[2.3] [NOOB-Made] From-scratch PHC Pathfinder, Ice Shot, Flasks, Zero-budget

Hey :)

Build keywords
Flasks, Pathfinder, Ice Shot, No Budget, Cheap, Noob made, Hardcore, Armour, Iron Reflexes

Introduction
I just wanted to post my current build here, because I'd love to get some feedback, give my own regarding some mechanics in it, and why not even give some people ideas.
I don't currently have an enormous playtime on PHC or altogether, in fact this is my sole character so far in Prophecy, level 72 only and haven't run more than T3s with it yet. You have been warned, don't take anything for granted here.

Build concept
Ideally, an hardcore-tailored, starter, zero-budget, zero-respec flasks build. I wanted to get as far as I could in an unknown league without ripping, and without money, for a first char.
Running Ice Shot because i like it, it's got freeze, chill, AoE, works well with HoI, and there's some decent Ice nodes near the tree such as Flash Freeze, Fangs of Frost and Force of Nature that also gives elemental penetration.

Why a Pathfinder Flasks build ?
Sure, this is not reflect safe, altough you might not kill yourself due to the low DPS.
Sure, it requires using potions all the time.
Sure, it doesn't have the damage of a Deadeye.
But, eh, why not ? Potions have an insane heal rate early on, and a more than decent one later on once you buff them a bit. Flasks such as Basalt also grants good mitigation esp. against low hits that are already mitigated by armour partly. You can run them perma, why wouldn't you ?

Build pros
* Cheap, bought stuff as i leveled just using drops
* Freeze all the things!
* Flasks gameplay is a great change from the usual Leech Ranger builds

Build Cons
* Can't run reflect
* Low DPS -- It's still okay, but don't expect an insane clear speed at similar levels
* No single target mechanic because i'm just lazy, but you can stick Frenzy/Blast Rain
* Flasks without the Surgeon Ascendency passive likely won't do on anything too long running, unless you have a few adds to kill every now and then
* There's probably more.


Tree
Rather than giving a whole tree, i'm going to list Notables and explain why for each:
* Starter: Life/Evade, Heart of Oak, Ballistic Mastery
* Flasks: All you can get! This means, Druidic Rite, Primal Spirit, of course Herbalism, but also Profane Chemistry and Arcane Chemistry (Scion south). This is pretty much every flask node in the tree save for the Witch's.
* Crit: Lethality, King of the Hill. This is not a Crit build per se, but as i'll explain later on, you can get very decent crit chance with a perma-running Diamond Flask, so why not ?
* Survival: Constitution (big Life wheel) - the small nodes allow you to add Life on an as-needed basis as you level, Reflexes (big evade wheel), Celerity (Evade/Movespeed south-east).
* Iron Reflexes
* Bonus: Graceful Assault, because it gives damage, onslaught, and evade.


Ascendency
I find Nature's Boon to be a must for flasks auto-charge and the reduced Elemental Damage taken. Veteran Bowyer and Master Alchemist also combo well together with HoI, and give further elemental pen and damage to offset the rather weak base attack.


Stats at Lv70 with my crappy gear
* 4kHP with Belly of the Beast, 3.5K with a regular cheap life armour
* 7K armour flasks off, 10K flasks on for 80% mitigation with perma-basalt according to charsheet (remember, informative value only, that's not how it works)
* Nearing 0% Chaos Resist on Merciless provided you have a bit on your gear, and with perma Atziri's Promise
* 4K raw DPS (1/3 Physical 2/3 Elemental) with Hatred/HoI, 7K with crit, 8.5K with perma-Atziri's, estimating 11K with perma-Diamond, and more in burst with possible Onslaught/Frenzies.

Skills
Main combo: Ice Shot + WED + LMP + Increased Critical Damage
I'm using LMP rather than GMP because I don't have an actual single target attack.
Provided you get a 5th link, i find Slower Projectiles to be a good match as Flash Freeze will offset it, and 30% More Damage is great.

Support Herald: HoI + Ice Bite + Culling Strike + Item Rarity
This gives you a 30% reservation HoI instead of 25%, but that can cull, freeze more, generate frenzies, and then why not stick Item Rarity too since it has no Mana Multiplier ?
The Ice Bite/Culling combo doesn't seem to generate frenzies reliably until you reach bigger packs around Merciless though...

Golem: Ice Golem. It fits the theme, and boosts crit chance you're pretty low on already.

Auras: Hatred. Cold, cold, cold !

Movement: Blink Arrow + Faster Attacks. You can stick an additional Flame Dash for Labs and such.

Defensive Combo: It's probably a good idea to stick CoDT+Immortal Call+Duration somewhere, but so far just mashing flasks buttons was good enough. I've also seen a friend die a few days ago to a pack-oneshot in Poorjoy's Asylum, and i'm almost sure this wouldn't have happened if he realized how much damage he took without Immortal Call proc in the first place and just ran away.


Gear

Core Uniques: Bloodgrip. Never heard of it? It's an amulet that gives decent life, liferegen, and more importantly, 100% increased flask life recovery rate. This might not be the best choice, but this seemed like a coherent enough one for a build whose sole defensive mechanism is flasks. It's very cheap too.


Damage Uniques: As you might have noticed in the passives, there's very few actual damage multiplier on the build. How to reach half-decent damage without ruining yourself ?
My solution was Infractem + Drillneck. As a cheaper and simpler alternative, or in the meantime, you could run Death Harp's with a Crit Quiver and upgrade it yourself later on to a Death Opus.



Extra Uniques:
I've found Maligaros' Virtuosity gloves to be interesting to accentuate the Crit side, altough they're far from required and there's likely better choices. They're very cheap, but that's one more piece of gear without HP/Resists.



Finally, as there's rather low HP in tree, grabbing a Belly of the Beast if possible is great as it can offset that. It's not the best armour in the world, granted, but i find it very versatile... Especially since it even has flask life recovery rate and resists. What more to ask for ?



The belt
The belt is very important, because it's the only non-unique where you can get one of the most interesting survival stats in my opinion : Reduced Flask Charges Used !
Because it's not a widely used mod, it's possible to get a decent belt for a few chaos. Don't expect a large selection with good rolls of this one though, as it's definitely underrated.

Ideally you want to get either 19% or 20% in Reduced Flask Charges Used on your belt, because this will do -34/35% with the 15% of Arcane Chemistry, more than 33% so leaves one extra use on many flasks.



The rest
HP, Resists, the usual !



Flasks!
Wait, what about flasks? Well, that's certainly what I can give the most feedback on...
I've been running those so far:



You'd need an hybrid as there's no Mana Leech due to Infractem, requiring something that can fill the gap. Also, the anti-Freeze is not required once you have Master Alchemist. Otherwise, i've found having two life regen potions to be a bit overkill, and you might just get away with a single one (i solely use the life flask when the hybrid is about to run out of charges, such as extra tanky corrupting blood enemies).

The Basalt flask is a must, and will reach 10s duration thanks to added duration on the flask itself. This means you only need to use it once every two Diamond/Atziri, ensuring you always have extra charges as it eats a lot.

The Diamond flask might not seem like much with it's "Lucky" chance, but it's actually very strong. Assuming you get two chances at rolling your critical strikes, this turns 31% Crit Chance into 53%, letting you run Increased Critical Damage Support and freeze almost everything.

An Atziri's Promise is real cheap, about 1c, and gives extra damage the build is lacking in and chaos resist. Chaos is definitely an issue because of the relatively low HP, and having the Atziri's Promise helps offsets it. Prior, during labs or rushs, you can run a modded Quicksilver such as this one to ease leveling and moving between packs, reaching insane speed with onslaught+passives+flask.




Conclusion
Here's my noob take on the Pathfinder Flasks build.
Feel free to comment, give feedback, outright flame, or anything else :)
Thanks a lot for reading through the post !