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

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clockerrs11 wrote:

I'm having trouble looking for body armour based on what is prescribed in the gearing guide.

The guide says in point 4 that for body armour, we are looking for one that has 45+ Int, 300+ ES and 1200+ Evasion. However, I can't find anything on trade this league for that. Does anyone have a link I can use?

Here's a search query: https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Affliction/2Qg4odjsk

Although it's likely cheaper to search for fractured bases and slap int essences: https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Affliction/RVZQPgRs7

You want to roll a % evasion and an empty suffix, so you can bench craft % attributes.

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crimson_facade wrote:

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clockerrs11 wrote:

I'm having trouble looking for body armour based on what is prescribed in the gearing guide.

The guide says in point 4 that for body armour, we are looking for one that has 45+ Int, 300+ ES and 1200+ Evasion. However, I can't find anything on trade this league for that. Does anyone have a link I can use?

Here's a search query: https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Affliction/2Qg4odjsk

Although it's likely cheaper to search for fractured bases and slap int essences: https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Affliction/RVZQPgRs7

You want to roll a % evasion and an empty suffix, so you can bench craft % attributes.

Thank you so much, this is exactly what I needed!

Aight, after selling most parts and finishing any major projects so far, it is time for a final assessment of the build. Or course, this is all personal opinion and should be taken as such.

Feel of progression: 9.5/10
Mapping: 7/10
Bossing: 4/10
Invitations: 6/10
Tankiness: 7/10
Costeffectiveness: 2/10

Let´s adress all those categories one by one in more detail for a foundation of my evaluation:

Feel of progression:
For a build to feel good u also want to feel like your upgrades matter and indeed, they do. Based on what I´ve tested this league there are several milestones with over-the-top-impact, but even just getting another 100 int via charms felt great and noticeably resulted in more damage and tankiness.

Mapping:
Once the damage reaches a certain point normal and blue packs die instantly, this is when the mapping feels good. Oriath´s End was actually a game changer and made mapping feel supersmooth. But I excluded this deliberately from this category as I highly doubt a lot of players will have access to this flask at this point. If we´re talking strictly endgame, mapping might be more like 9/10, otherwise the aforementioned evaluation goes.

Bossing:
This is where the build struggled the most with unfortunately - which is due to the way Icestorm functions. The fact that you can stack up to 5 storms limits a great bossing experience to endgame bosses with not much movement. Means: Very easy time on Shaper, Elder and Uber Elder, solid experience for Eater and Exarch, but Maven and Sirus with their permanent teleporting? Absolute shitshow of experience. On top of that, adressing again my former point on how this build feels when it comes to applying curses, I heavily have to deduct further points. On maven I am 80% of the time without any curse if I dont change the setup.

Inviations:
Those are kind of in-between from mapping and bossing. You have more bosses and therefore more spots you can focus dmg on, easier uptime therefore to keep leech up and the general tankiness of the build feels solid for up to rare formed, forgotten and twisted. Hidden is a whole different level, same goes for feared... Here the build struggles more due to dmg-uptime and I generally would not count those high-end pinnacle things to its strengths.

Tankiness:
While the build certainly has a tanky feel to it, I just have to adress the fact that most of our layers are just residuals. We have a bit evasion, a bit block... The main part is a big ES shield and very high levels of leech and overleech. Those in total make the build tanky, but for my personal tastes I prefer more layered approaches which truly makes u swim in sirus-pools untouched or outright immortal if played correctly.

Cost effectiveness:
This part is probably the most controversial, but I dont think this build is looking all to good here. Fact of the matter is, it is entirely possible to create characters that farm t16, fitting league mechanics and basic invitations comfortably at a 15-20 div budget. This build however started to feel only better once Ambush and Assassinate came into play. The PoB does reflect that: Those jewels have a 95% more multiplier, which in reality is more like 60-70% because it only refers to lowlife, though helps with initial burst and stacking up power charges. The second item with that amount of power is the amulet, which puts a lot of stress on the remaining parts of the gear - so you could eigher fix the gear and simply go to simplex amulet (this is what I did) or you can craft a normal double-influenced amulet a few times and fix attributes via a craft, having less strain on gear but leaves a lot to be desired.
Overall, I dont feel like the investment gets you much value in this build, because once you push anything with 100+ divs at this point in the league, it will crush as well, so there is simply no upside.

Still, nice learning experience again, solid build per se to step your first toe into int-stacking and grats for maintaining the build-discussion. It is always appreciated

Interesting points. I do have to disagree on tankiness. I've never played such a tanky build, and I've tried RF, Boneshatter jugg and other such very tanky builds. the big ES pool and incredible amount of leech make for confortable Uber farming, which, let's be real, is top-end. It's also worth mentionning that you can allocate the evasion mastery on right of the tree for 3 points and get 15-20% additional evade chance if you want, pushing up in the 70s.

Sirus is hell. No getting around that. I was farming Uber Uber elder without any trouble but had to allocate Lethe Shade to finally beat Uber Sirus back in Kalandra. Your points about the Maven fight are super interesting. I wonder what other people's experiences are like. I've done her so many times and her attacks are so telegraphed that I developped muscle memory and I only struggle on melee builds on the beams part.

I do feel like your rating is based on very high-end content that most players are not going to reach, like the Feared. Saying that the build struggles past invitations such as Sirus Conquerors is asking a lot out of a build, and pointing out that you can't swim in Sirus pools as a critic of a build is a tad exaggerated. In my experience, Ubers are confortable even without Ambush and Assassinate. Maybe our experiences differ though!

I have to wonder if our perspectives are different on what is "comfortable" because once I pumped 5-10 divines into the build with more expensive pieces (better gloves, better chest, %increased int on helm, good clusters), I can and am currently just comfortably flying through t16 maps. Pretty much the only time I die is when I decide to uber juice something in the map, or open some 6 essence stacked mob lol. Mobs die fast, it isn't tornado shot cleaving the entire map at the same time, but its the trade off for being so tanky and being able to take hits that would just kill other builds.

It is true though about bosses that move, my dps on bosses that teleport around or randomly walk between spell casts is so sad. Overall I've had a ton of fun playing the build, its a very chill build, basically a two button build. It was extremely satisfying going from leveling to early maps, to getting the first big upgrades, the progression laid out is great and helped me a ton.

Interesting comments.

@Vennto: your observations are coming from a background where you were able to spend ~50 div that you somehow managed to accumulate in 5 days.

From my viewpoint, I have spent less than 100 chaos so far on my character and he can handle level 80 heists easily and affliction-juiced T6 maps (I only have 40 hours in and haven't been focused on maps.) And I have probably another factor of 25 more damage I have to look forward to.

I've tried a LOT of other builds, and there really doesn't seem to be anything out there that matches this build's ability to progress very far on a very low budget (while remaining tanky.) I'd dearly love to know of one that also has that potential damage multiplier.

At the moment, I have 2 div I've found, plus maybe 75c. Dithering over whether I should craft the 18% belt (instead of the 17c total cost 14% I am using now. Once you have a few divines, you can craft and flip these for a profit of 0.5 - 1 div -- sometimes.)

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Vennto wrote:

Feel of progression: 9.5/10
Mapping: 7/10
Bossing: 4/10
Invitations: 6/10
Tankiness: 7/10
Costeffectiveness: 2/10

I mean, as someone who played WI for the last 5 years in a row, you couldn't be more wrong about the bossing & tankyness parts.
I farmed Magebloods and Headhunters with this build in record time, I sold bosses (ironically the bosses you claim are hard for the build are the easiest ones).

Icestorm is a target locking skill, which means if you hold the cast button the storms will keep casting on the target even if it moves.
The tankyness of WI comes from channeling and using frostblink to move without losing itensity charges.
Overleech and the insanely high amount of ES you can get its nearly impossible to die since you recover from max leech, recovery mechanic, life regen and ES on hit, on top of blocking and evading
If you're constantly having issues with Uber Sirus to the point where the arena is filled with degen ground that usually due to messing up the mechanic itself, practice makes perfect and theres determinstic ways to never die to the die beam.

All ubers besides sirus are a walk in the park for this build, to the point where you can run 300 uber mavens and not fail a single one while selling 4 portals.
For Sirus you just need to negate the beam action speed debuff, by either using the sanctum jewel and cast temp chain once per 10 sec or by using One Step Ahead and then its literally mechanics.

This build is as easy mode as it gets with the most minimal investment.
The mapping will feel bad compared to any fast build, even with Oriath's End.

Also Costeffectiveness 2/10? This build is the cheapest to max out, the reason I always get a mageblood is because I have nothing left to upgrade within the first 10 days of the league.

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Graiaule wrote:

At the moment, I have 2 div I've found, plus maybe 75c. Dithering over whether I should craft the 18% belt (instead of the 17c total cost 14% I am using now. Once you have a few divines, you can craft and flip these for a profit of 0.5 - 1 div -- sometimes.)

Buy synth rings first. They were 2div last weekend, 3-5 div now (if you check often or have a live search going) and they will be 15div in two weeks. If you can nab one or two, it's the perfect moment.

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Vennto wrote:

Feel of progression: 9.5/10
Mapping: 7/10
Bossing: 4/10
Invitations: 6/10
Tankiness: 7/10
Costeffectiveness: 2/10

I mean, as someone who played WI for the last 5 years in a row, I couldn't disagree more about the bossing & tankyness parts.
I farmed Magebloods and Headhunters with this build in record time, I sold bosses (ironically the bosses you claim are hard for the build are the easiest ones).

Icestorm is a target locking skill, which means if you hold the cast button the storms will keep casting on the target even if it moves.
The tankyness of WI comes from channeling and using frostblink to move without losing itensity charges.
Overleech and the insanely high amount of ES you can get its nearly impossible to die since you recover from max leech, recovery mechanic, life regen and ES on hit, on top of blocking and evading
If you're constantly having issues with Uber Sirus to the point where the arena is filled with degen ground that usually due to messing up the mechanic itself, practice makes perfect and theres determinstic ways to never die to the die beam.

All ubers besides sirus are a walk in the park for this build, to the point where you can run 300 uber mavens and not fail a single one while selling 4 portals.
For Sirus you just need to negate the beam action speed debuff, by either using the sanctum jewel and cast temp chain once per 10 sec or by using One Step Ahead and then its literally mechanics.

This build is as easy mode as it gets with the most minimal investment.
The mapping will feel bad compared to any fast build, even with Oriath's End.

Also Costeffectiveness 2/10? This build is the cheapest to max out, the reason I always get a mageblood is because I have nothing left to upgrade within the first 10 days of the league.

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Jhssutrx wrote:

2 red, 4 blue and 0 (zero) green sockets.

It is very hard to color an (at least partly) dexterity based chest to have zero green sockets. Even harder to color a strength-NOTbased chest to have 2 red sockets. It is too costly. It is a chromatic-orb hog (sinker).

Not hard. Use the 1R craft for 4 chromatics. Don't use the expensive 2R one.