[3.21] ShakCentral's Cold DoT Elementalist For Everyone

I've looked at a couple characters from people who said they kept dying, and it seems to me a lot of 'em aren't running the armor auras. Determination + Defiance Banner + Armor flasks + Divine Shield notable on the passive tree is a *huge* boost to survivability. Haven't died since I made the switch. I'm also running Incandescent Heart until I get my Shav' and switch to low-life, as it gives a huge boost to res against elemental damage since part of it gets converted to chaos, to which I'm immune.

Plus, Scourge is like most content in PoE: you can't really stand around casting stuff or you'll die. Use a quartz flask to phase through enemies and just run through everything. They'll die by following you into the vortexes you leave behind.

hope you didn't look to hard at mine! I have completed a single map outside campaign. Figured if I cannot do a single blue map w/o ripping there's problems. I had full resists and 4500+ combined life/es. Certainly not squish by normal league standards for a T1 blue map.

Yeah I had similar issues to yours in scourge once I hit map, but going for the armor auras (and dropping malevolence to have enough mana for it) fixed everything. Scourge is just overtuned and most characters will die if they push it without more defense layers.

One thing that helps a lot is running Vaal Cold Snap. Just charge it, pop it as you open the Scourge realm, run as fast as you can killing everything, then charge again and repeat. Never stand still.

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TheSadPope wrote:

I've looked at a couple characters from people who said they kept dying, and it seems to me a lot of 'em aren't running the armor auras. Determination + Defiance Banner + Armor flasks + Divine Shield notable on the passive tree is a *huge* boost to survivability. Haven't died since I made the switch. I'm also running Incandescent Heart until I get my Shav' and switch to low-life, as it gives a huge boost to res against elemental damage since part of it gets converted to chaos, to which I'm immune.

Plus, Scourge is like most content in PoE: you can't really stand around casting stuff or you'll die. Use a quartz flask to phase through enemies and just run through everything. They'll die by following you into the vortexes you leave behind.

That!

This build is insanely good when played correctly and well thinked.
The current league is rather unforgiving but that's the deal with new leagues, and that's where the fun hides!

Have fun !

Did everything including Sirus 8 with this build. The damage is definitely there even post-EE/EO nerfs. Sadly the defenses aren't enough to make you immortal, which was disappointing. If you don't have Vaal Discipline handy you get chunked to death near instantly in rippy maps or by scourge mobs.

Tried a bunch of different setups to help with defenses and high density clearing. Blasphemy+curse+Profane Bloom does really good work with ritual/expedition/blight content but otherwise is just ok. The recovery from Vile Bastion basically turns out to be nothing compared to Brush With Death recovery so I would still stick with Profane Bloom even without using a Blasphemy setup probably.

1x Brush With Death was a little low for me and your ES bar will move downwards sometimes so I would definitely budget 2, or find a way to get Soul Thief if you can't get the clusters. Maybe nerfed Cinderswallow is still ok but the uptime is going to be crap if you're not igniting.

With all the recoup nodes on the tree maybe a life-based Trickster using a triggered Forbidden Taste would be nice defensively. But then you have no damage so probably not with this build.

Time to gamble everything and chill until next league.

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Loved this build in Heist. Tried it again this league and I agree with the last few pages of posts. It feels squishy. I die pretty fast when I pop scourge zone. It's weird because in Heist I was feeling like the build was amazing. It was tanky and did plenty of DPS. I think scourge is just overtuned and likely any build is going to struggle.

Every League start is like this. I can't recall a recent league start where similar league mechanics are over-tuned.

I played during heist and I recall at the start mobs being incredibly strong and you risked setting the "alarm" off if you killed too many mobs. Ritual and Betrayal are another two that come to mind that were incredibly over-tuned. I'm sure we will see some minor nerfs to the debuff in the coming week.

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Ravenous0001 wrote:

hope you didn't look to hard at mine! I have completed a single map outside campaign. Figured if I cannot do a single blue map w/o ripping there's problems. I had full resists and 4500+ combined life/es. Certainly not squish by normal league standards for a T1 blue map.

I looked at your tree homie and its not right

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dragothica wrote:

I've been using ShakCentral/Zizaran Cold DoT Vortex/Creeping Frost build guide in Scourge and got a curious question:

In PoB it's recommended to use Elemental Focus with Vortex (also Creeping Frost, as it seems to recommend a dual-5-link setup). Elemental Focus increases the linked abilities Elemental Damage but prevents them from inflicting Elemental Ailments.

Does this remove the Cold DoT from Vortex / Creeping Frost or some other Ailment and the Cold DoT is still applied even when using Elemental Focus?

It's not a dual 5L setup. The idea is to have vortex with pure DPS links (including ele focus) in body armour, and chill with something else (creeping frost/cold snap/whatever). This way Vortex can still benefit from enemies being chilled, have hypothermia linked etc.

Cold dot itself is not an ailment, freeze and chill are - and those are not applied by vortex.

Do you have a problem with Leech Life? I feel like I'm dying from it.

I'm a relatively new player and using this as my league starter for this league (In previous leagues I've reached maps but stopped before doing anything else).
I'm still progressing through the campaign but will soon be looking to start saving bases for the switch to CI. The guide says to aim for around 5k es when switching over but is there an easy way to calculate what es I will end up with once I respec the passive tree from life to the ci build?