Since the launch of Ancient Skies, I’ve been really trying to make a cold build since I really loved playing Frost/Cold Monk in PoE2 and I wanted to have a similar feel with Swarmblade, aka freezing everything while fighting through maps. I think I’ve achieved something that kind of somewhat achieve this, but I can’t help but feel like I missed something when building what I have theory-crafted so far for this build. That said, I am still somewhat of a amateur at ARPGs and as such, my buildcrafting capacities aren’t as good as some others and so I would love to have some input from more seasoned players and buildcrafters.
It’s likely going to be all over the place in terms of skill nodes and passive nodes to make this work, but this is what I have so far and for what it’s worth, I am proud of it. That said, beyond Swarmblade’s more innate squishiness compared to bear form, it still feels like there’s something missing from this synergy. I don’t know if this is from Gathering Storm seemingly not doing much while I’m transformed or how my nodes are currently being set to prioritize cold and freezing potential while transformed, or a mix of both. Maybe I could swap out Gathering Storm for Tempest Strike and spec it so it affects transformations. I didn’t know if the subreddit or the forums was the best point of entry to have this discussion, but I would love to have it and learn more to improve at making my own builds.
Thanks for taking the time to read my post and if you have any input, I would love to hear it!
Biggest problem is you are trying to stack both frostbite and melee hit damage. Generally a bad idea as both end up doing lackluster damage. Pick a lane and stick to it, I recommend Frostbite as Swarmblade melee hit/crit scales pretty poorly lategame, especially compared to Frostbite which has more synergy.
Gathering Storm(Storm bolts) is THE strongest player damage skill in Primalist currently and pretty much propping the class up on its own IMO. Like I don’t think any other non-minion skill comes even close to competing except maybe pre-nerf Earthquake (maybe Avalanche? but even its a lot more limited). Anyway, the main thing on the skill is using the node Excited Bolts which lets it scale its damage based on your current mana(or rage if transformed) in exchange for consuming mana. Tbh Storm bolts can do decent damage without the node for early game but the node(and managing its mana consumption) is pretty important to scale Storm bolts into endgame and it is used to great success on many builds (like Lightning Werebear, Lightning Swarmblade, Tornado Shaman and Frostbite Swarmblade).
This is the setup I used in 1.1 for Frostbite Swarmblade
Its a bit outdated (for eg: it should definitely take the recently buffed Boar Heart) but maybe it can help as a reference if you do choose to push Frostbite.
I haven’t really seen melee crit Swarmblade be a thing, Lightning Stormbolts have decent success tho(BinaQC and another person on youtube I can’t remember).
Serpent venom Swarmblade is another thing that has worked but honestly its main draw was its potentially high single target (which got nerfed again this patch). Its kinda clunky and clear suffers tho so keep in mind.
