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

Spartacus, tell me more about your build (tree, armour, gear). I'm curious.

So, the claw-charge thing is actually practical? Never thought I could keep charges up reasonable with that mechanic. Nice.

You got me thinking about the shield nodes again. I've being planning to drop Iron Reflexes (as it doesn't benefit from dexterity and some evasion improving passives). investing on some Shield Armour increasers might do the trick.

Here is the tree my shadow used, ended up just not having enough life to be viable in act 4 merc, trash was easy but some rares and bosses would just one shot me because I lacked life. I started out with EV/Acro but that was even worse so my tree got kinda jacked up when i spec'd out of it and went IR, I also kept jumping between dual and shield ended up going shield to get better res and def since my life was lacking. Used CoD + Bloodrage to keep up frenzy charges and CoH + HoI + HoL + Assassins Mark to keep up power charges, plus stealing charges with Claw of the Magpie.






A lot of my downfall came with lacking better gear but I could just tell that the build was getting to stretched out to accomplish what I wanted to do with it. I think an EV/Acro version could work if I could figure out a reliable way to apply blind. I used to use CoS + Ice Nova + Blind but that hasn't seemed to work very well lately specially when instead of getting stunned and casting nova i just died lol.

I didn't follow your guide, but this post inspired me to make a LS char in 2.1, as LS is the new meta in current patch.

I'd like to share my findings with you or anyone who is enjoying LS now.

Main variances:

Shadow class
- Will be grabbing Assassin nodes in Ascendancy patch

6L gem is Crit Multi
- Lightning Penetration only boosts damage for lightning DPS; Whereas, Crit Multi gem also boosts cold and fire damage

Chest piece is Lightning Coil
- Better mitigation for late game mod. I ran 4 poorjoy maps and survived all.

Hatred + HoA + HoL
- 1 use of LS costs 24 mana. With help of one lv3 enlighten gem linked to hatred and HoA and one lv2 enlighten linked to HoL, I managed to retain 48 mana, so I can constantly spam LS with 93% mana reserved.

Vaal Lightning Strike
- With 4L setup as shown below, no boss has survived 3 stored uses of Vaal LS, or even just 1 use.

Right now, my char level is 81 and my tooltip dps is 100k+ DPS with level 18 LS gem + Hatred + HoA + HoL and without charges and flasks.

I've being testing a lot with the build. I believe I have found my personal favorite way to play Lightning Strike, which is "not dyeing".

Made some minor changes to the tree, but reviewed all my auras and utility gems. Turns out, I've made a powerful combination of damage mitigation systems! It's working nicely - I was able to level half of my level 90 without problems, deaths and still keeping some decent clean speed.

###### Latest changes (check OP for other details) #######


MECHANICS:

You'll be mitigating a lot of damage by combining Fortify, Molten Shell, Arctic Armour and Perma-Enfeeble and endurance charges.

1) Move around with Fortified Whirling Blades: -
• Whirling Blades
• Fortify
• Cast on Crit
• Molten Shell

2) Permanent defenses:
• Blasphemy
• Enfeeble
• Arctic Armour
• Enlighten

3) Free endurance Charges:
• Riposte
• Vengeance
• Reckoning
• Endurance Charge on Melee Stun

You'll be doing some considerable damage, one-shoting most of the trash mobs up to level 77 maps.

4) Herald (for dps) and Second curse (for Power Charges) - Windscream boots needed
• Herald of Thunder
• Curse on Hit
• Assassin's Mark

5) Dps Boost
• Ice Golem
• Blood Rage

6) Main attack:
• Lightning Strike
• Weapon Elemental Damage
• Multi-strike
• Faster Attacks
• Physical do Lightning
• Lightning Penetration (or Added fire damage)

i like the move to create a good defence over offence. I especially like the dual curse system you have.

I like to suggest you remove blasphemy+enfeeble and move HoT-coh to a 4L:

HoT - CoH - AM - Enfeeble

So you can save mana reservation by using HoT to dual curse. This opens an opportunity add another herald, maybe HoA for some extra AoE damage.

You can also play around with the curses depending on your situation, such as Ele Weakness + Conductivity if you're running easy mods.




On a side note, If you're dual cursing AM+Enfeeble, and you equip ele weakness on hit gloves, which curse gets overridden?

The build is looking better and better and its giving me ideas, thanks junaum

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fiqst wrote:

On a side note, If you're dual cursing AM+Enfeeble, and you equip ele weakness on hit gloves, which curse gets overridden?

It's just a guess, but I believe the last curse applied overrides the first.

I reckon that dual cursing from HoT would save me some mana and provide room for an additional Herald, but: perma-enfeebling your surrounding is a different thing. Everything that get's near you effectively gets the full enfeeble damage reduction - no exceptions. The "no exceptions" part is the key! We get 30% less damage from enfeeble (plus crit/accu mitigations), 12% less phys/fire damage from arctic armour, 20% less damage taken from hits from fortify and, if you get hit, 12% less damage taken from endurance charges. I'm not sure if the math is as simple as adding, but if so, we get more than 70% damage mitigation. And the persistent nature of those defenses (plus our armour/life/resists) is a thing of it's own. Man, it's cool!

Lately, I've also being playing more and more with frost blades on tight maps - it makes everything easier. It's such a fun skill and it often perma-freezes mobs, which synergizes with the new safe approach of the build.

Yes, perma-enfeeble is much better, you're right.

So in this current system and your theory on the tri-curse thing, you can blasphemy-enfeeeble all attackers, HoT-AM will paint a few targets, have ele weakness on hit gloves strike mobs (which overides the enfeeble since it curses first?). So enemies are enfeebled until you hit them at a lower resistance, and get power charges as well. Interesting if its true.

I've been having a lot of fun with frost blades, its my new favourite skill at the moment. The clear speed is insane.

But i have learnt the hard way not to use it for atziri in her split phase. If you stand outside facing in, the projectiles hit the reflect clone, and if you stand inside facing out, your multistrike hits the reflect clone since the range is so long. After a few deaths i had to swap to dual strike.

"

fiqst wrote:

So in this current system and your theory on the tri-curse thing, you can blasphemy-enfeeeble all attackers, HoT-AM will paint a few targets, have ele weakness on hit gloves strike mobs (which overides the enfeeble since it curses first?). So enemies are enfeebled until you hit them at a lower resistance, and get power charges as well. Interesting if its true.

On my (empirical) experience:

1 - Enfeeble will enfeeble
2 - AM will grab a few mobs out of Enfeeble range
3 - If Elemental weakness override enfeeble but instantly reset to enfeeble as it´s a persistent auta.
4 - If Elemental weakness override AM, then it will stay there until you kill the mob, re-curse it with a Hot.

It boils down to: Enfeeble will be always on as an aura, as long as monsters are in range. Other curses will keep overriding each other. If any curse grab an enfeeble-zoned mob, it will be instantly overrided by enfeeble again.

What about pierce? I'm running a similar build to this in Talisman. Only level 78, but I can't imagine not having pierce. Is it really not needed?

"

jarhead271 wrote:

What about pierce? I'm running a similar build to this in Talisman. Only level 78, but I can't imagine not having pierce. Is it really not needed?

You can save the Piercing Gem socket by adding quality to Lightning Strike. At 20 qualy, you get 40% piercing. But you´ll feel that after 80k dps, piercing trash mobs doesn't improve clear speed that much.

But the same principle does not apply to Frost Blades as it (kind of) chains. This makes up for the lack of embed quality derived piercing.