[3.6] The Blizz Sorc - Icestorm/Winter Orb CI Occultist - Viable For Everything
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Kelvynn wrote:
Working up my Atlas, buying cheap corrupted red maps people sell for cheap, just did this one:
Yugul, swapped Herald for Purity (took out Bonechill to have some free mana too), brought Sapphire flasks and kept Fortify up. No problems with Syndicate and trash, but used Vaal Discipline on the boss. Still didn't need to use Sibyl's Lament.
I guess the difference from the Ascendant version is that the Ascendant version can run 100 8mod t15 maps with ele reflect with almost 0% possibility to die, but this version will likely die several times :-)
(btw, most of the cheapest 8mod maps have ele reflect)
hi guys, currently at lvl 58 with this build, works pretty nicely. One question: Am I the only one who has some mana regen problems? I Arctic Armour, Discipline and HoI running, which caps my mana a lot, which isn't that big of a problem. I am at 100 Mana to work with, which goes low pretty fast when spaming my WO - is it normal that i have to chug a mana potion everytime I fight something that I can't oneshot? As soon as the mana is full the mana flask effect is gone and i have to pop another one which is kinda annoying. Is there a passive that will fix that problem in the future?
Getting a ring with an open prefix to craft -mana cost to skills solves the problem as well.
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.
Just saying that trying to use 4L was a mistake.
By the way, i'm not going to talk about "how great WO setup is", because i still never even tried red maps :) But want to say something about theory of WO as map clear assistance:
Damage is important! More important than anything else. It doesn't even matter how much WO stacks you have 1 or 10, but it's setup that absolutely crucial about "can one blast oneshot the trash enemy?".
WO have a problem, and that problem is that it always target random targets and never sticks to one.
So, if you have enough damage to kill white/blue mob in one blast, then entire pack will be obliterated by herald explosion and WO becomes AMAZING skill for clear.
If you have enough damage to kill white/blue mob in 2 blasts, then it's still pretty good, if you approach packs one by one, so damage will not be spread between packs. But it lose big chunk of QoL, and most importantly, probably will make you run slower, so you will not leave monsters behind. It's probably not even "pretty good" anymore, it is just "doable"
If you have even less damage than that - that setup is ABYSMAL!
And i'm pretty sure that 4L setup comes at 3rd category, so no wonder that you didn't like it in the first place.
By the way, that setup also benefit from the shaper amulet with damage for 15 int, more than anything else, cause that big boost in damage will definitely make trash mobs into chunks of meat.
P.S. Again, i'm not trying to say that WO-setup is such a good idea, but trying it on 4L is definitely one hell of a bad idea, because of that absurd difference in concept between 1-shotting and 2-shotting monsters.
Last edited by Med1umentor#6844 on Dec 22, 2018, 7:15:47 AM
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.
Just saying that trying to use 4L was a mistake.
By the way, i'm not going to talk about "how great WO setup is", because i still never even tried red maps :) But want to say something about theory of WO as map clear assistance:
Damage is important! More important than anything else. It doesn't even matter how much WO stacks you have 1 or 10, but it's setup that absolutely crucial about "can one blast oneshot the trash enemy?".
WO have a problem, and that problem is that it always target random targets and never sticks to one.
So, if you have enough damage to kill white/blue mob in one blast, then entire pack will be obliterated by herald explosion and WO becomes AMAZING skill for clear.
If you have enough damage to kill white/blue mob in 2 blasts, then it's still pretty good, if you approach packs one by one, so damage will not be spread between packs. But it lose big chunk of QoL, and most importantly, probably will make you run slower, so you will not leave monsters behind. It's probably not even "pretty good" anymore, it is just "doable"
If you have even less damage than that - that setup is ABYSMAL!
And i'm pretty sure that 4L setup comes at 3rd category, so no wonder that you didn't like it in the first place.
By the way, that setup also benefit from the shaper amulet with damage for 15 int, more than anything else, cause that big boost in damage will definitely make trash mobs into chunks of meat.
P.S. Again, i'm not trying to say that WO-setup is such a good idea, but trying it on 4L is definitely one hell of a bad idea, because of that absurd difference in concept between 1-shotting and 2-shotting monsters.
I did a bunch of runs with 5l wo and spell cascade, pretty easy clearing even on t16 t15 with hard mods. But I can't use both Herald of Ice and Ice Armour because of Vitality jewel. So after many runs with AA only and HoI only i don't see any impact of HoI on red maps. Damage of explosion is pretty low and doesn't help much. It's only good if u clear some easy/trash/low maps with it.
And about ele reflect, I can't do it safely. I almost die every time I try to clear it, and it's with Pantheon and ring that reduce elemental reflected damage taken. Totally I died one time, but it's so hard. Remember I don't have life leach in staff . Lifesteal comes from Vitality and enchant on boots.
P.S. Remembered I died on 18% ele reflect and -total max res, meh.
Is there an ETA on when the guide will be updated/finalized? Holding off jumping the gun until I see it in action in some stuff, namely incursions (where clear speed matters) and deeper delves.
As soon as the mana is full the mana flask effect is gone and i have to pop another one which is kinda annoying. Is there a passive that will fix that problem in the future?
Use level 1 WO and the mana cost is negligible.
I made a flask/mod combo that slows your mana drain enough to not empty your mana before everything is dead on screen.
The Act 1 flask gets swapped out for an end game one on no-regen maps.
Is there an ETA on when the guide will be updated/finalized? Holding off jumping the gun until I see it in action in some stuff, namely incursions (where clear speed matters) and deeper delves.
Still working on going to deeper delves, but haven't had a problem yet up to lvl 78 monsters.
Incursions were a bit annoying until I figured out a strat. Lower level incursions aren't an issues, but for high level T14-T16 incursions, I use my single target setup, and focus each pack, for ~1 to 2 seconds, and move-on without waiting for them to die. Doing that gives me about a 70% success rate in clearing out the incursion. Incursions are pretty much the only weakness I've found with the build, although I haven't run a pure breachstone with it yet. That may be another place where the build gets pushed.
At level 39, do you think it's worth replacing tabula to icetomb?
if not, what 6link should I run, assuming I have the full 6S 2L staff
The recommended 5L for your chest is CWDT - Ball Lightning (or Storm Brand?) - CoH - Enfeeble - Blind. If you get the "+1 curses" corruption on an amulet or the veiled mod for chest pieces, you can add either Frostbite or Warlord's Mark as the sixth gem to the 6L.
Edit: and Icetomb is a solid leveling chest after lvl 39 if you get a 4/5L one for cheap.
Last edited by Solax#7674 on Dec 22, 2018, 2:19:24 PM
