[3.15] Self-Cast Eye of Winter Occultist - Get that Diablo 2 Nostalgia!

Some observations:

1. Frostblink is your friend. It interrupts the casting time and allows you to get close enough to apply blasphemy enfeeble (or temp chains) while getting the nearby damage. Throw a elemental prolif on it and watch it clear white packs with HOI.

2. I went hybrid and am relatively happy with my decision. 7k total with ES/HP.
My damage is at 2.5 million with dual void batteries and Replica Inya's. I'm comfortably doing t15s atm. I haven't had a t16 drop yet but I'm not too keen. I am using frost shield which is 25% more damage. Occultist makes its AOE large enough to not suck. Bossing would be bad with this build.

3. Snakepit is not required. I am using pierce support with +1 pierce. With herald of ice you clear packs comfortably.

4. Projectile speed DOES affect the main ball. So if you want to make positioning easier you can swap in slower projectiles on bosses---however, this makes clear dogshit, so be warned.

5. You don't need a mana flask or inspiration IMO. Just manage your Unleash seals and run a low level clarity with some mana regen, and mana nodes.

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Tesrali wrote:

Some observations:

1. Frostblink is your friend. It interrupts the casting time and allows you to get close enough to apply blasphemy enfeeble (or temp chains) while getting the nearby damage. Throw a elemental prolif on it and watch it clear white packs with HOI.

2. I went hybrid and am relatively happy with my decision. 7k total with ES/HP.
My damage is at 2.5 million with dual void batteries and Replica Inya's. I'm comfortably doing t15s atm. I haven't had a t16 drop yet but I'm not too keen. I am using frost shield which is 25% more damage. Occultist makes its AOE large enough to not suck. Bossing would be bad with this build.

3. Snakepit is not required. I am using pierce support with +1 pierce. With herald of ice you clear packs comfortably.

4. Projectile speed DOES affect the main ball. So if you want to make positioning easier you can swap in slower projectiles on bosses---however, this makes clear dogshit, so be warned.

5. You don't need a mana flask or inspiration IMO. Just manage your Unleash seals and run a low level clarity with some mana regen, and mana nodes.

I like your take on EoW, but I have to ask where are you figuring you have 2.5m DPS? With basically the optimal check marks on chill, freeze, power charges etc...PoB is showing you having 81k damage on EoW. Granted, that's per shard, but that's nowhere near 2.5m dps.

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arkon9944 wrote:

I like your take on EoW, but I have to ask where are you figuring you have 2.5m DPS? With basically the optimal check marks on chill, freeze, power charges etc...PoB is showing you having 81k damage on EoW. Granted, that's per shard, but that's nowhere near 2.5m dps.

Per cast you get 3 shards as it travels to the target, then 8 when it explodes.

That's 11 shards not counting unleash.

Unleash gives another 11 at 21% less damage, so ~8 Shards
Then another at 42% less damage, so ~6 Shards.

Per cast you are looking at 25 shards with proper positioning.

My previous PoB is at 91k per shard. If I had to guess you have frostbite not activated because I switch between enfeeble and temp chains so it is overriding the frostbite. Anyway, I'm definitely rounding a bit here.

If we wanted to be more conservative then the PoB you are looking at has 2 million Sirus DPS but I think we are in this ballpark.

I just upgraded to my a frenzy charge on hit chest and a badge of the brotherhood. Once I six-link the chest it should be about 4 million dps.

I'm not gonna continue the build any farther though I think. I don't think it can boss well. If it had 10 million dps it would still be a shit show because of how the positioning is.

Playing for the past hour though I have to say that the cooldown reduction from badge of brotherhood on frostblink is nutty. Makes the skill very fun.

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Tesrali wrote:

[...]

3. Snakepit is not required. I am using pierce support with +1 pierce. With herald of ice you clear packs comfortably.
[...]

Snakepit + Hydrosphere can double your boss dps - the projectiles that hit the sphere, will chain to the boss. Not required, but very strong.

"

Tesrali wrote:

Some observations:

1. Frostblink is your friend. It interrupts the casting time and allows you to get close enough to apply blasphemy enfeeble (or temp chains) while getting the nearby damage. Throw a elemental prolif on it and watch it clear white packs with HOI.

2. I went hybrid and am relatively happy with my decision. 7k total with ES/HP.
My damage is at 2.5 million with dual void batteries and Replica Inya's. I'm comfortably doing t15s atm. I haven't had a t16 drop yet but I'm not too keen. I am using frost shield which is 25% more damage. Occultist makes its AOE large enough to not suck. Bossing would be bad with this build.

3. Snakepit is not required. I am using pierce support with +1 pierce. With herald of ice you clear packs comfortably.

4. Projectile speed DOES affect the main ball. So if you want to make positioning easier you can swap in slower projectiles on bosses---however, this makes clear dogshit, so be warned.

5. You don't need a mana flask or inspiration IMO. Just manage your Unleash seals and run a low level clarity with some mana regen, and mana nodes.

I mean yeah, if the boss is running backwards and travels perfectly with the eye of EoW, all 25 shards would hit him. In reality though, only the front few will hit at first, then the final explosion...(assuming you land the last pulse on top of the boss)...will then hit all shards. Out of the 25 shards, you're more likely to hit about half of them, maybe 60% of them at best.

And as the previous poster said a moment ago, Hydrosphere with Snakepit boosts your single target DPS huge.

At my current level and gear I have no issues with bosses. EoW is certainly not some S tier amazing boss killer. In the 'right circumstances' (A big fat boss that doesn't move a lot) it is a low end A tier boss killer, and in the 'wrong circumstances' it's probably a solid B.

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arkon9944 wrote:

At my current level and gear I have no issues with bosses. EoW is certainly not some S tier amazing boss killer. In the 'right circumstances' (A big fat boss that doesn't move a lot) it is a low end A tier boss killer, and in the 'wrong circumstances' it's probably a solid B.

Do you have a video or something? My quick testing in standard didn't really convince me. Then again, I only spend 5 minutes testing it.

You guys are right, I need to get chain in.

It is my prejudice against Hydrosphere and uniques which don't do much besides that one thing.

Is there a way besides Snakepit? (I suppose Awakened Chain is not dogshit, it has +3 chain on it which is amazing for clear.)

It took me 20s to kill a T14 Hunter without HP mods.

32 578 382 HP and some stupid phases/kiting.

Like he summoned the snakepit once and then I had to chase him a bit before he dropped.

This is on a 5-link using hydrosphere with one of the links as chain. (I do have 10 power charges / frenzy though.)

On the bonechill note keep in mind if you use militant faith and take inner conviction you'll no longer have the ability to gain frenzy charges. It's the 3% more damage per power charge node.

Also I have to say chain feels way better than pierce but pierce was useful when I was running the build on 0c still.

I'm at 50c and clearing up to t8s so far. 30c of that was just for a helmet enchant so I could test it out to see how it feels.

So just a few thoughts about EoW now that I've been playing it in t14-16 maps for the past few days.

1 - Projectile Speed. At first I thought this stat was amazing for the skill, I was wrong. Stacking it too high makes single target damage awful. I've tried everything from 20%, 30%, 40%, 50%, and 70%. I find 20% to be the sweet spot of a good balance for strong single target damage, while also having just that tiny bit extra reach for clearing maps.

2 - Snakepit Ring. I still believe this is the single best piece of gear for EoW. The +1 chain is all you need to make EoW an amazing map clearer. The bonus spell damage and Cast Speed are just a nice bonus on top of it.

3 - I saved the best for last. I've tried all sorts of combination of supports for EoW. Spell Echo, all pure damage supports...you name it, I tried it. Which brings me to the most important support of them all...UNLEASH. This support is single handedly the most important support of them all. You want to scale Unleash as much as possible. This means getting Thunderous Salvo on the tree. Seal Mender on a large Cluster Jewel. And lastly, strangely enough...Doedre's Malevolence gloves. The negative cast speed means nearly nothing as EoW already casts super slow. The bonus Unleash seals are obviously a huge bonus. And lastly, the added Chaos Damage is tremendous. EoW has a 40% 'effectiveness of added damage'. Sounds bad, right? Well that's 40% PER SHARD that hits. So in reality, while casting with Unleash, you're going to be hitting an enemy with tons of shards, multiplying that 40% to outrageous numbers.

I'm currently running a LL/ES version of this build. I've killed A6 Sirus deathless and rather easily with this build (I'm still gathering watchstones or I would've done him on A8). I have not fought Shaper or Elder yet, but I don't see either of them being a problem since they are both rather stationary bosses. I wouldn't call him 'hard' by any means, but so far I would say the boss this build has the most trouble with is Al-Hezmin (The poison based conqueror). He dances around a lot and avoids damage that way, but otherwise just keep on him and he goes down fast enough with a few solid overlapping EoW's landing on top of him.