Level 96 Crit Vaal Blade Flurry Warden^3.25

Notes

WARNING - I am a softcore enjoyer and will sometimes not focus on defensives. If you are looking for ultra tanky, this is not the build, especially on warden. 
This can facetank regular pinnicle bosses with vaal skill usage, but it is not an archmage MoM mana abuser or anything like that. 
Temper your expectations, it will be somewhat squish, but good damage. The configs are meant only for the dexstacking trees, so you can disable/ignore them for the early leveling trees.

Leveling explosive trap or Roa/Storm rain into Blade Flurry (or charged dash for the memes), swapping after hitting maps/getting cheap dex stack gear

I did not make a melee leveling guide becuase I cannot tell if melee leveling will be strong or not for 3.25, therefore I focused on either spells or bows. 

You can also respec with Gold! Much easier access for newer/noob players and leaguestart scenarios.

g-g-r|g-[gr]-g|r-g-g|b-g|g-b|nne|Flam|itho|s:.+bow - This regex covers all the items you'll be looking for in terms of weapons/sockets/+1 fire or phys wands for trapper, simply copy and paste into the search bar of an item vendor. 

Traps - If leveling traps, you cannot use Avatar of the wilds. This route will also require more respec points (30-40 at least), however will feel stronger since it scales well with spell damage and doesn't need much juice
to get started after act 1. You will also need to keep up with intelligence, which is a bit tricky at league start without using uniques. Mana will be bad until you get eldritch battery. 

Find decent wands and you're set until maps. any + 1 to all spells/fire/phys spell gem wand with added damage to spells is good with a shield for shield charge tech to get through the acts fast. use the gem links in the 
trapper tree and you'll have a nice time act 2 onward. The pathing is a bit awkward at first since it reaches out very far, also be sure to keep up with your flasks. To be frank, it's not the easiest leveling build to run, but it is managable.



Below is my reccomended leveling strat -

Bows - If leveling with bows, you will feel okay in act 1, but get stronger faster as you get more added damage and find better weapons by act 2-3. You will notice mana being annoying but not the end of the world due to mana gain on hit later.
The gearing feels a lot simpler than the explosive trap leveling and requires much less attributes, also it requires less passive points being swapped for dex stack.  (~20-30).

IF the league mechanic gives a lot of items, it may be better to just level melee/bows and grab added damage sources. Clear will feel a little slow at the start (Act 1), unless the league mech is insane. 
Make sure to keep up with weapon upgrades, flasks, and links. look for raw lightning damage and fire damage on a bow. Use added cold with trinity and you'll have an easy time with the acts. 

Ascendency order is 

1. Oath of Spring - Best source of damage early, you're using skills that hit a lot with solid lightning damage and decent crit amounts, 
you will do very very good damage and stack up the shocks to 10-30 times for 2% each from over laps with storm rain or explosive traps.

2. Barkskin - Very strong in acts since you will take mostly low chip damage, it also gives a huge amount of evade if you get hit by attacks a lot. Pairs nicely with arctic armour/grace

3. Either Oath of Winter or Avatar Of the Wilds if you are playing bows. Again you will have many hits happening at once, giving you massive amounts of hoarfrost very quickly, so if you do manage to freeze, it will be a very long freeze
 with Oath of winter. Take the Winter Spirit node and mastery that states deal 5 % increased damage permanantly on enemies per second they were frozen, and these pair very nicely together especially on bosses.

Avatar of the wilds gives a massive 80% MORE damage burst for 10 seconds after stacking it up (only works for your hits, so doesn't pair well with traps, take oath of winter instead)
You will stack this very quickly thanks to how many times you will hit with overlaps from storm rain (6-8 seconds) however, it won't be crazy needed in acts since most things will die before it matters. 
This is better as a final ascendency point unless you just want more damage.

4. Which ever between oath of Winter or Avatar of the wilds you didn't pick.

Eventually I will respec Oath of Spring to Oath of Summer for more consistent damage and not needing to worry about needing to hit 20 times a second for good benefit of Oath of Spring after swapping to dex stacking.


You will need about 30-60 C at least to properly swap depending on the breach market. 3 - 5 divines to fully fleshout the baseline gear in my tree. (ranged could change, but shouldn't be more than 8 D total after 3 days, very doable for most players)

Hand of Thought and Motion - usually 3 - 10 c each, you'll need 2 - so 6 - 20 c

Fractul Thoughts - Usually 2 - 5 c at most at league starts. 

Briskwrap - Good early dex stacking chestpiece for more damage. a 5 link is maybe 45 - 90 c, or buy 1-5 c version and 5-6 link it yourself

The Snowblind grace - Best defensive dex stacking chestpiece. a 5 link is maybe 50 - 90 c, or buy 1-5 c version and 5-6 link it yourself

Astramentis - Massive amulet for all stats, makes dex stack gearing much easier - between 5-75 c depending on rarity, but if you get it early, it's normally cheap. gets very cheap after week 1 though.


IF you want to abuse the extra aura tech, use haste + Marionette Specrte + guardians blessing. Might not be cheap to get the corpse, no price estimate.

Look for simple rare gear that gives life, resistances and dexterity. usually are priced at 10-30 c each but can be crafted with various methods that many other content creators have streamlined.

Use eldritch currency to get intimidate on hit and lightning exposure on gloves for implcits. might take between 5-30 tries for each if you're unlucky. which could be 10-90 c range depending on luck. 

You can also look for brittle or sapped ground on boots for bossing, but not neccessary.

you'll want 2 golden oils and 1 violet oil to get Veteran's wrath for rage gain on hit. 50 - 160 c total depending on how early you get this.

Arcing blows is a good alternative - 2 Clear oils and 1 Silver. 15 - 35 c total.


Cheap 1-5 c uniques which give a lot of power early game-

Tasalio's sign - ring source of raw damage

Berek's grip - ring source of raw damage and good leech

Praxis - ring that allieviates a lot of mana issues

wanderlust - boots for decent ms and freeze immunity
 
honorable mentions - more than 5-15 c early league

Tabula Rasa - simple 6 link chest

Storm Cloud - solid elemental bow for leveling

Goldrim - good all res helmet

Axiom Perpetuum - a lot of good spell damage and crit for spells on a sceptre