[2.5] Fabulous Frank's Festive Fern Ascendant - Tulborn Freezing Pulse



INTRODUCTION



Welcome to Fabulous Frank's Festive Fern Ascendant,a variation of Fabulous Frank's Festive Fern Trickster . This build utilises Tulborn with Surgebinders to make Freezing Pulse great again!

VIDEO


Ascendant Variation Guide
Trickster Video Guide

OVERVIEW


Pros:

+ Relatively fast.
+ Versatile.
+ Makes Freezing Pulse great again.
+ Uses a few "weak" uniques to great benefit.


Cons:

- Resistance gearing can be tough.
- Not very good on isolated bosses without charges up.

DPS



SKILL TREE


Tree

Ascendancy Points:
Raider
Gives us onslaught at max frenzy charges as well as some extra chance at a frenzy charge on kill.

Berserker
Gives us a 1.1X multiplier on our damage as well as some extra leech when we've killed in the last 4 seconds.
We cannot take savage hits as CI so this has no effect on us.

Path of the Ranger
Saves us some more points between the Ranger and the Trickster, alternatively the 2 hybrid strength nodes can be taken or the 2 passive nodes we have access to.

Bandits:Kill, Kill, Alira


LEVELING


You may level using your preferred projectile based levelling method, I used Blade Vortex/Bladefall until level 70 when I transitioned to CI + Freezing pulse.


SKILL TREE EXPLANATION



We pick up Elemental Overload for extra damage(since we don't scale crit), We then grab Chaos Innoculation, Ghost Reaver and Vaal Pact for that large ES pool. We are grabbing Witch and Shadow power charges as well as Ranger and Shadow frenzy charges as a lot of our damage scaling comes from these. We then pick up damage that applies to freezing pulse, projectile speed and Energy shield. We end up with around 6 jewel sockets for damage, ES, stats and resists that we may need. Another noticeable set of nodes is Heart of Oak down by the ranger for some stun avoidance(this is how we will manage stun since we are using The Aylardex and 2 Snakepit rings and can't afford Skyforth)


JEWELS


Rare Jewels with any stats/resists we require or Rare Jewels with Energy Shield + Cold/Projectile/Spell Damage


GEAR





GEAR EXPLANATION


Spoiler
Main Hand


We are using Tulborn to add a large amount of flat cold damage based on our power charges and to also generate said power charges, since most of our flat damage comes from power charges Tulfall does not seem like a good idea.

Off-Hand


An Energy Shield, Spell damage + Catarina crafted cast speed can be substituted for extra energy shield since we do not have as much energy shield as the Trickster Variant.


You can also opt for a 2nd wand if you feel you have enough ES still.

another Tulborn was the best option for me


however one may consider a Void Battery for what was(for me at least) a very small damage boost fully buffed


Or a rare wand to help us have extra damage when our charges are down.





Helm

We use a hubris circlet with Energy Shield and Resists as well as a Leo crafted chance to avoid stuns. Any freezing pulse enchant will help us but wont be necessary, our freezing pulse already does a decent amount of damage at the edge of the screen so while projectile speed is nice it is not mandatory.




Chest

We use a standard high energy shield chest with some resists



Gloves

We use Surgebinders for up to 98% increased damage to our freezing pulse, the most important rolls are Elemental Damage Per Frenzy Charge, Spell Damage per Power Charge and a low roll of Reduced charge duration. It is worth noting that these can be a pain in the neck to search for on Poe.Trade and I recommend setting a minimum buyout of 4 or 5 chaos just to filter out bad rolls. cold spell based enchants are best.



Boots

Decent energy shield, high movement speed Sorceror Boots are used, we can also consider Skyforth if we can afford it. This is one of your best locations to fill out resists and I have prioritised those over high energy shield. For enchants leech is best.


although when we have all sources of leech it is interesting to consider +1 frenzy charge corrupted boots.



Amulet


We use the Aylardex as its low value makes it easy to corrupt +1 frenzy charge. It also gives us an extra power charge and makes our power charges last exponentially longer which helps for bosses. The mana regeneration doesn't hurt either. Since we are not scaling crit and are using Elemental Overload the reduced crit chance per powercharge doesn't affect us.


An interesting alternative here is the Pandemonius(Upgraded Tul Amulet) this gives us some more cold penetration, blind and increased cold damage, for bosses you will either have to selfcast your Vortex or stand near the boss so that he is constantly chilled from the vortex.



Rings


For Early mapping we use 2 Snakepit rings for the extra cast speed, damage and most importantly the extra projectile


Later on when you can afford it, using a Green Dream jewel may allow us to drop Ice Bite for Greater Multiple Projectiles letting us remove the Snakepits for Opal Rings crafted with Essences of Hatred or Essences of Horror for the rich.





Belt

I like Doryani's Invitation here for the extra damage, a bit of leech and the extra freeze chance while using a flask, this becomes practically mandatory if you drop Ice Bite.




Flasks

We are using Atziri's Promise for extra damage and leech

I like the Overflowing Chalice for increased damage and flask charge generation when needed

We then use an array of flasks to help with weaknesses such as bleeding or freeze immunity, these can go on your preferred utility flasks


If you can afford it Dying Sun is a great help as it increases the radius of our blasphemy and grants us 2 more projectiles if we are using Snakepits.


LINKS AND GEMS



Main DPS Setup
Chest: Freezing Pulse, Controlled Destruction, Spell Echo, Ice Bite, Life Leech, Cold Penetration.



Mobility Setup

Main/Off hand: Lightning Warp + Less Duration + Faster Casting/Rapid Decay

We use Lightning Warp on the Ascendant variant as well, typically with Rapid Decay due to our extra cast speed.




Aura Setup
Weapon/Helm:Discipline, Blasphemy, Warlord's Mark

We use Discipline for extra energy shield and Blasphemy along with Warlords mark for extra leech.




Golem

Summon Lightning Golem/Summon Flame Golem
we use whichever golem gives us more dps.



Extras

Boots:
Orb of Storms, Power charge on Critical, Curse on Hit and Warlord's Mark

In case we need to keep our distance we use an Orb of storms to sustain power charges and Elemental Overload along with cursing on distant enemies.

Gloves:
Cast when Damage Taken, Immortal Call, Increased Duration and Vortex

We have a Cast When Damage Taken, Immortal call setup to help with rapid burst damage and labyrinth style traps as well as Vortex to slow enemies that have reached us.

Somewhere:
Try to fit in Vaal Breach

For some charge generation and leech during boss fights(note that this can obviously get us killed if used incorrectly).

HOW IT ALL WORKS



We use Tulborn and surgebinders to gain a lot from our Power/Frenzy charges and then we generate Power and Frenzy charges, freezing pulse is used because of its high damage effectiveness as well as the fact that I felt like doing Freezing pulse.

THE END



Last edited by codraziel on Feb 18, 2017, 12:02:13 PM
Last bumped on Mar 4, 2017, 11:34:13 PM
the new jewel will be awesome!
"
prospecial wrote:
the new jewel will be awesome!


It sure will! hopefully I'll test it out in one of the Festive Fern builds provided its not too expensive :)
i had a different idea when seeing tullborn/tullfall

i was thinking about the new overload wand shade of solaris instead of another tullborn
also it seemed to me a good idea would be to try 3 powerlessness to see if you can get free perma full frenzy charges in that case tullfall would be better
in that case aylardex could also be replaced with more resists too
"
lichdeath wrote:
i had a different idea when seeing tullborn/tullfall

i was thinking about the new overload wand shade of solaris instead of another tullborn
also it seemed to me a good idea would be to try 3 powerlessness to see if you can get free perma full frenzy charges in that case tullfall would be better
in that case aylardex could also be replaced with more resists too


From my understanding of other people's content you do get all your frenzy charges, people are doing selfcast discharge this way. but from my testing max frenzy charges vs max power charges the tulborns ended up more dps in this scenario at least.

Edit: This is because freezing pulse has an insanely high damage effectiveness and benefits greatly from flat spell damage, additionally since we are using Surgebinders we already gain close to 100% increased damage.
Last edited by codraziel on Feb 25, 2017, 7:58:35 AM
"
codraziel wrote:
"
lichdeath wrote:
i had a different idea when seeing tullborn/tullfall

i was thinking about the new overload wand shade of solaris instead of another tullborn
also it seemed to me a good idea would be to try 3 powerlessness to see if you can get free perma full frenzy charges in that case tullfall would be better
in that case aylardex could also be replaced with more resists too


From my understanding of other people's content you do get all your frenzy charges, people are doing selfcast discharge this way. but from my testing max frenzy charges vs max power charges the tulborns ended up more dps in this scenario at least.

Edit: This is because freezing pulse has an insanely high damage effectiveness and benefits greatly from flat spell damage, additionally since we are using Surgebinders we already gain close to 100% increased damage.


i c thank you for this information also wouldnt molten shell profit from this a lot? it might be better than vortex?
Last edited by lichdeath on Feb 25, 2017, 9:41:10 AM
"
lichdeath wrote:
"
codraziel wrote:
"
lichdeath wrote:
i had a different idea when seeing tullborn/tullfall

i was thinking about the new overload wand shade of solaris instead of another tullborn
also it seemed to me a good idea would be to try 3 powerlessness to see if you can get free perma full frenzy charges in that case tullfall would be better
in that case aylardex could also be replaced with more resists too


From my understanding of other people's content you do get all your frenzy charges, people are doing selfcast discharge this way. but from my testing max frenzy charges vs max power charges the tulborns ended up more dps in this scenario at least.

Edit: This is because freezing pulse has an insanely high damage effectiveness and benefits greatly from flat spell damage, additionally since we are using Surgebinders we already gain close to 100% increased damage.


i c thank you for this information also wouldnt molten shell profit from this a lot? it might be better than vortex?


if you could get it high enough it may, to be honest vortex is only there for the chill effect, its a remnant from when I was using The Pandemonius but I kept it for some extra defense.

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