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

About the Vortex replacements. I've looked at a few options here.

The main point of that mechanic is to:
1) have the enemy chilled with greatly increased effect of chill from Unbound Ailments and Bonechill;
2) have them take cold damage from all sources (including Icestorm) increased by the magnitude of the chill effect on them.

So we use a chilling skill to make them take increased damage from Icestorm. That skill used to be Vortex. Now that's gone.

Vortex's main selling point was it being instant cast. But it had a downside too: you had to get near the target to cast it.

Now there are no instant cast skills left for that purpose, but we can try something that would not require being near the target instead. CWDT - something - Bonechill - Unbound Ailments.

Option A: Cold Snap.
Pro: MORE effect of chill.
Con: 3 sec cooldown. Has to be lv 20 for the best effect. CWDT lv 20 requires taking significant damage.

Option B: Creeping frost.
Pro: No cooldown (i.e. the default CWDT 2 sec cooldown). Can use lv 1.
Con: Projectile takes time to travel.

And then there is an option to simply use Frost Shield. That would still require getting near the target. But it saves a gem socket (no CWDT).

The deciding factor might be the transfigured versions of those skills. They posted one for Cold Snap already. It eats power charges to bypass cooldown instead of the MORE chill effect. Doesn't look useful. It won't bypass CWDT cooldown. We'll see what the other skills get.

I'll be honest, I like the idea of frost shield if nothing better comes up. Only downside is the small 5 second recharge.

As much as i love this build I have played it for the last 3 so I think i will try my own again, thank you so much for the awesome build really learnt alot. also don't think i'd hit a divine altar and get 40 divines again to get ambush gem lol

Well it's finally clear that D4 has jumped the shark with the release of Abattoir of Zir today. I did like D4 in that I was able to design my own off-meta builds that actually worked well, but that's about it. (The main story quest line is awesome, by the way -- definitely worth playing. It ends at roughly level 50 though.)

So I'm back, baby!

It's been a year away, roughly. What's new in crafting killer items for the build (the rest of the stuff I can figure out, but not the new crafting ideas) ?

Last time I played, I would craft the chest using Winterhiko's quite clever scheme to get high ES and evasion on a Sadist garb. There were also particular algorithms to use eater etc stuff on gloves and chest for more dps and defense. We're still using Stampede, the old cluster jewels, one watcher's eye, and the two flame jewels. We settle for about 50% stun resistance iirc via corrupted jewels.

No more alternate gems, so no more Heist farming. Essences are now useful for crafting apparently, though I need to learn more. No idea what the new atlas tree looks like. No idea what to farm this time around (I basically just did maps with essence rewards maxed a year ago, which is slow income but quite steady.)

We still trying to buy 6% int synth rings early in the league when they are cheap? People still have 20+ trade tabs up live searching for items?

I'm guessing catalysts will now come from ultimatums, correct?

Damn, there's a lot to reload into my brain... it's easy to forget just how much background info you need to know to play PoE optimally.

I suppose the best question to ask is: what's the one new thing we can do that GGG hates us knowing?

Kelvynn switched to a crit version since we got instant leech. That changed the tree and some support gems.

Body armour is now fractured + eldritch implicit thanks to crit, which is wayyyy easier to craft than the old crusader influenced version.

This league Simplex Amulet seems easier and more powerful than the previous high-end option.

Megalos are out, which is absolutely great.

The rest of the gear, if I'm not mistaken, is mostly the same. Some use corrupted Anathema in a ring slot, but it puts a lot of suffix pressure so it's a min-max option.

We're still pondering the replacement for Vortex, but the rest should be the same as last league.

Yeah, I remember the crit version. I looked at your gear, and it's pretty much as I remembered.

Did the Kalandra thing make it possible to make +278 int amulets again?

So the changes look like:

1. No alt gems we just lose anomalous POE
2. Vortex replacement TBD
3. Simplex amulet from Heists so we still do heists
4. two new ascendancies with lots of ideas

Did I miss anything?

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Graiaule wrote:

1. No alt gems we just lose anomalous POE

Anomalous PoE is now the main version of the gem.

GGG ran into some last minute problem with the transfigured gems, so they are late posting them. Still waiting to see most of the ones we use.

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Graiaule wrote:

Did the Kalandra thing make it possible to make +278 int amulets again?

Kalandra wasn't added to the core game. But Simplex Amulet now doubles the effect of its mods. You can deterministically craft 28% Int + 2% inc damage per 15 Int. And I guess randomly hitting +132 Int on the 3rd mod would make it a mirror tier.

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Kelvynn wrote:

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Graiaule wrote:

Did the Kalandra thing make it possible to make +278 int amulets again?

Kalandra wasn't added to the core game. But Simplex Amulet now doubles the effect of its mods. You can deterministically craft 28% Int + 2% inc damage per 15 Int. And I guess randomly hitting +132 Int on the 3rd mod would make it a mirror tier.

those look really nice though making me want to keep playing the build lol

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Kelvynn wrote:

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JohnBaneling wrote:

How good is this build for Delve?

Depth 500 is trivial and optimal for farming. You can find bosses often enough. You find all the expensive fossils very often. And Harbingers. They are all completely trivial at that depth with this build. I've spent a couple of days farming there and got several multi-divine Aul drops (helmets and amulets), a whole lot of all types of fossils, and several Fracturing shards. The only problem was boredom.

Then I went down and reached depth 1000 just for fun. Around 600-700 it stops being easy or fun. The bosses get WAY too much hp. And the random Archnemesis rares can ruin any node regardless of its content. Also, the new Beyond equals instant death.

I killed Aul with relatively harmless mods at depth 990 but it took way too long to be worth it. The loot is obviously the same at any depth.

So if Delve is your thing then depth 500 is where you can farm everything easily with this build.

Do you plan to add links to these replies (e.g., this one on Delve and others on Sanctum run, etc.) to the main thread for easier reference?