[2.3] Shakk's Cyclone Build. A story about a man and his fists.

Now here's some stuff that this build is built around, it's by no means the cheapest builds out there, but cheap among endgame builds.

- Abyssus, Basically the only real option for our helm
- A decent chest piece, preferably a 6L with R-R-R-G-G-B colors. Carcass Jack or Daresso's Defiance if possible, they're the BIS chests for the build depending on Armor or Evasion focus.
- Facebreaker 950+ if possible, but not a requirement, you'll kill any boss in seconds with a 900 one. And the build has been done succesfully on temporary leagues with 800% ones.
- A good shield with with resistances, life and with room to put the physical master mod from Haku. This will be your main shield.
- A Saffell's Frame on your alternate weapon swap, while not necessary, it'll help you alot against magic bosses like Piety in maps even with horrible mods as well as allowing you to kill Atziri.
- Meginord's Girdle, best in slot belt for FB builds. There’s no other option.
- High physical damage jewelry with leech, you will probably need stats+ (mainly dex) on the amulet for gem requirement and such.
- And a pair of free choice boots! (While Rainbowstrides seem tempting, you’re better off with something with more resistance and life)

Cyclone DPS
Cyclone DPS with Atziri Flask

Defensive Stats w/ Rumi's
Defensive Stats w/ charges

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One thing you should do to avoid auto-equip is get an amulet with alot of intellect and equip a high req int weapon on both your sets then take off the amulet, the weapons will stay inactive in your weapons slot and will allow you to level gems on them.
My Jewelry has room for upgrade, my amulet only serves the purpose of giving me the dex that I need, while getting high phys damage and life leech, that way getting leech from talent tree is not required.
The armor you want for the build is either Carcass Jack or Daresso's Defiance, both have good and bad sides compared to eachother. Daresso's is probably the go-to for armour build, it lets you link a CWDT to Immortal Call. Carcass Jack on the other hand gives you more dps and aoe range which is amazing for this build.

6L: Cyclone - Melee Physical - Added Fire/(Fortify) - Concentrated Effect - Blood Magic - Faster Attacks

4L: Enlighten - Hatred - Determination/Grace/Haste - Herald of Ash

4L: Lightning Warp/Flame Dash - Blood Magic - Golem/Faster Casting - Blood Rage

4L: Shield Charge - Endurance Charge on Melee Stun(Reckoning if Curse on CWDT) - Blood Magic - Faster Attacks


3L: Reckoning/Curse, Cast When Damage Taken - Tempest Shield (lv 1)

Other gems to have around: Haste, Life Leech.
Golem choice depends on how youre survival is, you can use Fire golem if you want more dps, or Chaos if you desire more survivability.
Quality on Concentrated Effect gives mana reduction; it's handy to get that 200ish life cost Cyclone near end game.

Enlighten level 4 would be ideal, that way you only need 10% mana reserve from the tree to run 2 auras + herald. Otherwise Level 3 Enlighten is good enough, level 2 is also useable if you get an extra 4% reserve node.

CWDT does not work on any “Cry” ability, so manual casting is optional for whoever wishes to run them. Linking a low level CWDT to Tempest Shield is ideal.

Basically there's 1 Unique Jewel that's completely necessary and 1 that's very helpful. 3rd choice for Jewel should be one with Life Leech if possible.


Is mandatory, good news is that it can be obtained from Cruel Act2 Quest.

The other Unique Gem you want to get your hands on is Martial Artistry



This is my Life Leech Jewel, helps a lot when I forget to put Blood Rage up..

Current Tree


Do note that my gear is mostly Evasion based, so I can't currently drop IR, but as I switch my gear I'll drop IR. Armour version is much better than IR now, so if you're just starting your character, I recommend using the Armour one.

Bit of explanation, some nodes are optional, like the increased stats ones or resist nodes; they can be swapped for more dps or life nodes.
Fortify nodes seem pretty good, so I’ll be testing it with them as I dropped IR from the previous patch.
Same goes if you want more endurance charges (if you run EC or Charge on Stun linked to Shield Charge); I don't get them because I haven't felt the need for it.

Rampart.. Well since we're running with Champion Ascendancy, we might as well grab the Rampart nodes to boost Fortify. Otherwise points can be used to get more armour or evasion.

It boils down to either Champion or Gladiator, both are strong, and for now both should be viable until they're tested properly (a few weeks)

Champion: Unstoppable Hero > Fortitude, and Inspirational

Gladiator: Painforged > Versatile Combatant and either Violent Retaliation or Gratuitous Violence (needs testing)

Normal - Help Oak, he's a bro
Cruel - Help Oak
Merciless - This is up to the player's choice, I prefer to kill all and get the passive point, since a charge can be gotten from the tree with that same passive if need be.

- It's probably one of the easiest builds to play, turn on your auras, Blood Rage and start Cycloning.
- Against Elemental Reflect, just attack as you were, the Hatred and Added Fire won't be enough to kill you.
- Against Physical Reflect, you’ll need either Abyssal Cry or use a Rumi flask to get more block.
- Against mobs that do alot of spell damage like Cells Boss or Piety in Temple, it's recommended that you use a Saffell's Frame just to avoid alot of the damage.

Map mods
- If a map has Temporal Chains mod and you really want to run it, run for Haste aura.
- If a map has Blood Magic, swap Blood Magic gem for Life Leech/Life on Hit and run without auras.
- If a map has Phys reflect, swap Melee Physical Damage for Physical to Lightning.
- Fracture mod is easy for this build, just tedious, try to avoid if you're in a hurry

Your main auras will be Determination and Hatred, they give the most balanced DPS and defensive stats.
Assuming you have the Mana Reserve nodes and Enlighten gem you can use a Herald of Ash or Tempest shield as your 3rd aura.

Blood Rage can be used if the player has enough mana to cast (otherwise link it to Blood Magic), the life regen we got should be more than enough to substain Blood Rage without worrying about dying. It also gives a good boost to dps with 3 charges up

Golems Either Flame or Chaos golem, needless to say they give us a good buff to our survivability or dps.

Leveling as Facebreaker is quite easy due to the fact that all your abilities scale with the same gear. You should be leveling with Infernal Blow until you feel comfortable with the life cost of Cyclone. This should happen around lv50ish or so depending on how many links you’re using, if you’re leveling with a Tabula Rasa, do not use all 6 links until lv60 or so, the life cost will be too high. Instead use 4 Link until lv50, then 5link until lv60-65.
Levels 1-17 should be easy enough, just grab w/e mace you have and use Ground Slam while leveling an Infernal Blow gem elsewhere in your gear.

The “optimal” path for the talent tree should be to rush for Resolute Technique (then Life Leech cluster under marauder area if you lack some leech on your gear), but using Crest of Perandus might be enough, then get the Life nodes as dps nodes are not needed untill 40-50+, IR is a good option to get after a few life nodes to make your life easier if you choose that tree, there’s not really a set path after that, but I recommend that you leave the block nodes untill 70+ as you will be leveling quite fast between 70-80.
The resistance nodes should be taken around lv65ish, again this is just a preference, if you want to take it before, be my guest, you won’t exactly be in danger of dying to elemental damage before 70+ maps.
The aura reserve nodes should be left for 85+.

There’s a few leveling items I recommend for leveling.

Apex of Sacrifice full run

Malachai Merciless

Tried streaming a bit on patch day while testing the 2.0 tree

Another stream session

While Lockstep makes desync a non existing issue, I understand that some people might not have good enough connection for it.
The main drawback of Cyclone ability is Desync, you will desync, alot. The way I counter this (other than turning on Lockstep) was by making this build be very Life heavy, meaning that by the time I desynced back or /oos myself I would still be alive. The times I've died it has mainly been due to my own stupidity or understimating map mods and not desync itself.

Why not BoR? because this is meant for maximum possible damage. The drawbacks of not having a chest piece really limits which rings and amulets you can use. See the Ramblings sections for some BoR tips if you still plan on using it.

Abyssus damage will kill me? It's not really noticeable, you will obviously die if you take a Touch of God from Dominus or a buffed Vaal in Maze, just pay attention.

Physical reflect? avoid the map mod phys reflect if possible, it's still doable if you swap melee physical gem with Phys to lightning, but I really don’t recommend it.

It's too expensive! Compared to other endgame builds this is on the cheap side.

I want to use Bor You will probably lose alot of dps by using BoR, I don't recommend it. Do read the next post as I've written how to use it with this build.

Vaal Pact, yay or nay? I'd say nay, with the combination of flasks and silly amount of life we're leeching it shouldn't be needed.

09.03.2014 Created
10.03.2014 Got new boots with Dex, dropped the 30dex node, got 20% phys node from marauder tree
18.03.2014 Added Aura section
02.04.2014 Added possible lv100 tree
28.05.2014 Updated with current stats and tree
17.06.2014 Added some tips about leveling.
29.08.2014 Finished updating for 1.2
05.09.2014 Shield Enchant hype
10.09.2014 Added alternative lv100 trees
10.12.2014 Added 1.3 stuff
02.01.2015 Fixed broken links
13.07.2015 Updated to 2.0
05.03.2016 Quick update for 2.2

The whole Bringer of Rain debacle is an interesting one, while a BoR will let you get blocked capped easier, it will mean you can't use 20/20 gems and you will lose the huge dps buff an Abyssus gives.
Blind gem is not very useful for this or any Facebreaker build due to the fast kill speed that the build has, at this moment (level 90) bosses in 77 maps take about 10-15seconds to die depending on physical resist mod in the map.
But let's say you really do want to use a BoR with this build, then you should expect to pay alot of the jewelry as you will need quite alot of resistance on these to make up for the face you can't wear a chest. Your links with a BoR should be Cyclone - Added Fire - Blood Magic and Concentrated Effect, I cannot stress enough how huge of a dps gain Concentrated Effect is.
For the Passive Tree the most obvious thing to do would be to swap around some block nodes to resistance nodes like the 12% one under Golem's Blood south of the dueliest starting area, as well as the +1max for each res type from the marauder tree.

While in the main guide I talk about needing a 6L to make it work properly, that might not be the actual truth, the guide is made to get the most dps out of the tree and gear as possible. I can use my gear as an example of how my dps numbers would be if I only had a 5L.

These are old numbers
DPS 5L: cyclone - added fire - conc effect - melee physical - Blood magic: 32470 dps
DPS 5L: Cyclone - Conc effect - Melee Physical - Faster Attacks - Blood Magic: 32892 dps
DPS 5L: Cyclone - Melee Physical - Faster Attacks - Added Fire - Blood Magic: 26003 dps

Compared to my buffed dps with a 6L thats about 10k dps loss, it's not terrible considering how much the price gap between a 5L and a 6L is.
Main problems could come from only having 2% leech on 50% regen maps or no regen maps, but it's definitly playable.
Swapping to a life leech gem for some of the hard mods would be out of the question with 5L as that would mean running the maps with 4L for dps, the dps loss would be too great, I'd say avoid no regen or 50% maps, as well as avoid Phys reflect at all costs.

So Atziri, where the real endgame begins, I won't go and say that this build has any chance against Uber Atziri because I really doubt it does, I won't be trying that any time soon, not with the prices of Hope shards.
However, Normal Atziri, is very doable.
I never tried Atziri before lv92, I was afraid I would lose half my xp bar trying. If you're already clearing most 78 maps the hardest part about Apex of Sacrifice will actually be getting to Atziri as the Guardian bosses are the hardest for this build.

What you'll need for Atziri are:
Lv20 Life leech gem (this is mostly to counter the puncture as you probably wouldnt want to spam all your flasks), just put it in place of Added Fire.
Saffell's Frame this will nullify the burst damage from her Flameblast and Storm Call
Quicksilver flask with extra charges, never swap to Aegis or other shield during this fight, you won't need it.
A Ruby Flask or Topaz flask (I used neither, as I forgot to bring them with me and spell block would be sufficient)
Life Flask with Bleed remove and an Instant recovery Life Flask. (I was using 3 life flasks since I forgot my ruby flask)

The fight itself is pretty basic, dps her while running away from Storm Calls and Flameblasts.

On the 4 copy phase, dps the one with the spear (no idea if it makes any difference in terms of damage taken)

On the regen phase, just hold cyclone attack on her during the whole phase, it will kill most of the adds right before they reach her, some will get to her, but your dps should be pretty high to take about 40% health between phases, so even if she regens 20% you'll be fine.

Other than that, don't rush it, I managed to 1 shot her on the first time I tried her by being super careful.

1.2 update: Well with the extra DPS we gained on this update, there's little reason to use a Life Leech gem on any boss anymore, it will make the fights much shorter and safer, the trio still quite dangerous as going Yolo on them only works about 50% of the time. For Atziri you still need a Saffell though, not much has changed there.