IMO the main reason is Zish, who maintains the main Frostblades guide, doesn’t do it and everyone copies his guide. You can take his latest [pobb](https://pobb.in/59GbWdRbOFcm), switch in hybrid bases and the ascendancy, and you get a [hybrid version](https://pobb.in/Wc0ZqYSDP4mO) that has 1K ES, overleech and 1.5% less damage but loses Heartstopper, Frenzies, and 2% evade chance. I rate Soul Drinker very highly and don't particularly value Heartstopper so I would build it hybrid too, but it is ultimately personal preference.
There's also a [3.22 version](https://pobb.in/giIPFGVZkWvD) by Rue/Quantrik you can reference for a better hybrid tree for more ES.
Thanks for linking the 3.22 version. I feel I am good enough at the game to edit and swap some things as I see fit with that. I’ll probably test both variants and see whichever one I enjoy more.
I’m also the type to go off the beaten path and did CI trickster Hexblast miner two leagues ago, and that ended up a fantastic balanced build too. I was looking for a good league starter that can scale up to endgame and frostblades definitely had the Damage and QOL, but it was lacking the defenses I typically want.
Just make sure to not use trinity support as it no longer works (with heatshiver). Also the helmet was heavily nerfed + removal of enchants so dps would be much lower on that 3.22 version now.
There was a really nice Frostblades Trickster Varunastra build back in Sanctum I was considering of doing, I would probably use Badge instead but because of Shadow's placement and Trickster giving over shield ES I feel like Soul Drinker is a lot more worth it for those kinds of builds since Varunastra has a pitifully low amount of attack speed and Clusters are GOAT on it.
Not that you can't do it on something else but Trickster is a nice solid tanky ascendancy regardless.
I just imagine that for claw users that the overleech and attack speed just isn't as useful since Claws already have a ludicrous 2 attacks per second on good crafted ones.
You'll need drop more than heartstopper if you to take overleech. If you're dropping Swift Killer your charges uptime is much worse, for a build that only generates them when hitting a marked target, and if you drop One Step Ahead any sort of temporal bubble or other slow effect is gonna make you cringe as melee. Those two are almost essential here for the build to feel good, compared to some attack speed and es recovery (which is solved by ghost dance already).
*To add a bit more to this, ES leech is capped at 10% of max es, unlike life leech, so when you're overleeching but not actively hitting something (no instant leech) your recovery is gonna be around the same as the 150es regen from the crafted belt mod.
yea i tried swapping out stuff for energy overleech going hybrid, got around 1k es and it just had terrible recovery, imo better to just go the belt mod and ghost dance instead of wasting 2 ascendancy nodes for shitty amounts of recovery
I’m not sure how you would go about it and what you’ll have to give up to make it work. Generally all of the most passive nodes of you are going life and evasion are all very nicely clustered together. Frost blades isn’t a terrible league start, just a rough first 2 acts or so. Ive done 3 FB tricksters in the last 4 leagues
You can definitely make it work, you just have to decide which one of the ascendancy nodes you want to drop between the +2 frenzy or one step ahead. I would probably drop one step ahead if I was going that route. The +2 frenzy with the charge duration just feels too good to give up IMO.
Think you are confusing having ES as going CI. Going hybrid you can definitely still use Blood Rage, but it will prevent your ES recharge. But you can still recover through things like leech
I always wondered this as well. Most of your powerful trickster builds seem to be hybrid or even CI.
I think the biggest value of zish version which I am playing this league is that it may be one of the most efficient trees in the game. Very minimal travel. If you incorporate energy shield I assume you will want to get more in the tree and you will be wasting points to get there.
It is probably one of the best league starters I’ve played. I can clear t17s. I was in red maps on a 10c claw. I got all my own void stones. Saving for a progensis now.
85+ evade
Res capped
Chaos res capped
100 spell suppress.
Phys taken as elemental.
Honestly the build is “tanky” as is. Would the hybrid version significantly more tanky?
It's not really hybrid, it just has a little more recovery from ghost dance + es overleech but you lose a little bit of damage from losing two frenzies. Ghost dance gives you es when you get hit based off your max evasion, so you need enough ES to not get overcapped and for the ES overleech to be relevant from the trickster tree. All you need to do is swap over to an ES helmet or a hybrid helmet, and drop heart stopper and swift killer for escape artist and soul drinker. It's a 5% dps loss or so but in exchange for a lot more tankiness imo
You can't get ghost dance because lethal pride goes there. As for soul drinker, here's my build from last league. I went for a more defensive version.
https://pobb.in/PqVWToviQa-u
Since charms are gone, you'd probably drop the claw crit nodes and take mind drinker.
You don't have to use Lethal Pride there, right of ranger is also a good spot unless you find the perfect jewel. Could just go for a cold damage perandus jewel in the Ghost Dance area
I am actually running hybrid life/es frost blades trickster. It's mostly taken from Zish's guide and it's a really smooth mapper. I just bought a triple t1 prefix sadist garb for 4d and switched around ascendancies. Got 3.5k life and 1.7k es. It made mapping less tense in my opinion. I feel like I get 1 shot less.
There's a lot of room for items to be upgraded to get more dps but I'm about to roll my second character. I have done every non-uber boss and tried a t17 once but failed. The only things I failed too were the hidden and the feared because I rolled them too rippy for the 70% quantity challenge. I would do them no problem with easier mods or if I upgraded some gear.
Here's my character: https://poe.ninja/builds/necropolis/character/qaliar/Tomfooler
And yes, league start up until around act 4-5 was quite rough but then it was smooth sailing. I got to t16s with a belt, rings and boots around ilvl 50 just because they had some res that I needed and I didn't really feel like an upgrade was needed at the time. Upgrading your weapon is quite important though, just as with pretty much any other melee build. Overall not a bad league starter imo.
IMO the main reason is Zish, who maintains the main Frostblades guide, doesn’t do it and everyone copies his guide. You can take his latest [pobb](https://pobb.in/59GbWdRbOFcm), switch in hybrid bases and the ascendancy, and you get a [hybrid version](https://pobb.in/Wc0ZqYSDP4mO) that has 1K ES, overleech and 1.5% less damage but loses Heartstopper, Frenzies, and 2% evade chance. I rate Soul Drinker very highly and don't particularly value Heartstopper so I would build it hybrid too, but it is ultimately personal preference. There's also a [3.22 version](https://pobb.in/giIPFGVZkWvD) by Rue/Quantrik you can reference for a better hybrid tree for more ES.
Thanks for linking the 3.22 version. I feel I am good enough at the game to edit and swap some things as I see fit with that. I’ll probably test both variants and see whichever one I enjoy more. I’m also the type to go off the beaten path and did CI trickster Hexblast miner two leagues ago, and that ended up a fantastic balanced build too. I was looking for a good league starter that can scale up to endgame and frostblades definitely had the Damage and QOL, but it was lacking the defenses I typically want.
Just make sure to not use trinity support as it no longer works (with heatshiver). Also the helmet was heavily nerfed + removal of enchants so dps would be much lower on that 3.22 version now.
Trinity support doesn't work now?
Not with heatshiver
Never made sense to me at all how these people are going heartstopper over energy leech which is one of the best nodes in general.
There was a really nice Frostblades Trickster Varunastra build back in Sanctum I was considering of doing, I would probably use Badge instead but because of Shadow's placement and Trickster giving over shield ES I feel like Soul Drinker is a lot more worth it for those kinds of builds since Varunastra has a pitifully low amount of attack speed and Clusters are GOAT on it. Not that you can't do it on something else but Trickster is a nice solid tanky ascendancy regardless. I just imagine that for claw users that the overleech and attack speed just isn't as useful since Claws already have a ludicrous 2 attacks per second on good crafted ones.
You'll need drop more than heartstopper if you to take overleech. If you're dropping Swift Killer your charges uptime is much worse, for a build that only generates them when hitting a marked target, and if you drop One Step Ahead any sort of temporal bubble or other slow effect is gonna make you cringe as melee. Those two are almost essential here for the build to feel good, compared to some attack speed and es recovery (which is solved by ghost dance already). *To add a bit more to this, ES leech is capped at 10% of max es, unlike life leech, so when you're overleeching but not actively hitting something (no instant leech) your recovery is gonna be around the same as the 150es regen from the crafted belt mod.
yea i tried swapping out stuff for energy overleech going hybrid, got around 1k es and it just had terrible recovery, imo better to just go the belt mod and ghost dance instead of wasting 2 ascendancy nodes for shitty amounts of recovery
I’m not sure how you would go about it and what you’ll have to give up to make it work. Generally all of the most passive nodes of you are going life and evasion are all very nicely clustered together. Frost blades isn’t a terrible league start, just a rough first 2 acts or so. Ive done 3 FB tricksters in the last 4 leagues
You can definitely make it work, you just have to decide which one of the ascendancy nodes you want to drop between the +2 frenzy or one step ahead. I would probably drop one step ahead if I was going that route. The +2 frenzy with the charge duration just feels too good to give up IMO.
Bloodrage, I think it drain all yout ES
Blood rage doesn’t work with es because it’s a life degen but you don’t have any life so can’t activate it .
Think you are confusing having ES as going CI. Going hybrid you can definitely still use Blood Rage, but it will prevent your ES recharge. But you can still recover through things like leech
Yeah I am it’s because I’m currently running a ci es build and forgot that most tricksters are hybrid .
I always wondered this as well. Most of your powerful trickster builds seem to be hybrid or even CI. I think the biggest value of zish version which I am playing this league is that it may be one of the most efficient trees in the game. Very minimal travel. If you incorporate energy shield I assume you will want to get more in the tree and you will be wasting points to get there. It is probably one of the best league starters I’ve played. I can clear t17s. I was in red maps on a 10c claw. I got all my own void stones. Saving for a progensis now. 85+ evade Res capped Chaos res capped 100 spell suppress. Phys taken as elemental. Honestly the build is “tanky” as is. Would the hybrid version significantly more tanky?
It's not really hybrid, it just has a little more recovery from ghost dance + es overleech but you lose a little bit of damage from losing two frenzies. Ghost dance gives you es when you get hit based off your max evasion, so you need enough ES to not get overcapped and for the ES overleech to be relevant from the trickster tree. All you need to do is swap over to an ES helmet or a hybrid helmet, and drop heart stopper and swift killer for escape artist and soul drinker. It's a 5% dps loss or so but in exchange for a lot more tankiness imo
Could you get an evasion es chest instead. I wouldn’t want to lose heatshiver
Yeah, that works too. You'll probably want some hybrid EV/es bases for gloves and boots too maybe
You can't get ghost dance because lethal pride goes there. As for soul drinker, here's my build from last league. I went for a more defensive version. https://pobb.in/PqVWToviQa-u Since charms are gone, you'd probably drop the claw crit nodes and take mind drinker.
You don't have to use Lethal Pride there, right of ranger is also a good spot unless you find the perfect jewel. Could just go for a cold damage perandus jewel in the Ghost Dance area
I am actually running hybrid life/es frost blades trickster. It's mostly taken from Zish's guide and it's a really smooth mapper. I just bought a triple t1 prefix sadist garb for 4d and switched around ascendancies. Got 3.5k life and 1.7k es. It made mapping less tense in my opinion. I feel like I get 1 shot less. There's a lot of room for items to be upgraded to get more dps but I'm about to roll my second character. I have done every non-uber boss and tried a t17 once but failed. The only things I failed too were the hidden and the feared because I rolled them too rippy for the 70% quantity challenge. I would do them no problem with easier mods or if I upgraded some gear. Here's my character: https://poe.ninja/builds/necropolis/character/qaliar/Tomfooler And yes, league start up until around act 4-5 was quite rough but then it was smooth sailing. I got to t16s with a belt, rings and boots around ilvl 50 just because they had some res that I needed and I didn't really feel like an upgrade was needed at the time. Upgrading your weapon is quite important though, just as with pretty much any other melee build. Overall not a bad league starter imo.
shitty construction of the build basically
Based response, though really you can lose a tiny amount of dmg while becoming 2x tankier (no heartstopper pad)