[2.1] FROSTBITE - Fast paced, High DPS, Strong Defenses Frostblades build

Thanks for that Fiqst! The belt+flask idea looks very sexy! I'll keep that in mind as I fill my purse.

I couldn't find Spectral Throw's base critical change. Do you know it's value? I was thinking that it could also be a good idea to add Crit Chance support instead LMP.

I've dropped the 3 Heralds approach by now. Back to HoT + Hatred. Seems more violent to me. Using Lightning Penetration though! Indeed it was a nice addition.

The good news is that the current state of the build is a lot more reliable. I finally was able to level half of my 90's without dying! Changed a lot of things on the OP. If you have the change, please have a look and let me know what you think about.

Cheers

** Tested pCoC+crit chance with Whirling Blades as well. It worked nicely with the fast paced playstyle I was using. It also procs Charges as fast as ST. I just have to monitor now if I'll keep charging closely to mobs, or heading to a long range gameplay (then I'll get back to ST+pCoC).

Looks like a fun and interesting non-fotm build and i guess i will try this out.
The only thing i kinda stumbled over while cross-reading this guide was:

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* Why avoid Physical Damage passives? (from gamepedia)

Spoiler

"Increasing the melee portion of the hit through melee-exclusive means such as Melee Physical Damage will not actually increase the projectile damage; the projectile damage is not "converted melee damage", a common misconception. Do not be deceived by the tooltip DPS of this skill which will change if you apply a melee-exclusive modifier; the tooltip DPS only shows the DPS of the melee portion of the attack and things that modify that, but not the projectile part of the attack.

[/quote]
while there is a bunch of phys damage passives taken in the tree.

Would anyone bother to explain?

With friendly regards.
Neon

He was talking about not taking MELEE Phys Damage increase I guess. The implicit "Melee" says everything already, it's not converted into the projectiles. For the other nodes, such as "increased physical with one handed melee weapons" , etc. this does work though, since it's not saying melee explicitly.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's how I understood it.

"

Rakinos231 wrote:

He was talking about not taking MELEE Phys Damage increase I guess. The implicit "Melee" says everything already, it's not converted into the projectiles. For the other nodes, such as "increased physical with one handed melee weapons" , etc. this does work though, since it's not saying melee explicitly.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's how I understood it.

Yes, that's what I got from the Wiki as well. It's very confusing. This principle applies to all Melee skills + projectiles (such as molten strike and frost blades.

Melee exclusive bonus won't affect lightning hits, but "dealt with melee weapon" will be fine.

BUT I've made a typo, and I'm really sorry for that. Instead of why avoid Physical Damage passives, it should say why avoid Melee Physical Damage passives.

Great fun mapping with you today, although 380ping and constant d/c's weren't.

Both of us tested lightning strike and the combination long range crowd control from junaum and short range dps from me was a great combo.

Lightning strike is an excellent skill and you can play with it in a number of ways. You can enhance projectile ele damage like what junaum has done or concentrate on single target damage as i have done.

Focussing on pure single target damage means not needing melee splash in your setup, the lightning bolts are all the AoE damage you need, so you can have a full 6L dps gem setup.

I think LS could be the best melee skill at the moment.

Very nice build.

"

fiqst wrote:

Great fun mapping with you today, although 380ping and constant d/c's weren't.

Both of us tested lightning strike and the combination long range crowd control from junaum and short range dps from me was a great combo.

Lightning strike is an excellent skill and you can play with it in a number of ways. You can enhance projectile ele damage like what junaum has done or concentrate on single target damage as i have done.

Focussing on pure single target damage means not needing melee splash in your setup, the lightning bolts are all the AoE damage you need, so you can have a full 6L dps gem setup.

I think LS could be the best melee skill at the moment.

Very nice build.

That was awesome! We should do this more often.

The real meaning of Blue screen.

Yesterday, I've died to an inescapable death: was stuck between mobs, in the middle of a narrow bridge - and then, got 2-shot nuked.

My life passed before my eyes and I realized that this is not what I wan't for my leveling process. So I'm prototyping a couple of changes to make the build even more sturdy, perhaps even HC viable. This is what I'm doing with my auras/defences (and will update the main thread if deemed good):

- Enfeeble on Blasphemy: permanent -30% damage, critical and accuracy reductions
- Arctic Armour: permanent -12% damage taken (from hits)
- High level Molten Shell Trigger: Triggered by Vengeance + Reckoning + CoC
- One herald (Ice, Thunder or Ash)
- Whirling Blades now has pCoC, Fortify and FA

This math is probably wrong (because POE Math is a mystery to me), but from that, I believe we get more than 50% damage reduction, and 60% physical/fire damage reduction. Add your armour to that (40-50%) plus elemental resists (75%), and Wraeclast starts to sound a lot less dangerous.

Gem and gear Setup under testing:

Benchmarking it now.

EDIT: Done.

Gameplay video - Academy 78 (I always get rapped by this boss, but, did it)
https://youtu.be/6qaCb9j1DiE

After that:
- I swapped from HoI to HoA (mainly because of the DPS improvement)
- got Fortify socketed back on Whirling Blades (because it just procs on Melee hits anyway), and socketed Added fire damage instead (I also use Lightning Penetration on that socket, but was out of it's color).

Nice build very similar to what I have been playing with, just a quick question:

Why did you not choice to use any shield block nodes? I've been bouncing back and forth between dual wielding and sword and board to try to figure out which works better.

Also have you tried a claw variant with Claws of the Magpie to help keep charges up?

"

Spartacus219 wrote:

Nice build very similar to what I have been playing with, just a quick question:

Why did you not choice to use any shield block nodes? I've been bouncing back and forth between dual wielding and sword and board to try to figure out which works better.

Also have you tried a claw variant with Claws of the Magpie to help keep charges up?

Haven't tried it with claws because of the reasonable amount of (elemental) leeching from the new nodes. Did you have a chance to do that? Most of the claws are Leeching from the Physical damage of your direct hit (which my build doesn't focus), but there are those with life on hit... they sound interesting. I could actually try it just for fun but right now I'm low on currency.

Concerning shield nodes: can't have it all. I've chosen +life and crits. From what I've read on other tank oriented build, Shield nodes are powerful when heavily invested (lot's of it, instead of just a couple), which I can't afford to. Afaik, "+defences from shield" just improve armour/evasion from shield, and block needs a lot of nodes to start making a difference. So I just go with my equiped shield, happy with what I got from it, as is.

With the new changes (posted just above), I'm finding the build pretty reliable now. In the hands of a good player, it might even be HC viable. But I still wan't to do some more testing before updating the OP.

"

Haven't tried it with claws because of the reasonable amount of (elemental) leeching from the new nodes. Did you have a chance to do that? Most of the claws are Leeching from the Physical damage of your direct hit (which my build doesn't focus), but there are those with life on hit... they sound interesting.

My claw build ended up not working in act4 merc mode. Access to higher end claws was more difficult than the more main stream daggers. Tried this type of a build both from the shadow starting and the duelist starting duelist start seems to give better paths to def than shadow did. LS has been one of my fav skills for a long time now just always seems to get the build stretched thin and having to sacrifice def to make it work. Might try from the scion starting area next to see if that will help the build not be so stretched out points wise. I just really enjoyed the Claw of the Magpie node on my claw build, be surprised at how many mobs get charges, and because it steals the charge from the mob it not only adds to my off/def ability it took away from the enemies.

Claws I was using: