[3.21] ShakCentral's Cold DoT Elementalist For Everyone

Wow. That you achieved that in league is unreal. You have all my respect, what you have done is truly amazing.

It should be the new basis for Shakcentral endgame build.

BIG optimizations:
* Snowforged is now strictly superior to Heart of Ice (in my opinion). With your dps, even Light Eater might be superior to Heart of ice, but that debatable (overall without Ghost Reaver).
* Penetration does not affect cdot, so you can link Divine Judgement through the top node for a whoopy 4% increased dps ^^


On my side, I went full apeshit on auras. With the help of a friend explaining things slowly to me, I got 4 i84 medium aura clusters, and rolled them with 35% inc effect. At 40ex apiece plus 10ex for each roll it's absolutely not worth it XD. But it's standard so who cares right? right?

I nuked the full right part of the tree for them. When you dive in the aura stacking rabbit hole there is no going back. By example dread banner: I have it a lv 9 atm due to str limitation. This gives "Nearby enemy have 18% less accuracy rating". With my 220% increased aura effect, they now have 57% less accuracy. It's a full other ballpark. A true aura stacker would max out evasion with zero evasion on her. Crazy. It's to the point that I wonder if replacing my gear with full aura stacking is worth it. Without 3 nodes voices, I doubt it. Plus it would denature the build to much imo.

Anyway, I speced in Vile Bastion (the stun immune part is too good to pass) and took Whispers of Doom on the tree. I have 1354 es regen with Bottled Faith and Vitality lv14. This is main visible difference between our builds. With the 4 aura clusters, I'm back to 20m dps.

I did try some juicy (140q+ 4 scarabs) t16 delirium maps. It was pretty smooth and I never felt any real sense of danger. Conquerors even drox rarely have time to use their first ability. Sirus last phase gets properly obliterated. Only in Delve lv 600+ I found the build more frail than the block version, but I killed Aul at lv900+ pretty easily (with some mods, but not the worst ones).

Next step would be to reroll two of my cluster jewels to spec out the str node and get enough resists to use a proper second dps ring.

This min-maxing project is way more entertaining than I thought it would. I truly enjoy playing the build in maps and "one shot" conquerors. I didn't think it would ever be possible with vortex. But now I have to resist the urge to reproduce this build as league starter. I have been there and it's an exercise in frustration...

Actual pastbin: https://pastebin.com/2jXUxQxV

Donbrwaler, I can't thank you enough for the inspiration for this build. I had more or less given up on vortex and now I'm again enjoying this build immensely.

@roselan, thanks for the kind words. ShakCentral's guide was very detailed and I read it multiple times to learn about vortex. Its my favorite build of all time and loved adding my own tweaks over the last couple leagues.

I had no idea Penetration has no effect on Cold Dot and using Vitality gem is super tempting.

Using a Thread of Hope instead of Intuitive Leap at first was a struggle with mana, but with one cluster jewel I fixed that issue.

I thought I was gonna miss notables like Mystic Bulwark, Blast Radius and Prodigal Perfection, but having extra points for cluster jewels to gain mana and fitting in Aspect of the Spider to gain way more dps was the way to go.

The thread of hope also allows for much more customization in where you put your points and with a lvl 10 clarity I have no mana issues even with low mana 147 it regens instantly.

Snowforged is a very nice find indeed that extra resistance is a huge plus too.

While I do like Light Eater it's a situational DPS increase so I think Heart of Ice is still better most of the time.

With harvest coming back next league the Balanced POB should be very achievable. I will be trying to go for the highest DPS next league I just hope Poe.ninja fixes how they calculate dps :D

@roselan, After realizing how OP 35% Aura effect is.

Here is a 30mil Shaper DPS with 11k ES POB for theory crafting fun you can mess with :)

https://pastebin.com/3u3x0RsL

That's pretty awesome. I played this in harvest SSF, but i didn't have the cluster jewels to go far in that direction. I also tried it for the flashback, such a fun build. Debating on doing this for 3.13 or trying EQ Jugg bleed :)

I'm willing to bet aura stacking gets some nerfs in next patch.

"

_Elminister_ wrote:

I'm willing to bet aura stacking gets some nerfs in next patch.

I think that's everyone's bet ;)

And that's why I don't mind to have spent 200ex to aurastack my Occultist. In best case scenario med aura clusters get simply removed, and the existing ones become legacy.

On the other hand, building an aura stacker takes time. This keeps people playing and might incite GGG to keep it them in the game.

ps: if you want to see my build in action, here is Sirus last phase, and that was before i84 clusters (now at 20m dps, not 17).

"

I'm willing to bet aura stacking gets some nerfs in next patch.

Wouldn´t change a thing. I am kind of annoyed of people being in a devastating fear of nerfs. It´s not like builds become unplayable afterwards. Best example would be the summoner nerf 2 leagues ago. Damn, the forum and reddit went crazy, all the time you saw postings like "THANKS GGG, Summoner is dead" and other stuff.

Kind of funny, if you check poe.ninja then it is after ascendant still the most played class with over 20%. Even if you cut out the carrion golem which is normally played as some sort of aura stacking its still the 3rd most played ascendancy. So yeah, wasn´t that big of a nerf after all, was it?

My expectation: Same will happen with aura stacking. If they did not want to have mechanics like aura-stacking in the game they would have adjusted the stacking of notables on the cluster jewels right after delirium with the rework. They did not. Why? Because they are smarter than most of the community that screams "NERF NERF". The option to stack notables is build-enabling in a lot more ways than pure aura-stacking and getting rid of this would damage build flexibility and diversity.

In general I wouldn´t even say I disagree - Aura stacking might be a bit overtuned right now. But it´s not that broken as many people act it is. If you have to work on a character half a season to get him to this point of strength then it is supposed to be pretty well-rounded. Do that on other chars and you´ll come close to that result.

Keeping all that in mind I think it´s pretty obvious that even with a nerf aura-stacking itself will still be viable and that build was viable even before it. So yeah... time to relax.

Damn I think we got a little nerf. Frigid wake is now 15% more Cold Damage instead of 20% overtime Multiplier

OMG profane bloom 40% chance to explode (like my head ^^)

https://i.imgur.com/KXA3PbP.png

Frigid Wake goes from 20 to 15% more cold dmg :/
Vile Bastion regen 2% instead of 1%. Still max 10%.
Malediction not gated behind Profane Bloom, but looses it's 8% phy to chaos per curse per enemy. Maybe malediction is reworked.