[3.11] Frost Blades Raider - Super Beginner Friendly - League Starter - SSF Viable

* This build will teach you how various mechanics in the game Path of Exile work, and which concepts to focus on in case you decide to make your own build in the future.
* This build doesn't require any sort of investment (there is no real need to trade with other players for specific items). You will be completely fine during the campaign of PoE without any real 'special' items.
* You will be able to shred a lot of enemies very quickly if you follow this build correctly.
* It is very difficult to die with this build, as there are a lot of different mechanics that we use to avoid taking damage.

* While you are able to clear a lot of enemies, fighting bosses with this can be a bit tedious. This build is focused around doing a lot of damage to enemies, but not really that much when it comes to bosses.
* While we do have a lot of defenses, there are a few aspects that rely on RNG. Statistically, there is a good chance that you will just die due to 'unlucky dice rolls'.

* Solid for league starting. Works on very minimal budget, suitable for SSF. No mandatory uniques (with the exception of quest rewards).
* Good clear speed, even on a 4-link. Great clear speed on a 6-link.
* Great survivability; tons of defensive layers.


* Defenses rely heavily on RNG-based mechanics (especially dodge). Don't expect to be immortal. THIS IS NOT A HARDCORE VIABLE BUILD!!! Play this in Hardcore at your own risk!
* No defenses against ground-effects, DoTs and chaos damage (this can partially be remedied with gear or the Pantheon).
* Terrible single-target damage, especially on a budget.
* Dies to elemental reflection (obviously).

For every act, I have created a small cheat sheet that you can refer to in case you are confused on where to go.


When you make a new character, you will need to make a Ranger. I know it sounds pretty weird to make a ranger while this skill appears more melee-esque. In Path of Exile, there are no class-restrictions when it comes to abilities (or gear).

After killing the very first enemy, you will get an ability called Burning Arrow. While this won't be used at all after the first , it will serve as a solid introduction for the later mechanics.

While this is a pretty good ability by itself, the main thing to consider is the item that we will put that gem into, namely the Crude Bow.

In case you haven't noticed it, the 2 green slots in this bow are connected by a little line. This means that these slots are part of the same 'gem link'. Once you put your secondary gem, called Pierce Support, in the bow as well you will be able to see the action unfold.

If you've taken a look at the skill tree, it seems quite overwhelming. As such, I would recommend you to allocate the points like this.


When you get to the town called Lioneye's Watch, you are able to pick up your skill gem reward from Tarkleigh.


Pressing the small exclamation marker on top of the skill gems will provide you with more information about the gem itself.

Additionally, you should purchase a claw and a shield from Tarkleigh and look out for any non-weapon item with green-green-red sockets. In the instance where you can't find any items with green-green-red, having green-green will suffice for now.


My suggestion here is to get rid of Burning Arrow and equip Frost Blades together with Pierce Support in the same item.

Here is an example of what I would recommend to buy and what to avoid:


If done correctly, here is what your current gameplay should look like:


After completing a certain quest, you are able to acquire new items. The 3 most important things here are a quicksilver flask, onslaught support and ancestral call support. At this point, I would recommend either using

or


Here is what your current gameplay should look like:

You might also notice that you aren't dealing a lot of damage to bosses. To remedy this, I would highly recommend using the setup Puncture - Chance to Bleed.

For movement skills, I would recommend using Dash.
So, to sum up, here is what I would recommend to use when it comes to gems:




(You can purchase Maim from Nessa when you reach the Lower Prison).




After you kill the boss of the Upper Prison, you will be able get your second movement skills. These ones are Smoke Mine and Whirling Blades.
The way to move around at this point is to yeet your Smoke Mine, detonate it and then just use Whirling Blades.





Additionally, linking Whirling Blades with Blind Support is pretty decent.
Although we won't get much use out of it right now, having Whirling Blades linked to at least one other green gem is pretty decent.

Before fighting the boss of act 1, it is important to consider your current weapons and resistances. My main recommendation at this point is to pick up some random claws off the floor (either Sharktooth claws or Awls) as well as getting yourself some Sapphire Rings for cold resistance. If you are looking to upgrade your current weapons, you can do so right now with either Essences or the Harvest mechanic (Which will only be useful for the 3.11 Harvest League)



Bear in mind that it isn't strictly neccesary to upgrade your weapon to rare at this point (however, it is still a good idea to upgrade them); You will be perfectly fine if you are using normal weapons. The most important thing at this point is to get rid of your basic Nailed Fist and start using an Awl.

Welcome to act 2. For this guide, I would recommend you to allocate your skill points like this:


There aren't any major changes that we will make going forward. For now, just keep following the story and remember to check the cheat sheet if you get stuck.

The only changes that we will make here are the following:

1. Remember to check your gear properly at this stage. Right now, you want to focus as much effort as possible on getting elemental resistances. Later on in the acts, you will find two-stone rings, which will be your primary way of getting your resistances at this point.
Additionally, getting life, resistances or both on gear can be a huge help! As a rule of thumb: If you hold alt over an item, you can see something called the 'item level'. If the difference between the item level and your current level is greater than 15, I would suggest to get a replacement for the item.


2. By progressing the quests, we will be able to acquire new skill gems. The primary ones that we will be using are 'Herald of Ice', 'Blood Rage', 'Faster Attack Support' and 'Elemental damage with Attacks Support'.
My suggestion would be to use this setup:
Frost Blades - Ancestral Call - Pierce/Onslaught (Use this for clearing)
Frost Blades - Added Cold Damage - Elemental Damage with Attacks (Use this for bosses)
Whirling Blades - Faster Attacks
Puncture - Chance To Bleed - Melee Physical Damage (This might not really be necessary anymore if you are using the Frost Blades setup recommended for bosses)

3. Since the claws require you to have intelligence, and the red supporting gems that we use require strength, you might run into some issues. While you could easily grab a Heavy Belt and a Lapis Amulet, they might not be sufficient enough.
In a situation like this, I would advice to temporarily grab some nodes with strength/intelligence on the skill tree.
If you are willing to spend 4 points to temporarily boost those stats, you could allocate your passive points in this manner:

When it comes to your setup, don't really worry too much about any of the gem types for now. No matter which of the 2 setups you were using up to this point, you will soon reach a point where those 2 will converge.

From this point forward, you will start to get 4-linked items to drop.
My suggestion would be to look out for any links that are red-red-green-green or red-green-green-green.


The Library
At this stage in the game, you will have access to an NPC called Siosa. This ghostly fella will provide you with all of the necessary gems.
Here is a list of all of the gem links that we will be using from now on.

Frost Blades - Ancestral Call - Elemental Damage with Attack - Ice Bite (Use this for clearing)
Frost Blades - Ruthless - Elemental Damage with Attacks - Added Cold Damage (Use this for bosses).
Whirling Blades - Fortify] - Endurance Charge on Stun - Faster Attacks
Ancestral Warchief - Stun - Blind
Smoke Mine - Second Wind - Frost Bomb
Frostbite

Maximum amount of currency required:
* Scroll of Wisdom: 4
* Orb of Transmutation: 5
* Orb of Alteration: 7
* Orb of Chance: 4

In case you are confused, here is a list of the gem locations at Siosa.


If done correctly, you should now have these gems:


After you are done with this act, go back to the Sarn Encampment.
Interact with the plaque on top of the stairs. Enter the portal that opens up.

Skill tree:



I don't really have any major advice for this act. My only word of wisdom would be to grab the "Tribal Fury" node on the tree as quickly as possible and start using the Multistrike gem instead of Ancestral Call.

Skill tree:



As I am still writing this guide at this moment, I won't really have much to say at this point. My only major advice is to grab the jewel called "Fight for Survival" from one of the quest rewards.

After defeating the Act 5 boss, ALL of your resistances will get a -30% penalty.
For this reason, it is really important to take a proper look at your gear. Whereas you could have been getting by with whatever you just found lying on the floor, you will actually start to pay attention to your gear now!

First of all, make sure that the majority of your items have at least 40 to maximum life and at two 20% resistance modifiers (It is preferred to have these even higher).
As a rule of thumb, you should preferably be around 1600 life with 75% to all elemental resistances when leaving the act 6 town.

In the instance where you are unable to acquire this gear, there are a few things to do.

Skill tree:



At this point, I don't really have anything to add to this leveling section. My only advice at this point is to MAKE SURE THAT YOUR RESISTANCES ARE IN CHECK!
Even though having 60% instead of 75% resistance doesn't really seem that important, it is!
My main advice here is to flip your way of thinking. Instead of thinking 'I resist 60% damage', you should be thinking 'I take 40% damage'.

Bear in mind that this leveling process is just for people that want to have the 'frost blades experience' early on. If you want to level with something completely different, such as caustic arrow, feel free to do so (going for something bow-based also allows you to use ballistae against the early bosses :-))

At level 2, I would recommend to start using Frost Blades with Pierce Support. At this stage of the game, the Corroded Blade basetypes will do the most damage. I would recommend switching from two-handed swords to claws when you can get Whirling Blades.

I would recommend a skill tree like this. You will do more damage than the skill tree that I recommended for newer players in addition to having the 20 strength/intelligence node (as well as getting 10% increased flask effectiveness)



The gem links that I would recommend are:
* Frost Blades - Ancestral Call - Pierce/Onslaught (personal preference)

* Puncture - Chance to Bleed - Maim
* Dash
OR
* Frost Bomb - Onslaught - Frostblink
* Ancestral Protector - Ruthless - Maim/Chance to Bleed

The goal with this first gearset was to get a proper 'foothold' in the early maps. I primarily focussed on life and resistances here (I actually got too many elemental resistances, I easily could have gotten chaos resistance instead of the certain elemental ones).

My current goal with this build is to get more chaos resistance on my gear while getting a weapon with more damage. At the current stage in the build, I am able to get through T1-10 maps with relative ease. I even handled the regular mobs decently on a T14 map, but I struggled against the boss as expected.

As a quick rundown, this build aims to convert all of the physical damage to cold damage. This means that, in addition to being immune to physical reflect maps, we will be able to focus our attention on the enemy's cold resistance.

For clearing, I am using the Tribal Fury Node. This does seem quite different from other builds, as you would preferably swap out Ancestral Call and Elemental Damage with Attacks between bossing and clearing. However, since this build is aimed at newer players, I feel like swapping out these gems constantly will be quite tedious for them.
With newer players in mind, I've also not focused a lot on critical strikes, which is why I am using the Resolute Technique. This means that newer players won't have to worry about accuracy and critical strike mechanics at all.

For bossing, I do try to reduce the cold resistance as much as possible by using Frost Bomb and Frostbite. In addition to this, Fight for Survival and Fangs of Frost really help with the penetration as well. This build only uses one Fight for Survival, as I don't want newer players to waste time just to get a new character to act 5 in order to grab that gem. Of course, if they are inclined to do so, they can absolutely go for it!
In addition to this, Vaal Ancestral Warchief is a HUGE damage boost against bosses.

However, this is all that I really have in terms of offensive capability. This build is more focused on defense to ensure that newer players don't really die too often.

Rundown on the defensive layers
In addition to this life gain on hit, we will have numerous other defensive layers in this build.

Defensive layer 1: Affecting enemy attacks.
* Enemies get blinded. This reduces their accuracy and causes them to miss their attacks more often.
* Frost Blades causes enemies to get frozen/chilled, reducing their action speed or nullifying it altogether.
* Enemies get stunned in certain situations for brief periods.
* If the Soul of Gruthkul Minor God has been upgraded with Erebix, enemies that have hit us will have reduced attack speed.

Defensive layer 2: Avoiding damage.
* Around 60-65% chance to dodge attack damage. If you are able to get your hands on the Darkray Vector boots, you will be able to gain increased dodge chance for each frenzy charge.
If the Soul of Lunaris Major God has been upgraded with Shock and Horror, we will have an additional 5% chance to dodge.
* If we fail to dodge, we will have an effective 60% chance to evade attacks. Since evasion is entropy-based, this WILL make us dodge 3 out of 5 attacks.
Addendum: Due to the Wind Dancer keystone, we will have 40% less evasion rating if we haven't been hit recently, but 20 more evasion if we have been hit recently.
* Although this build doesn't focus on block, we still have a block chance of 10-20%.
* We aim to get as much 'chance to avoid elemental ailments' as possible to ensure that we don't need to take an anti-freeze flask. Without any other modifications, the chance to avoid freezing from the tree is 70% (which can be raised up to 100% if Arcane Swiftness and Elemental Focus are taken). Additionally, we are able to get 'chance to avoid elemental ailments' on our shield as well. If this is raised high enough, we won't even need anti-ailment flasks.
As an added bonus: This elemental ailment avoidance also works against brittle, sap and scorch.

All in all, this gives us a very low chance to even receive damage. It is difficult to put an exact number on this, due to the fact that the values for evasion and dodge depend on our current situation.

Defensive layer 3: Mitigating damage
* If we haven't been hit recently, we will take 20% less damage due to Wind Dancer. This means that the first hit that we take most likely won't be fatal.
* We will have the Fortify buff on us quite often, which will grant us 20% less damage taken as well. (This combination actually doesn't give us 40% less damage taken, but rather 36%.)
* This build usually has between 25 and 60% physical damage reduction. While this can be pushed higher with better armour, this build won't really use this as those items can be quite expensive to acquire as a newer player.
* This build can have 77% lightning resistance and 78% fire/cold resistance. While this can be pushed higher through anointing Anointed Flesh, bear in mind that that does require the expensive golden oils in addition to the opportunity cost of not getting any other notable.

Defensive layer 4: Regaining lost health.
As mentioned before, the Imperial Claw bases are able to provide us with 48 life gain for each enemy hit. In addition, we will have a Life Leech cap of 20% of our maximum life per second. While the Life Gain on hit of 48 life doesn't seem that great, bear in mind that we will be able to scale our attack speed quite high. Due to the fact that we will hit a lot of enemies with Frost Blades, we will be able to get a lot of life from just one single attack. If possible, try to get your hands on a Vaal Breach, which will serve nicely against bosses that don't summon any adds (be sure to get enough Souls before going into a boss arena). In addition to providing us with Life Gain on Hit, we will also be able to trigger the Soul of Lunaris effect.


How this build is still able to die
First of all, despite the fact that this build has so many defensive layers, bear in mind that the vast majority of those are based on RNG.
There is no guarantee that we are able to freeze, stun or blind enemies. Nor is there is any guarantee that we will dodge, evade or block a specific attack. Even though evade is entropy-based, we might just be so unlucky to evade the minor attacks while still getting hit by fatal blows.

In addition to all of this, we are not immune to ground effects. In combination with the low chaos resistance, we are very likely to die to desecrated ground or attacks from El-Heizmin. Of course, you are able to get your chaos resistance up to 75% with the use of either gear or jewels, but bear in mind that that comes at the expensive of other stats.