[3.12] Smokemantra's Wintertide Brand Occultist - Low Life 6k+ ES

The idea of this character is to hang in close to mid-range from enemies. We will be making use of Curse auras, which will have a set Area of Effect, so if we get too far they won't have any effect on enemies, and these Curse auras increase our damage by a lot. The ideal scenario will be that we run into a pack, we put our Brands on the enemies and while they're affected by our auras, explode thanks to our Ascendancy bonuses. We will aim to regularly cast as many brands as we can have out and let them clear by jumping from one enemy to another as they die, making use of Brand Recall to reposition our Brands when necessary. We also will want to make sure we're using Flame Dash often so that we can have a high uptime on our Arcane Surge buff and also regularly casting Cold Snap so that we gain Frenzy Charges to increase our damage.

Damave Over Time (DoT): This is a DoT build, which means any bonus to damage with Hits will not be useful for us. Any bonuses to DoT will be how we will scale up our damage. In specific, bonuses to "Damage Over Time Multiplier" (or the more specific Cold variant of this) will be highly desirable to acquire, with "increased Damage Over Time" being slightly less effective, although still highly useful. Particularly for our main skill, Wintertide Brand, modifications to Spell Damage and Cast Speed will also affect our DoT and Activation Frequency, which will result in higher damage as well.

Low Life (LL): This build makes use of "Low Life" modifiers, where we will be considered to be in a 'Low Life' state if we have 35% or less of our Life remaining. We can force a permanent state of LL by "Reserving" 65% or more of our total Life, which we achieve by using auras socketed in a Prism Guardian Shield. Since LL makes us vulnerable to Chaos damage, which naturally bypasses Energy Shield (ES), we also make use of the "Shavronne's Wrappings" Body Armour, which has the "Chaos Damage cannot bypass Energy Shield" modifier so that we don't instantly die when facing Chaos damage. With this, we can treat our Life as an extra resource pool and utilize and focus on ES as if it was our new main source of 'Life'. This allows us to use the Pain Attunement keystone passive for more damage as well, and since we will be heavily ES based we will also use the Wicked Ward keystone passive to improve our ES recharge.

Block: This build makes use of the Block mechanic as an extra defensive layer, which is essentially a chance to mitigate damage taken. Getting a lot of Block Chance is not too easy without focusing a lot on it, but we can get the Glancing Blows keystone passive, which doubles our Block Chance while reducing the damage reduction of blocked hits from 100% to 50%, which in the end is a good tradeoff for us.

Wintertide Brand: The main skill of our build. Casting this will create a Brand on the ground that will attach to nearby enemies. While it's attached, it will chill them and deal Damage Over Time (DoT) in set intervals, gaining more damage with more activations. Once the Brand is removed, an AoE debuff dealing damage and chilling enemies will be released.

Auras: Our Auras will be separated bewteen those that will reserve out Life and those that will reserve our Mana.

The ones that will Reserve Life are Malevolence, Hatred and Zealotry. These three auras are all about increasing our damage. We will aim to use them by reserving Life, which we will achieve putting them in a Prism Guardian Shield, which will reduce the amount of the reservation (from 50% per aura to only 29% for a total of 87% reservation) and cause them to reserve Life instead of Mana, which is what will leave us on a permanent state of Low Life.

The ones that will Reserve Mana are Discipline and Clarity. Of these two, Discipline will be very important, since we want to aim for the highest amount of ES possible. Clarity will be an extra skill that will help us with mana sustain but it's skippable if we don't have enough sockets or enough mana to cast it. Alternatively, we can also use it with a low level, since the amount of mana it reserves gets higher with gem levels.

Curses: We will also aim for a double Curse setup that will consist of Frostbite and Elemental Weakness. Since self casting curses would considerably slow us down in the long run, we will couple these auras with the Blasphemy Support gem, which will turn these curses into permanent auras that will now reserve some of our Mana, but they will inflict curses on any nearby enemies, which will synergize very well with our Void Beacon ascendancy node. It's also important to upgrade Blasphemy to its Awakened version, since it will lower the amount of Reserved mana and will strengthen our Curses. We can couple this setup with an Enlighten gem to further reduce the amount of mana reserved.

The use of this particular double curse setup will eventually result in nearby enemies having over -100% Cold Resistance, which will scale with Curse Effect modifiers. This will greatly boost our damage.

Cold Snap: This skill will create a zone in the ground that will deal DoT and will Chill, as well as give us Frenzy Charges if enemies die while inside the zone, which will boost our Cast Speed and damage.

Triggered Skills: These skills will be triggering without us needing to focus on casting them, which is great. Tempest Shield will give us Block Chance and an extra Hit skill, which will proc evey time we block and will apply Elemental Equilibrium and if it crits, it will also apply Elemental Overload. Orb of Storms will be a similar case. Frost Bomb will apply Cold Exposure to the enemies it hits, which will amplify our damage further.

Mobility: We will use Flame Dash because we will ideally be stacking a nice amount of Cast Speed, which will benefit Flame Dash. This skill also comes with 3 charges, so it's nice to have as a standalone gem. We will be coupling this with Arcane Surge so that we can get Arcane Surge to proc on every cast of Flame Dash for a good uptime.

Wintertide Brand is not available until level 12 and we don't have access to any of our desired support gems for it until level 18, therefore I recommend using another skill until we acquire said support gems. My recommended skill is Freezing Pulse, which is a staple leveling skill. It should linked to a low level Arcane Surge and Added Cold if possible. Early on we also want to pick up relevant gems for our build, such as Orb of Storms and Frost Bomb, which are available very early on and are quite efficient as leveling skills, these can also be supported with Increased Crit Strikes to proc Elemental Overload easier early on. Orb of Storms will be very good to proc Elemental Equilibrium as well. We also grab Frostblink until we can access Flame Dash.

Once in Act 2 we can get Brand Recall, Tempest Shield and Cold Snap. Tempest Shield will not be very useful at this stage (we might not even have a Shield yet) but the other 2 can be handy. Later on near level 18 we will have access to Controlled Destruction and Elemental Focus, and once we have them we will start using them alongside Wintertide Brand as our main source of damage. In case we have a 4-Link, we can also use Faster Casting. At this point we should already have the Runebinder keystone passive (or at least be close to it) so by now we can have up to 3 brands attached to an opponent, which will help us kill bosses.

Once in Act 3 we can get our Curse and Aura gems. We will only be able to use one Curse and one big Aura at this point, of which Frostbite and Malevolence will be our best choices. It's also possible to use smaller auras like Discipline and Clarity, but be careful with your mana pool management. Frostbite will be used as a self cast Curse until much later in the game.

In act 4 we will have access to the rest of the support gems we need for Wintertide Brand. Efficacy will be particularly important, because it also increases the duration of our Brands.

To start this section, there are some ailments that we can counter through Flask mods, and of those, the most important ones are Bleeding and Curses, therefore we want to have one Flask with "Staunching" and one with "Warding".

For specific Flasks, we will always have a Quicksilver Flask so that we can run fast. We also want to have a Rumi's Concoction, which will give us over 20% Physical Damage Reduction and a lot of Block Chance (which will be doubled by Glancing Blows). Other than that, the rest of the Flask setup can change depending on personal preference. I do recommend using a Quartz Flask for the extra chance to Dodge and the useful Phasing mod, since we will often be quite close to mobs so that our Curses affect them.

Some suggestions to fill the remaining 2 Flask slots:

- Sulphur
- Basalt
- Silver
- Cinderswallow Urn

These are the items I was wearing when I killed A8 Sirus (I did it at level 89 with only 1 Cluster which was a Brand type, gems were level 18-19 without quality):

To be able to use this build, we want at least 85 Strength (to be able to use the Prism Guardian Shield) and at least 111 Dexterity (to be able to use our Dex gems like Hypothermia and Swift Affliction, if we take Awakened Swift Affliction we will need 126 Dex). This is an important requirement to meet, so don't be afraid of taking the +30 Attribute nodes in the Passive Tree if you are in need of Attributes (like Might/Agility or even Practical Application, which can sometimes be better to get).

This build is made around the use of 3 core items: Shavronne's Wrappings, Prism Guardian and Presence of Chayula, which are staples in Low Life builds. While the latter two are not particularly costly items, the former is usually a somewhat rare and expensive piece of gear. Fortunately, it can be target farmed through Divination Cards, particularly "The Offering", which specifically gives us Shavronne's Wrappings as a reward. Besides that one, it can also be acquired with cards like "The Aesthete"/"The Body".

Among other unique items, some that stand out are:

-Rumi's Concoction, which will give us a lot of Block Chance and Physical Damage Reduction.
-Bated Breath, which will be a great low-budget Belt alternative for ES. This Belt should eventually be replaced in an endgame setup for a well-crafted Crystal Belt.
-Intuitive Leap, which will be used to save passive points and still get some useful nodes. It should be placed in the Jewel Socket right next to Instability in the Passive Tree. This location is also very good for a Large radius Thread of Hope so you can choose whichever you prefer.
-Thread of Hope, which is very important for us to get Glancing Blows without wasting too many passive points. For that purpose we will need one that has a Very Large radius. As I mentioned, a Large radius one can also be relevant for us.
-Energy From Within, which converts increases to % maximum Life in its radius into increases to % ES, which is especially good once we have Shavronne's Wrappings since by then we don't need to scale Life anymore.

Just equipping our Core unique items and emptying the rest of item slots, plus Cluster Jewels and the Passive Tree we can reach 5k ES quite easily, and since we will have over 200% increased maximum ES, we have a very real potential to reach super high values as long as most if not all of our Rare items have ES.



Any item slots not mentioned (except for the weapon) should be filled by Rare items that would ideally have Resistances and ES mods, as well as other things we find useful.

Cluster Jewels can be skipped, but having the right ones is very beneficial. Our point usage is pretty tight, so if we can't fit an "optimal" Cluster setup (by that I mean 1 Large, 2 Mediums and 2 Smalls) we will have to skip the Large.