Flicker Strike Gemling Legionnaire Full Guide | From The Riverbank to Infinity | Low -> High Budget

Table of content

• Build Overview
• PoB Links
• Pro's and Con's
• Important Mechanics
• Gear Overview
• Skilltree & Ascendancy
• Gem Setups
• Leveling
• Video Guides
• Video Showcases
• FAQ
• Credits

Morning Guys,
Moorhuhn here.
This is my Flicker Strike Gemling Legionnaire.
Starting out with a fairly moderate budget, the build is scalable into infinity and beyond.

The entirety of the build is build upon The Pillar Of The Caged God Quarterstaff.
While starting out with mostly strength, adding dexterity into the mix later, and finalising with intelligence, this build is a tri attribute stacker. Gemling Legionnaire lets us utilise all attributes to great effect. We use strength to scale increased damage and health, dexterity to scale attack speed and accuracy, and intelligence, to scale flat damage, mana and area of effect.

Utilising Flicker Strike snapshotting and easy power charge generation through a mostly automated weapon swap setup lets us start out with a potent build on a low budget.

Making good use of HoWa, The Adorned, Controlled Metamorphosis, Against the Darkness, and Morior Invictus, the scaling possibilities are endless. If these names aren't known to you, DO NOT FEAR! I will explain everything in throughout detail.

So lets dive right into it



The most up to date variants of the PoBs can be found on my Discord. So if you feel like the PoBs here are out of date, check the Discord or hit me up for an update.

https://discord.gg/xJ4hp9m5uU

Current Variant:
https://pobb.in/3sk3a_jnAPhM

Below 10 Div Budget Crit Variant: (Recommended for when coming out of the story)
https://pobb.in/hzp7sjbMLJ5h

Non Crit Non HoWa Budget Variant: (Only for right after the story and leveling)
https://pobb.in/dbjBk_rDI1fl



Pro

• Flicker Strike
• Smooth leveling experience
• Starts out cheap
• Very fast clear
• Good survivability due to health scaling
• Infinite scaling options
• Flexible gear options to add rarity, more damage, or more defense

Con

• Lots of backtracking even with very strict filter
• Can cause headaches
• Items go from cheap to extremely expensive quickly when looking for upgrades
• Loosing power charges in dangerous situations can be very annoying

Power Charge Generation
Power charges are generated through Profane Ritual. By reducing its duration a lot and gaining tons of cast and weapon swap speed on the secondary weapon set, this feels very smooth.

For this setup to feel as good as you want it, you need to assign it to the second weapon set only. So that whenever you use it, you sweap into the second set. When no enemies are around, you have to press X to get into the second set.

To swap back you can just use either charged staff or flicker strike. However charged staff will consume all your power charges. So aside from the first use and to refresh its duration, use any of the staff skills.

For the occasion that no enemies are around, you just started the map, or are in front of a boss, we utilise Skeleton Warriors and the Sacrifice spirit gem to generate charges. You want to have these gems only activated in your secondary setup, so that you do not consume spirit for no reason. Activate all your combat auras in your first set only, so that you can have a good amount of skeletons. Leveling the skeletons reduces their spirit cost also.

Flicker Strike snapshotting

Flicker Strike rolls all of its conditions on the first strike. All repeats will copy these conditions. This gives us a couple of fun tools to play around with.

Ambush support. Hitting a full life enemy with flicker strike, will give us a very high chance to crit. Now that the first hit crits, all subsequent attacks will crit do also.

Frozen Locust. The ice crystal of frozen locust counts as full life, if just spawned. So you can target your crystal first to guarantee crits against bosses that have been damaged already.

Mana cost. Due to the skill repeating, only the first strike consumes mana. This makes mana management fairly trivial overall. Some bosses do pose a threat to our mana when they survive the first couple of chains however.
So dont forget your mana flask if you do happen to run out of it.
For clear a single jewel with mana on kill should be sufficient. 1% does work. 2% feels much better.

Attribute stacking

Which attribute you should focus very much depends on your gear state. For this id recommend to check out your PoB. On gear, it does not matter which of the attributes you are getting. Just get them as high as feasible within your budget. You can change the attributes on your skilltree to make up for it always.

For dexterity it is important to change a couple of nodes due to attack speed breakpoints. Changing nodes into dex can look like a dps downgrade untill you change a couple more, where it spikes up due to hitting a new attack speed breakpoint.

If the attributes give more or less the same damage, strength is a choice always, due to it increasing your survivability also.

Why no Herald of Ice

I tried out Herald of Ice and was playing it for my entire leveling and well into the lategame. Especially with Polcirkeln it provides tons of clear. However shattering enemies all over the screen interrupts your flicker chains often. This makes for a very disruptive gameplay. Therefore I swapped over to Herald of Ash. It provides a much smoother clearing experience due to not killing enemies instantly.



Current Gear



Due to the limited possibilities of posting gear from PoE2 on the forum currently, please take a look at the PoBs for early gear setups and the remaining jewels.

Tradelinks for starting out and cheaper alternatives:
These can be adjusted to buy very good items also.






Adaptive Capability and Enhanced Effectiveness are the best tool to get a lot of value out of attributes. Doubling the accuracy, mana, and life we are getting out of attributes. These you should pick first while leveing

Crystalline Potential should be picked up as soon as you transition into flicker strike. It makes the skill feel a lot smoother with less power charge refreshment needed.

Early on Advanced Thaumaturgy can feel good when the mana cost are too high for the clear speed or at bossing with lower dps.

Implanted Gems is a decent option to scale damage further, however it is a small bonus only.

Generally I prefer to pick up 2 small quality nodes to get even better charge sustain.



Check out the PoBs for a zoomable skill tree variant.

On the skilltree we need to get the +2 power charges. Due to the dexterity wheels being close and very potent crit clusters around, this does not pose much of a problem. Pathing is very strong anyways due to getting tons of attributes.

With the First Weapon Set we just pick the damage nodes we do not need during the weapon swap.

With the Second Weapon Set we go for reduced skill effect duration and weapon swap speed. This helps with power charge recharging a lot.

On the way towards the good clusters, we pick up as many jewel sockets as possible. Even without adorned, these do provide extremely strong bonuses.

The goal is to reach about 50% crit chance without ambush support. This can be somewaht difficult, but anything above 35 starts to feel good.

We pick up falcon dive to utilitse the dex scaling accuracy to gain more attack speed. This does not have a high priority below 300 dex.

Pick up either Hunter's Talisman or Natural Immunity. Both can provide very strong defense against freezes, which can be dangerous in some situations.

Jack of all trades should not be picked without a decent Against The Darkness.

A Large Controlled Metamorphosis helps getting penetration and scale Against The Darkness.


Main Setup

Rage - Electrocute
We do not use Quarterstaff Strike a whole lot. And when we do, mostly for the Charged Staff wave. So we do not need a lot of supports in here and just add some utility.


Perpetual Charge - Ambush - Concentrated Effect - Primal Armament - Close Combat
Perpetual Charge is the most important gem to make Flicker Strike feel good. Right after Ambush comes, because it provides so insane value due to the snapshotting nature of flicker strike explained in the most important mechanics section. Concentrated Effect is very high damage for no real downside.Primal Armament and Close Combat are good because they provide guaranteed damage.

Other options for supports here are lightning infusion and Momentum. Lightning Infusion just is too weak compared to the other options however. Momentum might not work well on single target bosses, so we do not run it here. If you are mapping primarily, Momentum provides very good value.


Persistence - Overcharge - Lightning Exposure - Strip Away - Lightning Infusion
I do like Charged Staff with a utility oriented setup. Persistence bumps the duration up to over one minute, which is very nice while mapping and for bosses. Overcharge, Lightning Exposure, and Strip Away provide a strong damage boost for our Flicker Strike. Lightning Infusion just adds some bonus damage. You could go with Conduction, if you struggle to apply big shocks yet.

If you are running a lot of cold damage, you can add Cold Infusion also. Due to being nearly 100% lightning however ,I decided to drop the cold supports alltogether.

Single Target

Eye of Winter - Conduction - Voltaic Mark - Cursed Ground - Heightened Curse
This setup provides a lot of damage with the resistance shred and higher shocks. The critical Weakness debuff allows us to not rely on Ambush for single target also. If you do struggle with bossing, swap out Ambush in the main setup for another damage support when running this setup.

I do have so much damage that I want Cursed Ground, so I don't have to wait for the curse to be applied. If your damage is on the lower side, prioritise Heightened Curse over Cursed Ground

Clear Auras

Magnified Effect - Precision
Herald of Ash does not need many supports. And does not accept many supports also. It provides great clear and we do not use Magnified Effect anywhere else. So slap it on there. For why we use Herald of Ash over Herald of Ice check out the very important mechanics section.


Elemental Focus - Lightning Penetration - Innervate
This setup just provides some more clear and spreads Herald of Ash explosions. If you are running a setup with cold damage, switch Elemental Focus to Ice Bite

Utility

Charge Infusion provides more critical strike chance, which helps a lot to get closer to 50%. It does rarely remove charges with quality and a high level so the uptime is a nonissue.


Martial Tempo - Inspiration - Bullseye
Martial Tempo and Bullseye are great ways to get around faster. The increase in attack speed feels very good. To tackle the mana cost add the Inspiration support and keep Frozen Locus at level 3. This does not effect the speed of the skill.

Charge Setup

Unleash - Profusion - Overabundance - Arcane Tempo - Fast Forward/ Mobility
Unleash and Profusion make generating charges very quick, because often times one click is enough for full charges. Overabundance helps with reducing the delay to gain charges a lot. Arcane Tempo and Mobility make the skill feel a lot smoother to play. Either of these can be replaced by Fast Forward, if you rather trade some speed for even quicker charges. Overabundance should suffice however.


Physical Mastery - Minion Mastery
Just add some levels to the gem to reduce its spirit cost.


Needed to cast Profane Ritual on your Skeletons.

Both of these skills should be assigned to your second weapon set only to not waste any spirit on your clear setup.



Leveling a legionnaire is a lot of fun. There are tons of good leveling uniques you can utilise. The basics are: Pick up a pillar, socket in flat damage runes, stack strength and dex, socket the gem you like the most. Get rolling.

You should not switch to flicker before level 58. Get your charge sustain sorted out before starting to flicker.

A lab carry can improve your speed greatly, as you can get all 8 Ascendancy points from one carry at level ~25.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dK8iMKkBKHU

In this video I am showing a lot of the strong leveling uniques.
However I have improved upon them since. One of the strongest recommendations I would make now is to get a corrupted Pillar with flat lightning damage. This corruption is worth about 2.5 runes and pushes your pillar into a 4.5 rune monster.



Videoguide on my first variation
www.youtube.com/watch?v=dy5AS5h2Eow

Improved variation. Way higher budget. Adorned included
www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bkMDerdfAc

Easy Power Charges: (has been improved since)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aQIhML1Rdw

Improved Power Charge Tech & Other tips & tricks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iG9ILzo3Gk


pure gameplay footage coming up soon

T15 45% Delirium Map
https://youtu.be/6-_qq6VdrfY




Q: Also heads up, I'm not seeing zoomable passive trees in the POB links. Maybe I'm missing something.


A:

Q: Thanks for the awesome guide! One question, why aren't we using the bell? I just got setup on the low-budget end, ~550 str, 270 dex/int. Had a friend throw down bell on a T18 boss and that felt pretty good, though I'm not sure if the damage was from me or the bell


A:

Q: Any clue how this fares

A:


Thanks to all the people who have helped me improve the build. A lot of people have played their part in the creation of this variant. Either with recommending entire mechanics, smoothing out the passive tree, giving input on item improvements, and a lot more.

Credit where credit is due, I started out following Goblin Inc.'s guide roughly https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-8RJoOwU28 Obviously I did a lot of changes, including the entire class since. But he was who made the stone roll.


With all that said,
I say thanks for reading.
If any questions come up feel free to ask. I answer everything as usual.
I am Moorhuhn
And I am out

Reserved for bumps / updates

Awesome Guide TY

Any clue how this fares in hardcore?

Also heads up, I'm not seeing zoomable passive trees in the POB links. Maybe I'm missing something.

Thanks for the awesome guide! One question, why aren't we using the bell? I just got setup on the low-budget end, ~550 str, 270 dex/int. Had a friend throw down bell on a T18 boss and that felt pretty good, though I'm not sure if the damage was from me or the bell.

"

Also heads up, I'm not seeing zoomable passive trees in the POB links. Maybe I'm missing something.

PoB lets you zoom in into the passive trees. Sorry if this was written confusing. There is no seperate link aside from the pob links

"

Thanks for the awesome guide! One question, why aren't we using the bell? I just got setup on the low-budget end, ~550 str, 270 dex/int. Had a friend throw down bell on a T18 boss and that felt pretty good, though I'm not sure if the damage was from me or the bell.

3 reasons.

Damage, setup, and gem space.

From my feeling the bell does not provide an actual damage increase. Only if the bell is right on top of the enemy so flicker hits the bell and the enemie within one strike.

Secondly you need to set it up. Flicker strike needs 4 full rotations to get the bell ready. So you will have to start with 4 auto attacks into the battle to get the bell ready.

We do, in the current gem setup, not have space for the bell. Simple as that.

However I did play with the bell for a long time. Though since I am playing with ambush, and would advice to always be doing so, it just doesnt provide enough value anymore.
When my damage was lower, it was nice to put down when I lost my charges in breaches and alike though. But with the improved charge tech I implemented over time it felt less and less necessary.

"

Any clue how this fares in hardcore?

Technically might be okish. It can throw you into situations you do not want to be in however. Though I would shift the focus of the build into very high strength and life stacking to reach past 9k hp. With that setup it felt very tanky.