[3.0]PewPewPews DirtCheap Frost Blades build | Clear all maps on a budget | [4/4] Guardians down

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And with Minotaur biting the dust, I've officially killed every guardian on Budget gear. Woop! Here's a short list of things I've done with the build(and way more in the video list)

Chimera
Hydra
Phoenix
Minotaur
Eater of Souls
Cursed King(Onslaught)
Abaxoth T15

Now, all that's left, is finishing the guide :)

Unlike most "budget" build, I've done all the content above and in my video's, with budget gear. This means:
- No expensive jewels
- No expensive flasks
- No expensive high end rares(due to an overcommitment of uniques in the build)
- total costs less then 100c(far less)

I'm getting tired of builds promoting it being a budget-build-that-can-clear-all-content, while in fact they are clearing all content on a non-budged version instead.

Also, the guide is updated to the 3.0 version! (even though I haven't filled it with my regular spam yet ;D)

So, what's this build about?
This build is a high mobility, high clear speed, dirtcheap and fun build, designed for players that are new to the game, have low funds or want a good starter build to start of a new league. This build is strong enough to solo Guardians on a budget. This will be an indept guide on all the mechanics this build has to offer. Please note that I'm currently working on this guide. It's not complete yet, but (hopefully) will be soon! - everything you need to know is already in the guide however :)

A brief introduction to Frost Blades. How does it work?
The wiki states: "Frost Blades is a cold melee attack skill that strikes with increased range, then has the secondary effect of releasing projectiles from the struck enemies."

There are a two keywords that are quite important to us. Frost blades is a Melee attack that launches multiple projectiles upon hitting an enemy. It is important to understand that these two, are different components, that make frost blades what it is, as both get their damage increases from different sources.


The green dot is the player.
The red dots are enemies.


Let's talk about the melee portion first: the enemy you attack directly. The melee portion is increased by everything that increases melee damage. This includes Melee physical damage, Claw damage and the increased melee damage we get from strength.

The projectile part of the skill(everything that is hit by the projectiles), is modified by everything that increases projectile damage. This does not include bow damage, as we are not using a bow!

Both parts of the skill get buffed by Attack damage, Physical damage, cold damage Elemental damage, and Weapon elemental damage.

We value Melee damage over Projectile damage, as it determines how well we'll do vs bosses or other strong single targets. Projectiles are mainly useful for clearing packs. As most packs have relatively low life, we do not need to scale projectile damage, ever. Sure, the projectiles can chain back to the initial target, but the chances of that happening is situational and thus in general, not really reliable.

Frost Blades and damage conversions.
Frost Blades converts 60% of it's physical damage to Cold damage. In our skill tree, we pick up Winter Spirit, which gives us another 40% Physical to Cold damage conversion. This means, 100% of our physical damage is converted to cold damage.

There are a few things we need to understand about damage conversions.
1). Damage conversion is done before any increases to the damage values.
2). Converted damage is affected by both increases to the original damage type and the new damage type.

This means, our base damage is increased equally by both physical damage and cold damage. We do get some other increases from cold damage, that does not scale with physical damage(Like the increases from Herald of Ice, to an extend Hatred, or flat cold damage we might get from our gear), but we get into more detail when we talk about gearing.

Long story short: Both Physical damage and cold damage will increase our damage thanks to damage conversion!

Sidenote: even with the changes coming to 3.0, I do not expect this to be affected at all.

Gem setup. Why are we using these?
Before I explain every gem combination, here's the list of gems we want and will be using:

6-Link: Frost Blades - Multistrike - Cold Penetration - Weapon Elemental Damage - Faster Attacks - Fortify
4-Link 1: Vaal Haste - Ancestral Warchief - Increased Duration | Hatred
4-Link 2: Cast when Damage taken - Golem of choice - Immortal Call - Increase Duration
4-Link 3: Vengeance - Curse on hit - Temporal Chains - Blind
3-Link 1: Herald of Ice - Curse on Hit - Warlord's Mark / Assassin's Mark
3-Link 2: Whirling Blades - Faster Attacks - Culling Strikes

Sidenote: I have Hatred in a different spot, no duration linked to my Immortal Call, and a Portal gem in my Vaal Haste setup. This is because I just like playing with a portal gem. I wouldn't recommend doing this though!

[Will edit the rest soon!]







Required Uniques and what they do


The magic comes from these weapons. We have additional chains whenever we are on max frenzy charges. Frost blades have a decent amount of projectiles from itself already. With a free chain, we gain a lot of extra damage on monsters, even on bosses, if we manage to chain the projectile back to the boss. We dual wield these, so we get two chains instead of one, once we are on max Frenzy Charges.



More frenzy charges, and 18% additional dodge chance once we are at max frenzy charges. The loss in duration is hardly a problem, we still get an uptime of 15 seconds on our Frenzy charges. And even if we'd lose our charges, we will have it back within seconds, as we get charges from either shattering, killing any mob, or attacking rare/unique mods.

This jewel x2

The cold penetration is huge. It basically means we have 30% more damage with these two jewels in our tree. Which is, insane.

Gear


Tree and Ascendancy
This is our tree.

I'm actually pretty satisfied with the tree as it stands now. Might still change, but I doubt it will.

Some features:
- 186% life
- 19% Penetration(+ 30% from the threshhold Jewels)

It's noteworthy that we pick up a couple of melee nodes. Those nodes do not increase the damage of our frostblade projectiles, only for our initial hit(still worth picking them up, as our single target damage is still our weakest point).
we also do not get Vaal Pact. Mostly because of the Labyrinth, but also because we get an ungodly 92 life per hit thanks to our claws(which acts as a mini Vaal Pact). This, combined with our high dodge chance means we can even do reflect maps(and even reflect maps + -max)

Our Ascendancy is Raider, and mainly for the frenzy charges. We get the Phasing nodes as well for the immunity to status elements, and additional dodge. Frenzy charges give the build a big boost in Dps. Around twice the numbers in our tooltips.

Bandits: Oak/Passive/Kraitlyn

Quick leveling Guide
30 points tree - Just work towards Phase Acrobatics. We pick up a couple of damage and life nodes among the way. You can pick up an Ewar's Mirage. That should make leveling a tad easier.

44 Point Tree - this is around lvl 40: when you want to try normal labyrinth. Choose Raider, Get Way of the Poacher.

66 point tree - Grabbing mostly damage nodes, couple of life. If you feel fragile, try upgrading your gear. At this point, elemental resistance is rather important. Grabbing more life nodes won't do you much good. Sure it'll give you more life, but the biggest defense, at this point, comes from your gear.

85 point tree - this should be a fine tree to have before you go into mapping. Make sure to get your jewels, to make map bosses melt under your barrage of attack. You should be close to getting the Touch of Anguish as well at this point. If you are unsure about mapping, staying in Act 9/10 until level 70, is perfectly fine.

From this point on, it's just grabbing the last remaining points. The last damage nodes are mostly crit nodes. And that's fine, as crit really shines when you get to a higher level.

Video
VS Double Malformation Boss(T10)
VS Shipyard Boss(T12)
VS Death and Taxes(T12)
VS Waterways Boss(T13)
VS Double Beacon Boss(T13)
VS Double High Garden Boss(T13)
Vs Plaza Boss hard mods(T13)
VS Double Maze Vaal(T14)
VS Palace Dominus(T14)
VS Double Palace Dominus(T14)
VS Double Volcano Boss(T14)
VS Double Shaped Crypt Boss(T14)
VS Double Springs Boss(T14)
VS Double Maze Boss(T14)
VS the Cursed King(T15)
VS Colosseum Daresso(T15)
VS Double Colloseum Daresso(T15)
VS Double Abyss Kaom(T15)
VS Core Malachai(T15)
VS Double Overgrown Ruin Boss(T15)
VS Guardian of the Chimera(T16)
VS Guardian of the Hydra(T16)
VS Guardian of the Hydra Onslaught/-Max
VS Guardian of the Phoenix(T16)
VS Guardian of the Minotaur(T16)
VS Esh's Domain
VS Uul Netol's Domain
VS Uber Izaro
VS Atziri

Obligatory Reserved

Hey awesome to have you back! Even though I prefer to try my own builds it always has been a great pleasure to look over your guides. Hope to see more of them in the future :)


/EDIT: Okay, finally had the time to have a closer look at your guide. One suggestion that I would make is to work in The Perfect Form. It could up your defences quite a bit, especially if you manage to run Purity of Cold.

I can't help but wonder if a crit version of this build wouldn't be somewhat smoother. I mean, Touch of Anguish's base crit is kinda decent, and you're pathing next to the juicey crit nodes anyway.

You advise trying it as first character in Legacy League? Any leveling up suggestions?

What about Malachai's Artifice Flame Golem and Hrimsorrow?

With the new passive tree there's very little reason not to go crit imho. I really hope that you'll try this build in Legacy and see how far it goes!

I am :)
It's still going to be my started build for the new league!

I haven't got the time to actually revamp the tree. I've been messing around with crit, got tooltip damage up to around 75Kish. With the new improvements however, I'll be looking to get some more investment in crit. There are a lot of nice nodes around us.

Also, we are getting the 100% damage conversion as there's 40% conversion in the tree. So.
You know. Good times. :D

I'll most likely update this topic tonight. I'm super excited for this build, as it was a blast to play in 2.5 :)

"

Appels_Zijn_Gezond wrote:

I am :)
It's still going to be my started build for the new league!

I haven't got the time to actually revamp the tree. I've been messing around with crit, got tooltip damage up to around 75Kish. With the new improvements however, I'll be looking to get some more investment in crit. There are a lot of nice nodes around us.

Also, we are getting the 100% damage conversion as there's 40% conversion in the tree. So.
You know. Good times. :D

I'll most likely update this topic tonight. I'm super excited for this build, as it was a blast to play in 2.5 :)

Nice to hear! I might take back was I was saying about crit tho. I tried hard to come up with a decent passive tree but I just can't manage to get sufficient life.

On another note, you should have a look at the new versions of Hyrri's Ire (it now adds (50 to 60)-(70 to 80) cold damage to attacks) and Tasalio's Sign (it now adds (7 to 10)-(15 to 20) cold damage to attacks and 40-60 cold damage against chilled enemies). Both items are missing life tho.

hi,

I'm thinking for un FB crit claws build and you remind me these starter claws thanks !

my version of the build poeurl.com/56z

if it can help you, but i'm not fully satisfied, medium life (for me, i love to get at least 6k, but here 5.5 max with good gear i guess) and only 3 jewels slot.

And my link plans are, FB - MultiStrike - WeD - Cold pen - crit chance - and the last maybe EleFocus but i dislike the idea to loose the shattering, so the last can be FA - MeleePhys - Add Cold - Add Fire - Crit multi. I don't know yet :)

Have fun and Good luck !

My take on the tree - with just barebone crit investment.

I have the exact same problem as you both. There is just too much to pick up atm, and to get the good life nodes, you need to travel quite a lot.

Now, We are investing quite heavily in dodge(boots, asc, keynodes), so I believe we can get away with picking only 156% life from the tree. But it does make me wonder whether the 40 life from oak is really going to be worth the skill point :D

As for links, I'm leaning towards Frost Blades - Multistrike - Weapon elemental damage - Melee physical damage - Cold Penetration - Fortify

Yes, I'm keeping Fortify on the main setup. You could put it on Whirling Blades, but having to Whirl through a tough boss(or even in a tough situation) every few seconds, will only get you killed.

Remember: Frost blades do not target things behind you(unless it chains). Standing in the middle of a pack will decrease your clear speed by a decent bit. It's most optimal to stand outside a pack, and kill everything from that point. So Fortify on Whirling Blades, is really sub-optimal for the build imo.

I'll be messing around with the tree a bit longer. We aren't there yet. But I feel this will at least make for a decent base :)


Oh, and before I forget: I've seen all your item suggestions, and they are nice yes. I don't want to use any more uniques in the buils for now though, as we already occupy a decent amount of slots(Weapons, Boots). Plus, getting a 6 link on a specific armor is going to be very expensive, while a regular 6 link will be much, much cheaper.

I want this build to be a cheap league starter. Possibly transitioning into stronger gear, but it needs to be solid enough to work without those expensive gear pieces :)

I tend to agree. I think Touch of Anguish will likely be the best option for this build, with a rare sword/claw/dagger potentially offering a better top-end.

With full elemental conversion, ToA checks all the boxes you want. Solid base physical damage, increased cold damage, and additional chaining at max charges, in addition to solid base crit chance.

I don't think Darkray are worth the slot. The 50% reduced duration sucks, lack of HP sucks, minimal resistances sucks. The movement speed and dodge is nice, but I'm not sure they offer enough. Raider is pretty damn fast on its own. Movement speed is also wasted if you use Whirling Blades as your primary movement.

The newly announced "Fight for Survival" threshold gem looks like a must for this build as well. Really strong.