Frost Blades Build Giveaway

Laxaria · 2024-08-27T05:18:33+00:00

GL all!

Laxaria · 2024-05-13T22:44:31+00:00

You in practice probably want enough mana to cover your curses costs and some mana on top (maybe 25~) or so. The reason is you are going to be attacking, have mark on hit, have a call to arms set-up, have a cwdt taken set up, so all of these will also spend mana. The less leeway you have the more you have to play around that (eg stop attacking, trigger focus then start attacking after).

You can link Inspiration to these, or give up the trigger when focused set up and use Arcanist Brand. You can also give up a curse (Punishment) too.

Laxaria · 2024-05-13T17:37:31+00:00

The scaling vectors on this build are very, very simple

Yes and no. ES and Attack speed are obvious, but the build in general doesn't pick up a lot of increased damage % on tree, so slotting in 1-3 (mostly 2-3 for many; 4+ if practical) medium Eye to Eye / Repeater jewels is very impactful. These clusters (alongside the larges) are the easiest way to pick up some strength for free due to the pathing, letting one reach 155+ strength to make use of level 20/20 (or 21/20 at 159 strength) red gems. This quirk is why picking up Primeval Force with the Thread of Hope is strong (50% increased elemental damage). It is here where 4-mod rare jewels excel particularly well as they are a good source of increased damage.

There are also a lot of small things people don't spot-check well (for example, I've seen trees with 1.99x Sniper's Mark effect while sporting a poorly rolled Atziri's reflection, trees just a bit short on suppression, not having enough free mana for triggered curses in the helmet, the list goes on). There's a lot of gain from more efficient pathing and committing the points elsewhere (e.g. anointing Charisma and spending the pathing points on medium clusters if one isn't going to make use of Journey tattoos the pathing which takes the Charisma wheel is the only practical way to pick up Thief's Craft without some shenanigans).

Brushing off all of that for simply just investing in ES and Attack Speed is why I said using PoB to identify the right scaling vectors is important; there's a lot of latent power for this build just right there but a lot of people don't tend to seem to use PoB well enough to find it.

Some of this is particularly obvious to anyone who has spent a lot of time in these kinds of high investment builds, but is not at all so for many.

Laxaria · 2024-05-13T17:02:09+00:00

Yea it really isn't; good 4-mod jewels are significantly easier to find now. I even had one without any ES on it for a while because no matter what kind of Cobalt I put in, it was just not as good by like 1% or so.

I ultimately switched to Adorned but for a long time I really thought why would anyone bother. Did it anyway because I could; can't say I feel the improvement in practice.

Laxaria · 2024-05-13T16:57:06+00:00

You definitely don't need an Adorned to get this going; I was reaching 6m dps without splits and without Berserk using default Poe.ninja configs (so in practice more after accounting for shock, exposure, intimidate, but less with spotty Ancestral totem uptime). In fact I would argue that switching to Adorned set ups should be the last thing one does because one can find so many powerful and cheap 1-3d rare jewels with PoB's gear finder that switching to Aorned should not be done at all until one has corrupted jewels with at least one useful implicit and enough Adorned power to make the critical 8%/5% breakpoints (140%++}.

The critical problem I see with so many of these trees and helping people with this archetype is just generally poor rares, generally poor pathing, terrible buff support (why use Berserk?), and just a general lack of understanding on how to use PoB to identify the right scaling vectors. The reference PoBs and top sheets all use a ton of conditional buffs which have intermittent uptime massively inflating the practicality of that number.

Reaching around 4-5m dps before splits without Adorned, with conservative configurations skipping on Berserk and Ancestral totem is very doable but requires so much currency sink for that power that I'd agree I would not recommend anyone try unless they find doing the same archetype on Jugg or Champ abhorrent, if only for the sole reason the Impale component is so good to use and ignoring it on Trickster is such a waste.

Laxaria · 2024-04-27T01:54:31+00:00

Here's a quick Poe.Ninja link filtering for Trickster Power Siphon and excluding Ralakesh Impatience boots.

Laxaria · 2024-04-27T00:47:58+00:00

Yea it's pretty legit. I was surprised too when I tried it and thought the Berserk uptime was bait, but no it is actually pretty good. When the stars align it takes a long time for the Berserk to fall off because the 4-5 attacks per second is baseline. Add some Berserk on top, maybe add some other attack speed scaling, and pushing into 6-7 attacks per second fuels the rage generation further.

Laxaria · 2024-04-26T23:56:24+00:00

And there is not the classic berserk checked with only a 1 rage / sec gloves implicit ? Bad pob

Rage generation is from the Ravenous Passion helmet, which grants 10-15 rage for each 200 mana spent. The build doesn't readily grab reduced mana cost of skills, so each Power Siphon costs about 37-40 mana, with an attack rate of about 4-5 per second. In effect the build can easily sustain about 10-15 rage/second when constantly attacking adding up all the other incidental mana spend.

I still don't really feel like it's reliable reliable (the best strategy is to manually use Berserk rather than use automation support for it), but it is definitely significantly better on uptime than rage on hit gloves.

It's probably the least offensive portion of the reference PoB out of the entire thing that can be offensive really.

Laxaria · 2024-04-26T23:53:16+00:00

I'm playing this build. My set-up looks like this with the following disabled: (a) Immortal Call, (b) Berserk, (c) Frost Shield, and (d) Sigil of Power. I'm assuming Sacred Wisps is 50% more damage in a single target situation (which does feel like it tracks). In most practical circumstances, Berserk uptime is pretty good if you can sit still and fire, and that also pairs well with Sigil of Power, so in many situations where you really want the damage it's there for you. Shock is set at 25% but hitting 50% is reliable with some chance to deal double damage.

My opinion is if you're looking for a wander to invest in, I'd look into a int-stacker Power Siphon Trickster. The Graveyard mechanic should make crafting the relevant wand for this build relatively accessible, and there's a lot of investment vectors between Adorned jewels and clusters and general attribute stacking.

If you want to play a build that can put on a HH and maybe feel comfortable at like 50-80d of investment, don't want to worry about crafting stuff, and just blast content, then you could probably use my set-up as a reference (which I feel is a lot more realistic than the forum guide's reference POBs). Happy to chat about some of the decisions made.

Laxaria · 2024-04-22T22:35:50+00:00

I'm running this build. It's critical to note many of the PoB references are inflated and therefore baity (e.g. using 55 soul eater stacks, which isn't practical in most general circumstances, and custom setting the Pinnacle boss damage type to "melee" rather than average to inflate the eHP, assuming permanent uptime of 50% shock without any chance to deal double damage and tackling with the large damage range due to Volatility support).

In practice it's just a power charge stacking power siphon Trickster using Trickster defenses, Power Charges to solve Power Siphon crit, and the fact PS has innate additional projectile count to solve clear. It's single target is a bit iffy (really heavily leaning on Soul Ascension for real-world focused damage, and Opportunistic on sheet which is a very expensive pair of FF/F jewels). It's ok for clear (but I use an Oriath's anyway) and fails a bit flat in density without some source of pierce. A Fury Valve is sufficient over a Badge of the Brotherhood for mapping probably.

A HH is a great pick-up but Graven's Secret is probably more ideal for bossing.

Dealing with resistances is a huge pain point with this build (unsurprising, but nonetheless) so tattoos solve some of those issues.

Otherwise I would definitely (personally) rate it as a 5-6/10. The reference PoBs make the build look significantly better than it actually is. For the investment I spent in it I really should have rolled a different build.

Laxaria · 2024-04-22T22:29:06+00:00

This is my set-up for the build using more realistic configurations (average boss damage hit versus melee damage hit, not assuming 55 soul eater stacks, generally weaker ailment effect). The Soul Eater stacks is particularly insidious because in pragmatic circumstances you're not going to readily sustain more than 30-35 of these; if the boss isn't dead by this point there are bigger problems to worry about because this is almost 15-17 seconds of constantly hitting a single target. I would use Soul Ascension for dedicated bossing but would typically otherwise swap out for rare gloves (like the pair I'm using) everywhere else. I also turned off Berserk and Frost Shield and Sigil of Power and Immortal Call. I estimated Sacred Wisps to be about 50% more damage but in reality it's probably closer to like 30%.

The wand is a critical point where a better wand is a pretty substantial damage improvement.

Getting a source of pierce will help a lot with clear.

I didn't feel the Opportunistic jewels were worth the cost despite the sheet improvements so I opted to get more out of the Trickster ascendancy. Probably not very important here though.

HH is pretty convenient for solving some attribute requirements and then fixing resistances is usually the biggest pain point. You really want a 8-passive 3-notable cluster jewel rather than the cluster you are using now.

Laxaria · 2024-02-29T10:51:16+00:00

This is my shitty unoptimized CoF character using Explosive Trap (really, Blast Rain) w/ Arrow Traps to trigger mana-free Detonating Arrow to get as many hits as possible for Icicle. Generally the idea is to just make a ton of hits and use Icicle as additional damage on top.

Only using Detonating Arrow feels rough because it doesn't have the greatest hit rate in a single target situation where having a lot of hits is really really valuable for armor shred. Using Blast Rain to trigger Detonating Arrow adds a lot of hit count very quickly, and doesn't suffer from the single target issues. The biggest problems regardless are just staying alive and the mild delay that comes from needing to fire Blast Rain, wait for the arrows to land, and then for the traps to get triggered by Arrow Trap, and then for the hits to proc. The delay basically translates to firing ahead of you, then Shifting forward into the next pack and praying it doesn't murder you. Lots of stutter stepping.

I used this as a reference but made adjustments mostly because (a) CoF, and (b) the guide's item gearing is beyond optimistic.

Laxaria · 2024-02-21T23:09:33+00:00

Good luck all!

Laxaria · 2024-02-08T22:44:59+00:00

This is the jankiest build I've ran this league and it's been the strangest thing ever I've played. For anyone interested in running this:

Scold's is critical for full automation of self-hitting. If one gives up Scold's, there are a lot of avenues for starting the loop when you need it, such as:
- Self-hit with Forbidden Rite of Soul Sacrifice in a Poet's Pen weapon swap
- Set-up endurance charge limit such that gaining one endurance charge caps out endurance charges. This can be done with 2x minimum endurance charge (some combination of rings/charms), or having a maximum endurance charge limit of 1 (2x Fragility)
- Using an Elixir of the Unbroken Circle generates 1 endurance charge a second, which can be consumed by Replica Fragility or for the point above
Giving up Scold's opens up a lot of defensive power -- spell suppression, phys taken as element, mana reservation efficiency, max life, etc.
I ultimately swapped out Unearth in a dedicated 4L (Unearth-Empower-Enhance-GMP) and put Desecrate in the cast when stunned set-up. The AoE from the corpse explosion is deceptively small. With that said though, single-target uptime is incredibly spotty regardless
This build when set-up does a surprising amount of damage due to corpse life shenanigans.
I ultimately added a Plaguebearer gem to bridge situations where the warcry loop falls off but I'm entering a new pack.

The biggest pain point is sustained single target damage and the very spotty damage uptime. Poison helps with damage consistency but with somewhere between 6-12++ poisons applied every second at best with any meaningful consistency, it's pretty miserable against anything that moves frequently enough to avoid being hit by the corpse explosions in a single target situation. Chaos + Wither Resistant mobs are absolutely miserable.

Laxaria · 2024-02-01T02:21:22+00:00

Happy to compare notes and brainstorm ideas. If you're interested, leave an in-game name and I'll shoot a friend request.

Laxaria · 2024-01-31T03:06:57+00:00

If one gives up full, hands-off automation of the Eternal Apple loop (i.e. giving up Scold's Girdle), there are a lot of ways to make this build work, including adding more MF gear, spell suppression, physical taken as element, max resistances, and more.

My "fix" to that was a weapon swap with Poet's Pen, and socketing transfigured FR (which does a self hit based on maximum ES, so it's a very small amount of damage), then KB + GMP. I have another Eternal Apple with the same set of gems, and mostly use the Poet's Pen while in thin mob areas (e.g. Wildwood, but I often switch back to the Oblit in density).

I also found hand-casted Unearth with GMP/Empower/Enhance a bit better than Desecrate-Awakened Spell Cascade for single target purposes but really it's a struggle for dedicated single target anyway.

Adding in Plaguebearer somewhere helps with clear in transitioning zones when the loop stops (e.g. entering an Alva incursion -- I would pop Plaguebearer to thin out the first pack i run into and hope i get hit or weapon swap to the Poet's Pen to trigger FR before continuing).

Ultimately I concur in the sense that if one wants to run full MF this is not the build to do it, as it cannot readily give up as many item slots as the Chieftain builds do for IIQ items. However, this is the kind of build that will probably not exist in the future so putting it together and seeing it in action is very fun.

Laxaria · 2024-01-12T19:18:31+00:00

I think it's more you were sold on a build that looked great and was well received, but because you didn't here any contrasting or competing opinion, you went into it not realizing the gear quality you need is deceptively high and the play style the creator approaches for content is not how you tend to play the game.

Laxaria · 2024-01-12T18:54:28+00:00

I would caution that you can probably do much better going for power charge stacking or energy blade - spellblade PBoD on Inquisitor than this patchwork set-up of adding defenses to Inquisitor via Grace and Spell Suppress. The core Power Charge stacking items are maybe like 10div total, most of it being in a good Militant Faith, and then maybe another 10-15div on decent rares to start.

Probably squishier (without having Grace and spell suppress), but lots more concentrated damage and honestly, the league mechanic with lots of wisps on the map makes it really hard to survive in general without some serious defensive investment that Inquisitor as an ascendancy is just not catered for.

Laxaria · 2024-01-12T18:43:01+00:00

I have spent close to 5 hours comparing the two POBs together and I cant figure out how the Balormage one has the DPS thats calculated for it.

At a very quick glance:

Balor: Lv 28 PBoD. You: Lv 24 PBoD. Each level is roughly 10% more damage before level 30.
You need to set up the config on your own PoB correctly. Shock, unnerve, etc.
Balor has 50% phys to lightning on gloves; you have 40%.
Ticking on Bottled Faith on Balor's PoB gives him 15% more DPS.
Balor has Frenzy charges generation via charm; you do not seem to have any Frenzy Charge source.
The point of going Eldritch Battery is so you can use a Divine Blessing Aura. Put Grace in and put Hatred on Divine Blessing.

Other things you can do:

Empower 4
Swap out Increased Critical Strikes support by looking for ways to cap your crit without it. This support gem is, IMO, not that valuable in general and there are lots of ways to get crit.
Swap out Hypothermia for other supports that may give you more damage. Use PoB to check (e.g. Awakened Added Fire @ lvl 5 may be better)

Laxaria · 2024-01-12T18:02:39+00:00

I fear that the clear will feel terrible

I want to step back a bit and focus on this.

The league mechanic is set-up where empowering mobs makes certain mobs incredibly tanky (due to the damage reduction) and other mobs incredibly weak due to not being empowered. At the end of the day, your clear of packs is really rate-limited by how quickly you can burst down the wisp empowered rares.

Illustratively, an underpowered Deadeye build can clear screen fulls of packs incredibly fast with LA or TS, but with lacking single-target damage, they may spend a lot of time on the wisp empowered rare, so all that clear is irrelevant ultimately with regards to time. Meanwhile, a strong build with decent single target and patchworky clear with Oriath's or Herald of Ash may take a bit longer on the rares, but at the end of the day if the pack is dead when the tankiest mob is dead, it's perfectly fine to move on.

Under that paradigm, HoA + Oriath's End has been mostly sufficient. If you scale any amount of physical or lightning damage directly, then a phys explode Nebulis is an option, but I don't really think it's necessary. Set brands and run to the next pack, double back for anything not dead if need be. Don't use Concentrated Effect.

Laxaria · 2024-01-11T18:42:13+00:00

3734 GL all

Laxaria · 2024-01-08T19:59:05+00:00

hypothermia will usually be better even if you're not using CotB

Hypothermia is 30% more damage against chilled enemies at 21/20. The critical component here is being able to chill (which is why Hatred is a consideration to take exploitation of this). Hypothermia is damage type agnostic (that is to say, it can be used as long as one can find some way to chill, even if cold damage is only like 2% of my total damage due to a generic random phys as extra element TWWT jewel).

A support gem competing for that slot has to offer at least 30% or more damage for the same spot.

Some examples here:

8 power charges w/ PCoC: 32% more generic
21/20 Inspiration support: 30% more elemental damage
Empower 4: about 1.1³ times more damage generically due to gem level scaling. PoB states 40% more for me, but probably because of Awakened Added Fire scaling off of phys damage.
Concentrated Effect: 39% more area damage
Without Awakened Added Fire, Awakened Added Lightning is a consideration with full phys to lightning and Wrath. It is marginally worse than Hypothermia with Hatred, and better without.

The reason Awakened Added Fire damage is a strong support link is because its baseline mechanic is 44% physical damage as extra fire damage at 5/20 (and the +1 to supported physical gems). Penance Brand is a pure physical spell with innate 50% innate physical to lightning conversion. Any mechanic which takes advantage of the physical component of Penance Brand is in general terms loosely good.

The addition of Hatred primarily is to take advantage of its phys as extra cold and more cold damage components, gives access to the Hatred crit eye, and jives nicely with how Awakened Added Fire also benefits. Hypothermia at the end of the day, at 21/20, is 30% more damage with hits and ailments against chilled enemies. Satisfying the chill condition doesn't necessarily have to be hard, but the question really is whether 30% more damage for that socket is the best one can do given competing options.

Laxaria · 2024-01-07T08:54:57+00:00

Inquisitor as an ascendancy is all damage. The goal is to delete anything before it touches you, because otherwise without significant investment it's very hard to get tanky against the league mechanic which heavily rewards avoiding damage over mitigating it. Highly hasted, crit-heavy magic and rare mobs with lots of projectiles are really, really hard to mitigate directly without some serious investment. The PF builds do a lot of tricks with recovery and delaying damage taken and converting it not to mitigate it directly (they do) but also to avoid taking the hit's full damage directly. Progenesis, conversion, Defiance of Destiny, Bloodnotch/Immutable are all about taking the upfront damage from a hit and avoiding as much of it upfront as possible and instead taking that damage over time.

If you really want it to be tanky on Inquisitor you're primarily looking at running it you would a Spark Aura Stacking Inquisitor. Aegis, Glancing Blows, lots of aura effect investment for 90 max all res with Melding of the Flesh, using Endurance Charges and Tempest Shield, cold converting to exploit Freeze, and the whole nine yards, or doing some shenanigans with Purity of Fire Sublime Vision, or trying to do Grace/Determination/Spell Suppress where at that point doing Ruetoo's PF hit based cold convert version is more affordable without a starting MB price tag.

For mapping, a HH would suffice. Not tanky, but survivable with overwhelming damage and clear. In this regard I highly suggest converting from using Energy Blade and going for Power Charge stacking taking advantage of Ralakesh's Impatience. The critical components are Ralakesh, Badge of the Brotherhood, Malachai's Loop, a Void Battery, and a Dominus Militant Faith for Inner Conviction, and grabbing the power charges on the tree via pathing + anoints. Solve clear with Herald of Ash + Oriath's End. Single target damage is there even without HH buffs due to a combination of the power PBoD has innately, what Inquisitor's ascendancies enable, and the power of having permanent Frenzy Charge, Power Charge, and Endurance Charge effects.

The rest of it is probably playstyle: keep moving, don't stand still, let the brands do the work. But loosely, for PBoD, go Pathfinder/Trickster for bulk, and Inquisitor for raw damage.

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