[2.3] Valhan's Crit Ele Frost Blades Inquisitor (HC) [Yes, Frostblades is good]

[2.3] Valhan's Crit Ele Frost Blades Inquisitor (HC)



Opening Thoughts

This build is for HARDCORE. I'm not shooting for the highest softcore dps possible. Just an FYI.

I'll start off by saying that this build is UNDER CONSTRUCTION! This is also my first build so I apologize if I'm not 100% clear on something and I will be glad to reply to any and all questions posted here.

OKAY, so...

This build idea originated from Foxtactic's Crunchy Frost Blades Ninja build listed here on the templar forum. I originally played his build up until about lvl 76 and then decided that there is no need to duel wield this build at all. From level 70 to 91(current level) I have been amazed at how well Frost Blades scales at higher levels. It takes a little bit of monetary investment to get yours to my level, however, I also do not have a 6 link and the thought of how much damage this would do with an Added Cold Damage linked up sickens me.

When Frost Blades begins to come to life you start to appreciate the power of the free chain and fork integrated into the skill. Although this isn't the most viable single target ability I have found that with the correct scaling and ascendancy nodes it performs perfectly fine... This eliminated the need for hotswapping as is used in fox's build.

If you are at all unsure about this build because it uses an otherwise considered 'poo poo' skill then you will just have to take my word for it and watch the clips that I have posted below. This is not a build to pass over. It's also extremely enjoyable and will keep you hooked to the crunch until the very end.

That being said, lets get onto the specifics.

Pros/Cons

Pros
-High DPS / Super Fast Clear Speed
-High Mobility
-Everything gets Shocked, Frozen, and Ignited
-Good Survival (HC Viable)
-Really fun, haven't gotten bored of it (cough cough pizzablast)
-Can chain around corners or into dangerous rooms without much hazzard

Cons
-Doesn't work well until you have a 5-link and are lvl ~70+ (But then its fantastic)
-Can't do elemental reflect maps (Unless vaal pact)
-If you dont choose to go vaal pact single reflect mobs must be approached with caution (I have no problem with this. Vaal Pact is 1 node away but it will make blood rage less enjoyable)
-Although pretty tanky for an evasion character - still not as tanky as an Earthquake marauder. (I guess this is a con)

The majority of the cons can be fixed with Atziri's Acuity - if you're a rich man.

Videos
Arid Lake Run
http://plays.tv/s/Kr5upWWw8nl8

Orchard + Boss
http://plays.tv/s/Kr5ukF6cEn6n

More to come!

Ascendancy
Inquistor. This has some fantastic crit nodes to help the fact that you're a goddamn crit no-pants. It also gives you 100% ele penetration on crit strikes making resistances completely a thing of the past for you. This also helps you freeze literally everything you crit.

Furthermore, we also pick up Augury of Penitence, which has an amazing synergy with the Lightning Coil. (Nearby enemies deal 8% less elemental damage) This makes us pretty freaken tanky against phys damage as well as elemental.

This is literally the only reason we are a Templar. (Sorry Templar fan boys)



Which nodes to get in order:

Righteous Providence:
100% increased Critical Strike Chance against Enemies that are affected by no Elemental Status Ailments
+45% to Critical Strike Multiplier against Enemies that are affected by Elemental Status Ailments
(This is good in all situations, we affect just about everything with ele status and value the extra crit on the first hit before applying them)

Inevitable Judgement:
Critical Strikes ignore Enemy Elemental Resistances
Non-Critical Strikes penetrates 10% of Enemy Elemental Resistances
(This is the bread and butter of Inquisitor. This enables the whole build to happen IMO)

Augury of Penitence:
Nearby Enemies deal 8% less Elemental Damage
Nearby Enemies take 16% increased Elemental Damage
(This coupled with the lightning coil is bonkers... Not to mention you're getting damage in the same node)

As for your uber lab. there's really no stand out choice. I'd probably go Instruments of Virtue for the attack speed. The choice is up to you. Uber lab does not impact this build much. So much so to the point where I haven't even bothered.


This all being said I see no greater benefit for frost blades from any other ascendancy. This is just a nuts combo.

Gem Links / Gear Explanation

I should first state that I am only running a 5-link at the moment and some of my gem set-ups are not perminent. What you link in the helmet is up to you, I just haven't been able to chrome mine appropriately yet ;D. This isn't meant to be the holy bible of gear for this build as there are many options but this is what I have with my budget and has been working well for me.

Also, because we use a rapier - our weapon's native crit chance is going to be low and the attack speed will be high. This is why we run Increased Critical Strikes rather than Increased Critical Damage. ICS adds FLAT CRIT to our weapon which makes this viable. You could literally never replace this gem nor would you want to.


Chest:


Gearing: I would have to reccomend the lightning coil here for obvious reasons. It saves us from getting 1 shot from phys damage slipping through our evasion/dodge.
Gem Setup:
Order of priority goes Frost Blades -> Multistrike -> Increased Crit Strikes -> Faster Attacks -> WED
If you have a 6-link I'd either go Added Cold/Added Lightning/Or Crit Multi. Personally i'd go added cold because we're not exactly looking for more damage so much as more freeze potential (With Inquisitor you are pretty much already freeze-f***ing everying. Added cold may seal the deal on bosses as well as being an extremely easy color to get on a Lightning Coil).

Boots:

Gearing: Like most of our gear we're aiming to get high Evasion. I had plenty of res already so I opted to find one with chaos res. Movement speed is fairly irrelevant with the attack speed of our whirling blades. This honestly is one of my weaker pieces but because of it I have around 30% chaos res... which is always nice to have ;D
Gem Setup:
Whirling Blades -> Fortify -> Faster Attacks -> Blood Magic
This is a pretty required link as an evasion character... We also run a small mana pool because we're elemental based and love our auras so blood magic is a must.

Gloves

Gearing: Mixing a little armor into your build isnt the worst idea. I have around 10% phys reduction on top of my evasion and dodge. This coupled with the lightning coil does make a bit of a difference. Besides, who wants to hit those diminishing returns on evasion ;D. This is also convenient for running the CWDT setup as they're all red.
Gem Setup:
CWDT -> Immortal Call -> Increased Duration
These are the important things to have in here. This is a requirement on most HC builds these days so I wont spend to much time here. The important thing to note here is that I have my Herald of Thunder(EDIT: This should be swapped with wrath. This was a mistake I made when putting all my gems back in. When linked in here Herald of Thunder uses increased duration and reserves more mana. We dont want that) in here just because I had nowhere else to put it. There are a few things that could fill this slot and be more helpful but i'll leave that to your creativity ;D

Helmet:

Gearing: High Evasion + life + res. Nothing out of the ordinary here.
Gem Setup:
I'm sure theres a million things I could put here. I was considering a second CWDT loop but have not been able to chrome 3 reds onto it. So for now it holds just random utility gems. You can do what you want here. I've also skinned the bringer of rain on here, although this will not help your game play at all it WILL go down well with the ladies of Wraeclast. Also worth mentioning that this enchant does not help the build at all >=|

Shield:

Gearing: Eva + life + res.
Gem Setup:
Herald of Ice + Curse on Hit + Assassin's Mark
This is used to generate our power charges. It does a really good job at it while not overwriting curses in a party. We shatter everything so this works fine.

We'll cover my weapon and rings in the damage section below.

Weapon + jewelry (this is where we get the deeps baby)

I cannot stress enough how important of a mod Increased Elemental Damage with Weapons is for this or any other weapon elemental build. Getting all my jewelry to have this mod was the single most deciding factor in turning this skill from crap into gold. This is quite possibly the most expensive part of the whole ordeal.



I keep my Blood Rage and Vaal Grace in here just to hold them for now. Once again, what you want to do with this is up to you but I haven't needed to worry about this.

My weapon is pretty good but its nowhere near the best. The fact that a weapon can get better than this just illustrates how hard you can hit when fully geared. The chance to cause bleeding does nothing for us and it's bad luck that this fine ele crit rapier was rolled on this troll base item. The most ideal thing would be for the implicit to be Incrased Critical Strike Multiplier.

I also picked up chaos res on my amulet because I believe its important to have at least 30% chaos res on any build (excluding ci)

Stats

DPS: I'm not going to humor the DPS tooltip debate as it's almost always incorrect. I have about 80k tooltip but this honestly is nowhere near the damage when things begin to get shocked and chains start hitting home.
Life: ~6k - Could be higher if needed (I found this to be plenty on a high evasion/dodge character.
Evasion: ~10k
Dodge: 40% Attack - 30% Spell - Much more when Vaal Grace is running.
Armor: Works out to be about 10% phys mitigation with my gear. Which is pretty good with acro. That 10% goes a long way on top of a lightning coil.
Other CWDT+Immortal call setup as usual. Lightning coil + Inquisitor Ascendancy = very tanky. With how fast you can whirling blades you can pretty much always have Fortify up. Which does a lot for your defensive set.

Although 6k life doesn't seem like a lot I RARELY ever get hit that hard. Like any evasion character, especially on hardcore, your survival is based on your ability to read mods on packs and navigate appropriately.

Auras

We have picked up Charisma from the passive tree to add some damage as well as to allow for a larger use-able mana pool. This is the only node required in auras as it gives us just enough mana for mana leech from the tree to do it's thing.

Herald of Thunder - We use this to add flat lightning damage resulting in pretty high shock potential. Which in turn increases the potential for freezing.

Herald of Ice - Freeze stuff, explode stuff, generate our power charges.

Wrath - Scales well with Herald of Thunder. Running both of these with 100% res pen gives us an almost certain shock.

Vaal Grace - SO IMPORTANT. You should use this when encountering reflect mobs (unless you go the vaal pact route) and also whenever fighting a boss. Vaal grace should probably be linked with increased duration but I haven't gotten there yet. If you've scaled your damage appropriately then you can kill almost any boss before Vaal Grace wears off making it super safe.

Specific Links are listed in more detail under the section above "Gem Links / Gear Explanation"

Jewels

My build currently only has 3 jewel slots. This may change and you can certainly go up to 5 or more very easily but I haven't needed to. Everything in moderation!

Here's my priority on jewels.
Life -> Attack Speed -> Crit Multi -> Crit Chance.

The varity of jewels out there makes me actually posting mine kinda pointless. For buying them i'd suggest a poe.trade search for a jewel with your starting criteria as at least 6% increased life. Then search for the jewels that have one or more of the aforementioned mods.


Bandits

Oak -> Kraityn -> Kraityn
(We only pick 1 frenzy charge up from the tree giving us a total of 5 charges. I see no need for getting more really so that 1 free one really helps us juggle our passive tree)

Leveling / Passive Tree

Don't use Frost Blades until you have a 5-link and are around lvl 70+. This is the best advice I can give for you not having a bad time with this build. Seriously, don't do it.

I leveled using 2 life sprigs and freezing pulse. Freezing pulse has gotten a lot better and IMO it's better than orb of storms + spark for leveling. You will not be getting many damage nodes from the tree for a while so you don't have to worry about the fact that you're a melee/attack character casting a spell until it's time to switch. You can level the passive tree any which way you deem fit however I have included an incremental build below for those who don't want to think about it ;D.

20 Skill Point Build:
http://tinyurl.com/zxsz5a4
Goal here is to get the hell out of the Templar start while picking up life along the way.

50 Skill Point Build:
http://tinyurl.com/z4eucra
Picking up life & mana leech from the tree should remove all need for Elreon jewelry and sustain your mana from now until the end of the game.

80 Skill Point Build:
http://tinyurl.com/z26snlh
This is a rough time for this build. This is when you start grabbing crit nodes, the acrobactics wheel, the elemental damage wheel between ranger and duelist, and sword crit. Somewhere in this time frame you should be looking for a good ele sword and evasion gear. As well as a 5 link. None of this is hard as it sounds although if this is your first character in the league or you are broke it may prove difficult.

Final Build + Ascendancy Points:
http://tinyurl.com/z3pfwou
I have a random 10 int node because I need to gain some int on my gear before removing this. I'd probably just disregard that point but I figured i'd post it as such anyway. Honestly, once you get to lvl 90 you can pretty much make small tweaks here and there to suit your gear setup.

At a Glance

Here's everything I used dumped into 1 spoiler. If you're wondering why some of my slots are empty on armor then I suggest you actually read the build. (Obviously they're not supposed to be like that ^_^)


Last edited by valhanrex on Jun 28, 2016, 6:19:34 PM
Last bumped on Sep 3, 2016, 11:34:31 AM
Reserved for future content
Looks good, build seems solid.

Any thoughts about going for either dual wield for more crit with Twin Terrors? Guessing at the moment that with your build / gear that dual wield will just result in less defenses and a little more dps.
(Just saw that you had written the reason to why your not dualwielding in your post ^^)

Or Touch of Anguish? Touch of Anguish doesn't really fit the Inquisitor Ascendancy though.
Last edited by Zephon on Jun 28, 2016, 7:36:15 AM
"
Zephon wrote:
Looks good, build seems solid.

Any thoughts about going for either dual wield for more crit with Twin Terrors? Guessing at the moment that with your build / gear that dual wield will just result in less defenses and a little more dps.
(Just saw that you had written the reason to why your not dualwielding in your post ^^)

Or Touch of Anguish? Touch of Anguish doesn't really fit the Inquisitor Ascendancy though.


Hey, thanks for the reply!

To answer your question there are only a few things that we benefit from while dual wielding. These are the following.

10% more attack speed
15% additional chance to block
20% more physical attack damage


as listed here http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Dual_wielding

Since we are not interested in scaling the physical damage of the ability so much so as just using it as a vessel for chain/fork the last stat matters little. As for the block, we pick up more than 15% while using a shield and its all halved by acrobatics anyway. The only useful bonus here is the more attack speed. This is nice and all except for the fact that you lose a huge amount of evasion/res/life by not using a shield and we would have to buy 2 expensive rapiers as opposed to one. Then you will alternate your attacks with each rapier resulting in uneven damage unless you have pretty much the same rapier in each hand.

As for the twin terrors node. Fox's original build used this wheel and I presume most of the reason he went dual wield was to get it. However, a quick trip to the left of the vaal pact area grabs us like 85% crit chance (which is pretty close to what we'd get from twin terrors) as well as access to harrier (attack speed makeup for not being dual wield). Additionally, we pickup the attack speed and accuracy nodes to the right ranger which also helps makeup for the loss of dual wield attack speed. I found that a small amount of accuracy on this build, with its high attackspeed, makes the play much smoother.

As for the Touch of Anguish, where its mechanic is cool and potential useful it suffers from 3 major drawbacks. Firstly, it has very little damage compared to a good ele rapier, about half of what we'd expect. Second, the attack speed is very low which is not ideal for a crit templar in general. And last, it is a claw. The problem with using claws or most weapons with frost blades is that the range of the weapon greatly determines the range of the initial spike shooting out from the attacker (which then procs the chain/fork). Thrusting swords, such as rapiers, have a range of 7. Claws only have a range of 5 (the second lowest right behind unarmed). Rapiers are tied with the longest melee range with two handed axes... This says a lot.

The range is the big deal here with this skill. I've tried it with daggers and claws before and thats when I thought the skill sucked. Throw on a good rapier, and bam, it appears as a tier 1 skill.

More on this mechanic can be found here http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Range.

Hope I answered your questions!
Last edited by valhanrex on Jun 28, 2016, 3:36:56 PM
Going left of vaal pact is 75 crit, not 85. Also, harrier does not make up for not dual wielding because it's 9% increased, whereas dual wielding gives 10% "more", which is multiplicative with all your attack speed.

I suppose you can use a shield, but you don't quite need one, and you lose a decent bit of dps. Especially since you can get both twin terrors and the crit left of vaal pact.
For try, for see, and for know.

This is a buff
"
Etherfire wrote:
Going left of vaal pact is 75 crit, not 85. Also, harrier does not make up for not dual wielding because it's 9% increased, whereas dual wielding gives 10% "more", which is multiplicative with all your attack speed.

I suppose you can use a shield, but you don't quite need one, and you lose a decent bit of dps. Especially since you can get both twin terrors and the crit left of vaal pact.


There comes a certain point where you do not need more DPS. Additionally, I didn't say that it completely made up for it. Picking up attack speed / accuracy nodes in addition to harrier helps ease the transition.

If this was a physical build I would be more inclined to agree with you however as an elemental build you are only utilizing one of the bonuses of dual wielding and sacrificing 100+ flat life, ~1000 evasion, and a whole lot of utility res that could free you up to get more chaos res or whatever you please from your other gear. Also, having a high evasion shield lets you work a little armor into the build and picks up some of the slack of you having a hybrid chest (coil).

In hardcore, this doesn't seem like an intelligent compromise for gaining some attack speed >.>

And yes, I was guessing about the crit increase as I didn't have it in front of me but busting my balls about 10% is silly especially considering it's all in my build guide.

As for "losing a decent bit of dps" its not enough dps to make or break anything. The difference between 10aps and 13 or so aps is silly unnoticeable. Also, you do not need the crit to the left of vaal pact and twin terrors as its just over the top. Even in the builds current state you will not notice much of a difference when you pick up a diamond shrine as opposed to your normal damage. Moderation is everything!

I should go on to say that I do not think that my build is better or worse than fox's. I'm simply positing my experience with the build and adapting it for HARDCORE. I am not interested in scrubcore in the slightest so any information supporting a better softcore build is not what I'm after.
Last edited by valhanrex on Jun 28, 2016, 6:19:51 PM
I'm just wondering what your crit chance is because i'm thinking of applying the same kind of idea, but on spectral throw
IGN:WitchSummonerz
Last edited by fid1 on Jun 28, 2016, 11:05:08 PM
Is it Atziri viable (at least on SC)?

BTW, instead of wasting one point for 10 intelligence, you can pick Coldhearted Calculation near crit nodes at north. And what about Fangs of Frost at south? Also I wonder if it would worth to drop something and reach Vitality Void for better leech instead. Last but not least: which Golem? Seems like an Ice.
Last edited by Gosen on Jul 16, 2016, 3:05:04 PM
good build.. just thought I'd show my gears. Getting 73k dps with 6 frenzy charges and unleveled gems

why not go staff..disembowling, smashing strikes & double ur dps. ele rolls on staff are ridiculous. forget the fire ele damage on staff (focus on cold, phys, lightning,crit)...staff lightning mod easy to get to 250 top ele damage. use herald of ash. boots was just leveling item.

u have to remember to double quadruple dip into phys ele and dot. frost blades is probably the best herald of ash proliferation in game.



[quote="Mark_GGG"]damage modifiers don't can currently can't apply to degen.[/quote]
"Getting all life nods on passive tree should give additional survival, not the mandatory basic survival."
.\1.2/
..\3/
[img]http://ertaislament.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/pentavus.jpg[/img]
Last edited by leighferon on Jul 17, 2016, 1:21:07 AM

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