[3.28] Ward Stack Flicker Strike Slayer

Overview

This build uses the 100% uptime ward tech with the new timeless jewel that's been shooting up in popularity over the past week. There are different flavors of it (auto-bombers, attack hit, etc) - I decided to do it with Flicker Strike.

POB

Showcase - This showcase is actually using worse gear than the POB.

Play Experience

Build plays great. Bossing is excellent - All pinnacles are trivial; Mapping is fast and smooth, but there are a few mods that you need to avoid. Once you get it up and running, even on a lower investment level, you basically become immune to hits. A bit more optimizing to get recoup allows you to not die to DoTs. I am completely fine against shaper beams, cortex degens in uber ubers.

How it Works

There are many posts out there already explaining the mechanics. I won't go into too many details, but this is how the build comes together:

1. Ward Uptime
   Normally when you get hit with ward, your ward breaks and takes a few seconds to refresh. We get around this cooldown by using Iron Flasks which refreshes your ward instantly. We then use the new timeless jewel Heroic Tragedy with the notable Regenerative Runes to get iron flask charges back whenever your ward breaks. With enough notables, and enough flask charges gained, your iron flasks gain back to full charges every time your ward breaks, allowing it to be used immediately again. This means that your ward is up 100% of the time.

2. Stack Ward
   You scale ward through Ynda's Stand belt, with a high Armour/Evasion chest. Along with some notables on the timeless jewel, and Runegraft of the Fortress, you can scale Ward to 10k+ pretty easily. You can also scale it even more Faithguard, and getting ES nodes on the tree.

3. Damage Scaling
   The Uhtred variant of the timeless jewel gives you Celestial Mathematics, which breaks our ward and gives added cold damage to attacks based on ward broken. Because we scale ward a ton, the added flat cold is quite high. This allows us to not worry about flat damage scaling, and invest elsewhere to get damage. For example, this build no longer needs to stack frenzy charges for ice bite damage.

4. Flicker Frenzy Sustain
   Historic versions of Flicker, while able to sustain Frenzy charges for the most part, has some downtime during bossing. We get around this by getting the Frenzying Sigil notable on our timeless jewel, allowing us to gain a frenzy charge every time we attack. So, Flicker spends a charge, and gains it back immediately.

The result of this is 100% uptime on a massive amount of ward to negate all hits damage, with infinite usage of Flicker Strike that has a ton of added flat cold to it. The rest of our gear is focused on improving QoL + other parts of the build (scaling damage, ailment immunity, life recoup).

FAQ

Q: Do I need to get a 5-passive Regenerative Runes Heroic Tragedy to make the build?
A: No. I got this up and running with a 3-passive and more flask clusters + flask gained mods on the tree. It worked totally fine. Got it up and running at level 90. You'll have plenty of passive points to spare even if you don't have a great Timeless jewel.

Q: Do I need to be a Slayer?
A: No. Slayer overleech is great to further help mitigate against DoTs, but honestly the real reason is because I leveled a duelist and didn't want to level a new character. But in my theorycrafting a Ranger, Shadow, or Witch can all do this, with slight variations in what it does better.

If you have questions about why I used certain items, or how to craft something, just let me know. Happy to answer your questions in thread or DM.

End

The best version of Flicker I've played. I'm having a lot of fun with Mirage. Going to 40/40 and min-max the build further.

Credit to this post + many others who did the initial discovery of this.