Level 12 Frost Blades Shadow^3.21

Notes

Tips 1-12

- If you want to Mule I recommend Duelist and going through both Breaking Some Eggs and Mercy Mission.  This will get you Ancestral Protector and Steelskin along with an extra
Quicksilver Flask and some more gear potential and a couple of extra shops to check for your 3 Green Linked Item or 2 Green 1 Blue Link and Movement Speed Boots.  This will also guarentee a Medium Life Flask early.

- Check the vendor for Movement Speed boots and 3 Green Linked Item or 2 Green 1 Blue Linked.  Preferably not a weapon as you will change and upgrade that often.

- Armour and Armour/Evasion Hybrid items are useful to pick up and equip early on as they help with Rhoas in Mudflats as well as Brutus.

- 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.

- Buy an Extra Mana Flask before Brutus if you do not have at least 1 medium and one small already.  You will likely find a Large Mana Flask for 3 Scrolls of Wisdom.

- (NEW 3.21) For quicker Brutus kill get a big 2 handed sword preferably a Longsword and 2 Iron Rings if possible then buy Puncture.  If you have 3 or more Transmutation Orbs you can also buy
Efficacy as well so you will need a Green Blue link.  Puncture will trivialize Brutus, apply the bleed and then just hit with Frostblades when you are safe for an easy kill.

- You do not need to use a claw until late Act 2/Early Act 3.  Whirling Blades requires a claw, dagger or one handed sword and before Brutus use the highest damage weapon you get no matter what.
(NEW 3.21) You now get access to Faster Attacks at level 8 so make sure to get that to link with Whirling Blades.

(NEW 3.21) You can now keep Precision at level 1 forever.  Making room for other auras and more mana to play with.

- Use Blade Trap for Mervail.  Swap the gems so the Blade Trap setup is in a 3 link with Added Cold Damage and Swift Assembly.  Setup traps on her and keep Frost Bomb up as well.

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.

- Towards the end of this act make sure you pick up a Claw base as you will now start getting Claw specific nodes.  Use Essences if you have any to craft one.

- After Vaal Oversoul or Crematorium you can drop Blade Trap.

- (NEW 3.21)  Get the Elemental Mastery that inverts enemy ele resist 25% of hits by taking Forces of Nature earlier.  This will make bossing MUCH easier, between 25-40% more dps against
bosses at all stages and nearly double damage against the resist mod rares.

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.

- (NEW 3.21) You will now want to pick Wrath over Hatred as your aura.  This will give you Shock and earlier access to Trinity which is very strong.  You can also use Elemental Weakness
until you get your mark on hit setup.

- 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.
(NEW 3.21) You get access to Lightning Damage Crafts after killing Piety that you will use instead of the Cold Damage Crafts from Act 4.

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.  
(NEW 3.21) Only do this if you have a very early Heatshiver and some extra freeze chance via Tasalio's Sign for example.  Otherwise go Lightning Damage.

- 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+ all 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.  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

- 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 Poacher's Mark on hit setup.
(NEW 3.21) Since you may no longer take Precise Technique you can go right for Assassin's Mark.

- 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.

- (NEW 3.21)  Keep using Wrath and Lightning Damage weapons/jewelry until you get Heatshiver and Yoke of Suffering.  The Shock and Trinity are worth it.

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.
(NEW 3.21)  Elreon may no longer be needed because of the new Life Mastery that diverts 30% of Mana Cost to Life Cost.

- 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.
(NEW 3.21) Ritual and Delve are also great ways to get Offering to the Goddess as they are pretty common drops there.

- 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.
(NEW 3.21) With the new Wrath and Lightning Damage strategy you can go all the way to T16s without any Uniques so doing that and making currency trade is better.  Still do this in SSF though.

- 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 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.
(NEW 3.21) The top socket by Ghost Dance is much better now as we have 13 notables allocated there in the end game opening up and insane amount of good Lethal Pride options.

- 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.
(NEW 3.21)  Mesa is no longer available but I will review which maps can replace it.  My first thought is Beach but I will see if there is something better.

- Farm Hunter for Hunter Influence Shields or Hunters Exalted Orb to get your final aura setup with the 30% Reduced Mana Reservation mod.
(NEW 3.21) This is no longer necessary to use the core build but could still be worth it to do if you want to fit in another aura.

- 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.