[3.25] Rage Vortex of Berserking Flicker Strike Berserker - Tanky map destroyer



After playing Tarekis's Trickster Flicker last league, I couldn't go back to a glass cannon flicker playstyle. Having never played a Berserker before, I decided to give it a shot, since Rage got reworked entirely. I've discovered, over some experimentation, that Rage Vortex of Berserking(RVoB) is an incredible supplement skill to Flicker Strike as a Berserker.

The end goal of the build is designed to require minimal attention while farming simulacrums or T17's. I wouldn't look at this build if you would like to farm ubers.

Videos

POB
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My current POB:
https://pobb.in/mt5y9klLFdIp

Older POB(more expensive):
https://pobb.in/Abvj9U7v7dmI

Older POB(budget-ish):
https://pobb.in/BvxuC41yIVGK

Why Rage Vortex of Berserking?
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1. Counteracts the life loss of Rite of Ruin. Berserk can do this as well, but it's not always up, and you can refresh RVOB while it's still active to reset the rage drain rate.

2. Applies several on hit effects you'd rather not have in your main skill setup: fortify, maim, cull. These supports are flexible, you could swap out cull with Rage support or Life on Hit.

3. Acts as a pseudo anti-melee bubble when Lion's Roar is up, due to the knockback.

4. Helps gain frenzy charges with the Redeemer chest mod: 10% to gain a frenzy charge on hit. In my setup RVOB hits about 20 times a second, resulting in enough charge gain to not have to worry about using Farruls Fur.

5. With 10% instant leech, you are constantly gaining a TON of life and mana, allowing you to get away with a very small mana pool and giving a very nice amount of life leeched per second. On a higher end build, theRVoB storm alone gives around 1.1k HP/s in instant leech and 22k HP per second in leech over time. Flicker gives about 740 HP/s in instant leech and 15.5k a second in leech over time.

The overall sequence for this build is:
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1. Intimidating cry.
2. Flick in to an enemy.
3. Activate RVoB.
4. Keep flicking.
5. Refresh RVoB once the rage drain rate accelerates out of control. (Try to keep your rage from dipping 5-10 below your max, every 30 seconds or so)
6. Drop a War banner and pop Berserk on really tanky bosses.

Pros:
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+Tanky. 80/80 block, elemental ailment immunity, 21 fortify, ~100k-110k armor, insane leech per second. EHP sitting at ~720k with molten shell up, and about 430k without.

+Good DPS. A budget version should be able to hit around 5-10M DPS for 10-20 div. My current version is sitting at about 20-36M DPS, with about 140 div total in investment for the whole build.

+Map destroyer. Juiced T16's are a breeze on a budget-ish build, T17's can be cleared well but you'll have to roll the maps to avoid some build breaking mods. Can do Simulacrum deathless without much effort once you get ailment immunity.

Cons:
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-You must manage your Rage to keep this build feeling good. RVoB must be refreshed every 30 seconds or so.

-Heavily dependant on leech for survival, "cannot leech/cannot do damage" mods can brick the build. Don't expect to survive many hits if you aren't actively attacking.

-Flicker can't handle certain bosses like Maven, requiring a gem swap to Double Strike.

-Mapping with Flicker can involve backtracking to get loot you zoomed past.

-Some people just can't stomach it. Don't play this build if you get motion sickness.

Most important things to keep in mind:
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1. You want at least 10 rage on hit for the build to be smooth. The more you have, the lazier you can be about refreshing RVoB and the better you can sustain Berserk, but 10 is fine. I get 9 from the tree and 1 from the timeless jewel.

2. Melee splash(Tribal Fury) + non vaal attacks target an additional enemy(glove eldrich mod/explicit or attack mastery) is needed for flicker to actually clear well and feel satisfying.

3. Intimidating cry before activating RVoB to get free double damage for the entire duration. Refresh RVoB whenever you feel the drain rate is starting to stop you from sitting at 10 rage below your maximum.

4. Use Berserk sparingly, I mostly use it for finishing the last half of a big bosses health bar. Berserk isn't really necessary for mapping. You can't reset/cancel Berserk so the rage drain rate eventually becomes completely unmanageable and you'll go back to 0 rage.

5. You may have to swap some points around to get 80/80 block if you do not have a watcher's eye that gives x% block from determination in addition to the pride two extra impales.

6. All rage gain is on hit, no warcry rage gain, and RVoB is manually refreshed. Therefore, if your rage is at 0, you must land at least one attack before you can rev up RVoB. You can either just hold the RVoB button down for a second, or perform a single flick/leap slam.

7. You'll need a source of mana leech on hit, which can be obtained via the cluster jewel node "Fuel the Fight". Otherwise you could get it on a regular jewel or possibly on a ring.

Leveling
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I leveled with RVoB + sunder until I was ready to switch to flicker. I used Blood Magic with just pride + eternal blessing until I switched over to a mana leech setup with determination + pride.

I wouldn't switch to flicker until you have these three mods good to go:
1. 10% chance to gain a frenzy charge on hit(chest mod)
2. Melee splash (Tribal Fury)
3. Non Vaal skills target an additional enemy(glove eldrich mod)

Ascendancy progression:
I'd go for Crave the Slaughter first. Aspect of Carnage second.

There isn't really a clear order for the next two, you just don't want to take Rite of Ruin until you can also mitigate the downside. If you don't have RVoB yet, Berserk and/or Instant leech may allow you to mitigate the life loss for the meantime.

Gear
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My current loadout:


All rare pieces of gear: Aim for as much life and armor as you can find, fill the suffixes with Ele/Chaos res mostly. Fit in Spell Suppress if you can get away with it.

Weapon: A high Physical DPS one handed axe. You'll want at least 450-550 Physical DPS, but more is always better. Soul Taker can work here too. Ideally a faster weapon is better, since you want RVoB hitting as fast as possible.

Shield: Svalinn. Make sure you have the Shock Nova setup here.

Body: Rare Royal Plate with the Reemer mod: "10% chance to grain a frenzy charge on hit". You will want this mod to make the build feel good.

Helmet: Rare high armor/health Giantslayer Helmet with these eldrich implicits: "x% reduced mana cost of attacks" and "x% increased reservation effciciency". I have 9% reservation efficiency and 20% reduced cost on mine.

Gloves: Rare high armor/health Leviathan Gauntlets with % increased attack speed. You'll want the implicits "non vaal skills strike an addition enemy" and "hits have a chance to ignore physical damage reduction" not so sure how well the phys damage reduction is helping us though. You can experiment with other mods if you'd like.

Belt: Bear's Girdle or Arn's Anguish. I'm torn between the two, but I switched to a double corrupted Arn's with increased Pride effect and attack speed, and it seems to be better DPS/EHP

Amulet: Carnage Heart for the attributes/res/damage while leeching. There's probably a better amulet that could go here, possibly either a Stranglegasp or an Aul's that makes pride/determination reserve no mana.

Rings: Rare rings with added Phys damage to attacks, you want high life and some resistances, damage taken recouped as life is a plus. I went double Amethyst to cap out my chaos res.

Boots: Rare high armor/health Titan Greaves, With eldritch implicits for "x% chance to avoid shock" and "x% chance to avoid elemental ailments". You want your total shock avoidance to be 55+ on your boots, that way you can get the rest of the shock avoidance on a jewel for the Stormshroud setup. Have an open prefix so you can craft "Movement speed + chance to gain Onslaught on kill". This craft is found by unveiling boots from Betrayal.

Jewels:
1. A decently rolled Lethal Pride to fit in the top left of your tree, you'll want to look for at least one node with "1 Rage on melee hit", the rest of the nodes you can look for "5% chance to deal double damage" or "4% increased max life". My current jewel is "13210 Warriors under Akoya, passives conqured by the Karui"
2. A Watcher's eye with "Impales last two additional hits with pride", bonus if you can get "x% increased chance to block with determination", you'll have to shuffle a node or two around on the tree to hit 80/80 block without it
3. A large "increased attack damage while holding a shield" 8 passive cluster jewel with Feed the Fury, Fuel the Fight, and Smite the Weak
4. Stormshroud
5. An abyss jewel with x% chance to avoid shock, you must balance this with your boots to reach 100%. Getting corrupted blood immunity on this jewel helps, but can be expensive-ish

Flasks:
All utility flasks should have the prefix that gains flask charges when you are hit, the suffixes should be: reduced effect of curses, increased armor during effect, immune to poison during effect(might not be necessary? can switch to movement speed if you want)
1.(Budget) Instant recovery Divine Flask with removes bleeding/corrupted blood on use. (Expensive) Progenesis + corrupted blood immune jewel
2. Basalt flask
3. Sulphur flask
4. Jade flask
5. Lions Roar for more melee dmg, the knockback is funny with RVoB running too.

All utility flasks are set to "Use when charges reach full"

Pantheons
Brine King for freeze immune and Abberath for burning ground immune.

Once you get elemental ailment immunity: switch to Solaris and Abberath.

FAQ
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Can I league start this?
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Kind of, this build has some essential pieces that would make flicker feel really bad without.

I wouldn't switch to flicker until you have these three mods good to go:
1. 10% chance to gain a frenzy charge on hit(chest mod)
2. Melee splash (Tribal Fury)
3. Non Vaal skills target an additional enemy(glove eldrich mod)

Do I have to Intimidating Cry before each use of RVoB?
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While Intimidating Cry does snapshot double damage to RVoB, it's not really necessary. 95% of your damage is coming from flicker, RVoB is mostly there for the utility of hitting 20 times a second combined with several on-hit effects.

I randomly stop flicking, what's going wrong?
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1. Make sure your frenzy charges aren't running out, this shouldn't ever happen if you have RVoB spinning and have the Redeemer chest mod for 10% frenzy gain on hit. Make sure your flicker strike has 20% quality.

2. Shock Nova slotted in svalinn can proc like crazy if you're blocking tons of hits in a very short period of time, and that can actually overcome the mana leech from RVoB and stop you from flickering. This happens to me pretty rarely, usually fixed by moving a little bit away from whatever is rapidly hitting you. You can try to unslot Shock Nova if you feel this is an issue, but losing automatic vulnerability/shock kinda sucks unless you can find a delve ring with vulnerability on hit.

Do I need the Redeemer mod on the chest?
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This is the primary way we can consistently sustain frenzy charges without awakened multistrike. It is possible to use a Mark Mastery node for the "10% chance to gain a frenzy charge on hitting a marked enemy" combined with Mark on Hit + Poacher's Mark + Lifetap. You would have to drop Shock Nova + Hextouch + Vulnerability. I have not attempted this method however. You can attempt to flicker without this mod, but it will not be 100% smooth for single target.

How would I craft the chest?
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I bought some well rolled Royal Plates with an open suffix, and just slammed Redeemer Exalts on them until one hit. Make sure you dont buy armor with eldrich implicits on it already, as you can't redeemer slam on those. It took me about five tries, as the mod itself is weighted low compared to the others. I was able to sell some of the failures for some decent profit as well, so it's hard to say it even cost me money to roll this, but your luck will vary.

If you don't hit the mod and don't want to buy more armor/redeemer orbs, you can spam some essences on the your failed Redeemer armor until you hit the mod and get some decent stats. Luck is even more of a factor this way though.

You could search on trade for something decent with the mod already on it, but I wasn't having a ton of luck on that front.

Why not crit for Blitz charges?
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I felt like I couldn't get the same level of survivability with crit investment. Resolute Technique allows us a lot more room to work with. The damage without crit is just fine for my liking.

What map mods should I avoid?
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100% avoid: Phys reflect, cannot leech
Annoying but do-able: cannot regen life/mana, enemies steal charges on hit
T17 specific mods to avoid:(can't think of all of them)
Deal 0 damage for 3 out of 10 seconds.
Drowning orbs
Cannot Block
Awakener's Desolation
Maven can be annoying combined with increased monster health

Why is my RVoB so small compared to yours?
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Don't forget to add 20% quality to the gem, as it gets a radius boost per 10% quality.

Awakened Multistrike?
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If you can afford it. It would be one of my last upgrades after I've felt satisfied with the rest of my gear.

Why no Blood Rage?
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It's another button to press. Leech is already capped, but now you have to deal with the degen. The only benefit is 20% attack speed, and honestly that is a pretty marginal boost. You can run if it you'd like, but I never bothered.


This build isn't min/maxed, the highest version of the build is what I'm currently wearing. I welcome any suggestions for any improvement to the build.
Last edited by paranoiaxssr#6720 on Aug 23, 2024, 1:42:22 PM
Last bumped on Aug 21, 2024, 3:25:24 PM
Can rage support be added to the links of Rage Vortex to make it lazy mode?
"
Can rage support be added to the links of Rage Vortex to make it lazy mode?


Yeah, I'd probably drop culling strike for it if anything.
Last edited by paranoiaxssr#6720 on Aug 21, 2024, 3:25:44 PM

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