- 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.
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: