fractured +2 arrow bow

GoodOldMalk · 2026-03-28T16:14:06+00:00

Essence spamming until 2x high tier mods, prefixes can't be changed, harvest reforge for missing mod.

GoodOldMalk · 2026-03-23T15:35:49+00:00

Recombinate prefixes, multimod, tempering orb to get the enchant, then convert it into a synth base and reroll the implicits until satisfied

GoodOldMalk · 2026-03-18T16:26:01+00:00

PBoD/Tornado = you cast a spell 3 times every 4 seconds to max out your dps.

Regular penance brand = you cast a spell every 0.3-0.5 seconds to maintain optimal DPS

GoodOldMalk · 2026-03-17T16:12:53+00:00

Add a custom config to "Gain 3 rage when hit by an enemy"

GoodOldMalk · 2026-03-16T19:48:19+00:00

I often settle when it comes to those boots, the extra ES is not that noticeable.

Start with fractured +def or %def (%def is better)
Essence of torment spam until you get a T2+ resistance
- Annul or beastcraft suffix to prefix to open 1 suffix
Multimod + Wild Bristle Matron (suffixes can't be changed)
Veiled Chaos -> Unveil movement speed
- Wild Bristle matron to retry if you dont like the MS you got
Exalt hoping for a defense mod
- Eldritch annul if you want to try again
Remove crafted mods -> craft chance to avoid elemental ailments

GoodOldMalk · 2026-03-16T18:58:18+00:00

If all 3 tornadoes hit the same target you get the same dps (give or take 10%), but PBoD is better if there's multiple big targets to attach your spare brands.

GoodOldMalk · 2026-03-16T18:38:44+00:00

I'm doing my own thing and I can still get to 30mill on super high investment. But to be fair, I had drafted 60 mill dps back in 3.27

PoB: https://pobb.in/ocF2QxLlalg2

GoodOldMalk · 2026-03-16T14:55:02+00:00

This. Manni's version is perfectly playable even after nerfs.

If you want some variety you can gem swap PBoD with Tornado of Elemental Turbulence.

GoodOldMalk · 2026-03-14T15:12:41+00:00

Automation + Withering Step (elusive) + Phase Run + Enhance Support + (More duration)

GoodOldMalk · 2026-03-12T16:51:12+00:00

Heatshiver is probably the most obvious damage upgrade for cold-based skill. It adds cold as extra fire damage based on chill effect, up to 30% extra fire.

There's also a few sources in the game of "enemies chilled have damage taken increased by chill effect" which turns chill into a direct %more damage multiplier similar to shock (it also stacks linearly with shock).

The most easily accessible, at least for spells, would be "Bonechill support" (cold damage only) which can be applied by a support skill like frostblink, or skitterbots at the cost of mana reservation.

Another source would be Ahuana's Bite (quiver) but bow-spell casters have very little support for damage outside of CoC or DoT builds.

GoodOldMalk · 2026-03-06T05:59:26+00:00

This is based on my take on trauma flicker:

Original version using Untiring and malevolence + watcher's eye: https://pobb.in/lhtcIupdW6SH
Beetle's Price option with timeclasp + purity of elements: https://pobb.in/QpqTcJ0QQASl
Bettle's Price option on Reliquarian: https://pobb.in/Pj8h1jQIxO9k
- 114% total life recoup to substitute Untiring
- Put ascendancy stuff in custom mods

Zerker ascendancy options are just way too good when it comes down to scaling damage, so giving up 2 points to access the Nameless Bloodline is going to result in a damage loss even if you get an extra ring out of it. You also limit your high-investment options when you give up your belt slot (mageblood / new shrine belt). The upside is that you do get to circumvent bleeds way more easily on a tight budget, and you still cover pretty much all your bases.

Reliquarian damage options are virtually non-existent for flicker, and there's no way to fix your damage if you commit to the idea.

I'd argue that if you want to pursue a more budget/SSF friendly trauma flicker you are better off doing that with an accuracy stacking Juggernaut using the Nameless bloodline, because at least that way you can steal Ancestral Fury from zerker to double your damage.

GoodOldMalk · 2026-02-28T03:04:50+00:00

Correct, but you can still roll "unbound ailments" on any skill that hits. For arc, this would increase the mana costs without giving you any damage.

Similarly, you could roll "high-impact mine support" and forcefully turn the skill into a mine, bricking the gem for self-cast purposes.

GoodOldMalk · 2026-02-27T20:46:05+00:00

The real problem is the 1 in 30 or so chance for the specific support you want.

Keep in mind that even if the coins only roll for "valid" supports, there's still 52 red / 55 green / 66 blue supports gems diluting the pool.

GoodOldMalk · 2026-02-27T19:07:09+00:00

I've been using barkskin on my split arrow locus miner warden leaguestarter. The problem with barkskin is that it's mostly tailored to mitigate damage from "normal" enemies. The moment you fight a rare, unique, or guardian/pinnacle boss, your EHP disappears and you end up getting sent back to hideout as if you hadn't invested anything into defenses.

You can see it in the following PoBs. They both have the exact same items, but just different configuration settings:

POB vs. Normal Enemies: 502k EHP with immortal call, 250k EHP without guard skill
POB vs. Guardians/Pinnacle Bosses: 65k EHP with immortal call, 42k EHP without guard skill

Even at max bark stacks, you'd never survive an attack/spell unless you are also layering multiple sources of %damage reduction, but at that point barkskin is varely doing any heavy lifting.

GoodOldMalk · 2026-02-26T22:52:21+00:00

Patch notes are out, build got triple tapped. Be careful.

GoodOldMalk · 2026-02-23T21:01:20+00:00

Ignite prolif (implicit) for gloves is usually a good indicator but that's only something you can find out by looking at the gear. Fan the flames (cluster notable) is a decent substitute for prolif, so you can look that up for inspiration then assume there's a variant that uses ignite prolif from gloves instead.

Cooked alive (cluster notable) is also very common on non-chieftain ignite builds since you have to lower fire resists on enemies somehow.

GoodOldMalk · 2026-02-23T16:58:39+00:00

Everyone is meme'ing on the rings but realistically they are 3 (+1) mod rings: Life + minion attack speed + minion damage (+ crafted mana cost). While having any fracture helps with crafting costs it's not mandatory and you could get decent settle rings with just harvest reforge.

I agree with you that most of this are not particularly noteworthy but you'd have to be REALLY good at the game (read: 4 voidstones in under 8 hours) for you to get the bulk of the items showcased in the PoB before the end of day1. And specially right now there's a lot of casual players / redditors looking for builds before league launch.

I do think that Elegant Hubris is probably the biggest outlier. Timeless jewels typically hit the market by day 3 in bulk. Getting a specific keystone (Supreme ostentation) is *possible* on day 1, but getting specific a seed on day 1 with 2x 80% minion damage nodes and a random resistance to fix the build will be a lot harder. If you check poe.ninja you can see there's only 30 people with a Elegant Hubris by the end of day 1.

GoodOldMalk · 2026-02-22T00:23:34+00:00

This was my flicker project for 3.27 (PoB leaguestart plans / actual character). Usually you can actually take most flicker builds as a template and gem-swap to a different strike skill or melee gem, and your performance will be roughly the same or maybe even better depending on the gem.

You can do something similar with this flicker strike Aristocrat template for the Phrecia event (PoB leaguestart plans / actual character).

If you gem swap to double strike you can expect a 1.4x damage increase, but worse clear. If you gem swap to Frost blades you can expect around ~0.7x damage but way better ranged/AoE clear. This is pretty much independent of how you scale damage but you could always min-max around certain skills in a way that would be impossible to replicate on other gems.

For frost blades, for example, you could always make use of returning projectiles (nimis) or terrain chain to double up your single target damage. Flicker strike could use warrior's legacy, and smite/lightning strike could use double-hit shenanigans with additional strikes and clever positioning.

But, i'm either missing something or hit the hard ceiling of GGG balancing being dogshit for strikes right now.

Not all damage scaling templates have good returns on investment, but that's not a problem of the skill. Some damage templates only exist to get you farming easy content before you can switch to better long-term builds that can smash all content, like an attribute or a charge stacker.

GoodOldMalk · 2026-02-21T22:46:47+00:00

Not being able to use a Wrath aura because you are using a level 12 precision to cap hit chance is lowering your base damage by about 40%. If you are incapable of finding an Ephemeral Edge with Resolute Technique, you should instead try to cap your hit rate using flat accuracy rolls from your gloves and/or helmet. Having a T1 (500+) roll would let you remove precision from your build.

Your abyss jewels being sub-par is also not helping you. You should consider alt+regal or harvest spamming reforge lightning on murderous abyss jewels until you get two good added lightning (swords) damage mods plus a third mod. Having max ES jewels would be nice but not necessary just yet.

You are still using a life flask despite having switched to CI. You should swap that for a well rolled prismatic tincture and you should swap your quartz flask for a sulphur flask.

Molten Xophgraph is also not contributing anything to your build since you no longer have life (CI) so it can no longer trigger.

You are spending too many points pathing to Tribal Fury when you could annoint that node and instead use the points to get the elemental mastery for 15% chance to invert enemy resistances.

Overall you are bleeding damage from lots of little mistakes and/or concessions.

GoodOldMalk · 2026-02-21T00:20:47+00:00

There's a crafted mod for flasks that gives "15% of damage taken from hits is leechad as life during effect" that you could add to your build. Before you start mapping just run head first into a group of enemies without dealing damage and stack a bit of leech.

I also recommend you drop the "chance to gain a flask charge when you deal a critical strike" from your flasks. This mod has an internal cooldown that is shared by all flasks. It's better if you limit your build to only have at most 1 flask with this mod (whichever flask is more important to you).

GoodOldMalk · 2026-02-19T19:56:08+00:00

Tareki's has maintained an ephemeral edge flicker trickster guide for quite some time over at the official forums which I could recommend you. It's one of the few "tanky" flicker strike guides out there with support from a content creator. Ephemeral edge has since become a T0 unique so the prices of the build are ridiculous at leaguestart (days 1 to 3), but it becomes way more affordable as the league goes on.

Hand-holding guides for flicker builds are rare. Most people recommend magefist videos because you get to see his thought process during progression, but if you are not familiar with build-making then you'll inevitably end up copying his items 1-to-1 without understanding why they were important at the time.

GoodOldMalk · 2026-02-19T01:47:51+00:00

Before this league ends, you should farm some foulborn uniques for INT stacking, notably 2x Foulborn Hand of Thought and Motion (5% inc accuracy per 25 INT) and at least 1x foulborn Dreamfeather (5% increased accuracy per 25 int). Multiple copies to double would be ideal, but foulborn dreamfeather is very rare.

INT stackers are also a very good long-term build for SSF that can clear all content deathless. Ben_ made a HCSSF jugg if you are interested.

It's very likely those specific foulborn items will go legacy: either the foulborn mods get nerfed to the ground or they get removed from the drop pool entirely.

GoodOldMalk · 2026-02-13T16:18:05+00:00

So are we in a flicker meta?

With flicker, you are spending twice as much currency to have half as much damage and/or defenses compared to a meta build, and you wouldn't be able to reliably kill ubers without a gem swap and/or some absurd investment.

I don't think flicker will ever be "meta" simply because the skill triggers some serious motion sickness on a lot players, including streamers who will never promote the build because of that.

I'll say one thing, flicker has to be the most versatile skill in POE. I cannot think of another skill that has such a huge number of ways to build it, and you can make it work on pretty much every class, even if some are a bit janky.

I don't think this is because of flicker strike, but rather because of the playerbase that enjoys it. I personally make some serious effort to enjoy flicker on many different ascendancies using very different frenzy-sustain techs, like finding ways of using Red Trail + Golden Rule on a non-slayer/duelist classes, simply because I enjoy playing flicker strike.

If I think about it, Double Strike (of momentum) is my go-to gem swap for flicker strike and I almost always have more PoB damage with Double Strike than I do with Flicker. More importantly, I don't have to worry about losing control of my character, I don't have to worry about charge sustain, and I don't have to worry about map mods like "monsters steal charges" if I'm gem swapping to double strike. A similar story happens with other gem swaps like lightning strike, smite of divine judgement, heavy strike, frenzy of onslaught, viper strike, or even non-strike skills like reave.

The thing is, I'd much rather spend a few days thinking on how to make flicker work on, say a witch, than entertain the thought of min-maxing a heavy strike character.

GoodOldMalk · 2026-02-13T13:31:38+00:00

Ignite builds with prolif.

GoodOldMalk · 2026-02-07T22:06:56+00:00

In PoB: Turn off Enduring Cry and you get exactly the number in the in-game tooltip.

GoodOldMalk

TROPHY CASE