3.1 Frost Wind Ascendant (White Wind Frost Blades) HC red map viable #CURRENTLY UPDATING FOR 3.5

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pr7_ wrote:

Can someone tell me what is making the ice-icles appear from the ground when he kills mobs?

thanks!

MTX on Herald of Ice.

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__MaX__ wrote:

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pr7_ wrote:

Can someone tell me what is making the ice-icles appear from the ground when he kills mobs?

thanks!

MTX on Herald of Ice.

Cheers!!

will this build benefit somehow from this stat?: ---> Adds 15 to 33 Cold Damage against Chilled or Frozen Enemies

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Zlobazla wrote:

will this build benefit somehow from this stat?: ---> Adds 15 to 33 Cold Damage against Chilled or Frozen Enemies

Yes.

Hi guys.

I saw many variants for this build. I'm playing in softcore and wondering which one is the best if I want to optimize my DPS while being able to survive.

This is my first character (as I'm a returning player) so if you have any advices they are warmly welcomed :) !

BR,
Avalon.

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AL_Avalon wrote:

Hi guys.

I saw many variants for this build. I'm playing in softcore and wondering which one is the best if I want to optimize my DPS while being able to survive.

This is my first character (as I'm a returning player) so if you have any advices they are warmly welcomed :) !

BR,
Avalon.

Catmaster's version is really viable when it comes to survivability. But keep in mind that it is a T15 build. You won't be able to get the Shaper, Elder or Uber Elder by yourself. I had to respec on a Varanustra variant to get to a really insane amount of DPS :)

I just did red tier Elder (t12) without any problems. Great build, thanks for sharing!

Here is the current state in 3.3 Incursion, I've followed the build to the letter:

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/966469933769196147/60DB10D47D5AFE29175A49D89854EC5728A3DF3C/

At top charges, Frost Blades does 71k DPS (tooltip, no Hypthermia). Most end-tier map bosses kills are somewhat slow, but usually can't kill you unless you do some big mistakes. The build can do anything except non-leech.

I've invested:

1. About 20 exalteds in gear (7 for 7 link Belly, about 5-6 in Abyss Jewels, about 3-4 in rares).
2. About 10 exalteds in challenges. I've bought:
a) nearly all end-game grinds
b) Alluring Abyss trio challenge
c) Vaal Temple completion (though the build is capable of clearing it if RNG smiles on you and you get the map)
d) Minotaur no slam hit challenge (probably also possible with the build)
e) Vinktar square completion for 14 unique maps

Hello everyone...

First of all I want to thank you for all your interest in the build despite the fact that I was really slacking on the levelling section of the original guide and also made some bad choices.
Grateful for all the people who dropped by in my stream and told me that they really liked the build, that they had optimized it for endgame bosses, that it was their first lvl 100 build ever, etc.
I would have never thought that the video would reach so many veteran and new players alike and in retrospective I could have done many things better.

Almost an entire year has passed and PoE has continued to evolve (Thanks GGG!).
Ascendancies have been revisited and changed in 3.2 Bestiary. Many new items and Utility Skills and even Support Gems have been added to the game.
The addition of Bestiary, Incursion and Delve to the core game and the introduction of Jun Ortoi in Betrayal have shaped the endgame and the challenges we encounter in our journey tremendously.
Last but not least, "Statsticks" have been heavily nerfed and the very mechanic of statsticking has been removed from the game, effectively eliminating a lot of builds that were outshining the Frost Wind in 3.1 Abyss League.
The game has changed in such significant ways that I felt a need and a fit to finally revisit the Frost Wind Ascendant in 3.5 Betrayal League.

After my league start in HCSSF Betrayal where I died at lvl 90 as Rank 20 Elementalist with Winter Orb I have been starting (2AM CET, 13/12/2018) to level an Ascendant and to accumulate Currency in SC Betrayal with the goal of making the new best possible iteration of the Frost Wind Ascendant.

I borrowed a Tabula Rasa, a Thief's Torment and a stack of 10 Chaos Orbs from friends and levelled from the start using Molten Strike and Frost Blades in the same Setup with Ancestral Call, Added Cold Damage, Weapon Elemental Damage, Onslaught as soon as I could use them with whatever weapon I could get my hands on.
Also, starting as a Scion I instantly used both a Wildfire and a single Fight for Survival threshold jewel in the sockets right and bottom from the Scion start.




From lvl 26 onwards I was dual wielding Ewar's Mirage with top Attack Speed rolls and 50%+ EDwAS for the additional projectile to both FB and MS and the chain to FB which makes clearing feel close to endgame (aside from low crit = few shatters) throughout the entire levelling process.




From lvl 30 onwards I was using the Thief's torment for its big Life and Mana gained on Hit. This makes levelling feel like using old Vaal Pact while you facetank things with Molten Strike Balls hitting a lot of times per second. (prenerf; "Instaleech" like legacy Atziri's Acuity)

Note that it is of utmost importance to have a high (40-60) Life gained on hit roll here. Second Priority is all elemental resists because this baby does occupy both of your ring slot for your entire levelling experience from lvl 30 to somewhere betweeen 80 and 90.


Now at lvl 81, not fully ascended yet, my current gear and costs are:


cost me 1 Orb of Alchemy or 1 Chaos Orb, cannot remember, but supercheap for such a good roll.
Keep in mind this is more than 420 pure raw cold DPS without taking into consideration the 100% increased cold damage when offhand is empty with a perfect roll being about 5% less total edps than the highest edps rare Dagger available on the permanent Softcore market.
Pure cold DPS is a lot easier to scale than mixed elemental DPS, e.g. by means of penetration and resist reduction mechanics.




cost me 8 Chaos Orbs.

A rare helmet with high life, some resists and decent accuracy. Nothing special.




is borrowed from a friend, but should be no more than 10c at this point.




cost me 30 Chaos.

This is a really good investment since this amulet has both the offstats we need prior to making the stretch on the passive tree into Shadow area. Now I don't need the Attributes anymore and can freely switch, but the life (87 + 55/2 = 114.5), the flat cold dmg, the EDwAS and the freely craftable suffix are still very good.
I will eventually replace this.




This Thief's Torment is borrowed as well, but I had bought a slighly worse one for 12 chaos which I later sold easily for 16 chaos again.




cost me 1 Orb of Alchemy.

Given the access to good abyssal jewels, it's not too easy to outclass the unique Stygian Vise as it can give you a lot of flat damage and up to 150 flat life.




These boots I picked up from the ground and identified during the levelling process. Nothing special again, just life really and a little chaos resist to counteract the downside of the Oskarm Nubuck Gloves.




cost me 1 Chaos.

These gloves are pretty good but dropped in value massively with the knowledge about Assassin's Mark on hit on Shaper rings making it into the main stream crafting meta. People generally don't like the malus to chaos resist and the low life roll, but I think the accuracy increase puts them at a real good power level.
Eventually I can switch them out for good rare spiked gloves or we could try and corrupt Elemental Weakness on hit onto a pair if we manage to squeeze an additional curse into the build.




costs around 30 Chaos at the moment for a maximum roll of 15% elemental resist penetration.

Assuming your uncapped cold resist the highest between your elemental resists, this is really good for both its offensive and defensive value, especially if you manage to completely balance your resists





Nothing much to say here, just some flasks, very softcore oriented at the moment.
If I was more worried about dieing, I would certainly drop the Silver Flask for a Basalt flask and as soon as I get another source of Onslaught I will do that.
In 3.5 Betrayal I'm not restricted to the chance to gain 4s onslaught on kill you can get on Searching Eye Jewels but there is a very nice craftable suffix available from Jun's crafting bench that reads "You have Onslaught during Soul Gain Prevention".
Currently I am using an unlinked Vaal Ancestral Warchief which has 9s Soul Gain Prevention which is very much on the low end for the spectrum of Vaal Skills (Vaal Clarity has a base Soul Gain Prevention of 14s, for example).
Also, quoting the wiki, as of 3.4 Soul Gain Prevention is "modified by modifiers to skill duration and buff duration if those modifiers in some way affect the associated skill."
Soul Gain Prevention of longer than 30s is possible in builds that focus on increased skill duration.

For those interested, here is a pastebin link for the current levelling state of my current build: https://pastebin.com/MtfLQkmc


I will be streaming the entire levelling process live on my twitch stream twitch.tv/catmasterOP and I will write a fully fledged new guide as well as make a proper Build explanation video soon!

Thanks and may the Ancestors watch over you!

Big thanks for this build. Start to play with it and waiting for the full update for 3.5.

Hello everyone, quick update here.

Currently @ LVL 91, made a couple of upgrades, replaced the ring, balanced resists for the Wise Oak flask and fully upgraded my pantheon powers. Most content just melts, able to kill pretty much everything in flask uptime unless there is several defensive mods on the maps.

The build can deal with up to 2 but struggles with 3 or more mods like:

+ increased Monster life
+ Monsters take reduced extra Damage from critical strikes
+ Monsters have increased elemental resistance
+ Players have Elemental Equilibrium (effectively +25% monster resists for this build)

The build does not have access to a lot of life so even with a Belly of the Beast it is a struggle to get more than 6000 life. You need good life rolls on every piece of gear.

I gave up some life nodes in order to push damage for red map bosses, which you really want to kill or get into next phase during flask uptime.


Build facts:

Total Life: 5667
Total Mana: 719 (107 unreserved)
Total Melee Hit DPS against non-Bosses: 244580.3
Total Melee Hit Shaper DPS: 186092.0 (140663.5 without flasks)


Ascendancy and Passive Tree Choices



Gear Upgrades


Really sleepy right now need to rest but wanted to quickly share this so you guys can know what you are looking at and for in this league.

All in all I think the build is still very good and very fun to play but takes a fair bit of investment to really get going in high yellow and red maps.
At quite insane investment levels I can see this going past 1million shaper dps and being a very nice boss killer due to its smooth playability.

Looking forward to pushing it to 95 in the next couple days and making the switch to bosskilling setup :)

Have some nice holidays and if you have any questions or want to hang out, feel free to come over in my stream twitch.tv/catmasterOP, I will be streaming almost every day during the holidays!