[2.5] 2600+ Int Whispering Ice Guardian. Wonderous Wizard of Wisdom

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Andizlack wrote:

Ah, here's a quick one: how important is Increased effect of Auras? I had the thought to only take the first of three in the Influence cluster and remove one from the Sovereignty cluster. That would free up 3 points for more Int, or am I missing something and that is critical to the build somehow?

aura effect is very important. builds that only use 2-3 auras still get influence so using 7 makes it incredible value. Only looking at discipline dropping those 3 aura effect nodes loses you around 78 base ES which is a pretty large amount considering how much %ES comes from Int. Adding onto that you'd lose cast speed from haste and all 4 purity auras would be giving less resistances would put you undercapped and give more problems that need solving. I even get devotion in the build more for the 3% aura effect then I do the Int (although its more of a late game pick up)

Foresight is pretty good for 2 points. It is hard to make cuts but some of the late game stuff like the last jewel sockets can be delayed.

Haste is definitely better damage then herald of ice. Mostly because herald of ice isn't an aura and doesn't get boosts from all the aura effectiveness nodes. Haste does and the cast speed (while not showing up in tooltip) gives much better damage and also makes you be able to dodge easier which is important. You can't run it until you have a level 3 enlighten but I do consider the upgrade to be pretty darn good once you can afford it. It certainly can be hard to choose what to buy first I do admit

Don't get me wrong curses are still good even with 60% less effectiveness. But when you get as much aura effectiveness as this build its just not worth dropping an aura to get blasphemy when you can just put it on CWDT and have it pop up when its useful, without actually relying on it

Sweet! Thanks a lot for that, dually noted, will get recommended aura effectiveness nodes.

How about this! (told you I can't get not running Blasphemy out of my head... hah!) - taking out Haste and adding a Warlord's Mark aura. You would lose a bit of cast/attack/move speed but you would gain enough leech to remove the life leech gem from the WI 7L and replace it with another DPS/clear speed gem (increased AoE/Controlled destruction/Hypothermia?), as well as giving you a permanent 3 endurance charges adding even further to your already beefy-as-hell physical reduction. Ehhh, how about it? This sounds like an awesome idea to me, but of course it would mean that you can't leech on curse immune maps/bosses, so I know you'll say that's a negative, but other than that, seems like it'd be better damage and defense in the end.

And ok, great. I think I'll take Foresight and 3 of the Arcane Focus cluster to help with ES while still in normal and then spec out of them after I get a Shav's. It's only 5 points and should give a pretty sizable amount of ES. I also thought about going CI while leveling, or even not reserving auras with life until I'm chaos immune, but I think I'd rather run the end build asap with the gear hit.

Can't wait!

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Andizlack wrote:

How about this! (told you I can't get not running Blasphemy out of my head... hah!) - taking out Haste and adding a Warlord's Mark aura. You would lose a bit of cast/attack/move speed but you would gain enough leech to remove the life leech gem from the WI 7L and replace it with another DPS/clear speed gem (increased AoE/Controlled destruction/Hypothermia?), as well as giving you a permanent 3 endurance charges adding even further to your already beefy-as-hell physical reduction

Warlords mark is not a bad curse but is not a replacement for life leech gem. Defenses while clearing trash isn't relevant at all as you shouldn't die there its only really against bosses where your defenses matter. Against bosses (who have curse resistance) you will only have 0.8% leech instead of 2% which just isn't very much leech. Also those endurance charges will run out pretty much right away, you'll have them while clearing but much of the game has bosses separate from convenient mobs and without any endurance charge increased duration most of those times you just won't have them up.

Secondly is that there isn't really many good gem options left. You suggest increased aoe but that is a massive damage down for ice/fire storm as larger aoe's mean less hits so you don't actually want it that large. Controlled destruction is already part of the setup so you can't use that again. Most of the big bosses like atziri and guardians are immune to chill so hypothermia doesn't give any extra damage on them. Added cold damage was the next best damage gem but its not actually that great, its more there for lack of better options

If you wanted to swap haste into blasphemy then warlocks mark or enfeeble are good defensive options but I wouldn't be removing the life leech gem and you'd be losing a decent amount of damage and "smoothness" that haste gives

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Andizlack wrote:

Sweet! Thanks a lot for that, dually noted, will get recommended aura effectiveness nodes.

How about this! (told you I can't get not running Blasphemy out of my head... hah!) - taking out Haste and adding a Warlord's Mark aura. You would lose a bit of cast/attack/move speed but you would gain enough leech to remove the life leech gem from the WI 7L and replace it with another DPS/clear speed gem (increased AoE/Controlled destruction/Hypothermia?), as well as giving you a permanent 3 endurance charges adding even further to your already beefy-as-hell physical reduction. Ehhh, how about it? This sounds like an awesome idea to me, but of course it would mean that you can't leech on curse immune maps/bosses, so I know you'll say that's a negative, but other than that, seems like it'd be better damage and defense in the end.

And ok, great. I think I'll take Foresight and 3 of the Arcane Focus cluster to help with ES while still in normal and then spec out of them after I get a Shav's. It's only 5 points and should give a pretty sizable amount of ES. I also thought about going CI while leveling, or even not reserving auras with life until I'm chaos immune, but I think I'd rather run the end build asap with the gear hit.

Can't wait!

Hey, I pick prayer of glory as one of my ascendancy, and use enduring cry. I pretty much have 3 EC up all the time, as well as the 15% increase movement and cast speed. Something you might want to consider instead of blasphemy-warlords. The problem with curses is when you need it the most. ie bosses, the effectiveness is the worst, and there is also hexproof maps... whereas haste is up all the time, and I just cannot live without it. In my playing experience with WI char, it easily beats a curse or herald of ice. Herald of ice aint that great with this build because ice storm only has 30% effectiveness.

Elemental overload is very much worth it, when I see a pack, I usually cast enduring cry then orb of storm. My orb of storm is linked with curse on hit, so it'll curse the mobs and elemental overload procs quite consistently.

Apart from life leech, the best gems for damages/clear speed are

Cold pen, Spell Echo, Conc effect, Elemental Focus, Control destruction, faster casting

Which one your drop depends on your preference
Personally i drop fast casting, because with haste and prayer of glory, I feel I have enough cast speed.

I keep a spare whispering ice and take out elemental focus and control destruction and put in inc rarity and inc quantity (standard) as my damage is sufficient to clear t11-12 effectively.

Added cold is not great, as we get tons of flat cold dmg from int already, and again the 30% damage effectiveness from the skill makes flat damage not worth it (same reason as herald of ice)

Ok, you convinced me of your points again! Dang arguments based with logical examples! I didn't realize the endurance charges would actually be down that much...

I am considering prayer of glory for instant warcries, the node benefits seem like they'd be really helpful too, but I feel like if you are warcrying and then casting orb of storms on a pack, that if you rather just went in with icestorm the pact would have almost been dead by the time it took to do that stuff, right? I'm just speculating so my guess isn't worth much :P This is all stuff I'll play with and learn what I like best in time, no biggie.

Just to clarify, it looks like for the main 6L you said Life Leech - Faster Casting - Spell Echo - Cold Penetration - Elemental Focus - Controlled Destruction, so I was suggesting replacing Life Leech with Concentrated Effect. You did mention that it doesn't add that much damage, so I'm just gonna skip the blasphemy aura and go with your suggestions, it's obvious you've already tried all this! I think I've learned just about as much as I can about this build without actually playing it, so I'm gonna try and stop bugging you until I have things to say after running it myself. :)

Thanks again.

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Andizlack wrote:

Ok, you convinced me of your points again! Dang arguments based with logical examples! I didn't realize the endurance charges would actually be down that much...

I am considering prayer of glory for instant warcries, the node benefits seem like they'd be really helpful too, but I feel like if you are warcrying and then casting orb of storms on a pack, that if you rather just went in with icestorm the pact would have almost been dead by the time it took to do that stuff, right? I'm just speculating so my guess isn't worth much :P This is all stuff I'll play with and learn what I like best in time, no biggie.

Just to clarify, it looks like for the main 6L you said Life Leech - Faster Casting - Spell Echo - Cold Penetration - Elemental Focus - Controlled Destruction, so I was suggesting replacing Life Leech with Concentrated Effect. You did mention that it doesn't add that much damage, so I'm just gonna skip the blasphemy aura and go with your suggestions, it's obvious you've already tried all this! I think I've learned just about as much as I can about this build without actually playing it, so I'm gonna try and stop bugging you until I have things to say after running it myself. :)

Thanks again.

For me yes, white mobs dies in 1-2 ice shards impact. I always cast enduring cry just because even with so much defence some map modes still makes your armour seems non existant. And since I am casting, I might as well drop a storm of orb, get some curse action happening.
Its mainly for bosses to tank and get some dmg boost. I also have leap slam with fortify when tanking minotaur/shaper, after I drop sufficient ice storm to continue leeching even when not attacking to reduce dmg taken and 1 shots.

Since I am trying to level to 100, I am doing temp chain as my curse.

I would not suggest dropping life leech, you will feel it when you see ele reflect mob.

I carry at least 1 atziris promise and one antifreeze cold flask for this situation.

I have 0.4% cold leech corrupted on my staff and 0.5% from boot enchant and 2% life leech and I still die occasionally in min max maps due to stupied hidden mobs with ele ref.

If you dont want enduring cry, rallying cry is good for dmg boost too.

I have a lightning golem for extra cast speed. So for cast speed I have war cry bonus, haste, golem so I dont use faster casting. But you can try for yourself. I have bis gear for everything and this might not apply in new league (I have 20k damage per hit with all buffs up, my 6l is cold pen, control destruction, elemental focus, conc effect, echo and leech
Cold pen is swapped to mana leech in no regen map.)

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Andizlack wrote:

Just to clarify, it looks like for the main 6L you said Life Leech - Faster Casting - Spell Echo - Cold Penetration - Elemental Focus - Controlled Destruction, so I was suggesting replacing Life Leech with Concentrated Effect. You did mention that it doesn't add that much damage, so I'm just gonna skip the blasphemy aura and go with your suggestions, it's obvious you've already tried all this! I think I've learned just about as much as I can about this build without actually playing it, so I'm gonna try and stop bugging you until I have things to say after running it myself. :)

Thanks again.

To clarify what I mean in the main page of the guide is that swapping controlled destruction into concentrated effect doesn't have that much extra damage as it only has 15% more damage in terms of numbers which isn't that much. The actual damage increase is quite worthwhile on the big bosses as shrinking the aoe increases the number of hits on the target for most bosses (bosses that move around alot like the pheonix are an exception to this). I don't bother swapping it in for most content but for really strong bosses that don't move much its a really good damage increase.

I didn't list concentrated effect as a possible replacement for faster casting or life leech in a permanent sense just because I think the skill is quite unfun to play with conc effect all the time. The small aoe means you can't hit a whole pack with one storm anymore and you start needing to cast alot more and painting the screen with the cursor to hit everything.

Both life leech and faster casting are good defensive gems, leech for face tanking and faster casting because it means you won't be "rooted" to the ground casting as long (being able to dodge is pretty good too) but I mostly don't see better options because all the other possible support gems have annoying downsides that have previously been mentioned.

No worries about bugging me I don't mind questions. I visit the forums when I have some free time to spare

Hey, just fyi, the "Lasts Points" tree doesn't match the tree that you post earlier in the build. It's missing the 2 reduced mana nodes by Sovereignty (was wondering why the aura calculator thingie wasn't working!). Not a huge thing but yeah, thought I'd let you know.

Edit: Ah, found it. You take Trickery in the Last Points tree but not in the final tree you link earlier in the build.

Been having a ton of fun with this build, just go to the point where I was able to swap Arctic Armour into Haste thanks to a Lab enchant.

This is what my tree currently looks like:
www.poeurl.com/Smj

I think my next 3 points will go to get Coldhearted Calculation, then 3 points after that to get Trickery, which will put me at 92. After that, best thing I can think of is 2 points to get Ancestral Knowledge (Averaging 15 int per point), then 3 points to get Thief's Craft (3 points for 40 int).

i have a question, why u did u decide to take vaal pact, cancelling the regeneration from TIME OF NEED and other reg %? pros and cons?

sorry for bad english, i hope that u will understand ^^