[3.6] The Blizz Sorc - Icestorm/Winter Orb CI Occultist - Viable For Everything

Hey guys..for me the start was really bad too ,but when u get the staff,perandus belt and icetomb everything is cake for sure and ofc the syndicate is really rippy but thats it

I kind of starting to think that the reason why i think that this build good as starter is only because i'm kind of veteran of leveling :)

But indeed, i guess there are builds that more suitable for this.
But overall i think that any build can be leveled as spellcaster without any investing from the leveling tree at all. So, i don't get all those wailings...

But i guess i get it when said that sindicate is rippy, indeed.

I like it than the scion version but...
Elemental reflection is impossible.

Here's how my march to maps went and some tips. I'll cosign everyone saying the march to Vaal pact during leveling was difficult without the staff, but I powered through, got the staff around Act4. After getting WI staff+VP and plenty of int there were much fewer problems.

I picked up a little bit of crit nodes to assist while leveling and regretted out of them later. I still have plenty of quest regret points for the CI switch later:
- Throat Seeker
- True Strike
- Perfect Agony
- Regret these upon WI+VP and head for Exception Performance & Heart of ice

Freezing pulse as a main damgae skill is OK but I use it more for crowd control and never used winter orb early on (leveled on alt weap). Put elemental prolif on FP in spell totem (FP+EP+Totem+Hypothermia) and grab the threshold jewel for +2Projectiles to just freeze/chill everything. Throw on storm of orbs/arc in a 4 link to be your self cast and these 2 spells should handle most content.

Pre-WI, get as much spell%/cold%/flat cold/other flat damage, life, and if it happens to have crit that can't hurt and works with the temporary crit nodes I suggested. Your tree won't be doing much dmg so to improve equip/links as much as possible.

Post-WI follow the guide's equip suggestions. I used storm burst for icestorm's CWC until I got the northern witch cold DMG notable nodes, it just felt better.

Don't neglect defensive gear, craft or buy pre 4-linked items to do this on the cheap so you don't waste your jewelers you'll need to 5/6S your staff. Icetomb and some other ES/Res boosting really help me not get one-shot by syndicate in Act 7. My cold damage/leech scaling really took off around this point and I was untouchable after I fixed defenses.

I have put about ~28 hours into this build during the weekend. Lv76, 6/8 occultist.

Here are my thoughts:

1) Although the main combination is not bad, it is missing *something*. Even now, in endgame, my burst is noticably bigger with Vortex (that is on 4 links) than it is with these icestorms. I have 1200 intelligence at this point, 6 socket staff. I use Winter orb + CWC, GMP, controlled destruction, lifeleech and bonechill. I just switched to Efficacy instead of Bonechill, we will see how it goes.

Leveling. Yeah, Freezing pulse is nice, but Vortex was nicer.

The moment I could, I switched to Winter Orb CwC Frostbolt (witch Frostbolt unique jewel), the aoe was insane because of the manually casted vortex chains.

Survivability? It was really not good. Now, I have mediocre gear (will link it below), basically will have around 6.4-6.5k ES by the time I get 8/8, and the ES on hit Watcher's Eye ability will be a *must* have.

I am still deciding what to actually quality first, the cast speed on winter's orb would actually make a lot of sense, weirdly. I use Armageddon Brand with Curse on Hit (frostbite) and blind for immortal masters and bosses, it really shines on abyss groups too.

The pain point of this build is the leveling process with the new climate. I would just ignore Vaal Pact altogether pre-lv70, and build my way towards it from lv70-80. It would mean at least 15 orb of regrets, but better to regret it at that point than to regret existing against immortal missions during the lv30-50 period.



Edit: Here is my skill tree. I mostly followed the guide, with a few small adjustments.

https://www.pathofexile.com/fullscreen-passive-skill-tree/AAAABAMBAADuBAcNfA5IEFgRDxEtES8RUBGWFLAVIBV-F1QZtBzcHU8fAiKBKPoqOCpNKwosnCymLL8s6S0fLYM1uTbFN4M6sz8nRnFJUUrITC1Ms04qUUxRdFKyU9RWSFZKV8lbr13yX2pp2G0Zb559W36hf8aCHoMJg_eGs4hCiFuNgo48jr6O6Y_6kAqQ1pLBkyeVIJ6hnwGhL6Kjppmm66cIpyuo6qxHr5uwC7QMuJO6Drv8voq-p8HFwfPKSsrT0NDR5Ngk3Q3fsONW5Ovr7uwY8NU

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Graiaule wrote:

haveallama, how many hours played did you spend to get to 79? And did you solo them? I ask cuz I went flat out (or so I thought) on this char and 17 hours playtime later am still at ~61. (I wanted to try a faster levelling char to buy stuff for the occultist char since it wasn't clear just how fast the witch was going to level. Apparently I can't overcome my bad playing algorithm.)

I think I was about 10-15 hours. Can't fully remember. Leveled with a friend. I kept as freezing pulse (with 2x threshold jewels for more projs) until lvl 70.

Just got my uber ascendancy (I'm 83). This build is now already at silly levels. 6.8k ES and I rejen like mad (with Vaal discipline to force proc). Gonna get the ZO flask now to also do the same.

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svarogg wrote:

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haveallama wrote:

You intelligence very low for this build.

My int on day 2 of the league was >1K, I think that's pretty good for what gear is available. It's just going to go up and up now :)

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injate wrote:

Pre-WI, get as much spell damage and crit on leveling equipment as possible since your tree won't be doing much to help damage.

I would rather refrain to advice people to seek crit on leveling equipment. It's a dead stat at low level.
Crit is never good, until you can rise crit chance and crit multi to suitable levels. It's especially not good, when we don't have much "increase damage" nodes, so each additional of these are more effective than in late game.

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Oldern365 wrote:

I have put about ~28 hours into this build during the weekend. Lv76, 6/8 occultist.

Here are my thoughts:

1) Although the main combination is not bad, it is missing *something*. Even now, in endgame, my burst is noticably bigger with Vortex (that is on 4 links) than it is with these icestorms. I have 1200 intelligence at this point, 6 socket staff. I use Winter orb + CWC, GMP, controlled destruction, lifeleech and bonechill. I just switched to Efficacy instead of Bonechill, we will see how it goes.

Ditching Efficacy and GMP in your damage setup would help ALOT.. GMP only helps Winters Orb, and there are much better supports than Efficacy

I'm level 76, 6.4k ES, steamrolling early maps at this point. 70 total deaths, but I think around 64 of them were to Syndicate mobs. I would agree that while it's not the best or the most tanky build to level with. The new content is super rippy, and probably pushed it over the edge from "slightly scary" to OMG, what killed me again!!!!

I've also linked bonechill and arctic armor, it appears to work as designed. Hard to test, but I seem to be getting the additional damage when things tag me, or stand in my ground ice. 999/1110 mana reserved, and no problems as long as I leave Winter's orb just linked to CwC.