A really GREAT starter body armour for this build is The Beast Fur Shawl.
The increased ES recovery on it is amazing (it increases the leech cap), and its cost is super low (2-3c) even for near to perfect rolls.
I've been using Incandescent Heart. The ES is low, but the extra chaos damage actually does something on the Cold version of the build, and the 25% less elemental damage is very nice.
How can we know that we deal enough damage in order to chill end-game bosses?
Hypothermia is kinda useless against end game bosses if we can't chill them!
they stand on chiled ground so at the very base they get the 10% chill at all times, damage is only relevant to get them above the 10% base provided by chilled ground.
Your build is awesome. I’ve been looking for a valid and relative not expensive CI build for a few leagues, yours is the best one I can find. However, I have a question about your build concept.
I understand that high intelligence will provide extra mana, increased % of ES, plus increase % of damage because of the unique staff (Not sure if it’s local or global). But I didn’t see why we want to detour some spell damage or energy shield points, especially the beginning points of witch they’re pretty good.
Every 10 intelligence will give 5 mana and 2% of ES. The minimum energy shield point will give you 6%, which equals 3 small intelligence points, even you have mod of increase % of intelligence, let’s say 50%, it still equals 2 small int points. The beginning points of witch that you skipped will give you (12, 10, 6, 10), avg is 9.5. You’ll need at least 12 small int points to catch up this much ES. The spell dmg point you skipped are (12, 10, 10, 10), you’ll need at least 28 small int points to catch up (again, assume you have 50% increased intelligence ). My point is if you take all of these dmg & ES points, it’s only 8 points, it will be better than 120 int you got. I don’t consider the extra mana that int will bring because I think due to you won’t level up winter orb, you don’t really need a large mana pool.
Again, please don’t get me wrong, I agree to build up a high int, but have concern to choose so many small int instead others. Let me know your opinion. Thanks.
Also, for those who don't like blood rage setup that eat away our ES and blocking ES recharge start.
I have different solution, but it comes at the cost of absense of a second WI staff on weapon swap, but on the other hand, it greatly diminishes our gem slot problems.
The things is - blood rage is removed together with gem, but we can't do that in the middle of battle, so we just place it on the weapon swap. So weapon swap, use blood rage, and weapon swap again. That way we can activate "stopped taking DOT damage" even without immortal call, and also it great way to "hurt yourself" before trap of the labyrinth, and activate unstoppable ES recharge to run through it.
But wait, there is more! As you all know, there is new craftable veiled mod, that "trigger socketed spell when use a skill", and those things are cheap as hell. So we can even place our frost bomb setup on it, and activate both blood rage and frost bomb at the same time (frost bomb will not go anywhere even after weapon swap, because the moment it was placed, it become completely independent from our gems). And we can do it with a skill as instant cast, even during the run, without stoping. (or with a skill that we want to use anyway, like vigilant strike)
In short, we can place there any of our supporting skills to cast, and cast it manually alltogether by weapon swap and one button.
There are tons of combo that will ease our life, i will investigate slightly further right now, any ideas are welcomed :) (coldsnap+bonechill, hello ^_^)
P.S. The only downside is that you need to get used to weapon swap notion, and waste "single target setup WI". But on the other hand, i don't even use "single target weapon swap WI" anymore. When i changed to 5 link winter orb, i use that instead for both bossing and map clear. It do both with flying colors. Maybe i will change my mind in more deep late game, but right now single target setup only make me to waste more time.
Update: Cause vigilant strike and fortify isn't one entity, removing vigilant strike from gems don't remove our fortify buff. Also, it's not a spell, so it will not be triggered by veiled mod, and will not clunk our order of skill activation.
So we can safely place vigilant strike+ancestral call+blood rage in one hand, and coldsnap+bonechill+frost bomb in another.
That give us 4 free gem slots at the very least.
So, is anyone at all have any comments about my new strat? I'm lonely that everyone just ignored me :(
If you think that it's bad decision, please comment on it, and explain why. I will try to improve it, or just drop that idea entirely if it's unsalvageble :)
Also, for those who don't like blood rage setup that eat away our ES and blocking ES recharge start.
I have different solution, but it comes at the cost of absense of a second WI staff on weapon swap, but on the other hand, it greatly diminishes our gem slot problems.
The things is - blood rage is removed together with gem, but we can't do that in the middle of battle, so we just place it on the weapon swap. So weapon swap, use blood rage, and weapon swap again. That way we can activate "stopped taking DOT damage" even without immortal call, and also it great way to "hurt yourself" before trap of the labyrinth, and activate unstoppable ES recharge to run through it.
But wait, there is more! As you all know, there is new craftable veiled mod, that "trigger socketed spell when use a skill", and those things are cheap as hell. So we can even place our frost bomb setup on it, and activate both blood rage and frost bomb at the same time (frost bomb will not go anywhere even after weapon swap, because the moment it was placed, it become completely independent from our gems). And we can do it with a skill as instant cast, even during the run, without stoping. (or with a skill that we want to use anyway, like vigilant strike)
In short, we can place there any of our supporting skills to cast, and cast it manually alltogether by weapon swap and one button.
There are tons of combo that will ease our life, i will investigate slightly further right now, any ideas are welcomed :) (coldsnap+bonechill, hello ^_^)
P.S. The only downside is that you need to get used to weapon swap notion, and waste "single target setup WI". But on the other hand, i don't even use "single target weapon swap WI" anymore. When i changed to 5 link winter orb, i use that instead for both bossing and map clear. It do both with flying colors. Maybe i will change my mind in more deep late game, but right now single target setup only make me to waste more time.
Update: Cause vigilant strike and fortify isn't one entity, removing vigilant strike from gems don't remove our fortify buff. Also, it's not a spell, so it will not be triggered by veiled mod, and will not clunk our order of skill activation.
So we can safely place vigilant strike+ancestral call+blood rage in one hand, and coldsnap+bonechill+frost bomb in another.
That give us 4 free gem slots at the very least.
So, is anyone at all have any comments about my new strat? I'm lonely that everyone just ignored me :(
If you think that it's bad decision, please comment on it, and explain why. I will try to improve it, or just drop that idea entirely if it's unsalvageble :)
The idea sound´s very interesting - would solve my problem of missing sockets. I need some more :-)
But i don´t like the weapon swap. If i want to activate Arakaali i have to do that every 4 second or am i wrong here? Also my Winter Orb stacks drop after weapon swap.
Can´t say anything about the veiled mod thing, becouse i don´t have it in standard.
The idea sound´s very interesting - would solve my problem of missing sockets. I need some more :-)
But i don´t like the weapon swap. If i want to activate Arakaali i have to do that every 4 second or am i wrong here? Also my Winter Orb stacks drop after weapon swap.
Can´t say anything about the veiled mod thing, becouse i don´t have it in standard.
How do you deal with incursions with this build? Im always out of time for open a door or kill the mobs that give a key. The build its fantastic and OP for 99,99% of the game, but incursions its a "no" because the build its slow for a 8 seconds timer!
How do you deal with incursions with this build? Im always out of time for open a door or kill the mobs that give a key. The build its fantastic and OP for 99,99% of the game, but incursions its a "no" because the build its slow for a 8 seconds timer!
Had a problem with incursion, until switched to winter orb setup. Now incursion become piece of cake, full clear with 20 sec remaining.
Actually, incursions were the only reason why i even wanted better clearspeed, and i still want to play with standard spell cascade setup, but incursions were too much...
Anyway, just link your staff for 5link (it's not gonna be that expensive), and link there your standard "winter orb - CwC - GMP - 2 other damage gems", in last 6 socket place life leech (you don't really need it in winter orb setup, but icestorm setup want it)
That way you will get 2 in 1: 5 linked winter orb, and 5 linked icestorm single target setup. That setup perfectly fine with both map clear and single target. In incursion just place cursor on rare target, and all the others will die themselves.
Oh, yeah. I don't think that i need to say that, but herald of ice is required to clear speed.