[3.7] Face-Cannon Frost blades Assassin. Face Tank everything! (Shaper, Uber elder video added)

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Inst_ql wrote:

Hello, now I'm playing frost blades one-trickster with near 8 ex investment and thinking about respec to yours cuz I'm feeling squishy even with 6.1k hp on t14+ map bosses, but I'm worry about clear speed. So I've only seen your t13 map run, and my trickster feels faster. Is it possible to use ancestral call support to clear mobs and swap on bosses? Maybe you can make some vid with ancestral call on t13+ without slowing curses? And can you check my items in profile character name "TsunamiKick" I think most of them would be ok for running on this build. Thanks for answer :)

Short answer is do not worry at all! :)

Edit: I have uploaded a video for T15 Sunken City Map full run, face tank boss as always :).
No ancestral call used, you can check if the clear speed seems okay to you :D
https://youtu.be/rV07zwXMZY0

To be more detailed, I am clearing super fast now in all maps up to T16, and there's no need for ancestral call imo (and I don't like gem swap..lazy..). The video you saw is with TC, without it the clear speed would be very good. And also it is before my updates. Now I switched to elemental focus gem, and got 30 quality corruption on my weapon, and got lv21 frost blades as well as some other gems to 20% quality, the clear speed is even faster...

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nal_tony wrote:

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Steady_Handz wrote:

Loving this build so far! Could someone please explain to me what having multiple Frost Blades on the setup does? I tried removing two of them and leaving only the 6 link one and I didn't notice a difference.

I was just leveling those gems for corruption, so feel free to take them off as they will do nothing to your dps. :D (only the frost blades in the 6-L matters)
(When you level a gem to lv20 and use a vaal orb on it, it has a chance of going to Lv21)

Gotcha, thanks for clearing that up.

A few rather cheap upgrades to the gear in the OP:
*Weapon elemental damage on a stygian vise belt (around 30-50 chaos). Same life as leather belt, but you gain the offensive stats of the jewel.

*2 damage stats (flat phys, crit multi or WED) on the amulet. You should be able to get one like this for ~1 ex:

crit multi is HUGE for DpS
*a freakin Diamond Flask (you're nowhere near capped on crit in your current setup), This is way more DpS than Wise Oak, and you can use a "curse immune" suffix on it, to double your DpS in enfeeble maps, enjoy temporal chains maps, not be constantly bleed or oneshot on Vulnerability maps etc.

Also I'm not sure if Shaper gloves are really the go to option.
Pretty good, but I'd rather wear attackspeed, life, accuracy, one resist rares, ideally spiked or gripped gloves. This frees up a resist from your jewelry, so you don't need such a defensive amulet.

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About your "if you're rich":
*Atziri's Acuity - I wouldn't bother. I think you could get away replacing just one Bloodseeker with a high DpS claw and alternating between instant leech and normal leech. Your attackspeed should be high enough to pull this off.
*Elder chest - Not sure you can replace belly that easily. You would need an INSANE elder chest (life, life%, crit to attacks in super high tiers). Just clicked it in PoB, you'd have 5.5k life with t1 affixes. On a mirror tier chest that only the top .1% of players could ever afford.

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Can you really play with Enlighten 3 HoA, Hatred, AA?
I run the same setup + 15% reduced Hatred reservation enchant, and I would NOT feel comfortable to further reduce my mana pool, especially in no regen maps.
I want free mana for 3 attacks to have smooth and failsafe gameplay.

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Peterlerock wrote:

A few rather cheap upgrades to the gear in the OP:
*Weapon elemental damage on a stygian vise belt (around 30-50 chaos). Same life as leather belt, but you gain the offensive stats of the jewel.

*2 damage stats (flat phys, crit multi or WED) on the amulet. You should be able to get one like this for ~1 ex:

crit multi is HUGE for DpS
*a freakin Diamond Flask (you're nowhere near capped on crit in your current setup), This is way more DpS than Wise Oak, and you can use a "curse immune" suffix on it, to double your DpS in enfeeble maps, enjoy temporal chains maps, not be constantly bleed or oneshot on Vulnerability maps etc.

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Hi Peter, Thanks a lot for going over this build! The belt and amulet part I also mentioned about them in the future gear section, but the item you post won't fit directly to my current build since the resistance will be a problem. Are you using Starkonjar, belly, boots with enchant(not two-toned) and shaper's glove? It's hard to cap resis in this setup, but your suggestion took out a total of 75% resis from my setup. If you're talking about upgrade while maintaining the resis, it is not "rather cheap".

Regarding the diamond flask, it does not change my tooltip dps while in flask effect (although in PoB it does increase, idk if only I have this problem), and it feels bad that those tooltip number does not change, so I picked a more defensive flask.

About the future gear section, by switching out one of bloodseeker with normal leech claw will substantially reduce your ability to face tank. I did try bloodseeker+ touch of anguish, the leech just doesn't feel fast enough. If I can not face tank T16 bosses, this build just loses its meaning.

For the chest piece, yeah, that's why it's in the "if you're rich" section and that's why it's after amulet/belt etc. Three mods watcher's eye may even be more expensive.

"Can you really play with Enlighten 3 HoA, Hatred, AA?" Yes. But if you read my previous reply, I've already said it's very nice to have enlighten 4, I even posted my mana pool for different lvls of enlighten. But if you consider no leech map, that's beyond the scope of this build, since my build is about instant leech. Are you using the same setup as me? If so, with a 15% reduced hatred will be more than enough to have 3 free attacks from unreserved mana.

Let me know if you have any other suggestion! I think these detailed discussions can also be helpful to others.

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nal_tony wrote:

Hi Peter, Thanks a lot for going over this build! The belt and amulet part I also mentioned about them in the future gear section, but the item you post won't fit directly to my current build since the resistance will be a problem. Are you using Starkonjar, belly, boots with enchant(not two-toned) and shaper's glove? It's hard to cap resis in this setup, but your suggestion took out a total of 75% resis from my setup. If you're talking about upgrade while maintaining the resis, it is not "rather cheap".

I'm using this stuff:

That's around 1000k "unrealistic DpS" (frenzy, onslaught and no boss resists, but only one monster around, so... yeah ^^)
540k Shaper DpS (no frenzy, no onslaught, Shaper has 60% resists)
520k "normal" DpS (frenzies, onslaught, but no flasks or warchief) with 100k projectile DpS (this is easily enough in every tier of maps)

I have around 150% resists on my cute selffound boots, so it's not that hard for me to cap resists. ;)

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Regarding the diamond flask, it does not change my tooltip dps while in flask effect (although in PoB it does increase, idk if only I have this problem), and it feels bad that those tooltip number does not change, so I picked a more defensive flask.

"Crit is lucky" is not shown in tooltip, but it works wonders.
On every attack, you now have two "dice rolls" if you crit or not, and if one succeeds, you crit.
At 50% crit chance, that brings you up to a true 75% crit chance.
And since we have quite a lot of crit multi, this means a ton of extra damage.

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About the future gear section, by switching out one of bloodseeker with normal leech claw will substantially reduce your ability to face tank. I did try bloodseeker+ touch of anguish, the leech just doesn't feel fast enough. If I can not face tank T16 bosses, this build just loses its meaning.

With my two ToA, I cannot really "facetank" through all map mods, but that's because the guardians actually oneshoot me (5.7k life) with some nasty map mods and some of their attacks.
Instant leech wouldn't help here as well.;)
Without nasty mapmods, the natural tankiness of Acrobatics, chance to blind, fortify and flat phys mitigation seems to work out for me, even with normal leech.

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Are you using the same setup as me? If so, with a 15% reduced hatred will be more than enough to have 3 free attacks from unreserved mana.

I have 90 free mana on Hatred (-15%), HoI, Arctic Armour, Enlighten 3.
Without the helmet enchant, I'd have a lot less mana and would not feel
A 6L frost blades costs about 33 mana, so I can sustain it properly.
Whirling blades would love blood magic, but I really don't want to put it in a 4L.
And I would never go out of town without fortify, like you do. That's crazy!

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Peterlerock wrote:

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Without nasty mapmods, the natural tankiness of Acrobatics, chance to blind, fortify and flat phys mitigation seems to work out for me, even with normal leech.

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I have 90 free mana on Hatred (-15%), HoI, Arctic Armour, Enlighten 3.
Without the helmet enchant, I'd have a lot less mana and would not feel
A 6L frost blades costs about 33 mana, so I can sustain it properly.
Whirling blades would love blood magic, but I really don't want to put it in a 4L.
And I would never go out of town without fortify, like you do. That's crazy!

Hi Peter, thanks again, and great information :). I was also thinking about switching to Tombfist.

Your setup seems much closer to Reload's build instead of mine. (Did you take Frenzy nodes, Winter Spirit and Primeval Force in skill tree?) For guardians I could easily face tank Chimera and Minotaur with 1~2 dmg mod, and using ToA I found it hard to do so even with easier mods. For Phoenix and Hydra, you have to dodge though, since you're not always able to leech. It also helps when you're doing maps such as Dark Forest, Villa, Palace, Reef etc, where the boss shoots a bunch of projectiles or have cyclone. With ToA you need to dodge and play some mechanics, but with my build you simply face tank.

For the setup you have, it should be easy for you to take out portal and make 4L whirling blade on your boots..(of course easier for me since I have 4-L glove atm) Blood magic really makes the game play faster and smoother.

My build does not generate frenzies, but this enables elemental focus instead. It does not sacrifice too much DPS. If you want, you could also try my build for a bit and let me know how you feel!

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nal_tony wrote:

Your setup seems much closer to Reload's build instead of mine. (Did you take Frenzy nodes, Winter Spirit and Primeval Force in skill tree?)

My char tab is open, you can take a look.
My build is a bit different from Reload's.

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For guardians I could easily face tank Chimera and Minotaur with 1~2 dmg mod, and using ToA I found it hard to do so even with easier mods.

Those two are easy with normal leech when you have actual defenses (Fortify!!!).

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It also helps when you're doing maps such as Dark Forest, Villa, Palace, Reef etc, where the boss shoots a bunch of projectiles or have cyclone. With ToA you need to dodge and play some mechanics, but with my build you simply face tank.

Reef and Dark Forest are a bit annoying because of the invulnerability phases, but you cannot facetank through those as well. The rest is actually pretty easy.
Villa and Palace... I play this game for so long, Dominus doesn't frighten me anymore... ;)

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For the setup you have, it should be easy for you to take out portal and make 4L whirling blade on your boots..

Main issue is that the claws are 30% corrupted, I cannot easily switch them. ;)

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My build does not generate frenzies, but this enables elemental focus instead. It does not sacrifice too much DPS.

I tried ele focus, but you need to drop hypothermia then.... and the frenzy charges.
I'm more interested in "damage on full life" at the moment, think I can almost justify it.

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If you want, you could also try my build for a bit and let me know how you feel!

I don't think I want to drop that much damage. ;)

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Peterlerock wrote:

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I don't think I want to drop that much damage. ;)

Well, basically I am here just trying to help people who feel squishy playing frost blades and who wants to try this build. If you want play another build feel free, I am not here trying to claim this is the best frost blades build and I've never claimed so either.

Ok, you played this game for so long, nothing frightens you, but what do these statements relate to my post? All I am saying is, I have tried both ToA and Bloodseeker with my current same gear, and bloodseeker do feel way more tanky, which means what I was not able to face tank with ToA (and corresponding skill tree etc), I can now face tank with this build. While you're comparing with your playing experience, without even trying my build...I would really appreciate if you share your opinion after giving it a try.

If you've played this game for so long, you should understand many people can do end game content with less than 5k hp EASILY. So what, right?

Relax, this wasn't meant to be an insult, and your build is fine.

I only entered this thread because I felt your current setup could have some easy improvements (like a diamond flask of warding or a stygian vise). That doesn't mean I have to try it, it's enough for me to play "something similar".

Bloodseeker's instant leech of course opens interesting possibilities ("face tank" to some degree, the hp buffer is a bit low for my taste, but I'm sure it works out in some scenarios).
But at the end of the day, Bloodseeker is still a very mediocre weapon when it comes to DpS and crit chance.

You're paying a brutal price for the instant leech, especially with a skill like FB that alternates weapons (dual strike is cool for one bloodseeker plus high DpS weapon x, reave is cool for bloodseeker plus crazy statstick, frost blades... well, you basically have to dualwield bloodseekers then).

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Peterlerock wrote:

Relax, this wasn't meant to be an insult, and your build is fine.

I only entered this thread because I felt your current setup could have some easy improvements (like a diamond flask of warding or a stygian vise). That doesn't mean I have to try it, it's enough for me to play "something similar".

Bloodseeker's instant leech of course opens interesting possibilities ("face tank" to some degree, the hp buffer is a bit low for my taste, but I'm sure it works out in some scenarios).
But at the end of the day, Bloodseeker is still a very mediocre weapon when it comes to DpS and crit chance.

You're paying a brutal price for the instant leech, especially with a skill like FB that alternates weapons (dual strike is cool for one bloodseeker plus high DpS weapon x, reave is cool for bloodseeker plus crazy statstick, frost blades... well, you basically have to dualwield bloodseekers then).

No problem man. I will keep this build updated. Welcome for any suggestions in future. :)