[3.23] Poet's Pen Frostblink of Wintry Blast | Blast maps in seconds | 120m+ DPS | Elementalist
|
Of all the things to do in PoE blasting maps is one of the best, I live for it, so why not make a build that can blast maps like no other... presenting:
The build that blinked before it could walk Pros - It's fast asf boi - It does damage - What more do you need? Cons - Defenses are not getting hit - You will come to hate corners and walls - Has ramping*
Other Considerations
- This build excels at anything that can be done quickly and repeatably: essences, Einhar beasts (including memories), boss rushing, and guardian invitation rotations are notable examples. - We can do most map mods without much issue, main ones to watch out for: 1. Less cooldown recovery rate: effectively 'bricks' the build, still playable but feels real bad. 2. Cannot regen: if you don't have any mana leech, you need an enduring mana flask 3. Monsters steal charges: will feel bad without enough damage to 1-shot most things. Otherwise getting hit removes frenzy charges, which halves our trigger rate due to our attack speed. - If you don't like flicker strike you probably won't like this build, we're blinking around very quickly which can get disorientating. Especially against tanky/invulnerable enemies which causes us to blink back and forth over the same spot. - Maps with a lot of walls, corners, or tight corridors are challenging to navigate at full speed. *only an issue if you want to boss with this... but why would you? Seriously, don't though, most uber bosses are horrible for this build. If you really want to there are some potential suggestions at the end. Showcase
Elderslayer Invitation
Mapping
  How it works
Poet's Pen + Frostblink of Wintry Blast (FWB)
We're using Poet's Pen to get consistent triggers without being limited to a 4-link with Asenath's Chant and it's higher 0.3s base cooldown or needing s crit engine for CoC. Since we want to go fast the highest reasonable trigger rate we can reach is 15.15 or every second server tick (0.066s). With Poet's Pen having a base cooldown of 0.25s we have " which amounts to 279% increased cooldown recovery rate we need to get.
Cooldown Recovery
Since the 0.25s cooldown is inherited by FWB we can modify it with cooldown recovery rate of movement skills as well. All up, this is achieved via the following: - Up to 50% from Watchers Eye mod "#% increased Cooldown Recovery Rate of Movement Skills used while affected by Haste" - Up to 80% from Badge of the Brotherhood with 8 Frenzy charges - Up to 80% from The Stampede blight boots - 30% from Fleet Footwork notable - 30% from small nodes leading up to the Mysticism wheel This leaves 9% left we need to obtain elsewhere. My current iteration uses a Saboteur charm for 9-12% at T1, other options include: - CDR belt craft from unveiling belts (9-12%) - CDR belt suffix from Shaper or Crusader influence (10-20%) - CDR on a That Which Was Taken (9-12%) - Abyss jewels, at least 3 3% jewels or a 3% + 2% in a max roll Darkness Enthroned. If you get more than 9% here, it allows some more freedom to look for more useful Watcher's Eye mods and The Stampede corruptions.
Attack Speed
Now that we can trigger FWB 15 times a second how do we actually achieve this attack speed? With the new Frenzy gem. With 3.23's gem changes Frenzy's quality now gives 0-2% more Attack Damage and Attack Speed per Frenzy Charge. We pump up the quality through a Dialla's Malefaction and Level 6* Enhance to reach 90% quality, or 14% more attack speed per frenzy. With 8 Frenzy charges that equates to 112% more attack speed. With a 12% attack speed roll on Poet's Pen we need 326% increased attack speed elsewhere to reach 15.17 attacks per second on Frenzy. Can check POB for where this comes from, mainly from supports, Onslaught, Haste, Blood Rage, and Spiritual Command.
Attack Speed breakpoint
You might have noticed that we end up with 15.17 aps instead of our 15.15 trigger rate. Usually having attacks speed greater than trigger rate completely bricks the build as every second attack would occur before the cooldown is over and so we would miss the next trigger. And as a result you typically want to have a slightly lower or ideally equal aps. I have not found any way to get exact 15.15 aps, have only been able to reach 15.14 or 15.17 (depending on Poet's Pen's base attack speed 9-12% increased). However from testing this issue doesn't seem to exist at this CDR breakpoint 15.17 and 15.14 both felt similar. POB also shows 15.17 aps giving the highest effective trigger rate I could reach.  There is definitely something else at play (have heard frame rate might impact this) as sometimes the triggers would feel very smooth as if you were simply drawing a line with your mouse whereas typically it still feels a bit jittery - think flicker strike.
Gems, Mana, and other Mechanics
Gems
Our main damage links are in Poet's Pen + The Squire: Frostblink of Wintry Blast - Power Charge on Critical - Increased Critical Damage - Inspiration 21/20 - Empower 4 - Flex Flex support can either be Increased Critical Strikes if you need more crit chance, Awakened Increased Area of Effect for clear and QOL, or Awakened Elemental Focus for highest damage potential. Do be aware that we lose freeze with Awakened Ele Focus which is QOL and a type of defense in itself, would only use for bossing or where you need to burst something down quickly. Inspiration needs to be in The Squire for additional mana cost reduction, if you have a +1 Squire then Empower and the awakened support also goes there. Otherwise just put whatever gets the most from the additional quality. Frenzy trigger in Dialla's Malefaction: Frenzy - Faster Attacks - Bonechill - Enhance 4 - Additional Accuracy - Blood Rage We need 4 green and 1 red for socket colours, sixth socket is flex. Enhance 4 needs to be in the red socket to hit level 6 and the rest in green sockets, Bonechill can be in any colour (red gives more ailment effect which might? allow getting less elsewhere - untested) Remaining Links: Steel Skin Hatred - Divine Blessing - Inspiration 21/20 Haste - Grace - Zealotry - Enlighten 4* *This needs to be in boots if you have +1 socketed on your Stampede boots for Enlighten 5: Assassin's Mark - Mark on Hit: if you have +1 curse Frostblink - Culling Strike: if you don't have another source of cull You can check the gear section for other examples of current gem links.
Charges & Ramp
On top of the base 3 power charges, we get 3 more from the tree, 1 from helmet, and 1 from the Forbidden Flame/Flesh jewel set stealing Occultist's Forbidden Power for a total of 8 Power and Frenzy charges from Badge of the Brotherhood. Since Badge gives 10% CDR per Frenzy Charge we currently have, we only have 10.10 triggers per second until we get all 8 charges to put us at 15.15. This means there is a bit of ramp from either hitting enemies with our Frenzy, or killing enemies and getting charges from Blood Rage. This is typically fine but can be annoying for bosses, particularly any that have phase transitions as it takes a second to ramp back up due to a slower Frenzy attack speed as well.
Mana cost
Since we're running Inspiration Support we want to try balance our mana cost, ideally hitting 1 mana per cast on FWB, at 15.15 triggers per second that is effectively 15 mana per second which our mana regen is enough to sustain. This is currently achieved by the following: - 44% reduced from a 25/28 Inspiration - 6% from Tireless - 44%* from mana cost craft on a flask - -7** flat from ring craft *Depending on your supports (and their cost multipliers) you will need slightly different numbers, either tweaking the 20-25% roll on the mana cost craft or the 60-70% increased effect enchant from enkindling orbs. **You can also reduce this down to -6 if needed however this will also affect your Frenzy cost, see: Since Frenzy is in a 5 link without inspiration it will end up costing mana as well, my current setup costs 2 mana per attack, which total with FWB is ~45 mana per second against my 55 mana regen. While this is enough, if you're also casting Hatred (which costs 64/68 mana for me) you will need to make sure you regen enough in between casts. Alternatively, before getting a Massive Thread of Hope and Mageblood you can path down to the tireless wheel for additional cost reduction, I started with this and two -6/7 cost rings which results in a free Frenzy and low cost FWB. If you really need to you can also run an enduring mana flask with reduced cost: Try to aim for 1 mana cost on FWB so we still benefit from Inspiration charges and their 25-30% more damage.
Frostblink Damage
Double Hitting Since FWB hits at both your initial and final location we can hit twice per trigger if enemies are in the overlapping area, doubling our damage. The AOE we get from 8 Power Charges with Forbidden Power should be enough to double hit against most enemies, even with Convergence up. To do this is a bit finnicky though as we need to position ourselves so that enemies are in the overlapping area before namelocking them and holding down Frenzy. If you do this correctly, you will basically teleport back and forth over the target. Chill Effect FWB has the additional line "15% more damage per 5% chill effect on enemy" this means if we can get a 40% chill this is up to 152% more damage with a 20% quality FWB. Shaper of Winter increases our maximum chill from the standard 30% to 40% and also gives us a base 15% chill. We need to get 267% increased chill effect to hit the maximum 40% with any damage source (mainly our Frenzy). This is done by: - 44% increased from Bonechill - 30% increased from passive tree - 5% increased from a jewel corruption implicit - 50% more from Shaper of Winter " We need at least 4% from gear otherwise we lose up to ~19% more from only being at 39% chill. The 5-7 ailment effect from jewel corruptions is the best place, however you can also get some more on the tree or from cluster notables if you're having a hard time finding a good jewel. -------------------------------------------------- Since we're only applying chill once from our Frenzy and hitting twice, only half our hits should benefit from the chill effect (testing was inconclusive on this particular aspect). The 120m DPS in the title assumes a single hit with 0% chill effect, which is most of the time when mapping. In theory if we double hit with 1 always having 40% chill we would end up with ~300m DPS. But again, bossing is not what this is built for. I started the build with about 20-30D budget, half of which was spent on The Squire at the time. Unfortunately I hadn't tracked gear progress but I was sitting at roughly 10m Shaper DPS at that point which was more than enough to be blasting essences and beasts in white maps. I farmed most of my currency for upgrades with this strat. Gear
Current Gear and Alternatives
Weapon(s)
No surprise, Poet's Pen is our main hand, elemental penetration is BIS corruption but increased AoE and attack speed can also work. Until you start min-maxing, <12% increased attack speed is also fine - you will need to POB your own character to figure out what base attack speed is ideal. For offhand you can either go Squire for damage or something more defensive instead. If using a rare shield, aim for +1 level of all cold gems as spells like FWB generally scale well with levels. Although you lose a significant portion of damage, a 3 link setup would be FWB-Inspiration-PCoC/Empower. I have a +1 socketed for a higher level Empower as well as hitting another damage breakpoint for Inspiration at level 25 which also requires the +3 from the crit mastery.
Body Armour
We use Dialla's Malefaction to get the attack speed we need, look for good corruptions and 6-link yourself if needed with tainted fusings. Watch out for life corruptions as we make use of the 15% increased life mastery which requires no life tags on our body armour.
Helmet
This slot is pretty flexible, you can get a +1 power charge on a synth implicit or unique corruption e.g. Heatshiver. I chose to do an Awakener slam because I didn't have much money initially and the first slam went well enough: For this you'll just want "+1 to Maximum Power Charges" from Warlord and "Nearby Enemies have -9% to Cold Resistance" from Redeemer (you can elevate this to -12%). Awakener Orb onto whichever base you want to keep, pray, and repeat until you hit something useful, e.g. attributes, resistances, suppress (T1 chaos res in my case). Craft life and slam any open affixes.
Gloves
Suppress + Attack Speed, the rest is up to you. For most of the build's life I was using these: which is a Deafening Essence of Zeal spam for T1 dex (the convert prefix is useless I just wanted to throw an unveil at it). More recently upgraded to the Incursion mod (increased damage against chilled enemies) for more damage as I no longer needed the extra dexterity: Ideally these would have higher attack speed on the suffix to make implicits and tree a bit more flexible but you essentially have to buy the suffixes as is and eldritch chaos spam for prefixes afterwards (make sure Exarch is the only implicit or has a higher tier than the Eater implicit). Implicits are exarch for attack speed and eater for cold exposure on hit.
If you have the money
You can buy a base fractured with the Incursion mod. In this case crafting is also spamming Deafening Essences of Zeal but instead aim for T1 suppress. There aren't really any useful unveils for us, you could get +2 socketed aoe depending on what your gem setups are. Once suffixes are done, Eldritch Chaos for life and craft whatever you want if there's space. You can balance attack speed here with the suffix and implicit if you have too much/not quite enough.
Boots
The Stampede is required to hit CDR breakpoint, +1 socketed is NOT necessary unless you're running the same aura setup in which case you need a level 4 Enlighten in here to have enough unreserved mana to cast Hatred on a Divine Blessing. This is just for more damage and adds an extra button press to the build. We get an extra annoint here which we use for Fleetfoot as we do not have enough points to path there otherwise.
Jewellery
Amulet Need Badge of the Brotherhood for CDR, corruptions are optional, I only got this recently as I actually needed the dex for the majority of my play time. My annoints changed a few times depending on where the build is at: - Disciple of Slaughter: most damage - Charisma/Champion of the Cause: if you don't have +1 on boots you can also get reservation here to be able to cast Hatred - Spiritual Command: if you want to save points and don't have a Massive Thread of Hope yet - Marked for Death: if you can fit +1 curse and don't have cull elsewhere* *getting cull on a charm/TWWT is better as they have unconditional culling strike if you can fit one. Also lets you run Disciple of Slaughter again to squeeze out some more damage. Rings Since most of our gear is unique and we don't have many suffixes spare we need a ring with a lot of resistances: If you upgrade your gloves for the Incursion mod we can drop some resistance as that comes with T0 cold res and craft an upgrade to something like: Our second ring is for damage, either get Frostbite on hit fractured or as a Synthesis implicit. Since we're running Spiritual Command we actually want this on a Bone Ring base so we can roll minion mods for minion attack speed. This is usually cheaper than other bases. (I accidentally bricked the fractured ring at some point)
Crafting Rings
Resistance ring: Buy amethyst ring with T1 fractured lightning res (or whichever you need the most of). Scour to save 10 Prismatic Catalysts (Resistance). 1. Spam Deafening Essences of Scorn for the other resistance you need, I settled on T3 fire res as that was enough and you might need to repeat this step a few times. 2. Lock suffixes, reforge life or veiled chaos until T1 life or fills, restart if annul bricks. 3. Lock suffixes, Aisling for flat cold + lightning, go back to 2 if you remove life. 4. Craft -mana cost or increased damage (depending on other ring). Frostbite ring: Buy Frostbite on hit Synthesis Implicit on a Bone Ring base. Scour and quality with Accelerating Catalyst (Speed). 1. Single fossil spam with bound (more minion) looking for T1 minion attack and cast speed (for Spiritual Command) and T1 minion damage (for Spiritual Aid). 2. Lock suffixes, Aisling for life, restart if you remove minion damage. 3. Craft -mana cost or increased damage (depending on other ring). --potential upgrade-- 1. Spam Deafening Essences of Scorn for T1 minion attack and cast speed. 2a. Suffix lock and veiled chaos until T1 minion damage (which can fill) or 2b. Suffix lock and reforge less likely/more likely with harvest, this maintains the same number of prefixes so you have to have 1 prefix + suffix lock which results in 2 prefixes. You will then need to lock suffixes and annul/scour+slam to go back to a single prefix and repeat. 3. Aisling or unveil for life and craft -mana or increased damage. I haven't tried this approach so unsure how successful or costly this one could end up being. -------------------------------------------------- You don't need to follow the prefixes exactly it's mainly just losing out on some life and damage. We do however need to have at least one open prefix to craft -mana cost. See section on mana for more details. Other alternatives/upgrades here include: - +1 max power charge synth implicit also lets us drop more attack speed at the cost of slightly more ramp time - Spell damage per power charge synth implicit - Crit multi on the Bone Ring with Essence of Scorn
Belt
Best in slot is Mageblood, it helps adjust our mana cost and fixes the rest of our resistance and attack speed. You can save some money by buying a corrupted 3 flask as we don't actually need all 4 flasks since we still use a life flask plus either a Bottled Faith or Taste of Hate depending on content. I did end up buying an uncorrupted one by the end as I'd wasted too many tainted catalysts trying to hit higher attributes to fit everything in. Alternatives include: Darkness Enthroned for jewels with CDR, attack speed, crit multi, life, attributes, etc. A rare Stygian Vise (or other base) with Shaper/Crusader or crafted CDR plus life, resistances, attributes or other filler stats. These two options do free up a charm or TWWT mod for more flexibility there.
Jewels
Forbidden set to get +1 power charge from Occultist Watcher's Eye for CDR and any other useful stats Thread of Hope, massive radius saves us about 15 passive points travelling to Templar start and Tireless wheel, we do lose some damage and life but is partially offset elsewhere. Would not recommend getting this swap unless also getting a Mageblood. Lethal Pride for double damage, life, strength, etc. Rational Doctrine for Profane Ground and linger That Which Was Taken for a mixture of QOL and damage, look out for hexproof, CDR, mana reservation (saves an annoint or +1 on boots), leech is instant (saves 3 passive points), evasion per frenzy, global blind, other useful stats. For damage look for culling strike, base crit at full power charges, consecrated ground applies increased damage taken. This mostly depends on what the build needs at the time. Clusters with Blanketed Snow for penetration, Doryani's Lesson for our source of life leech, and Prismatic Heart for resistances or whatever else you can find. Rare Jewels for Corrupted Blood and Silence immunity (silence can be a jewel swap if you want, it shows up rarely depending on content but is very annoying when it does). One of the jewels also needs increased ailment effect corruption in order to hit 40% chills with our Frenzy, see Frostblink damage mechanics section for more details. For affixes, look for double (triple if you can find/afford one) crit multi along with whatever other useful stats you can find.
Flasks
I prefer using a life flask for times we take a hit but a Progenesis should also work and give us some more chaos resistance as well. We do have corrupted blood immunity and bleed removal from Steelskin so a different suffix is possible, depends on personal preference. Magic flasks are the following: - Bismuth to cap out remaining resistances and good uptime for mana cost reduction if you don't have Mageblood*. - Silver flask for Onslaught, attack speed can be replaced with something defensive but will need to get the rest probably on jewels. Defensive alternatives include reduced curse effect or avoid shock with Stormshroud jewel for elemental ailment immunity. - Jade flask with increased evasion suffix, provides a majority of our evasion. We use increased effect on all our prefixes for stronger flasks (best/mandatory for Mageblood) as we kill things very quickly and should not run out of charges given we aren't stopping too often. Fifth flask can either be a unique like Bottled Faith for damage, Taste of Hate for more hit mitigation, or a fourth magic utility flask. *Pre Mageblood I was using a diamond flask instead of a unique with elemental resistance suffix to fully cap resistances. You will likely need this suffix somewhere as we don't have access to the increased effect enchant until getting a Mageblood.
[3.23] Charms
There isn't a whole lot here, most of our good mods are on different classes so can only fit on a TWWT. I've mainly used these to 'cap' our crit or CDR and fill some of the other mods listed in the TWWT section: Unavailable Unavailable Unavailable
Potential Issues
- If you're having mana sustain issues either run an enduring mana flask or take Clever Theif wheel for instant leech which also lets you run no regen maps (though somewhat painfully). - We don't want 0 mana cost on our FWB, but if you really must you can run Eldritch Battery to make life easier for sustaining cost, casting hatred, and no regen maps (though less recovery rate becomes an issue). - Attributes can be quite finnicky due to how tight we are on suffixes, we need 156 dex for our auras but we can drop some strength if you want to run a lower level Steelskin (I ran level 14 for most of my playtime). - Make sure you have life leech from spells/elemental damage and instant leech somewhere otherwise you will have effectively no health sustain. - Health, we don't get a lot of it so try to fit as much as you can on rare gear. Make sure your Dialla's doesn't have a life implicit for the life mastery.
Future Upgrades
At this point, the next biggest upgrade would involve upgrading my PC so loading screens don't take as long as the map itself. Otherwise, there is definitely still room to improve on gear, we can still squeeze in an extra mod or tier on the rings and helmet. As always, given POE's depth, there is likely some synthesised, unique, or other item out there that I haven't even thought or heard of as well.
Bossing
Although we have the damage for it I would not recommend it, since our damage consists of us blinking back and forth over the boss we have effectively 0 control of where we are. Not ideal for bossing. Any boss with long phase transitions requires us to ramp back up again if there is nothing for us to hit. If you want to take this bossing I would recommend going back down to 10.10 triggers and dropping The Stampede for Ralakesh's Impatience to remove ramp. This will require a good bit of re-balancing attack speed but that can probably be moved into more damage or defences depending on preference. Could potentially swap jewels around for crit multi stacking with The Adorned and get some more increased damage which we don't get a lot of.
PoBs
Current min-max (Elementalist): https://pobb.in/xzBjXsAlArWh Budget starter (Assassin): https://pobb.in/GO6NL22DrB3V Last edited by Valkyreon#6613 on Feb 6, 2024, 12:06:58 AM Last bumped on Mar 31, 2024, 7:08:05 PM
Some items in this post are currently unavailable.
|
|
|
Updated a few sections and added a more budget-friendly PoB with Assassin for anyone that wants to get a feel for the build.
|
|
|
viable for 3.24?
|
|
" Did a minor test in standard and looks pretty dead now. With the change to add cast time to trigger cooldown this more than doubles our base cooldown so would be effectively impossible to hit the previous breakpoints now. There might be some way to invest enough into cast speed and re-tweak CDR and attack speed to match those new timings but I haven't done enough testing to see what those numbers would look like now. With the ~19% damage nerf on top I'd probably just recommend using lightning warp instead and reallocating points into getting 0 duration by stacking reduced duration if you did still want to play something similar, iirc Palsteron had a guide for one a few leagues ago (sadly with helm enchants gone I think you need to use a Warped Timepiece to hit 0 duration now - 55% from level 26+, 25% on tree, 20% on amulet). |
|
