help with frost blades pls

[Dietre]

just curious on what is the best passive upgrades to make this skill more powerfull. im basically using every type of dmg except spell. Im using two unique knives right now but will be switching over to the fortress claw when i can.

i know projectile dmg will help it, and probably elemental dmg. should i increase cold dmg and will physical dmg increase the dps as well

Thanks for any help, its kinda confusing me a bit

[Drake]

just focus on phy attack damage. Everything in the attack takes it source from phy damage (the %increased is from phy, the conversion is also from phy). If you're focusing on attack speed, you might want to focus on crits too and maybe got cast on crit with a phy spell like bladefall.

Concerning number, you need to understand how they work. %increased is the same for any damage, the projectile / cold / melee etc. tags are limiters (they restrain your build, you want to stay away from them if you can help it). So having 10% increased physical damage or 10% increased projectile damage is the same if you're using a physical projectile (which one you choose depends on the node count, you pick the nearest one, wasting nodes is wasting levels).
You need to keep that in mind when taking nodes in the tree, do not get tempted to pick some elemental or projectile %increase if it's lower than an other bigger %increased node that would work on your skill just because you see the tags in the description. This is why in most weapon builds on players you rarely see weapon specific (like dagger/claw/axe etc.) being taken, because a 20%increased melee damage is always better than a 15% increased with X weapon.

So in case of frost blades, since it's a melee hit that changes to projectile and physical that converts into cold. Getting cold damage will only raise the cold damage, while physical will raise everything, and melee damage will only raise the melee part while projectile damage will only raise the projectile part. This is why for that particular skill having so many restriction you might want to focus on pure phy damage and crits which work on every part of the skill.

[Dietre]

good info my friend, that helps me understand a bunch. I read somewhere to that projectile speed is great because it can chain further for juicy off screen kills.

That cleared alot of my confusion up. this is my 1st melee elemental build. I did a zombie build and 2h sword build with cleave but with so many tags on this skill i kinda got lost as to what i should focus on. Thank u

[Haas]

One thing to keep in mind is that you can build it exactly the same as a Lightning Strike build. Personally, I honestly think Frost Blades is just a worse Lightning Strike (mechanically Lightning Strike is a lot more forgiving and does slightly more damage) but if your preference goes out to Frost Blades then go for it (it does look amazing).

Deadeye is an excellent ascendancy to go with, so I'd heavily consider that (go for the Ricochet option for sure). The one benefit Frost Blades does have over Lightning Strike in this instance, is that the quality upgrades for Lightning Strike (pierce chance) are worthless if you have chaining (i.e. the Ricochet from Deadeye) which Frost Blades does greatly benefit from.

That way you can also quite easily grab the nodes from both the Shadow and Duelist side of the tree, which are both excellent paths to go into for a Frost Blades/Lightning Strike build.

Claws can certainly work, personally I'd suggest going Dagger+Shield for the inherent crit chance though. The life gain from claws is less important as you'll be playing a ranged build anyway. That is also something to keep in mind, you say it's your 1st melee elemental build but really Frost Blades ends up playing like a ranged build as you stand at a distance with increased projectile speed to hit enemies and chain attacks (which is mechanically slightly easier as Lightning Strike hence I think it is just superior in almost everyway myself).

If you do end up going Daggers and pick up Deadeye you can also get the Deadeye poison (Sharp and Venemous) talent and combine it with the excellent dagger talents in the Shadow area.

Either way just focus on projectile damage and the physical damage from daggers/claws nodes depending on what you end up going with.

i.e. http://exilecraft.org/#AAAAAwIAAF4FfQW1CC4NjQ+rFqoWvxmOG60i6iP2JIsk/SaVKgss4S1VMHw90T3iQzFHBkd+SO5KfUz/TZJOKlFHVUtW9VuvXfJh4mKsZU1sjHBSdct4rnsUfXV944TZh3aJ04w2jX2Nfo2/joqUuJfQm42jiqxmsbO0xbe2uT69Nr6nwuzDOtN+1CPYdttu2+feGOOf51To1upi7YPuDvzF/rr/3g== is a solid foundation to go with.

Alternatively you could give Raider a shot for the frenzy charges or go a whole different way with high crit Inquisitor resistance pen.

Good luck figuring it out!

[K0rkki]

Hey bro! Been also trying to make a build that could work well with frost blades and keep stumbling on the fact that X skill would be just better... still not giving up. First I tried a build with 1H weapon + shield and felt like the damage wasn't enough. Now I'm trying a build with 2H weapon for better damage. It clears packs nicely but I have to use something like molten strike to kill bosses. So far I think it's best to scale up the damage by picking just +phys damage (with X weapons) on the skill tree. I have kind of figured out that the skill puts out the most damage when linked with physical to lightning (total of 90% damage converted to some element and +lightning damage), weapon elemental damage and added fire damage. Only after these I would link in something like chain or multistrike. I have seen some variants using Oro's Sacrifice (leaving out the added fire support and physical to lightning since it does nothing with Oro's) dealing massive amounts of pure fire damage. Also, I wouldn't worry too much about the projectile speed since FB base projectile speed was increased by 25% in v2.1.0 patch and now it feels enough as it is.

The latest idea I have thought up is to utilize the Elemental Overload key node (40% more elemental damage) and Mjölnir (mind the skills chain +1 times). The problem is that I would possibly be relying more on the spells cast by Mjölnir since the Mjölnir doesn't have that amazing of a pDPS. The Elemental Overload might also work well when dual wielding something like high "increased elemental damage" roll Doryani's Catalysts.