FrostBlades Question

Questions ladies and gents, I created a super effective build a few leagues ago with frostblades and with a slight buff coming I want to make another build involving frostblades. The one fall of the build is the single target damage because the initial hit is melee and not projectile 100%. My question is, is there a way to work around this? Possibly somehow trigger the projectiles without having to actually hit an enemy? If I could figure out a way to do this, I believe frostblades could be an end game build. For example, If I fought Izaro Uber I would have to have adds to hit so I could do more damage because the projectiles on my build did ALOT more damage versus a straight up 1v1 brawl because the melee portion just wasn't very strong. Anyone have any ideas? I already tried frostwall btw :p but of course that didnt work.

Scale elemental damage and attack speed rather than projectile damage.

Like you said, projectile damage bonuses only work on the back half of Frost Blades, but full elemental conversion (promised to be MUCH easier in 2.6!) means WED is a giant boost to both portions of the attack, and more attacks means more damage in general. Depending on how much cold conversion there is in the tree, can even get into Cold Pen these days instead of splitting between Cold and Lightning damage and not having any worthwhile penetration. Will certainly make it easier to color Evasion chests like Kintsugi for Frost Blades.

Frost Blades is one of my favorite skills in this game, and my FB Raider is my highest-level and best-geared character. One thing I learned early on is that PPAD and other physical boosters are just a waste. Great for half of your attack, but a good FB needs both halves of the skill to be strong. I'm currently running:

FB > WED > Multistrike > P2L > Inc. Critstrikes > Hypothermia

Crit works on both halves, WED works on both halfs, P2L fuels WED and also adds a bunch of extra lightning for bigger Shocks off of Crit, and Hypothermia improves Touch of Anguish's Frenzy generation and also adds a big 'More' modifier against chilled targets (i.e. all of them. Aquamarine flask 4 lyfe). Hypothermia goes unreported in the tooltip, but it sure as shootin' helps.

If we get 20% or more cold conversion in the 2.6.0 tree, I'd argue that you could consider dumping P2L for Cold Pen and still be golden. 80% Cold damage with WED and pen would be enough, especially now that the Shadow leech is attack based instead of phys. attack based. Yeah, Ele. reflect maps cork you, but reflect corks most errybody. Still better universal scaling than physical, especially if you don't care about freezes/chills in your particular build and can do Elemental Focus, as well.

I really appreciate your feedback. I made a gladiator at the time, and the clear speed was insane. Now that you mention cold pen and everything, I figured out exactly what I can do. I would consider using the unique gloves that provides 25% conversion AND maybe they will buff the gloves as well (who knows). I guess its going to come down to the tree first but I really think it could be wise to go full elemental damage conversion now since its 60% versus 40% and thats what really ruined my builds potential I believe. I might consider a witch maybe with this build, ranger is nice too or I could go gladiator again. It really is going to depend on what they do with this tree. Im crossing my fingers now that they will have 20% cold conversion, thanks again you really inspired me to try this out again.

With Hrimburn, all you need is 15% physical to cold in the 2.6.0 tree to get to 100% conversion. Frankly, even 85% conversion would likely suffice, and that you can do with item and skill alone. Frost Blades is bad for Ignites, but having Ignites off of Hrimburn is still some extra damage. Hatred, obviously. I have a crippling addiction to Raider; Deadeye offers a 'free' +1 Chain which is great for clearing and super useful if you're not using Touch of Anguish, but the rest of its nodes are mostly physical focused and don't back up the elemental blade theme much. Pathfinder is Pathfinder. None of the Shadow Ascendancies really click with the skill, either. You could run Assassin for culling crits and some extra crit chance/multi, get raw deeps, but really?

Once you run a Frost Blades Multistrike Raider with nine frenzy charges, constant elemental status immunity, 50+ percent Dodge/Spelldodge, and something like double the game's native footspeed on top of fairly easy 50k tooltip (which doesn't report Hypothermia and ignores Chaining bladestorms, so take that as you will) even with suboptimal gear...well, it's awful damn hard to really sound sincere when you recommend anything else.