[3.11] Barrage CoC Ice Nova – All Content, Fast, Cheap, SSF Viable (Craft all your own gear!)

The one thing that's nearly required is Asenath's Chant:



Putting a Frostbolt in this doubles Ice Nova's damage and gives it actual range as Ice Nova is then cast from up to 2 Frostbolts instead of you.

I wouldn't quite say it's required though as until you get an Asenath's Chant, you can use Spellslinger with a wand. If you're not able to buy an Asenath's Chant, put Leo in Transportation for Silver Coins and farm prophecies until you get Song of the Sekhema.

The basic mechanics are:

* Trigger Frostbolt when you attack
* Get 100% crit chance for both spells and attacks
* Hit things with barrage to trigger Ice Novas from your Frostbolts

WEAPON

"

Naturally bows are the best for us as they can easily get +1 to gem level and Shaper bows can get built-in cast on crit.

Crafting:

* Get a Shaper bow. Item level 75 is ideal as it can get all of the T1 mods we need and can be crafted using seeds from Quarry.
* Essence craft spell damage onto it.
* With three prefixes, remove/add crit until you get the crit multi.
* With three prefixes, remove/add attack until you get good attack speed.
* Remove unwanted prefixes.
* With three suffixes, augment crit to get cast on crit.
* Craft "cannot roll attack mods", and with three suffixes, augment, hoping for +1 to level of socketed gems. It's not guaranteed, but the odds are pretty good.
* Craft double damage chance.

The crafting process relies on a little bit of luck, but everything that doesn't go right can be fixed relatively cheaply.

Once you find yourself with more money than you know what to do with, you may also consider using a bow with synthesized mods and more gem level along with Awakened Cast on Crit.

HELMET

"

If you're SSF or in a private league, you can get this by farming prophecies. Leo in Transportation helps a lot.

Otherwise, buy an Asenath's Chant or Asenath's Mark with a good enchanment. An Asenath's Mark will keep its enchantment when upgraded.

BODY ARMOR

"

The additional curse and added crit chance are great and this is an extremely easy craft:

* Get a hunter base.
* Quality it up with fossils and a quality craft.
* Six link.
* Use reforges until you get the additional curse mod.
* Clean everything else off.
* Augment caster to get spell crit. Remove/add until T1.
* Augment attack to get attack crit. Remove/add until T1.
* Add life / resists.
* Craft dodge.

RINGS

"

We want two curse rings: One Redeemer with Frostbite and one Shaper with Assassin's Mark.

In both cases, just reforge until you get the curse mod. All of the other mods are easily targeted. Note my Redeemer ring is garbage and you can do much better than that. The Shaper ring is perfect though.

I craft minus mana cost on my rings to make Barrage sustainable while keeping my Frost Bomb at 26 mana to trigger level 6 Arcane Surge.

BELT

"

Your belt MUST have at least 14% cooldown recovery. This is a huge deal. See the section below on cooldown recovery.

This means your belt must have at least Shaper or Crusader influence. I went for Crusader as it gives a big chunk of crit against things our Skitterbots are near. If you have an Awakener orb you can also add Redeemer for more damage.

* Influence an item level 84 Stygian Vise.
* Reforge cooldown recovery or damage against chilled enemies on it.
* Get any junk belt with the other of those two mods.
* Combine with an Awakener orb.
* With three suffixes, augment crit for crit change against shocked enemies.
* Add life and resistances.

GLOVES

"

Gloves are where we get a big chunk of our boring stats like resists and energy shield. Even though this is a life-based build, nearly 200 energy shield on gloves gives us a decent boost to our effective health pool.

I just happened to find these in a temple early on and decided to synthesize and craft them. Nothing fancy about the process.

BOOTS

"

Tailwind is amazing.

* Get item level 86 boots.
* Get tailwind or dodge on them.
* Get the other of those two mods on another pair of boots.
* Smash them together with an Awakener orb.
* With three suffixes, augment speed for movement speed. If you get a bad roll, you might end up removing tailwind trying to fix it, but that's okay since tailwind is the only crit suffix.
* Augment life, defence, and chaos. Don't forget you can remove/add mods from the crafting bench to effectively augment these things.

AMULET

"

This is probably the hardest piece to craft, but it's extremely valuable.

Take a hunter amulet with int gem level and combine it with a redeemer amulet with cold gem level. If you're unlucky and get a mod you can't remove, you might have to reforge it until you get int gem level, craft "cannot roll attack mods", then remove/add cold until you get cold gem level again.

FLASKS

"

I would consider Warding, Staunching, and Heat must-haves. And you wouldn't be playing this build if you didn't want to go fast. So that leaves us with one unique flask for damage. I use Wise Oak, but Atziri's Promise is also good and doesn't require resistance juggling.

CLUSTER JEWELS

"

I use four:

Large Cluster Jewel – Cold Damage
* Blanketed Snow
* Doryani's Lesson – Very important for life leech!
* Blizzard Caller

Medium Cluster Jewel – Curses
* Evil Eye
* Master of Fear

Medium Cluster Jewel – Crit
* Magnifier
* Pressure Points

Small Cluster Jewel – Life
* Fettle or Natural Vigor

BOW

Ice Nova - Barrage - Hypothermia - Cold Penetration - Concentrated Effect - Added Cold Damage

For bosses I swap in Awakened Elemental Focus since they can't be frozen anyway.

HELMET

Frostbolt - Blind - Culling Strike - Onslaught

Just packing as much utility into Frostbolt as possible.

BODY ARMOR

Flame Dash - Arcane Surge - Frost Bomb - Increased Duration - Faster Casting

Make sure you don't level Arcane Surge too high for Frost Bomb to trigger it.

In the sixth, unlinked socket you can use Precision.

Gloves & Boots

Cast When Damage Taken - Increased Duration - Immortal Call - Vaal Summon Skeletons

Make sure Immortal Call isn't too high level for Cast When Damage Taken.

Hatred - Bonechill - Summon Skitterbots - Enlighten

Passive Tree: https://www.pathofexile.com/fullscreen-passive-skill-tree/AAAABAYBAAQHBUIFtQceCPQN0Q5ID8QQWBCSEZYWvxewGo0byCBuIuoj9iT9JpUngyoLLJwtHzBxMHwyATIyNj031DpCOlg7fEGWSVFKi0t4TLNNklAwUUdRdFVLVcZbJl2OXfJh4mKsY0NqQ2yMbWxwUnBuf8Z_-4PbidOMC4w2jX2Nv47plPGVIJUunaqio6QFpHimmaf4qM-us6-bshm0OLVIuMq5Arl8vG-86sHVwfPN6s96z93Q9dQj2YbbXt2o3vjjhOUZ51TndOjW7LDtP_DV8Yr4l_v1_94=?accountName=rz2yoj&characterName=Ned_Duval

Bandits: Help Alira

Path of Building: https://pastebin.com/LXdvniCQ

To calculate your Ice Nova DPS, you need to multiply Ice Nova's average hit by double the number of triggers per second you get.

The number of triggers per second you get is based off of Cast on Crit's cooldown and your attack speed. Cast on Crit has a cooldown of 150 milliseconds, but the PoE servers advance time in "ticks" of 33 milliseconds. Therefore, with no cooldown recovery on your gear, Cast on Crit's cooldown is effectively 165 milliseconds. With 14% cooldown recovery on gear, its cooldown is effectively 132 milliseconds. And with 52% cooldown recovery, its cooldown is effectively 99 milliseconds. These are known as your cooldown recovery "breakpoints". For this reason, 14% cooldown recovery gives you a huge multiplicative boost in DPS. But having cooldown recovery greater than 14% is pointless until you get to 52%, which is only possible using Awakened Cast on Crit.

When you attack with Barrage, you spend the first 40% of the attack winding up, and the last 60% firing projectiles. This means you hit things in bursts rather than a steady stream of hits. When you have low attack speed, each burst might trigger 3 off-cooldown casts. But once you reach a certain attack speed, those bursts will only be able to trigger 2 off-cooldown casts. This means there are some points where you can lose DPS by gaining attack speed.

You can use these graphs to see how many off-cooldown crits per second you get at your cooldown recovery and attack speed levels:



For example, I have >14% cooldown recovery and 3 attacks per second. My barrages have a tendency to trigger two casts each and I get 6 triggers per second. Each trigger casts Ice Nova on two Frostbolts, so my DPS is 12 times my average hit. If my average hit is 1 million, that makes my DPS 12 million.

Uber Elder: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=le2cR0cXQZY

A8 Sirus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHVSmhwPb3s

Why get Wicked Ward?

Between my helmet, gloves, and boots, I found myself at 700 energy shield, which is pretty significant. Since we go right by Wicked Ward anyway, I think it's worth the skill point to make that extra effective health more reliable.

When should I get Awakened Cast on Crit?

Personally I don't think Awakened CoC is worth the cost unless all your other gear is perfect and you're really just min-maxing for the fun of it. In addition to the level 1 gem not being super cheap, you have to get boots with cooldown recovery speed and a good synthesized bow to really benefit from it.

What helmet enchant should I use?

I like Barrage attack speed because it's fairly cheap and even if you get a little more DPS out of Ice Nova damage, the attack speed just feels better since it increases your mobility.

What annointment should I use?

If you have access to golden oils, it's probably best to get Whispers of Doom (and add increased life or something else to your chest). If you're not in a trade league or you're on a budget, Eagle Eye is probably the most bang for your buck.