[3.2 Raider] BF/FB raider, great clear/ST and tanky shaper/atziri/elder down

3.2 Update: Nothing much's changed, the onslaught branch in the raider ascendancy has gotten a bit stronger so now it's a strong contender against avatar of the veil, however since this build mainly focuses on dodge/spell dodge, I still think Veil is better for the niche of this build

if you want the extra evasion+speed you can take the onslaught nodes, however and just change hyrri's ire body armour to perfect form


Hi everyone, This is a guide for my Blade Flurry Frostblades raider that I've found tremendous success with this season, so I thought i'd share it with everyone.

full disclaimer: there are probably similar builds to this, I don't claim to have invented something totally new, but I think I made this version my own, so I thought I'd share it.

Summary:
1. short description
2. pros and cons
3. videos
4. leveling
5. skill tree and ascendancies
6. gem setups
7. items
8. pantheons


Description:

So the point of the build is to use frostblades for clear and Blade Flurry for single target, and use massive evasion+dodge with some life to survive everything.

We can achieve this thanks to the new elder/shaper items giving us pseudo 5-6links so we can socket our frostblades with AOE setup into our elder gloves, and put Blade flurry with single target setup in our body armor.

The general playstyle is rather simple, you just whirl around spam frostblades, and use BF for the occasional high hp sp single target. on bosses you pop your ancestral warchief, frostbomb and vaal haste and go to town.

In case you're new, Frostblades is a single target attack skill that fires multiple projectiles from the initial target making it a fantastic clearspeed skill with this setup making dozens of projectiles fill the entire skill

and Blade Flurry is a channeled skill that deals damage in a small AOE around you, and a larger damage when you finish the channel, the more you channel the more damage it does, up to a cap (6stacks, how fast you get to 6 stacks scales with attack speed)


pros

1. Can do basically any content well (except for grandmaster)
2. great clearspeed
3. great single target
4. good survivability
5. can facetank almost anything thanks to all the evasion/dodge
6. good mobility
7. can do any map mods, even no leech(thanks to claw life on hit) and reflect (but you do need sybil's and yugul pantheon for reflect, and probably double potions for no leech, altough it's not mandatory
8. Hardcore viable with some gear/points readjustment
9. relatively cheap to start off with
10. no need to gemswap


cons

1. leveling can be a hassle in the first 30-40 levels
2. is prone to the occasional oneshot due to most of our defenses being about evasion and dodge(but it's not frequent at all, and with some more investment in HP it should be a nonissue)
3. we need to be in close range to do damage (especially with blade flurry)
4. because we are splitting our focus on two skills, they both do lose some value so this wont be nor the highest dps FB neither the highest DPS Blade flurry build, but they're both more than enough to complete any content comfortably.
5. colouring our body armor is kindof a nightmare


Videos


leveling


right after killing hillock you can get your frostblades (and buy a molten strike for bosses) if you got a tabula you can put them both in it.
link frostblades/molten strike with ancestral call->faster attacks->added cold-> elemental damage with attacks

at level 28 you can get your Blade flurry, 4linking with physical to lightning->elemental damage with attacks->concentrated effect for now is good enough for single and use your frostblades in the 5-6 link during leveling with the 6th being ice bite

get herald of ash/hatred for auras when you can and your mana allows.

and whirling blades+Faster Attacks for movement

as for items:
1. weapons:
a Windlash claw right from level 3 is a great leveling weapon, then at 34 you can swap to a mortem morsu, and at 60 to a wasps nest which will carry you till the endgame.
if you don't have access to these uniques just try to get a claw (or a sword but preferably claw) with as high physical dps as you can

2. armour:
Ondar's clasp is a great leveling gloves, it offers tons of attack speed and damage, Wanderlust and Wake of Destruction are great boots for leveling, and Darkness Enthroned(the new abyss belt) is a fantastic leveling belt if you've got two great abyss jewels for it
otherwise just try to get life/resists on armour items, and maybe some int/str which you'll need later

3. rings/amulet
Thief's torment is a fantastic ring for leveling it offers an insane amount of mana and health sustain

otherwise just try to get life/res and some flat physical or elemental damage on it(preferably cold) and maybe some int/str

take alira for your bandit, the crit multi is invaluable, the allres helps a lot, and the manareg is nice for the leveling.

I'll talk about the skilltree for leveling in the next section



skilltree


level 35:
version 1.
poeurl.com/bH2F

if you can use claws early go for this build

version 2.
poeurl.com/bH2J go for this if you cant use claws (basically skip claw nodes and take the next ones.

level 50:
poeurl.com/bH2K get normal lab take way of the poacher, then get frenzy nodes and the rest

level 75:
poeurl.com/bH2L fill out health/evasion, get avatar of the slaughter from cruel lab and quartz infusion from merc lab

final tree, level 93
poeurl.com/bH2Q get the rest of the nodes,+jewel slots and get avatar of the veil from uber lab.

you can take vaal pact if you feel like you need it, but I didnt really, life on hit from claws and regular leech is more than enough

https://pastebin.com/NXKBbUSr path of building



gems


the most important gems are in order of importance:
body armor 6link:
Blade Flurry
Physical to lightning
Elemental focus

Elemental damage with attacks
Melee physical damage

Concentrated effect

this will be our main single target setup for blade flurry, you can run a 5 link without conc effect until you can afford a 6link, but really you're better off with a tabula than any other 5 link in this build.

if you're running an evasion body armor(which you will if you follow my guide) you should try to use the Jeweler's method for colouring the sockets (link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycrneiNryNw) because flat out chroming 5 off colours will not be easy.

gloves:
Frost blades
Ancestral call
Elemental damage with attacks

Added cold damage

helm/boots:
Whirling blades
Faster attacks

Fortify
Blood magic


this is our main movement skill+fortify to help us mitigate tons of damage

weapon:
Herald of ash
Hatred
Ice Golem


these two auras are the best at giving us damage(you can also use herald of ice for the nice shatters but ash does significantly more damage, and ice golem is by far our best golem because of the accuracy(which is basically our best stat)

boots/helm:
Immortal call
cast when damage taken
increased duration

vaal haste

this is what I use for a defensive setup, immortal call gives us a nice grace period if we get chunked, and the increased duration also benefits vaal haste which is one of our best support skills for clearing abysses/breaches, and bursting down bosses. Of course with these we're in the "optional" territory, you could also use a curse like Enfeeble, or assassin's mark (especially before getting that sweet curse on hit ring which ill talk about later)

or simply smash your ice golem into it if you're lazy and dont want to keep summoning him (but then you cant level him up above level 2)

other weapon:
ancestral warchief
culling strike
frost bomb

now this is my most "up to you" slot

ancestral warchief is fantastic so I definitely recommend using that, but the other two are really optional, culling strike just adds some nice comfort, and frostbomb helps bursting down abysses/bosses, but you could also run blood rage for the extra attack speed, or just a flame dash to better maneuver some maps



items


weapons:


touch of anguish is a super cheap great weapon for both blade flurry and frost blades due to the extra cold damage and the chain, and doryani's is a fantastic statstick for your offhand.

of course using a really high phys dps rare claw will yield a significant boost in BF dps, but touch is good enough and the chain on it for frost blades is phenomenal, if you want to be really fancy you can run double touch in one weapon setup and a rare claw with high physical dps+doryani in the other and hotswap them, but then you'd need to rearrange your auras so they dont fall off during the swap.

body armor:

I fell in love with this chest the first time i saw it, it pushes both our spell and attack dodge above 50, gives a ton of evasion AND a lot of added cold damage to top it off.

some other alternatives are:
kintsugi, the extra 20% reduction helps avoid oneshots
carcass jack: a lot of BF dps at the cost of evasion
Belly of the BEast: tons of health, but not much else, I dont recommend it
The perfect form: it frees up some skillpoints and allows us to freely run arctic armor which is a really nice defensive buff.

gloves:

so this little baby here is what enables us to use two main skills, if you want to be really greedy you can also get one that has 30% inc crit damage on it in addition to the faster attacks.

get one as soon as you can, then you can upgrade to better ones with life/resists/etc later.

helm(s)


So this is our main helm, which we'Ll use for mapping, it gives some nice life/crit and attack speed


this is what we'Ll use for stuff like shaper/elder and endgame bosses in general, becuase it gives a massive damage increase but it costs us quite a bit of survival which is just not worth it in regular maps, where abyss monsters can oneshot you out of nowhere.

boots:


something like this should be our endgame boots
try to focus on resists+life firsts, then the movement speed, and then the lab enchant if yoU're rich enough, but that's a luxury, it's not necessary at all.

belt:


try to get something like this, lot of life+resist and some ele damage, I'll talk about the jewels a bit later.

rings:


this baby right here is priceless, that assassin's mark curse on hit is fantastic it basically guarantees 3 powercharges while mapping, and a lot of extra critical strike damage when killing bosses



a nice steel ring which I used to fill out my steep int requirements
you can also use an opal ring which will give more frostblades damage and less BF damage. I chose this because my FB damage was good enough anyway.

before you can afford a steel/opal just run any ring with life/resists and flat physical damage/accuracy/elemental damage with weapons

this is crucial if you want to do reflect maps, without this you wont be able to (make sure to put it on your LEFT slot. and try to cap your resists without your left ring if you can

amulet:



again, something to fill out my int, and my resists, with some nice crit damage on it, nothing special

jewels:


these are basically the types of jewels you want

some flat or % life, some elemental or physical damage, some crit multi and some resists

flasks:


you can run a basalt flask until you get your ToH, and you can swap a lion's roar instead of the silver flask for endgame bosses if you really want.



pantheons


Soul of lunaris+Garukhan for all the sweet sweet evasion+dodge you can get
swap in soul of yugul if yoU're doing a reflect map.




so this is it basically, hope you enjoy it as much as I do. if you got any questions dont hesitate to ask here in the comments.



Last edited by shaunika90#5422 on Mar 1, 2018, 8:37:35 PM
Last bumped on Jun 4, 2018, 2:25:50 PM
Any final thoughts on Hyrri's Ire vs Perfect Form, especially in terms of the endgame (red maps, guardians, red elder, Shaper)?
Last edited by praisethesun11#4583 on Dec 29, 2017, 4:29:53 PM
"
praisethesun11 wrote:
Any final thoughts on Hyrri's Ire vs Perfect Form, especially in terms of the endgame (red maps, guardians, red elder, Shaper)?


it comes down to a matter of taste really,

I wanted to get over 50% dodge+spell dodge with this build so I took hyrii's

plus the tons of added cold damage helped also

for hardcore for example, I may take perfect form because it's a lot safer a choice.

but for softcore, I choose to live on the edge and just trust my high dodge and enjoy the benefits of the added damage

in reality perfect form might be an overall better choice, but I guess taking hyrii's was more of a fun choice for me.

there's nothing like the feeling of dodging every single shaper ball that comes your way(which I think happens in my video if i recall correctly)

hyrri's= more damage
perfect form= more survivability

is basically the answer.
Last edited by shaunika90#5422 on Dec 29, 2017, 8:29:36 PM
I might be skipping it but... What about the bandits?



take alira every time :)

helps fill out the res and the crit multi is great

plus the mana regen helps leveling
"
shaunika90 wrote:



take alira every time :)

helps fill out the res and the crit multi is great

plus the mana regen helps leveling


I was thinking about it, thanks for the quick awnser! I'm having fun in the low levels so i suppose it's gonna be one of those builds i like.
Great Guide!

Something I did while leveling till BF was socket Spectral Throw with added cold, then snuck in increase crit for a bit.

I've never leveled a character faster, but I'm fairly new 😁
Last edited by UnNerv3d#2902 on Jan 18, 2018, 1:32:24 AM
Hey bro, what about Ascendancy points?
"
pms_techka wrote:
Hey bro, what about Ascendancy points?


Hi!

I mention them in the skill tree section

take way of the poacher from normal lab
avatar of the slaughter from cruel lab
quartz infusion from merc lab
and avatar of the veil from uber lab.


Last edited by shaunika90#5422 on Jan 21, 2018, 11:44:47 AM
why veil instead of chase?

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