The Frozen Dagger (ST/CoC - Self found, noob friendly) [Gameplay Videos]
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Really like the build, working on adapting/respeccing my Freeze Pulse shadow into this one.
A couple of quick questions- 1. How necessary is the Voll's? I assume you're missing out on tons of crit from the power charges, but I was wondering if it was possible without it. If I got a standard 5 link I could just do power charge on crit but then I realize I'm giving up casting a whole other spell. Hmm, maybe I'm starting to see why you use Voll's... 2. So is the main source of your damage the spell casts or the spectral throw damage? If you could estimate a % each makes up it would be useful for me to understand how it works. | |
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Fist off, I am having a total blast with this Spec. I feel squishy, but with a ton of Evasion/Block i am nearly never hit.
@Kinch45: I think 99% of the DMG is dealt by the CoC Spells. I have got the feeling that my Spectral Throw only "tickles" the mobs(does a bit more DMG with the Added Choas DMG Support Gem). But when the first few hits Crit and my Power Charges get rolling the whole Screen just melts. That said i am using double Ungils Gauche because of the nice Crit Bonus, the amazing Block and the lack of a good crit Dagger. (Currently LvL 63)
Spoiler
But i am really tempted to Spec into Elemental Equilibrium, using Ice Spear, Fireball and Stormcall(tried Stormcall with IceSpear in my 5L and it feels amazing, the frozen Mobs are just exploding). TL;DR: Amazing Spec, TONS of Damage, took a while to get used to it(especially the reckless spamming of the unlimited Flasks ;) ) | |
" Voll's is by no means required for any CoC build. This build actually evolved around a 4L Voll's. After the first evolution of the build, and my map starting gear, I really like cold snap since I was still massively squishy. So, I needed a reliable source of pwr charges. After figuring out that one of the builds strengths is it's flexibility with skill choices I considered dropping the Voll's. But then that left me without the ability to use cold snap or discharge at my leisure. You can EASILY run this build on a 4L Voll's with just ice spear or cold snap (It is pretty cheap to roll a 4L armour). Your freeze uptime is still acceptable. You will just be limited on how far/fast you can progress do to damage output. Also note that you can also go 'chargeless'. But if you throw out the power charges you will have to invest much more heavily into crit both on your tree and in your gear. " The main source is your spell damage. What daggers you choose to use will heavily determine the % of dmg ST actually does in comparison to your spells. But no matter how good your dagger damage is it will never come close to having the damage output of the spells themselves. " I am ecstatic to see so many people enjoying this. I don't typically write up guides since most things have been covered 100 times. But there where only a few CoC guides out when I wrote this one up. And none of them even considered Cold Snap or Aura stacking. And most of them wanted you to spend 35 Exalts for gear or to build uber tanky. " Did you watch the EE video? I have almost speced into EE a number of times. But everytime I go to do it I realize I would never be able to effectively run Cold Snap/Ice Spear again. And I would cry a little inside. Also, while stormcall can be super fun and has extremely good damage output ... once you get to a point where mob health gets so high that perma freezing become difficult, then stormcall will start to miss a LOT without reduced duration supporting it. Sorry I haven't updated the post recently. I started a new char (I am an altoholic). Will get back into the shadow this week and work more on the thread. Check out my Frozen Dagger build in the Shadow forums!!
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I'm planning a build very similar to this on HC myself. Aiming for around 200%'ish increased life and to run Disc, Clarity and Grace with IR and double ungils + a few block nodes for 59% block at around lvl85.
How on earth do you avoid insta-gibbing yourself on reflect without leech? You recon it'd be viable to run Spectral + LMP + CoC + Snap + Spear + LL as a 6link or dropping the Spear on a 5link for LL? Or will the damage just not be enough.... Someone also mentioned using that Bereks ring with the leech from Frozen targets... is it enough to keep you rolling with a flask on reflect packs? I just dont see how you can SAFELY survive reflect without leech, even with flasks. | |
" If your run this successfully in HC I would love to collaborate with you and add your build into this thread. I used to play HC exclusively. I got sick of dying to desync and switched over to Dom when this ladder started. First off phys reflect will never be a problem for you if your running dual Ungil's. When phys reflect shows up just make sure you don't go bursting things down with EK and you'll be fine. Ele Reflect sucks and can be deadly if you don't see it in time. You can't go blindly throwing daggers around. I deal with this mechanic in 1 of 2 ways. If I can, I pull a pack apart and burst them down 1 or 2 at a time with DS/CoC/Snap/EK. I show this tactic at the end of the EE video. If I have to, I kite around everything until I can pull the majority of the pack away from the aura mob. Then I go back to singling them out. This is not a faceroll build. It can feel face roll for a lot of the time. But, the moment you let your guard down is when you will die. Also, If you plan on going with leech to counter reflect I suggest LGoH. Pure LL will not be able to keep up with the overall dmg. Throwing daggers into a reflect pack will take you 100% in under a second as soon as CoC procs. Without VP, which would be extremely difficult to get without sacrificing the offensive stats this build needs to function, you will cap your regen rate and die. Since our spells do substantially small amounts of dmg on a cast by cast basis, then LGoH will provide more leech per hit than LL. As well as the fact that it will be instant without having to get VP. Also remember than the returns from your daggers will factor in and LGoH will ALWAYS beat out LL using Ungil's. Please not that I am saying all of this without being able to test it. I refuse to re-roll my Voll's to test it since I put over 300 Chroms into it to finally get gggbb. Once I get a stash of ~500 Fuse I plan on rolling the links on it and will then have gggbbr and will test extensively. But until then all I can do is theorycraft. Check out my Frozen Dagger build in the Shadow forums!! Last edited by Juggla1570 on Jan 8, 2014, 10:35:44 AM
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Added 'Gem Priority While Leveling' Section. Going to update some gear and passive tree changes in the next couple of days.
Check out my Frozen Dagger build in the Shadow forums!!
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I guess you dont get leech from the CoC spells, then?
In that case 20Q LGoH would indeed be the best... and I should probably run GMP (if my Mana can handle it) for more LGoH procs. I'm kinda hoping I could handle a reflect pack with Sapphire Flask + LGoH. But I guess just singling out the rare somewhat is the best course of action... Currently level41 and it's working out okay'ish so far. Was a bit too greedy with my crit early on and I'm now suffering from the lack of Accuracy/DEX :P But just started heading towards Ranger/IR so I should be able to get some more DEX and Accuracy on the way. I'll probably keep using Ungil's untill I get some really good Crit-jewelery and enough life/defenses from gear. And obviously a really good high-level dagger :P Kinda wondering if I could run a low'ish level Arctic Armor from Mana later on if I get enough regen... Would probably help A LOT against annoying mobs like Voidbearers and tittybitches. EDIT: Maybe LGoH + Thiefs Torment would offer enough sustain? Or LGoH + that Bereks ring with leech off Frozen mobs. Though I guess I'd lack a bit of Crit from rings if I did use Thief's Torment. Last edited by crafteri on Jan 8, 2014, 4:38:05 PM
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I am going to reply to crafteri and then make some comments about the changes to CoC with the new patch.
@crafteri
Spoiler
" It's not that you don't get leech from them. It's a case that each individual spell isn't doing a ton of dmg. So the leech you get wont be substantial. For instance, my level 19 Ice Spear is only kicking off ~200 avg dmg each (with lmp). Say you get ~10% life leech. That is still only giving you 40 life per spear with a crit. Equally, my ST daggers do 130 avg dmg each (with lmp). That is only 13 life per dagger with a crit. A 20/20 LGoH does guaranteed 54 life returned per hit. It also comes instantly. As opposed to LL without VP. Now a Cold Snap Crit will benifit more from LL. But with it's low crit chance you still likely to come out on top with LGoH considering your daggers and spear numbers far outweigh Snap hits. " GMP will rape your mana if you plan to run 3 auras. Plus it will nerf your damage into the ground. " That will always be the safe way to do it. But like I said, I have yet been unable to test LGoH to see if it will outheal Reflect or not. " Im stepping into 71-72 Maps and still using 1 Ungil's. " You will have to have a BUTT TON of regen for it. Especially using 1.5+ daggers. " I have never used crit rings .... I have tested a bunch and I don't see a huge difference in sustained DPS for anything above ~70% crit chance. Thoughts on the CoC gem 'nerf'.
Spoiler
I Have run a few maps now and you can see a slight decrease in the amount of procs on big groups. But from what I can tell it has had no substantial affect on gameplay. The current state of CoC has a 10ms internal cooldown. That is still 100 procs per second. Think about that ... 100 procs per second. I can't realy call that a nerf.
In some ways it actually helped. Now that I'm getting 80%+ chance to proc my single target has gone up noticeably. Check out my Frozen Dagger build in the Shadow forums!!
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By the way... Do you use a leveled Spectral Throw or a level 5 one for reduced mana cost?
I've kept my ST at level 5 an the mana-cost is kinda low at the moment.... I dont really see a reason to level it past level 5 since the damage-increase you'd get from leveling it is not really worth it unless you're using a high-DPS dagger(s), I guess. I also 6-soceted my Volls with like 10 jewelers last night... onwards to trying to 5/6-link it now :P Hopefully I'll get as lucky as I did with my mains Searing Touch and do it in like 25 fuses xD I'm using a level14 Arctic Armor on my main and it kinda negates all the damage from Voidbearers even in 74 maps.... So a level 10 one should be manageable (needs 97 regen while moving) and it would still at the very least halve the damage from those and help a lot against other kinds of mobs :P Mainly just trying to scrape a wee bit of survivability from several sources so that it'll add up and I wont be THAT squishy. EDIT: Here's a 100pt HC-build I planned for level 82:
Spoiler
http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgYB3nf_k9VP-_W0OOUZjDYC_t-EQsNd8nDVcFLz6ha_h9th4lVLJpVte7VIbWxTNZu1GYr7CfbaGo8tg5cGxKK74_66fXXTfu967g4j9u_wWkhW-vzFZ6CHdkp93Q1br04qKaWrC3LDzAbAUeOEY0Py4Q5InapirNadEZado_yrcLvZEy9vf8bBxYhCkBtwVpoT29SCHtsL8h0nqVptJDynXElRVuoFfac0BfmjipsmMgGyGc96FfA6WAR-hxnnVCT91QBMYASxlWY=
It's an 1h+Shield-variant for added survivability... Came to the conclusion that since I'll only (probably) be rolling a 5-link I'll only have ST+LMP+CoC+Cold Snap+LGoH so I'll use just 1 high pDPS dagger to boots my STs DPS to compensate for the lower damage from CoC procs... And with no double-Ungil's I probably wont have enough survivability without the Block. This way the DPS will also spread out a bit more between Phys and Ele so reflect wont be as big of an issue. Though if I manage to get a 6-link I'll probably go back to DWing double-Ungils for the added attackspeed and block and rely more on the CoC DPS. EDIT: I'm also secretly thinking of using the Prism Guardian shield if I'm gonna go 1h+Shield so that I can roll a pretty high-level Clarity off HP without losing too much HP. A level20 Clarity in this shield with reduced mana and 20% reduction from talents would only reserve like 150 HP or something. Last edited by crafteri on Jan 9, 2014, 4:22:26 AM
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@crafteri
Spoiler
" I use a leveled one. While the dmg output is negligible, I need as much mana returned from mind drinker as possible. I have tried a low level one and I can tell a difference in the mana regen in combat. " The problem with AA in this build is that Voll's absolutely DESTROYS your base mana regen from max mana. If you run a max clarity and have a ton of regen on your gear it may be possible. But, that would have to be tested. " If your planning on only running snap, and a high phys dagger, and you can get enough crit chance to make snap crit reliably, you may think about testing QLL over LGoH. Cold snap, by itself, hits pretty hard. Combine that with high returns from a high dps dagger and LL may beat out LGoH. The biggest problem arises with can LL without VP keep up with the dmg intake. It's something to consider. Check out my Frozen Dagger build in the Shadow forums!!
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