2.4 Frostblades Pathfinder. (2.6 projection+raider option.)

(updates in new posts at the end.)

First, let me preface saying, I play soloself found. so my gear is limited to luck. And, not instant access to BIS. With this my builds, and guides are focused around making choices from day to day on maximizing potential. There is no one right way, in most cases. I will likely give the choices I made, and then provide alternatives.
With that, way too many Tornado shot and blade vortex rangers dominating this forum atm.

With that, we will be focusing on Frostblades Ranger. Specifically Pathfinder, I find is best.(in most situations..)

Everyone seems to build Frostblades totally wrong. They see that +projectiles and jump on that. Meanwhile forgo their single target, and have a bad time. The key is do the opposite of that. Focus first on passives/gear that work on both melee and projectiles, then go ahead and allow some melee exclusive elements to come into play.

The Passive tree.

The tree is pretty standard for DW, crit. Fatalblade we take when we switch to foils.

We prioritize life of course.
offense Crit,attackspeed/crit multi. These 3 will scale both melee and projectiles, as well as elemental/phys.
Attack damage is nice as well. scaling melee, proj, and both elemental/phys.
global physical is ok. And if you choose to favor physical, solid. but, I will suggest elemental mostly.


Defense stacking.



Pathfinder.


Gems



Touch of anguish.
ToA solid mid tier. But a bit of a trap.
The +1 chain is near useless. A huge mistake to focus on, when what you need is melee damage to kill those big hp bosses. you do not need more trash killing power. you have that in spades.
But it does have a decent attack speed, and crit rate, and solid physical damage, with 30% inc cold damage, AND even frenzy gen on kill.
It wasn't until I actually took fatal blade, that I replaced it. But I DID replace it, when I took fatalblade.
cospri's malice is solid. However, note I tight my skillgem selection is.
Cospri's will/heretic veil. Also a solid alt build choice. enfeeble/elem weakness. dual curse. poison on hit. get physical damage.

Essance league
elem pen on belt. (and flask charge gain) Life everything else. I am not certain if the flat ar/eva belt or regular hp belt is best. Crit/attackspeed swords probably best. My luck here has not be great. I feel like chances of rolling high elem, with guaranteed crit/AS is better then guaranteed elem roll, with 1 or 2 other elem rolls, and good AS/crit.

Stats are tight. INT especially for herald of thunder. you will need to take the +30, and likely run int on ammy, helms, etc most of the time. Gear as you can. Atziri's acutity BIS, even partially due to this int.

Enfeeble is a near must.
Heralds vs Hatred. Touch of anguish is physical, and does scale with hatred well. Same with other phys weapons. We are choosing Heralds for few reasons. Quality heralds gain global 20% cold/lit damage. They also aoe explode, if you did care about more aoe damage. And, that Exalt I got from Herald of Thunder popping a vase as I ran by, explains all I need to about Herald of thunders value. They also add flat values to hits, scaling well the focus on attackspeed.

Frenzy. Powercharge.
During leveling I did stat into +frenzy. i recently specced out of them, for life, fatalblade. They are still solid, but I found the swap to be more powerful. This also then opens up the question if merc frenzy would be better as powercharge as well. I am not sure.

Decoy totem is a great extra level of defense vs a great many bosses who hate melee. It easymodes izaro and argus.
With decoy, life regen, flask charge regen ooc, wb, and runspeed with flasks, I would say this is a solid option for uber farming.

Enchants.
gloves:
Fury for power. Reflection is fun. small defensive bonus.
Boots: in order of favorite.
cold when hit.
Regen when hit.
spell dodge if spell damage recently.
stun avoid if killed recently.
move speed if havent been hit.
two tone resist.
Helm:
Enfeeble effect.
End cry CD recovery.
ancestral protector +attack speed.




Current gear. none of this is BIS. selffound. so play what I get, not necessary what I want.

I've been limited by map pool drops. only up to t11 so far. But do so with ease.
Did uberlab a while ago, with even lesser gear/hp.(4200hp, 50k max dps) 4700hp atm. yes I want more. Belly ideal imho. even the chest swap is more.
Single target dps buffed atm is 60-70k. A good amount of scaling via 6l, quality, crit/multi rings/ammy, weapons to go.
Uberlab easy.. I did however fail Atziri admittedly. 1st time going on any char. Frostblades did prove not ideal. maneuvering and targeting split phase to NOT hit mirror was difficult(while not impossible.) alternative was to move into point blank melee with frenzy. Both, presented the problem of animation lock with MS. I was taking far too many flameblasts. while not 1shots, deal damage, move, deal damage, move, deal damage moves was not proving viable. not enough damage being dealt, too much being taken. I had a ruby flask, but was not using it at the time. I do now have 40% more dps.(30-50k then up to 50-70k now) as well as another 500life. and would run the rubyflask.

Bonus.
Looking cool.

An end of league update.

2.5 pathfinder and rumi's were nerfed.
Sadly, I got bored grinding t11-13maps with higher never dropping. So started playing less, and can't say, killed guardians/shaper.
finished at 90. Might play a bit to get 91. She's very close.

Ended with some minor changes to the passive tree.
www.poeurl.com/T1z

Sword crit multi obviously is huge dps increase. Acc nodes were overkill. +1% max cold resist not needed.
Arrow dancing. didn't grab it. But, considering FB range+knockback, its probably a very sold choice. Nothing melees you.



Minor gear upgrades. Never was able to fuse a 6l. Threw a life Essence at a white 5l.




5k life. 37k tooltip unbuffed. 75k without charges. 90k with. (+30k protector)

Nothing BIS or especially noteworthy. But still cakewalked t12. Sapph flask makes even elem reflect doable. only "no regen" maps are a pain. mostly just due to draining mana via whirling blades. haha. perfectly doable. just tedious.

Non-legacy Rumis would be still good. But, possibly consider something else. Basalt, etc.
New Perfect form Chest would be GG. Tied for BIS with Belly, imho.

Pathfinder nerfs.

Master Alchemist still priority. and in fact, is comparably even better for charge generation now with Surgeons nerf.
Natures adrenaline also then still solid.
Master surgeon nerf means no longer are all flasks 100% uptime. Its pretty brutal. Raider may actually have higher status immunity uptime now. Another, maybe drop rumis shorter duration, and go stibnite for higher uptime. Frankly, I think they went a bit too far. the charge on crit gain is near useless now.

The question then, Master Surgeon, vs Vet bowyer.

Vet Bowyer is solid dps gains.
For this build, the choice is still Master surgeon.

1. Vet bowyer scales 10% of physical as random element. We don't focus on physical, so this value is not extreme in the first place. If you have a solid phys weapon, you can consider it. ToA, etc.
the 10% ad is solid, though. Also, the elem pen is adding into the elem pen from forces of nature, fangs of frost, and potentially elem pen belt. point for point less valuable then. The charge gain is near meaningless with our other charge gains.
Overall solid dps gains. but, no real utility.

2. Master surgeon charge gain may be kill. but its STILL Bleed immunity, and flask life recovery. This frees up your life flask for mods of choice.

I say worth it. But if you want raw dps, vet bowyer.



With path of building out. I will be going back and reviewing some of the passive tree.
I've already noted, some of the elem damage nodes in shadow, may be much more effective then the phys ones in duelist/ranger. the phys was never ideal, but often bundled with other valuable stats.

2.5
111 pt build. adds arrow dancing. drops ambidex and dervish. adds acuity back in, 2 frenzy charges, and elem focus. Slightly more life, evade, and damage.
Pathfinder
www.poeurl.com/Vcz
Raider
www.poeurl.com/4Ym

Took breach off mostly. As, I kindof hated it.


Seeing the 2.6 previews. I wanted to jump back in and make a note.
"Buffs to 1h weapons, and 1h passives."
And we can see that 35% increase to base Vaal blade damage.

"

This content update also contains several balance changes, including: improvements to unpopular clusters on the passive tree, more support for cold and elemental builds near the Ranger on the passive tree, mana nodes behind the Mind over Matter keystone, improvements to the claw, staff and sword passive tree clusters, buffs to one-handed weapon base type damage across the board, buffs and modifications to weapon implicit modifiers, reworks for threshold Jewels, changes to how area of effect modifiers are handled, and many more minor changes. For details, please keep an eye out for a manifesto post and then the patch notes.

Huge buff to frostblades incoming everyone. It was imho already t1, although lower t1 due to "weak" single target. if it gets another 20-35% damage increase via a solid buff to foils. it will be top tier all around.
It was ALREADY super viable. Breach even gave it more range.

Without knowing exactly what the changes are, can't make a guess at phys vs elem. Previously, FB builds it was viable to make either choice. A phys focused build, or an elem focused one. Potential changes may shift the balance in favor of one or the other. Raw weapon damage favors physical. Accuracy, attack speed, crit, and whatever "cold and elem support near the ranger" favor elemental.



Personally, I am eyeing that EK nova jewel. Thinking of making an EK "poison nova" CI pathfinder.


ps. I came around on Ewar's Its 50% inc elem damage is very strong. makes up for its lack of raw damage. it would last quite long into a league, longer then Touch of Anguish even. It is still outdone by a high teir Elem Foil though. Again, the chain is not why you use it though, its just the raw elem damage is solid. Chain is massively overrated for FB. you just want raw damage.

Manifesto post reaffirmed big changes for frostblades. Most seem to be nearly pure buffs.
But not enough info sadly to give hard answers to build order, or precise predictions.

"

Some physical to cold conversion has been added to the passive tree near the Ranger area. This allows for skills like Ice Shot & Frost Blades to have more conversion to cold than ever before.

What does this mean exactly?
Flash freeze was medicore. Does this mean flash freeze is altered?

we went down to forces of nature, for forces of nature, fatal blade, and arrow dancing.
only arrow dancing remains.
So, its not clear if this will be a dps gain, or passive point gain or loss.
The note says elemental CONVERSION. Not penetration or inc weapon damage. I would suspect the pen, and inc weapon damage, is more dps then additional conversion.

"

A new weapon elemental damage cluster has been added to the passive tree near the Ranger. This now allows for dexterity aligned characters who specialise in elemental attack skills to invest more of their points into damage.

This is Forces of nature most likely. Where exactly. if along standard pathing. no change really. Again, just the deal with Arrow dancing.

"

The area between the Shadow and the Ranger has been made more efficient and less restrictive, while also improving the efficiency of clusters in that section of the tree.

not enough info.

"

The Thick Skin cluster now attaches to the outside perimeter.

This meant more BEFORE fatal blade move. haha.
I toyed with graceful assault. but point for point sword nodes are just more powerful. Fatal blade, Brutal blade, slashing comeback, then graceful assault.
Overall shift of thickskin order means nothing. we grab all 4 regardless.

"

The sword critical cluster has been made part of the Ranger's large exterior sword cluster. The other path of the sword cluster has been significantly reworked to grant more power.

Skipping to this note, as its directly related. This is questionable.
Fatal blade is 5 points for like 20-25% dps gain. Super powerful.
Brutal blade is 5 points for about 10%, slashing comeback 4-5 points for about 7%.

How will combining these work out? in a point for point ratio? They can't have just added fatal blade into brutal blade. In such 5 points would then give 30-35% dps gain.
I expect this to be changed to be a circle or diamond, like Celestial judgment/punishment nodes. the result then being a higher required point investment, as well as possibly LESS total crit multi, as it will likely be spread out into nodes requiring even more points to reach.
So, I expect this to actually be a nerf. Passive points are valuable. life, crit, elem pen.

"

Some claw, staff and sword passives have received some special attention and should now be more powerful overall.

hard to say what this will mean. we would grab a few of these for attack speed and crit. neither likely buffed. Avoided phys ones.
Higher elem conversion via passive, and frostblades itself being shifted to 60% means those phys nodes are more valuable to us. as our dps will not be split as much.

"

The Vitality Void and Spirit Void cluster near the Duelist starting area that grants life and mana leech to attack damage has been rearranged, and is now also attached to the outside perimeter path.

hard to say what impact this will have. might cost us a point or two. I imagine they thought the 2 point invest was too efficient?

"

Leech effects in the Shadow area of the tree now leech from all attack damage, not just physical attack damage.

This is potentially huge. we already grab blooddrinker for the life alone. Minddrinker is an inefficient 3 point invest. But, this potentially may cause us to rearrange our build ENTIRELY. skip the entirely of duelist and go north into witch territory. flask effect, the elem nodes up there, snowforged, throatseeker, etc. Even potentially ghost reaver and CI.

"

The lightning clusters Arcing Blows and Crackling Speed have been combined, and Arcing Speed has been improved.

These nodes were ALREADY moderate dps gains even for the build tree that doesn't focus on lit.
Ewar's builds, and if we DID go witch/ci, this is also huge.
lowres's build for example. deals much lit damage. he runs wrath even. (I could have sworn his build included arcing blows.)
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1782840/page/1

"

Frost Blades and Ice Shot now have 60% physical to cold conversion, up from 40%.

not huge, but decent. Small direct damage buff, due to scaling into WED, and more of the phys damage nodes, again, scaling into "more elemental", and elem pen.

"

One-Handed Weapon Damage and Weapon Implicits
One-handed weapons were seeing very little use outside of daggers and specific one-hand skills. To improve player choice, we've increased the base damage of many one-handed weapon types across the board.
Daggers now have a lower implicit value.

Lower level claw base types that granted life leech now grant life on hit, as life leech has very little effect at lower levels.
Maraketh claw base types (Double Claw, Twin Claw and Gemini Claw) now have separate life and mana on hit values, as they now grant more life on hit.
Maraketh thrusting swords have a higher chance to bleed, going from 8%/12% to 15%/20%. Other thrusting swords have a lower critical multiplier value.
Almost half the one-handed and two-handed sword base types now grant flat accuracy, instead of increased accuracy. This should make them more desirable for characters that don't naturally have high accuracy rating from dexterity.

We didn't really use daggers. so, not a big deal there.
Claws, we have plenty of leech via duelist/shadow. so, not a reason to change.
Bleed buff is neat, but not ideal due to elem conversion. means nothing to us.
Nerf to crit multi thrusting swords. ouch. yes that hurts.
Flat accuracy to other 1h sword. I doubt this will be a large enough buff to justify one over a thrusting sword.
I would expect spiraled foils=harpy rapier>jeweled foils>eternal>midnight blade still.

If eternals are flat acc, they might compare. midnight/vaals are too slow.

Thinking of running frostblades on the upcoming league. thanks for the guide!

Will be playing as a starter this league, following ;)

2.6 patch notes do not really give enough info to make specific statements.

Duelist leach is a small nerf. we no longer can 2 point wonder down there. so, we will swap to grabbing 1 mana leech node there, only. giving us back 1 passive point.
Shadow life leech in blood drinker is being buffed for us, so that will make up for it. Although, during LEVELING you may want to grab a duelist life leech to tide over till you get up to blooddrinker.

Sword buffs are nice. While the crit multi reduction is at face value a small nerf to crit builds, the variance in the crit multi being SMALLER, is very nice. ALL top teir swords are viable now.

patch notes did not clear up the passive point value issue. We just do not know yet how many points will need to be invested in sword cluster or elem pen/conversion for the same dps value.

Some notes. Elem CONVERSION behind flash freeze. Flash freeze currently, is pretty weak point for point. putting elem conversion behind it, will likely make it mandatory. So we WILL most likely be putting 6 passive points into THAT we did not before.
Forces of nature was 3 points previously. it SOUNDS like its now a larger node. so might require even more points.

the patch notes are MISSING, "frostblades does 60% conversion now"
I think this is just an oversight, not a reversion on this change.

With flash freeze conversion (likely 5-10%) and frostblades base 60%. we should expect 65-70% cold conversion on frostblades. This ALSO means, ALL the physical damage nodes are MUCH more powerful for us as well. The DW ones, the 1h ones, the sword ones. This will dramatically change our powerscaling. we "may" even drop crit for raw damage.
Currently have 15 points invested in crit/critmulti. +crit foils, +jewel, and inc crit gem. Crit IS very efficient. But, this might be an avenue to explore.

Higher conversion, we need to consider elemental focus. cold pen possibly as well. cold pen itself is weaker then inc crit, and even faster attacks in the previous crit build. partially due to the amount of elem pen in tree. we might be dropping fangs of frost. Elem focus always was very strong, but interferes with heralds.
Melee physical damage support may be now baseline If elem conversion is high enough.
Links might be, FB+MS+WED+fortify+addedcold+meleephys


Raider is solid for frostblades as well of course. I prefer pathfinder, but raider is slightly more dps. Get Poacher>Veil>slaughter. Be sure to run a phasing flask, to have that "on call."


Buff to dreamfeather. And phys-cold conversion. Dreamfeather might be top teir frostblades weapon. especially if raider.

Touch of anguish might be back to top teir as well. Crit multi on swords nerfed. All 1h weapon base dps buffed. And the buff from 40-70% elem conversion. ToA's base physical now getting much more conversion makes it a much better scaling dps. then again, couple that with general physical conversion, the sword nodes themselves might not be as important.

"

Soul Raker Life and Mana Leech is now all attack damage, not just physical.

if you, or I DO go back to claws. soul raker is ALSO all attack damage now. Giving a ton of dual leech. making, the duelist leech totally pointless. Even blooddrinker, but we get that for raw life anyway.

Emmits is up.
https://github.com/EmmittJ/PoESkillTree/releases


whew lads.

Revenge of the hunted 8% life.
Forces of nature STILL exists IN ADDITION to the new primevil force WED.
Primevil force is pretty crazy. its off of arrowdancing node.

TWO 20% conversion nodes NEXT to flash freeze. 40% converions+60% frostblades, for 100% phys-cold.

Fatalblade moved to slashing comeback. Slashing comeback baked into brutal blade.
stats are not exactly the same. less crit multi, more crit.

Claws of the pride major buff, if we go claws.
there is now crit IN FRONT of soul raker, leech behind it, and magpie/soulrake swapped.

Master of force, still garbage imho.


Going to take some time to break this down.

Ok.
2.6 preview breakdown.

My first look at adapting preexisting ele foil ends up with remarkably similar Effective dps numbers.
Due note, this is my ssf gear, not IDEAL items.

Path of building 2.6 pastebin.
http://pastebin.com/4bm4MnZE
2.5
5037 total life.
220,853 EFFECTIVE dps. shock, pen, power/frenzy charges, ancestral prot, golem/heralds, flasks and onslaught factored in. build expects these at all times due to pathfinder.
(frostbomb is NOT factored in. that is not consistent.)

2.6
5256life
235,480 EFFECTIVE DPS. same buffs/debuffs.

So, lots of changes to the tree, end dps for ele foil relatively similar.
This does NOT factor in 1h weapon base damage BUFF, nor foil sword crit NERF.

Touch of anguish.
Swap out fatalblade for claw of pride and soul raker. and due to soulraker, we can drop the mana leech in duelist.
THEN, drop inc crit on frostblades itself. With ToA, MELEEPHYS is more dps, and faster attacks is also more dps then inc crit. (edit) Need to amend this. Cold pen is superior vs bosses. so, cold pen should be 6l.
FB+MS+fortify+WED+added cold+Cold Pen
ToA pastebin.
http://pastebin.com/5wGLBkhB
259k effective dps with dual Touch of Anguish.

It might be tempting to go hatred with ToA due to the raw phys scaling, however, you need LIT damage for shock. loosing shock is a larger dps loss then hatred gain. Although ToA chain does neutralize herald aoe.
(dual curse, enfeeble/eleweakness+HoT is an option with doedres damning or windscream boots. Very effective)

I fully expect ToA to get buffed MORE then foils as well, due to

"

Lower-level weapons, weapons with lower critical chance, and weapons with lower-value implicits have had their damage increased by a higher value.

Imperial claws surely fit that. so must be getting a larger base damage buff, then spiraled/jeweled foils.



Skilltrees.
poeplanner links.
2.6
Elem foil pathfinder

www.poeurl.com/5ma

2.6 Touch of Anguish phys CLAW pathfinder.
www.poeurl.com/5l6

2.6 Elem foil raider.
www.poeurl.com/5mg

Gem sockets remain largely unchanged.
We want to build defensive.

Blasphemy+enfeeble. ice golem. 3
Cwdt+IC+Frostbomb. End cry. 4
Whirling blades+FA+Anc protector. Decoy totem. 4
Frenzy+inc crit+PcoC+MS. 4 (gloves ideal)
Herald of thunder+HoI. bloodrage. 3
Frostblades+MS+WED+fortify+Added cold 5 (inc crit for foils. cold penr ToA for 6l)

Flasks
1 instant life leech flask. 20% flask effect, and 50% inc life for pathfinders. AND, charge regen on crit/every 3s. other builds can not get flask charge on crit on instant flasks.
Silver flask, granite flask, jade, sulfur. base. Knockback on flask is a must. Frostblades gains from knockback tremendously.
Lions roar/Rumis, atziris, taste of hate upgrades. (lions roar is godteir with Touch of Anguish now)

General gear
same as before. flat life first. crit+added elme/life and resists on rings.
boots- movespeed, resists, life. windscream is a great option. darkray vector/blooddance as well.
etc. standard stuff.
belt- flat life best. with WED, and Flask charges gained. Also, can look at the hysteria elem pen, if you are lucky. unique-perseverance.or the retch.
gloves- atziris acuity best... but spiked gloves good. lab enchant probably better. spite.
helm-life. the good unique ones for dps, cost you too much life. I would avoid. rats nest/devotos.

Weapons. I expect ToA to be back on top due to these changes. Dyadus, and dreamfeather are wildcards that need to be checked. doryanis offhand. A truly top top teir Foil may still be on top, but it will have a cost.

Very interested in this build. Thank you for sharing it, following :)

Any tips for leveling it SSF HC?