[3.25] Holy Flicker Strike Necro [League start > All content] All content is done. PoB updated
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I league started with Holy Relic and just wasn't having much fun with it. I ended up trying it again with this build and I'm now enjoying it quite a bit.
I'm at that late yellows/early reds stage of mapping and starting to hit that wall that you described in your earlier posts. I still need a couple levels and to respec a couple points to get my medium cluster going + a fortress covenant to have that extra bit of block but I'm not 100% sure where I should spend my currency next. My damage feels passable still but my survivability is dipping. In early to mid yellows I almost never touched my life flask but now I'm having to spam it a little and experiencing the odd death here and there. Based on your posts I'm assuming Asenaths, the timeless jewel + the ES on block shield? Maybe the other thing would be a new weapon? I'd say about 50% of the time things start feeling spooky is when static strike is down and I'm waiting forever for a hit to connect to get the relics going again. Thanks a lot for the guide - this has been my favourite character this league. PoB - https://pastebin.com/xTPGwgM7 |
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" Thanks for trying it out and I'm glad you enjoing it and feel the same way I did when I hit the wall in red maps. Confirms that my experience is not unique. So the very first thing you need to do, is to annoint your amulet with EVEN MORE BLOCK. Getting Deflection on Stone of Lazhwar actually makes you feel like you got on a whole new level on immortal. "And there is an easy solution to this. Reckoning Your static strike down? Enemy hit you? You block? Everything arond dies. You could also replace your shiled with high armor base + Life + spell block. You don't nesseserily need ES on block. Its a luxury stat and its much better when you transition to the ES shield. For now, Ebony Tower shield and above is your best friend. You can even try out Aegis Aurora but you will miss out on some spell block then. The ES regen will be divine though. I liked your idea to cheat timless keystone with belt. Even more reason for you to use Aegis. It will do for now, but eventually you gonna need timeless. The reason being: You need to work on chaos resist. Its not a high priority at this stage, but it will be at some point. Stygain with Jewel that gives Chaos resist will help a lot with capping 75 chaos res and start using Forbidden Taste. And finally, whatever you do, attempt to cap attack block. You have a whole circle of passives for it just waiting for you to take them near Agressive Bastion.  Now the minor things.
Spoiler
Shock Resistance notable is worthless. Ignite Resistance is 10 times better, but I leave you to judge. Think if you ever died to some random damage overtime effect. You prolly will.
General rule of thumb here - if its not 100% reduced effect, its worthless. You can get Ignite and Chill to 100% by upgrading Pantheon. Shock needs you to have Harvest craft on jewels. Speaking of Pantheon - I'd highly recommend Abberath. There are a lot of burning grounds in the game that don't look like burning ground. Black, Purple, Blue, Lava pools from goatmen, yellow beams of solaris, etc. Both burning ground ad Ignie stops Energy Shiled from regening. You already have 2 curses. That's a lot of buttons to press. I'd recommend putting one into weapon trigger, and using tempest shield manualy. Tempest shield has very fast cast rate and can pressed and held to trigger everything. Then it renews itself every time you block. You barely even need to cast it ofen. Unlike curse. Not entirely sure why you are using Predator in your Golem set up. Seems like a waste of slot to me. I would guess is its your way of trying to direct golem to maim a boss or something, but if its a boss, there would be no enemies around to begin with, cuz relics AoE them. Cluster is a step you need to take only after you get Thread of Hope, as it gives you a fair amount of points to put in clusters. Asenath is a huge in terms of protecting you. Removed corpses, blinds enemies (50% for you to not get hit, regarless of your evasion) and makes clear about twice smoother. It costs a lot so consider. Your relic damage is actually really good for gear you have. But getting +1 corruption on your chest would be massive boost to all damage. Also note that Level 20/20 Divergent Relic gives more DPS than lvl 21/20 regular one. But requires you to have level 18 static strike. Even more DPS if 20/23 Divergent. As an experiment, since you have Soul Theather, you can get a Supreme Decadence from timless jewel. Making your flask heal double. But its mostly memes. Last edited by Fire_Archer#4037 on Aug 22, 2021, 5:32:16 AM
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Wow thanks so much for the detailed reply!
I made a handful of the changes you recommended so far. Waiting to farm up a bit of currency and gain a couple levels to get the other changes done. Survivability is feeling a lot better in low reds so far. I've run a handful of t11s, a couple t12s, and a kind of spooky 8 mod t13 with sextants and fragments and while there were a couple of close-ish calls, overall I felt pretty comfortable the whole map.
Changes I've made so far
- Annointed Deflection I felt kind of bad doing this on a non-perfect stone of lazhwar but with bone offering and tempest shield up I am block capped so it's ok for now. Long term I can think about picking one up with perfect rolls. - Replaced Sentari's Bought a +90 life, 6% block, 12% spell block, 18% all res for very cheap. It's not shaper influenced and doesn't have high armour but it was cheap enough that I picked it up to get a little improvement over the Sentari's. - Dropped Predator, added Reckoning, changed Trigger spells I had Predator as kind of a leftover gem from leveling and just hadn't replaced it with anything yet. Reckoning is nice QoL. It helps me probably more than I've noticed but it does help with relic uptime in those moments where static strike is down and I can't go in for a new hit yet or just that small gap of time until my new hit actually lands. Swapped Tempest Shield for Punishment in my trigger setup. Not 100% on this one - just personal preference. This setup works perfectly fine but I think I might just prefer manually casting Punishment for tough packs/bosses and letting tempest shield trigger automatically. Going to give it some more time before I swap back. - Dropped Soul Tether Just because of mana issues. Until I get an Enlighten, Zealotry is just kind of uncomfortable and my Bone Offering can't trigger because I don't have enough unreserved mana for it with Zealotry running. My old belt is pretty awful so I'm just spamming harvest crafts on a stygian until I get a decent one, ideally with some chaos res. I can tell damage is going to start falling off a little as I push into mid/late reds and you mentioned the +1 chest being a big boost. I haven't seen any with the right colours up for sale yet but other colour combos start at around 3ex. If my math is right then it's probably going to be far cheaper to buy one vs buy up temples (currently 1ex) and chests hoping I get it. I can also start leveling some divergent holy relics in the meantime. |
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" Good shield, nothing to say about it. " Reckoning is actually insane. It works when you are frozen, it works when you are stunned, and if you get anomalus version, it will debuff your enemies for dealing even less damage. But its not too important. " Not sure how mana is related to your belt. I think Soul Tether were giving you much more survivability than your current belt, or any stygain you can get, untill you get Glorious Vanity in. 1200 ES for free is much more than 200 life and some stats. As for Zealotry, there is absolutely no reason to use it. Skitterbots are far more superior than Zealotry. The reason why you wanna use it later, is because you get shock effect from the ring craft. Also there is no reason to level skitterbots either, as they will cost more Dex that you don't have and damage boost from that is so minor its not even funny. Its like 0.5 or 1% at best. " Well you have 2 ways to go from there. Boost single target damage with chest, or boost clear with Asenath. Both are high cost, so choose with some thought. " You could actually look for a Karui Scepter with Alva mod AND attack speed roll with open suffix to craft trigger. Just a little bit of QoL, to strike faster. But its rather minor. Also I would get a 2 point small cluster with Rote Reinforcement and respec the entire branch of passives that gives you endurance charges. And put them in attack block. Even better idea would be getting Magalomaniac with Rote Reinforcement and a usefull thing like Mater of Command or Renewal. Last edited by Fire_Archer#4037 on Aug 22, 2021, 6:07:02 PM
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" I never really checked out the damage - I assumed the higher shock effect would be more of a boost to damage. Being back on skitters is a lot more comfy for mana. Things have been progressing - t16s are now comfortable to farm and I very rarely rip while mapping and if I do it's 95% of the time because of my own negligence.
Changes
- Fully upgraded Brine King + Abberath - Swapped to 20/23 Divergent relic + 19/23 Static strike - Swapped back to Replica Soul Tether + Skitterbots - Bought a Megalomaniac with Rote Reinforcement + Master of Command - Dropped the Inexorable cluster for Megalomaniac + 1 point in Aggressive Bastion cluster At this point clearing t16s is comfortable but the single target is starting to fall off even on map bosses. I've cleared t14+ A4 conquerors and my first Sirus of the league, all deathless. Surprisingly dps on Sirus was a lot higher than I expected based on how my damage on map bosses had felt so far. I think single target is more important to me than clear for now so I'll be looking to work on that next.
Upcoming Single Target Improvements
There's a few things I can do, but upgrades are starting to get pricier. In (rough) order from least expensive -> most expensive: - Holy Relic damage helm enchant (1-2ex) - Unnerved/Cull medium curse cluster (to replace my old medium cluster) (3-4ex) - 21 Divergent Holy Relic (5ex) - +1 gems corrupted chest (0 for sale today) - 4 Empower (9ex) - +1 spell skills weapon (with the temple mod) (9ex) Some of these aren't too bad to farm, just a time investment (ie leveling gems and The other thing I'm looking at is getting a Thread of Hope setup going to free up some passives. It improves things for me defensively but my dps drops a decent amount when dropping the other nodes in the Spiritual Aid cluster. With my single target feeling a little low and my survivability feeling good for now, I'm a little hesitant to make this change until I get 1 or 2 of the dps upgrades. Last edited by Vigeous#3485 on Aug 23, 2021, 10:12:57 PM
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" The value you are scaling there is 15%. 15 is not a big number to scale with % increase. " Perhaps you are rolling into Physical Damage Reduction mod on maps. Bosses in game have no armor, so its not surprising Sirus without map mods takes a lot of damage. Keep an eye out for map mods, maybe you don't want to run some if they slow you down. " So I'm gonna share a little bit of my experience with that. I always go for clear. The reason being - regardless of your damage you spend more time in the map than fighting boss. Yeah it feels kinda bad to just run around boss for like 40 seconds, waiting for it to die, but reality is, you save much more than 40 seconds if you clear the map 2 minutes faster. And on top of that. Asenath actually enable you to do league mechanics faster = more rewards = more moni. It basically unlocks doing blighted maps and blight encounters. Makes you go over 6 layers of delirium. Flash breach becomes a farm fest, legion becomes somewhat doable. Alva temple/encounter becomes too easy honestly. This is also the reason why I run Area of Effect gem instead of Meat Shield for all content other than Ubers. Blowing up screen of monsters and watch explosion chain half of the sreen extra, feels... efficient. " Ah but you don't have to drop them. You still have 0 point travel fee towards those with Thread of Hope. You can keep them if you want, but getting culling at that cost equals in getting 10% more damage. But you are at the stage of pushing build to the limit, I let you to decide what to do, and use guide for details. Feel free to ask anything as you progress. Another thing worth mentioning, you can get a Blue Nightmare jewel going and respec the spell block nodes into resist nodes. That in turn frees you some extra space in your gear slots to start working on chaos resist. T16 - its time to work on it. Last edited by Fire_Archer#4037 on Aug 24, 2021, 12:36:42 AM
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More progress has been made. Single target is still holding up comfortably so far. Another round of deathless conquerors + Sirus as well as 3 Shaper guardians.
Progress
- Level 94
- Asenath's are working very nicely - Replaced old medium cluster for Wish for Death + Dark Discourse - Crafted a simple pair of chance to unnerve gloves for big bosses - Updated some gems to be 21 and/or quality - Holy Relic helm enchant How noticeable is the Reckless Defense? 10% chance to be shocked, frozen, and ignited is kind of a big tradeoff. I know we block 75% of hits and then of those 25% only 10% trigger the ailments but I can't help but think that when it does hit it's an unnecessary inconvenience. Personally I'm leaning toward covering that last couple block % missing from the swap to the thread setup with a better rolled amulet and/or a point or 2 in the tree. What do you think? Also trying to make chaos res a priority now (currently at 25%). And as for my last few upgrades, I'm trying to farm them up myself while I'm still not at the real endgame yet. I have 6 Divergent Holy Relics leveling and hoping one of them will hit 21. Going to also be farming Alvas once I sort out my atlas some more and then I'll see if I still want/need the +1 gems weapon (unless I get luck with a harvest myself). |
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" You literally won't feel a thing. You have ignite/chill/shock/freeze reduction from Anointed Flesh + Pantheons, on top of block and 10% is such a low value to begin with. You are pretty much immune to ignites right now, freeze doesn't do anything to you, because you would be just standing and blocking anyway, you can get full chill immunity, the only scary thing is sock, but you can deal with that too, reducing it even further, or even to 100% with harvest jewel crafts. And +4/+4 block for 2 passive points is really big value. You can't get a better tradeof in terms of passive points spendings. Looking how your levels went up I guess Asenath doing some good work. Glad you found it worth of investment. Overall your build looking good. I would really change the gem positions. 8 second cooldown on Steelskin instead of 2.5 is.... very bad. Flasks are also looking a bit weird, especially mana one, but I'm not the one to judge, I have no clue how to set up flask properly myself. Taste of hate would help a lot tho, there are lot of cold damage overtime zones in the game currently + it gives good protection from hits as well. I haven't put it in guide yet, but I removed Zealotry/Skitters from build for now, replaced it with Vaal Discipline to be even more tanky. Will see if it will do any good against Feared. Also note that Glorious Vanity will change your passives that path to it. You might get something good like +resists +chaos resist or + block, consider that before you go for upgrading gear. Last edited by Fire_Archer#4037 on Aug 26, 2021, 8:00:09 PM
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Another 3 of Feared is done so its time for some update.
Damn getting to the fight is getting expensive. I've experimented with 3 different adjustments to see if I can boost up survivability and not loose too much damage. Spoiler alert - none of that worked.
Warcry setup
Traveling down on a tree to grab instant warcry keystone, at cost of some life. The idea was - if Enduring Cry will heal 2k HP, its worth loosing 300 health for that. And while it was VERY smooth for mapping and minor bosses, healing you up, giving you extra damage reduction and even generating you endurance charges... Feared just don't care. You get oneshotted by almost anthing. So there is nothing to heal. Still, having warcry instead of a guard skill proven to be great for mapping. I might actually use it at leaguestart, when you can't generate endurance charges easily.
Discipline setup
Swapping Zealotry for Vaal Discipline and adding some minion damage nodes to compensate for damage loss, I ended with 6000 Life and 3000 Energy shield. And the ability to restore Energy Shield with Vaal Discipline midfight. Suffice to say that even that paired with mitigations and block was not enough. Any ability Atziri does just straight up oneshots you if you fail to block.
Back to kill them before they kill you meta
And so I returned to Zealotry with extra minion damage nodes. This will be the end build for me, I can't push it further in terms of damage. Rocking 4.7 mill DPS and a solid 5800HP+2200ES
Once again, all 3 times I got unlucky with spawns and had to face Atziri and Cortex at the same time. This two took down 2 portals to do, then its pretty much free. Guard skill proven to be very important. Steelskin that it. There is no point in using Molten Shell anymore. Flasks were very handy too, especially Trigger Bleed flask that would deal with Atziri bleeds nicely. Savage Hit Taste of Hate were doing some work too, and of course, +100 charges Harves Forbiden Taste to rapidly heal if needed.
Final Flask Setup
Delirium Maps. As an experiment I run some heavily juiced delitium maps. Not much to say about it 20-60% feels like doing a regular map. Nothing scarry or hard, block and HP+ES regen just covers all of it. Relic damage is high to kill anything. 80% feels pretty easy too, but if you play at 1 fps (like I do) on a potato PC, there is a chance that large group of monsters will kill you during lag time. 100% is most likely not worth doing, as it just takes too long to kill enemies. And then some to loot the entire thing. |
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I kind of stopped progressing the character since my last post. I started tunnel visioning my challenges as I was getting close to 36. So I started spending all my currency on that instead.
However, even in my character's current state I'm happy with how far it got me. I can't remember everything I've done since my last post but the notable ones are A8 Sirus and conquerors, expedition bosses, Cortex, witnessed Shaper/Elder, and a Simulacrum, all deathless. If anyone else is reading through this thread and considering trying the build, I can definitely recommend it. Holy Relic is kind of a nice middle ground between a minion build and a non-minion build. Your relics do the heavy lifting and you have some automated uptime with static strike, but you are still being active with the build. I also found it to be easy on the hands. My damage wasn't insane but it was comfortable. And I felt tanky so I didn't feel like everything had to be instantly deleted for me to survive. I definitely have some changes and upgrades to make still to push my character closer to the finished version of the build, but I completed the majority of the game with the current state of my gear.
Gear
(glove swap for tough bosses) Jewels 1x Fiesting Fiends + Renewal (Large Cluster Jewel) 1x Dark Discourse + Wish for Death (Medium Cluster Jewel) 1x Rote Reinforcement + Master of Command (Megalomaniac) 1x Fortress Covenant tldr; build is solid, fun, and I recommend it. And thank you Fire_Archer for all of your help along the way and for posting all of your 3.15 updates and findings as you tested stuff. Thank you for the guide! |
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