3.24 Frost Blades of Occultabasis - Minmaxed to 3M Uber DPS
 My MS Paint build from league start. I know, I know, it's not really melee. Every league I try to take an off-meta skill or mechanic to 40/40 with a single character. I'm not usually successful, but Frost Blades of Katabasis turned out to be very viable, especially with the surprise 20% more base damage buff it received this league. For the uninitiated, Frost Blades of Katabasis is a transfigured version of Frost Blades which is essentially a completely different skill: on a successful hit on a mob, a chilling area is dropped beneath the mob that deals heavy damage over time. PoB: https://pobb.in/VUFCaR06eN9g GEAR DUMP
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INTRO
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The skill does have a couple of annoying properties:
1) Neither spell nor attack damage apply to the damage of the chilling area, limiting a lot of the usual scaling options. My initial plan was to use The Adorned to add DoT multiplier to the tree, but I ultimately found better jewels and scaling sources to compensate. 2) The chilling area doesn't always come out, as it seems you need a direct rectangle of uninterrupted ground from the player to the mob being hit. This means that ledges, corners, and even adjacent walls can prevent your chilling area. This is ultimately not a problem as boss arenas are clean and you can just avoid running bad maps. Those aside, the absurd added weapon range (+6 meters at 20q) and lingering chilling areas make mapping a breeze, while the mechanics of the skill itself make a lot of negative mods on T17 maps, Ultimatum encounters, Expedition encounters, etc. totally irrelevant. Furthermore, the off-meta state of cold DoT makes trading for most gear extremely cheap. The godlike Nebulis I ended up using was purchased for a single divine. DAMAGE
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As mentioned, we cannot scale the damage from Frost Blades of Katabasis through spell or attack damage. Instead, we focus primarily on the following:
1) Gem levels 2) Effect of non-damaging ailments 3) More/increased cold damage, elemental damage, and elemental damage with attacks 4) -#% resistances on enemies DEFENSE
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We use a hybrid Armour/ES setup with high block to trivialize most hits:
1) Aegis Aurora, Determination, and block 2) Melding of the Flesh 3) Effect of non-damaging ailments part 2 4) Pantheon for DoT SPECIFICS
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GEM LEVELS
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Katabasis scales wildly with gem level, about 14% more damage per level up to level 30 and around 5% after that. We can achieve level 32 with gems and gear, ending up with 14.6k base cold damage per second or a little less than 340% more damage over level 20.Starting with a level 21 Katabasis, we get +2 from Skin of the Lords, +5 from level 6 Empower (Skin of the Lords also buffs socketed support gems), +3 from Replica Dragonfang's Flight, and +1 from Awakened Elemental Focus, for a total of +11.
EFFECT OF NON-DAMAGING AILMENTS
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One of the neat things about this build is the massive effect of the ailments we inflict on enemies, doing double-duty as offensive and defensive effects. For damage, shock is the big player, followed by chill and scorch.
1) Shock is granted through the Forbidden Flame/Flesh combo for Shaper of Storms and applied through a level 1 Storm Brand. 2) Frostblink linked to Bonechill causes chill effect to apply to cold damage taken. 3) Scorch is applied by our trail of scorched ground, granted by an eldritch implicit on boots. We get most of our non-damaging ailment effect through cluster jewels, as well as an Ash, Frost, and Storm anoint on our amulet. All told, we have max shock and chill effect for 80% increased damage taken, and -26% resistances on our scorched ground. MORE/INCREASED DAMAGE
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In no particular order, the bulk of our damage modifiers come from:
1) Nebulis. With 90% max cold res we get the full 300% increased cold damage value. 2) Sadist cluster jewel notable. Sticking flat fire damage to spells anywhere (easiest is an abyss jewel) and Elemental Proliferation on Storm Brand provides ignite procs, and of course we chill and shock all the time. Each Sadist is worth a whopping 60% increased elemental damage. 3) Perandus Pact. The cold damage variation stuck in the Templar jewel slot gives us an easy 120% increased cold damage. 4) Support gems. Pretty straightforward choices. The rest of our damage is from miscellaneous mods on gear, passive nodes, and the Occultist ascendancy. -#% RESISTANCES
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Possibly controversial, but we pick up the Elemental Equilibrium variant of Skin of the Lords, keeping cold exposure up with Storm Brand. The original build used Fidelitas' Spike to proc EE, and that's still fine as a starter item, but a crafted rare into Nebulis is the subsequent progression as you gain enough damage to clear packs even through the wrong exposure.
We further decrease enemy resistances with the Occultist ascendancy, double-cursing Elemental Weakness + Frostbite. With the aforementioned scorch ailment and Snowforged on the passive tree, uber bosses are at around -80% cold resistance. AEGIS AURORA, DETERMINATION, AND BLOCK
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The classic AR/ES setup, gaining ES whenever we block. We have big armour from Determination and gear, and at least 40% attack and spell block from the tree, Rumi's Concoction, and Tempest Shield. Glancing Blows is okay for starting up, but further investing into block is worth it. Without temporary buffs up we have 50k to 100k eHP; with Vaal Molten Shell and an enkindled Rumi's up we have over 1M eHP. MELDING OF THE FLESH
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The usual next defensive upgrade, Melding of the Flesh combos with the +5% maximum cold resistance from Aegis Aurora and the newly changed Sapphire Flask to put all our elemental resistances at 80%+ without much investment. A level 23 Purity of Ice (base level 21, with +2 levels from a corrupted implicit somewhere) will put us at 85%+, a comfortable spot for endgame.
EFFECT OF NON-DAMAGING AILMENTS
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When people ask how not to die, the snarky answer is just don't get hit. With 30% chill effect, this becomes actual advice. Every boss attack gets telegraphed weeks in advance, and the occasional rare mob is an easy kite.
PANTHEON
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Our weakness is DoT effects. Bleed, ignite, those awful devourers in T17 maps. We could plausibly pick up Lethe Shade and avoidance on gear and elsewhere, but I just pick up Arakaali for the major pantheon and swap between Abberath and Ralakesh for the minor. It works enough!
MISCELLANEA
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1) Dexterity and Strength are hard to come by. If necessary we can take some of the +30 stat nodes, and the best place to find stats on gear is a Cogwork Ring with Intrinsic catalysts. Simply spam the appropriate essences until you get a nice roll.
2) We link Ancestral Cry with Call to Arms for QoL while mapping and a little extra armour. 3) Storm Brand of Indecision is a small optimization, as it zaps faster and thus ignites more consistently. 4) There are plenty of Intelligence travel nodes to replace with tattoos. We have a couple of good options, including reduced extra damage from critical hits and reduced effect of curses on you. 5) There are plenty of good corrupted implicits to be found on jewels. I got Maim, Hinder, and Corrupted Blood immunity. 6) Blood and Sand works for Katabasis because it says Melee Skills deal 15% more Area Damage. I'd stick it in if I could, but the mana wasn't there. 7) Thanks to Mathil1 for unlocking a lot of the synergies used in this build in his version found here: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3298972. Last edited by SerpentofSet on May 2, 2024, 1:12:49 PM Last bumped on Jun 5, 2024, 8:07:22 AM
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How are we recovering life in the event of unlucky blocking, chaos damage, or other dot if nothing's beating on us? I just switched to this to see if it was interesting (yes, because that's what we do with our 130 div) and that's what I saw so far. In your gear below you have the regen affix, but I followed your pob which had the stun affix instead.
Has it been a problem for you? *edit* Every person I whispered for a shock effect implicit Rime Gaze didn't answer either, so I'm going without it for now lol... Last edited by rhapsodieinblue on Jun 5, 2024, 8:09:46 AM
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