[3.20] Ice Dancing Queen - Icestorm/Cyclone/CI - Viable For Everything
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Hello guys.
First off this is my first league start and it was a blast. It was quite fun in the start seeing how you other guys fared up and leveled and geared up. Congrats to @archwerewolf for getting lvl 100 1st! I've been trying to keep up with you 2 guys @lilianmarius. I noticed early (2nd day?) when I first got my staff (in act 6 I got it) that this build was gonna dominate the delirium content. The clear/bosskilling balance and survivability make this build handle it well. Even with reserving alot of mana and pretty low life / more ES gear I was doing really well during leveling. It was so fun. I was set to just stick to the true and tried version of the build until later to look into the new league mechanics. But shortly after getting into the endgame content I dwelled into the new notables and unique jewels anyway and started crunching notes after notes. Someone brought up the Split Personality jewel early on during the league reveal. I got one with Int & ES (early on these guys went cheap in the market for 5c) and put it in the farthest jewel slot of existing build setup and the measly amount it gave made me scrap the idea of using this "shitty jewel". But then I just ended up fitting it in place of a fertile mind since it did grant an OK boost. Then I thought what if this jewel isn't limited to 1?? It wasn't. So I started an even longer detour into PoB and started experimenting for ages. Manually counting the path of each jewel since PoB doesn't support this, not even today 1 month after release. I used @lilianmarius Metamorph character I_Storm_Santa as a base and finally after 5 variations with Split Personality & Voices jewels I managed to boost his build from 211K avghit/22K ES/3.5K Int to 310K avghit/37K ES/4.1K Int by just modifying the passive tree. This was with the worst tier Voices even. With madness tier Voices jewels it can go to 364K avghit/44K ES/4.6K Int. I even got one version with 5K Int but it has less avghit/ES so its not as interesting. The drawbacks of this Split version is that you drop alot of resist nodes. I've had to use max resist rolled rare jewels and good resist rolls on gear to keep mine maxed. I've also tested Megalomaniacs since they can roll any notable I thought they were the best ones to go for. I've used Overlord and Enduring Focus for the nice defensive buffs since. I've also tried Natural Affinity and its actually quite good. I'd say it's better than Arctic Armour since it reduces all damage source and gives dbl dmg chance. I was curious to see how much the DPS boost was and its quite a lot at 10 stacks of vines. In actual game testing I also saw when the dbl dmg hits went down on mobs so it is indeed applying to Icestorm. However it didn't fit in with my Megalo/Split variant. I've got some IRL stuff going on since then and I mostly just wanted to play the game so I haven't been able to theorize much more. I also felt that this was just not feeling balanced so I suspected GGG would nerf the notables and unique jewels stacking. But hey they are just gonna let us have it I guess. I'm currently in a love hate relationship with this game. I've been using Spell Cascade since its just more effective in everything except boss fights. But when you stack enough Int the duration of Icestorm along with more tanky&numerous endgame content it just kills your FPS. Until maps I could play with DirectX and sounds enabled. But then it started to get too laggy so I started using my performance optimizations (disabling sound effects, then using Vulkan mod). Vulkan mod is a stutterfest when you start using it, but when it has cached the shaders the performance is better and with Icestorm the actual performance in a map is smoother. It's just very annoying because whenever GGG releases a patch the shader cache seems to be gone. It also seems to randomly have to reload the shaders. Sometimes my screen freezes for several seconds because some shader hasn't loaded. Yet I never seem to die in this situations still even with delirium and challenging map mods, a testament to this builds survivability I guess. If only there ever was a performance optimization for this skill... I never got this high end with my other char, so far I've managed to successfully Crusader slam a Vaal Regalia, Hunter slam a Helmet (thx @Graiaule for your informative posts on crafting) & craft a nasty Crusader Lapis Amulet with only alt/regal spamming. And then I know I have a lot of improving capabilities still!
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I decided to use Frostblink since it got buffed this league. It has some very interesting usage scenarios that I like a lot compared to Flame Dash. It doesn't cancel channelling Cyclone and its instant. If you manage to place it correctly you can chain it really fast since the cooldown gets reduced per monster affected by it. I find it works really well for Delve and clearing maps. I swap to Flame Dash for difficult bosses but now with insane stats and more knowledge of boss skills I don't think I need it anymore. I see there's alot of variations of this build now, thats cool! I've seen some other players customize even more using other skills & uniques. Some random screenshots:
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Me battling my nemesis the Chimera with funny map mods on a corrupted map. (I couldn't kill him - used all portals.) 25th March
 Deathless so far in the Simulacrum. I shouldn't be since I had a crash to desktop in the middle of a Kosis fight in Lunacy's watch in Wave 20. But I logged in with auras still up and no XP lost xD. Here's before/after of my 3rd run where Kosis & the fat guy spawned in Wave 20 at the same time. 27th March:   Getting that achievement, 28th March.:  Decided to run a 100% delirius T17 Summit with a random added suffix & crazy mods along with beyond and shaper+conqueror influence. Took ages to clear. Died once to the beyond boss that detonates corpses I think (Shits just too laggy to see). Blight, Legion & Zana encounters were impossible to complete with suboptimal DPS at the time. But that loot! :D March 31st   OK so I was casually completing some missing map objectives and I strolled into the Racecourse map bosses and just watched myself RIP over 10% of lvl 98 XP. I'm still a noob apparently since I had no idea one of these guys had a ele reflect skill. Thanks @Kelvynn for giving me tips on how to kill this map boss safely the next time! lol April 2nd  I wish I took some more shots. :) Last edited by LiNGeN on Apr 4, 2020, 6:52:53 PM
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" Wow...that's really godlike numbers! Wish Lilian did it in league) |
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" I forgot to post a screenshot:  | |
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New video: Sirus AL8
This is my first ever AL8 Sirus (5th Sirus kill overall). I haven't played much in 3.9, so I'm still learning. But it was a deathless roflstomp. I really thought this would be harder. After I did literally the same at AL5, everybody told me he's MUCH harder at AL8. Not really! Not with this build anyway. BTW, Sirus was the final straw that convinced me to switch to The Stampede boots and Frostblink. Always spinning at 150% speed in the final phase is priceless. You don't have to worry about getting slowed by the rotating beams (they apply 200% chill), it's much easier to dodge the 'Die!' laser he does right after that. And constantly placing new Icestorms in a circle is very nice - apparently he likes to teleport to spots around that circle. On my previous kill (AL7) he actually died to residual Icestorms off-screen after teleporting away from me, before I could find him again :) Last edited by Kelvynn on Apr 4, 2020, 5:29:46 PM
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" Hello! Can you post the pob pastebin for the variation you did on my I_Storm_Santa please? At least that one with the worse Voices jewel Thank you! |
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" Gratz! Well he was fixed a little bit. But yeah. not so hard after you learn his pattern |
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" Loaded your character into PoB and it says you need level 104 to get all the skillpoints (and PoB does account for the extra skills from ascendant) How are you filling out your tree?? | |
" You probably connected all nodes on the cluster jewels, including ones that I don't use. Both new videos have the PoB snapshot in the description: https://pastebin.com/4k0kJQMh It has the exact nodes, just doesn't calculate the stats on Split Personality's. | |
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Man, I do hope that at least the base version of this build will stay affordable in the following leagues.
I very much suspect that the new jewels (both split personality and cluster jewels) will become both more rare AND more expensive. The base build is still able to clear everything fine right? And can use the Stampede Boots without much trouble? | |
" Yes and yes. It helps to plan ahead to use the Stampede boots (e.g., don't put Aspect of the Spider on your rare boots...) |
