[3.22] Herald of Ice Worm Shatterer (Glass Cannon) Occultist / Ascendant WIP
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Introduction
The Return of Worm Blaster (Not auto but still blasting worms)  Have you ever dismantled a build because you have an experimental build in mind? This is that build for me, and I'd like to share my project with you Exiles and hopefully, someone would be inspired. -------------------------------------------------------- DISCLAIMER!! Before you continue reading, know that this build is not designed for mapping and is a Glass Cannon showcase. If you cannot stand dying often during bossing, I suggest that you try out other existing powerful builds that can do bosses and maps like Hexblast Miner. It is also Very Expensive to get my exact set-up , this is but an experimental build so do take my take with a grain of salt. -------------------------------------------------------- Still Sane Exiles? Cause you might not be after reading this post. Ready? Let's dive in This guide is split into 4 main sections, each explaining a piece of the puzzle that's needed for this to work. 1. Worm Flask 2. Tattoo 3. Flask Sustain 4. Fixing Damage Scaling -------------------------------------------------------- Chapter 1 - Worm Flask The Mother's Embrace belt allows any minion you summon to trigger Each Flask on your character Once. Since a level 21 Summon Skeleton summons 4 skeletons, The Writhing Jar a.k.a Worm flask is used 4 times, consuming all the charges available (9 charges per use due to 40% reduced charges used by Minions). -------------------------------------------------------- Chapter 2 - Tattoo of Arohongui Warmonger & Herald of Ice This newly introduced mechanic provided us with stats that are usually not possible. In our case, reaching 100% chance for killing blows to shatter as though enemies are Frozen, means that no matter what skill we use, as long as it hits the worm, it shatters. This materialized the playstyle of which this build is solely built upon - the Herald of Ice skill gem. Since every worm can be shattered by any hits, Herald of Ice can potentially chain react to kill other worms with enough AoE investment, without the need of passing the Freezing Ailment threshold. This enables Elemental Focus if you'd prefer to have more damage each hit. -------------------------------------------------------- Chapter 3 - Flask sustain The Soul of Ryslatha minor god pantheon does not stop generating flask charges because it is your minions that are using the flask, so this eases up a lot of flask charges gained needed. With the Replenishing Remedies passive cluster and Flask Mastery, pairing with a Mender's Wellspring & 65% increased charges gained from passive tree, my character is regenerating 17.5 charges per 3 seconds, that means every 3 seconds I have a burst of 20 worms after the initial 40 worms blast. -------------------------------------------------------- Chapter 4 - Fixing the Problematic Damage Scaling
Problems
Limited damage type Since Herald of Ice cannot be scaled by Spell damage, we could not go for 2x Void Battery set up as the usual Winter Orb/ Blade Vortex Occultist does for max Power Charges & spell damage per power charge. Solution We invest in Generic damage, Cold damage, Elemental damage & Critical strikes. The easiest damage item we could get is an Annihilating Light which triples all our elemental hit damage. This pairs extremely well with the Coming Calamity jewel, which gives the Lone Messanger keystone that gives our herald skills 100% more damage with hits at the cost of only being able to use one herald and no auras. Heatshiver helmet gives us another layer of scaling by gaining cold damage as extra fire damage. Almost all mobs would reach at least 30% chill and can be frozen, taking full advantage of the item. And since we're shattering a lot, we can take advantage of the Cold Mastery that gives 20% chance to cover enemies in Frost, further increasing enemies' damage taken alongside with Bonechill support. Finally, we have a very strong interaction between Impossible Escape & Elegant Hubris. I have managed to find a seed that has 4x Damage per power/frenzy charges nodes and when slotted into the witch starting area towards Pain Attunement, you can get all 4 by 4 passive points using Impossible Escape with said notable. -------------------------------------------------------- Critical Strike Chance Herald of Ice does not have a base critical strike chance, without being an Assassin/Ascendant, Solution We invest in Medium Cluster jewels which contains the notable Self-fulfilling Prophecy, which gives our skill +1% base critical strike chance. In my case, I invested in triple 3 passives The Voices so that I could get 8x medium cluster jewels and 7x triple Crit Multi jewels. -------------------------------------------------------- Area of Effect scaling Herald of Ice like other explosion effect have a static 1.2 metres radius, and does not gain radius with gem levels. Solution We have multiple AoE increase from Power charge related notables: From the Occultist Ascendancy we have Forbidden Power. From Medium Cluster jewel we have Vast Power. From Passive skill tree we have Enigmatic Reach. To further increase our AoE we could use Awakened Increased Area of Effect, and the Dark Messanger Notable from Herald Medium Cluster Jewels. -------------------------------------------------------- Uber Pinnacle Bosses resistances On top of the inherent less damage taken modifier in Uber bosses arena, the boss is one level higher and also has the usual pinnacle resistances. Solution Self-casting curses with Assassin's Mark using the Vixen's Entrapment gloves, triggering 2 additional curses to reduce enemies Cold Resistances. -------------------------------------------------------- Video Showcase Explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raXm44Vh_n0 To showcase how it flows together, I have bought Maven's Writ to test it out in Uber Maven, not my cleanest kill since I'm not used to the playstyle yet, but I think this has big potential. [t=3:11] In the Glass Cannon market, a classic Cast on Death Assassin build cannot do bosses that have multiple phases, while an Ice trap build can. The worm blaster feels like an in-between.
Occultist
Uber maven: https://youtu.be/MNVVkyxF590
The Elderslayers Invitation: https://youtu.be/h_u-XUYSeos The Formed Invitation: https://youtu.be/yKucaLQIqqM The Twisted Invitation: https://youtu.be/YvdmRv4Ccyk The Elder: https://youtu.be/jb86i3YnP1M
Ascendant
T16 Beach map: https://youtu.be/Bv4TQbziBZs
T16 Cemetery map: https://youtu.be/z2ku3vvyl8k T16 Mesa map: https://youtu.be/Pgm7stSRMt4 -------------------------------------------------------- Gems
Spoiler
Staff: Body Armour: Helmet: Gloves: Boots: -------------------------------------------------------- Gear
Spoiler
We also uses Ralakesh's Impatience for charge generation during the start of the Uber battle. I've not included my jewel setup in this post since there's too many, I've snapshotted my character into a PoB and placed it below this section -------------------------------------------------------- PoB Here's my pob including all the jewels and the most common spec when against Pinnacle bosses. (I unticked Frozen because I'm not sure whether it's guaranteed) https://pobb.in/CbK55wNPc4_h -------------------------------------------------------- Updates
Spoiler
22nd September Update - All Guardians are down - Uber Maven was way easier than Cortex/Shaper/Elder - Uber Sirus' storm was too much to handle, but damage was enough to insta phase Sirus -------------------------------------------------------- 26th September Update - Testing out a mapping variant, the end goal is to have defensive layers to stay alive while maintaining the one shot potential for map bosses & non-uber bosses - Character is now being reused in a Scion -------------------------------------------------------- 28th September Update - Ascendant variant works great, with enough suppression and resist to last through maps due to us constantly generating Endu charges for immortal call. Overleech from Slayer helps a lot with staying alive, and the AoE is still overlapping like Occultist did. - Frostblink for both Bonechill and Utility feels great, the damage it does is enough to kill regular mobs which means we only have to cast skeletons on Rare mobs and Bosses. Loyalty Tattoo of Ikiaho also makes it so that every map we have a zoomies moment. - The Restless Ward made the build tankier through 48% movespeed & 300 flat life regen, our charge duration is up to 1 minute and 06 seconds due to Unleashed Potential forbidden jewels and this chest piece. -------------------------------------------------------- 11th October Update - We got featured in Build of the Week Season 12!! - Working on polishing the Quality of Life and Defenses on the Scion variant, let me know down the comments if you'd prefer a new thread or you'd prefer to keep every variants under this thread - Current Ascendant character PoB: https://pobb.in/HCJmXq_X2xmw -------------------------------------------------------- 15th October Update - A surprising finding is that this build can stampede through Hall of the Grandmaster excluding GGNoobz (This Ascendant didn't have enough damage, we get around 50% of the ES down with 1 burst) - Rewritten the tree a bit to cap out Spell Suppression, and added 1 jewel on tree so that we can grab 1 small int node for lightning damage tattoo, which opened up Elementalist shock from Ascendant. This gives us 2x golem trigger craft which makes Frostblinking between packs even more smooth. - Current char PoB: https://pobb.in/sUM9hRF9b_Hi -------------------------------------------------------- Credits Thanks for all the Exiles that helped me brainstorming this idea. I hope that this post would inspire others to do more worm blasting that's more mapping friendly. Nervyr Anathema CardiaDarkhill Amun -------------------------------------------------------- Last edited by Suzu520#2048 on Oct 15, 2023, 4:34:50 AM Last bumped on Oct 21, 2023, 9:33:41 PM
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Peak PoE creativity! Ty Susu and the others for sharing!
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Hell ya! I gotta try this thing!
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A Fantastic new idea! It's like Cast on Death without the manditory deaths! Love the idea with the mothers embrace and 5 worm flasks too :D
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" It really does feel like a Cast on Death build haha, the inspiration I took from actually had a Cast on Death Discharge set up on top of this, maybe that player was testing similar idea |
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got any videos?
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" Currently this post is based on an impulsive recording here convinced by my friends and guild haha https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raXm44Vh_n0 |
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" haha nice. i might try this later in the league |
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" Slowly uploading more videos now, both Occultist and Ascendant variant |
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This may be my favorite build I have ever seen. Eagerly waiting for the ascendant version coming out, and can't wait to farm next league for this bad boy
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