[2.1.x]Lightning Blades - Elemental Crit Frost Blades Build - Talisman SC/HC Viable

* High clear speed
* Good damage on a 4L
* Budget viable up to like tier 10 maps
* Really high AOE
* Can be played both physical and elemental equally effective
* Scales amazingly with good gear

* Needs to use another single target skill due to unreliable single target damage
* Best as a crit build so to scale effectively and do highest tier maps needs a lot of currency
* Highly mechanically dependant, takes time to get used to max range and how to position ourself properly, can't mindlessly spam like with Spectral throw

Terrace

Excuse the potato quality, i have shitty dated PC and bad upload speed

More videos are coming soon, i'm currently limited by map drop RNG but i'd like to upload some tier 10+ maps as soon as possible

I skipped the Boss because i think it's too much hassle for my liking, will try him out later to see how it goes

Standard - random rare Plateau with 6L and good gear

Here's a video with 6L and standard level gear to showcase the potential Frost blades have even in higher tier maps, i also tried to click on monsters less and make it auto-target from range to show what i talk about further down in my notes

Dark Forest

Finally managed to record in HD although it crashed my PC twice before pulling it of and nearly crashed it this map, upload also took 3 hours, need to mess with OBS more to find a sweetspot between quality and size

Canyon

bad quality but at least it didn't take hours to upload :D

Arid Lake

random rare Arid Lake

* Frost blades - - Multistrike - WED - Added Lightning - Fork/Faster Attacks - Lightning pen

* SIngle target setup is something to be debated about, there are 2 options and i'll talk about both here:

Molten strike - Multistrike - Lightning Pen/Added Lightning - WED

this is the most consistent setup but has a drawback of adding a gem with 155 str requirement into the mix which puts a strain on your gear and you have to sacrifice either passive points or DPS stats in favour of atrributes, if you manage to get GG gear with all the necessary attribute rolls this is the prefered setup

Vaal Lightning strike- Multistrike - WED - Lightning Pen/Added Lightning

This is the "attribute light" setup that has higher potential damage but with less consistent use because of the soul cost, i actually came to like this setup more even with the soul cost downside because i chose Faster attacks as one of my links with Frostblades so my single target is enough with Frost Blades for "average" rare monsters, i only use Vaal LS for bosses, it was same with Molten strike and i kinda prefer it because it offers up so much gear potential now that i don't have to worry about attributes


* Whirling blades - Ice golem - Faster attacks - Fortify

* Curse on hit - Wrath - Herald of ice - Assassins mark

* Cast When damage taken setup can vary a lot depending on your preference, after some testing i came to like the first one a bit more:


1) Cast when damage taken(lvl 10 or under) - Immortal call (lvl1)- Increased duration

2) Cast When damage taken(lvl 10-15) - Immortal call - Enfeeble

3) Cast When damage taken(lvl 20) - Ice golem - Enfeeble (run this setup if going Vaal Grace)


* Your last setup should include Vaal Haste and any other utility skill you like:

1) Vaal Haste - Blood Rage - Increased Duration (this is prefered if goinf Vaal LS for single target

2) Vaal Grace - Vaal Haste - Increased duration

3) Vaal Haste - Enfeeble - Increased Duration

4) Vaal Haste - Temp chains - Increased duration

Seeing as I intend to keep this build as work in progress i'm constantly testing new setups and discovering new possibilities

I have spent some time testing all the potential 6L gems on standard in tier 12 and tier 13 maps

So far Chain has proven as only good vs large white packs, and the build has no issues with those packs, chain or no chain, chain just makes them die 0.1 sec faster which is negligible, as a result it severely nerfs damage vs smaller packs, strays and blue packs

Faster Attacks vs Fork is a debate to be had, and even myself can't decide which is better, fork gives improved range and more offscreening but faster attacks increases single target and damage vs blue packs so much more, i find myself using moltenstrike exclusively for bosses and rares that have multiple damage reduction mods, for everything else Frost blads-Faster attacks combo proves to be enough single target

It also reduced the animation time of multistrike and smoothens the build mechanically which is something i'm starting to like very much, i will continue with faster attacks from now on and wait to see how it performs in Talisman league, i don't want to be spending too much time in standard because the gear i have there is quite unrealistic for early stages of new leagues for which i intend this build to be

Standard will serve only as a sort of a Sandbox test arena

I leveled all kinds of different ways since it was very start of the league but the best way would probably be something like this:

Dual wands + EK + Fire trap until lvl 15-20

Then switch to Frostblades + WED and then FB-WED-Multistrike-Added Lightning with Shiversting->Geofris>Rigvald's charge->Terminus Est

Use Elreon jewelry, 3 pieces will be enough to have 0 mana cost even on a 4L

Once you hit around lvl 60-65 and get some efficient crit nodes you can find yourself a 1c dagger with like 150 ele dmg, 1.7AS and 8%+ crit

that will be enough to finish merciless and get you into maps

Other viable option is leveling with Bow skills(tornado shot, shrapnel shot etc.) you take all the projectile nodes early one anyways so it doesn't matter which projectile attack you use

I actually did it this way since i found an amazing bow at lvl 35 which lasted me till merciless ledge

Jewels can help us mitigate lack of crit chance on the tree(340% which is kinda low for a crit based build

Ideal jewel would have any combination of following rolls in order of priority(IMO):

- %max life
- crit chance with melee weapons
- crit chance with cold skills
- crit chance with elemental skills
- projectile damage
- any high attack speed roll(5%+)
- critical multiplier

for example myfavourite would be a viridian jewel with following rolls:

7% max life
18% crit chance with one handed weapons
12% projectile damage
14% crit chance with elemental skills

3 jewels like that, maligaro's, diamond rings, crit on amulet, golem bonus and 5 power charges would bring you to 82-85% crit chance depending on rolls with 8.5% base dagger(imperial skean)

85% crit chance with 10 attacks per second is absolutely insane

it will probably be hard to find such jewels so you'll only realistically be able to find a combination of 2 or 3 good rolls, imo dropping projectile damage is the best since we already get so much on the tree

If you play on HC you should definitely take all the nearby life nodes much earlier than me, you can get up to 182% life with my tree and not lose much if any damage nodes by ~lvl 85, you also get 3 jewel slots you can fill with another ~20% life which can bring you to respectable life levels even for HC standards

There is the issue of Evasion, Acrobatics and it's usefulness in HC scenario, if you don't like that route you can go IR and drop wrath and run Grace instead, your damage would still be good, especially with a 5L or a 6L and i might even try it myself in SC

Taste of hate is a must IMO these days and if you choose IR route Rumi's concoction becomes a good mini taste of hate until you can afford it

Belly of the beast also becomes a decent option in an IR build which would bring you up to 230%+ life

I have recently seen a lot of claims that frost blades is a bad skill because you have to click on an enemy and that it's too clunky to use and i heavily disagree

When you add Multistrike it is actually possible to pre-cast it and as long as the mobs are in range, multistrike will target them for you, all you lose is the damage of the first hit which is negligable compared to the safety you can get from attacking from range

It does take some time to get used to exact range needed to pull that off and it's not necessary to do so in most situations except when meeting dangerous mobs or volatile blood rares

It's a more mechanically demanding skill but that doesn't make it bad, it offers 122% base damage effectiveness and doesn't need any aoe increasing gems that would add a less multiplier, only fork is good for it and fork gives only 12% less damage at lvl 20, which makes it negligible compared to extra projectiles it gives

it also shoots 8 projectiles that cover a lot of area, it has so many gem slots to add for all the multipliers in the world and offers far better damage and coverage compared to spectral throw or lightning strike which are other Pseudo-melee projectile based attacks

Also when looking and deciding what gives you more damage, disregard the tooltip dps and just look at the damage the projectiles do in the tooltip, tooltip DPS stat includes melee hit which isn't what we're trying to scale here and can be misleading

1.0
- Updated gem slots to reflect on my testing with fork, fork prove to be a really solid choice and gives massive range

- As a result Herald of Thunder usefulness for providing charges dissappeared and i removed Herald of Thunder from the build, damage it gives is negligible

- Turns out we can sustain on mana with only 0.4% leech

- Reflected the changes in the passive tree's both for leveling and endgame

1.1 Updated gear

1.2 Added Faster attacks as a very viable support and added a section that explains all different gem setups

1.3 added jewel section

1.4 Updated gear

1.5 Added more videos

1.6. Updated gear

1.7 Added leveling section

1.8. Added Various possible gem setups for CWDT and for single target damage

1.9. Updated gear