[3.11] Aquarism's Ice Shot [All Content]

24/06/2020: Updated POB to version 3.02

17/06/2020: Updated POB to version 3.01

25/04/2020: Updated POB to version 2.0

14/04/2020: Created Crafting section.

23/03/2020: Updated POB to version 1.10.

20/03/2020: Updated POB to version 1.09, tweaked lvl 100 league tree to include cluster jewels, fixed rare bow only having +1 arrow instead of 2.

15/03/2020: Amended gearing section regarding death opus.

13/03/2020: Updated POB, swapped out death opus for a rare bow.

11/02/2020: Updated POB, swapped Fork for Chain, added awakened version of clear and single target.

06/01/2019: Updated pob, swapped some gear around to improve survivability. Darkray removed from end game league, added warlord gloves for +1 max frenzy. POB V1.05.

23/12/2019: Updated gearing section with 3 new bow swaps, re-added taming. mentioned damage on full life swap in gem section, better-explained FAQ. POB amended with 2 new bows, made standard jewels relic, expanded notes. POB V1.04.

21/12/2019: Ammended pob and gem section regarding links.

19/12/2019: Updated mechanics, gear, gems section.

18/12/2019: Updated POB, combined bandit/pantheon/ascendency into the POB section.

13/12/2019: Added a 4th build into POB, an extreme budget setup. Levelling tree adjusted so claw cluster is no longer included taking into account Lioneye's fall will likely be expensive. Previous budget gear renamed to End Game League.

12/12/2019: Added refined levelling guide, subject to change with Barrage Support.

11/12/2019: Removed temporary levelling guide. Removed level 100 passive tree. Removed Mapping and Bossing POB, this information is now merged in to one POB.

11/12/2019: Added temporary levelling guide.

05/12/2019: Changed second gif showcasing clear.

23/10/2019: Added second POB for clearing variant.

09/10/2019: Guide created.

Mandatory
Before you start, you need to download Openarl's Path of Building (POB), this is an external tool designed to more accurately represent player damage. After that download LocalIdentity's Fork, it expands on the current POB with more features.

POB
Fork

Recommended
POE Overlay helps you price check items in-game without the need to alt-tab and search for yourself, you can also ctrl scroll through your stash tabs without the cursor in your stash. A loot filter will also make your mapping experience infinitely better, try Neversink's loot filter, you can either subscribe to his filter to receive updates automatically or download the zip file.

Overlay
Loot Filter Subscription
Loot Filter Download

So how do we scale our damage?

- Additional arrows. Barrage is a skill that scales incredibly well with additional arrows, by default it fires 5 arrows, we can bump that number to 12, 15 in standard.

- Critical Strikes. We will have 100% crit chance if not very close, giving us a huge damage boost, as well as a lot of other interactions with crit.

- Frost bomb. This skill applies cold exposure, meaning enemies will have -25% to cold resistance, as well as lowered regen, use this at bosses for a nice damage boost.

- Frenzy charges. We take the best of raider ascendency and use it for deadeye, each charge gives us 4% increased attack speed and damage. Using the syndicate mod "5% chance to gain frenzy charge on critical strikes", by having a high attack speed, high crit chance and a lot of arrows, we will have 100% frenzy up time against bosses.

- Onslaught. Flat 20% attack speed and movement speed.

- Power charge. Furthur boosts our crit potential. We can get it from killing enemies cursed by Assassin's mark, or cluster jewel "Storm Rider"

- Assassin’s Mark. One of the ways to generate power charges, on top of making our crits more deadly.

- Aspect of Spider. Slows enemy movement speed by up to 90%, and 15% increased damage taken.

- Culling Strike. With curse medium cluster, we will be able to cull enemies affected by our curses.

Pastebin link, V 3.03:
https://pastebin.com/ZpqyQeiv

What is inside
Included in this POB is a collection of 5 builds: Endgame Mapping and Bossing setup that uses Legacy and very expensive min-maxed gear, serve as a benchmark for the potential of this build, uniques and rares with now unattainable stats will be marked as “relic” with green text. The other 3 uses the current version of uniques and rolls, higher budget uses higher rolls. Low budget is meant to be used with the levelling tree, using gear found on the ground or bought for cheap. Medium budget can easily do all content, it uses all in tool generated values ranging from T4-2 with a lot of room for improvements. High Budget uses mostly T1 rolls, with a crafted rare bow, costs probably in the mirrors.

Difference between setups
Bossing: 26.6m Shaper DPS, 5.0k life
Mapping: 15.8m Shaper DPS, 5.0k life
Low Budget: 4.3m Shaper DPS, 4.8k life
Medium Budget: 12.7m Shaper DPS, 4.8k life
High Budget: 14.7m Shaper DPS, 5.5k life
How to use
To see different builds and tree, select tree in POB, go to the bottom left where the drop-down table is, select the one you wish to see. For items, it is at the very top of the list of your items, you can select the appropriate one.

Config
When switching between builds and trees, make sure the correct configuration is checked, disabling enabling onslaught/frenzy/power/on kill etc can bloat or deflate your dmg. This guide assumes you have frenzy/power and onslaught. Actual DPS may vary depending on the situation, frenzy/power takes time to ramp up, ran out of flasks etc.
Bandits
Help Alira.

Pantheon
Mostly down to preferences, but I took:
Major: Lunaris
Minor: Garukhan
These two combined gives a nice speed boost while mapping.

Ascendency
Gathering Winds - Far shot - Endless Munitions/Fast and Deadly - Ricochet

We take Gathering Winds first to take advantage of the 20% action speed modifier, which makes us move faster, attack faster and cast faster. Then far shot next to help clear with ice shot. The order for the last two choices is flexible, Ricochet if you want better clear, or Endless Munitions for better single target. At a certain number of arrows, Fast and Deadly will be better than Endless Munitions, it also caps our accuracy, you can always decide which one to pick later on.

Notes
- Depending on playstyles, you can take point-blank or opt to not take it. Point blank deals max damage at 10 units away, slowly decreasing to no bonus damage at 35 units, any further it deals less damage. Far shot deals max damage when reaching 70 units, refer to this image for visualisation: Distance.

- Vaal pact can also be good if you are degening too much, double the max life leech is incredibly potent in staying at high or full life.

- You need a decent jewel to justify spending 2-3 points pathing to it, if you cannot get one then spend your points elsewhere.

- Death's Opus use to be the BiS bow for any crit bow build, but after getting nerfed twice this is no longer the case. It is still a very potent bow to use while you transition to a better one.

- Arborix is rather tricky to use, you want to dash around while clearing to maximise move speed, while no dash at all while focusing bosses. forced to have iron reflex also means we are less survivable. chose death opus if you do not like the playstyle

- Chin sol is great too, it does more damage than death's opus as soon as you get any source of additional arrows. But you need to take point blank and be in melee range. At end game. Using this bow also means you would have at most 5 arrows on ice shot; Flask(2), ascendency(1), Quiver(1).

- Currently, the best bow would be a rare bow, of base Imperial or Harbinger. You would want to look for +2 arrows, high added and percent increase physical, elemental damage with attacks, and critical strike chance/multiplier. However you need a really good craft to beat unqiues, only recommended for min-maxing.

- Standard, you can use a legacy reach of the council for its +4 arrows. essentially adding a 7l GMP to ice shot and barrage with no drawbacks, this helps clear and adds about 80% dmg to barrage. Only downside is lower base crit, you would need watcher’s eye and perhaps bottled faith to have capped crit chance.


- Prioritize enchantment first, we are looking for the enchant "Barrage fires an additional projectile", in standard you can get +2. If you cannot score a barrage enchant, the next best would be "30% increased Assassin's Mark Curse Effect" "40% Increased Ice Shot damage" or reduced Hatred/Herald of Ice mana reservation.

- For the base, you can use devoto for 20% more ms, more attack speed. Rat's Nest for attack speed, huge crit chance and some ms, or Starkonja for some attack speed, crit chance, and life.

- Ideally, you would use a rare helm with the delve suffix, "nearby enemies have -9% to cold resistance". The range of nearby is about a full screen from testing in PVP arena.


- Hyrri's Ire is the undisputed best DPS option, it provides cold damage topping a level 17 added cold damage support. In standard make sure you buy the legacy version, which is about 10% more damage.

- If you are struggling with resist and life, use Queen of the Forrest. or any rare chest would work.

- Another option is to use Lore weave, can be quite powerful if rolled correctly.

- A corrupted 6l armour, if you can get the right colours it is way better than Tabula, the downside is you can not use it at level 1.

- On quivers we want crit multi, ele with attacks, max life, +1 arrow on shaped or warlord, and one open suffix to craft crit chance/frenzy on crit hybrid, you cannot craft this mod if you already have crit chance on the quiver. This will serve as our primary frenzy generation. The 5% may seem low, but we have 100% crit chance, attacks 4 times a second, every attack fires up to 15 projectiles, you would usually achieve max frenzy in 3 seconds from bosses, or 2 pack clear with ice shot.

- Voidfletcher is another option when you have +4 additional arrows, but that means no permanent uptime of frenzy charges at boss fights. Due to how projectile behaviour works, we also do not want any source of piercing in our build, any corrupted implicit is better in this case for voidfletcher.


- Double Abyss tomb fist is still the best DPS option, the downside being low life and no resist.

- The next option is any gripped gloves with resist and life, you want at least t2 life, if not t1. If you can spare resist elsewhere, aim for attack speed, inc projectile dmg, flat added damage, increased elemental damage and dmg agasint chilled enemies. Best DPS roll is +1 max frenzy/culling strike on warlord base gloves.

- Another option is to get gloves with +1 max frenzy corruption, slink is the best base for this since corruption rerolls implicit, the best case is you get warlord influence for the sweet +2 max frenzy.

- Oskarm is a cheap way to get power charges early on, some life and decent spell dodge chance.

- Surgebinders synergises well with darkray, we can get up to 56% increased elemental damage at 8 frenzy charges. But, it has no life and resists.


- Dark ray gives +1 max frenzy and decent move speed when we have full frenzies, as well as some dodge. In standard you can buy a +1 max frenzy corruption, giving us 2 extra frenzy charge.

- Best boots would be to use rare with a lot of life, resist and move speed. We can get max frenzy on gloves corrupt. Redeemer base has the affix chance to gain elusive on crit, which acts exactly like withering steps except it cannot be refreshed.

- Synthesized boots with onslaught implicit are the best we can get, try to buy or roll good life, resist and move speed. Permanent uptime on onslaught will be a huge boost.


- Rare shaped amulet with crit multi, ele with attack, gain x% physical as extra cold, ele pen, damage per dex is all good rolls, we use onyx here to alleviate some stat requirements.

- Redeemer amulet with 5-6% increased damage per frenzy charge, cold pen, +lvl to all cold skills. Hybrid shaper redeemer would be crazy if rolled correctly.

- Yoke of suffering is good because of the affix, your elemental damage can shock, a somewhat reliable way to shock enemies, works great with the taming.

- Pandemonious gives increased cold damage, cold pen, and blind, the chill when hit is mostly useless as we always chill when we hit with ice shot, but the permanent blind is helpful with survivability.

- For anointment, get "Throat Seeker" for DPS, "Graceful Assault" if you have no other form of onslaught generation, "Freedom of Movement" for more ms, "Cruel Preparation", "Purity of Flesh", "Discipline and Training", "Constitution", "Soul of Steel", or any other defensive nodes you want.


- A rare shaped ring with the suffix "Curse enemies with LVL X Assassin's Mark on hit" is insanely good, it gives a huge chunk of crit chance and some crit damage, killing cursed enemies will also have decent chance to get power charge, further boosting our crit potential. An opal ring is the best base but can get quite expensive, you can instead use a diamond ring, stats we want are life/resist/damage.

- Mark of the elder works great with our shaped ring, gives some cold damage and a very big damage boost to attacks.

- Circle of fear is also good, you will need X% increased Cold Damage while affected by Herald of Ice and Herald of Ice has X% increased Buff Effect to be good, if you can't get these 2 together then mark of the elder is better, implicit try to get inc damage while leeching, % inc cold damage, increased elemental damage with attack skills, the very best would be gain onslaught on hit, but this with the 2 desired affix will make the price stupidly high.

- The Taming will be the best way to fix resist, up to 40% of all res is nice. The bonus damage is hard to get though, we can only reliably ignite enemies, we don't get a bonus from chill only freeze, but we can't freeze end game bosses. We can't reliably shock either because we do many little hits and to shock we need a single hit of 150K lightning damage to shock for the minimal amount.

- If you can’t get curse on hit for some reason, then any ring with resist and life will do.


- For a clear speed build, HH is the obvious choice, gaining a rare monster's mods is the single most powerful ability in this game.

- For bossing or lower budget, a stygian with life/res will work just fine.


- A lot of options when it comes to flasks. Firstly it is mandatory to get an instant life flask, with bleed immune on it, a quick double-tap will bring you back to full life from near death.

- Atziri's Promise is the cheapest way to get a huge chunk of damage out.

- Bottled Faith is really strong against bosses you can easily reach 100% crit with this flask.

- Taste of Hate, works well both defensively and offensively, gaining 20% phy as extra cold means we will be getting 20% inc cold damage as we fully convert to cold damage.

- Wise Oak if you can over cap cold res as dying sun gives 50%, getting a nice chunk of cold pen.

- Dying Sun is a must get for this or any bow builds, it gives +2 arrows, equivalent to death's opus.

- If your crit chance is low, squeeze in a Diamond flask, "Lucky" means you roll your crit twice and takes the higher value, this will help you cap your crit chance.

- Cinderswallow performs better than Atziri's Promise only when it has crit chance veil, and when you have any amount of fire damage to proc ignite. It is also an onslaught flask, meaning you can free up gear choices.

- Have two quicksilver flasks on hand, one for suffix inc movement speed, one curse immune, swap them if you get temporal chains in maps.


- A big bulk of our dmg comes from abyss jewels, prioritize resist first, then if you are under 4k life you need at least t2 life on them. For damage, we want crit multi, flat added dmg, inc crit multi if we killed recently, inc dmg if we killed recently, inc attack speed if we crit recently.

- Then we want a watcher's eye with crit chance hatred, this is to help get our crit as high as possible and make frenzy gen more reliable. If you want more sheet DPS, go for added cold then cold pen. If you can't afford double hatred, get precision with those 2 hatred mods, for precision we want flask charge on crit, crit multiplier, inc attack speed.

- If you use voidfletcher, another way to generate frenzy charges is to use a green nightmare near "survivalist" or "Golem's blood" and take the respective resist nodes.

- Nested cluster jewels bring a lot of value and utilities. All three notable from the large cluster is useful to us, giving a decent chunk of attack speed which we desperately need, as well as life/mana leech. The curse cluster allows us to cull enemies affected by our curses. The ailment cluster allows us to shock enemies and generate power charges when there are no mobs. The life cluster gives great value for bumping life up.

Notes
- Try to aim for 5.5k life, 5k should be the bare minimum, this is where you would survive shaper balls, 5.2k will let you barely survive Sirus.

- You want a good balance between rare and uniques, the only "mandatory" Unique is Hrri's Ire. the rest can be swapped around as you see fit.

- Gears that give you the most damage, in order: Rare +2 bow - Hyrri's Ire - Dying Sun - Curse on hit ring - Barrage helm - Other unique ring - Good rare amulet or a unique one - Rare quiver with frenzy on crit.

- Ways to get frenzy charges: Green nightmare, Brutal restraints, Icebite Support, Quiver craft.

- If you're looking for freeze immunity, you can craft it on boots, or use one of the flask for it.

While uniques can be easy to obtain and gear up, rares eventually outperforms them. This section will detail some of the crafting methods I use. Use POE Data Base to check for mod weighting and Ilvl requirements. Crafting is for the absolute min-maxing, you can usually get equal or even better gear with a fraction of the cost to craft. You might spend 100 ex to craft a bow that gives you 20% more DPS than a 60c death opus, sometimes still ending up with a subpar bow.

Base
It is essential that you use the right base before crafting, this usually means the base type of an item and its item level. Certain tiers of affix can only roll on high Ilvl bases. Optionally, you would want to use perfect fossil in a primitive resonator to get 30% quality. You can still use syndicate bench craft to get 28%, but for pure min-maxing 30% is the way to go.

Bow
The base needs to be either Harbinger or Imperial, Ilvl 86. Best way to craft is to spam alterations on it until you hit "Bow Attacks fire 2 additional Arrows". This affix is extremely rare, only a 1/782.5 chance to get it from suffixes, even lower chance including prefixes, therefore it is better to craft on a base with no influence to avoid hitting other influenced affixes. I recommend imprinting the base before further crafting.

If you have a prefix from alt spamming, it needs to be minimum t2 inc phy/flat phy/inc ele, rest of the prefix is simply not good enough. If you only have +2 arrow, imprint first then use augmentation orb on it to hit one of the 3 mentioned affixes. If you hit anything else, use orb of annulment to get rid of the undesired prefix, use the imprint if the +2 arrow is annulled instead.

Next imprint again, then use a regal orb on it. What you want to hit is the three mentioned prefixes, or inc as/inc crit/inc crit multi suffixes. Again, needs to be at least t3 rolls. If the regal hits an undesired affix, you need to annul and exalt slam until you hit a good affix. If you annulled off +2 arrow, scour the item then use the imprint on it to restore it to the imprinted state.

When you have +2 arrow and 2 other desired affixes, you can multimod the bow to complete the craft. What you craft here is dependant on the roll you already have on the bow, usually its the 6 aforementioned affixes, but I recommend checking with POB to determine what is best for you.

Gloves
Use griped gloves, Ilvl 85. Spam Pristine/Prismatic/Sanctified fossils to hit decent life and resist rolls. Warlord exalts slam to hit +1 frenzy, or culling strike, 125/6000 chance for frenzy, and 250/3000 chance for culling strike. You can change the odds a bit by crafting cannot roll attack modifiers.

Or you can craft by hitting frenzy or culling, then try to hit life and resist from here.Alternatively, you can buy gripped gloves with incursion suffix damage against chilled enemies.

Rings
Opal ring, ilvl 81, you are looking for the suffix "Curse Enemies with Level x Assasin's Mark on Hit" with odds 1/532 for lvl 12 curse. Best way is to alt spam to hit it, imprint, augment, regal to look for atleast t3 max life/ele with attacks/inc as. Similar process to Bow.

Boots
Slink boots, Ilvl 86, all you need here is high life, resist and movement speed rolls. Spam with Pristine/Prismatic/Shuddering/Sanctified fossils. Once you are satisfied with the results, block suffix, and slam with redeemer exalt and hope to hit "Chance to gain Elusive on Critical Strike" 1/10 chance to hit.

Or you can craft using a redeemer base, alt spam for elusive, augment regal and hope for high move speed life and resist.

Helmet
Lion Pelt, Ilvl 85, redeemer base. Spam with Frigid/Pristine/Prismatic/Sanctified, try to get high life /resist rolls and "Nearby Enemies Have -9% to Cold Resistance"

Quiver
Spike-Point Quiver, Ilvl 86. The same process as bow, first alt for the prefix "Bow Attacks fire and additional Arrow" it has a 400/35400 chance of rolling in prefixes, lower including suffixes. imprint, augment, regal. Desired affixes are ele with attacks/max life/inc as/crit multi. The important thing here is we do not want inc crit chance, as it blocks the ability to craft frenzy on crit.

Amulet
Onyx, Ilvl 86, redeemer base. alt for the affix "Increased Damage per Frenzy Charge" or if you feel you need more mana to run aspect of the spider "Hatred has% reduced Mana Reservation". imprint, augment, regal for max life/crit chance/crit multi/ele with attacks.

Notes
- Gear that worth crafting is Bow and Quiver, rest you can try just buying off the market.
- If you manage to score a magic bow with +2 arrows and a deirable T1 prefix, you can try to dupe it using split and imprint beast, then sell a coppy for profit. (Woops I spilled trade secret!)

Links
Explanation and Swaps

This will be primarily focusing on newer players and at league start with no access to levelling uniques. With the reworked early act boss health and resist, beating the campaign will take some time until you can get decent gears.

Gear
Gems

Q: Why is my damage low?
A: This build uses a lot of intertwined mechanics, its power truly shines when all the pieces fall together. Check the mechanics section, then try to get all the gear needed for these mechanics to work.

Q: Why not endless munitions instead of fast and deadly?
A: There is a threshold where fast and deadly becomes better than additional arrows, for me fast and deadly gives a far bigger DPS boost than endless munition. this differs from person to person, if you are using voidfletcher then endless munition might be the better option. tweak your build to see which is best.

Q: Can I league start with this build?
A: Ice Shot got buffed twice in a row, but early bosses got a ton more hp, do not expect to waltz through the campaign with this build. Your clear will be crazy good but single target will be lacking until you can get good gear.

Q: What about Frenzy generation?
A: We start by using an Ice Bite Support to generate frenzy, later in the game try to get crit/frenzy hybrid craft on quivers, this will give permanent uptime on frenzy charges during boss fights.

Q: How do I sustain mana?
A: From large cluster jewel notable "Fuel the Fight", before you can get this, spec 1 or more points into mana leech near "Arrow Dance" Keystone. If you still can’t sustain mana, use flask.

Q: Why is my damage on barrage/barrage support lower than ice shot?
A: Tooltip accounts damage only for a single arrow; you need to times the tooltip DPS with the total number of arrows. For clear DPS is accurate because mobs can only be hit by one arrow per attack.