DreamFeather Spectral Throw - Clearing the game on a budget. Shaper/Uber Atziri Included.

My gear is as follows. of course using the dreamfeather weapons to boost our chaos damage from high evasion. thus all applicable gear should have the highest evasion we can find. also all applicable gear should have flat chaos damage added, since this is our main source of damage to augment with % increase and % more damage modifiers.

the next tricky part is the belt. this belt is required. this gives us flask charge duration and most importantly lower flask charges used. this, coupled with Arcane Chemistry passive (which you can view in my tree below) allows us to keep flasks up basically permanently.

cospri's will is BIS for this variation of the build. either spectral throw or blade flurry, doesn't matter which, it is BIS because we have available mana for blasphemy curse since we don't use damage auras, and it gives us free poison, 2nd curse, and high evasion.

gloves should be highest resistances, hp, and accuracy you can find. evasion doesn't matter here, just get the stats.

boots BiS is atziri step for high evasion, hp, spell dodge and movement speed.

helmet and jewelry will all be connected as to what you can use. this is the best jewelry i had that i could craft flat chaos damage on and retain max resistances. you'll most likely need to jungle around what you use to have in priority:
max resistances, life, some accuracy, flat chaos, %WED
those are the stats to aim for

******NOTE*******
you NEED a source for poison. if you do not have and cannot get cospri's will, you can use LEGACY voidheart. if you do not have that, you can use poison support which i'll touch on more of in the gems explained section.
i do not recommend snakebite gloves. you will need rare gloves for resistances, life, and accuracy

Flasks are what this build is about. im basically a pathfinder without the ascendancy. my flasks are up 100% of the time. difficulty is having too many unique flasks means i can't have all the required mods to take off bleeding, freeze, shock, and curses.

I run one life flask. its risky, and it does cause me to die, but there you go. i often change between bleed removal, shock removal, and freeze removal. right now i don't often die to bleed because of my life leech with vinktar/atziri flask, unless its corrupted blood and im not careful. if i get too many stacks of corrupted blood without the bleed flask, im dead.

freeze is dangerous as well, but right now the shock added damage taken is too much so i make sure to null it out.

only reason why im running vinktar's is for the shock effect. it double dips and its the highest modifier you can get. the leech is bonus but not the most amazing since we don't prioritize physical damage and i don't have the flat lightning dmg variant.

atziri flask is great but i'd say not required. the amount of dmg given is not huge, but the leech is amazing and does apply from your poison damage as well. if anything, i'd swap this out for another life flask with bleed/freeze removal or if necessary for basalt flask against heavy phys dmg like Izaro.
i need to get more in the habit of not relying on this flask TBH, and use another life or utility flask when the times call for it.

witchbrew and jade flasks are required. the bonus dmg they give is astronomical.

i don't run silver flask. i used to, for the onslaught effect, but apparently the duration is overrode by our lower duration ascendancy proc. AKA its basically useless. only useful vs bosses but the bonus from onslaught really doesn't augment our damage enough to merit a dedicated flask to having onslaught, so skip it. it isn't a huge loss.

Here i'll talk about my gems and why i chose them.

first off is blade flurry vs spectral throw. i played the spectral throw variation with a specified spectral throw passive tree, including loads of projectile damage (which double dips the poison damage as well) this worked great!! however once blade flurry came out, i got a gem lvl 13 from vendor and plugged it into my sockets without changing anything else. i had less support gems augmenting its damage, no passives augmenting its damage and it SEVERELY out performed its damage.
it also out performs its range when using conc effect as opposed to using slower projectiles with spectral throw. this means its safer to use as well.

i highly suggest using blade flurry over spectral throw. this is my suggestion after testing both setups. the damage is at least 3x better, and the longer the boss lives the higher the damage gap becomes because BF stacks the poison at a MUCH faster rate.
if you choose to continue using spectral throw that is your choice, and i'll still cover that in this section.

BLADE FLURRY
this only requires a 5L. i repeat, it only requires a 5L for all required damage supports. this is a HUGE bonus over spectral throw variants. as of right now there just isn't enough support gems which help this gem with this setup. since we don't rely on physical damage at all we don't need to use melee physical damage. we still can, but it hardly adds any damage to the build.

BiS supports are: Faster Attacks, Void Manipulation, Added Chaos Damage, Increased Area of Effect/Concentrated Effect.
easily swap inc aoe for conc effect before separate boss fights. majority of map fights you can keep inc aoe socketed without issue.
for a completely optional 6th link, im currently leveling up my life leech gem. Life gain on hit im pretty sure would be better than life leech in this case, though its difficult to test. other optional support gem options are utility gems, such as Stun, Knockback, IIR, IIQ, Blind, Additional Accuracy, Culling Strike, and my personal favourite Endurance Charge on Melee Stun. BF always stuns, so you'll constantly have endurance charges up which is a big boost to defenses. Also allows you to run CWDT immortal call with EASE. by far the best defensive option.
however you could also roll fortify. i have fortify on whirling blades already, but its a bit of a pain to try to remember to keep it up all fight etc. so instead you could link this to your BF in place of endurance charge on stun for 100% uptime on fortify, which is 20% flat reduced damage taken. better than 16% reduced physical damage (tho no supply for immortal call)

*****NOTE******
if you don't have another means of poison, this is where to socket the gem. it requires a 6L however to fit it in. on only a 5L you'd need to cut out Faster Attacks.

Blasphemy one curse of your choice. Witchfire brew will take up the 2nd curse. i constantly run my flasks so i like to use poacher's mark as curse. it #1 reduces their evasion, subsequently raising our hit rate, #2 gives us life and man on HIT, #3 frenzy charges, but that doesn't matter much with raider buff, #4 the biggest reason is 100% flask charges gained. this curse will allow us to sustain our flasks at 100% uptime.
other aura is obviously Grace for higher evasion = higher damage

wither totem is required. get it with as many support links as you can. inc duration is best 4th link but inc aoe works as well.

fortify whirling blades is required. very defensive and good for you.

rest of my sockets are basically null and void to look at, but keep in mind i will be running endurance charge on stun so i will be making myself a CWDT setup and placing it in the weapon. i will also be taking out my stand alone frenzy attack since raider will be able to sustain charges against single target easily now, and place decoy totem with my flame golem.
I chose flame golem because the damage double dips, and i have enough accuracy/attack speed.

if you really don't want to use a severely OP gem that is Blade Flurry and want to stick with the slow and horrible spectral throw, then this is where i'll talk about its gems.

5L is required but 6L is ideal, of course.
spectral throw, faster attacks, added chaos damage, void manipulation, GMP/slower projectiles, pierce.
if you don't have legacy voidheart or cospri's will, poison will be your 6th support. i'd keep faster attacks in this case, but you could also sub faster for poison and keep pierce. pierce is only used because of its 19% more modifier, which does double dip. you would also sub GMP for slower projectiles against bosses.

not much else to talk about here. those are the required supports. nothing is better, everything is worse. again you need a source of poison so if you want to use spectral throw without cospri's/voidheart you have to have poison here, and it will be worth it.

Now i'll go over my passive tree and why i chose certain things.
First off is obviously frenzy charges. we want them all. the more damage double dips, and we're RAIDER which just got a massive buff, so this aids us. it doesn't boost this build tremendously, but it is still a buff. essentially it just means we have slightly more attack damage (doesn't double dip though) and more attack speed with almost perm onslaught, and frenzy charges come easy!!

for the BF version, which i am now, you can take out all projectile damage. this does nothing to aid you. we also suck at physical damage so that doesn't boost you at all either. the best boost you can get is CHAOS damage, second best would be attack damage or DoT. just not physical damage, or physical attack damage...those are wastes of passives.

I ended up getting all flask nodes i could get. i would go up and reach alchemist nodes in witch start if i could, but i can't. so Arcane Chemistry (required), Druidic Rite, and Primal Spirit. all good things.

as much life as you can get. though since its a bit out of the way i almost always avoid the Thick Skin cluster. it gives 22% life but takes a total of 6 passives to get there. thats only 3.667% life per passive used, which is absolutely fucking horrible. do not get that cluster, EVER.

depending on your jewelry/helmet and whatnot, you may need to get resistances from the tree like i have. this eats up a lot of passives which is very inefficient but necessary. do anything it takes to get maxed resistances. if i upgrade my jewelry with better stats and still keep the flat chaos dmg, then i will remove these passives and allocate them elsewhere.

I will be making some changes to my build and setup in 2.5. changes to make it more defensive, adding hopefully some more life, more consistent and constant leech with vaal pact, and just a lot more mitigation with immortal call CWDT setup etc.

i will be changing my jewelry around. this will cost some coin to do optimally but i need more life and resistances along accuracy and retaining my flat chaos damage. this will give me freedom for change in other areas, such as...

changing my helmet to alpha's howl. this will allow me to not be frozen and run blasphemy curse/grace and include arctic armour which this build SCREAMS for. while moving you drop ground ice which will slow enemies from getting to you, and while you're stationary (like casting BF) you gain phys and fire reduction. PERFECT.

i will also most likely permanently drop the atziri flask and include a bleed/instant recovery on low life life flask.

oh another change, i think i mentioned it earlier but not here yet, is since we won't have problem retaining frenzy charges vs single target as RAIDER...keep in mind this is for RAIDER...i am going to remove my stand alone frenzy gem, put my portal gem in its place, and put decoy totem with my flame golem totem + minion HP.
this should allow me to stand still for some moments and cast and get a bunch of poison stacks on bosses like the guardians or izaro without getting focused fired.

finally will be passive tree changes.
soon as we get the respec, i will be taking out the path to the north chaos damage nodes and spec some defensive options. my option for BV/endurance charge on stun and CWDT immortal call setup will become basically required in order to reduce those pesky 1 shot potentials.
new tree will look similar to this. getting an endurance charge, mana/life leech and vaal pact while retaining needed intelligence and hopefully more hp as a whole (depending how jewelry upgrade goes)

New Passive Tree

all in all these changes should add approx 49% physical damage reduction into the build. 16% from 4 endurance charges (also raises resistances too), 13% from arctic armour, and 20% from basalt flask. defensively this build should be a pretty big monster now. not the highest life pool, depending how your good your jewelry is, but not horrible. LOADS of evasive mechanics and a very respectable physical damage reduction rate. i am satisfied.
would these defenses make this hardcore viable, anybody know? be looking at 5-5.5k life, 75% evasion, 40% dodge, 46% spell dodge, 49% physical damage reduction, cannot be frozen shocked or bleed.