"No judge. No jury. Just the executioner"

The Slayer class focuses on raw power and maintaining sustainability as they fight. They possess bonuses to life leech and stun and passives such as Bane of Legends gives them an edge against tougher monsters.

Cyclone is an skill that initiates a spinning series of attacks as the player travels to a target location. After looking at all the different options and passives easily gotten on routes I wanted to take, I settled on cold damage. The idea of Cycloning through a pack and watching them shatter to dust as I passed sounded pretty fun so I started building upon that idea.

 

Quick Jump

• Pros & Cons
• Playstyle
• Skill Tree 
• Gems Setup
• Gear Setup
• Enchants/Corruptions
• Leveling
• Mapping
• Expectations & POB

 

Pro's & Con's

Pros

• + Fast clear speed.
• + Easy League start and scales well as you gain currency.
• + Cyclone kills as you move, no stopping.
• + Frozen things can't hit you.
• + Melee build, see their frozen faces before they shatter.
• + Immune to Stun and Bleed.
• + 3c budget gets you farming maps.
• + No mirror tier or Headhunter required.
• + No corpses left behind to be raised/detonated.
• + Insane leech with VP and Slayer Ascendancy.

Cons

• - Melee build, gotta get up close and personal
• - Min/max End game items will be expensive but not unobtainable.
• - Requires one specific unique which makes SSF hard to go full cold.
• - Not a face tank build, requires dodging mechanics(a pro me personally)

 

Playstyle

Zone into map, hit a quick silver flask then spin to win anytime a pack is near. Elemental reflect is no longer a thing we need to worry about so makes it even easier.

With bosses, drop totem and use flasks+vaal haste when you can. As usual with Cyclone make sure to not lock yourself into the animation when a boss does something particularly nasty. When they do something nasty, LEAP you fool! Then leap back to get Fortify. If you are a try hard you can leap to try and maintain Fortify.

 

Skill Tree

Ascendancy

Head towards Brutal Fervour first and then Headsman.

Bandits

This quest is given to you by Eramir in the Forest Encampment after you complete Through Sacred Ground or talk with any of the bandit leaders. There are three different bandit leaders. You can either side with one of them (and kill the other two) to get the respective reward or you can kill all of them to get the reward from Erami - from Gamepedia

Kill All

Pantheon

The Pantheon List

General Mapping

• Major: Soul of Lunaris. All of the additional mods are great to have when mapping.
• Minor: Soul of Ralakesh, Soul of Abberath, Soul of Garukhan are all good for mapping. For Lab runs Soul of Ryslatha.

Bossing

• Major: Soul of Solaris. All of the additional mods are good for fighting bosses.
• Minor: Soul of Garukhan, Soul of Yugul(with Asphyxia) for fights with cold damage, Soul of Abberath for fights with fire damage, Soul of Gruthkul(with Legius Garhall) for physical damage bosses.

Passive Tree

 

Gems Setup

Cyclone

Standard Mapping

Damage on Full Life Support + Elemental Damage with Attacks Support + Melee Physical Damage Support + Maim Support + Hypothermia Support

Most things get frozen and shattered as we pass by and bosses melt.

Four Link

Cyclone + Melee Physical Damage Support + Elemental Damage with Attacks Support + Hypothermia Support

Five Link adds

Maim Support + Damage on Full Life Support + Fortify Support + Chance to Bleed Support

Maim more consistent dmg while Dmg on Full higher dmg 90% of the time. If using Kondo's Bleed Support also an option.

If you are having survival issues at all throw in Fortify for any other red support other than Elemental Damage with attacks.

Can use Faster Attacks before Hypo is available or Mana leech if having issues.

Max Freeze

Elemental Damage with Attacks Support + Melee Physical Damage Support + Elemental Proliferation Support + Hypothermia Support + Ice Bite Support

With this setup 99% of things you hit will freeze and then shatter. Lower damage, not really good for bosses but really fun to map with.

Bossing

Elemental Focus Support + Concentrated Effect Support + Damage on Full Life Support + Elemental Damage with Attacks Support + Melee Physical Damage Support

Or

Concentrated Effect Support  + Hypothermia Support + Damage on Full Life Support + Elemental Damage with Attacks Support + Melee Physical Damage Support

---

Aura's

Hatred + Blasphemy Support + Frostbite + Enlighten Support + Enfeeble + Grace

Simple, straight forward. When you get Enlighten lvl 3 throw it in and be done. Herald of Ice can also be used but Hatred + Frostbite wins out in the end. Enfeeble also useful on bosses and grace as well if you want to take the hit to your damage.

---

Movement

Leap Slam + Fortify Support + Faster Attacks Support + Blood Magic Support + Endurance Charge on Melee Stun Support

Nothing new here. If you are Vaal Pact blood magic can still be used or you can put endurance on melee stun in. If you aren't using Vaal Pack using blood magic lets you leap forever.

If you are using Fortify in you Cyclone setup put in Endurance charge on melee stun support.

---

Totem

Ancestral Protector + Increased Duration Support + Elemental Proliferation Support + Faster Attacks Support + Blood Rage + Haste

This setup will allow your totem to be freezing pretty much anything it hits. This has been great for Abyssal Cracks and anything where monsters are pouring out of portals(elder phase 2).

Protector or Warchief is really upto your personal preference. Protector maths out to more damage for you but it's pretty much equal.

---

CWDT

Cast when Damage Taken Support + Immortal Call + Increased Duration Support + Frost Bomb

Arctic Breath can be really good at spreading chilling ground but the -20 cold resist on frost bomb is useful in almost every situation. Vortex and Shock Nova are also useable.

Golems are also good, lightning specifically but at low levels they die and at high levels you have to cast yourself. Also when mapping mobs will avoid you and instead go straight for your golem making you double back to kill them. 

 

Gear

Overview

Budget Options

Again the only item 'required' for this build are Hrimsorrow or Hrimburn gloves. Every other slot can be rares and filled out as you earn currency.

The main thing to remember is in almost every case more raw physical damage is better than more elemental. Since we convert 90% of physical to cold and gain EXTRA cold damage based on physical with hatred getting more physical damage goes a long way.

 

Enchants/Corruptions

Helmet: Cyclone attack speed - Cyclone Damage - Ancestral Protector added attack speed or Ancestral Warchief added damage - Frostbite increased effect

Totem/Frostbite are about equal. Frostbite probably best all around for leveling with Cyclone Attack Speed - Damage the end goal.

If you use a watcher's eye to achieve 100% cold conversion, Frostbite enchant will beat out a cyclone enchtn.

Weapon: +2 Range corruption

Gloves: +1 socketed gems corruption for aura setup or Commandment of Force.

Boots: Attack speed if killed recently is the best Lab enchant for 99% of things. Any boss that doesn't pop adds out enough you can use a Writhing Jar.

+1 Max frenzy corruption best over all but requires keeping up frenzy charges.

Amulet: Additional Curse corruption. Used with either enfeeble for damage reduction or Ele weakness/Punishment for more damage.

 

Leveling

40 points

(Ready to enter Normal Lab)

67 points

(Ready to do Cruel Lab)

92 points

(Ready to do Merc Lab)

When reaching the node before tireless cluster we can regret out of essence sap to pick up all of the tireless nodes. At this point our leech+tireless reduction will be enough to sustain our mana even while single targeting.

108 points

123 points

If all you're doing is plowing t10-t14 maps and don't care about end bosses, this tree is for you!

Speed demon!

Leveling Tips

Use anything you want until cyclone is available.

Having Spirit void will make Cyclone feel much smoother but cyclone will still DEVOUR your mana early on. If you don't feel like chugging mana flasks using Mana Leech Support will solve it. If you are having mana issues with Hatred/Frosbite using Herald of Ice/Frostbite will leave you with plenty of mana to not run out during single target cycloning. Lower damage but not that big a deal over all.

Later on you will not need Spirit void to sustain mana during single target cyclone. It is just useful for leveling.

Using Brute Force Solution jewel will take care of any Int problems you have while leveling. Placing it in the socket right next to Golem's Blood will give 50 int + whatever is on the jewel.

At lvl 51 We highly recommend picking up Terminus Est. The movement speed alone will make everything just feel better, also it has a ton of raw physical damage.

At lvl 64 you will be able to use Kondo's Pride or Hezmana's Bloodlust. Either of them are fine but Kondo's is better damage wise. Using Hezmana's saves you having to regret points later on.

If you choose Hezmana's you can then regret the Spirit void if you want to free up points.

The first unique we purchase while mapping is a Bronn's Lithe but Carcass Jack is a better choice if you wish to be more defensive. Both are fantastic chests and gives us a nice all around damage boost. These let us focus on the more defensive passives each level while still doing great damage. 

 

Mapping

Cannot Leech Maps are a no-no

As the build is a 90% cold conversion build it means running elemental reflect maps technically isn't doable. However, the only thing making us elemental is a pair of gloves and 2 points.

• Regret 2 points
• Swap Rings and gloves
• Replace Hypothermia with faster attacks/culling/onslaught
• Replace EWD with Maim/Ruthless(whichever you aren't using)
• Replace Hatred with Haste
• Replace Frostbite with Vuln

 

Expectations & POB

POB link: https://pastebin.com/uBqKyytc

(If you do not know how to use it, see the instructions below, otherwise please ignore)

• Download Path of Building (link: https://github.com/Openarl/PathOfBuilding)
• Copy pastebin URL.
• Launch path of building.
• Click on Import/Export.
• Click Import from Pastebin
• Paste the URL copied in step 2.
• Done!