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

"

WinterHiko wrote:

@Kelvynn : Have you considered the "frenzy charge every 15 seconds" implicit on body armour? The current mod is +effect of auras or +crit multi, both of which give less than a frenzy charge in DPS (+effect of auras while boss is 3%).

If we can get the charge duration over 15 seconds, even the lowest tier guarantees permanent maximum charges. For bosses, it's a net gain, because we have no reliable way to generate Frenzy charges. During mapping, it makes it more consistent.

If we remove One Step Ahead and add Swift Killer, plus put one point into the extra max Frenzy charge on the right of the tree. Average hit goes from 1.682M to 2.016M, or 25% more DPS. We lose the benefits from One Step Ahead and need to find one passive point to remove.

We can also not even take the +max charge on right of tree and change nothing and DPS is 1.949M, so 20-22% more damage at the only cost of One Step Ahead's benefit.

Seems super worth it.

Maybe I can give you some insight why this is not done: This league we have "That which was taken" - there is a cheap mod "Gain frenzy charge on hit". This is the best source for Frenzy Charges if you hit. We do hit often. Like all the time.

Well, it was never used before and the PoB doesn't usually take into account the current league's mechanic. I was suggesting it for next league, as Kelvynn usually comes by at the end of leagues to prepare for the next. You are right that this league, the TWWT is a better source.

This is going to be a stupid question, but does anyone have a viable helmet to Mirror in Standard that would play well with Whispering Ice?

I was going to try and get one, that had a Purity of Elements Enchant, but by the time I was ready to do it, all of the best +Int/+%Int helmets changed their Enchant before they were removed.

I'm asking because I have a PoB with 4m Hit Damage, 34k+ ES, 100% Suppression, that I'm just missing an ACTUAL helmet for. I have almost all of the items in game for it already.


Any help would be super great, thanks!

Hello and thank you Kelvynn for this guide!


After playing this build for a while i need to start a new character
to play with a friend who is new at the game.

I liked this build so much that I had the idea to basically play it again,
but with Firestorm of Pelting instead of Icestorm for a bit of variability.

There are builds on poe.ninja with Firestorm triggered by Cyclone but none of them use two staves and weapon swapping, a thing that I really liked in this build.


Does anyone know a build like this?

Is there a reason why this wouldn't work?

Any tips for me if I decide to try to make this build myself?

Which Ascendancy would you recommend?

Most CWC builds do not use a self-cast staff because of cast speed.

With Whispering Ice, you are capped at five storms. This means that even without any investement in proc rate, you reach top DPS quite fast. Accordingly, using self-cast ends up with roughly the same cast rate and makes more sense, because you get two more support gems to boost damage (replacing Cyclone and CWC).

However, on a traditionnal CWC build, you benefit heavily from trigger rate as an extra multiplier, because there isn't a cap on casts. See, for example, CWC Ice Nova. As such, investing in more trigger rate (via cooldown recovery breakpoints I believe) will actually boost damage more than those two support gems, while maintaining the mobility. Taking CWC Ice Nova's example again, you can end up dealing more damage via 10+ cast per second, instead of the slow self-cast.

In the case of Firestorm of pelting, you still have a maximum (10 storms at 20% quality). To ramp up to the maximum amount, you'd need twice as long with self-cast. That might explain why people prefer to skip cast speed and invest in faster triggers to accumulate storms faster.

Thank you!

I've played Icestorm for like 2 years straight. Thinking of trying something new this league. Anyone tried something with a similar playstyle they like? Preferably with CI.

"

RaGe0uS wrote:

I've played Icestorm for like 2 years straight. Thinking of trying something new this league. Anyone tried something with a similar playstyle they like? Preferably with CI.

I'm going on 5 years with Icestorm. There's nothing like it, sadly. I've tried.

Note: there are builds that are equally tanky and have the same dps or more, but only the icestorm build has both its play style and this very nice ramp from 5c gearing to 300 div+ gearing. So it's great for people like me that suck at making currency fast.

Regarding the playstyle: no need to 6L your weapon or chest; heal via leech; CI; good movement speed; spin and sometimes dodge to win -- this is the only build I know of with these features. (Again, there are subtle variants to Kelvynn's build that you can try.)

--------------------------

Regarding the new league, looks like we'll be losing some power due to losing some of the Affliction items. Let's see what the patch notes say.

You're confirming the suspicions I always have every league, that I won't enjoy anything else. It's also what has me concerned for POE2. I'm hoping some version of the build survives. I consider myself slow as well, which is another reason I love the build. Hell, half my high end gear I end up buying as hand-me-downs from other Icestorm players 2-3 weeks in lol.

"

RaGe0uS wrote:

You're confirming the suspicions I always have every league, that I won't enjoy anything else. It's also what has me concerned for POE2. I'm hoping some version of the build survives. I consider myself slow as well, which is another reason I love the build. Hell, half my high end gear I end up buying as hand-me-downs from other Icestorm players 2-3 weeks in lol.

LOL at your hand-me-downs. I used to sell my upgraded-over gear easily, but oddly enough nothing sold last league.

Regarding POE2, I believe GGG was asked about whispering ice, and they said it would continue to exist in POE2. That's my memory at least. The issue is the very different way gems work in POE2 -- how can you socket into something for which there is no gem (Icestorm), only a staff? So maybe there's an icestorm gem in POE2! That would be the straightforward solution. We'll see. I'll miss 6Sing and 6Ling gear though... not sure why GGG removed that. It was great fun upgrading my staff from 4S to 5S and finally to 6S, independent of the gem level (which does not appear to be true in POE2.)