Level 95 CI Flicker Strike Trickster^3.24

Notes

LEVELING

Disclaimer: You won't be leveling with Flicker for most of the campaign and can switch at around maps to flicker.

Follow the tree outlines for a general progression on your tree while doing the campaign.

Level with Explosive Trap until you can get Blade Trap.
Use any two swords with as much DPS as you can find on floor/vendors, crafting bench added damage if you have an open prefix.
Link Blade Trap + added Lightning/Cold Damage and swift assembly for the entire campaign.

Getting Ephemeral Edge is better than any rare weapon as long as you have ES on your gear, so you should get it ASAP.

You can swap to Flicker as soon as you have the following:
- 20% quality frenzy (very important!)
- Charge wheel skilled (frenzy on kill)
- +2 frenzy ascendancy
- Tribal Fury to the left
- The small mana leech node to sustain mana

This should be somewhere between the trees for Ascendancy 2 and 3.

Now you should grab all frenzy nodes and top up ES as high as possible.

At around maps you should get some ES gear to get at least 4k ES, now you can get CI. Do not get Ghost Reaver until you have Shavronne's!

GEAR PROGRESSION
A rough outline of what investment levels should you get which upgrades at

Close to none Investment
To start out, all you need is Ephemeral Edge, uncorrupted.
Grab as much ES on your gear as possible and cap your resistances. 
Fix your accuracy with tree and cheap benchcrafts.

10d Investment
Grab the most important/cheap uniques
Resolute Technique EE
Aegis Aurora
Darkness Enthroned with budget increased mod + Abyss Jewels
Cheap Lethal Pride
Vessel of Vintkar
Stormshroud + shock avoid on abyss jewels
Depending on prices, get a Voice of the Storm

Upgrade ES as much as possible on your rares, keep your res capped

50d
Grab all Uniques besides (maybe) Bottled Faith, max out DE as much as your want to spent
Annointed VotS is mandatory now
Upgrade your Lethal Pride, if you get a (near) perfect one now, you can forget about it later
Watcher's Eye, possibly with 2 wrath mods, depending on prices

Upgrade ES as much as possible on your rares, keep your res capped

100d
Grab every Unique in Mid-Tier, and as always, push ES as high as you can on your gear

Moving shock avoid to either get or prepare for +4 Frenzy Helmet is advisable
Upgrade your eldrich implicits

Beyond
+1 Frenzy Gloves
+4 Aura Helmet
Upgrade your eldrich implicits with Conflicts, only do this for already finished slots like +4 frenzy, +frenzy, 6T1 items, etc
Possibly Double-Corrupted Bronn's + Res Juggling
Possibly MB Res fixing, so you can do conducitivy ring, whispers of doom/tribal fury annoint juggling, etc shenangians

CRAFTING/BUYING GUIDES
Self-crafting essentially all rares, you can try to buy them but they'll probably be at a hefty premium if you find any that match.
These crafting guides are all non-necropolis crafting guides, they will work once graveyards are gone, and have worked before too.

On any item you craft you need Strength to fulfill Requirements unless you source elsewhere, you'll need at least two good rolls or one and a +30 tree node.
If you happen to have a blank suffix you can benchcraft on, you might want to keep it unless you already have strenght fullfillment planned otherwise.
If you have the currency to do so, 28+% quality with Perfect Fossils and Sacred Orb your ES bases. Sacred can be done after crafting too, be sure to do quality before, as hillock is gone in 3.24!

Color those offsocket 4-links with jewellers, not chroms. This works with bench crafting 2 sockets, forcing base colors, e.g. 2R, then spamming 3-2-3-2 sockets until your third socket hits the correct color, then the same with 4-3 sockets.
3R2G1B Chest is best done with 1R bench craft on average.

NECROPOLIS CRAFTING
I'll try to provide sensible Graveyard crafts. Please think about copying the graveyard, check the CoE link URL and test out a few things, adjust according to what you have, and see how the chances change!

Remember to use divine and sacred corpses, they are insanely cheap compared to doing it aftewards!

Necropolis crafts enable you to get very cheap tri t1 ES items.

ES Recharge on the suffixes is fully completely for this build, so yolo anulling, trying to craft with fractured mods, or just rerolling suffixes with eldrich modifiers or doing graveyards until you hit what perfect mods is the way to go.
Enormous ES numbers for cheap is the new normal this league, so if you move some mods like shock avoid to e.g. jewels, you can get high ES for really cheap.
Pure ES and nothing else isn't the very best you can get, but it's very cheap to minmax ES (disregarding suffixes, which are very powerful, but pricey, so just going giga ES can be viewed as the lower end of high tier versions of this build)

Helmet:
NECROPOLIS
Cheap 6T1 ES/Res Graveyard Craft:
https://sudos.help/poe/graveyard?hash=C9fwe4OpBnVHI2cU2wkYL2viLxWUYOq7eLkwhBj__UU


Graveard for double fracturing T1 prefixes (this makes +4 AoE with high ES trivial, you only need ~30d for suffixes and hit unblocked +2 veiled prefixes, ca. 3 unveils on average)
https://sudos.help/poe/graveyard?hash=LuMC2oBFHSI0LEz_9xQWn0JvYSLdj9NX5m4ufvoilg0

Keep in mind you will need to get shock resist from jewels/boots if you opt for +2/+4.

Crafting:

Prefixes: you want as high ES as possible, if you want to increase DPS veiled chaos prefixes for +2 AoE
Suffixes: Shock Avoid, Ele Res / Int, (+2 Essence Mod if you can min-max shock avoid with boot mods or 50% jewel + 100% DE)

My crafting process:
- Fractured ES Mod Base (flat fracture is better than %inc, since benchcraft %inc is way better)
- Spam T1 Torments until 2 high tier res/int, you can exalt/eldrich exalt the last suffix
- Add Searching Dominance

Prefix strategies:
Budget ES-only:
- Eldrich Chaos for secondary ES mod
- Eldrich Exalted if Chaos was empty (Cheaper than raw Exalted)
- Benchcraft last ES mod

Costly +2/4 AoE:
- Clear Prefixes (high chance with Eldrich Chaos)
- Lock Suffixes
- Veiled chaos
- Craft + zombie if empty to block some unveils
- Unveil +2 AoE
- Benchcraft last ES mod
- If prexises were filled, repeat the entire craft

Insanity:
- Clear Prefixes (high chance with Eldrich Chaos)
- Block mana, roll T1 ES
- Lock Suffixes
- Veiled chaos, hope for hit lock suffix
- Unveil +2 AoE
- If you don't hit the veiled chaos or the unveil, repeat

Gloves:
NECROPOLIS
+1 Frenzy Craft:
https://sudos.help/poe/graveyard?hash=bQtbezAc97t4u4Z71KowNfmbeJq65ERXiuAUlMZ5fOU
This is very expensive! Try to fish for +1 frenzy fractured. You can also split your gloves for a higher chance to get the exact frenzy fracture. Buying the base costs about 50d+ and supply is scarce.
If you manage to get the base, continue as normal with the usual crafting steps.

Gloves can have vastly different mods, there are many good options, e.g.:
- the "default" flicker gloves with +1 frenzy, +non-vaal strike targets
- pure ES, pure Res
- ES/Res + atk spd/dmg

Crafting:
I went for the last option.
My crafting process:
- Fractured ES Mod Base (flat for atk spd, hybrid %inc for pure ES)
- Spam T1 Zeal until 2 high tier res/int (use Woe for pure ES until triple T1 ES alternatively)
- Fish for non-vaal veiled chaos if you want to burn some currency, and you intend to use vaal haste/vaal totem regularly.

If you went for atk spd, you need to fix prefixes:
- Eldrich Chaos for secondary ES mod or +lightning to attacks
- Eldrich Exalted if Chaos was empty
- Benchcraft last ES mod

If you went for pure ES you need to fix suffixes, which is a bit lackluster IMO
You could also throw in a prefix lock and veiled chaos + slam if you want but probably
- Eldrich Chaos until 1/2 high tier res/int
- Eldrich Exalted if Chaos only had 1 mod
- Benchcraft last mod

Boots:
NECROPOLIS
Shock Avoid + 3 T1 ES + Res Graveard:
https://www.craftofexile.com/?b=41&m=graveyard&i=|16|&ob=both&v=d&a=x&l=a&lg=16&bp=y&as=1&hb=0&req={%222007%22:{%22l%22:43,%22g%22:2},%222008%22:{%22l%22:84,%22g%22:1},%222009%22:{%22l%22:78,%22g%22:3},%224975%22:{%22l%22:16,%22g%22:2}}&bld={}&im={}&ggt=|&ccp={}&gvc={%22limit%22:88,%22weight%22:{%221%22:{%22-300%22:5},%222%22:{%22-300%22:5},%224%22:{%22500%22:8},%225%22:{%22-300%22:2},%226%22:{%22-300%22:2},%227%22:{%22-300%22:2},%228%22:{%22500%22:12},%2214%22:{%22-300%22:2},%2216%22:{%22-300%22:2},%2231%22:{%22-300%22:1}},%22tiers%22:{%220%22:{%2250%22:16}},%22explicit%22:{%220%22:{%221%22:1}},%22haunted%22:{%220%22:{%22150%22:1}}}
TBD
Fish for 3 T1 ES, Lightning Res and Shock Avoid, benchcraft last mod

Again, high ES prefixes, res/int suffixes
If you want to (you probably don't need it, but some people prefer it, get movement speed instead of ES hybrid, but you'll be flickering+leap slamming anyway, so I never do)

This is the most buyable non-jewellery slot of them all, if you can get a good deal you might wanna buy instead of craft.

Crafting:
My crafting process:
- Fractured %inc ES Mod Base
- Spam T1 Woe until high hybrid ES
- Fix Suffixes with Eldrich Currency as above

If you are running Vaal Flicker Strike, you can Veiled Chaos for inc dmg during Soul Gain Prevention for a good DPS increase while it's on CD, this is only really useful for very beefy bosses tho

Body Armour:
NECROPOLIS
Cheap 6T1 ES/Res Graveyard:
CAREFUL copying this. This is an older 4-item craft, it's probably expensive, but it should give you one perfect hit, got very expensive lately.
https://sudos.help/poe/graveyard?hash=N4FhWujIlhlFTkts8zDNcnrJHcOFGvECbKbjsLkZOgs

You can just roll a Bronn's Lithe (definitely cheaper) or craft a rare chest with high ES/Evasion with resistances/attributes:

- Fractured T2 %es/eva Sadist Garb
- Spam Dense/Prismatic until triple T1 ES/Evasion
- Eldrich Suffix fix if you didn't get lucky with resistances/attributes
- Veiled Chaos for hybrid Attributes is decent, but not worth IMO

Rare Ring:
Finish off your build with whatever you need from ring, and get ES & Damage if you're res capped.
You can build your ring spamming Torment or Woe and hoping for the best, or just buy one.
I simply searched for ES, flat lighting, ele w/ atk, ele/lightning %dmg and bought the best price/value one.

Rare Abyss Jewels:
If you run Darkness Enthroned socket the best ones there, preferrably:
ES & Flat Lightning & Flat Lightning w/ Swords & Atk Speed
Fix your Shock avoidance with one, and get Corrupted Blood Immunity if you don't have another jewel that does

Search:
For high DPS Jewels in your DE:
https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Necropolis/olBqzrZhl

Belt:
High-rolled Darkness Enthroned with DPS Abyss Jeweles or Crystal Belt with ES, Flask Effect, Ele Dmg (Res if you need it)

Lethal Pride:
Essentially just get the Indimidation Chance Node, then as many Double Damage Chance as possible, and maybe Strength to complete requirements. There are other cool mods like fire res, phys as fire, so you can round off your build that way too.

Searches:
3 DD, 1 Intimidation
https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Necropolis/PdmgeOqiL
Or to tweak: Conqueror does not matter as Keystone wont be specced, deselect all and select only used nodes!
https://vilsol.github.io/timeless-jewels/tree?jewel=2&conqueror=Kaom&seed=15436&location=61834&mode=stats&stat=5806&stat=8166