3.28 Build Update - FB/LS Warden plays like a Ferrari

Hello,

Following up on my pre-league post about my league starter, Frost Blades Warden.

Link to video of my current character and atlas strat

Link to my current character's PoB

Link to my current character's PoE Ninja

Link to the original PoB guide

Overall the build has been incredible from the start until now, and I'm planning to continue playing it. The damage has been so good that I've been able to purposefully drop damage to pickup additional defenses and utility.

It's very fast and snappy, has screen-wide clear, attacks from significant range, and feels quite tanky at this point. A certified map blaster, which is exactly what I was hoping for.

The original post and PoB has a ton of notes about the build if you're interested in some of the mechanics of it.

Summary of outside-of-the-PoB stuff that I've tried/changed this league;

• New support gem Invert The Rules (very strong and stuck - new staple in the build.)
• New support gem Greater Ancestral Call (mechanically this causes the build to ascend to something else entirely - new staple in the build.)
• New support gem Greater Multistrike (basically the same as old awakened multistrike, but cheaper)
• New support gem Annihilation (it sucked)
• Vaal LS (very good, has a lot more damage but misses out on the Ancestral Call interactions and can't use the new Imbued gem system. I swap to Vaal LS occasionally to keep things fresh)
• New acceleration shrine belt (insane, as you can imagine)
• New Runegraft of the Imbued (cracked - new staple in the build)
• Stun immunity tattoos (very good)
• Dropping Grace and Purity of Elements to run triple max res purities (feels much better)
• Stormshroud to get ailment immunity instead of ailment avoidance on boots + shield, opened up shield suffix for crit damage reduction (feels very good)
• Investment into additional block on shield and chest piece (feels smooth)
• Investment into additional block on passive tree (does not feel good)

I cleared my entire atlas on day 1, got all 4 voidstones and most of my invite/unique map points the morning of day 2, then farmed abyss for all of day 2, 3, and most of 4. Abyss helped a ton with getting the currency required to get the build up and going. I had way more currency than what I could spend early, as a lot of the things I needed (such as Aul's Uprising) didn't exist yet and I had to live search a lot of items. This forced me to progress the build out-of-sequence, but it was still a very smooth experience overall.

Day 4, 5, and 6 I farmed Maven destructive play rotas with map boss scarabs and beyond. This was crazy lucrative until Palsteron released a video on it, after which I swapped off. Very fun strategy.

The end of day 6 + all of day 7 I've been farming packsize 4-deli orb t16.5 maps on Strand. This strategy is REALLY tough in my opinion, and has caused me to iterate on the build a lot to figure out how to tackle tankiness issues in a deli environment where I get surrounded a lot.

Abyss atlas tree

2x abyss scarabs, 2x abyss scarabs of multitudes, 1x abyss scarab of edifice.

Made a ton of money from selling bases and being the trash collector - everyone loves buying my trash items. I ran this on regular t16s and on t16s with 3 deli orbs - I preferred it without the deli orbs.

Maven/Beyond guardian rota atlas tree

1x Horned Scarab of Pandemonium, 1x Horned Scarab of Awakening, 1x Beyond Scarab of Resurgence, 1x Beyond Scarab of the Invasion, 1x Cartography Scarab of Escalation.

Note I tried running Awakening and Influencing Scarab of Interference together, and they do not appear to work together - not sure if this is intended or a bug. Interference is easier than Awakening. I'd only run Awakening if you can handle The Feared spawning in your map. Most of the profit came from maven chisels, tainted currency, volatile vaal orbs, and fully miraged maps.

Current packsize deli strand t16.5 atlas tree

2x Scarab of Monstrous Lineage, 2x Delirium Scarab of Mania, 1x Influencing Scarab of Hordes, 4x Delirium Orbs of your choosing (I chose stacked decks, but currency and scarabs can be good too.)

This strat drops an absolute ton of currency along with the ~30 deli reward tiles per map. Currently I'm getting about 120 stacked decks per map. This strat is really hard in my opinion - there is a ton of damage going out, and I don't regex a lot of the damage mods, so I've had to invest a lot into the build to be able to run this comfortably and actually gain XP.

Current regex: "!ced e|ilm|o al|k at|eche|% of e|reg|taun" "urr.*([1-9]|\d..?)%"

Greater Ancestral Call lets you strike from MUCH further away, couple this with pierce and proj speed and it feels like a 360-degree screen-wide bow build. You do lose a lot of damage since this support gem doesn't provide you any damage at all, but I feel it is worth it for the mechanical utility increase in the build - it just causes the build to function differently. I will add that this gem isn't nearly as good on Lightning Strike, in my opinion, and should only be used with Frost Blades.

I put Lifetap imbue on my Frost Blades, so I no longer spend any mana on anything other than manaburn from the tinctures. This made a pretty significant difference in smoothness of gameplay, and theoretically would allow you to run no regen and no leech on your maps.

If you want to play Vaal LS instead of FB, just make sure you take the Multishot passive tree wheel or have additional proj from Fan of Blades notable on a large cluster - you need an odd number of projectiles in order to shoot straight, otherwise it won't feel very good.

Overall I couldn't be happier with the build and would encourage others to try it. I've been keeping notes and I'll iterate on the PoB guide for next league.

As always, if there are any questions, feel free to comment or shoot me a DM! Happy to help anyone with their builds.