[ 2.0 ] Frost Blast Wander Ranger

My name is Sora and here is my first build log, the Frost Blast Wander Ranger.

Build based on Kinetic Blast, alternatively Barrage to proc Cast on Crit rapidly set of a ton of Frost Walls or alternatively more damaging spells such as Ball Lightning, Arctic Breath and Ice Spear.

Videos

More videos to come

Quick Voll farming
https://youtu.be/rjeg1G9OniI
Spider Forest 71
https://youtu.be/lJfMuJPMRIY
Messy demonstration of single target capabilities
https://youtu.be/kuBbMtqNYcE
This build is still very squishy and beyond mobs are still scary
Mobile single target enemies are still a threat
https://youtu.be/diRVy_FdXBw






Two weeks into Awakening Warbands playing a Crit Tornado Shot Ranger with the help of Neversink's guide. Got myself some currency to play with to try out other interesting things.


Inspired by pabrt's Frost Wall Kinetic Blaster and with help from Oos Kinetic Blast Wander Guide. Got together a little something I'm enjoying.

Links to respective guides

pabrt's Frost Wall Kinetic Blaster
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1128367
Oos Kinetic Blast Wander
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1162760



Pros

Fun to play
Fast clearing
Flasks charge fast
Interesting shotgunning mechanics
Best Party Build


Cons

Reflect mobs (depending on the gem setup variation)
Fragile
Gear reliant
Best Party Build





Favorite Gem Setups


Currently running Ice Spear and Freezing Pulse

KB AoE
Kinetic Blast + Cast on Crit + GMP + Ice Spear + Freezing Pulse + Increased Critical Damage

This setup has been working really well for me, first started off with using Ice Spear. The huge innate crit chance of Ice Spear is really great. With crit multipliers in the passive tree, this benefits Ice Spear. Freezing mobs from a distance was good, but when close it was a little more difficult. Freezing Pulse has great synergy into this. Being really strong close up, this covers the set of skills to cover all ranges.


Barrage Single Target
Barrage + Cast on Crit lvl 12 + Fire Ball + Flame Surge + Fire Penetration

Alright, so I've managed to get what I've been wanting to get for ages! Snakebites with the vaal crafted implicit "socketed gems are supported by level 12 cast on crit." This single target still works in a 4 link, taking out fire pen. It's just if you manage to get this implicit on your gloves or helmet, it's pretty amazing.

Old Gem Setups
Frozen Castle
Kinetic Blast + GMP + Power Charge on Crit + Cast on Crit + Frost Wall + Arctic Breath/ Ball Lightning/ Ice Spear

First started off using Arctic Breath, then Ball Lightning for a long time. Now testing with Ice Spear and really loving it. The pierce, crit, explosion synergy is just so good! More info in the Skill Mechanics drop down below.
Currently using a level 13 Ice Spear, looking forward to how it performs at higher levels.

Lightning Ripper (yes including myself)
Kinetic Blast + GMP + Cast on Crit + Ball Lightning + Arc + Spark

Alternatives

Like with most CoC stuff, you can take out and replace whatever damage gem you like for something you more prefer. Spark or even Arc can be traded out for Arctic Breath and Ice Spear. I've just been trying to stick with the Lightning theme since I've gone ahead and started with it.

Also Barrage can be used as the proc skill alternatively, especially if you're expecting fights against a single target in an area with little to no walls.





Other Gem Setups

Leveling Gem Setup
Kinetic Blast + GMP + Faster Attacks/Pierce (depending on mob group size)

Heralds
Herald of Thunder + Herald of Ice + Curse on Hit + Assassin's Mark

First off, the shattered pop damage from Herald of Ice does apply curse on hit.
These heralds add a little bit of damage to everything, our KB, our spells etc.
They also apply Assassin's Mark very easily and this lets us keep up power charges well.

Old Herald of Thunder setup
Herald of Thunder
Herals of Thunder + Curse on Hit + Assassin's Mark/ Conductivity + Mana Leech/ Culling
(Assassin's Mark when I'm too lazy to power siphon regularly for power charges)

Mana Leech is nice for when you run out of mana and saves you having to default attack to get the mana back. Culling is just nice. Alternatively your Ice Golem in here would work, cursing on hit



Frenzy
Frenzy + Faster Attacks + Power Charge on Critical + Added Lightning Damage

Nice simple single target dps and way to stack charges

Power Siphon
Power Siphon + Greater Multiple Projectiles + Faster Attacks + Power Charge on Critical

After A couple volleys of Kinetic Blast and you see your Ball Lightning fly off, you can throw a few Power Siphons out to pick up power charges. The Ball will kill them shortly and still grant charges even if Power Siphon is not the spell to execute.

Lightning Warp
Lightning Warp + Less Duration + Faster Casting
Fast, long ranged mobility skill. Always useful, even more useful with screens full of ice.

Wrath Aura, flat added lightning damage to our Kinetic Blast and it's AoEs. 20% added damage to all our lightning abilities.

Blood Rage, keeps our frenzy charges up without having to frenzy, and grants us some attack speed and life steal.

Summon Ice Golem, more crits and accuracy.

Flame Dash
Flame Dash+Faster Casting+Blood Rage

Blood Rage in this link just to make it a little nicer when casting, and have to put that gem somewhere.



Leveling


This wand is pretty much the only thing you'll ever need. No offensive stat nodes in the passive tree needed. Just resistances in gear, hell, you could probably get to Cruel Act 3 naked but this wand. Works just too well with Kinetic Blast.
Kinetic Blast + LMP/GMP (AoE unaffected by damage reduction) + Faster Attacks/Pierce/Power Charge on Crit



Skill Mechanics

Basics of Kinetic Blast Shotgunning

Kinetic Blast creates four AoE blasts around the target hit. These appear to be random and never hits that primary target if it is stationary. Kinetic Blast can shotgun, unique shotgunning like with Tornado Shot, is one of my favorite mechanics in the game. A mob next to the primary target can get hit by one of the extra projectiles from LMP or GMP. The AoE explosion can hit the Primary target thus resulting in twice the damage from a single attack.

Wall Shotgunning

Kinetic Blast loves walls, kite a mob to close to a wall and start hitting both the target and the wall for much delicious shotgunning. You just have to find the sweet-spot distance between the wall and the mob, you can try adjusting your positioning and angle of the projectiles for best effect. This works great for both packs of mobs and single target. You can carry around a Vaal Lightning Warp to help you do this.

Frost Wall Shotgunning

What do you do when there is no wall nearby and you have to deal with a single target mob? Create one yourself. I don't recommend casting it yourself, however, cast from a spell totem might suffice.

What I really want to get to is, Frost Wall cast through Cast on Crit. This does multiple things.

1. Creates a wall for the Kinetic Blast projectile to collide with and create an AoE to hit the target.
2. Defense, keeping mobs constantly away from you makes it pretty safe.
3. Knock-back, Frost Wall pushes the monsters back creating a knock-back effect without the need of a Knockback gem and also the benefits of all of the above. Monsters knocked back can get hit by the AoE from the projectile they were hit by, thus maximizing the shotgunning effect even further.

Pierce

Pierce is a great stat to this build, as projectiles from Kinetic Blast can pierce through multiple mobs, and it does create AoE blasts from every mob it pierces and hits.

Frost Wall 2.0
100% Pierce chance gained through the passives tree and the support gem used to be an amazing combination with Frost Wall. However with the 2.0 Update, Frost Wall registers as one single large mob rather than a row of many small ones. Thus only possibly blocking one projectile. With CoC we should have enough Frost Walls that this is still useful.

However, since 2.0 we do NOT want 100% pierce chance, as when a Kinetic Blast projectile pierces through Frost Wall, rather than creating the usually AoE explosions it creates a single delayed medium sized AoE behind the Frost Wall.

Instead, we want some of our projectiles to collide with the frost wall to create the AoE hitting mobs, and some to go through the frost wall to hit them mobs themselves. In my opinion the 30% from the Passives skill tree and a lot of attack speed is enough to achieve this.

Reflect

With Frost Wall and Kinetic Blast setup, reflect does not effect us. However any of the other setups, it'll... almost definitely always one-shot you. So Frost-Blast combo is the safest option. If you want pure clear speeds, Arc and etc is the way to go.

Ice Spear vs Lightning Ball/ Arctic Breath

Arctic Breath crashes against the Frost Walls so does not penetrate far with only 40% Pierce.
I've used Ball Lightning for a long time, thought it would work well with my wrath aura, my lightning damage wand and with the knock-back effect of the Frost Walls. But, started testing with Ice Spear and have been loving it! Ice Spear 100% pierces any and all Frost Walls close by, and explodes on impact with mobs and Frost Walls at a fair distance away. With the 600% increased Crit Chance it helps us generate more power charges for more Frost Walls!



Skill Tree

35 Points Skill Tree

We have access to lots of Life Nodes early on
https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAwIAm42v6wgu7YMZjgBe037veu4Oo4oj9k2SjX0wfFFHjb_UIwW16NabJjIBshnPeud0bWw2PZ2qbIxirA-rFr8mlWHiVUu1SA==

57 Points Skill Tree

This part of the build is slow, we're just trying to get to all of our main damage nodes now
https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAwIAm42v6wgu7YMZjgBe037veu4Oo4oj9k2SjX0wfFFHjb_UIwW16NabJjIBshnPeud0bWw2PZ2qbIxirA-rFr8mlWHiVUu1SIw28-oqC3BSidNw1V3yDkgRln_GoqPB85Ugaxe86sBUCPRqQ4IeFLAtH0yz

83 Points Skill Tree

Pick up our Pierce Chance and then Crit Crit Crit all the crit you can get.
https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAwIAm42v6wgu7YMZjgBe037veu4Oo4oj9k2SjX0wfFFHjb_UIwW16NabJjIBshnPeud0bWw2PZ2qbIxirA-rFr8mlWHiVUu1SIw28-oqC3BSidNw1V3yDkgRln_GoqPB85Ugaxe86sBUCPRqQ4IeFLAtH0yz51Qk_Zphx8rJRL7uP3Ns5wmgznD25yBuUDAN0WND7LCMC7l8wuwqW3n2QzZS7H4zpJFVhaXLPs-95g==

115 Points Skill Tree

And finally to pick up on lightning or respective element damage nodes and any more life if you want it.
https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAwIAm42v6wgu7YMZjgBe037veu4Oo4oj9k2SjX0wfFFHjb_UIwW16NabJjIBshnPeud0bWw2PZ2qbIxirA-rFr8mlWHiVUu1SIw28-oqC3BSidNw1V3yDkgRln_GoqPB85Ugaxe86sBUCPRqQ4IeFLAtH0yz51Qk_Zphx8rJRL7uP3Ns5wmgznD25yBuUDAN0WND7LCMC7l8wuwqW3n2QzZS7H4zpJFVhaXLPs-95gjUTC0RD36vjRngEtlf3YwwW6yXlYcdgwQHg9tVxjpYBx6VLvDVSVH8xQ2Nh3ZnoOOfSn3_3mHrelM=


[b]New Current Skill Tree[/b]

https://www.pathofexile.com/fullscreen-passive-skill-tree/AAAAAwIBm42v6wgu7YMZjgBe037veu4Oo4oj9k2SjX0wfFFHPs-95jfU7T_nVCT9_96Nv9QjMHHdqEt4OkIFtejW53RtbBa_JpVh4lVLjDYDHh9BBiO1SPPqKgtwUonTcNVd8g5IEZYN0WNDNj2dqmyMYqxVhaXLf8aio1F0jummmcHzlSAtH0yzBAeD21XGIG5QMIIeFLCaYcfKyUS-7j9zbOcJoM5w9ufBxfrv_GRKmqIEBx6VLvDVSVHbXg==

We got some Frenzy Charges and respec'd to better suit our current gem setups





This build relies on high crit chance and attack speed to get off ass many procs of CoC as possible. Takes a long time to get going but luckily our leveling doesn't take too long as Kinetic Blast clears very fast. Extra Life nodes can be picked up early for extra defences.

I'm not that big of a fan of the projectile damage nodes for this build, as the shotgunning AoE is what really interests me. But A projectile damage alternative can be played, especially if you link Arctic Breath and Ice Spear to CoC.
Bandits

Oak - Life
Kraityn - Attack Speed
Alira - Power Charge



Gear

Wand

We want high attack speed and local crit chance. The best bases are Imbued Wands and Prophecy Wands. Other useful stats to use are spell damage and added damage to spells.

Sometimes I like to switch out to all lightning abilities and even dual wield for maximum damage. But having to make up for lost resistances with an amulet.


Unique Wands


The Twyzel was our leveling wand, it's a cheap option and can still be very relevant.
The Piscator's Vigil is a mid priced wand, better Rare wands can be bought at the same price. I keep this wand in my alternative weapon slot for Physical Reflect maps.




6L works wonders, a Tabula Rasa works just as well.
A Voll's Protector is even better for this build. Saves the slot for Power Charge on Crit with it's unique 100% chance. So both offensively and perhaps even defensively stronger as more frost walls can be created and faster. A 6L Voll's will give you the highest DPS option.

However, this build works with a 5L just removing the Ball lightning and working off the shotgunning effect of Kinetic Blast and rapid Frost Wall procs which do decent damage after the buffs and our Auras/Heralds.


Key to our survivability and mana sustain. Specing mana leech nodes or getting mana on hit jewels may be an alternative. And once the build gets rolling a mana flask can also be carried and with the Surgeon's mod should always be up and be spamable.

Snakebite,
SNAKEBITESNAKEBITESNAKEBITE

I'm in love with this unique, and it has become even more accessible in this expansion. I personally have three with different gem setups, but that's just me.
The Frenzy changes are just really fun. The extra damage per charge also benefits our spells and the attack speed for more Kinetic Blasts, what is not to love?

Got new Snakebites!

Love these to bits! Gives me a 5link option with wands to specialize for a single target dps skill. And now that we have gotten the extra frenzy charges from the skill tree, this item is super nice. Just a little hard to keep up the charges, haha. Can spec more increased duration into the skill tree if this is a problem.


Resistance Gear
pretty much the rest of our gear is where we're going to pick up our resistances and life. This may be expensive because of the Thief's Torment taking up two of our Ring slots.
A 5L or 6L Queen of the Forest is very lovely too, works very well with all the evasion we have. Alternatively you can pick up some Energy Shield and the Eldritch Battery node for more mana help.

[spoiler@=" Old Gear"]


I managed to get my hands on a +1 Frenzy amulet which has great synergy with Snakebite

But there are other options for amulets such as for more crit chance and resistance rares or

[/spoiler]


Flasks


Old



Mapping

Started mapping from level 63 with the Sage Wand
then from 68 leveled to 76 in a day doing 68-73 maps

When doing maps solo you can play the frozen castle setup with Frost Wall and either Arctic Breath or Ball Lightning, this is much safer as it constantly keeps mobs at a distance from you. It also gives reliable single target damage with Kinetic Blast

The Lightning Ripper gives a faster clear speed but it much more fragile.

In parties, well.
Frost walls everywhere, isn't it just the best? haha
It's highly recommended to only play the Lightning Ripper in parties with minor exceptions.




This is still a build in progress, any and all advice would be much appreciated!
Much ♥
Sora
Last edited by Sorawr on Jul 31, 2015, 8:28:32 PM

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