Just wanting to start thread to find out what people have tried with spellblade so far. I have tried the following and it works really well on L82 SB in Black Sun L68 — really quick kills on Fire Golems for example
Defence - Stack 4 rolls of Purifier, Lightbringer and Enduring set affixes (means you have to take shield not catalyst if you use attack speed roll on gloves which i think is very imp)
Crit - 3 rolls of crit avoid to cap
Mana - i needed 3 x 23-30 mana rolls to get above 300 Mana (incl Helm with +10% Mana and 96 mana from passive trees
Uniques - went with Eye of Reen and both Fire Invoker rings (i think they are perfect for this build)
Idols - 4 x Gleaming Ornate Glass Idol of Pyromancy
Skills (DPS) - Firebrand and FlameReave as a generator / spender combo — work really well when you get a few stacks first then FlameREave as “spender” ---- 3s Fire Golem from 75% health to dead
Skills (supporting) - Enchant Weapon and Flame ward i havent even tried to respec these so they are prob badly optimised atm
Skill (Focus) - i though i would need focus but dont ever use — may look to change later
Just some initial thoughts as works well for me at moment
I am not even level 20 yet, but I plan on going Firebrand with Fire Aura. Instead of doing a big spender spell, I plan on using the “damage taken from mana before life” affixes as an extra layer of defense.
It may not be great, but the changes to Fire Aura made me really want to do a fire focused Spellblade.
I was initially trying to do the Fire Aura build with my Firebrand/Flame Reave build, but I specced out of it for a set up close to Llama’s (still not done the campaign yet). Damage-wise I think the Fire Aura build could be quite good, since it seems to do damage very quickly. Unfortunately, though, Firebrand’s initial range hits outside of the Fire Aura range with 4/8 points in the node that boosts the Aura’s AoE, so I found it a lot worse than when I was using Manastrike. Overall I think if I try it again I’m going to do a cold version with Shatterstrike. AFAIK Fire Aura can freeze, so it should work well there.
