[3.0] The Azure Knight (Flurry/Frost Blades/Multi-class/Budget/Crit/Life/Conversion) Shaper/Uber

Hi, and welcome to another Blade Flurry/Frost Blades Witch build by me.

I've written the guide with an Occultist in mind, but the build can be played by many different classes/ascendancies - links to other ascendancy threads are in the Stats section.

Build is broken down into 2 different gear/gem setup, Cold and Light/Cold based, full explanation of differences included.

There is also a small Frost Blades gem section, if anyone prefers it to Blade Flurry. Vast majority of the guide applies to Frost Blades option as well.

Pro's
- Fun, fast paced build
- Non-meta, hipster build
- Can beat 2.6 HoWA Blade Flurry dps, while being much, much cheaper
- Fast clearspeed, and an amazing clearspeed with Frost Blades
- Cheap (6L not included)
- Can be used as a league starter
- Can run Elemental Reflect maps with a few gear/gem changes
- Flexible, can be played as any class in the game, each with different pros and cons

Cons:
- Some map mods can range from annoying (no mana regen), hard (vulnerability), to very hard/undoable (no leech)
- It's not a 15k ES or 8k life build, so cannot facetank everything and you need to dodge telegraphed attacks
- Not recommended for HC due to low life values and use of Abyssus (Altough, if you choose Starkonja/Grace/Shield it might be HC viable).

My Laptop is ancient so please at least try to ignore freezes/lag and sometimes low quality in general. Don't judge the build based on the videos performance/my performace/fps, just the build's performance.
Still, apologies for the dreadful videos, and hope you can see past the quality.

3.0 videos:

2.6 videos:

"Witch start" passive tree allocation/leveling:

Leveling and gearing from 30s till maps:
Level 30 is when you can start leveling with Blade Flurry/Frost Blades.

1. Detailed leveling: (thanks iktose for this, written from Shadow POV, but applies to all ascendancies)

"

iktose wrote:

If that can be of help this is how I leveled my Assasin with this build:

ACT1
2L: Frost Blades + Pierce (great for clear speed)
3L: Onslaught for even more clear speed or Added Cold for more DPS and/or bosses
4L: Added Fire
+ Riposte (drop it when you need the slot for something more useful)
+ whirling blades

ACT2
Frost Blades + Pierce/Added Cold + Melee physical + Added Fire
+ Herald of Ice
+ Vaal Lightning Trap on bosses
+ Blood Rage (caution : use only if you have enough life leech)
Use this until you can get Blade Flurry in ACT3
Bandits : kill all (can change to Alira later if needed but I prefer the points)

ACT3
Reach Winter Spirit in the skilltree. It's time to start using BF

Blade Flurry + Melee Physical + Elemental Damage + Elemental Focus
seems to be the best DPS combo according to PoB
Swap Herald of Ice with Hatred when possible
+ Ancestral Warchief
+ Enduring Cry
Add Fortify + Faster Attacks to Whirling Blades
+ Enfeeble (self cast at the moment)

ACT4
+Ice Golem

ACT5
nothing special here

ACT6
Can start using Cast When Damage Taken + Immortal Call or Vortex or Frost Bomb
If enough mana pool and mana leech can even use Blasphemy + Enfeeble or Elem Weakness

Get ascendancy points as soon as possible. The order to spend points is already in the guide.

With correct stuff it should be easy to get level 90 quickly

I've written down my gem tips below as around the same time, so you can get a bigger picture (most of our gem suggestions are very similar). The leveling advise provided by iktose is already spot on, but below you will also find some gear tips.

2. Gems
Early on, Added Lightning, Added Cold etc. are better then supports like Faster Attacks or Elemental Damage with attacks, especially if you don't have much physical to elemental conversion. Uniques like Hrimsorrw or Moonbender's Wing (along the Winter Spirt passive notable) can change that. I wouldn't use these gems (Added Cold/Lightning) past early 40s, or only if you don't have a decent weapon and added flat damage is better then %more.
Blade Flurry - Melee Physical Damage - Added Cold/Lightning work great early.
G R G/B

As you level up and get better gear, phase out Added Cold/Lightning for Physical to Lightning support and Elemental Damage with Weapons.
Blade Flurry - Melee Physical Damage - Physical to Lightning - Elemental Damage with Weapons
G R B R

If you reached Winter Spirit and have either Moonbender's axe or Hrimsorrow/Hrimburn gloves, drop Physical to Lightning support and get Elemental Focus instead.
Blade Flurry - Melee Physical Damage - Elemental Damage with Weapons - Elemental Focus
G R R B

If you have a 5 link, use Increased AoE and swap it around with Concentrated Effect for bosses.
Blade Flurry - Melee Physical Damage - Elemental Damage with Weapons - Elemental Focus - Inc. AoE/Conc. Effect
G R R B B

3. Rare gear mod priorities
Try to cap your resistances and get life on gear. Ignore armour/es/evasion rolls almost completely. It is better to mitigate 75% of elemental damage then have a small chance to evade it but take it fully in your face. If you want evasion and armour while leveling, grab a Granite and Jade flasks instead.
Try to get some added physical damage on rings/amulet or other damage enhancing mod, like accuracy, but don't ever swap resistance rings for damage rings if you aren't capped.

4. Dual wielding Claws? DON'T!
Once you start using Blade Flurry, use only ONE claw and a mace/axe with increased % of elemental damage implicit. Your tooltip will be lower, but the tooltip is bugged this way. Your real dps will be higher with a claw/mace then with 2 identical claws. Try to get bonus accuracy or resistances on your offhand. Example that I used in early maps:


5. Weapon and other important upgrades
On a budget, use vendor recipe: Magic or Rare Rustic Sash + Claw of your choice + Blacksmiths Whetstone. It grants you a magic claw of the same type with 40-69% increased physical damage. Always use the best claw available to you to do this recipe (most of the time it will be the highest level requirement claw).
Rolls depend on rarity of the Sash and its item level. Augment it for a chance of attack speed % or other useful mods.

If you can spare a chaos or two, get it. Since 3.0 poison butchery it is really cheap, and I bough a decent rolled one for only a single Chaos on the first day, just a few hours into the league. If you didn't drop a Chaos orb or 2 yet, convert your Alterations or other currency. Later in the league, you will buy this for a single Alchemy orb.

This one can be expensive early, 3-5c at the first day or two of a new league, but get it eventually, it is definately worth it.
Belt of the Deceiver
Resists, life, damage. Great leveling belt. Price in early leagues is unknown to me as I found a nice rare and didn't need to buy this one.
Ornament of the East
By the time you start outleveling Mortem Morsu, you will have enough currency to buy this weapon. I got mine around level 50, and seen around 20% increase in dps over Mortem Morsu. Not a lot, but for its price (1 Chaos) it was definately worth it.

Since poison isn't in a great state, this amazing weapon is also really cheap. On the second day of the league I found out about this new unique, costing only 1 Chaos. Great critical strike chance, attack speed, physical damage, accuracy, and you can get situational extra chaos damage. All this for one Chaos orb. It is a truly great claw for its price, so get one with good stats and it will last you for a long time.

6. Masters
It is very beneficial to do master quests as you level up. Particularily Elreon for reistances/damage mods on jewelry and Haku for resistances on armour pieces.
Vagan is also a decent choice, as you might find a rare Claw that is missing added flat physical damage, and can beat uniques at your level in terms of dps. It is a gamble, but his missions are one of the quickest anyway, so do them when you can.

7. Auras/Mana reservation
Super early on, use both Herald of Thunder and Herald of Ice to level faster. Once you get Hatred, run it with either one of the Heralds.
Once you get Blasphemy and Elemental Weakness, use it along Hatred.

Major:
- Soul of Lunaris is a great pick, synergizes very good with our defenses. Best mapping choice imo, also increases your spell dodge chance to 35% with Perfect Form, and gives you a chance to avoid projectiles.
- Soul of Solaris is also decent, but not as good as Lunaris, even if Solaris bonus can be better in some rare cases.

Minor:
- Gruthkul is great, as being close ranged character we are getting hit constantly. Additional slow also helps with survivability.
- Finally, Yugul helps us deal with reflect, if this is your main concern. Take it especially if you are playing Frost Blades version.

Stat explanation:
- "Fully buffed" means with curses, flasks, charges if they can be gained on hit (Frenzy charges if gained from Blood Rage or only on kill aren't calculated), Vaal Lightning Trap, Frost Bomb debuff.
- "Unbuffed" means with curses and charges if they can be gained on hit, but not on kill (so Frenzy from Blood Rage isn't calculated). No Lightning Trap.
- "Mapping dps" values are calculated against normal monsters, with flasks, with all charges on hit/and on kill, without Lightning Trap or Frost Bomb, and using AoE gem instead of Conc Effect.

Both "fully buffed" and "unbuffed" are calculated against Shaper/Guardian type of Boss, not vs normal monsters.

All stat calculations are based on Cold-centered setup, using same gear/level/passive tree (with small adjustments here and there to accomodate different mechanics).

Example level 89 passive tree.

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Basic gear:

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Cold vs Light/Cold differences:

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Cold based setup (main attack gems/gear):

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Light/Cold setup (main attack gems/gear):

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Flasks:

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Jewels:

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Uber Lab enchantments:

Depending on your Ascendancy/availability/gear (unset rings), you might struggle to fit all listed gems. In order of importance:
- Auras
- Curses
- Whirling Blades + Fortify
- Golem, Totem, Enduring Cry
- other gems and CwDT setups

Auras:
Cold setup: Hatred + Herald of Ash + Arctic Armour + Enlighten. If using Perfect Form, replace Herald of Ash with either Blasphemied Enfeeble or Elemental Weakness.
Light/Cold setup: Hatred + Arctic Armour + Herald of Ash + Enlighten

Movement:
Whirling Blades + Faster Attacks + Fortify
Linking it with Fortify makes it easy to have Fortify almost all the time.

Buffs:
Blood Rage
Attack speed boost and Frenzy charge generation - great boost for both mapping and bosses.
Socket it in your claws, so that you can disable it easily by switching your weapon sets.

Vaal Haste
Great dps boost, with the nerfs to Vaal Lightning Trap this will probably serve you better (also speeds up map clear).

Ancestral Protector/Warchief
Both totems improve your dps by almost equal amount, but Warchief has a built in AoE, so its a preferred choice for us.
Protector might be a better choice against Chimera, since it boosts your attack speed, you will find the boss quicker during the smoke phase.

Enduring Cry
Endurance charges are great for increasing our survivability. It may take a bit of time to get used to using it constantly, but it's well worth it.

Ice Golem
Ice Golem helps with crit chance and accuracy, both extremely important. Best to put it in one of your CwDT setups, so you don't have to recast it yourself and waste time.

Cast When Damage Taken combo examples:
Cast When Damage Taken + Immortal Call + Increased Duration
This setup is a staple in almost every build. You use if you like it, personally, however, prefer constant 12% physical damage reduction then temporary immunity. Immortal Call will last 2.6 seconds with 3 Endurance charges, and over 0.65 seconds without.

Cast When Damage Taken + Ancestral Warchief + Blind + Ice Golem
This setup works better for Cold based setups - Blinded enemies have 50% less chance of hitting you, which can boost your evade chance from 40% to 70%, which is pretty good for one gem.
Having Blind on golem and totem increases the chance of actually blinding the enemy.

Cast When Damage Taken + Immortal Call + Frost Bomb + Vortex
Defensive setup: Physical protection, Cold penetration debuff and 10% slow. A great thing to have, as IC duration should be decent without Increased Duration gem, thanks to Endurance Charges.

Debuffs:
Elemental Weakness
Greatest curse of them all, as a bonus, we can get it as a "on hit corruption" on gloves, which saves us some gem slots and improves consistency.
If you don't have such gloves, use your curse either in CwDT setup (which will proc most often on bosses, where you actually need it) or as a Curse on Hit setup with a skill like Ball Lightning or Bladefall for AoE cursing.

Vaal Lightning Trap
A 20% more damage for a single gem, good value for 1 gem slot, But you have to decide between this and Vaal Haste.

Frost Bomb
Only worth it in Cold setup, due to majority of damage being scaled with it.
Decent damage increase. Unlike Vaal Lightning Trap, you can recast it unlimited number of times - works perfect in a low level CwDT setup.

Vortex
This is a defensive option, as even bosses can be slowed by up to 10%. Keep it in a low level CwDT for constant reapplying.

Above screenshot was taken using:
18/14 Frost Blades
20/10 Multistrike
20/20 Weapon Elemental Damage
20/23 Elemental Focus
21/20 Melee Physical Damage
20/20 Cold Penetration
With 20/20 Frost Blades and Multistrike, you can achieve 516k dps tooltip (2.6 values).

Worth mentioning, with Frost Blades, sustaining Power Charges is harder, since projectiles don't strike an additional time, yet kill monsters, robbing you of opportunity to gain charges with Forbidden Power.
This also applies to other ascendancies that can rely on percentage based "on hit/strike" mechanics.
Also, note that reflect becomes more obnoxious, so do get Yugul pantheon power for reflect damage reduction.

Changes from normal setup:
Main attack:
Frost Blades + Weapon Elemental Damage + Elemental Focus + Multistrike + Melee Physical Damage + Cold Penetration

Auras/Gems:
Hatred + Arctic Armour (or Blasphemy Enfeeble)
CwDT + Enfeeble or self cast Elemental Weakness for bosses if running Blasphemy Enfeeble.

Gear:
Shaper's Touch
Touch of Anquish x2
Strength/Evasion armour like Lightning Coil or Belly of the Beast (for easier coloring)

Jewels:
2x Fight for Survival jewels
(didn't have those equipped in the Beacon or Springs video)

5.5-6k Life at level 90
With Belly of the Beast, you want to break at least 6.4k.

25+ mana regeneration per second
This is quite important for QoL reasons and sometimes survivability. After using Whirling Blades, crossing the map, you might end up with no mana to attack when you finally encounter monsters, or your movement speed will simply be restricted to your mana regeneration. Having 25-30 is comfortable. If you can't achieve it, following nodes can be taken:
- Druidic Rite near Ranger (also flask charges and duration, but least actual mana regen)
- Primal Spirit near Ranger (flask charges, intelligence if you need stats, medium mana regen)
- Mana Flows near Duelist (single biggest mana regeneration boost on the tree, but no other bonuses)

89-91% accuracy
This is enough, as after you reach around 90%, you start hitting really big dimnishing returns for each extra point of accuracy.

Overcapped resistances
Depending on the Ascendancy version you take, it may be difficult to get your resists high enough to negate Elemental Weakness map mod (especially if you use Lightning Coil).
After you use up your usual slots (like rings/belt), sacrificing damage mods for resistances on jewels might be a good idea. On the tree, it usually takes 2 points to get either 10, 11, or 15 to elemental resistances, usually mixed in with some evasion or armour. Therefore, investing in resistances on the tree is expensive and inefficient.
A jewel can have:
- 10% to elemental resistances, and additionally 14% double res.
- %life
- damage mods
In other words, for 2-3 points, you can unlock a jewel and get same bonuses as the resistance nodes + additional life/damage as an extra on top of it.

Path of Building pastebin:
https://pastebin.com/BAe18ai9
With 3 more levels, another cheap life+2 stat jewel and taste of hate, we can easily break 2 million dps to Shaper with a 297 pdps claw: https://pastebin.com/DUewDwkr
After getting another jewel/Taste of Hate, I could upgrade my current jewels to life+3 stat, then amulet, and finally claws.

Path of Building pastebins:
https://pastebin.com/6px77JgD for Cold setup.
https://pastebin.com/Ai00DDt9 for Light/Cold setup.
Both pastes got Enemy type: Guardian/Shaper selected, and Frenzy Charges unchecked. You can play around with current equipment, or compare it to other builds that have access to 400+ dps crit claws and other bonkers gear :)
This is a 2.6 setup, but you can easily change it to 3.0.

Stat screenshots (2.6, yet to update):
- Gems: One 21/20, some 20/20, few 15/20 or 18/18 etc.
- Cold setup: Means lower tooltip dps due to Cold Penetration gem not increasing it. Light/Cold setup will have higher tooltip dps - around 27-30% more.
- Do note that due to "fake dual wielding", both attack speed value and damage numbers aren't accurate (should be higher). You can get higher values using another claw, but real dps is higher with Doryani's. Trust me on this one.

Hideout dps Golem+Totem, Inc AoE
Hideout dps Golem+Totem, Conc Effect
Combat dps, Golem+Totem+Flasks, Inc AoE, full charges
Combat dps, Golem+Totem+Flasks, Conc Effect, full charges
Defenses unbuffed
Defenses with flasks and 3 Endurance charges

Now, we all know that there are mechanics and requirements that while aren't apparent, need to be fulfilled if you want to blast through content. Here, you will find some gear/gem/tree changes you need to make to have an easy time with specific content:

Shaper: No special mechanics, apart from small cold (and light?) penetration on a few of his attacks, iirc.
If this is your first time doing Shaper, watch all available videos to have a rough idea on what to expect. There is quite a few of them on my channel, most of them from my other BF witch build, but techniques are excatly the same - that is if you can suffer watching my slideshows, if not, find some other Blade Flurry videos that show Shaper fights (hopefully not a mirrored gear 2 second kills, you won't learn anything from those).

Minotaur: A lot of physical damage here. Make sure you don't stay too long in falling rocks circles, and dodge his burrow attack/slam every time. He won't use burrow unless your Golem/Totem/You are away from him - best to position totem behind him, stick close, and pray he doesn't go after the golem that is chilling a bit behind you. Still, if your rig doesn't lag like mine, you can easily dodge all his dangerous attacks. Make sure your Endurance charges are always up and running.

Hydra: Always, always, stay behind the Hydra, and you will almost never get hit by her attacks. However, just to be safe, don't forget about Enduring Cry, as most of her attacks deal majority of physical damage.

Phoenix: While Phoenix channels his fire nova blast, he lowers your fire resistance by up to -50%. Make sure you are seriously overcapped, if you want to have a slightest chance of tanking the explosion. Also remember, the birds he summons deal fire damage, so being hit by them if you aren't overcapped will seriously hurt. If you cannot get 185 fire resistance, don't worry - just dodge his blast ahead of time, don't be greedy - or his spawns will kill you.
This is the only fight where you might want to stick to AoE gem, to clear birds faster and stay more out of the way of the Phoenix himself.

Chimera:Finding him in the cloud in time is pure rng, but make sure you disable your Blood Rage beforehand, otherwise you will have less time to do it. Keeping Endurance charges up is very important. Also, if your chaos resist is low (mine is at -60), you have to be really careful during snake minion phase. Having a life flask with poison immunity is recommended for this boss.Now imagine this flask with Poison immunity instead.
Don't rush adds in a straight line, or you will soak all the projectiles on your face. Zig zag to them instead.

Breachlord Domains: All easy. However, if you run Chayula domain, make sure you are prepared, and your AoE is decent. This is probably the only content, for which you might want to respec some of your skill points, and grab Blast Radius notable in Witch area - extra AoE helps a lot with the timer. If you stay on top of the breach edge, you might not realize quick enough and kill yourself on a reflect rare. This usually means you rip a Chayula stone, which isn't cheap, and you will cry, so stay a bit behind the edge.
For Chayula, recommended at least 10-20% chaos resist during domain clear.
For Chayula and Uul-Nethol, I recommend use of Sibyl's Lament ring to reduce reflected damage, and taking Yugul pantheon to further help.


Atziri and Uber Atziri: Atziri fight is purerly mechanical - if you know her attacks and are good at dodging things, you will be fine. Practice normal Atziri a lot before moving on to Uber, and never attack the one which is holding a mirror during split phase.
Dodge Oversoul slam attacks, and try to activate them in different time intervals for easier kills.
Trio is definately most dangerous, if your chaos resist is low. I still have no idea how the Trio works (they get special buffs depending on who you kill first and second or something), and for that reason, I still haven't done Uber Atziri yet - I ripped twice, once when Uber Trio was ghosted thanks to prophecy triggering (just my luck), second time due to immense lag/delays which cost me 4 portals, then another 2 on Uber Atziri herself. Definately check the wiki or other resource for their fight mechanics, as I'm pretty bad dealing with them.