Flicker Strike AOE.

Flicker Strike is a heavy investment skill, to play with it you need to give up: 10 passive points (power charge passives), 2 gear slots (amulet and gloves for generating power charges), several skill slots and support slots in skills, sometimes even jewel slots.
Right now it seems like this skill has no purpose.
Clearing with Flicker Strike is not so enjoyable because you have no AOE on it and you can't provide it with viable items, support skills or passive tree nodes.
It also lacks single target because you can't use Tempest Bell well (you will do less damage if you hit Bell instead of an enemy with Flicker, this is not the case for Tempest Flurry, Ice Strike or even Whirling Assault, which are not so demanding and available earlier).
Adding even a small AOE of 1.3-1.5 meters, even scaling with skill level, will solve this problem and make Flicker Strike oriented builds more viable and enjoyable.

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Riliment#7178 wrote:

Flicker Strike is a heavy investment skill, to play with it you need to give up: 10 passive points (power charge passives), 2 gear slots (amulet and gloves for generating power charges), several skill slots and support slots in skills, sometimes even jewel slots.
Right now it seems like this skill has no purpose.
Clearing with Flicker Strike is not so enjoyable because you have no AOE on it and you can't provide it with viable items, support skills or passive tree nodes.
It also lacks single target because you can't use Tempest Bell well (you will do less damage if you hit Bell instead of an enemy with Flicker, this is not the case for Tempest Flurry, Ice Strike or even Whirling Assault, which are not so demanding and available earlier).
Adding even a small AOE of 1.3-1.5 meters, even scaling with skill level, will solve this problem and make Flicker Strike oriented builds more viable and enjoyable.

Charged Staff is your AOE and it's amazing.

We get range-AOE that use power charge: Falling Thunder

Flicker Strike is a semi-AoE with a drawback: you kill enemies, but you don’t know where you’ll land, potentially getting killed by on-death effects or terrain/traps. Flicker Strike is fine, but the real problem is survivability.

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PhillipBurns#5461 wrote:

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Riliment#7178 wrote:

Flicker Strike is a heavy investment skill, to play with it you need to give up: 10 passive points (power charge passives), 2 gear slots (amulet and gloves for generating power charges), several skill slots and support slots in skills, sometimes even jewel slots.
Right now it seems like this skill has no purpose.
Clearing with Flicker Strike is not so enjoyable because you have no AOE on it and you can't provide it with viable items, support skills or passive tree nodes.
It also lacks single target because you can't use Tempest Bell well (you will do less damage if you hit Bell instead of an enemy with Flicker, this is not the case for Tempest Flurry, Ice Strike or even Whirling Assault, which are not so demanding and available earlier).
Adding even a small AOE of 1.3-1.5 meters, even scaling with skill level, will solve this problem and make Flicker Strike oriented builds more viable and enjoyable.

Charged Staff is your AOE and it's amazing.

Only if you have Herald of Ice + Polcirkeln + Call of the Brotherhood. Otherwise it's not that good for clear. It's better than Staggering Palm only due to duration of the buff.

I'm running it right now with only one power charge node (the extra duration area one), and the quarterstaff skill that gives you an extra power charge effectiveness up to your max. Its doing fine. Throw in Ambush and I have 100% crit against full health enemies. Charged staff doesn't murk all the pack all the time, but it does a good enough job.

The best thing about it in comparison to Falling Thunder is that it more reliably charges Reaper's Invocation, as it looks like Falling Thunder's projectiles don't count as 'melee kills' to charge it.

If you want a bit of AoE for it you can always go Elemental Expression. It's a spell, not melee, and your damage is likely to be 50/50 cold or lightning, but the arcing bolts and projectiles do a decent job of clean up. Downside, it burns through mana like nothing else, so I'd definitely need to grab all three reduced cost nodes to run it I think.

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SelkieTheSeal#5934 wrote:

We get range-AOE that use power charge: Falling Thunder

Flicker Strike is a semi-AoE with a drawback: you kill enemies, but you don’t know where you’ll land, potentially getting killed by on-death effects or terrain/traps. Flicker Strike is fine, but the real problem is survivability.

I don't think it is fine. You should invest hard in it and get charges, and you get: Rage generation only on first strike of two per Power Charge; targeting mobs that are unreachable for it (walking from water ones, for example); not full AOE not full solo target dedicated skill; animation bug that lock you on one side that can kill you easily; server synchronisation bug when you will not deal damage to mobs with Flicker; random destination; random attacking pattern in packs; not full uptime; targeting monster walls (essence ones for example). It's doing the good job only sometimes (30% of time you will clear a good chunk of the map, 45% of time you will lose all charges after 1-2 packs or not reaching another, 15% of time you will die due to stun/freeze/unfortune). You don't want to paticipate in Pay to Play Russian Roulete with RNG without proper reward, and this skill doesn't feel like it have that.

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Riliment#7178 wrote:

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SelkieTheSeal#5934 wrote:

We get range-AOE that use power charge: Falling Thunder

Flicker Strike is a semi-AoE with a drawback: you kill enemies, but you don’t know where you’ll land, potentially getting killed by on-death effects or terrain/traps. Flicker Strike is fine, but the real problem is survivability.

I don't think it is fine. You should invest hard in it and get charges, and you get: Rage generation only on first strike of two per Power Charge; targeting mobs that are unreachable for it (walking from water ones, for example); not full AOE not full solo target dedicated skill; animation bug that lock you on one side that can kill you easily; server synchronisation bug when you will not deal damage to mobs with Flicker; random destination; random attacking pattern in packs; not full uptime; targeting monster walls (essence ones for example). It's doing the good job only sometimes (30% of time you will clear a good chunk of the map, 45% of time you will lose all charges after 1-2 packs or not reaching another, 15% of time you will die due to stun/freeze/unfortune). You don't want to paticipate in Pay to Play Russian Roulete with RNG without proper reward, and this skill doesn't feel like it have that.

I'm clearing T5 maps just fine with my set up, and damage wise I will definitely have no issue going further and that's without my third ascendancy at this point.

One Stormwave then I charge my staff for the immediate damage boost, repeat that once or twice until I'm at 7 stacks, then I Stormwave one more time for 1-7 power charges for my flicker, I prefer to use it at least at 2 power charges though. Then I just flicker. Once I have 7 stacks of Charged staff, I just keep flicking until I have to rebuff that. I kill most packs especially when they're together... I'm not using herald of ice though I am using herald of thunder, combat frenzy w/Resonance passive tree, and ghost dancer or cast on crit. With 25 more spirit I can use them at the same time.

Once I get third ascendancy, I will unlock Elemental Expression which does even more AOE when you melee crit, so I assume that will feel even better than it does for me now.

I have currently use all the power charge nodes.

The only issue I have with the flicker strike so far is getting stuck in weird spots and still continuing the attacks lol looks funny when it happens.

I agree it still needs a little polish but compared to Windblast, ice strike, lightning flurry, whirling assault (i cant stand how bad that skill feels) I think it feels the best. Thats just my opinion.

Anyways, glhf and Merry Christmas

EDIT: I have never got stuck on an essence monster before opening it BUT there are a lot of weird spots in maps and areas that feel weird

Second EDIT: I just got the Elemental Expression skill through ascendancy and can confirm the aoe is even better now. Insanely satisfying when you get that.