1.Introduction:
2.Pros and Cons:
3.Video:
4.Leveling and gearing up:
5.Pantheons:
6.Bandits,Stats and Ascendancies:
7.Passive tree:
8.Gear:
9.Utility Gems:
10.Frost Blades edition:
11.Benchmarks(stats to get)
12.My character stats and Path of Building pastebins(2.6)
13.Boss / Content section:
1.Introduction
Hi, and welcome to another Blade Flurry/Frost Blades Witch build by me.
I've written the guide with an Occultist in mind, but the build can be played by many different classes/ascendancies - links to other ascendancy threads are in the Stats section.
Build is broken down into 2 different gear/gem setup, Cold and Light/Cold based, full explanation of differences included.
There is also a small Frost Blades gem section, if anyone prefers it to Blade Flurry. Vast majority of the guide applies to Frost Blades option as well.
2.Pros and Cons:
Pro's:
- Fun, fast paced build
- Non-meta, hipster build
- Can beat 2.6 HoWA Blade Flurry dps, while being much, much cheaper
- Fast clearspeed, and an amazing clearspeed with Frost Blades
- Cheap (6L not included)
- Can be used as a league starter
- Can run Elemental Reflect maps with a few gear/gem changes
- Flexible, can be played as any class in the game, each with different pros and cons
Cons:
- Some map mods can range from annoying (no mana regen), hard (vulnerability), to very hard/undoable (no leech)
- It's not a 15k ES or 8k life build, so cannot facetank everything and you need to dodge telegraphed attacks
- Not recommended for HC due to low life values and use of Abyssus (Altough, if you choose Starkonja/Grace/Shield it might be HC viable).
3.Video
My Laptop is ancient so please at least try to ignore freezes/lag and sometimes low quality in general. Don't judge the build based on the videos performance/my performace/fps, just the build's performance.
Still, apologies for the dreadful videos, and hope you can see past the quality.
3.0 videos:
4.Leveling and gearing up:
"Witch start" passive tree allocation/leveling:
Example level ~30-35
At the beginning, you will most likely level with spells or traps, as Witch lacks good melee gems to start with. Unfortunately, the pathing we take lacks any meaningful bonuses and life at first. You can take spell damage nodes instead of claw nodes if you want to level with
spells after level 30-40.
Around level 30, you can use Blade Flurry and reach a few first claw damage nodes. You can also level with Frost Blades, as it will allow you to better utilize Heralds/Weapon Elemental Damage/Elemental Focus etc. You can always stick to increasing your physical
damage instead of elemental - all depends on your gear.
Example level ~50-55
When you are able to reach Winter Spirit, and use Blade Flurry+Hatred, make sure you have Melee Physical Damage, Weapong Elemental Damage and Elemental Focus in your attack setup. Start using Elemental Weakness curse.
Take all nearby life nodes, unless you severily lack damage - in that case, get Aspect of the Lynx/Weapon Artistry/Aspect of the Panther. All 3 provide good dps increase per point spent.
Example level ~60-65
Getting Constitution node and other nodes on your way there is very important at this point, you might not have enough damage yet to make use of Vaal Pact, so only after getting major life nodes start making your way to get it. I might be terribly wrong here, so you
might want to test it yourself.
Leveling and gearing from 30s till maps:
Level 30 is when you can start leveling with Blade Flurry/Frost Blades.
5.Pantheons:
Major:
- Soul of Lunaris is a great pick, synergizes very good with our defenses. Best mapping choice imo, also increases your spell dodge chance to 35% with Perfect Form, and gives you a chance to avoid projectiles.
- Soul of Solaris is also decent, but not as good as Lunaris, even if Solaris bonus can be better in some rare cases.
Minor:
- Gruthkul is great, as being close ranged character we are getting hit constantly. Additional slow also helps with survivability.
- Finally, Yugul helps us deal with reflect, if this is your main concern. Take it especially if you are playing Frost Blades version.
6.Bandits, Stats and Ascendancies:
Stat explanation:
- "Fully buffed" means with curses, flasks, charges if they can be gained on hit (Frenzy charges if gained from Blood Rage or only on kill aren't calculated), Vaal Lightning Trap, Frost Bomb debuff.
- "Unbuffed" means with curses and charges if they can be gained on hit, but not on kill (so Frenzy from Blood Rage isn't calculated). No Lightning Trap.
- "Mapping dps" values are calculated against normal monsters, with flasks, with all charges on hit/and on kill, without Lightning Trap or Frost Bomb, and using AoE gem instead of Conc Effect.
Both "fully buffed" and "unbuffed" are calculated against Shaper/Guardian type of Boss, not vs normal monsters.
All stat calculations are based on Cold-centered setup, using same gear/level/passive tree (with small adjustments here and there to accomodate different mechanics).
7.Passive tree:
Example level 89 passive tree.
8.Gear:
- Touch of Anquish is an amazing claw, just perfect for this build. Good dps, crit chance and increased cold damage. However, it is expensive since Frost Blades becoming meta.
- The Wasp Nest is a great, and very cheap alternative. Dps-wise, it is not very far behind ToA (roughly 95% dps of it). Definately a better pick for your currency in 3.0.
- If looking for rare claws, prioritize critical strike chance (over 7.5%) and attack speed (at least 1.7 attacks per second). Attack speed is important since it benefits your movement speed through Whirling Blades as well.
Look for at least 300 pdps, and 7.5-8.69% critical strike chance. Any lower then that, and you will be better off getting well rolled Touch of Anquish or Wasp Nest, and just spending currency on upgrading rings/amulet/jewels etc.
- Singularity is the best off-hand weapon you can get on low budget. It provides you with more dps then another claw, even if tooltip doesn't reflect it. It's also amazingly cheap.
- Doon Cuebiyari is another decent off-hand choice, better then another claw while also providing you with some small life bonus thanks to high strength. Remember to put it in your left hand.
- Doryani's Catalyst is your BiS off-hand, however, they are very expensive at the start of every league.
- We are a crit build, so Abyssus boosts our damage quite a bit. Increased damage taken is not that much of a problem, we use flasks and Arctic Armour (eventually) to mitigate it.
- Starkonja's Head or even a rare helmet with life/resists/accuracy is a valid replacement if you are ok with sacrificing damage for survivability.
- Rare belt can easily beat any unique belt. Life and resists are your priority, with Elemental Damage with Weapons being a cherry on top of the pie.
Belt of the Deceiver is a good early game option that will carry you till maps.
- Rare boots are better then any uniques, especially since we use so many uniques without resistances.
Darktray Vectors could also be good on Raider/Scion versions, if you can handle losing resists and life.
- Jaws of Agony shield can help you whenever you need to quickly pre-build Power Charges for hard content and have some spare time (before enganging Guardians or Shaper, Atziri between phases etc.). Use Cluster Traps/Multiple Traps and some low mana costing
trap for best effect.
Cold vs Light/Cold differences:
With Cold setup:
- You get hit less often, but physical damage hurts more.
- Reflect is more manageble thanks to higher evasion.
- Much easier time getting resists - Perfect Form's penalty of -30 isn't as bad as Lightning Coil's -60, plus, and Hrim gloves add another +20-30 cold resist. This alone means a difference of 50-60 resist you can save and don't have to get on gear/jewels.
- You could potentially transform it into high armour build with Iron Reflexes (22+k with Grace, 45+k with Jade Flask of Reflexes on top), but you have to sacrifice either life or damage to reach the node, and then some more damage/utility to fit Grace aura.
- You can drop Hatred in favour of Grace, and Abyssus in favour of Starkonja, greatly improving your survivability (less physical damage taken, more life, 40->61% evasion, 66% on low life) at the cost of damage (around 55% less damage without Hatred and Abyssus).
Light/Cold setup:
- You can achieve 10-15% more damage vs bosses, or you can match damage but increase your life pool from 6k to 6.3k (or even 6.8k with Belly) at lvl 90.
- You get better physical mitigation with Lightning Coil.
- Getting right colors on your chest is much easier with hybrid armour/evasion, as you only need 3 off-colors (instead of 4 in Cold setup).
- Higher trash mob dps, even when boss dps is almost the same. Totally unbuffed (except for charges and curse) with my current gear, using AoE gem, it's a difference of 1.0 million vs 0.74 million dps.
- Much higher tooltip damage for warrioring - 72k damage, vs 57k in Cold setup (example from 2.6). The real dps is practically the same.
- Not as flexible with auras/buffs (unless you use Perfect Form like in Cold setup)
Main Attack Gems
Blade Flurry + Weapon Elemental damage + Melee Physical + Elemental Focus + Increased AoE/Concentrated Effect + Cold Penetration
If on a 5 link, drop Cold Penetration.
Specific gear:
- The Snowblind Grace or The Perfect Form are BiS evasion armours for this build. You reach more evasion then with any other unique armour, but you also get some other sweet bonuses:
Snowblind Grace increases effect of Arctic Armour from 13/12 (lvl 20) to 16/15 and provides small spell dodge chance.
Perfect Form saves you a lot of mana reserved, and gives you free Phase Acrobatics.
Other good armours include Queen of the Forest and Kintsugi. Rare armours can also work, so can Evasion based Atziri's Splendour, which is also easy to colour.
If you are on a budget, look for a rare, corrupted, 6 linked armour - it will get you to end game faster then a 4-5L unique.
- Hrimburn and Hrimsorrow convert the rest of our damage into cold, which means that we can use Cold Penetration gem to its full effect. This is very important, since otherwise it becomes really expensive to roll the right colors in your attack setup.
Cold resists also help negate downside of Perfect Form.
- Rare rings and amulet
Stats to look for (in order of importance):
Resists (more important with The Perfect Form)
Life
Strength/other stats
Accuracy (important to get it on jewelry since we get no accuracy from gloves)
Physical damage to attacks/Crit multipier
Elemental damage with weapons
Attack speed/Cold damage
Mana regeneration
Light/Cold setup (main attack gems/gear):
Main Attack Gems:
Blade Flurry + Melee Physical + Weapon Elemental damage + Physical to Lightning + Increased AoE/Concentrated Effect + Elemental Focus
If on a 5 link, drop Elemental Focus.
Specific gear:
- Shaper's Touch is a cheap and great option for us. Massive dps boost thanks to accuracy from Intelligence and Melee Physical damage from Dexterity, great life boost, only disadvantage is lack of resists.
You can also use a rare gloves, if Shaper's are out of your reach. Make sure you prioritize life, accuracy and attack speed - any additional resistances are just a bonus.
If you can afford it, "Elemental Weakness on hit" corruption is BiS. You can also find a rare pair with life/resists/accuracy/attack speed. Prices on rare gear can vary from 5c to 15 exalted, depending on the seller and combination of mods/corruption.
- Lightning Coil is a great choice since we are wearing Abyssus. However, you can also use other unique armours like Belly of the Beast, or even a rare armour with high life roll and resists.
Another good choice would be some sick Essence of Horror crafted armour.
On a budget, get a cheapest corrupted rare 6 link with appropriate colors.
- Rare rings and amulet
Stats to look for (in order of importance):
Resists (more important if you use a Lightning Coil)
Life
Strength/other stats
Physical damage to a
Flasks:
Make sure you always have freeze and bleed immunity in your setup. Other then that, here's a quick flask breakdown:
Basalt flask: Since we wear Abyssus, we need as much physical mitigation as we can get.
Diamond flask: Great boost to our critical strike chance, about the same damage increase as Taste of Hate, popping this flask also means we will max out our Power charges faster (important vs bosses with phases, when your charges will dissapear after not hitting anything
for a long time).
Lion's Roar: The best dps flask you can get.
Taste of Hate: Dps flask, but also a good defensive flask. It can help you deal with elemental reflect to some extent, also decreases amount of physical damage taken.
Atziri's Promise: Not a great dps boost (it's ok, but nothing major), however it does increase our leech more then anything else. Also important to deal with reflect.
The Wise Oak: If your overcapped cold or light resist is greatest of all elemental resistances, this flask can give you a moderate dps increase. If it's the lowest, it can provide a little bit of protection against elemental reflect. In any case, it is a good resistance boost for
Elemental Weakness maps (if you need more).
Silver flask: Can serve as poor man's Taste of Hate. Half the dps increase of ToH, and about same amount of physical mitigation if you go for "increased armour during flask effect".
Sulphur flask: Another cheap dps flask, if you can't afford Lion's or Taste of Hate.
Jewels:
Look for following mods on your jewels (order of priority):
- Life
- Attack speed with claws
- Critical strike multiplier
- Physical damage/other attack speed mods (5-6%)
- Elemental resists
- Area damage/melee damage
- Critical strike chance
- Cold damage/Lightning damage
Uber Lab enchantments:
My personal picks are underlined. Top enchants are also bolded.Helmet enchants: (and how much it would buff my dps with my current gear):
- Ice Golem buff effect (7.4%)
- Blade Flurry 40% damage (5.6%)
- Blood Rage 12% attack speed (4.7%)
- Ancestral Warchief grants additional 30% increased damage when active (4.2%)
- Elemental Weakness curse effect (1.4%, but 4.1% against normal monsters)
- Arctic Armour 36% buff effect increases mitigation from 13/12 at level 20 to 17.68/16.32, basically a free Endurance charge.
- Hatred mana reservation together with Enlighten 4 will allow you to run Herald of Ash on top of Hatred and Blasphemy, or add Arctic Armour without Perfect Form. Thank you Sarunastm for pointing this one out.
Boot enchants:
- Penetration if you haven't killed recently (7.2%) (keep in mind that in maps and even vs most bosses you will more often then not "killed recently")
- Attack speed (6.2%)
- Cold damage (3.4%)
- Lightning damage if you haven't killed recently (2.2%, will probably be a bit higher in Light/Cold setup)
- Fire damage (1.6%)
- Leech (around 28%/33% more leech, with and without flask respectively)
9.Utility Gems:
Depending on your Ascendancy/availability/gear (unset rings), you might struggle to fit all listed gems. In order of importance:
- Auras
- Curses
- Whirling Blades + Fortify
- Golem, Totem, Enduring Cry
- other gems and CwDT setups
Auras:
Cold setup: Hatred + Herald of Ash + Arctic Armour + Enlighten. If using Perfect Form, replace Herald of Ash with either Blasphemied Enfeeble or Elemental Weakness.
Light/Cold setup: Hatred + Arctic Armour + Herald of Ash + Enlighten
Movement:
Whirling Blades + Faster Attacks + Fortify
Linking it with Fortify makes it easy to have Fortify almost all the time.
Buffs:
Blood Rage
Attack speed boost and Frenzy charge generation - great boost for both mapping and bosses.
Socket it in your claws, so that you can disable it easily by switching your weapon sets.
Vaal Haste
Great dps boost, with the nerfs to Vaal Lightning Trap this will probably serve you better (also speeds up map clear).
Ancestral Protector/Warchief
Both totems improve your dps by almost equal amount, but Warchief has a built in AoE, so its a preferred choice for us.
Protector might be a better choice against Chimera, since it boosts your attack speed, you will find the boss quicker during the smoke phase.
Enduring Cry
Endurance charges are great for increasing our survivability. It may take a bit of time to get used to using it constantly, but it's well worth it.
Ice Golem
Ice Golem helps with crit chance and accuracy, both extremely important. Best to put it in one of your CwDT setups, so you don't have to recast it yourself and waste time.
Cast When Damage Taken combo examples:
Cast When Damage Taken + Immortal Call + Increased Duration
This setup is a staple in almost every build. You use if you like it, personally, however, prefer constant 12% physical damage reduction then temporary immunity. Immortal Call will last 2.6 seconds with 3 Endurance charges, and over 0.65 seconds without.
Cast When Damage Taken + Ancestral Warchief + Blind + Ice Golem
This setup works better for Cold based setups - Blinded enemies have 50% less chance of hitting you, which can boost your evade chance from 40% to 60%, which is pretty good for one gem.
Having Blind on golem and totem increases the chance of actually blinding the enemy.
Debuffs:
Elemental Weakness
Greatest curse of them all, as a bonus, we can get it as a "on hit corruption" on gloves, which saves us some gem slots and improves consistency.
If you don't have such gloves, use your curse either in CwDT setup (which will proc most often on bosses, where you actually need it) or as a Curse on Hit setup with a skill like Ball Lightning or Bladefall for AoE cursing.
Vaal Lightning Trap
A 20% more damage for a single gem, good value for 1 gem slot, but if you struggle for sockets, get Vaal Haste.
Frost Bomb
Only worth it in Cold setup, due to majority of damage being scaled with it.
Decent damage increase. Unlike Vaal Lightning Trap, you can recast it unlimited number of times - works perfect in a low level CwDT setup.
Vortex
This is a defensive option, as even bosses can be slowed by up to 10%. Keep it in a low level CwDT for constant reapplying.
10.Frost Blades edition:
Above screenshot was taken using:
18/14 Frost Blades
20/10 Multistrike
20/20 Weapon Elemental Damage
20/23 Elemental Focus
21/20 Melee Physical Damage
20/20 Cold Penetration
With 20/20 Frost Blades and Multistrike, you can achieve 516k dps tooltip (2.6 values).
Worth mentioning, with Frost Blades, sustaining Power Charges is harder, since projectiles don't strike an additional time, yet kill monsters, robbing you of opportunity to gain charges with Forbidden Power.
This also applies to other ascendancies that can rely on percentage based "on hit/strike" mechanics.
Also, note that reflect becomes more obnoxious, so do get Yugul pantheon power for reflect damage reduction.
Changes from normal setup:
Main attack:
Frost Blades + Weapon Elemental Damage + Elemental Focus + Multistrike + Melee Physical Damage + Cold Penetration
Auras/Gems:
Hatred + Arctic Armour (or Blasphemy Enfeeble)
CwDT + Enfeeble or self cast Elemental Weakness for bosses if running Blasphemy Enfeeble.
Gear:
Shaper's Touch
Touch of Anquish x2
Strength/Evasion armour like Lightning Coil or Belly of the Beast (for easier coloring)
Jewels:
2x Fight for Survival jewels
(didn't have those equipped in the Beacon or Springs video)
11.Benchmarks (stats to get):
5.5-6k Life at level 90
With Belly of the Beast, you want to break at least 6.4k.
25+ mana regeneration per second
This is quite important for QoL reasons and sometimes survivability. After using Whirling Blades, crossing the map, you might end up with no mana to attack when you finally encounter monsters, or your movement speed will simply be restricted to your mana
regeneration. Having 25-30 is comfortable. If you can't achieve it, following nodes can be taken:
- Druidic Rite near Ranger (also flask charges and duration, but least actual mana regen)
- Primal Spirit near Ranger (flask charges, intelligence if you need stats, medium mana regen)
- Mana Flows near Duelist (single biggest mana regeneration boost on the tree, but no other bonuses)
89-91% accuracy
This is enough, as after you reach around 90%, you start hitting really big dimnishing returns for each extra point of accuracy.
Overcapped resistances
Depending on the Ascendancy version you take, it may be difficult to get your resists high enough to negate Elemental Weakness map mod (especially if you use Lightning Coil).
After you use up your usual slots (like rings/belt), sacrificing damage mods for resistances on jewels might be a good idea. On the tree, it usually takes 2 points to get either 10, 11, or 15 to elemental resistances, usually mixed in with some evasion or armour. Therefore,
investing in resistances on the tree is expensive and inefficient.
A jewel can have:
- 10% to elemental resistances, and additionally 14% double res.
- %life
- damage mods
In other words, for 2-3 points, you can unlock a jewel and get same bonuses as the resistance nodes + additional life/damage as an extra on top of it.
12.My character stats and Path of Building pastebins (2.6):
Path of Building pastebins:
https://pastebin.com/6px77JgD for Cold setup.
https://pastebin.com/Ai00DDt9 for Light/Cold setup.
Both pastes got Enemy type: Guardian/Shaper selected, and Frenzy Charges unchecked. You can play around with current equipment, or compare it to other builds that have access to 400+ dps crit claws and other bonkers gear :)
This is a 2.6 setup, but you can easily change it to 3.0.
Stat screenshots (2.6, yet to update):
- Gems: One 21/20, some 20/20, few 15/20 or 18/18 etc.
- Cold setup: Means lower tooltip dps due to Cold Penetration gem not increasing it. Light/Cold setup will have higher tooltip dps - around 27-30% more.
- Do note that due to "fake dual wielding", both attack speed value and damage numbers aren't accurate (should be higher). You can get higher values using another claw, but real dps is higher with Doryani's. Trust me on this one.
13.Boss/Content section:
Now, we all know that there are mechanics and requirements that while aren't apparent, need to be fulfilled if you want to blast through content. Here, you will find some gear/gem/tree changes you need to make to have an easy time with specific content:
Shaper: No special mechanics, apart from small cold (and light?) penetration on a few of his attacks, iirc.
If this is your first time doing Shaper, watch all available videos to have a rough idea on what to expect. There is quite a few of them on my channel, most of them from my other BF witch build, but techniques are excatly the same - that is if you can suffer watching my
slideshows, if not, find some other Blade Flurry videos that show Shaper fights (hopefully not a mirrored gear 2 second kills, you won't learn anything from those).
Minotaur: A lot of physical damage here. Make sure you don't stay too long in falling rocks circles, and dodge his burrow attack/slam every time. He won't use burrow unless your Golem/Totem/You are away from him - best to position totem behind him, stick close, and
pray he doesn't go after the golem that is chilling a bit behind you. Still, if your rig doesn't lag like mine, you can easily dodge all his dangerous attacks. Make sure your Endurance charges are always up and running.
Hydra: Always, always, stay behind the Hydra, and you will almost never get hit by her attacks. However, just to be safe, don't forget about Enduring Cry, as most of her attacks deal majority of physical damage.
Phoenix: While Phoenix channels his fire nova blast, he lowers your fire resistance by up to -50%. Make sure you are seriously overcapped, if you want to have a slightest chance of tanking the explosion. Also remember, the birds he summons deal fire damage, so being
hit by them if you aren't overcapped will seriously hurt. If you cannot get 185 fire resistance, don't worry - just dodge his blast ahead of time, don't be greedy - or his spawns will kill you.
This is the only fight where you might want to stick to AoE gem, to clear birds faster and stay more out of the way of the Phoenix himself.
Chimera:Finding him in the cloud in time is pure rng, but make sure you disable your Blood Rage beforehand, otherwise you will have less time to do it. Keeping Endurance charges up is very important. Also, if your chaos resist is low (mine is at -60), you have to be really
careful during snake minion phase. Having a life flask with poison immunity is recommended for this boss.
Now imagine this flask with Poison immunity instead.
Don't rush adds in a straight line, or you will soak all the projectiles on your face. Zig zag to them instead.
Breachlord Domains: All easy. However, if you run Chayula domain, make sure you are prepared, and your AoE is decent. This is probably the only content, for which you might want to respec some of your skill points, and grab Blast Radius notable in Witch area - extra
AoE helps a lot with the timer. If you stay on top of the breach edge, you might not realize quick enough and kill yourself on a reflect rare. This usually means you rip a Chayula stone, which isn't cheap, and you will cry, so stay a bit behind the edge.
For Chayula, recommended at least 10-20% chaos resist during domain clear.
For Chayula and Uul-Nethol, I recommend use of Sibyl's Lament ring to reduce reflected damage, and taking Yugul pantheon to further help.
Atziri and Uber Atziri: Atziri fight is purerly mechanical - if you know her attacks and are good at dodging things, you will be fine. Practice normal Atziri a lot before moving on to Uber, and never attack the one which is holding a mirror during split phase.
Dodge Oversoul slam attacks, and try to activate them in different time intervals for easier kills.
Trio is definately most dangerous, if your chaos resist is low. I still have no idea how the Trio works (they get special buffs depending on who you kill first and second or something), and for that reason, I still haven't done Uber Atziri yet - I ripped twice, once when Uber
Trio was ghosted thanks to prophecy triggering (just my luck), second time due to immense lag/delays which cost me 4 portals, then another 2 on Uber Atziri herself. Definately check the wiki or other resource for their fight mechanics, as I'm pretty bad dealing with them.
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