[3.11] LL Vortex Occultist (endgame/deep delve optimized)

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Ramzuron wrote:

How do you think the change to glancing blows will affect the build? It seems a major nerf to me :(

For those who don't know they will change it so that 5 of the keystones that previously were found on timeless jewels(including Glancing Blows) will be moved away from the jewels themselves and instead placed on the passive tree itself. The issue with that is that now taking those keystones require builds to travel specifically where those keystones are located. The glancing blows will be located between marauder and templar area (to the left of scion life wheel). For this build in particular indeed it probably means a no in terms of its viability - technically, it's still not terribly far - if moving from EE it takes 9 points and you can take jewel slot on the way. However, 9 points is still a lot considering that this build has a lot of good opportunities to spend points efficiently. I'd say overall it means that GB will not be used, therefore some of the shield nodes on the tree also might become less tempting and thus dropped, however something like es% gain on block shield should still be very good option for the build even without the keystone.

Do you think the new Winter Brand would fit into the build and have good synergy with Vortex / Cold dot scaling?

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Viktranka wrote:

Do you think the new Winter Brand would fit into the build and have good synergy with Vortex / Cold dot scaling?

Spoiler

Wintertide Brand
Wintertide Brand applies Cold Damage over time to the branded enemy and chills them. Each activation, the Brand's damage effect becomes more intense on that enemy.

When the Brand is removed (such as when its duration expires, it is recalled, the target dies or the Brand is replaced), the damage over time effect is released in an area. This affects both the branded enemy (if they're still alive) and all other enemies around them. This means that if the damage effect has grown in intensity through many activations, it could apply a very potent damage over time effect in an area.

Unlike other Brands, Wintertide Brand has a base limit of two Brands per target. With the Runebinder keystone you could apply three Wintertide Brands to a single target for massive cold damage over time. This means that your character's build will be quite different from other cold damage over time skills, but the duration based nature of Brands means you can easily cast a cold skill like Vortex, Cold Snap or Arctic Breath in between refreshing your Brand effect.

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2869604

I don't think so. The biggest issue would be that the brand would mess up EE too frequently. There is no way that a bit of extra damage and utility of wintertide brand would make it worth to give up the enemy resistance reduction that EE provides. Also keep in mind that brand recall is getting nerfed.
Either way, the skill itself is interesting, but it would make much more sense to rather use brand as a main skill and only use vortex/cold snap as something extra (without passive tree investment into brand notables using brands as actual source of clear and damage makes no sense, and neither does it make sense to invest into brand notables in this build).
So to sum up, you might be succesful with this brand and other cold dot skills as extra utility, but that is the completely different build, though I encourage you to theorycraft in that regard if you are interested in trying something like that yourself.

Well that's sad news about Glancing Blows. Just when I thought that I finally found tanky enough build to play without constant fear of dying to some ridiculous oneshots and explosions when you hit unfortunate mod combinations with sextants on rare maps. Well I play standard so no changes for a while.

I just fitted a medium and small cluster jewels to the build taking DoT dps to 3,5 million and still over 13k ES, CWDT + Immortal Call and both defensive curses. I don't even remember when I died last time with this build and you can do pretty much all content in the game. I still skip Uber Elder and Uber Atziri though, they're always dangerous.

Grozaa:

Do you have any ideas in what direction to take the build when Glancing Blows is gone? 9 passive points is too much I think since only useful nodes on the way is the jewel slot. The passive tree is already optimized so well. You do save 3 points by not taking the jewel slot where we now fit the Timeless Jewel though but still 6 points short.

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patouskii wrote:

Well that's sad news about Glancing Blows. Just when I thought that I finally found tanky enough build to play without constant fear of dying to some ridiculous oneshots and explosions when you hit unfortunate mod combinations with sextants on rare maps. Well I play standard so no changes for a while.

I just fitted a medium and small cluster jewels to the build taking DoT dps to 3,5 million and still over 13k ES, CWDT + Immortal Call and both defensive curses. I don't even remember when I died last time with this build and you can do pretty much all content in the game. I still skip Uber Elder and Uber Atziri though, they're always dangerous.

Grozaa:

Do you have any ideas in what direction to take the build when Glancing Blows is gone? 9 passive points is too much I think since only useful nodes on the way is the jewel slot. The passive tree is already optimized so well. You do save 3 points by not taking the jewel slot where we now fit the Timeless Jewel though but still 6 points short.

There are plenty of good passives to take and the option to stack even more cluster jewels is also reasonable. It should also be mentioned that as far as I understood, though some of the keystones that were timeless jewels-specific are going to be moved to the passive tree, those keystones lost from timeless jewels will be replaced by some new ones. Of course we would need to wait and see, but perhaps some other new keystones will present a viable alternative to Glancing Blows.

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patouskii wrote:

Do you have any ideas in what direction to take the build when Glancing Blows is gone?

What about replacing Tranquility with Glancing Blows on the amulet? Bex has said that all notables will be anointable in Harvest. According to pob, this means giving up 18% spell damage--15.5k to average hit and 225k to dot dps. Maybe it's worth it?

You can regain about a third of the lost damage by adding Frost Walker. Same for Snow Forged and Storm Weaver, but the opportunity cost of any of these options is 3 or 4 points in the current passive tree. At least it gives you some tradeoff options beyond paying the full cost path to the new location of Glancing Blows.

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GERWARIC wrote:

Bex has said that all notables will be anointable in Harvest.

Notable =/= Keystone. You could never anoint keystones (like Phase Acrobatics or Zealot's Oath).

P.S. When you talked about Tranquility I checked what helmet does the build use, btw it needs updating because the -res mods require lvl 85+ not 84 as of recent patch (the redeemer mod). Anyway you can get "free" tranquility by using awakener helmet in case you don't have -cold res hubris. And then you can anoint all the other stuff from the ones you mentioned.

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Viktranka wrote:

Notable =/= Keystone. You could never anoint keystones (like Phase Acrobatics or Zealot's Oath).

Thanks. Every time I turn around I'm learning some new basic concept that I missed despite getting to red maps in my first league. (As an example, I didn't start using flasks in a serious way until maybe yellow maps).

Can't wait to see what the patch notes bring for the vortex builds, but I'm tempted to not worry about it and practice leveling an occultist this weekend, since I've only ever leveled one character (ED trickster), and I think it took me 20-30 hours to reach maps because I didn't know any better.

I updated my PoB and changed passive tree from 3.10 to 3.11. Slight drop in DPS (from 3,52 mil DoT to 3,33 mil DoT) and obviously Glancing Blows is gone now but otherwise the build didn't get big changes I think.

Glancing Blows got moved further away btw. It's not where it was first said it would move to. You can still reach it with 9 points but the route is different. There's jewel slot on this route also but it's two points more so 11 points if you want jewel slot and Glancing Blows from the tree.

EDIT:

For those who use Thread of Hope in the build, Wicked Ward is moved to a slightly different spot so that you can't choose it with Thread of Hope anymore. So reaching it with normal route takes two extra points.

I have updated the POB tree to 3.11 . The changes to Glancing Blows have been reflected so I've removed Lethal Pride. It frees up 3 passive skillpoints so I've directed them towards Heart Of Ice. Some block-related notables become a bit less interesting but I still consider them good enough, though of course they are one of the ones that can be dropped for the build variations with cluster jewels(though keep in mind they might a bit harder to get and supposedly harder to craft).