[2.4] How to smash Heads. Extremely detailed guide about the Facebreaker gloves and builds!

First of all the info below is about The Awakening Beta and not about the current live PoE version of the game!

OK guys so ... i've finished merciless with Ice Crash and here's what i think of this new attack

First of all let me explain what Ice Crash is.
It will be the newest melee attack usable while unarmed. You hit a monster or the ground and you deal damage in a circle then a slightly bigger circle appears which deals slightly less damage that hits a slightly bigger area again. Now it's important to note that the same target can't be hit by the 2 stages of this attack - if you strike a monster with the initial hit you won't hit it with the secondary one.
Ice Crash converts 50% of your physical damage to cold damage just like Infernal blow converts it to fire damage. It is an AoE attack which is great because you don't need melee splash with it. And of course that means that you can put a support gem that contributes with much more damage ( i.e. added fire damage ).
Ice crash deals huge amounts of damage per hit! It starts off with 160% base damage effectiveness which drastically increases with each level of the skill. The downside ( there's always a downside ) is that Ice Crash has 25% less attack speed to balance the huge damage effectiveness. So you end up with the same basic DPS as with infernal blow, but again ... with infernal blow you need melee splash which cripples your damage, with ice crash you don't and because of that Ice Crash just deals much more in the end. You can't use Multistrike with Ice crash but it's not that big of a loss really.
Now let me tell you about the AoE radius of Ice Crash ... and oh boy it's an awesome one! Without any passives, gear or supports it already has great AoE radius. Now add the Martial Artistry unarmed jewel(10%-15% increased AoE radius ) and the Amplify passive skill and you have a skill with incredible AoE radius! Actually that's all that you need! No Increased AoE support gem, no carcass jack ... no nothing! Just Martial Artistry and Amplify are enough to make the radius of Ice Crash just ... perfect! Well more is always better ... but there is no objective need for more.
Talking about AoE, let me say a few words about Concentrated Effect and Ice Crash. Well ... it's not good... as you know ( or you might not know ) Concentrated effect has been nerfed - it gives less damage and it reduces more AoE radius ( actually it now gives "less AOE radius" multiplier instead of "reduces AoE radius" which is ... worse ) It gives nice DPS that's for sure but it absolutely cripples the ICe Crash AoE. In my opinion it's not worth it. Maybe if you use Carcass Jack ... maybe ... you'll be able to use it instead of added fire damage ... but the AOE will still be much smaller and extra DPS won't make up for it.
I have to say that Ice Crash is a pretty cool skill. It has this nova-like playstyle to it and i've always enjoyed nova skills! You go in the middle of the battle and you just start spamming your nova-like skill until there is nothing else... beautiful!
Because of the insane AoE and the very high damage per hit Ice Crash is just perfect for white and blue packs ... you one-shot the entire pack and go to the next one. But when you face bosses ... it's just not as good as Cyclone. Tho it is better than the current Beta Infernal Blow. Perhaps you've missed that change... anyway Infernal Blow has been nerfed quite a bit ( too much if you ask me ). The explosion damage can no longer be reflected which is great and it was about that for that change ( tho with the reworked and not so scarry reflect it's not as important as before ) but the downside to that ( told you that there is always a downside ) is that the explosion damage has been reduced from 25% of the corpse max life to 10%. That's a huge nerf because the chain explosions that clear the entire screen and which melt down bosses ... has been ... i know it's a strong word ... but it has been destroyed!
So how is Ice Crash compared to the old unarmed attacks?
Compared to Cyclone, well it has much larger AoE right off the bat (tho the Projected force jewel that gives +4 unarmed radius surely buffs Cyclone quite a bit in that area) and that makes it much more easier to get Ice Crash to work properly compared to Cyclone. It's also much easier to manage your mana with Ice Crash. You can use a 5L Ice Crash with your mana while having 75% of your mana pool reserved and all that without having any mana leech ( of course with leech is better ) ... all you need is the Rivelry passive(which is now more easily accessible). With Cyclone even now when the mana cost has been greatly reduced it's much harder to achieve that But in the end when you have the needed gear, Cyclone is superior in my opinion. It kills packs just as fast and it kills though monsters and bosses much faster. On top of that with cyclone you are moving while attacking instead of just standing still and you can't be stunned.
The nerfed Infernal Blow compared to Ice Crash... well Infernal blow just ... blows. Ice Crash is just so much better in every possible way! Much bigger AoE without the need for melee splash leads to faster clear speed and when it comes to bosses it performs just as good. Infernal blow is better for your first 28 levels just because Ice Crash has a level requirement of 28.
I can't really compare Ice Crash to Dominating Blow. Dominating Blow is just a strange incomparable skill ... so i just can't ...
Now Frenzy, Frenzy is much more appealing now in my opinion due to the reworked frenzy charges. Instead of 5% increased attack and cast speed they now give 4% but they also give 4% MORE damage and that's awesome! Also because of the reworked and much easier to deal with reflect an Evasion + Acrobatics based Frenzy Facebreaker build would be much more viable now and it's definitely something that i want to try at some point! So is Frenzy better than Ice Crash ? Can't really say ... it requires a different approach, they can be equally good but some Frenzy testing is required because i can say anything with 100% certainty.

So in the end i want to say this - when you have the chance give Ice Crash a shot. It's a fun, powerful and definitely viable skill! It might just be the attack that you've always wanted for your Facebreaker!


Now as promised a few words about the new Blood Rage.
Blood rage now deals to you physical damage instead of chaos damage. That's not that big of a deal ... sure it's easier to handle the degen without the need for any chaos res ... but you can no longer benefit from your high chaos res ( if you happen to have high chaos res ) in order to mitigate a large portion of the degen. So in the end it's easy to get to the zero but impossible to get above the zero. Unfortunately armour mitigation and the fortify buff don't affect physical damage over time effects ( such as the new Blood Rage ). The only way to reduce the degen is by having endurance charges ... but how many can you really have 3-4-5? In the end they won't reduce it by that much .. not to mention that now it's a bit harder to accumulate endurance charges because Enduring Cry can't be used with CWDT.
So with all that said the degen is perfectly manageable because of the huge life regen that you'll have ( with this build at least ). So by sacrificing a large portion of your life regen you'll get the ability to gain a Frenzy charge per kill. And as i've already said the reworked frenzy charges are pretty awesome. As example i can say that with my current Ice Crash Facebreaker i have ~30k DPS and every Frenzy charges adds ~2k to that number for a total of 38k DPS ( yup i've helped Kraytin in Merciless ) That's around 25% more total DPS! And of course Blood rage gives quite a bit of life leech which is not that important at the moment.
So is Blood rage worth it? Arghhh ... it's hard to say ... i love life regen... and i sure miss it when facing damage over time effects .. but i do love damage too!
Life leech will be completely reworked soon ... i guess i'll need to see how that plays out before i can say for sure "Yes" or "No" to Blood rage. At this point it's around 40:60 in favor of "No" because more damage is always nice tho not always needed while more defenses are always nice and always needed. But if having large amounts of life leech is much more appealing after the leech rework ... that might turn my "No" to "Yes"


Ok guys so that's all that i can think of ... as always if i've missed anything or if i've said something stupid please do tell me, it will be greatly appreciated!

Have a nice evening!

Well while i agree that killing fast is the best defense ... at certain point you reach that moment when it doesn't matter if you have more dps or even if you double it because you already kill as fast as possible. I'm speaking from the point of view of a player who only plays solo of course ... you can never have too much DPS in full groups :)
I don't know ... 4% less life regen is not a "little" less in my opinion, especially later on when your life pool reaches 5500-6000. As for the leech ... i don't know man .. i don't see any difference in leeching between Blood rage and no blood rage with the current leech mechanics as long as i have some leech from other sources ... but damn i do feel the loss of life regen... Well that's without having all the planned regen for the build. And on the other hand the damage boost in Beta indeed is insane ! Maybe loosing half of the regen is not that bad. With the Beta character i loose almost all of the regen but with my live version facebreaker i would be from ~500 life regen per sec to ~250 life regen per sec which might not be that bad. I do see a potential mistake here... something that i might have overlooked! Perhaps having blood rage as long as you still have ok regen is worth it after all. Of course i would know for sure when i test it more extensively with my live character ... when it's possible.

Thanks for pointing those arguments out Etherfire! Your point of view and advice are appreciated as always!


P.S. Thanks for the Mantra of Flames link! Cool jewel .. of course facebreaker builds no longer have any use for it ... but it's better that way!

@uljimah
Well man everything seems fine to me. Next you should get legacy facebreakers and yes a better amulet would be nice ( tho yours is not bad ). And you already said that you are working on a Taste of Hate.
Of course you could always have better rings, better shield etc. but unless you get a mirrored ones there is always room for improvement... so don't worry yours are actually pretty awesome. :P
Just one think ... why do you a have lioneye's remorse on swap instead of Saffell's Frame ?

I see that you are using herald of ash + prolif which is a popular combination ( tho i don't like it at all because you loose tons of armour due to no Determination ) which is fine of course. But keep in mind that both Herald of Ash and elemental prolif will be hugely nerfed ( they already are in the beta ).

@Asag
Well it's pretty simple actually in my opinion.
I consider Iron Reflexes not to be worth it because:
1. You need to spent 4 passive skill points just to get ... and that's just such a huge waste.
2. You would think that you'll gain tons of armour right ? Well that's not entirely true. From where you'll get tons of armour? From your armour based shield ? From the 30 evasion of your facebreakers? From your Abyssus with 0 evasion? The only gear piece with ...ok ( and no where near good ) evasion is the carcass jack .. that's it... and maybe your boots ( if you are me and you have Evasion boots) and on top of that you don't get any evasion from your dexterity while you have iron reflexes and also the armour/evasion hybrid nodes only count as armour nodes while you have Iron Reflexes. You might think grace right ? But actually determination gives more armour even with IR! With all that said IR sure gives more armour but to get that you sacrifice passives and a lot of evasion chance.

So by getting Iron Reflexes you end up with this :
+ you gain a bit more armour
- less passive skill points to use elsewhere
- less chance to evade

Is the extra armour worth it? I don't think it does, not compared to the loss of passives and chance to evade. Sure more armour is always nice but after a certain point more armour doesn't do much more against your common enemies and the hard-hitting bosses will still do pretty much the same damage.

So in the end ask yourself this question - "What will i gain and what will i loose if i take Iron Reflexes? Is it worth it?" - the answer (once when you've taken into consideration all details) will be pretty obvious. It depends on your personal preferences ... but it will be obvious.

P.S. Oh well ... i'll do some tree changes to grab Iron reflexes and tell you the exact numerical changes.

@uljimah
After the expansion just like before that the best combination in my opinion will still be Hatred + Determination + Herald of Ash.
The problem is that 2-3 more passive must be spent to get enough reduced mana reservation cost ... aaaand a level 3 enlightenment ( fortunately i already have one at level 3 )
Until you can support all that i'd suggest dropping Herald of Ash completely. In the beta it has ridiculously low AoE ... so essentially it just gives you 15% of Physical Damage as Extra Fire Damage which is not a big deal compared to Hatred which gives 36% at level 20 and Determination which pretty much doubles your armour.

Ok so after using 8 regrets these are the numbers that i have:

Lioneye's Remorse + no IR
armour 16823 (62%)
evasion 2617 (23%)

Old one's ward + no IR
armour 2788 (21%)
evasion 3673 (28%)

Lioneye's Remorse
armour 21778 (67%)
evasion 0 (5%)
-355 life because of refunded passives

Old one's ward + IR/deter
armour 9832 (48%)
evasion 0 (5%)
-355 life because of refunded passives

Lioneye's Remorse + IR/grace
armour 19778 (65%)
evasion 0 (5%)
-355 life because of refunded passives

Old one's ward + IR/grace
armour 11970 (53%)
evasion 0 (5%)
-355 life because of refunded passives

First of all it's clear that Determination > Grace in most scenarios ( and i was using level 20 grace )... with the exception of Old One's Ward + IR + Grace.
So you get more armour for sure with IR.
In the case of Lioneye's Remorse it seems to me that the difference is not big in terms of estimated physical damage reduction, in the case of Old one's ward it's a significant boost indeed. Now the downside is the huge loss in evasion chance and the loss of life due to the 4 passives needed to get to IR.

I don't know man... in my opinion it's not worth it... maybe if you are using Old One's Ward it makes some sense ... i can't definitely say "never use it" or "always use it"

For me as a person who uses Lioneye's Remorse the extra 4-5k armour is not worth the loss of 355 life and so much chance to evade. I mean bigger life pool alone is just ... better.

But in the end IR is not a terrible choice ( tho i wouldn't use it ) ... and if you want to use it go ahead! :)