3.6 Ethereal Knives Phys/Chaos Trickster

Leveling is done with Ethereal Knives that you get by Level 1 + Summon Phantasm on Kill Support and Projectile Speed Support. Add Bane in Act 3 by Level 24, this will carry you trough most Acts. Pick up Holy Flame totem for Boss Fights. By Act 5 pick up ring of Blades unique Jewel. By level 40 your Main 4 Link Should look like this: Ethereal Knives + Spell Echo + Controlled Destruction + Energy Leech Support

Main Idea of this Build is to stack as much global physical damage and global chaos damage and X% of Physical Damage gained as Chaos Damage to maximize the Damage.

Level 93 PoB with my Gear
https://pastebin.com/7m4gCcUF


sitting on voer 4 Mio Dps for Mapping,
Shaper/Guardian without Flasks at 1.1 Mio DPS, Vaal RF, Power Charges. With Them over 2 Million.

Ah and your Totems do 600k DPS just by themself.

Pros & Cons:
Very Fast+
Great Defense+
A lot of Movement Skills+
Strong Leech+
Can run no regen Map+
Fairly Cheap+

Can't run Phys Reflect-
Can't run Elemental Reflect if you have Elemental Damage mod's on the Gear or Herald of Ash active.
Depending on Flasks for Ailments Immunity, Curse Immunity, Bleed-
Damage is high enough to kill Bosses, but not extreme-

1. Gem Links:
6 Link: Ethereal Knives + Spell Echo + Controlled Destrcuction + Energy Leech + Mana Leech Support + Arcane Surge Support (6- Link)

4 Link Auras: Blasphemy Support + Enlighten + Projectile Weakness Assassin's Mark

4 Link (Weapon):Whirling Blades + Fortify + Herald of Ash + Flame Dash

3 Link: CWDT + Immortal Call + Summon Lightning Golem

4 Link Totem:
Holy Flame Totem + Multiple Totems Support + Controlled Destruction + Infused Channeling


3 Link:Vaal Righteous Fire + Discipline + Blood Magic Support

2. Ascendancy, Bandits, Keystones:

Bandits: Take Alira
Pantheon: Soul of Solaris and Soul of Shakari
First Lab: Take Swiftkiller
Second Lab: Take Ghost Dance
Third Lab: Take Escape Artist
Forth Lab: Take Weave the Arcane
Switch from Swiftkiller to Harness the Void, as you feel that maps are no longer an Issue for you.

Why Harness the Void and not Swiftkiller? - Swiftkiller is greater for Mapping as it is easy to have all your charges up all the time. Different in Boss fights, where you don't always have Monster's to kill. Swiftkiller is an overall damage loss with a potential higher Spike, maintaining full charges while you fight tough encounter is nearly impossible, and should not be a priority for you during this fight. You can gain Charges on other way's - Assassin's Mark Blasphemy will give you Charges, also some new Synthesis implicits or Elder Mod on Gloves, can provide you Charges, making Swiftkiller a bad choise.

What about CI? - you can take CI with Ghost Reaver, just drop some Shield Spell Damage nodes. But, as you already have over +100 Chaos Resistance with Ming's Heart i don't feel like it is necessary to loose 2k EHP dropping you from 10k EHP to 8k EHP. If you go CI, then consider going for Mark of the Shaper + Elder Ring instead of Ming's.

Why Discipline with Bloodmagic? - You can make some use of Lowlife, but you actually never use it besides Boss fight's.

In most of the Bossfights is ABSOLUTE 0 Chaos Damage, such as Shaper, Elder, Uber Elder, Nexus and Cortex Bosses, Delve Bosses, Bestiary Bosses, Shaper Guardians, and Elder Guardians.

Only Chauyla, Chimera and The Constrictor and Fenumus, First of the Night do some Chaos Damage. So you fight them without Discipline. For all other Bosses Low Life is 25% free more Damage and 1000 free Energy Shield.

For General Mapping this Damage and extra Energy Shield is not needed at all. So just run with deactivated Discipline.



3. Items:
Here is my actual gear:

As you see there are some Elemental Damage sources, as well as Herald of Ash making me unable to run elemental reflect maps but giving me more overall damage.

This item has a great synergy with Ethereal Knives + Chain Support, as you get 3 Chains and a Whooping Gain 60% of Physical Damage as Extra Damage to that hit. It feels great on Maps, however this nasty Loose 10-15 Life for each enemy Hit by your Spells can drop your Life down quicker then your Leech from Gloomfang can work now, as it is capped by 20% of your Life per second.

Gloomfang has 0.5% Chaos Damage Leeched as Life, that is more then enough to cap your Lifeleech at 20% - 400 Life per second.

If you hit 20 Monsters with 6 Hits a second it equals to 60 hits that degen you 1200 to 1800 Life depending on your Gloomfang roll, while you only sustain 400 Life in the Same second. And additional Chaos Damage from Somewhere, and you are Dead.

there is a "Workaround" for it provided by a nice Community guy making it even possible for CI and Lowlife to use Gloomfang, but as it does not provide any damage in Boss fights, i did opt out of Gloomfang in the late Stage of this build as my Damage on Maps is Insane Anyway. Care more about Boss Damage now.

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2225600/page/1

However it is a great item, and makes a lot of fun to play. You have to get rid of Mana Leech Support for Chain Support to do that, and for this you will need Boots with 0.5% of Damage Leeched as Life and Mana when you Killed Recently enchant. I still use Gloomfang + Chain now and then when i go for really fast mapping in a bulk, but got to lazy to switch for Mana Leech Support before Bossfights, makes me run Mana Leech Full Time.

All this will not work on Bosses, letting you with no Mana, and no extra Damage.