Need suggestions for my Frostblink build

I didn't get much time to play Archnemisis but I did manage to begin a build that is probably one of the my favorites ever. I was surprised it worked at all and I'd like to try it again and maybe get it closer to being actually good.

I thought it would feel smooth to cyclone around debuffing and frost blink from pack to pack. I thought I could take it to maybe yellow maps before I needed help. I finished out the league with it, I was limited on time but every boss I made it to I managed to kill. Searing Exarch gave me trouble during the bullet hell phase and endless hunger's sea of acid was frustrating but that was it. I was able to kill them all even thought the single target on this build is bad, bad, bad. For clear it was like butter, it's incredibly smooth and often feels pretty tanky thanks to block and primal aegis. I was honestly shocked that it felt as good as it did for so much of the game.

I might be wrong, but I think it's pretty cheap. I'm using some golden oils but it farms currency pretty well and nothing on the build broke the bank. Also, I'm not using any 6 links so there is a lot of potential power I could be accessing if I knew what I was doing or had a plan.

I need help understanding what's working for it and what might make it actually good. This is an unfinished build. there is a lot of experimentation I've been doing and a lot of I've tested. There are things I was working on but never got the time to finish, like I never got a corrupted blood jewel I liked.

Here's the PoB: https://pastebin.com/PtiFFfLB









Any help or advice would be appreciated. I've played POE for a while now and I like to mess around with making weird and bespoke builds. But I'm very much a casual player and this is the first time I've done something that I think might be actually kind of good.

My goal was an ok build I could play without much investment and that feels within reach. You can tell that none of my items are particularly good. The plan was a build that wouldn't have to mess with elevated mods or engaging in any multi-exalt crafting and could get by without a 6l. But this was fun enough that I might try to take it to the next step. Maybe it could scale and I'm not quite familiar enough with potential mechanics to make it work.

There's a lot to talk about. This will be quite rambly.

Your offence doesn't seem that bad. With Sirus ticked in the Config, you're sitting at 2.19 mil ignite dps, very solid and much more than what I was expecting. Getting a level 21 frostblink and switching Awakened Swift Affliction to Awakened Burning Damage gets you to 3 mil. Straightforward upgrades, if a little expensive perhaps due to the quality on your Frostblink.

Looking in the Calcs tab, we can see that the Eye of Malice does work how you expect, but since you are only getting the boss to -6% resistance, you're only getting an extra -3% from the helmet. A rare helmet with the -9% Warlord mod will be much better, and allow you to get some more energy shield as well. Losing the resistances on the Eye is no big deal. Enchants like Frostblink CDR/Travel Distance (QoL) or Aura Reservation Efficiency (more power) are much easier to get on rare helmets too of course.

The Polaric Devastation is a good pickup. The rare ring could be better of course but it's pretty good.

The boots are insane of course so keep them, and the Ashes is nice all round (be wary this league as they are increasing its rarity), but for the love of god change the anoint from Persistence. -damage taken from hits is the worst stat in the game bar none. Picking up a reservation efficiency node like Charisma or Champion of the Cause will be so much more beneficial. I would then drop Hatred (I know you wanted to avoid this but it's not really that much damage, at least PoB numbers-wise), and pick up Determination, which as you mentioned, is almost mandatory for tanky characters.

A combination of the Discipline Reservation mastery, an Enlighten, or de-levelling your Clarity a bit then allows you to run something like Skitterbots for Shock (>10% more damage). Shock is a prime target for increasing damage.

I might suggest going Shaper of Storms instead of Liege of the Primordial and using the reservation for a Purity to help cap resists, since you are wearing a lot of uniques. Not sure if this is a good idea but have a try. There aren't too many more auras that stand out to me. You might like the flavour of having golems and they're fine so you can ignore this paragraph if you wish.

Tree-wise, looks okay, though if I was playing an ES build I would probably take more Energy Shield nodes. You are also critically low on jewel sockets, though your tree is quite bunched up so I guess there isn't really anything you can do to change that. Jewel sockets give so much power. Cluster jewels can also give a lot of power, but you would have to sacrifice some nodes on tree. Something to think about.

Something that is popular on RF builds is Fire Trap for single-target, and since you have a trap setup in your Staff already you could have a look at implementing this. Your scaling might not line up with it, and you do already have 1 trap to throw in your DPS downtime so you might not want to do this. I don't even know if it's good, just spitballing here.


Hopefully this gets you somewhere - if there's things that I haven't addressed then feel free to ask more questions. Good luck :)