[3.1] No Jewel Phys to Ele Conversion Claw Inquisitor Blade Flurry / Frost Blades Lv90 build

Hello everybody once again this is AikawaKazu with my first Build guide for Path of Exile on the forums.

This build is actually tested and played by my close friend Allan who have tried and tested various ascendancy and class choices before arriving at the current set up you see today.
He has personally cleared almost all content in 3.1 Abyss League less Uber Atziri and Hall of the Grandmaster with a Wasp's Nest, Doriyani Catalyst setup.
This means Shaper, Guardians, Red Tier Elder and his/her guardians are all cleared.
Uber Atziri not done at this point because of how expensive it is for now.
I made my own character to play and see how the character felt and played overall before making this guide. Through this guide I hope to help share our thought processes into how this build came about.
Feel free to let me know if there are any mistakes or points of improvement to the guide.
I've only played PoE since Harbinger league so I'm still relatively new overall.


As you can see from the title, this build uses no jewel socket in your passive tree up to Lv90.
You may choose to add your usual 2 point jewel socket in your passive tree thereafter.
(We still use 1 abyssal jewel in our belt since they are really good now for life, all resistances and global crit multi/chance)
Beyond Lv90 you can acquire any passive jewel socket slots at your desire.
This build is made with Lv90 in mind since the average PoE player will not go beyond Lv90 more often than not which was one of the main considerations in the build.

The advantage of using no jewel socket in your passive tree meant that you can allocate 2 skill points (per jewel socket usually) to other key passive skills thus earning their benefits.
In a new player perspective, this means that you don't need to worry about what jewel modifiers you need to go for and more importantly, not spend any currency you earn on them.
While 4-5 modifier jewels are really strong in PoE, they are usually very pricey and more often than not can't be found in a temporary league like Abyss league.
This is another advantage of this build since it uses no jewel socket in your passive tree up to Lv90.

Having no jewel socket don't mean that the build is weak compared to other available builds out there, it just means that it is "optimized" while not picking up a single jewel socket in your passive tree.

Changelog
Spoiler

27 Dec 17 - Guide Posted
29 Dec 17 - Added Gameplay T10 Shaped Channel & Normal Atziri


Videos
Spoiler

Gameplay T10 Shaped Channels & Normal Atziri - https://youtu.be/Jv4UvosdHOc
iAsuraX Red Tier Elder Kill - https://www.twitch.tv/videos/212759206
iAsuraX Shaper Kill - https://www.twitch.tv/videos/212754049
You can also check out my twitch stream or vods @ twitch.tv/kazuaikawa.
I've been playing this character for the past week so you can check out my gameplay, mapping, runs etc.


Pros
- Fast Clear Speed with just 4-Link Frost blades for Mapping (everything, up to tier 15)
- Can work with most map mods.
- No issue with bosses in Maps with Blade Flurry for Single Target even with 5-Link
- Clear up to Uber Lab no problem
- Freeze Izaro in Lab and ask your friends to take a good look at him when you carry them
- Relatively Cheap to build
- Can scale up to be even stronger with new shaper mod sceptres/axe (off-hand) or high pdps Rare Claws.
- MTX wise, if you love Gore Herald Herald of Ice Sexplosions/Shatter, this is nice too.

Cons
- Have to cast Blood rage every 4 seconds to trigger Instruments of Virtue (read Why Inquisitor)
- Cannot do Elemental reflect map mods
- After trying this build, it will be hard to play another build that is so versatile in the sense that you can clear map and farm currency relatively fast and have no issues with end-game content.

With my Current Gears I have 1.44M TDPS with my Blade Flurry Released at 6 stages while some of my skill gems not maxed out at 20/20 yet. (Blade Flurry is 19/0 in this calculation)
I have no issues mapping up to T14/15 so far with my Frost blades in a 4 Link.

PoB Pastebin for Reference
Spoiler
https://pastebin.com/MCNqeGyV

You can also import via kazuaikawa, looking for character name aikaNoJewel as well for up-to-date references to my gear.

In general your gameplay will be ...
Spoiler
For Mapping: Whirling Blades -> Blood Rage -> Frost Blades pewpewpew -> Rinse Repeat
For Bosses: Drop Ancestral Warchief -> Whirling Blades to get close to Target -> Cast Blood Rage -> Pop Flasks -> Blade Flurry to 6 Stages - Release -> Rinse Repeat


Why Inquisitor?
Spoiler
Instruments of Virtue gives 50% Attack Damage Increase if you cast a spell recently as well as a good 20% attack speed if you attacked recently. (recently = 4 seconds)
If you're wondering how we are going to trigger this when Blade Flurry nor Frost blades are spells, we trigger this by using Blood rage every 4 seconds. Blood Rage is considered a spell in the tooltip.
Since instruments of virtue gives 30% cast speed if you attacked recently as well as the other cast speed bonuses we receive via our skill tree, using Blood rage is pretty much instantaneous.
All that matters now is that you as a player remember to use Blood Rage before casting Frost Blades during mapping or before using Blade Flurry.

Inevitable Judgement gives 100% Elemental Penetration if you crit, this means you don't have to get elemental weakness corruption on gloves. Elemental weakness corruption on gloves are always expensive like the shaper's touch gloves that we will be using.
You also save yourself from adding points into Forces of Nature (6% ele pen) and Primeval Force (5% ele pen). That's 7 points saved and gives you full elemental penetration in a crit build.
You still get 10% elemental penetration for non-crit which is just shy of 1% from the elemental penetration you get from spending potentially 7 points to pick them up assuming they are close to the path of the passive tree you are even building for.
In any case, since this is a crit-build, you will be landing crits most of the time.
(Currently sitting at 78% effective crit chance with flasks up)

Righteous Providence gives +45% critical multiplier against enemies affected by ailments.
Ignite, chill, freeze and shock are collectively referred to as elemental ailments.
This is why we use the hypothermia support gem over maim in our Blade Flurry setup and why frost blades can hold its own in a 4-Link (Frostblades-Multistrike, Ancestral Call, Hypothermia) for mapping even up to Tier15/16 maps.
Cold damage always inflicts chill and since we are doing phys to cold conversion via winter spirit (40% conversion to cold) this means that our Blade Flurry will also inflict cold damage thus granting it the ability to chill allowing righteous providence to give the critical multiplier bonus.
To see how much DPS this provides, unchecking the "is the enemy chilled" option under configuration in PoB reduces the Total DPS by around 500k.
With physical to lightning which gives 50% conversion to lightning and 40% from winter spirit to cold, our Blade Flurry only deals 10% physical damage which thus allows us to run physical reflect maps.
Frost blades have a base of 60% cold conversion thus with winter spirit's 40%, it is 100% cold converted which means no issue with physical reflect map mods.

Augury of Penitence provides some nice all resistances as well as increased elemental damage.


Ascendancy Choice/Flow
Spoiler
Instruments of Virtue->Righteous Providence->Inevitable Judgement->Augury of Penitence


Pantheon
Spoiler

Major: Soul of Arakaali
Minor: Soul of Ralakeesh
This 2 helps with reducing the effects of Blood rage even though the passive tree wiith 5.4% HP Regen will be more than enough to deal with it.
Especially helpful when you are doing map mods that have reduced recovery rate of life or cannot regenerate life
For Shaper or Guardians can use Soul of Solaris Major.


Bandits
Spoiler
Kill all, grab those 2 juicy passive points


Why Claws?
Spoiler

Claws provide more surivability due to their life gain on hit base (for wasp's nest and imperial claws). With Vaat Pact changes (we don't use VP), this helps in making survivability in maps really comfortable. You will see the effects of life gain on hit per enemy while mapping for sure.
It even "Feels" like old vaal pact in some instances though it isn't xD

While using swords can also work, the passive tree will be slightly different as you need to work towards Blademaster and Fatal blade nodes which are both separated from left and right of the passive tree respectively.
Soul Raker Claw Node to provide both Life and Mana leech is really useful and further allows for effective use of passive skill points.
Going Swords will mean you lose the soul raker life and mana leech meaning you have to go for Vitality Void and life & mana leech nodes below Vaal Pact. That's another 4 passive skill points to use.

Even after removing claws of the pride, magpie and soul raker nodes you will not have any spare points for use to get those nodes. This means you will need to remove some points from other parts of the tree to make this work overall.

Basically Claws are really recommended for this build.


Current Gears
Spoiler



Gear Explanation
Spoiler

The ideal setup for Softcore will be to use an Abyssus helmet.
To deal with the increase in physical damage taken you use the Lightning Coil armour which converts 30% of physical damage taken into lightning.
You can also use the taste of hate flask to further convert 20% physical damage into cold.
This how my friend Allan sets up his character for maximum offense which if I had used, will bring my T-DPS for Blade Flurry from 1.4m -> 2.1m.
Also take note that if you use the Abyssus setup and want to run uber lab, you want to prepare another helmet in advance because traps are very deadly while wearing an Abyssus though many players who vouch for the use of Abyssus helmet always mention that they don't face any issue.
This probably means that using Abyssus is skill-level or player control dependent should you insist on using it. If you are doing a helmet swap set-up, don't forget to take into account the attribute loss from not using it since it might brick your overall stat requirements from your intelligence skill gems primarily.

My own setup currently is using Belly of the beast because I have a 6-L one which I used earlier for a Terminus Est Flicker Strike build.
With this I have 2 choices for my helmet which was using either a Rat's Nest or Starkonja.
Allan advised me to use a Starkonja which I regret not listening today since if I did I will be at over 5.2kHP while losing only a little bit of DPS and crit chance compared to using a Rat's Nest.
So my personally recommendation will be to use a Starkonja if you don't like the risk of using Abyssus/Lightningcoil setup since that will mean that having taste of hate will be more than just good for DPS but also for your overall survivability as well.

Carcass jack gives more damage and overall AOE for Blade Flurry but compared to Belly of the beast, you lose a decent amount of HP. Down to 4.7k (from 5.2k) if you used it with Starkonja.

Devoto's Devotion is not a choice since we don't need the movement speed or attack speed. We move around very quickly with whirling blades so Devoto's not the optimal choice when compared to Starkonja, Rat's Nest or Abyssus. Our passive tree also grants us alot of attack speed alongside our Ascendency choices.

Try to get a good Wasp's Nest with the highest rolled physical damage increased, attack speed and critical chance. Should be within 10-20 chaos which isn't too expensive overall. If you don't have the currency to get a doriyani's catalyst, using 2 wasp's nest until you can do so is fine as well.


My Gem Links
Spoiler

Helm 4L: FrostBlades - Multikestrike - Ancestral Call - Hypothermia

Body 6L: Blade Flurry - Melee Phys - Elemental Damage with Attacks - Concentrated Effect - Phys to Lightning - Hypothermia
For 5L remove Hypothermia.

Claw 3L: Whirling Blades - Blood Magic - Fortify
For claw, if you're looking to upgrade into a Rare one, look for at least 320pDPS, with 1.9 Attacks per second with around 7.69-8 crit.
This usually means you need to find a rare imperial claw with at least 160% increased physical damage, adds # to # physical damage, increased critical chance, attack speed and global critical strike multiplier. They are extremely pricey now so alternatively you can try and self-craft a claw or get your Vagan to level 8 for multi-mod crafting on a claw that you found/bought with at least 2/5 of the modifiers I just mentioned.
In any case I've included a "11 ex" imperial claw in the PoB pastebin that when used increases your DPS by around 300k.
A well-rolled Wasp's nest is more than enough for Shaper as long as you know the mechanics well.

Doriyani's Catalyst 3L: Ancestral Warchief - Faster Attacks - Summon Ice Golem
Faster attacks is just a random gem that I was leveling that I slot in, you can go Melee Phys for more damage for your warchief for even more DPS.
Get Ancestral Warchief on your Doriyani's so that it benefits from the Elemental Proliferation.
Gives 20% more chance to freeze and 19% increased in duration of elemental ailments on enemies.
You can also upgrade into a shaper mod axe/sceptre to gain (36–40)% of Physical Damage as Extra Lightning/Fire Damage. This will single handedly give you the most DPS boost if you're looking for an upgrade though extremely pricey now since people have caught on with it.

Gloves 4L: Blood Rage - Increased Duration - CWDT Lv1 - Immortal Call Lv3
Lv1 CWDT only supports skill gems that require Lv38 or lower to use, Lv3 Immortal has a Lv38 requirement therefore it will work. Increased duration at lv20 increases the immortal call buff from 0.4s to 0.66s (not sure if it is even significant xD)
Your Blood Rage will not meet this requirement for CWDT when it is at Lv20 so you can still cast it manually even though they are all linked.
Curse on hit Temporal Chains is a bonus and don't cost as much as elemental weakness corruption, pick it up if you can spare the currency since it helps decently when it comes to mapping defensively.
Your frostblades with ancestral call will curse any monster (including further than your screen) that doesn't die immediately. Works really well with Abyssal chasm monsters when things get hectic and really helps out for suvivability when you are dealing with tanky rares.

Boots: Herald of Ice - Hatred - Herald of Ash - Enlighten Lv3
You can slot in Herald of Ash once you enlighten Lv3 for even more DPS, if not stick to Herald of Ice and Hatred will be fine.


Flasks
Spoiler


Sulphur, Diamond and Silver.
Atziri's Promise and Lion's Roar

Taste of Hate is also a good choice because you gain 20% physical damage as extra cold damage.
As mentioned above it converts 20% physical damage taken to cold, so it really helps if you're using the abyssus set-up, just don't forget to use the flask itself.


Gear Stat Priorities
Spoiler

Wasp's Nest - 165-170% Physical Damage, 23-25% Attack Speed, 23-25% critical chance

Doriyani's - Just all round good rolls will be nice since it is a stat stick.

Amulet - At least 40 Life, 200-250 Accuracy, Flat Phys. Crit multi if you're not using abyssus.

Ring - At least 40 life, 200-250 Accuracy, Flat phys and resists if needed
Either Steel Rings or Diamond Rings are fine.
My friend uses a combination of Diamond and Steel while I use 2 Steel rings since I am trying to make up for the flat phys to attacks Abyssus gives which I don't posses in my setup.

Belt - Triple Resists of 90-100% (30%+ for each resist) with around 65-90 Life. Stygian Vise in the current Abyss league with such stats shouldn't be too expensive or hard to find.

Boots - Triple Resists of 90-100% (30%+ for each resist). No movement speed required since our character moves around with whirling blades.

Some of the stat recommend here are not found exactly on the gears that I have, try to play around with what you can afford and possess and try for the best results. Play more and farm more currency then look to upgrade your gears again.


Leveling Tips
Spoiler

Useful Uniques for QoL Leveling in General
Goldrim up to 40% all res.

Tabula Rasa for 6L Blade Flurry - Can be used up until you get at least a 5L Armour of your choice.

At Lv30 use Thief's Torment for up to 34% all res - Life/Mana Gain on hit is awesome for early mana issues and survivability overall when face-tanking Act1-Act10 Bosses/Encounters
You can even use Thief's Torment up to Lv90 which is what Allan did for that extra 16% increased quantity. He got a total of 5 Exalted orbs looted during that process (extremely lucky guy tbh).

Leveling in General
Use 2 Redbeaks until you can use The Princess at Lv10.
Use FrostBlade with Ancestral Call at Lv4 once you get it as a quest reward.
Use Frostblade with Onslaught and Ancestral call 3-Link will be fine.
Templars don't get Frostblade as a skill gem reward so you need to buy it from Nessa.
You can also use added cold support gem at Lv8 if you are using a Tabula or any 4-Link set-up.
You can use Molten Strike for Single Target DPS with Ancestral call in your tabula rasa


At Lv28 use a Lakishu's Blade for your Frostblade for Lv1 Multistrike with your earlier Frostblade 3L set up.
You can also change your single target skill from Molten strike to Blade Flurry.
Link Blade Flurry with the gem links mentioned above when possible.
At Lv31 change out onslaught support to use Hypothermia for Frostblades and use Hypothermia for Blade Flurry.

At Lv45 if you want to use claws, you can use Ornament of the East unique Claw.

At Lv60 use a pair of Wasp's Nest until you can change one of them to Doriyani's Catalyst at Lv75

I level from 58/59ish to Lv70 at Blood Aqueduct usually for all my builds for my characters. If you don't have a tabula rasa at this point, you can farm humility div cards (9 of them) for your own tabula. I did this with my Reave crit bleed gladiator for my starter league build so you might want to consider doing this. Some people are really unlucky so this one is up to you.


Passive Tree Progression
Spoiler

15 Points: https://pastebin.com/2TzDjnbs
30 Points: https://pastebin.com/jufhLWFE
45 Points: https://pastebin.com/qAf7W7BR
60 Points: https://pastebin.com/rqHSGGX8
75 Points: https://pastebin.com/vnGAwSeq
90 Points: https://imgur.com/a/nXGhb
105 Points: https://imgur.com/a/dRv2x
113 Points (Lv90): https://imgur.com/a/T7diI
Ran out of pastebin copies in 24hours BibleThump


Other useful tips
Spoiler

Prepare an weapon swap for leap spam when carrying or doing labyrinth runs.
This is very useful in traversing certain uber lab layouts having this prepared is always nice.

You can set up an offhand weapon swap with jaws of agony.
Use multiple traps + cluster trap with Lightning/fire trap for ultimate tryhard

You can also use Vaal Haste or Vaal Lightning trap though my friend and I don't use or depend on them but take note that they really boost your DPS so there's no harm.

Don't forget to use Blood Rage every 4 seconds for 50% attack damage increase via Instruments of Virtue


Special Thanks
To my friend allan (Acct: iAsuraX, just in case if you want to bother him with questions and not me Kappa) for sharing and explaining to me what his build is about so that I can share with y'all viia this guide.

Mathil for bringing Mathil's Nest to the scene.

Cutedog_ senpai for always inspiring me to have Positive Mental Attitude (PMA) in Abyss league despite not having a single dropped exalted orb for up to 2 weeks of playing intensively though I recently got 2 so far xD

Engineering Eternity for always providing really useful guides that I can always direct my friends and viewers to when they are new to PoE.
Anyone else contributing to the PoE community in any awesome way.

Last edited by kazuaikawa on Dec 29, 2017, 4:20:57 AM
Last bumped on Feb 27, 2018, 10:42:40 AM
-reserved just in case-
Tried the build.

Here's my Shaper kill

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/212754049

and my Red tier guardians and Elder kill

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/212759206



10/10 build that costs me 0 exalts! good build !
Updated video section on guide!
Highly recommended! Easy to follow and gearing is quite cheap to start.
"
The strongest people are not those who show strength in front of us but those who win battles we know nothing about.
I wonder if doriyani's catalyst could be replaced with something better?
IGN: MsAnnoyance
"
qquno wrote:
I wonder if doriyani's catalyst could be replaced with something better?


I mentioned about it in the guide under gem links (mybad)

You can also upgrade into a shaper mod axe/sceptre to (tier 1) gain (36–40)% of Physical Damage as Extra Lightning/Fire Damage. This will singlehandedly give you the most DPS boost if you're looking for an upgrade for your doryani's catalyst though extremely pricey now since people have caught on with it.

Last edited by kazuaikawa on Dec 30, 2017, 8:14:56 AM
"
qquno wrote:
I wonder if doriyani's catalyst could be replaced with something better?

something better and more costly? try shaped axe with prefix "Phys gained as fire + cold" or shaped scepter with 3 lines phys gained as element . it will boost your blade flurry dps alot but get ready your exalts for it :)
Hi,

Love the idea of combining BF with Frost Blades. I'm curious if FB dmg (180k from PoB) is enough for clearing easily T14-T15.

Build looks grate but one thing worries me... I will not have BotB 6 linked or rather I don't have enough currency to buy it (have like 6ex right now). Without belly, life poool is not enough unfortunately.

Sooo I've tried replacing belly with just 6L armor with 100hp and some res and then remove all skill points from Disemboweling and put them into 3 jewel nodes + 1 hp node so I could get some % life jewels and %dmg jewels. By doing this I lowered BF dmg from 1,5kk to 1,4kk and FB dmg from 180k to 166k. I think I can get more DPS by using better jewels. They will be exepnsive but still less expensive then 6L Belly :P.

By having more resists on Armor I can get rings cheaper. Any tips?

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