[2.5] BHC WoE Cyclone Slayer - cheap and efficient, excellent for uber lab farming and mapping.

I originally posted this in Reddit, but seeing as it was fairly popular I figured I'd post it here too where it can be more easily found.

Hi, I've run several iterations of the Slayer ascendancy in the past leagues and this is the build I've been happiest with. I used this build to finish 100+ uber Izaro kills within a week in BHC, all runs with 3-5 keys, and mapped up to tier 14 until lag&pre-nerf Tul breach got me (fuck breaches.) I also boosted a lot of uber runs for my friends and was still able to get 3-4 keys on boost runs.

I think the build is about as finished as it's gonna get so here's the bones of it, I may write a detailed guide with videos and stuff to it later if there's interest.

Build pros

-easy to level
-easy to play
-near-infinite sustain even in boss fights
-low cost, no need for even 5-links
-safe to play even when tired, leech keeps you topped 99% of the time
-culls everything at 20%, making certains fights easier
-is tanky with several layers of both mitigation and avoidance

cons

-lower movement speed and AoE than some other Cyclone variants
-mitigation is mostly active, you're vulnerable to burst damage if defenses are down
-difficult to scale damage for most demanding bosses without build changes











How the build works

With the Slayer abilities and other passives, you reach a life leech rate of 43% of your maximum life per second. That means that together with your life regen, you can heal up almost 50% of your max hp every second. Thanks to the fast attack speed of Cyclone, you can maintain this leech rate even against a single target. Keeping up a leech rate this high would probably not be possible with slow-attacking skills like EQ.

Combined with your layered defenses, this leech rate ensures that you can face tank even stronger bosses without needing your life flasks. Also due to the fact that you cull everything at 20%, you can kill Uber Izaro's last form easily without losing your defensive flasks.

Your total defenses at level 90 will be: 6500+ life, 7 Endurance Charges, 23% Fortify, 3-5k Armor, 38%+ block, Blind from BoR and the ability to chill bosses with AA. With your evasion, block chance and Blind bosses should hit you maybe 1/3 of the time or less.
Tooltip DPS with Hatred + Conc effect at level 90 should be around 40-45k, and ~70k with BR, onslaught, Headsman and Frenzy Charges.

Flasks: You'll want 1-2 instant health pots, a freeze immune quicksilver and (ideally) a Chemist's Basalt Flask of Grounding. Fifth flasks can be whatever you want but freeze and shock immune are vital against Izaro when he has elemental buffs.



This character isn't minmaxed in terms of gear because I mostly intended to farm currency in uber lab and then buy good gear for attempting guardians but I died to a very laggy breach in T13 map before I got that far. However this gear was good enough for that content.


Uber lab farming

You can safely do Uber lab at 75 if you want to (though you may not want to give Izaro too many buffs) and comfortably farm 4 keys at 80+. While this build can kill the final form fast, I wouldn't recommend running him with Charges + another serious damage buff or double elemental buffs (Essences & conduits), especially when he is using dual swords. 2-handed Mace does significantly less damage than the sword versions. For Curse Fonts, you can run 2 anti-curse utility flasks and disregard the mechanic entirely.

In the last phase you can use Enduring Cry on the sentinel totems to get 3-4 charges before the boss activates, also it is important to prepot Basalt flask right as he activates if he has buffed damage as you don't have all your defenses available immediately. In the first 2 trials be careful because if your DPS is high, he can go invulnerable and be un-leechable while he finishes summoning the rest of his adds like Lieutenants. Getting teleported isn't a big issue, just leap slam back into action. If Izaro parks himself on top of saw or other non-spike traps, don't worry, you can just attack him and out-leech the trap damage too.

Argus is easy but you may want to make sure you have all your endurance charges before engaging him and pop Basalt for the first enrage. If he gets ghosted you may want to abort, depending on the ghost. I did kill him when ghosted several times but I don't think those were very dangerous ones.

Use 2x Brightbeak in weapon switch if you gottagofast (alternatively, Brightbeak + 3G Prismatic Eclipse or Voidhome)


Leveling

Having leveled a slayer 5 times now I think I have a firm grasp on how to do it, here's what I've found works best.





High life regen makes leveling a melee character a breeze, this build also gets AoE nodes and enough int early enough so you don't have to worry much about stats.

Leveling with 2h build seems better to me. Up until level 12 use whatever, then use Sunder, at level 31 use Earthquake - Less Duration - Melee Phys - Added Fire/Fortify in a 4-link. Earthquake seems better for leveling until you have your BoR imo, at least unless you have some 30% MS leveling boots. Use Cauteriser and whatever leveling weapons you have, if any.

Ascendancy leveling order: Bane of Legends > Endless Hunger > Brutal Fervour > Headsman

Do normal lab as soon as you can, the Bane of Legends ascendancy will significantly speed up your leveling.

Scaling for endgame

If like me you've earned tons of chaos from lab farming you may want to consider buying a Disfavour or an equally sexy weapon and speccing into a regular 2h build (takes less than 12 points to respec.) Alternatively you can acquire Steel Rings for more damage, and/or a Voidheart and switch Hatred into Blasphemy Vulnerability and Added Fire into Added Chaos. The Retch paired with leech flasks is a fantastic item for Slayer if you can get your hands on one. If you feel like the build isn't defensive enough, you can also run Grace and use 2 points to grab IR, or if you feel like it is too defensive, lose some life nodes and grab Wrecking Ball.

You may also want to buy high rolled Wings and attempt to vaal +2 weapon range into them.


F.A.Q.







Credit to Hegemony for his WoE slayer in last league that I used as inspiration.

Guide looks promising, I'm leveling it now! Thanks for writing it up.

Quick question - what bandit rewards do you take?

"

Kataris a écrit :

Guide looks promising, I'm leveling it now! Thanks for writing it up.

Quick question - what bandit rewards do you take?

Meant to include that in the poeplanner links but Oak - Kraityn - Oak

Hey,

Seems interesting, thinking of rolling one. Im a bit concerned about the mapmods though, can it run either reflect?

Thanks for the guide!

Hi.

did u try it vs som of the lvl 70 breach bosses? if so how did it go.

thanks.

I will be doing this build and will tell you how it goes for me. Just one question though do you have to over cap your resistances for maps or can you just roll around with warding flasks? As i have always found it hard to get BoR builds up to an appropriate overcap

"

pripple a écrit :

Hey,

Seems interesting, thinking of rolling one. Im a bit concerned about the mapmods though, can it run either reflect?

Thanks for the guide!

Ele reflect is easy, just turn off hatred and replace Added Fire with Melee Damage on Full Life or similar gem (don't use blood rage with it though.)

As for phys reflect, with headsman it might be possible if you keep your defenses up but you might run into trouble if you whirl into huge packs because your leech tank has a limit.

"

Tunechis a écrit :

Hi.

did u try it vs som of the lvl 70 breach bosses? if so how did it go.

thanks.

I only tried Xoph, it was very easy.

"

Yatunic a écrit :

I will be doing this build and will tell you how it goes for me. Just one question though do you have to over cap your resistances for maps or can you just roll around with warding flasks? As i have always found it hard to get BoR builds up to an appropriate overcap

My gear wasn't very good and I think I was nearly ele weakness capped, also this build has 4-5 jewel slots which can help with resists. I wasn't too worried about overcap because I spent a lot of time in lab where it didn't matter much and 7 endurance charges give +28% allres when up, though they're not entirely foolproof because of Nullifiers.

Hey, trying this build aswel atm and I got 1 question. Why do you grab attack speed on your jewels while using ancestral warchief that reduces attack speed in your cwdt setup? Trying to figure out what's better for the build, attack speed or flat dmg ^^.