Patriarch ColdBlade - The Frozen Orbadin

jjscud

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Aug 18, 2004
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Patriarch ColdBlade - The Frozen Orbadin

Other names:
The Melee Caster
The Frozen Orb Casting Paladin
The Riftadin

Riftadin is probably the only one with a decent ring to it, though while in Hell, I checked the Paladin guides and actually found a Riftadin guide but the char was nothing like mine.

Anyways, this build was centered around the runeword Rift, here is the weapon I made:

Rift
Divine Scepter
'HelKoLemGul'
One-Hand Damage: 16 to 38
Durability: 17 of 70
Required Strength: 82
Required Level: 53
Mace Class - Fast Attack Speed
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 47
Fingerprint: 0x21439310
+9 to Strength
+9 to Energy
+19 to Dexterity
+9 to Vitality
Adds 60-180 fire damage
Adds 160-250 magic damage
75% Extra Gold from Monsters
Requirements -20%
+3 to Meditation (Paladin Only)
38% Damage Taken Goes to Mana
20% Bonus to Attack Rating
150% Damage to Undead
16% Chance to cast Level 21 Frozen Orb on attack
20% Chance to cast Level 16 Tornado on striking
Level 15 Iron Maiden (40/40 Charges)
Socketed (4: 4 used)


My basic idea was to make a Paladin who would use this and rely largely on the Chance to Cast Frozen Orb combined with a strong Conviction Aura to kill most monsters.

The Good:
1. It basically worked, I had a 5fpa Zeal with a roughly 1/6 chance of casting a slvl 21 Frozen Orb. I think that comes out to about 1 orb a second, like a sorc, but mine was an average, it wasn't uncommon to launch 2 or 3, even 4 occasionally within a single second, something a sorc could never do.

2. When I did get lucky and launch several withing a second, it usually cleared the screen very quickly. It was a blast to watch monsters gathering on screen and then a spurt of orbs would shoot out and nearly everything was dead.

2.5 (I just remembered and don't want to change the numbers) Frozen Orb is "on Attack". This means that the ctc check is done every time I swing, not every time I connect as "on striking" is. This means that my AR was only a mild curiosity and not very important.

3. The conviction aura broke most CIs, though there were a few important times when it didn't. Anything non cold immune was sent into negative resistance, usually clear down to -100 CR, doubling my orbs damage. Also, I believe there is something about only the highest level conviction aura on the screen being active so I was never hit with conviction.

5. This guy could take on ANYTHING in the game. Nothing could stand up to him for long. With a modest amount of physical damage, some magical damage, some fire damage, and the ctc Frozen Orb, there was no set of mods/immunities that he couldn't handle, and fairly quick too.

6. Playing him was fairly simple, I never had to weapon switch (though I chose to for 4 monsters), only occasionally skill switch (to refresh my Holy Shield), some tactics were used while fighting but never any other skills/weapons.

7. It was easy to reach good blocking and defense levels. I had 75% blocking and 13K defense most of the time.

8. IM was not instant death. It was still dangerous though, mostly due to a very low life pool but I could still take 5+ swings and only died twice to IM when I went into the fight with very low health already.

9. PI packs were a blast, they tended to fall quite quickly. I wold start beating on them, which didn't do much and then a couple frozen orbs would pop out and they would all be dead.


The Bad
1. I did experiment with a couple things and as a result had a very low life pool. Most notably was using Medusa's Gaze (10% ctc lvl 7 Lower Resist), I added a ton of strength for this but decided in the end that the lower blocking and resists wasn't worth it.

2. Although Conviction broke most CIs, their remaining cold resistance was quite high so they usually still had to be dealt with by hand.

3. My setup was very tight, it didn't leave much room for playing around.

4. Frozen Orb was still Chance to Cast. While there were many cool spurts that filled the screen with tons of ice shards, there were just as many dry periods where I was beating away at monsters waiting for the orb to launch.

5. Up until level 43, it was very slow going. Better twinking could have improved it I'm sure but I'm a lazy twinker. Luckily, I did MP with my daughter's Trapsin until I reached 43 and that helped some. BTW, 43 is the rlvl for Voice of Reason which also has ctc Frozen Orb, but only a lvl 13 one.


Overall, this was a very fun and unusual build. Definitely worth the cost of the runewords.

The details

Gear
Nightwing's Veil (14% + 5/5 cold facet)
Highlords Wrath
Ormus' Robes (15% cold damage + +3/-4 cold facet)
Rift
Hoz (+4/-3 cold facet)
Lava Gout
Goldwrap
Nat's Souls
Ravenfrost
SoJ
3 Captain's Skillers
1 Lion Branded skiller
tons of res sc

switch
Beast
HoZ

Note: The switch was only used against the Ancients, Lister, and Baal. The Ancients were the only ones I really felt I needed to. Lister was done because I was low on potions and had a low life pool and was likely to die if I didn't get mean. Baal was done because I was even lower on potions when I entered his lair and once in there I realized I was also out of tp scrolls, one of us was going to die very soon, it was late at night, and I decided it was him.


Stats

LCS Image

A level 21 Frozen orb does around 420 a shard, that was usually doubled when monster's were not CI.

Skills

Zeal 1
Conviction 20
HolyShield 20
Defiance 20
Resist Lightning 18
Other Prereqs 1

That's about it. Here is a shot of ColdBlade in action. Unfortunately, frozen orb's have a short life span so I was never quick enough to capture more than two on the screen at a time.

Edit:

Other thoughts:
The one thing I would really like to try is a Pheonix shield with this. I think it would really take this char to the next level.

I also really liked the Voice of Reason weapon. Even though it had no direct ED, it has alot of ed to demons and Undead. I think this is a phase blade would be a powerful, fun, and quite inexpensive weapon.
 
Last edited:
Grats on the unusual build. I actually spent a while last night looking at the stats of Rift on arreat summit, considering this exact build. Too bad you beat me to it. But, I was also considering how long it would take me to find a 4os Caduceus with good +skills, so it's not like I would have gotten to build it anytime soon.

-CG
 
Great little project! I am working on a Frost Zealot that reminds me of this char, but I think not having conviction like you are using will mean much slower going.
 
Awesome zealot you have there!

So, 'on attack' means on each zeal strike, not on each zeal cycle?
If so, I guess I made a mistake not using this weapon on my elemental zealot.

I might make a 'Rift' too, but maybe not on a paladin... :evil:
 
5. Up until level 43, it was very slow going. Better twinking could have improved it I'm sure but I'm a lazy twinker. Luckily, I did MP with my daughter's Trapsin until I reached 43 and that helped some. BTW, 43 is the rlvl for Voice of Reason which also has ctc Frozen Orb, but only a lvl 13 one.

*Go on haste to find a lady to make wife, hoping for a girl/boy to play D2 with*



 
The Riftadin guide build is pretty much the same, only using all the dupewords (mainly dreams).
The basic idea is still a Frozen Orb casting Conviction Zealot, and it is still an awesome idea.

Some comments on your 'Good' points:
1. With a Divine Scepter and 50% ias you have a 6fpa Zeal, 5 fpa requires 110%.
(Follow up is not the same as attack.) If it had been me, I would probably have
gone for 110% with Treachery and an ias jewel, but that is just because I am a
speed freak. The added damage of Ormus and two facet is most likely way superior.

2.5. Unfortunately, according to RTB the "on attack" part just limits what type
of attacks it works with. Things like kicks, smite, blade fury etc trigger one but
not the other. Kind of a moot point though, as Conviction gets rid of any defense
the enemy might have anyway.

4. The squid ate your number four!

Finally, I think a Dragonscale would be a better option than Phoenix. Lowered resists
can hardly be of much use when you already have Conviction, and an additional
350 fire damage per swing must be better than the Firestorm proc.


@ CG: Why a caddy? You hardly do any physical damage anyway, so why not a War Scepter?
Also, as far as +skills goes, consider repair costs as well...
 
@ CG: Why a caddy? You hardly do any physical damage anyway, so why not a War Scepter?
Also, as far as +skills goes, consider repair costs as well...

Basically, leech and personal preference. Honestly, it's likely I would have gone with a war/divine scepter eventually, if only because finding the right caddy would take forever.

-CG


 
Yeah, gloams seem to be the main enemy that can easily take down chars with 75 resists.

@Delreich - Interesting, maybe I clicked the wrong item type when running my numbers, or maybe ran caddy instead of divine scepter before I know what the base item would be. Also, I will have to give Dragonscale a spin, though I suspect that the lack of resists will be problematic. I may also check my break points and see if I can't hit a higher fpa and up the AR too, I may be able to double the Forb output.

As for repair costs, they are worth considering, mine in a Divine Scepter with only +3 to meditation usually were over 30K.

I was tempted by Voice of Reason in a phase Blade for that reason too but that would have ultimately led to a normal Zealot with the frozen orbs mostly acting as fireworks.
 
A little clarification on the speed thing: the calc, when showing zeal speeds,
only shows the follow ups. To this you have to add a normal attack. So, if the
calc says 5fpa, that makes for a total of four times five frames, plus a normal
attack, for a full zeal cycle. (Not exactly how it is, but end result is accurate
for paladins.)

Caddy/Divine Scepter/War Scepter with 50% ias hits the 10/5 frame bps, for a
30 frames 5-hit zeal. However, I obviously was not paying attention previously,
and completely missed that the 4fpa follow up was at 142%. So, 110% only
gets you to 8/5, or two frames faster per cycle. Two frames over five swings is
not very much, and getting yet another 35% ias might be a bit steep.
 
Nice build jjscud! Sounds like a fun, and off-the-trail character!
 
Congratulations.

I'm building a similar one but am still wondering whether to burn the gul on this or instead go with voice of reason or gimmershred. Frozen orb on voice of reason is only on striking, but I expect that to not make a huge difference with the -enemy defense of conviction, the level is lower as well of course.
 
Nice write up. Good read.

I thought about the two rune words (VoR/Rift) for my elemental zealot as a ranged weapon swap when required.
My elemental zealot is set up for all elemental damage on the weapon and is quite effective in his own right but off course the problem is physical damage versus IM curse as Azurewrath with strength is about 330-350 damage per swing making it quite nasty when IM'ed. maintaining his 4 fps zeal speed with a Rift would be my challenge.

It is good to hear that Rift is a capable end game weapon save for the final bout with Baal in hell.
 
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