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

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lilianmarius wrote:

Trying to maximize the DPS/damage output for clearing maps:
At the moment i have in the "clearing trash" staff the following combo:

5L - Winter Orb/CwC/GMP/Cold Penetration/Controlled Destruction
1L - Spell Cascade

In PoB if I switch Cold Penetration with Hypothermia i get better DPS/Average Hit values both for Winter Orb and Icestorm for both conditions: normal mobs with 0% Elemental resistances and normal map boss with 30% elemental resistances

What do you guys think for clearing trash should switch Cold Penetration with Hypothermia?
I am also using an Wise Oak flask which penetrates elemental resistances for 15% during usage so the gap of DPS with Hypothermia vs Cold Penetration is even bigger when flask is up in favour of Hypothermia.

I'm saying that there are some diminishing returns when you reach a certain value of elemental penetration (skill tree points, flask, debuff, etc.) so for some type of clearing(trash mobs , normal bosses) penetration is not always best dps combo in the setup. At least this is what PoB says.

I haven't been able to get a 5L staff yet, but I tried using WO for trash clearing with 4L (WO-CwC-GMP-Pen). Pen works better than CD because a lot of trash in the Delves is resistant. However, overall I didn't like it, it was slower than just my regular setup (WO-CwC-Pen-Hypo, CE, SC).

WO needs to be kept at high stacks, i.e. stand and channel, then move a little, then stop and channel again, etc. I spent more time stopping to do it than I normally do to cast Icestorm. And you can't target WO, it often decides to launch its volley at a basket or a lone straggler that's about to die to Icestorms instead of a fresh juicy pack.

I went back to Icestorm as the main clear skill and it works fine. HoI is already a big improvement in clear speed from the fire version. I don't really think we need more. If clear speed is more important than endgame boss farming, you can always trade Frigid Wake for Malediction and annihilate everything with Frostbite + Profane Bloom explosions. But the possible tiny improvements from using WO as main clear skill are not worth losing the nice anti-Syndicate setup: I kill the Syndicate with my SC staff, it does enough damage and they move a lot, the single target CE staff is not very good against them.

WO is good enough as a secondary skill already.

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Breken wrote:

Decision time... would +1 curse be worth loosing around 644 total Energy shield?

I'm leaning to no, simply because the extra shield helps for leech and boss suitability, while curses are pretty useless when bossing...

I'd say yes all the time.

If you go for Frostbite as your 2nd curse, you gain about 4.6% MORE damage on Shaper and about 20% MORE damage on trashes, which is crucial in Alva's incursions.

This kind of character doesn't lack survivability, you can go to 11-12k ES even with a dual curse setup.

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Kelvynn wrote:

WO needs to be kept at high stacks, i.e. stand and channel, then move a little, then stop and channel again, etc. I spent more time stopping to do it than I normally do to cast Icestorm.

Rather than trying to actively maintain Winter's Orb stacks (which I've only found to work well in Delve), I tend to just run around playing as normal with Icestorm, while the 5L Winter's Orb helps to augment clear speed.

Any tips on Mastermind fight?

I guess bringing 2 or 3 vaal discipline may help the invulnerable phase (it appears that you can still leech in the invulnerable phase if she has energy shield). But she moves a lot and due to DoT, pursuing her when hit by the flame from the center pillar is kind of dangerous without regen/leech.

Neat side effect from the last patch that stopped Winter's Orb from snapshotting: looks like now you keep your Winter's Orb stacks but they refresh to the new gem setup when weapon swapping if both weapons contain Winter's Orb in the same slot.

Makes the WO+GMP setup's weapon swaps feel a lot cleaner.


Edit: Actually this only works for my 5L/6L swaps, doesn't work for me when using an un-linked staff... something about how the links are arranged in addition to gem order? /shrug.

POB export from Kelvynn's Betrayal Occultist 113/123 SP for anyone else looking for it:

https://pastebin.com/Jbz39Jga

Edit: Added the Leveling (Lvl 38) Skill Tree as well.

I noticed my character has almost 400 less intellect than the build guide character even though I'm 12 levels higher.

Can someone take a look at my 84 Occultist in betrayal and give me some hints as to what I'm doing wrong? I'm thinking I just need better gear and this seems pretty heavily dependent on rolling the 5% inc int with a vaal orb and I'm a complete noob when it comes to vaaling it seems.

I've tried vaaling astramentis twice and both times it did nothing. Been vaaling decent rings to see if I can get the extra % int as well and nada.

Also it seems like the sockets to link with ice storm are constantly being debated, could someone elaborate on why that is?

Finally, is weapon swapping required? I don't weapon swap currently but am starting to feel like I should so I don't have to gem swap spell cascade with conc effect for bosses.

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rpgbuddy wrote:

I noticed my character has almost 400 less intellect than the build guide character even though I'm 12 levels higher.

Can someone take a look at my 84 Occultist in betrayal and give me some hints as to what I'm doing wrong? I'm thinking I just need better gear and this seems pretty heavily dependent on rolling the 5% inc int with a vaal orb and I'm a complete noob when it comes to vaaling it seems.

The build relies on having as much INT as possible on as many things as possible. You don't currently have any on your helm, gloves and one of your rings.

You're also missing Fertile Mind jewels in 3 of the 4 recommended jewel slots - these jewels stack up on the DEX nodes and account for a lot of your missing INT:
- socket near Harrier
- socket between Shadow and Ranger
- socket below the Scion start

I also noticed that you've put some skill points into the mana & jewel nodes up by Chaos Inoculation. These points may be better reallocated to the strength and jewel nodes over the other side just below Faith and Steel. You'll want to slot this with a Brute Force Solution jewel to convert the STR to INT. If you're having issues with mana, try to get a "-X to total mana cost of skills" craft on one of your rings.

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rpgbuddy wrote:

I noticed my character has almost 400 less intellect than the build guide character even though I'm 12 levels higher.

Can someone take a look at my 84 Occultist in betrayal and give me some hints as to what I'm doing wrong? I'm thinking I just need better gear and this seems pretty heavily dependent on rolling the 5% inc int with a vaal orb and I'm a complete noob when it comes to vaaling it seems.

I've tried vaaling astramentis twice and both times it did nothing. Been vaaling decent rings to see if I can get the extra % int as well and nada.

Also it seems like the sockets to link with ice storm are constantly being debated, could someone elaborate on why that is?

Finally, is weapon swapping required? I don't weapon swap currently but am starting to feel like I should so I don't have to gem swap spell cascade with conc effect for bosses.

Forget about vaaling stuff for now you are just wasting currency and concentrate on getting decent flat int rolls (preferably 50+ but 40 at the minimum) on head (ditch the unique head and get a rare with int/es/resists), chest, gloves, boots and both rings. Everything in those slots currently has either no int or not nearly enough with the exception of the boots. You don't need to spent much to get going - for example rings with 50+ int and some resistance go for a few chaos.

Your jewels are also a complete mess, you have all 4 jewel sockets that should have fertile minds in taken and yet you are only using one. A low roll one costs 1c or 6-7c for a 24 int one (you can snipe 24 int ones for 1c though with some whoops set up and a bit of patience). Just spending 3c on 3 low roll ones and putting them in the correct sockets (see first post for where to put them) would get you well over 100 int.

Seems like you really need to go back to the first post in the thread, reread it and take note of all the gearing advice there.

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Kelvynn wrote:

I just did an unid rare T8 map, and I'm sure it had ele reflect: I noticed that I was taking damage even when hitting frozen mobs. It wasn't anything drastic, but my ES was going down in uneven chunks, i.e. it was hit damage, not DoT. So then I ported out, switched to Yugul and grabbed 4 Sapphire flasks. After that I was able to easily outleech that reflect. It probably wasn't the top tier reflect since the map was yellow, but I don't even have the boot leech enchantment yet, just LL in my staff and a 1-mod Watcher's Eye. Didn't need to use Sibyl's Lament either.

Looks like reflect won't be a problem.

Haha

I had two ele reflect maps and the same effect.
And no watchers eye.
BUT then i had the problem if there are mobs frozen and die and no other mobs come in and then come 1 syndicate or big yellow mob i am dead. it takes to long to leech in that situation. Also the channel boss. As i cant stop icestorm i died since there wasnt mobs to leech and the boss i cant leech.

AND watchers eye is really expensive. (4,5 ex atm)

so the lazyness of the scion version is gone.

but delve is much safer with the witch. So its similar.

the only thing i miss is that it seems that there a nearly no rings or belts with %int corruption on the market and if they are way to expensive.