[3.10] Bashtart's BLADE BLAST NINJA * Blade Blast is sick!

First I want to talk quick about the mechanics of Blade Blast. When you cast Blade Blast on its own it will deal some damage in medium size area at your target. Enemies hit by Blade Blast will be unnerved and that will increase the spell damage they take. The blade skills Ethereal Knives and Bladefall will leave blades behind which disappear after a short duration. With Blade Blast you can detonate those blades or the blade stacks of Blade Vortex. The detonation of the blades of Ethereal Knives and Bladefall will result in many small explosions.

I am really excited about the interaction between Blade Vortex and Blade Blast. The Blade Blast will consume the Blade Vortex stacks and for every stack it will get a bigger area of effect. It is just very cool to have BV with crazy single target dps which can be explode for full screen clear. The explosion chains will multiply the area of effect of the explosions. It would be interesting how multiple chains affect the damage of the explosions. Maybe... It is even worth to invest in cast speed and use support gems like spell echo or unleash to fast stack your Blade Vortex.

Main Skills:
Bladefall > Unleash > Spell Cascade > Conc. Effect (+faster casting from Shaper gloves)

Blade Blast > Brutality > Arcane Surge > Energy Leech > Controlled Destruction > Intensify

So far Bladefall with Blade Blast was by far the best. It kinda sucks that you always lose your stacks with BV. Ethereal knives just is not effective enough to create knives to explode.

Movement:
Whirling Blade + Faster Attacks + Fortify
I would use whirling blades as movement skill because it always procs our ascendancy Bastion of Hope.

Mana reservation
Flesh and Stone + Maim
Clarity
War Banner
Precision
Herald of Purity

CWDT
CWDT + Vaal Molten Shell + Enfeeble

Vaal Rightious Fire
For harder encounters I plan to use the vaal skills Vaal Righteous Fire and Vaal Molten Shell which will be linked in Cast When Damage Taken setup.

I probably will play around with the skill setups a bit to try out some of the changes and new gems. The Vulnerability curse will help to increase the dps against harder bosses.

Stone Golem / Lightning Golem
The Stone goles gives great survivability with life regeneration. Lightning Golem for more attack and cast speed.

I decided to go with Guardian as ascendancy and some of you might ask yourself… Why would someone choose Guardian for the Blade Spell Skills? In my opinion Guardian is still underestimated ascendancy class. Since the last rework Guardian is in a very good state and can be used for many different build. Guardian is definitely not only a Support Bot or a Minion ascendancy. With Guardian you can build very variable. The Guardian offers offensive and defensive power.

Acendancy order:
1) Radiant Crusade
2) Harmony of Purpose
3) Bastion of Hope
4) Time of Need

Radiant Crusade gives a great boost to dps. With Herald of Purity and a Golem we more or less will always have both buffs from Radiant Crusade active. Onslaught and 10% MORE damge is pretty strong and additionally we get 20% to all resistances and that makes gearing a lot easier. I would go with Radiant Crusade first because it will increase your leveling speed a lot.

Harmony of Purpose gives Guardian the chance to get power, frenzy and endurance charges on hit which is great for survivability, clear speed and dps. To gain charges on hit is very powerful because you will more or less have always at least three of all charges up.

With the last ascendancy points you can go for Bastion of Hope for another layer of defense with block or you go for Time of Need to get more crowd control and life sustain. Another option would be Unwavering Crusade but I think with Unnerve from Blade Blast it is not really necessary anymore for this build.

Let’s take a look on the skill tree. I decided to go crit based because at the end that will more or less always scale better in endgame. I tried to get as much life, mana, spell damage, spell crit and other good damage nodes as possible. In this version I only scale the energy shield with stacking mana and Radiant Faith.

I would start with getting damage nodes at the start and then rush to “Spiritual Aid” which a really powerful notable. “Increases and reduction to Minion Damage also affect you”. That is one more ways to scale our damage. After we picked up everything in this area I would travel to the witch area for the nodes there and after that to the shadow area. At the end I would travel to the big life cluster in the middle of the skill tree.

On the gear I focused mainly to get life and resistances. More or less you want on every rare gear piece a high life or energy shield and mana roll on it.For damage scaling you can go for crit multipliers and spell damage. The main damage is comes from the skill levels of our main skill. I decided to go with dual wielding cold Iron Point Dagger because this daggers are very powerful and very common unique. You normally can get this very cheap early in the league. Dual-wielding those dagger will increase all physical spell skill by 6 levels what is massive.

Prices per 28.03.2020
2x Cold Iron Point Daggers (10C): https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Delirium/02pvBoYIg
Crown of Inward Eye (5): https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Delirium/lg94qdjhV
Body amour (10-15C): https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Delirium/Ll3VbjHn
2x Ring: (10C): https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Delirium/23lwdik
Shaper gloves (10c): https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Delirium/3dMlpPs5
Boots (10c): https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Delirium/wrwoMJjhb
Amulett (1c): https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Delirium/KyjewlDi5
Stygian Vise (20c): https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Delirium/Z6BVv4mTQ
3x Jewel (3c): https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Delirium/Gv7o8JWsb
Cluster Jewel Arcane Heroism (1alch): https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Delirium/aVVzM5pTe
Total Gear & Jewels: 85chaos

The Diamond Flask and Sulphur Flask gives a nice boost to dps and sustain. Rumi’s Convovation is in my opinion the strongest defensive flask in the game and is a decent option for this build. A Quicksilver Flask helps with clear speed. In the life based version you definitely want to use a life flask for great sustain. For the energy shield version the last flask slot is more or less open.

For the bandit quest I would go with Alira for the mana regeneration and resistances because it is really strong while leveling. Later you can decide to go for extra passive points or just stay with Alira.

For Pantheon I would go for Soul of Arakaali for protection against damage over time effects, increases recovery of life and energy shield if you stopped taking damage over time recently. Arakaali reduces also the effect of shock on you. The lower pantheon is a bit a matter of taste… and depends on what you want to do.