[3.0] The Azure Knight, Assassin version (Blade Flurry/Frost Blades/Life/Crit/Conversion)

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iktose wrote:

First of all thank you for the detailed build. During 2.6 I was interested in your melee Witch build (Death Knight if I remember correctly) but I didn't had the chance to try it.
For 3.0 I wanted to make a Shadow because I didn't have one yet and this build seemed to fit the playstyle I wanted. So I decided to try it.

I'm planning to sacrifice a bit of DPS for some defence. I really don't think that will be a problem because this build has so much DPS anyway.

If that doesn't bother you I'll post my progress and build when I'm done with leveling and have decent stuff and gems. I hope this will help !

Btw I'm 35 in standard right now and this build is so much fun with only a couple chaos invested in leveling gear ^^

Have fun with new content !

I started playing in the League, got level 4 after 4 hours of crashes haha.
Leveled first with Firestorm traps + Freeze pulse, and switched over to BF around level 34, after I bought Mortem Morsu for 1c.

If you are just starting leveling, Added Lightning, Added Cold, Added Fire, BF, Melee Physical (any combination of 3 supports will work in a 4L) are best picks in my opinion before you get to Winter Spirit. Then, Physical to Lightning, BF, Elemental damage and Melee Physical work really, really well.

It is perfectly fine if you want to post your progress, if you have any tips/tricks that you find along the way it might only improve the build. Once I get to maps and I stop rushing/leveling, I need to update leveling sections for the build anyway, so any feedback will be appreciated :)

Yeah I couldn't play much yesterday either ^^

As a Shadow I started leveling with Frost Blades right from the beginning. I'm in standard so obviously I have access to items that aren't available when a new league starts (or for a new player) so maybe I will only talk about the skills.

So at first :
2L :
Frost Blades + Pierce (great for clear speed)
3L :
Swap between Onslaught for even more clear speed and Added Cold for more DPS and/or bosses
4L :
Added Fire

A nice utility gem to have as soon as possible is Riposte. As we are dual wielding we have an implicit chance to block so this will give us some additional DPS for free !

This will get you to the end of Act 1 in no time.
Will continue later, got to sleep now

Hi, you mentioned using Maces will be better than claws? Do I dual wield them then? If so, what changes to the passive tree should I make if I'm not using claws anymore? Thanks!

Hi, you wield one claw and one mace. Since BF doesn't work with maces, it will only use your claw.

Example: you have 2 claws, one mirrored and one white one dropped in act 2. In this case, you deal damage with godly claw, shitty claw, godly claw, shitty claw, and so on - it is alternating, not attacking with both at the same time, so your dps will be halved since your second claw deals next to no damage.
If you have a mace and a mirrored claw, only the claw willl be used, and you can use the mace to gain extra stats, and if you are buying claws, you only need to spend currency on one good one instead of a set okaish ones.

Hi there!
Thanks for the build! I decided to make a Frost Blades Shadow because of this guide.

I'm wondering: Why didn't you make a detour to acquire Fangs of Frost in the passive tree? 8% cold pen sounds really valuable for this spec

Edit: Also, what Bandit choice would you recommend?

I was playing with that build as the starter for harbinger, but in the act 5 became very difficult not to die. Of course I'm using shit items, but seems that a evasion char dies a lot.

Any tips?

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Gringos wrote:

Hi there!
Thanks for the build! I decided to make a Frost Blades Shadow because of this guide.

I'm wondering: Why didn't you make a detour to acquire Fangs of Frost in the passive tree? 8% cold pen sounds really valuable for this spec

Edit: Also, what Bandit choice would you recommend?

I recommend Alira for mana regen, extra resistances and crit multiplier. 2% physical damage reduction is laughable at best, and with alira you get the best possible dps as well as resistances, allowing you to roll with cheaper gear (45 less total resistances you need on gear).

If your gear is really good, however, or you got currency that you don't care if ring has 45 lightning res instead of 30 but costs 3 times as much, you will get the best possible dps/life from extra passive nodes. It is not recommended however if this is start of the league and you don't have 10+ exalted to spend min maxing your jewelry/belt etc.

Fangs of Frost are 5-6 points away from the main tree (depending on the version of the build), so the value per point is gone really quickly. Forces of Nature, while a bit weaker, are only 3 points away, making their bonus much more powerful per point spent.

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adnpagani wrote:

I was playing with that build as the starter for harbinger, but in the act 5 became very difficult not to die. Of course I'm using shit items, but seems that a evasion char dies a lot.

Any tips?

Act 5 sees a spike in difficulty, same as act 10. But it shouldn't be much more difficult. There's a couple of quick fixes I would apply to your character.

1. You are using Dual Strike, which isn't what this build is about :) If you don't want to recolor your chest, you can use Blade Flurry / Melee physical / Elemental damage / Added fire.

2. If you have any respec points, spec out of Artistry and Lynx notables, and invest these points into Winter Spirit, so that you deal more elemental damage.

3. With Blade Flurry, use only 1 claw - your Eagle Bite looks stronger then Vortex Slicer, your second weapon can be any mace, even white one - your tooltip will drop, but your real damage will be higher. I've used a blue one till act 5 or 6, when I found this baby

which carried me till maps and I bought Singularity, which I'm still using.

4. Since you are still leveling and your dps isn't in the thousands, % of leech, especially 0.4% physical, is not really boosting your survivability - life gain on hit (claws implicit) is more important at the moment. Get rare gloves with resists or Hrimsorrow instead of Slitherpinch for 90% cold conversion with Winter Spirit notable.

5. In general, try to cap your resistances whenever possible, and don't worry about armour/evasion too much. It is better to negate 75% of lightning damage then having a 40% chance of not getting hit by 100% of it. I find that doing haku/elreon missions help a lot, since you can craft missing resistances on your gear.

Hope this helps!

I'm going to update leveling section in the main (witch) thread, now that I've leveled 3 times with this build :) give me like half an hour.


EDIT:
PSA to all following this build:
According to Path of Building, difference between a 250 dps Wasp Nest and 270 dps Touch of Anquish is very small, depending on gear, but it may vary from 0% to 10% difference (in favour of ToA).

Difference is price, however, is massive - 1-2c for decent roll Wasp's Nest, vs 70c for cheapest Touch of Anquish.

Let Frost Blades Raiders bleed themselves dry :)

Hello Sir,

First of all, thank you for the hard work and for this build,
I am still a newbie to this game, i don't know a lot about the game yet, and i just want to ask you, is this build still valid till today? if so, could you please edit the post and add leveling tree, like from 0 to 20, from 20 to 40..etc so i can follow the correct progress. Thank you in advance.

I haven't had much time to level my character this league (work, holiday), so my character still is only level 77 and I'm only doing Merc lab today, but build is still strong, and I haven't noticed any drastic decrease in power compared to 2.6. Most of the nerfs that affected the build also affected every other Crit melee build, but most of them weren't big.

I have updated the thread with some example leveling trees, but, as you level, you should go for what you need at the moment, even if build specifies otherwise. For example, if you find a nice jewel, get a jewel socket. If you need more life, get more life before damage nodes.
Leveling as Shadow is very straightforward, just fill up the nodes in Shadow area (skip Vaal Pact till level 65 or so, you won't need it earlier) and work your way down picking important passive nodes on your way to Marauder area.

In the main thread (Witch section - https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1898845) there is a leveling section with some gear/gem tips that you can apply to Shadow character as well, it might help with your progress.

Good luck and have fun with the build :)

Thanks for the reply,

i will follow your advices and see how it turns out, i have few more questions, which stats i should be looking for in gears?

helmet :
armor :
gloves :
boots :
belt :
left ring :
right ring :
amulet :
right hand weapon :
left hand weapon :

and should i keep playing with dagger till i find a good claw? and should i go claw/claw or claw/mace?

Thanks in advance.