[3.20] Ice Dancing Queen - Icestorm/Cyclone/CI - Viable For Everything

well i in confusion, cause with profane bloom so fun to play, but with so much nerfs...and yeah inq asc now no alin immune, so mb witch antifreeze gona be best xD

What about bonechill btw? I don't get the wording of the new gem. Does it increases damage only for supported skill, or it will work for the Icestorm as well?

Bonechill Support

Added
Enemies Chilled by Supported Skills increase Cold Damage taken by Chill Effect
Enemies in Chilling Areas from Supported Skills increase Cold Damage taken by Chill Effect
Supported Skills deal 14% more Cold Damage

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Kelvynn wrote:

After looking at both versions in PoB and my respective characters and gear from 3.12 (Asc) and 3.13 (Occ), I have decided to go with the Ascendant for 3.15.

In theory, Occultist with ultimate gear should still be more powerful than Ascendant with ultimate gear. But that gear has to be really, REALLY good. In 3.13 I fine-tuned my stats and resists with Harvest crafting to get close to perfection on the Occultist, which allowed me to use Synthesized items and still balance all resists. It took quite a number of Harvest resist type changes and targeted rerolls even in that league, before the big nerf. Plus stun avoidance. Now that kind of gear is much harder to make AND it has to be even more perfect with mana-related things in mind.

Ascendant is a lot easier to gear. Maybe not to such perfection as Occultist, but to be comfortable enough. Ascendant doesn't need an extra Blasphemy aura, so it will have a lot more free mana. It's immune to stun. It needs fewer gem sockets, i.e. it can afford extra gems such as Clarity, Frost Shield, Vigilant Strike.

Finally, I don't see an easy way to level Occultist in 3.15 without either running into major mana problems or sacrificing important build features until I can obtain things that are just not available early in a new league.

Rather than chasing perfection with Occultist, I'm going to take an easier route with Ascendant and see how the build works in 3.15.

Good to hear, Ill leaguestart with it then. Thanks! <3

If CwC will cost us mana and Cyclone too, what's the point of playing CwC instead of Selfcast with two extra Supports?

Selfcast feels super clunky. Cast time is also super slow, means u have to stand still.
Not really a fun playstyle

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Kelvynn wrote:

Here's a very fitting way to mitigate the mana cost of Icestorm:

Yeah that stat is very good. I used it on BF/BB and could ignore practically all sources of mana regen and Clarity as was otherwise commonly needed for that build. However, I am not sure it will be enough for Icestorm alone (it would've worked well prior to 3.13 for sure - just as ES on hit did). I think Ball Lightning will definitely work well with this and totally negate the CWDT cost as it generates so many hits. But while Cycloning through a map/boss immunity/evading your hits - running OOM is probably going to be a common feature still. Arcane Surge also had its mana regen nerfed.

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Kelvynn wrote:

Now, another change: Vortex-Bonechill isn't as good as it was before. All it does now is make the enemy standing in it take 10% increased cold damage.

I suppose the new MORE multiplier for linked skills isn't enough for it to be put into the staff itself.. But you can link Bonechill to Skitterbots, and you'll have constant chill/shock to nearby enemies. It could replace FnS. FnS furthermore can be replaced by grabbing Disorienting Display on a large Cold cluster. Disorienting Display works like an aura that follows you once triggered, and probably lasts at least 4 seconds. If you use enough elemental skills (must be selfcast - Flame Dash/Frostblink/Vortex) it actually has a good uptime. And its AoE seems to actually be better than standard radius FnS: https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/fsypjr/psa_the_new_notable_disorienting_display_actually/

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archwerewolf wrote:

well i in confusion, cause with profane bloom so fun to play, but with so much nerfs...and yeah inq asc now no alin immune, so mb witch antifreeze gona be best xD

They didn't mention any changes to the Ascendant so we're still immune to ele ailments while in consecrated ground xD. Just keep using that sulphur flask (which btw uses up way more charges now though...) EDIT: Nvm they did remove it. I must've missed that when reading the patch notes OR they forgot it in the first upload. RIP.

delete, wrong thread.

Not sure why there is even a discussion to circumvent mana cost considering that we get a buttload of mana from the int, therefore, mana regen.

With my typical build that is far from optimal, I am regenerating 264 mana per second. Icestorm costs me 202 mana per second. Cyclone adds a whooping 8, for 210 mana per second.

I have IC and WoC on CWDT. That's 132 mana per 3 seconds, or 44 mana per second.

So that's 254 mana per second consumed in worse case scenario, I am regenerating 264. The only caveat is with Frostblink, but since we should always be capped on a mana and regenerating more than we consume, we should be able to offset the cost.

I did some comparisons in PoB between some of my builds from 3.14 to the recent 3.15 update that came yesterday.

Two of my SSF builds that are common (BF/BB Poison Assassin & Eartshatter slam Berserker):
72% & 64% less dmg, respectively, along with up to 4x the mana cost on avg.

Now those were without tweaking/adjusting the skill gems/passive tree to the new changes, but the impact of the nerf is quite evident.

I also compared my Icestorm hybrid aura stacker from Harvest league to new numbers (new PoB has updated to the new base dmg values of 3-5 dmg per 10 Int).

The new Controlled Destruction absolutely decimated my crit chance (80% less) so I had to replace that with Increased Critical Damage. But aside from that I made no changes:
3.14 avg hit: 556k
3.15 avg hit: 461k

That's 18% less dmg. I haven't compared with a more standard version of the build using EO instead. And I have now updated my PoB so I would need to download an older version and redo the test. But you will certainly do less dmg than before - but compared to other commonly played meta builds they got hit way harder in terms of dmg output.

That said... my Earthshatter Berserker with 100% SSF gear still does more dmg than my gigapimped Harvest Ascendant with a couple mirror-tier gear pieces. More importantly it is more flexible in terms of movement & defenses and can be achieved in SSF.

Icestorm deserves more flexibility, imagine if there were no clunkiness.

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loczek123 wrote:

If CwC will cost us mana and Cyclone too, what's the point of playing CwC instead of Selfcast with two extra Supports?

I don't think it's too bad since Cyclone doesn't require to be linked with other gems, except CwC. Pre-3.15, Cyclone needed to be linked with Inspirational to generate charges for Ice Storm but since triggered skills cost mana in 3.15, Ice Storm can generate Inspirational charges itself. Therefore, you can drop one more link for Cyclone, reducing its mana cost.