16%+ Damage Buff, Easier Gear Progression, Smoother Midgame! Frost Blades Trickster Buffs!

Tips 1-12 - You can make a Scion first to mule some extra items, Onslaught support, and an extra chance at early Movement Speed Boots from the vendor. - Pick up Magic and Rare unidentified items and sell them for Transmutation Fragments early on as you will need a few extra Transmutes for gems and later for bench crafting. Tips 12-24 - You will start to acquire gems you won't use yet such as Nightblade Trinity and Elemental Damage With Attacks. Put weapons/shields in your weapon swap so that you can have access to these. - Help Alira for the bandits, her stats will be very useful but we will respec later at around level 90 to get the skillpoints. Tips 24-34 - 4 Links become available at the vendor at level 24 starting in Act 3 and the vendor resets whenever you gain a level so check when you are in town if you don't find one on the ground. - In Act 4 you will want some extra Transmutes for bench crafting so if you don't have at least 8 extra ones start picking up Rare bases to sell for shards again. Tips 34-55 - The Crystal Veins in Act 4 unlocks Cold Damage Crafts. Use these on any jewelry or weapon you have open prefixes on for a good damage boost. - Upon defeating Kitava and entering Act 6 you will recieve a resistance drop. This is the time to make sure your gear is sorted as this act can be difficult if you don't have decent resistances. Don't be afraid to use resources such as Essences, Orb of Binding, and the Crafting bench to upgrade your gear. Try to have 50+ elemental resists at the least before starting Act 6. - Around this time we are switching to the end game setup. Grab all the gems and put the ones you can't use in your weapon swap to level. You should have some crit now so you can add Nightblade Support which will give Elusive making this stage of the game feel much smoother. Start going towards Frenzy Charges around level 50 and switch to Ice Bite when you get some levels on it and the 4th Frenzy in preparation for the 2nd Lab. Tips 55-Act10 - You can swap to Frost Blades any time you'd like after your second ascendancy. I would still keep Spectral Helix socketed in an extra socket or in the weapon swap though for Bosses. - Try to get the Mark Mastery for Frenzy Charges on hit against marked enemies as soon as you can after switching to Ice Bite to keep frenzies up at all times along with Assassins Mark on hit setup. - I like to get my 3rd ascendancy right after getting the skill point in Act 10 but you can grab it whenever you'd like. Make sure you start getting Masteries first for the big damage boost. - Craft Bleed/Corrupted Blood immune as soon as you get a Divine Life Flask. Tips Early Maps - Make sure you are ele resist capped before maps. If you are not you can farm Heists or The Desecrated Chambers in act 10 to get some gear and crafting resources. Bench Craft to finish. - Focus on Jun Mission and Essence points on your atlas skill tree for the first 10 points to help with crafting gear and getting Unveil unlocks. - Remove people from your betrayal board until you are sure you have Gravicius and Elreon on it as you will need their signiture crafts. - If you are in SSF start putting aside any Magic Find gear that has good stats on top of the magic find as you will need it later to hunt for the core uniques. - Start getting as much Spell Suppression as possible with the goal of being at 100% by red maps. Tips Yellow to Early Red Maps - At some point here you will do Uber Lab, if you are unable to find a trial to get an Offering to the Goddess do Kirac missions and look for one that has complete a trial of ascendancy. - Get some Kirac Mission and higher tier map drop chance nodes on the Atlas tree to make progression easier and so you can stack up Kirac Missions to get Atlas completion later. You can then get the Strongbox Nodes nearby so you can start getting Scarabs and chances at Corrupted 6 Links. - If you hit a wall and don't have the core uniques yet you can do some Magic Finding in low maps. Put on your best magic find gear while remaining resist capped and allocate Enriched Entities on the Atlas Tree. Run low level maps with multiple bosses such as Strand and Vaal Pyramid. The bosses tend to drop a ton of uniques especially with good Quant/Rarity and can be doubled. - Depending on your gear you may want to add Grace. You can do this by adding Conqueror's Efficiency or any jewel with Mana Reservation Efficiency when it is removed and running a low level Precision and either Accuracy on gear or the +3 Accuracy per Dex Mastery. Otherwise you will have to wait for a Hunter or Shaper shield. - If you are having trouble capping Spell Suppression do some Atziri runs to get Atziri's Step. Allocate the Pantheon Soul of Yugul and the Elemental Mastery that reduces reflect damage as otherwise you will die to Atziri's split stage from her Mirror holding clone. Early End Game Goals - Alter Farm to acquire tons of needed currency, especially map currency as you will be respeccing your atlas passive tree somewhat frequently. Underground Sea is my favorite Alter Farming map. - Make sure Flasks are crafted properly. You will need 20 Instilling Orbs. Glassblower's Baubles are easy as you can trade whetstones for them at vendor. - Always run Harvest as it is used for many things, especially in SSF including crafting, swapping Pinnacle Boss Fragments, swapping Scarabs/Essences, swapping Legion/Breach Fragments etc. It's probably wise to keep at least a few Harvest nodes allocated no matter what you are doing so you are always building resources. - Expedition is great to use early on as Rog will help with gear upgrades and especially Jewel crafting. Tujen is also nice for currency early on. I'd skip Gwennen though honestly. - Delve is very helpful for map sustain, you are start it at least by the end of yellow maps. The city nodes contain a ton of maps and respect your preferred map slots so make sure you Delve a bit before hitting T14+ maps so you can use this. - Clean up the Eldritch quests when you are pretty comfortable farming T16 maps and do all the Maven stuff too up to 10 witnessed bosses. Refining the Build Goals - Start here once you are easily farming T16s and have all the base uniques as well as a good amount of Orb of Unmaking for respecs. - Acquire Lethal Pride that fits into one of the nodes by your Frenzy Charges. Aim for at least 1 double damage roll and 2 more useful rolls or better otherwise keep farming Legion. - Look for Cluster Jewels. Priority for Large is Cold > Elemental = Claw. You will then want Either 1 Crit and 1 Ailment Effect medium or 2 Ailment Effects. - Acquire Circle of Fear from Sythesis memory maps. Allocate all of the Synthesis map nodes on your Atlas tree and make Mesa your favorite map on all slots. Get a ton of Mesas from Delve cities, Singular Focus (Unspec out of this before you run the Mesas though) or any other methods and once you have a ton just alc and go them just rushing the boss in the center. Double boss maps or Eldrich Entities are helpful for this too. You should be able to get some quick synthesis maps this way and if you want you can get the other guardian map nodes during this farm to double up on the potential value. - Farm Hunter for Hunter Influence Shields or Hunters Exalted Orb to get your final aura setup with the 30% Reduced Mana Reservation mod. - Farm Elder or Uber Elder for Watchers Eye. You are looking for Flat Cold Damage with Hatred but can also use most Hatred mods or Precision ones.