[1.3] pabrt's Frost Wall Kinetic Blaster - Budget Friendly!

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pabrt wrote:

I think it's a pretty cheap build to play, so it should be fine to start a league with. Only thing is you need a 5l and a crit wand, and thief's torment if you want.

I leveled up and took hired killer, I didn't want to spend a regret orb to gain 1% life for one level only.


The current OP is outdated, I can update it later. Changed some passive points, and am using a 2nd frost wall gem in my 6l (you can replace it with pcoc if you're not using voll's chest).

Please could you post the new tree and changes to the build?

Updated the OP. Changed nodes/gear to get more accuracy, put in a second frost wall as my 6l, slightly changed flasks.

I have some 75 maps so I might make a video of one later.

i dont see exactly why you take a second frost wall as your 6th link...
since there is a cooldown on CoC, any given critical hit can only proc one frost wall, so the second gem will only increase the chance of FW appearing, bringing it from 68% per crit to 90%.
that's a 22/68 = 32% increase in frost wall quantity, or a 32% more damage if we assume the damage rise proportionally with the number of frost walls*.
so, it's at best 32% more damage against anything else you might put in there.
for comparison, instead of frost wall and with your gear/tree, an added chaos damage would be an approximately 50% more damage, or an increased crit damage gem would be a 40% more damage.
and there are other gems that couild be considered (a second spell for instance).



*and it doesn't really. from being knocked back by so many frost walls, the enemy will soon be out of range of the KB explosions procced by the first wall, so for all practical matters it will be less then 32%.

Your math is correct, but it is wrong to assume that 32% more frost walls = 32% more dps, as that is representative of linear scaling rather than exponential. More frost walls not only increase your dps (which would be linear), they also increase the subsequent number of frost walls spawned, which in turn increase your dps more, and so on (making it exponential).

There are basically two kinds of enemies to consider, trash and bosses. Against trash losing some efficiency on your frost walls is largely a nonfactor, because kinetic blast automatically scales out of control in aoe situations. You could swap gems for a minor potential increase in clearing speed (same color).

Against bosses, you have a few possible scenarios:

+ Terrain/walls exist to push the boss against (including invisible walls for a map)
+ The boss can't be moved by frost walls
- The map is 100% wide open with no terrain and the boss can be moved

The third occurrence is the only downside, and is extremely rare/technically impossible, since all maps have outer edges.

So in the vast majority of the cases (and in my experiences so far), a second frost wall gem should be better. Though I haven't modeled the build's dps, I'm also pretty sure mathematically it checks out.

There are also other non-dps benefits to lowering your constant dps (ie. added chaos) and scaling through frost wall. The more hits you need to kill a monster, the more life you regain through life on hit, the more resistant you become to reflect, and the more flasks charges you generate. An additional Frost wall requires more hits to kill and produces significantly more hits per attack than any other gem, making it an increase to survivability as well.

Is there no way to run this on a 5L that isn't volls?

Is that good build to start generaly start of in PoE ? Im basicaly new to that game, got like 100-120 chaos atm.

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pabrt wrote:

More frost walls not only increase your dps (which would be linear), they also increase the subsequent number of frost walls spawned, which in turn increase your dps more, and so on (making it exponential).

that's true, but you have to take into account the cooldown on CoC.
in my case for instance, i sit at 86% accuracy and 90% crit chance with charges.
that means 0.86*0.9*.66 = 51% of my hits will result in a frost wall cast.
i have 2.3 attacks per seconds, each attack firing 5 projectiles triggering 4 explosions each (25 hits per attack).
that's 57.5 hits per seconds, enough to cap the creation of frost walls (20 per second), without even taking into account the fact that the attacks pierce.

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There are also other non-dps benefits to lowering your constant dps (ie. added chaos) and scaling through frost wall. The more hits you need to kill a monster, the more life you regain through life on hit, the more resistant you become to reflect, and the more flasks charges you generate. An additional Frost wall requires more hits to kill and produces significantly more hits per attack than any other gem, making it an increase to survivability as well.

very valid points, except maybe the underlined part (see frost wall creation cap above).

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pabrt wrote:

Updated the OP. Changed nodes/gear to get more accuracy, put in a second frost wall as my 6l, slightly changed flasks.

I have some 75 maps so I might make a video of one later.

Cast on Crit will not cast the same spell twice. Having 2 frost walls is the exact same as having one.

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jealkeja wrote:

Is there no way to run this on a 5L that isn't volls?

im running it with a non voll's 5L, it *works* its just a pita to generate power charges, but its still really fun and the dps come's in. i dont have a thief torment either but the coh-thunder-poacher makes it up

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blaes wrote:

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pabrt wrote:

More frost walls not only increase your dps (which would be linear), they also increase the subsequent number of frost walls spawned, which in turn increase your dps more, and so on (making it exponential).

that's true, but you have to take into account the cooldown on CoC.
in my case for instance, i sit at 86% accuracy and 90% crit chance with charges.
that means 0.86*0.9*.66 = 51% of my hits will result in a frost wall cast.
i have 2.3 attacks per seconds, each attack firing 5 projectiles triggering 4 explosions each (25 hits per attack).
that's 57.5 hits per seconds, enough to cap the creation of frost walls (20 per second), without even taking into account the fact that the attacks pierce.

This is theoretically true, but in practice is not the case. You definitely can't shotgun one enemy with 5 KB projectiles, no matter how many frost walls there are.

It is also very optimistic to assume all the explosions will hit the one target you are attacking, and is in almost all situations not the case. I find it harder to hit the frost wall cap than you've calculated, for those reasons.

While it's true that you will eventually cap frost wall creation once wound up using only one frost wall, a second one should significantly decrease windup time.

Anecdotally I've found a 2nd frost wall to be very strong, ideally you would make a character with this build and try it yourself to see :)

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Dmillz wrote:

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pabrt wrote:

Updated the OP. Changed nodes/gear to get more accuracy, put in a second frost wall as my 6l, slightly changed flasks.

I have some 75 maps so I might make a video of one later.

Cast on Crit will not cast the same spell twice. Having 2 frost walls is the exact same as having one.

My understanding is that it has a cooldown for the same spells. That is to say, if the first frost wall does not proc, the second one has a chance to because the cooldown has not been incurred.

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jealkeja wrote:

Is there no way to run this on a 5L that isn't volls?

You don't need voll's, there are a few ways to get power charges:
1. Power charge on crit 6l
2. Assassin's mark (curse on hit)
3. Power siphon with rarity/etc.
4. Cast when damage taken + spell + power charge on crit

Worst case you can always buy tabula and link pcoc, making it a pseudo-voll's without a mana penalty.