[3.17] Wallach's Hierophant Freezing Pulse Totems (No Further Updates)

Is the Soul Mantle change from curse to hex going to mess this up? I'm not really understanding the curse changes yet - need to read them again - but wanted to do this build again this league but that worried me when I saw it. We count on getting cursed for dps so not sure how to process this.

So patch notes are finally out, and while we won't get gem info until tomorrow, there are a few things I'm thinking about in terms of 3.12:

- Glancing Blows stuff is probably getting dropped from this guide. They are narrowing the usage of this keystone a little bit, and it's enough that I don't think it's a great recommendation for anyone not fully utilizing on-block procs from gear anymore. I personally won't mind freeing up a little text room in the guide anyway, nor was I the biggest fan of that variant in the first place.

- Soul Mantle is getting nerfed as a consequence of the overall curse changes. We will only be able to stack a maximum of 8 curses on ourselves now instead of 13; this is, in practice, a pretty small nerf because you can only ever stack this many curses on yourself in controlled opener situations (like right before triggering Shaper, Uber Elder, Izaro, etc). You'll note that every time I have provided a Path of Building example, it has always been done with 8 curses active, since this is a more reasonable amount of curses to have on yourself at any given time. It just turns out this is now the ceiling for contribution from Self-Flagellation. Overall, I wish they had compensated Self-Flagellation slightly for this change, but it is not a significant nerf in practice.

- For our purposes, Projectile Weakness (now Sniper's Mark) was nerfed compared to 3.11. Previously a 20/20 Projectile Weakness would result in 54% increased damage taken from projectile hits, and the new Sniper's Mark will only reach 40% at 20/20. The other new functionality added to Sniper's Mark, such as the projectile splitting and flask charges gained are not going to be relevant to us at all. Furthermore, we can no longer utilize Curse on Hit or Awakened Curse on Hit to access both Frostbite and Sniper's Mark, as that support gem is now restricted to Hexes only. This change will require some fiddling in Path of Building for me to decide how I will recommend this plays out. My current hunch is that we will simply self-cast Frostbite (optionally with the new Impending Doom support) and likely look for a Sniper's Mark on Hit ring at the high end after you have an Atziri's Reflection. Changes here will require some looking at new itemization options from Heist league as well, but in general this is going to be a downside at the highest end of gearing no matter how you slice it I think.

- On the plus side, self-casting Frostbite has gained new merit thanks to the addition of the Doom mechanic, and Frostbite gained an additional 10% chance to freeze which is a nice bonus for the earlier game. It remains to be seen how much magnitude Doom has on curse effect, but this change should help offset some of the potential loss for those that previously were sticking to a single curse and switching to Projectile Weakness in 3.11 or earlier. We'll also have the option of swapping out either Increased Duration or Spell Cascade for Impending Doom, though I personally do not expect that to be particularly helpful since clear is not something this build needs assistance with, and Impending Doom will have next to no impact on single target damage. I also very much doubt we will have enough reason to invest skill points into something like increased maximum Doom or Doom rate. It's something we'll still have to play around with when the league begins, but in any case we will get some gains coming to Frostbite.

- Vengeful Commander is also nerfed slightly, but is likely to still remain the option of choice to pair with Blanketed Snow on an ideal large cluster jewel. Just at a glance when looking at my final Delirium character (who was much better geared since I did not play much of Harvest league) this should amount to around around a 1.5% loss. Obviously more if you were taking a significant detour from my guide and running two large clusters.

Wallach, adore your guide and adore that you looked at the patch notes so quickly. Was quite concerned about Soul Mantle -- considering trying the ol' build for Heist (in HC nonetheless) -- so thank you for the voice of reason!

Hello there , i didnt see you mentioning the biggest change to projectile wekaness (now snipers mark) - it being able to apply on 1 target at any given time only. Is it worth getting on ring/wherever just for single target purposes?

I guess I was worried about our rings protecting us from curses but now we are getting hexed. I don't see that they are changing the ring as well as Soul Mantle. Can we still self curse and be immune?


Edit: Don't want to post again but wish I could "like" Wallach's responses! :)

Thanks so much for being here so fast to explain. I love your build - I've run it twice so far and seriously considering it for third time this league.

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Wajcik wrote:

Hello there , i didnt see you mentioning the biggest change to projectile wekaness (now snipers mark) - it being able to apply on 1 target at any given time only. Is it worth getting on ring/wherever just for single target purposes?

At the point where you have an Atziri's Reflection, you're pretty much trying to scale your single target damage because you will have way more overall damage than you really need to clear everything that isn't a boss pretty fast. The issue is going to be that you now need a different source of +1 to maximum curses because Awakened Curse on Hit will no longer be able to apply Sniper's Mark. You could instead still use Awakened Curse on Hit (or Hextouch or whatever it is called now) and instead do something like Frostbite + Elemental Weakness, but I don't know if that will really be worth the opportunity cost of your anointment when paired with whatever the loss of Doom scaling on Frostbite winds up being. Before I would often never go up to 2 curses and just switch out Frostbite for Projectile Weakness, so I don't know if the investment of +1 max curses is going to be worthwhile anymore with the value of our second curse being lowered.

Edit - I should clarify that Sniper's Mark not being affected by boss curse effectiveness may be more than enough to justify the lowering of the effect and still be worthwhile. But the opportunity cost has changed enough with the loss of Awakened Curse on Hit that I'm not sure yet if it will be worth the actual investment to do so compared to putting that currency in some other part of your character. That's what I need to fiddle with to understand more, and would like to see what the value of Doom is against a self-cast curse to better evaluate.

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Jenarie wrote:

I guess I was worried about our rings protecting us from curses but now we are getting hexed. I don't see that they are changing the ring as well as Soul Mantle. Can we still self curse and be immune?

Near as I can tell, Kikazaru and Atziri's Reflection should still affect all curses (both Hexes and Marks). The only change on that front will be that Atziri's Reflection will not be able to reflect Marks used by enemies, but that's of no real concern either way.

2 questions:

1. do you think impending doom / doom blast will work or will ancestral bond render it useless?

2. how about stacking frostbite and ele weakness with awakened curse on hit instead of proj weakness that is gone? or maybe the new punishment? or will the culling / overkill effects not work with totems either?

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Viktranka wrote:

2 questions:

1. do you think impending doom / doom blast will work or will ancestral bond render it useless?

2. how about stacking frostbite and ele weakness with awakened curse on hit instead of proj weakness that is gone? or maybe the new punishment? or will the culling / overkill effects not work with totems either?

I'm actually not sure what the source will count as for Impending Doom, but I'd lean towards it being blocked by Ancestral Bond. It's just easy to fit into the build in the case where we can utilize it (or for example if it improves Doom effectiveness to where we'd want it instead of Increased Duration for our Arcane Surge or something).

As far as dual-hexing goes, it'll still come down to opportunity cost, and personally I often found it hard to justify Awakened Curse on Hit even with Projectile Weakness (at least in trade league). Given that switching to it will now disable Doom scaling for Frostbite on bosses I feel like it will fare worse than before since single target is really the only context where +1 curse matters. Punishment may be a weird case where it gains abnormal value due to Sirus' health percentage starting so low in his final phase, but set against curse effectiveness penalty against him I don't know if even that will shake out that well.

Regarding the actual effects of Punishment, I don't see any reason those would not work with totem hits.

@Wallach - Simple question. Wouldn't it make sense to consider the new glacial cascade as opposed to freezing pulse as the base skill?

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Fleksz wrote:

@Wallach - Simple question. Wouldn't it make sense to consider the new glacial cascade as opposed to freezing pulse as the base skill?

Well there's nothing wrong with considering Glacial Cascade with a Soul Mantle. But it is a more different build than it might sound.

Glacial Cascade is a physical converted to cold skill rather than pure cold. This means that Hatred is way more powerful for Glacial Cascade than it is something like Freezing Pulse, because you'll benefit from both elements of Hatred's aura. This in turn means you really want Hatred active from the start, not just after you invest so much into the build that you could afford an Atziri's Reflection. So you have to do some reconfiguring in the build and/or play style to handle that.

You also have to keep in mind these two skills are pretty different functionally. This new Glacial Cascade especially is going to be pretty mediocre as a clear skill, because it has a fixed travel distance of what you see in the demo video. The tradeoff will be an easier to scale single target output, though one that comes with some more positional requirements as you will be needing to ensure that final burst is making contact with your target.

Ultimately you're making a fairly different build with different goals. Glacial Cascade is never going to map clear anywhere as good as Freezing Pulse, and (at least in theory) Freezing Pulse is going to need a lot more investment to put up similar single target damage. It'll also not be as simple to fit Soul Mantle into a Glacial Cascade setup because of how important Hatred will be for that skill.