[3.0] How to Flicker. Terminus Est Edition!

@thePunisher92
Are you sure that you are looking at your flicker strike damage and not your basic attack stats. Also flicker strike does not display DPS but damage per use, multiply that to your attacks per second to get your DPS. Now level 69 is very low so is 2.6k life - many of your gear pieces have no life and that's definitely a problem. Just level up, upgrade your gear and so on. Also your Termiuns Est has a horrendous crit chance roll.

@scoffer88
Ice Golem would be the best choice yes. Personally i don't use a golem because A) not enough sockets and B) Golems die way too quickly and for me at least recasting them constantly is a huge pain in the ass, but that's just me :)

@NickMarshall13
Just get an amulet with Intelligence (Lapis, Agate or Turquoise)

@Bloodytrailz, VsDreaMz, SoulTouched

Ok guys let’s talk damage mitigation, armour and one-shots.
First of all I want to explain two things that it seems some players are not aware of.
Dodge IS NOT the same as evasion. They are 2 separate and very different mechanics. Think of dodge as you think of chance to block

Armour does not mitigate flat % of the incoming damage (unlike elemental resistances for example) instead armour mitigates more against small hits (and we don’t care about small hits) and considerably less against large hit (those that might actually kill you)

The rule of thumb of armour is as follows: To prevent one third of damage, you need armor 5 times the damage (e.g. 500 Armor for 100 damage) To prevent half of damage, you need armor 10 times the damage (e.g. 1000 Armor for 100 damage) To prevent two thirds of damage, you need armor 20 times the damage (e.g. 2000 Armor for 100 damage) To prevent three quarters of damage, you need armor 30 times the damage (e.g. 3000 Armor for 100 damage) To prevent 90% of damage, you need armor 90 times the damage (e.g. 9000 Armor for 100 damage) Armor will never prevent more damage than its value divided by 10 (e.g. 1000 Armor will never prevent more than 100 damage)

Now about the order of mitigation:
First the damage conversions take effect (Taste of Hate)
Then the armour reduction and the flat % reductions (Soul of Gruthkul) kicks in
Now the reduced damage from Fortify and the increased damage from things like Abyssus, shock and vulnerability curse are factored in
The "less" multiplier of Arctic Armour is last
So with all that said let us imagine an average character using this build and having no dodge. He would have: 6500 life Taste of Hate (20% damage converted) Gruthkul and just to make things in out favor we’ll say that at the time it will mitigate 5% Kaom’s Heart + Perfect Abyssus + Armour boots + Lion’s Roar for a total of 830 + 400 + 931 + 3000 = 5161 and the tree that has 96% increased armour so you’ll end up with 10115 armour … let’s round it up to 11000 for easier calculations (remember your armour will never mitigate more than 1/10 of its value or in this case 1100) Fortify (20% reduced damage) Arctic Armour level 20 (13% less physical damage)

We’ll calculate 2 incoming hits with and without the 50% penalty from dodge One that does 5000 and one that does 10000

1st case without dodge


1st case with dodge


2nd case without dodge


2nd case with dodge


3th case without dodge


3th case with dodge


Ok after all that what can I say. Is loosing 40% chance to receive no damage from attacks (both physical and elemental ) and 30% chance to receive no damage from spells (both physical and elemental ) worth the extra 350-500 points of mitigated damage and 6 free passive points? Honestly it’s really hard to say. In my opinion yes – it is worth it. It literally means that half of the one-shot hits that you’ll normally take will instead be dodged and you won’t take any damage from them. What is the exact % of attacks that would deal just the right amount of damage so that these 350-500 extra points of mitigated damage will save I can’t say, but I doubt that the % is actually big given how specific that amount of damage must be. I’m tired of calculations if someone wants to do them be my guest, though my guess would be that a hit that deals 9000 physical damage would kill you if you have dodge but won’t kill you if you don’t have dodge, below 9000 you’ll survive in both cases over 9000 you’ll die anyway and that’s the point that I’m trying to make. Loosing a huge % chance to mitigate everything in favor of surviving a very small number of hits that you’ll take is not worth it, especially when you consider that you’ll also always take hits that will kill you 100% of the time without the chance of dodging them.
I’ll give you this fictional example: In an hour you’ll take 10 hits that won’t kill you with or without dodge, 10 hits that will kill you with or without dodge and 5 hits (and honestly that’s a very generous number given how little the difference in mitigation between with and without dodge is) that will kill you only if you have dodge . Without dodge you’ll die 10 times per hour, with dodge you’ll dodge 40% of the hits so you’ll die 6 times per hour. Of course it’s not that simple because there are many factors : exactly how many hits of each of the 3 kinds you’ll take what about dodged spells that otherwise will one-shot you what about dodged elemental attacks that will otherwise one-shot you what if you are cursed with vulnerability and/or you are shocked what about amour and dodge related map mods what if you are especially unlucky that day and you fail to dodge most hits what if you are especially lucky that day and you dodge almost all hits
Now the extra 6 passives can make up a bit for the armour version but I’d still go with the dodge. Don’t get me wrong I’m not saying that you won’t do fine without the acrobatics/phase acrobatics, but I think that you’ll do better with them. In the end of course, as always, it is up to you.

I can't really say what you are doing wrong mate ... care to give me a screenshot of that 3.1k flicker because it is literally impossible.