Another quick showcase of my 3rd build of the league (lets not speak of my leaguestarter) for the Phrecia event. The credit for this one goes to Woolie who posted his ward stacking dual strike character early in the league and got me thinking: we can flick with that. Links

• PoB guide with multiple budget options and upgrade paths, check notes: https://pobb.in/k723oZHyc1z4
• Link to my character PoB: https://pobb.in/GUDCoX9M_15u
• Link to my character in PoE ninja: https://poe.ninja/builds/phrecia/character/goodoldmalk%232755/MalkWardFlicker?

Note that I tend to move passives around a lot to run certain map mods.

How good is the build?

I'd say it's alright for the level of investment...

While I'd love to speak highly of my take on the build, the bar that all builds must meet this league has been set pretty high because of how idols break the game.

Still, being able to break over 30-40 million dps with what amounts to a few uniques and easily self-crafted gear is what compels me to push this out the door for someone else to play with.

How does it work?

So I'll try to keep this one brief. Ward stackers use the unique belt Ynda Stand with 20% defense quality and combine its effect with Antiquarian's Kalguuran Armour to gain ward equal to 110% of their equipped body armour. By using a well crafted (read: dense fossil spam) Conquest Lamellar the chestpiece can generate upwards of >6800 Armour + Evasion which converts into around 7500 flat ward.

The build goes on to stack sources of increased ward/global defenses: mainly Antiquarian's Starlight Reflector (+100% increased global defenses), some small ascendancy passives (+50% increased global defenses), and finally a well rolled iron flask (up to +30% increased ward), for a total of 180% increased ward, allowing the build to easily break past 21,000 ward.

From there, we use the unique gloves Nightgrip to gain 10% of this ward as additional generic chaos damage, or around 2,100 added chaos damage. This flat chaos damage can be used anywhere: attacks, spells, mines, traps, herald of ice explosions, skills gained from items like Abberath's Hoves, anywhere!

That said, chaos damage is remarkably hard to scale through the passive tree. Even generic sources of attack damage near marauder/duelist are scarce. For the build to work, we tap into Lethal Pride. Not only do we gain generic sources of increased melee damage in radius of the jewel, but this also pumps the build total strength so that we can replace small strength passives with tattoos that increase generic melee attack damage.

Since I'm a flicker slut, selecting Flicker Strike as a main skill is both optimal and mandatory. That said, the build does require some special considerations for frenzy charge generation. The easiest / most elegant way to bump frenzy charge generation, seeing the body armour was taken, was through the unique amulet Ashes of the Star, as Flicker Strike gains chance to gain frenzy charges from gem quality. Double Strike simply becomes our gem swap for bosses.

The rest is just stacking defensive layers such as block, spell block, max resistances, endurance charges, leech, regen, armour, and life until the build feels nice to play. Which may surprise some flicker strike enthusiasts.

What's the budget?

The build is extremely cheap for its overall power, tallying around 50 divines total. The two biggest purchases being Svalinn (10 divines) and Ashes of the Stars with 30% quality (10+ divines). The rest of the gear can be self crafted with essence spam for the most part, with only the hunter influenced helmet requiring recombinators.

The high-investment versions have some very expensive upgrades that may be outside of the budget for more casual players, but stuff like +1 frenzy rings are a pretty normal chase item for a Flicker Strike enjoyer, even if we don't always find it before the league ends.