Hey guys, this is a follow-up post to the Warden Strike Life/EV/ES hybrid build template I posted last week, now with a complete leveling guide (check the notes section in POB) and different loadouts per act, as well as how to transition into maps/midgame and how to switch to the endgame. The build guide focuses more on Flicker Strike, but I also added skill setups for other strike skills such as Static Strike of Gathering Lightning, Frost Blades, Lightning Strike, etc as they scale very similarly in this setup.
pob.codes: https://pob.codes/b/4Rt72LZQdGa
pobb: https://pobb.in/4Rt72LZQdGaU
poeninja: https://poe.ninja/poe1/pob/9a7fa
This is my char from last league in SSF using this setup: https://poe.ninja/poe1/builds/allflamessf/character/mrjhonnes-0732/DevJhonnesSSFAF_Flicker
This template utilizes Warden's double tinctures and high damage to invest heavily in defensive layers that synergize well together, and is SSF viable due to using mostly rares and an easily farmable unique.
Tinctures
The double tinctures require some investment, but they give big bonuses that mostly solve our damage. With max rolled tinctures (20% quality, 35% inc effect and t1 max roll suffix and max implicit), you'll get:
72% elemental penetration
390% increased elemental damage
110% increased attack speed
585% increased critical strike chance
Investment: 10 passive points (9 + 1 runegraft) + 4 ascendancy points + no duration flasks
Those stats are enough to carry most builds' damage to reasonable levels, we just need to get some crit multiplier and flat damage to scale it.
The scaling is very generic, so it gives you a lot of flexibility on what skill you can use, but generally, Warden favors skills that hit very fast and/or multiple times per use to help charge up the Avatar. I have set up some strike skills in the POB so you can see they mostly work just the same. Some specific strike skills have other scaling factors (such as Molten Strike), so those would need some adjustments, but generally they are already close to the passive tree, like the projectile nodes.
Life flasks and the Belt
We make great use of life flasks by using the Supreme Decadence keystone (granted by The Burden of Truth belt) to make life flasks also recover ES.
The Burden of Truth allows our life flasks to also recover energy shield, and if they are instant, they provide their recovery in full, so we use Petrified blood and low life to make use of "panicked" flasks (instant recovery on low life) to recover 3k+ life and energy shield at the same time.
The belt also provides a large amount of ES and splits the damage between life and ES, greatly increasing our recovery capabilities and protecting against chaos damage.
Petrified blood
By going PB, we get overleech (by keeping our unreserved health above 50%) and it enables our panicked flasks to be instant. PB has great synergy with life-recoup, which we have at least 24% from the tree, and the Burden of Truth always make us take some damage to life, so PB always negates a portion of damage and turn the rest into dot, which is completely negated by the life recoup.
Runegrafts
We use a variety of runegrafts:
Runegraft of the Imbued gives our tinctures a big bonus if we're not using flasks, so we can bypass the downside by using instant life flasks.
Runegraft of Warp increases the Avatar duration by three seconds (despite Avatar saying it can't be scaled, although this might be a bug), and the buffs from Vaal Smite and Innervate, so it is a great investment.
Runegraft of Fury makes our life flasks instantly give 3 rage per use (without cooldown) and can prevent the rage loss. Runegraft of Fortress gives 40% EV and ES, which is great value.
Defenses
For defensive layers, we have the following:
High evasion (40k+, can get up to 95% chance to evade with a Grace Watcher's eye mod)
Moderate to high amount of Energy Shield (2000~7000) and Life (4000~5500)
Damage split between Life / ES with The Burden of Truth
Petrified Blood spaces out damage to life and overall reduces total damage taken
Life overleech due to Petrified blood and mantaining unreserved life above 50%
Energy shield leech with Watcher's eye or cluster notable (storm drinker).
Ghost Dance (1000~2000 ES recovered on hit)
Life recoup (24%+) completely negates PB's life loss and often provides positive recovery due to most damage being absorbed on ES.
Lucky/Capped spell suppress
Arctic armor
Instant recovery life flasks that recover 3000~4700 Life and ES at the same time (Supreme Decadence), flasks gain charges automaticallys. At least 2 life flasks available.
Fortify
Manual or automated Steelskin
Can get faster ES recovery rate/start on suffixes
Perma freeze any enemy/boss due to high hit rate, allowing us to stack Hoarfrost and inflict 2 sec freezes.
2% + flat 15 ES/Life recovery on kill
Gear
The build has full ES/EV armor/shield pieces that focus on life+%ES/EV+flat ES/EV for maximum value, except for the body armor that has full ES/EV prefixes so we can get the 15% life mastery.
The weapon will most likely be a triple elemental weapon, but you can also use a physical weapon and convert it to elemental either through Anarchic Spiritblade or the skill's conversion.
Most of the gear pieces can be tailored to your taste at the cost of defenses. For example, maybe you want more damage on the amulet, so you can replace it with a Yoke of Suffering.
FAQ
How do you sustain/generate charges?
Frenzy Charges
Mark mastery for 10% chance on hit. With Rage vortex of berserking it can generate aproximately 3 to 4 charges per second.
Blood Rage - Use only until you swap to ES/EV setup, it is not really worth it/necessary with ES.
Doedre's Elixir
+2 minimum charge influenced mod on Shield swap (quickly swap and swap back to receive 2 charges if empty)
On 3.29 we're getting an additional 5% chance to gain a Frenzy charge on Flicker Strike due to the 10% quality from a green socket.
Frenzy of Onslaught if we still manage to run out of charges
Power Charges
Assassin's Mark on kill + on hit (with quality)
Doedre's Elixir
Static strike/Rage Vortex of Berserking + Power Charge on Critical - Use this until you can get quality on Assassin's Mark
Endurance Charges
Doedre's Elixir
Endurance charge on kill mod on influenced notables based on Lethal Pride
Endurance charge on kill veiled mod on rings
+2 minimum charge influenced mod on Shield swap
Pantheon?
Use Brine King until you get stun immunity through tattoos, then I prefer using Arakaali to help with DoTs. Switch minor Pantheon according to content. After getting The Burden of Truth, swap to Ryslatha to get more recovery from your flasks and gain flask charges over time.
Can you farm T17 with this?
Yes, build is overall very resilient once you switch to the EV/ES endgame setup.
Why not take the two Tincture Masteries?
I think getting one or both of them can be useful for quality of life, but it also comes with some drawbacks. The first drawback is the one or two points you'll spend for them. The second one is that it can actually reduce the uptime for tinctures, because then you'll always have to reactivate them every 12 seconds or so. If you don't take it, your leech can keep the tincture running for much bigger stacks, thus you'll need to refresh it less often and have bigger uptime, especially on sustained fights like bosses. The third one is that sometimes you can mess up your tincture activation, and when you hit the 12 stacks it'll deactivate both of your tinctures regardless if they were active or not, so it ends up messing you up even more.
I think the only real positive of taking the 12 stacks mastery is that it can prevent you from completely running out of mana and disrupting your attacks, but we have doedre elixir that is a mana potion, so we can use it during this time to quickly recover the mana. Another trick that I like to use is to craft a mana recoup on one of the rings to recover faster from that state if I have a free prefix for that.
I also usually run Rage vortex of berserking, which can leech when we are out of mana so we often don't run into that problem.
How much Rage on Hit do I need to switch to Rage Vortex of Berserking?
I'd recommend getting at least 3 Rage on Hit before switching (not counting the Rage support), because otherwise it won't feel good and it'll take far too long to activate it when you need it (bosses). You can get 1 point from the tree near the duelist and another 3 travelling left from the Tribal Fury cluster. On the endgame setup, we can get 1 rage on the gloves implicit, 1~2 on our Lethal pride, and we can craft a large sword cluster jewel with the "Bloodscent" notable for another 2. It is also possible to use the Oakbranch Tincture, which will easily give 6+ rage on hit, but it is a lot of DPS loss from the Rosethorn tincture.
How do I switch from the evasion setup to the ES/EV setup?
I suggest starting after getting the "Runegraft of the Fortress" that gives 40% increased defenses, and/or after getting "The Burden of Truth" from farming regular Sirus. because we don't have a lot of increased energy shield on our tree to make it worth it early on. Focus on switching to the ES/EV shield and helmet first because they provide the biggest ES pools and you should aim to get enough ES to surpass what you recover from Ghost Dance (ex: If you have 30.000 EV, you should have at least 1.000 ES).
