0.9.13 - In Depth Flicker Strike Dagger Guide

3-11-2012: UPDATED TO 0.9.13! My Shadow is owning again ;)
6-11-2012: Updated after playing a new hardcore shadow!
13-11-2012: Updated from Lightning Strike to Flicker Strike and added quest rewards and flasks.

Check out my other guides!:
Marauder Guide
Ranger Guide

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Passive Skill Tree:

Chaos Inoculation
Map Time!
Godlike

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Why Dual Strike early on?:

Dual Strike is alot better early on, use whirling blades or cleave as AoE ( depending on weapons ). Early on your chances to find a good weapon and shield to use Lightning Strike with are low. A shield won't help you much and dual strike oneshots pretty much anything.

Your survivability comes from your armor pieces, belt and rings. I normally start with 2 health rings untill merveil's cave then I swap to cold resist rings. After that you will need 2 lightning resist rings for act 2.

For belt you can go for health or strenght, both work fine.

I once got challenged to play hardcore to level 30 without using passive tree, and it worked out just fine. YES it took some time because of low dps, but surviving was no issue.

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Why this build?

I have played about 600 hours, tried over 20 different builds to level 60. What this experience told me is that it doesnt matter if you have 210k dps ( avatar of fire burning arrow few leagues ago haha ) or 2k dps. AS LONG AS YOU DONT DIE! IF you die, you lose ALOT OF HOURS OF XP! But if you kill mobs in 2 hits instead of 3 then you will only save a little time and you WILL die over and over.

If you have a huge energy shield, and huge damage migration from granite flasks and elemental resists you'll be able to soak up a huge amount of damage, add up your block chance, evasion chance and life leech and you are godlike.

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Flasks:

PvE:
1x Diamond with Dispel Frozen
1x Diamond with Dispel Burn
1x Diamond with Dispel Lightning
1x Granite with Dispel Frozen
1x Slow Mana Regen with anything

PvP:
1x Cold Resists with Dispel Frozen
1x Fire Resists with Dispel Burn
1x Lightning Resists with Dispel Lightning
1x Granite with anything
1x Slow Mana Regen incase enemy is immune to mana leech

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Gem Rewards:

Act 1:
Hillock: Dual Strike
Medicine Chest: Phase Run
Glyph Wall: Viper Strike
Brutus: Flicker Strike
Merveil: Increased Critical Damage
Blackguard: Frenzy
Maligaro's Spike: Added Cold Damage

Cruel:
Hillock: Critical Weakness
Medicine Chest: Added Cold Damage
Brutus: Blood Rage
Merveil: Life Leech
Maligaro's Spike: Faster Attacks

Merciless:
Maligaro's Spike: Mana Leech

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Gems:

Main Skill: Flicker Strike + Mana Leech + Melee Physical Daamge + Weapon Elemental Damage + Critical Strike Damage

Auras: Wrath + Discripline + Grace (trade for it) + Reduced Mana Cost

Curses (1 buff): Critical Weakness + Enduring Cry + Increased Area of Effect

Buffs: Blood Rage + Phase Run + Increased Duration

Escape: Whirling Blades (+ Faster Casting???)

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Gear:

Level 1-50:
1. ARMOUR > Life
2. 2x Highest DPS 1H you can find + Dual strike
2a. Best DPS 1H and best shield you find + Flicker strike
3. 2x Cold Resist rings - 2x Lightning resists rings - 2 Health rings

Focus on getting alot of Armour and Life, this will last you till level 50 easly without dieing. Once you find a good dagger start taking dagger nodes.

Level 50+
1. Energy Shield / Evasion Armor
2. High Crit/Slow/High Physical Damage Dagger
3. Crit damage Amulet
4. Attack Speed Gloves and Rings
5. Any %25+ Elemental Damage pieces you can get ( belt for example )
6. 30% Movement Speed boots

You want a slow dagger so its easier to oneshot enemies with flicker strike.

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Flasks:

2x Granite
3x Diamond

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How this works?
Defence: Insane Energy Shield, ALOT of damage migration from armour (70%+), VERY HIGH Block Chance and 75% All Elemental Resistances.
Offence: High enough DPS to kill mobs in 1 hit so you gain your frenzy charge back, diamond flasks to oneshot strong monsters and bosses and to apply shock or to instakill them.

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How to play?
1. Cast your 3 auras and Blood Rage and keep them up at all times.
2. Cast Enduring Cry untill you have 3 endurance charges. ALWAYS have 3 endurance charges up, these give you 5% elemental resisance and 5% physical damage reduction EACH! SO if you have 75% damage reduction from armor you will have 90% reduction from armor with 3 endurance charges up, a 66% damage reduction!
3. Get 4-5 frenzy charges with Frenzy
4. Spam Flicker Strike
5. Cast Frenzy some more if you run out of Charges
6. Spam Flicker Strike again
7. Keep Blood Rage and Endurance Charges up at all times

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PVP:

Coming Soon!!!

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Elemental Damages:

Fire Damage
If you land a critical strike with an attack or spell that deals fire damage, the enemy begins Burning. Burning causes damage over time. Humanoids, Monkeys and Sea Witches will flee while burning.

Basic burning effects last 4 seconds, and the amount of damage over time is 1/3 of the initial fire damage dealt, per second. So a total of 4/3 of the original damage, over 4 seconds. Total burning damage can be increased with skill gem bonuses, passive skills, and item mods that increase burning damage. In addition, the Vulnerability curse can increase burning damage, and the Temporal Chains curse can increase the duration of the burning effect without reducing the damage done per second.

Cold damage
Hitting an enemy with cold damage can cause the enemy to be Chilled. Critical hits with cold damage can also cause the target to be Frozen. Chilled enemies move, attack, and cast 30% slower, while frozen enemies cannot do anything except drink flasks.

Lightning damage
If you land a critical strike with an attack or spell that deals lightning damage, the enemy becomes Shocked. This can be stacked up to three times on one target. In this state, monsters or players take 40% more damage per instance of Shock from all sources. Under the effects of 3 stacks of shocked, an enemy would take 120% more damage than that would normally be done without any shocked stacking, no matter the type or source of the damage.

This is around what i want to do, but is is viable with duel wielding and or just using a 1 handed dagger instead of a sword? If yess, then i will be following this little guide like the bible.

"

cmarsach57 a écrit :

This is around what i want to do, but is is viable with duel wielding and or just using a 1 handed dagger instead of a sword? If yess, then i will be following this little guide like the bible.

1h sword or dagger prefered, if dagger then grab the poison on crit + 66% crit damage dagger node.

Need sword or dagger with 1.60+ attack speed.

Sword or dagger because you can escape easly with whirling blades.

Pretty similar to my build, but I'm going for the dagger clusters over Catalyze/CW.

Out of curiosity, how many times have you died? I'm holding off on getting CI until I can get some more base ES.

"

facehead a écrit :

Pretty similar to my build, but I'm going for the dagger clusters over Catalyze/CW.

Out of curiosity, how many times have you died? I'm holding off on getting CI until I can get some more base ES.

Only few times because of stupidity lol XD
You only need discipline + grace + CI to survive

Looks great! I fell in love with flicker strike as soon as I got it.

It feels like almost any skill can be made to be pretty OP so long as it derives some of its power from elemental damage and the passive trees are focused on enhancing elemental damage.

I think that's what's made my pure-caster builds feel so "meh". A build like this severely benefits from elemental damage on gloves, but the same or similar bonuses are less impressive on a castery build. :-/

lol every single build of yours goes over to templar tree for catalyze and elemental passives hehe

Maxed out build

This is how i would finish your build, let me know what you think of it, i never played the game, but it seemed the most logical path.

How does your ES add up to over 4k??

You have 25% increased and more 80% ES as far as nodes go, going by your 55 passive chart, and 1.25*1.8=2.25. So you have a multiplier of 2.25 on your ES, but 4k/2.25 should mean you have about 1700 base ES before any multipliers. You don't even have 1k worth of ES from gear!

You only have 119+143+72+401=735 worth of ES from gear, which should be 735*2.25=1653.75 total ES! Nowhere near 4k!

Silty, you also have to consider, that 5 Int = +1% ES.

Struyk, have you got any thoughts on Acrobatics + evasion and hp nodes build instead of CI, how well would that work?