Today, we have my take on the Cold Imbue Flurry build. When I first started with Flurry, this is not how I saw the build going. I was expecting a similar but weaker version of Twisting Blades. But to my surprise, this build plays completely different to any of the Twisting Blade builds I’ve done.
The mobility and crowd control of this build is insane being able to fly through packs of enemies freezing and stunning them while you hit huge bursts of damage. This also means that we can use this build to harvest a lot of Diablo 4 Gold.
Skills & Playstyle
For skills, we will be using Shadow Step, Dash, Flurry, Cold Imbuement, Caltrops, and Puncture, with our specialization being Combo Points.
Using Combo Points with Flurry doesn’t just give you that damage increase, but it also gives you a very nice attack speed bonus, giving us 30% attack speed for up to four and a half seconds.
Because of this, I really leaned into focusing on attack speed for this build. Because attack speed doesn’t only let us spam faster, it also speeds up the Dash, Shadow Step, and Caltrops’ animations, letting us cycle faster through skills and keeping up on our Crowd Control.
Most of our damage comes from the stunning and freezing our enemies. We stun by evading through enemies and then attacking with Flurry to get our two and a half second stun off. We then will use Cold Imbuement or Caltrops to freeze the targets, giving huge damage bonuses against them.
Caltrops is great. Because not only do we get a jump backwards and reposition, it also gives us more freezing and a big damage increase when they’re inside the Caltrops because of Ambush master.
Your most common skill rotation will look something like Dash in, Flurry for attack speed, Caltrops to jump back, Shadow Step back in if they threw and Flurry spam, using Cold Imbuement when it’s up.
For bosses, since our damage comes from stunned and frozen enemies, you’ll see that boss fights are off to a slow start. However, we can Crowd Control bosses super fast by evading through and flaring to build up that stagger bar. And once the bosses are staggered, you finish them up pretty quickly.
Armor Stats
First, we’ll talk about gear and stat priorities and then we’ll move on to our aspects.
First up, with our helmet, get ranks to Cold Imbuement, Life, Cooldown Reduction, and Armor percent.
For a chest, get Life, Damage Reduction, Damage Reduction from Close Enemies, and Damage Reduction from Distant Enemies.
On our gloves, we want ranks to Flurry, Critical Strike Chance, Attack Speed, and Critical Strike Damage with Imbued Skills.
On our pants, we want the same thing as our chest that being Life, Damage Reduction, Damage Reduction from Close Enemies, and Damage Reduction from Distant Enemies.
For our boots, make sure to have the Attacks Reduce Evade’s Cooldown. This is very important to have up, so we can constantly evade through enemies and get our stuns off as much as possible. Once you have that, then go for Movement Speed, Energy Cost Reduction, All Stats and Damage Reduction while Injured.
Also Read: How To Calculate Damage Increases In Diablo 4? - Damage & Defense Mechanics Explained
Jewelry Stats
As for our jewelry on our amulet, we want Cooldown Reduction and ranks to Weapon Mastery. For your third and fourth rolls, you can either go more defensively with some Damage Reduction rolls or go for Movement Speed with Dex percent.
For our rings, we want Life, Critical Strike Chance, Critical Strike Damage, and Vulnerable Damage.
Weapon Stats
As for our weapons on our crossbow, we want Critical Strike Damage, Vulnerable Damage, Core Skill Damage and either Dex or All Stats. I was using All Stats to help hit some node bonuses on the Paragon Board. And as normal, item power doesn’t matter for a crossbow, just aim for about 725 to get those stat bonuses.
For a one-hand sword, get Critical Strike Damage, Vulnerable Damage, Core Skill Damage and Dex.
For our offhand, we can either use another one hand sword or condemnation here. I did some testing with another one hand sword that was item power 816 with similar stats as my main sword and overall condonation did feel better. Not only did it feel like more damage, but you also get more attack speed out of using a dagger here.
Defensive Aspects
Finally, the aspects.
First up is defensive aspects. In this build, we are only using two defensive aspects, those being Aspect of Might and Aspect of Disobedience. For our third defense slot, we pick up Frostbitten Aspect here.
Frostbitten Aspect is super strong, especially when we stack both a stun and a freeze onto an enemy, but it’s not 100% needed. So, if you want some more survivability, go ahead and pick up Cheat’s Aspect, instead.
On our boots, go ahead and get Ravager’s Aspect for an extra Shadow Step charge.
Offensive Aspects
For our offensive aspects on our crossbow, I went for Accelerating Aspect. Having this here really makes all the skills of the build flow together nicely.
On our amulet, place Aspect of Retribution here. This aspect is a must-have, giving us up to 60% increased damage against stunned enemies.
For our last slots, pick up Edgemaster’s Aspect, Aspect of Encircling Blades and Trickster’s Aspect. Trickster’s Aspect has great synergy with Frostbitten Aspect, allowing for the Stun Grenades that come out of the Caltrops to freeze the targets. But if you’re not using Frostbitten Aspect and you’re using Cheat’s Aspect, go ahead and get Aspect of Expectant in place of this.
I want to quickly talk about Grenade Aspects in combination with Frostbitten Aspect. There’s an aspect called Aspect of Surprise that allows you to drop Stun Grenades when you evade or Shadow Step. For some reason, these grenades weren’t freezing like I thought they would. They seem to be the same grenades that come out of Trickster’s Aspect, so it might be bugged. It’s still a really strong aspect to have as we’re constantly evading and using Shadow Step. So, you can use this in place of Trickster’s Aspect.
As of right now, I do prefer using Trickster’s Aspect. But if they fix it to make these surprise grenades freeze, then I would swap for it.
Energy Aspects
Lastly, our energy sustain aspect.
This build does fly through our energy, so I do recommend having two rings to swap out. One would be Aspect of the Umbral and the other would be Energizing Aspect. Use Aspect of the Umbral when you’re running through the dungeon and when you get to the boss room, you’d swap out for your Energizing ring. Put Umbral on whichever ring is better. And if you don’t have an extra ring that you can use, just use energizing. Because if you get to that boss room and you don’t have energizing, fighting that boss is gonna be a nightmare.
So, if you want to get some special Diablo 4 Items by defeating bosses, prepare Energizing Aspect in advance.
Skill Tree
Below is a quick rundown of our skill tree:
- Puncture (Rank 1)
- Fundamental Puncture
- Stutter Step (Rank 3)
- Sturdy (Rank 3)
- Siphoning Strikes (Rank 3)
- Flurry (Rank 5)
- Enhanced Flurry
- Advanced Flurry
- Shadow Step (Rank 1)
- Disciplined Shadow Step
- Rugged (Rank 1)
- Reactive Defense (Rank 3)
- Weapon Mastery (Rank 3)
- Caltrops (Rank 1)
- Methodical Caltrops
- Dash (Rank 1)
- Enhanced Dash
- Exploit (Rank 3)
- Malice (Rank 3)
- Precision Imbuement (Rank 3)
- Cold Imbuement (Rank 2)
- Enhanced Cold Imbuement
- Mixed Cold Imbuement
- Frigid Finesse (Rank 3)
- Innervation (Rank 3)
- Adrenaline Rush (Rank 1)
- Haste (Rank 3)
- Close Quarters Combat (Rank 1)
Paragon Board
The glyphs that we’re using are Closer, Turf, Chip, Combat, Control, and Exploit.
If you are at a lower level, go ahead and pick up Exploit. Exploit is a really strong glyph, probably the best rogue has, and it’s definitely a must get that up as soon as possible. Other than that, we are picking up a bunch more of Rare and Magic nodes throughout the board, giving us a lot of Critical Strike Damage and some Vulnerable Damage.
