[3.1] The Blinding Blizzard - Whispering Ice Berserker - Viable for Most Everything

Hey all you sexy nerds!

I enjoy this build alot and I just came back from a break, I played the ES verison and now switching over to this.

I feel like its lacking somewhere or just not the same damage I had before, and that may be due to gear swapping I had to do, Anyone willing to take a look at my character and provide some feedback?

Thank you.



PassiveTree

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Undermonk wrote:

Hey all you sexy nerds!

I enjoy this build alot and I just came back from a break, I played the ES verison and now switching over to this.

I feel like its lacking somewhere or just not the same damage I had before, and that may be due to gear swapping I had to do, Anyone willing to take a look at my character and provide some feedback?

Thank you.

Spoiler

PassiveTree

1. You are using Life Leech gem. Berseker doesn't need it. Replace it with CE.

2. You are using IR. That already means lower damage. Use CD for better damage, at least for the bosses.

3. You are using high level SR gem. Bad idea, you'll run out of mana against a boss that deals constant damage. Use lv 1.

4. You are using high level AS gem. It fires only every Nth cast of OoS or FD. Use lv 6.

5. Those boots are pretty bad. Low Int, no ms, can't enchant, and still not a lot of resists even at that price. Look for better boots, maybe with less Life, but with Int, resists and ms.

6. You are still lv 82, at least 3 jewel sockets to get. That's a good amount of damage.

I figured there was still plenty to play around with! been awile.

Thank you for your reply, Will start working on the upgrades shortly <3

So this can be seen in some 3.1 preview video:



While the nerf to VP was anticipated, this is hilarious. Whispering Ice Slayer in 3.1? :)))

Or perhaps simply a new tree for the Berserker. We'll see.

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Kelvynn wrote:

While the nerf to VP was anticipated, this is hilarious. Whispering Ice Slayer in 3.1? :)))

Or perhaps simply a new tree for the Berserker. We'll see.

RIP? We had a good run, I played the build in the Templar CI days.

Right now all we can do is wait for the patch notes. Lets pray they rebalance the spike damage and remove reflect. But I'm not holding my breath, considering GGG's track record.

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toyotatundra wrote:

"

Kelvynn wrote:

While the nerf to VP was anticipated, this is hilarious. Whispering Ice Slayer in 3.1? :)))

Or perhaps simply a new tree for the Berserker. We'll see.

RIP? We had a good run, I played the build in the Templar CI days.

Right now all we can do is wait for the patch notes. Lets pray they rebalance the spike damage and remove reflect. But I'm not holding my breath, considering GGG's track record.

Far from RIP!

Slayer can get the leech cap to 100% with the new VP, and he will need to do much less actual DPS to heal himself fully. Moreover, Slayer's leech never stops, he can simply walk through most Lab traps, he is immune to stun and bleed while leeching (i.e. almost always).

Also, automatic cull at 20%. I think I'm going to enjoy this :)

Berserker still may be an option too. New VP is closer, and with it the leech cap for Berserker will be 40%, with 200% increased leech amount (within that cap). Even now, very few enemies can kill the Berserker in 2.5 sec without VP (mostly T16 with crazy mods).

And then we have the big question about ES leech. The new VP text doesn't imply that it can't work with ES! If this means ES leech un-nerf, CI may be making a comeback. And if CI becomes viable again, then Elementalist becomes possible again - THE best class for this build from the DPS and synergy point of view.

I'm going to watch the news closely. A lot of things are not clear at the moment. We'll see what GGG reveals in the next 3 weeks.

200% from non-instant leech seems to be not enough for bosses
bought this today (std)

and this (harbsc)

in fact my 2nd HH xD

just in the case for SC crit option
btw Harbinger is another league when I earned 150 +ex (1st was Perandus, then Legacy)

recently playing Turmoil with EK phys->lightning Inquisitor (check my profile for details)
very funny, very fast, Breach hunter, 4k splinters earned so far (working monday-saturday!), including 1,5 Chayula, 35 ex earned (not mentioning breachstones, valuable cards, uniques)

So if the current placement of vaal pact will go through this build will actually be dead once and for all since the leech against bosses won't be enough to facetank. Ah well suppose it was fun while it lasted.

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nanukotu wrote:

So if the current placement of vaal pact will go through this build will actually be dead once and for all since the leech against bosses won't be enough to facetank. Ah well suppose it was fun while it lasted.

No, it's actually easier to reach for Berserker than before. Only a few nodes down from Sentinel, and most of those are Dex that can be converted to Int with Fertile Mind in the socket there. And all other investment from the Shadow area can be re-allocated to the Duelist area, it has similar things. Art of the Gladiator converted to 20 Int is a great node.

At this point I'm more curious about the Slayer becoming the stronger choice. There are reasonable concerns that Slayer might get nerfed too, otherwise with the new VP he will be totally OP, and we'll have a Slayer meta.

The build will survive in any case. I already created a contingency plan in case of losing VP completely. It is viable even without VP. The 2.4 era WI CI Inquisitor Lord_Seru in my profile, respecced for 3.0 without VP, has killed all of T16 and the Shaper with some adjustments to the tactics and flasks.

Can't wait to hear more details about the balance changes in 3.1. Now that the cat is out of the bag about VP, there should be a Dev Manifesto post with more information soon. GGG can't keep a major balance change like that unexplained until the 3.1 patch notes. They will have to talk about it.

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skrecu wrote:

200% from non-instant leech seems to be not enough for bosses

It's not just 200% leech, it's also 40% leech cap (per second). For non-Slayers that is. Slayer can get to 100% cap, i.e. fully instant leech, but with 100% more speed than before. It's going to be crazy if they don't nerf Slayer to counter this new gift to him.

"

skrecu wrote:

bought this today (std)

Spoiler

and this (harbsc)

in fact my 2nd HH xD

just in the case for SC crit option
btw Harbinger is another league when I earned 150 +ex (1st was Perandus, then Legacy)

recently playing Turmoil with EK phys->lightning Inquisitor (check my profile for details)
very funny, very fast, Breach hunter, 4k splinters earned so far (working monday-saturday!), including 1,5 Chayula, 35 ex earned (not mentioning breachstones, valuable cards, uniques)

Sadly, I have completely lost any interest in Standard. It can only be challenging for new players. But after you've been through a few leagues and have all this stuff in Standard, it's just too EZmode. Roflstomping everything without any risk of dying can only be fun for so long. Nowadays, I only log in to Standard to test new ideas for the upcoming patches and check out random builds from the streamers that look fun (but usually they are not quite as much fun even with Std items when you are not Mathil :))