[3.20] Ice Dancing Queen - Icestorm/Cyclone/CI - Viable For Everything

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vudde wrote:

Does the Glancing Blows nerf destroy this build or is it just minor inconvinience? planned to play this in heist.

Lol bro this build doesn't even use it. You don't need it with how good the regen is.

If you do want to spend a few points on block and drop dps you can hit flat 50/40 block which is great.

Okay so now that the league has ended I would like to share my final results of grinding it out this league. Overall I had fun and am quite satisfied with how the build ended up in the end. I did not like the sacred grove. Having to play farmville as a minigame by building connections and stuff doesn't feel like it belongs in a dark action rpg and it was very buggy and laggy (most of my crashes to desktop were inside that place, and I had many...). All that clutter just trying to not click on your stuff while moving in there!? And all that extra quantity & rarity bonuses was too much for my PC so I could not harvest a lot of T4 seeds at the same time. Too bad as that was an effective way of actually getting a headhunter.

Anyway. I present Plant_Icestorm_Reap_FPS!

Lame name I know but in the heat of creating a character in leaguestart I couldn't come up with something better. :)

As I wrote in a prior post I have played an experimental build based on these cluster jewels:
I had 6 of those, with similar rolls. To demonstrate the power of these I can relate to poe.ninja, where cluster jewels & unnerve is not included, that I have over 3x the amount of ES & over 5x the amount of damage displayed there!

I tried out a crit version in the final week. More details below if interested. I could have improved my rings, body armour, gloves, helmet & amulet a bit further still so this could realistically be even better with gear like some other WI players have made here - taking it to over 30K+ ES & 600K+ unflasked avg shaper hit with defensive layers.



EO version:

Crit version:

I leave you with a showcase of some videos:

My fastest Sirus kill at awakening level 8 that I did during the last 30 minutes of the league: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44WVv_fyqvg

A Vaal Outpost in deep delve at depth 1016 with scary mods: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrYm6g6Q2lM

...and an Aul kill at depth 1025 with very difficult mods. This was one of my goals I set to do in this league actually. However, I completed it today after the league ended because I found him right next to my delve path, right in the end, during the last 4 minutes before league ended! It was extremely difficult to do this fight, probably the hardest I've done. I did some minor tweaks to pantheon, flasks & a passive skill respecc for more ES leech but now afterwards I realize I could have made some additional tweaks such as linking fortify in staff & of course spamming dynamite on him to stun him. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iyz7-UQbd5U

Yes, harvest was like a bless. But.. what you can do on standart League like a heist? No harvest craft.. i just do the build in pob and i m stuck on 14k es+- And average dmg icestorm (pob) 100k +- Will IT ve ok for end game?

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TemnyMagic wrote:

Yes, harvest was like a bless. But.. what you can do on standart League like a heist? No harvest craft.. i just do the build in pob and i m stuck on 14k es+- And average dmg icestorm (pob) 100k +- Will IT ve ok for end game?

With 14k ES and 100k dps you can do sirius 8 and any map with no problem... Just will suffer in deep delves 800+ and full delirium maps.

But doing sirius and T16 maps you can improve your character easily!

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LiNGeN wrote:

As I wrote in a prior post I have played an experimental build based on these cluster jewels:

I had 6 of those, with similar rolls. To demonstrate the power of these I can relate to poe.ninja, where cluster jewels & unnerve is not included, that I have over 3x the amount of ES & over 5x the amount of damage displayed there!

How can one craft such cluster jewels? I assume they don't just drop and Synthesis is not in the core game, is it? Are they done with Harvest crafting?

Looking at Standard trade, there is exactly 0 jewels like this for sale.

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Jadran wrote:

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LiNGeN wrote:

As I wrote in a prior post I have played an experimental build based on these cluster jewels:

I had 6 of those, with similar rolls. To demonstrate the power of these I can relate to poe.ninja, where cluster jewels & unnerve is not included, that I have over 3x the amount of ES & over 5x the amount of damage displayed there!

How can one craft such cluster jewels? I assume they don't just drop and Synthesis is not in the core game, is it? Are they done with Harvest crafting?

Looking at Standard trade, there is exactly 0 jewels like this for sale.

It's not the implicits that are important here, they are not even useful in this case except for a little more resist.

Its a harvest mechanic that will probably not be coming back, or if it does it will be rare to come over depending on how GGG will merge Harvest mechanics to core.

On another note, I got offered to run a couple fractured 100% delirious maps for free just now in standard. I decided to run it for fun and record it so you guys can see how my offensive respec of the crit version deals with 3 player (100% more monster life) & 100% Delirious. Before GGG changes the game and how Icestorm works this can be a showcase to get an example of dps. I was able to fit in vaal righteous fire this time since Im not using clarity with another watcher's eye. So my average iceshard hit went up to 2.38M with stacks of 1000 rampage kills along with it. Unfortunately I crashed the instance by running headstrong into a breach with tight packs. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

https://youtu.be/0uq7r4WXACY

Not your problem, guys, but I am tired of playing WI.

Delirium was the high point in my WI career; the stacked jewels and the great loot from the simulacrum gave me the most enjoyment ever in all of the leagues playing WI in the last two years.

Harvest wasn't to my taste. At all.

So I'm asking you folks. Is there another build out there as good as WI?

I'm specifically looking for a mobile attacking build, with good clear speed, good boss killing speed, good to great defenses, CI, no piano flasking, and being able to hit maps after ~10 hours of play, and not trade-dependent before maps (i.e., not dependent on getting a specific unique to be able to hit maps.) (Note: it takes me ~20 hours to hit maps while levelling up as WI to give you an idea of how slow I am. The bottleneck has always been getting enough currency to buy a 3-4 socket WI. It is a PITA levelling up without WI...)

I thought I had that with a Spellslinger ED/Contagion build with Glancing Blows, but that got killed on Monday. I had spent several days practicing levelling up that build and it was fun and quick to level, so was looking forward to this league. The best laid plans etc.

I've spent a few hours looking at different builds, but I do that every league and always come back to WI. Not this time, though. I'll continue to look, but would appreciate suggestions and advice.

To restate: I'm looking for a build I can solo level to maps quickly, does not require much currency buying special items, and which I can continue to play to high end bosses and maps. I don't care about delving.

I'm sure the people here will have some good suggestions.

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Graiaule wrote:

Not your problem, guys, but I am tired of playing WI.

Delirium was the high point in my WI career; the stacked jewels and the great loot from the simulacrum gave me the most enjoyment ever in all of the leagues playing WI in the last two years.

Harvest wasn't to my taste. At all.

So I'm asking you folks. Is there another build out there as good as WI?

I'm specifically looking for a mobile attacking build, with good clear speed, good boss killing speed, good to great defenses, CI, no piano flasking, and being able to hit maps after ~10 hours of play, and not trade-dependent before maps (i.e., not dependent on getting a specific unique to be able to hit maps.) (Note: it takes me ~20 hours to hit maps while levelling up as WI to give you an idea of how slow I am. The bottleneck has always been getting enough currency to buy a 3-4 socket WI. It is a PITA levelling up without WI...)

I thought I had that with a Spellslinger ED/Contagion build with Glancing Blows, but that got killed on Monday. I had spent several days practicing levelling up that build and it was fun and quick to level, so was looking forward to this league. The best laid plans etc.

I've spent a few hours looking at different builds, but I do that every league and always come back to WI. Not this time, though. I'll continue to look, but would appreciate suggestions and advice.

To restate: I'm looking for a build I can solo level to maps quickly, does not require much currency buying special items, and which I can continue to play to high end bosses and maps. I don't care about delving.

I'm sure the people here will have some good suggestions.

Nothing I have tried but maybe the creeping frost / cold snap / vortex cold DoT builds? Think its most common as a witch. Apart from being DoT and another class its pretty similar to WI, from what I can gather.

Okay so the new league's zana map mods are up... nemesis, beyond, blight & delirium. Best combo ever I believe! Might be fun.

Watcher's Eye: Can now grant 10 to 15% increased Energy Shield Recovery Rate while affected by Discipline (from 20 to 30%). Can now grant 6 to 10% of Maximum Mana as Extra Maximum Energy Shield while affected by Clarity (from 12 to 18%).

The Whispering Ice: The Ice Storm skill has undergone a significant rebalance, with larger impacts falling in a smaller area meaning you are significantly more likely to hit targets within the area multiple times over the storm's duration than before:
Now has 2 to 4 base Cold Damage per 10 Intelligence (from 1 to 3).
Now has a base Duration of 1 second (from 1.5 seconds).
Now gains 0.1 seconds of additional base duration per 100 intelligence (from 0.15 seconds).
There is now 1 impact every 0.2 seconds (from every 0.1 seconds)
Now has an Added Damage effectiveness of 60% (from 45%).
Now has a maximum of 5 storms at a time (any more than that replace the oldest).
Impacts now have a base radius of 16 units (from 10).
Impacts can now land in an area with a base radius of 22 (from 25).


(Ouch)

Looks like a strait nerf to me. From average 2 to average 3 base damage per 10 int, but much lower duration, and half as many impacts. Not to mention that you can only stack 5 storms, that's like 1.5 seconds of channeling. More impacts per shard, but I don't think that's nearly enough to counter the other issues. I'll have to test it, since Ice Storm is mechanically so hard to predict DPS, but the lack of stacking has me seriously worried.

Need to spend more time then I currently have tweaking the icestorm calculator to find real dps... I REALLY don't like the 5 storm limit though.

The limit of 5 storms is also a possible problem for clear, when zooming along the trailing storms did a good job of cleaning up after you. You probably won't have that luxury. You also won't be able to cover the entire screen with ice, meaning that blights could get harder, and a bit more scary, etc.

(Edit:) Crunching some numbers quickly the DPS for single target doesn't look that bad. Very close to the same. Feeling better about the changes a bit, but I'll have to test for feel. The Watcher's eye nerf is annoying though. The true buff will hopefully be our FPS.

Eagerly awaiting everyone's take on WI and finding a new way to play it (if needed)!

Edit - If we see a return of selfcast WI that'd be amazing as well haha