[3.4] Better than Flicker - Consecrated Path Trickster with poison and 100% mana reservation

[3.4] Better than Flicker!
- Consecrated Path Trickster with poison and fire to start a league with -

The idea for this build:
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I was looking for something different this league and became interested in Consecrated Path due to 3 reasons:
- It's a movement skill, so I can easily keep up with enemies running away.
- It's an attack so it can leech life.
- It has fire damage.

And then it hit me: As a Trickster I can use movement skills without needing mana. Great! The Trickster also scales well with damage over time and burn can provide that. Even Better!

But there's more:

This bad boy let's me also use poison. And the Trickster get's bonus chaos damage. JACKPOT!

Pros:
+ Cheap league starter only needs one cheap unique to start farming.
+ No mana needed.
+ You can use a defensive aura (Grace) and two Heralds or Haste.
+ You get nice life regeneration from consecrated ground and leech.
+ With 7 frenzy charges on a movement skill you are fast as hell.
+ Great against large groups of enemies. Melts through tunnels while delving.

Cons:
- Not so easy to keep up the charges against solo bosses with no ads.
- As a shadow getting max life is quite a pain. - So big hits hurt, A LOT.
- Reflect is baaad, 'mkay?

Core concept of the build:
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This build needs three things to work properly:

Consecrated Path
A movement, melee, attack skill that convert's physical to fire and uses only the main hand. Works with unarmed, axe, sword, mace, sceptre and staff.
It's feels a little like Flicker Strike but without the randomness and the cooldown.

The Consuming Dark

Since Consecrated Path does not work with daggers but only uses your main hand, you can off-hand this and have a nice stat stick that enables the build for use with poison damage.

The Trickster Ascendancy class - especially the passive WEAVE THE ARCANE.
With that you need no mana for your main attack skill. That allows for an early five or six link. (As early as clearing the normal labyrinth.) And later you can use 100% mana reservation as soon as you get a proper cwdt-setup running.
This Ascendancy class also let's you generate frenzy charges and power charges that boost your damage.

Levelling and Passive Tree:
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lvl tree 30:
Take the crit in the north first then move south.

lvl 60 tree:
Take all the life you can get along the way south. But your end goal is the life leech and life in the duelist region. When your strenght is lacking take one of the +30 nodes.

End Game Tree with lvl 90:
You need moar life, so the big life wheel near the scion is your next goal. Then it's time for some damage. And there is more life at the marauder... gimme!

Ascendancy:
Weave the Arcane (Normal) > Swift Killer (Cruel) > Patient Reaper (Merciless) > Harness the Void (Uber)

Bandits:
I'd always go for the two passives for killin'em all. - This build is always migrating somewhere so more passive points are nice.
Kraityn is meh and Oak also. Alira would be nice, but you don't need mana regeneration.


Skill setup:
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Chest (RRBBR+R/G)
Consecrated Path + melee physical damage + added chaos damage + concentrated effect + added fire damage + faster attacks/Ruthless

Ruthless gives more damage but on a rare evasion chest 5 off colours are hard enough to come by. So Faster Attacks it is if you want to use evasion. With 2 green sockets you could trade in Added Fire for Wither Support or Vile Toxins.
As a rule of thumb: The more green sockets you have, the less damage you make.

If you use Armour or Armour/ES getting those 4 red sockets is easy.


4L - CWDT mid (RRGG)
Cast when Damage Taken (lvl 11) + Punishment (lvl 14) + Summon Ice Golem (lvl 13) + Blood Rage (lvl 14)

Punishment gives nice extra damage. If you need something more defensive go for Enfeeble or Temporal Chains.
Blood Rage helps with frenzy charge generation.
The golem is best for buffing crit and accuracy.


3-4L Totem (RRG+G)
(Vaal) Ancestral Warchief Totem + Bloodmagic + Blind + Frenzy (or Wither Support)

I simply love Blind on the totem for the bonus defense against (close range) attacks. Wither gives a nice damage boost.
You could also stick Frenzy here for an added way of generating frenzy charges.


4L extra movement (RRGG)
Leap Slam + Fortify + Whirling Blades + Faster Attacks

So I heard you like movement skills... But yeah, terraces and chasms are a pain, so Leap Slam is QoL - I wouldn't wanna miss it.
Whirling Blades is for getting fast out of sticky situations. Fortify is added defense with that.


3L Aura and Heralds (RRG)
(Vaal) Grace - Herald of Purity - Herald of Ash

Herald of Purity offers more damage. So until you can reserve all your mana, prefer this to Herald of Ash.

3L CWDT low (RRR)
Cast when Damage Taken (lvl 2) + (Vaal) Immortal Call (lvl 4) + increased duration (max lvl)

The classic defense setup.

Items:
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Core:

That's it. You need nothing more to get this build going. You can clear maps to about mid tier easily by just using The Consuming Dark and good found rares.

So what stats to look for?
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On your main hand weapon:
1. physical damage
2. attack speed
3. accuracy and crit chance
4. fire damage or increased elemental damage
5. chaos damage and poison

Alternatives for leveling:
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You can also use Brigthbeak.

On your armour:
1. life
2. resists
3. attributes (mostly Str and Int to enable your skills or balance your immunities if you can get a Cyclopean Coil)
4. (movement) speed
5. accuracy
6. (added) damage (physical before fire before chaos)

On your rings and amulet:
1. resitances
2. life
3. attributes (Str and Int)
4. accuracy and added damage (physical before fire before chaos)
5. crit chance

On your belt:
1. life
2. Str
3. damage (physical before crit before elemental/fire)


Unique items and end game setup:
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Main hand:

Until you can find something with more speed and more damage, use this.

Boots:

A good rare with nice movespeed, resistances and life.

Alternatives:
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You could use The Red Trail for the additional way of generating charges against solo bosses (with no ads).

Gloves:

They give extra benefits in combination with Cyclopean Coil and Astramentis.

Alternatives:
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Snakebite gives moar speed but shortens the uptime of your frenzy charges. Against bosses that can be bad.
The Embalmer gives extra life and added chaos damage. Nice.
Meginord's offer lots of strength and thus more physical damage. They are a good start.

Belt:

This gives you immunity to freeze and shock (If you can keep Int above Str.) or burn (with Meginord's). In addition they offer nice stat scaling with Shaper's Touch and Astramentis - given you can get enough resistances from the rest of your gear.

Alternatives:
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Helmet:

A good rare with life, resistances and accuracy or damage.

Alternatives:
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Starkonja's or Abyssus - Given you have enough resists.

Chest:

You can use those throwaway pieces that got vaaled with too many off-colours. 3 to 4 red and 2 blue sockets on a dex-piece? - Gimme!
I prefer using evasion chests since I find evasion best for characters that have not much life and really don't want to get hit very often.
Again, you prefer life and resistances before damage.


Alternative Uniques:
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Loreweave or Skin of the Loyal - but they cost.
Carcass Jack doesn't cost much to buy, but good luck getting at least 3r2b on it.
And if you feel like burning Ex you can buy Farrul's helmet and chest for an alternative way to keep your frenzy charges up.

Jewelry:

There be resistances. And life. And some damage if you can get it.

Use Astramentis, if you can get all the resists you need from chest, helmet, rings and boots.

Flasks:

Something for everything. I wouldn't say Atziri's is a must, but damn, that's some extra damage.

Jewels:
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You should look for something with life, crit and attack speed.
For damage search for physical damage before fire damage before chaos damage.

Get resistances and attributes on jewels as well, if you need them.


Playstyle/Map mods/Alternatives:
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Playstyle:
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This build is made for delve and it excels at delving fast. Big groups of enemies are an easy prey. The only problem are those bosses that have no mobs spawn at the start of the fight.

You don't have to do much while playing on densely packed maps or while delving. Keep the button for Consecrated Path pressed and go. If you get hit too much, use Whirling Blades to get out of the fight. Use the totem and your flasks and head back into the fray.
Against enemies with more life it's possible to jump around them. Just position your mouse on the opposite side of the enemy and Consecrated Path will jump creating new consecrated ground for more life reg.

If there are no enemies near to use Consecrated Path or the enemies are standing in a bad spot (burning/desecrated ground) you can use Leap Slam or Whirling Blades to position yourself or get around the area.

The thing with frenzy charges:
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Frenzy charges, offer no direct way for this build to get them without KILLING enemies. Except for Frenzy, but that means loosing damage while you charge up and you have to stay very close to the boss.
In most cases the inability to generate charges from hits or crits or something else than kills is no big deal. You charge up against mob packs and then charge into the boss/big guys. You run out of charges? - There's bound to be some ads from the boss around.

But there are bosses that don't offer you that luxury. One of them is the Vall City Delve boss. No charges (or charges about to run out) as you enter and you gotta get him to below 50% life to have ads spawn.

My proposed solution is using Frenzy (on the Totem 4L) or The Red Trail. Frenzy means you have to watch your charge duration closely and use the skill before your charges run out. Keep in mind that you need to get nice and cozy with the boss for that.
The Red Trail offers a way to generate frenzy charge when you suffer bleeding. A bit risky but it works if you watch your life.

Other methods would either be using a vaaled Portal gem or spending ridiculous amounts of Ex to get Farrul's (helmet and chest).
The Raider does not work (you loose damage, see below). The same goes for Oro's Sacrifice.

If anybody finds a better solution for charge generation, feel free to hint it to me.

Map mods:
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It's satisfying how good this build works especially on crowded and/or linear maps.

Beware of reflect!!! (Elemental is more dangerous than physical.) - You jump into a larger group and poof goes your life. Those groups are even more dangerous if a rare with "allies cannot die" walks into them. This build gets much of its life back by killing (cf. the Trickster Acendancy passives).
You could swap out added fire and both heralds for haste and maybe get away with running ele reflect, but I'd rather not run that mod.

No leech is dangerous but not impossible. Same with no regen. - You can trade one for the other thanks to consecrated ground.


Alternatives:
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I thought about using two-handed weapons but the extra damage from The Consuming Dark is hard to pass by.
The same goes for using the Raider as a differnt starting (and ascendancy) class. You loose the power charges, you loose the full reservation (one Herald less for a long time, enlighten is too expensive for a starter) or loose out on damage from Doriyani's for having to use Soul Taker. And you don't get more Frenzy charges than the Trickster - you only get them a little more realiably.
Last edited by Andrej#2980 on Oct 25, 2018, 1:58:47 AM
Last bumped on Jan 13, 2019, 2:00:32 PM
FAQ (tbd):
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Hi, I'm just cleaning here! Nothin' to see...

Versions:
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- 2018-10-24 Version 1.0 for PoE 3.4
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- first complete overview of the build
- currently lvl 87 in Delve League, character ConsecrateExMachina
- no Shaper, Elder or Atziri done (I simply don't have enough time to play.)
Last edited by Andrej#2980 on Oct 24, 2018, 4:23:02 AM
Im gonna use this build for my betrayal starter league. Many many thanks for the guide.
main hand/stat stick changed gutted this idea, no longer possible to use consecrated path with a dagger equiped at all right?
Last edited by Irra_set#1448 on Dec 4, 2018, 8:38:49 PM
WARNING
Since 3.5 changed dual wielding, you are no able to use Consecrated path with dagger in off-hand.
so is there any substitute weapon or gear?
Breath of the council. Ez game, ez life.

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