Frost Blades

On first glance the skill is interesting, but over time i have found it iffy to actually use.

The main issue is perhaps not with the skill itself but with the targeting code. All too often i find my character swinging his weapon against thin air, even though a mob is two pixels over. end result is a waste of mana. Either clean up the targeting code, or make the skill only spend mana when it actually hits something.

The second issue is that the projectiles produced after the initial hit seems to find it easier to hit larger mobs. This likely because the targeting cone is barely overlapping with the hit box of said mobs, thus resulting in the projectiles going 90 degrees at times. As such, just widen the cone to 180 already. This still makes it so that it will hit smaller ones as well, but leave out those behind when surrounded.

Played it since Friday. What can I say:

1) Fork is a must! The skill just won't work at all without it. Chain eats too much damage, LMP and gmp are useless without fork and until you got good base damage + 6L.
2) Herald of ice is a must so is going crit. 2-3 hits=pack gone.
3) Multistrike is a double edged sword. On one hand it's really bad option for a 4L and questionable for 5L. But it deals with poor targeting of not aoe melee skills in this game. At the same time it brings another problem: 1-2-3 swinging all the time even there is no monsters left.
4) Projectile speed is a key stat!!!
Projectiles after forking seek targets which are in 180d(?maybe a bit more) area behind. And they are homing. So the more PS the more AoE projectile have to find next target. There will be no enough PS. You.Will.Want.More.
5) Don't even try to use this as single target DPS. It's not working.
6) About weapons. You need crit anyway. I prefer 2h since GGG gave us new crit 2h bases.

Links priority:
Fork>Added fire>WED>hypotermia>Phys proj damage/Multistrike

IN THIS EXACT ORDER

After testing and testing, i created the perfect gem combo and tree for this build. i have to go now but i will post everything today when i come home.

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Riukodou wrote:

After testing and testing, i created the perfect gem combo and tree for this build. i have to go now but i will post everything today when i come home.

Looking forward to see it and compare to mine.

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Riukodou wrote:

After testing and testing, i created the perfect gem combo and tree for this build. i have to go now but i will post everything today when i come home.

The best solution I came up with so far is to replace Frost Blades with Molten Strike. It might change at lvl80+ and a 6L...but for leveling it's a day and night difference.

Hey guys, here's my build atm not finished yet, still getting life nodes but my dmg is pretty decent for now.





the gear is still being optimized, I'm doing 11.5k dmg tooltip nonbuffed. 23k with charges and auras (Hatred/IceHerald/icegolem)

This skill is really cluncky for leveling and would not recommend it but has potential for late game

I'm currently experimenting with Frost Blades + Ice Bite + Added Fire Damage + Pierce, wielding a 2h sword at level 46 HC Shadow and melting through groups on Cruel Prison with 1-2 hits. For links 5 and 6 I'm thinking Weapon Elemental Damage and Hypothermia, although Projectile Damage is probably better.

My current build is this little gem which is far from perfect, but I'm tinkering with it on the fly.

I feel secondary skills are very important for Frost Blades; can't just six-link your way into maps, and the skills i chose to run with seem to enable a lot of things about my path that I have not seen discussed in these threads, so here's my breakdown.

As Curse I use Poacher's mark, for both the Frenzy Stack generation alongside Ice Bite as well as mana regen and added accuracy at this stage in the build. I plan on using Assassin's Mark but we'll see how that goes; might end up using flammability. Now I hear what you're saying; flammability!? This is cold damage! But bear with me, alright?

As a Golem I'm running with the fire type pokemon, both because of the 15% damage boost and the fact that I only had a red socket in my gear at the time of choosing, and I didn't really need the tankiness from the chaos golem. Might end up going with the frost golem for reasons I'll go into in a bit.

For Aura's I chose to run Hatred (no-brainer) and Herald of Ash. Both of these add a percentage of physical base damage as elemental, and the Herald of Ash does an important thing: ignite mobs that don't die from the first hit. I haven't yet experimented with Herald of Ice, because it gives a flat bonus and not a percentage-based one.

The main deal I feel is increasing the base physical damage component on frost blades, because of the 40% conversion on the base of the skill and the aura's and support gems. Secondly, projectile damage, and thirdly, increases in elemental damage because of the support gems and auras. The plan is to do a large hit up front, kill two or three guys in the back, and then burn the rest to the ground with the ignite damage from Herald of Ash and maybe another hit from the frost blades. This is why any additional crit damage is also a very good idea, but the main deal is simply increasing base physical because -everything- scales with that, including the ignite from HoA (x% of all of the overkill damage).

The reason I didn't go for Chain or Fork or any of the others like multistrike is because of the damage reduction; Chain is fun for distributing Freeze, Chill and Ignite, but Pierce does similar damage and outright kills stuff and most importantly doesn't reduce damage in any way, shape or form, and since the missiles are already homing, they just hit the entire group fairly well.

In my build I'm also including Frenzy stacks (5x4% damage increase as well as evasion with the right skill points), and I plan on using Frenzy for single target dps, with Fortify and elemental modifiers. Since a lot of my damage on Frost Blades is helped along by my auras, single target skills shouldn't have many problems scaling alongside it - currently using double strike, which I will switch as soon as I get a Frenzy gem. This will also lead to using Phase Run as a mobility skill.

Furthermore I plan to use uniques or items that increase damage dealt to burning or frozen targets and aim for skill nodes that increase burning and freeze chance (as well as Point Blank because the travel length is usually very short), so that if stuff don't die by the first hit, they MOST ASSUREDLY WILL by the time the second wave of frostburn smacks 'em upside the head.

I'm still not sure on weapon type; I favour 2handers at the moment, although the dps from dual wielding seems similar, I think 2handers will scale better with the up front damage - but I'm alos looking forward to testing Dyadus main hand and Cameria's Maul in offhand. Not sure if there's a Unique 2hander, since none of them seem very synergistic at the moment, but maybe a nicely crafted yellow is good enough - although I do think Atziri's Disfavour or Wideswing are nice for their increased range (which makes the +14 from Frost Blades into +16, and wideswing especially if you use that to socket Herald of Ash/Ice or some single target skill), or The Harvest for its raw damage and important lifeleech on -all- damage, which is normally hampered by a lot of physical damage being converted to elemental using this build. Also the Pyre ring might be very interesting and a reason to use Flammability the curse, and Darkray Vectors or The Blood Dance to make extra use of those frenzy charges.

Finally, I feel that a lot of the comments are geared towards increasing the dps output and clear speed of this skill, and compare it to 'better' leveling skills and such. I personally have a lot of fun testing FB and taking it through it's paces and feel leveling is going fast enough, although bosses pose a bit of a problem.
I think the greatest strength of Frost Blades and also it's niche potential lies in the combination of Dexterity Gem and innate Cold Damage. It allows you to make a dexterity, projectile based evasion melee character with oodles of CC, opening to Acrobat and Phase Acrobat, and as delivery service for Herald of Ash in addition to maybe paving the way for something using Elemental Equilibrium if you work in some shock stacks somewhere. The potential is a lot different from raw dps, I feel, especially in group play.

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As said, this is very experimental and I have no idea how it will hold up end-game as i'm still leveling my character and doing this shit on the fly, but I believe these findings and my way of looking at the skill can contribute to developing it to have a place in the playing field.

Thank you for reading this page of text. I have enjoyed this skill immensely (in part due to the very satisfying audio and visual feedback the skill give; great job, designers!) and don't think it needs a buff or nerf or anything of the sort just yet. Seeing most posts on these boards, I think all that needs to happen is a kind of different way of approaching these things and not discarding them as useless or sub-par right off the bat. Thanks, GGG!

Does increased melee physical damage while holding a shield work with the projectiles ?

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mschmidt8787 wrote:

Does increased melee physical damage while holding a shield work with the projectiles ?

Of Course not. Projectiles are projectiles and melee is melee.