fun/success with my sunder zerker. And i want to see which one im gonna pick to start next league :).

Thanks for the guide btw, nice one.

For league starter viability I really can't say for sure since I just made this build recently and it was already quite late in the league. If I were to use this as a league starter I would probably start either by going non-crit 2h cyclone with something like Doomsower/Ngamahu or a different attack like Frost Blades and then respec to crit foils later on.

That's not to say starting as crit foil cyclone is impossible, in fact I don't think it would be that difficult. A lot of the damage comes from gems and there are no expensive uniques required. 5-link Cyclone-Ice bite-EDWA-Inc AoE-Inc crit should be good enough for mapping to start with. Atziri's promise, Silver and Diamond flasks are definitely good enough as well, you don't need Vinktar. You might have some trouble getting all the pieces in order, though. Balancing resists, getting a decent foil, fitting Bisco's in etc.

As for reflect, I've actually done unid'd red ele reflect maps without dying, but it's a bit sketchy. Being evasion/dodge based helps a lot but Vinktar obviously helps immensely as well.

You can also make yourself basically reflect-proof by using Sibyl's Lament with Yugul pantehon. I just now tried a yellow reflect map with that ring and it didn't even feel like reflect at all. I wasn't capped on all resists once I replaced a ring with Sibyl's but I just used a bismuth flask and it was fine. Sibyl's isn't even that bad as a ring if you just want to use it all the time. It has life, WED and flat damage so it fits perfectly.

Hey if i can ask as a new player, what make a raider better then a slayer as cyclone? Readed many threads but that is the first non-slayer i had found.

Thanks for your comeing answer^^

"

Kurokâ wrote:

Hey if i can ask as a new player, what make a raider better then a slayer as cyclone? Readed many threads but that is the first non-slayer i had found.

Thanks for your comeing answer^^

I wouldn't really say it's better so much as it is different.

Fundamentally, the typical slayer cyclone build will use physical damage, two-handed weapons and the Resolute Technique keystone, which disables crit but gives you 100% accuracy. My raider build uses elemental damage, one-handed weapons and crit (but still has 100% accuracy).

Practically, raider is generally faster and can scale its damage higher because of crit while slayer is generally slower but more tanky.

In more detail:

Slayer can use Kaom's Heart with a six-link weapon and get a ton of life that way. I started Harbinger league with a cyclone slayer, with decent gear and Kaom's Heart I had around 7.5k life. Starforge builds can get even more, especially with the Blood Magic keystone. Slayer has reflect protection and constant leech, which are strong defensive layers.

This raider build can't use Kaom's and gets less life from passives so it ends up with 5-6k life, depending on item choices and gear level. Evasion, dodge, enfeeble, freeze/chill and Vaal Pact are very strong defensive layers though - I basically never die in maps unless I get hit by volatile or strongbox ice nova.


My decently geared slayer had around 460k effective Cyclone DPS vs Shaper, 600k including Ancestral Warchief - those DPS numbers are around what you should expect to reach with a standard cyclone slayer phys build without very good gear.

This raider build can relatively easily reach 900k effective shaper DPS only from Cyclone, and the ceiling is higher than it is for non-crit builds. If you want even more damage you can use Blade flurry for endgame bosses to reach 1.2 million (something 2hand builds cannot do).


It's hard to compare clearspeed fairly. In the end though, with enough damage you will oneshot every pack and the defining attribute for clearspeed becomes movement speed, both literal running speed and speed of movement skills. This is where raider clearly beats slayer.

My Slayer character had +152% movement speed fully buffed and could only use Leap Slam as a movement skill, which is in general slower than shield charge (faster for lab though).

Fully buffed (which is all the time in maps) my raider character has +217% movement speed. This is already very high but in practice it is even higher because you will mostly use Shield Charge to move. The speed of shield charge is based on both movement and attack speed, both of which are very high for this build.

High movement speed also makes cyclone feel better to play because it locks your trajectory when you choose a cast point and higher ms makes you finish each attack faster.


I like the playstyle of raider more than slayer mostly because I like to go fast and raider is much faster. For a beginner I would probably recommend a non-crit slayer build over mine because the build and the mechanics are simpler.

PoB for my slayer if anyone wants to have a look, it's a bit of a mess but the settings in the link should be accurate.

Thanks for that fast answer. I just played a few weeks so learning atm^^

So for a League Start or that comeing race a raider-cyclone is better then that expensieve slayer-cyclones? Looked with all that crushing ice-spikes very more spectulare then a slayer^^

"

Kurokâ wrote:

Thanks for that fast answer. I just played a few weeks so learning atm^^

So for a League Start or that comeing race a raider-cyclone is better then that expensieve slayer-cyclones? Looked with all that crushing ice-spikes very more spectulare then a slayer^^

This question is hard to answer for me because I've never started a league with a build that scales flat elemental damage like this one, so I honestly cannot even make the comparison fairly. I've always started with phys attack builds or spellcasters. I intend to use a flat ele raider build to start one of the 10-day events, but I've not done it before. I'll give you some info on raider and then a bit on slayer as well and you can make your own choice based on that.

In theory flat ele raider should be good as a league starter because so much of the damage comes from gem levels and not expensive items. Wrath, Ice Bite, Added cold, Herald of Ice etc. I would not start as cyclone, however, because you are restricted to using rare foils as there are no good unique substitutes available and if you go for 2handers you kinda need RT with cheap gear. I would start as any of frost blades, spectral throw, blade flurry or even sunder. You could even start as a bow build, ice shot would probably be the best choice of the bow skills. Unique weapons like Lioneye's Glare, Touch of Anguish, Ewar's mirage etc. are easy to acquire. Good rare foils can be hard to get, especially early in leagues.

I have a lvl 67 "base" passive tree in the guide that you can use for any crit-based attack build with raider. Use that base, then take skill- or weapon-specific nodes to suit whatever you're using. You can respec into the cyclone foil build later on and it should cost you at most around 20-30 respec points.

Starting as Ngamahu cyclone raider is viable as well, but if you want to respec into crit foils later it will be more expensive than the above method.



I started Harbinger league with slayer cyclone. It is a very reliable league starter and is actually quite cheap to gear for mapping compared to many other builds. Doomsower, Kaom's Primacy and Hezmana's bloodlust are common unique weapons that can carry your build to red maps and beyond. Disfavour and Starforge are endgame upgrades, they are insanely good but you can do any content with a 40c weapon like a 5-link Doomsower. Slayer can also do uber lab very reliably and it's just overall nice to play with the 20% culling strike and overleech.

I used this guide as a base for my league starter slayer, can recommend it.


PS. The ice spikes are MTX, Herald of Ice does not look like that by default. I'm using Gloom Herald, Herald of Ice looks like this without MTX. The sound effect is the same though.

So, I absolutely love the build so far - it is everything I have wanted in a cyclone build, and more. I have played slayer cyclone before and it didn't feel very fluid to me.

The only complaint I have is that I seem to run out of mana and end up standing still waiting for mana to regen. Any suggestions on how to fix that other than running a mana flask (that I'd have to spam use)?

I am using a qotf currently, because I had one 6L'd with 3r2g1b. I plan on eventually switching to a bronn's.



This is the gear I'm currently using, if that helps at all (I know I'm not using all the gems sockets right now. I got lazy..)

Thanks for that answer^^ Because Someone telled me that a slayer just should play a Dark Pact build and let cyclone to other classes. Best with Slayer i find as that insame leech and reg.