[3.23] Winter Orb / Frostblink of Wintry Blast

Introduction

Hello, Exile!

Welcome to my Frostblink of Wintry Blast, or Winter Orb of Wintry Blast, build. While reading the new Transfigured gems, a friend and I got so absolutely transfixed on Wintry Blast, we stopped looking at the other gems. We loved the jank of Frostblink, and now it was an active skill of sorts.

Video Showcase in a T16 75% more monster life https://youtu.be/hUa0q_6FCWw
Minotaur Run with 40% reduced Crit damage https://youtu.be/UqsQR-_KIeM
PoB With Community Fork https://pobb.in/NDmhKmUU8CYm

Note: I will update the PoB in the coming days to add a leveling guide / lower budget

+Pros
+Fast autobomber playstyle
+Freeze/Chill Everything
+Transfigured gem!
+Elemental Ailment Immune
+Can do Reflect Maps
+Ignores speed modifiers (Temp chains/Bubble does nothing to us)
+Decent Single Target
+Flicker Strike like playstyle

-Cons
-Can Be Expensive
-Decent but not the greatest Defenses
-Flicker strike like playstyle

I league started this, but really leveraged Trade League for my upgrades, so league start at your own risk.

Mechanics
Wintry Blast has three main mechanics:
1. The no cooldown nature of the skill
2. It cannot chill
3. 15% more damage with hits per 5% chill on the enemy, but removes the chill

So we want to leverage point 1 and 3.

1. Use Cast While Channeling to bypass long cooldown


2. We need to constantly chill enemies from another source. Use Winter Orb for Synergy with Point 1.


3. Lastly, we go Elementalist so we can get 40% chills instead of 30%. This takes the gem from 114% more damage to 152% more damage.



Scaling
We leverage a Power Charge and Frenzy Charge setup with Badge of the Brotherhood and Ralakesh's Impatience. We then stack power charges and use 6 curses with Anathema for when we need single target. We apply these curses with Bane and an Arcanist Brand.

Remember it is very important to chill enemies for the 152% more damage we are getting from Wintry Blast.

Getting some Area of Effect is important, which is why Elementalist is so nice. Wintry Blast has a minimum distance it can travel, so when you are trying to hit the same enemy over and over, you will be forced to move off the enemy. AOE just makes the Quality of Life of the build much nicer. Add in some Vast Power Cluster notables to synergize with our power charge stacking.

Skills




Uniques


!IMPORTANT! How do we deal with Malachai's Loop's Self Shock?
The easiest way to not get shocked is to use Tempest Shield. This also makes our spell block 65%+ so it is a nice, synergistic option.

The more expensive solution

Thanks for reading! I hope everyone is having a (wintry) blast with all the new Transfigured Gems. I will answer any questions to the best of my ability! See you in Wraeclast, Exile.

-Midge

Saving a block

This is an amazing concept! Can't wait to try it out. Will def wait for the general leveling tree progression, though!

Thanks for sharing it

How are you avoiding stuns during channeling? I occasionally get slapped by a rare in a pack, that does not die due to being empowered, get stunned and die. My assumption is enough damage to always one hit those rares. Currently on T1 maps after leveling and at about 350k dps

Also is there an easier way to get the body to have all blue / blue and white socket mixture besides immortal syndicate ? Mines currently up to 4B/1G using bench crafting and it looks like pretty bad odds for those Green ( assuming 4B/2G) to swap to white via Immortal.

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aftrans57 wrote:

Also is there an easier way to get the body to have all blue / blue and white socket mixture besides immortal syndicate ? Mines currently up to 4B/1G using bench crafting and it looks like pretty bad odds for those Green ( assuming 4B/2G) to swap to white via Immortal.

Easiest way to get more Blues on a Bronn's is to corrupt it and use Tainted currency.

I've been playing around a little bit with this. I've swapped to Grace from Determination because of stats, Bronn's being all evasion, and making sockets easier.
Some additions I can suggest to the tree:
Most important: according to PoB if I take the reservation option on the mastery from Deep Thoughts, then I can take BOTH Presage and the Scion reservation efficiency spiral, OR make the helmet into a 4l of Enlighten-Grace-Hatred and one of the 25%s, OR use a 90% reservation multiplier corruption helmet with Grace-Hatred-Arctic Armor-Herald of Ice, I can take Tempest Shield again. Presage depends on your Militant Faith roll, however. Of course Tempest Shield's shock immunity means I don't need Solipsism again, and can back out of the Scion area entirely; trading Enlighten and three passive points for the five passive points going to that area. I can also refund the remaining various ailment duration passives.
Whispers of Doom can be dropped as there are absolutely more power charge sources than space for curses. The suggested skills only have 6, for example. Bane also isn't affected by the cast speed nodes leading to it.
Glacial Cage is probably an opinion, but I dropped it for now.
The suggested tree passes right by the Arcane Guarding circle, so I'm taking that. 10 power charges and Tempest Shield gives you exactly 75% spell block, so you can drop it once you get to that point.
If you have the cold exposure eldritch implicit on your gloves, you can also take an Elemental Mastery to increase that to a base value of -18%, which then gets an extra -25% from the ascension. There's two nearby-ish Elemental Mastery circles in Snowforged and Divine Judgement. You can also swap from Frost Bomb to Hydrosphere if Hydrosphere's lower base exposure was the reason you weren't using it over Frost Bomb. (this is not the reason people don't use Hydrosphere. you'd still be weird for taking it.)
I got a large cluster with the recommended Doryani's Lesson and Blast Freeze, as well as Prismatic Heart. There's probably better options, but that was available, and helps with resistances due to the number of uniques in the core system. My medium is Vast Power and Expansive Might rather than Magnifier. Magnifier is more damage, but Expansive Might gives area size while not moving, which we are. This is an opinion pick. Because I'm using Grace I have a small cluster with Sublime Form instead of Uncompromising.
Change from the % mana cluster socket on the right to the % ele socket on the left.
Bronn's doesn't have a life modifier, so take the 15% life mastery.

For Primalist charms; any assassin +crit-at-max-power-charges will get the build to 100% crit. Any regenerate-%-ES-per-second should be more than enough to keep EB topped off. Past that it's convenience or eking out more damage. Culling Strike, crit multi per power charge, area per power charge, element penetration, resistances and stats; as probably a vague order of impact. You could also try to find an ursine charm for a Culling Strike and cannot-be-stunned-while-leeching or unaffected-by-bleeding-while-leeching, though we may not be leeching for long enough for that to be impactful. The .3% of spell damage leeched should be all that is needed with the ES regen from the mastery recommended by the original tree.

Equipment:
Use the gloves, belt, and other ring to get your stats and resistances.
The original tree has ES leech on a reuse flask. As mentioned, this shouldn't be necessary. Grab an Amethyst Flask until you get chaos to positive.
You don't need to stack that much ES, so go with full STR or full DEX gloves if you can. All gloves can get suppress, unnerve, and cold exposure eldritch implicits the same.
Curse removal and/or bleeding/corrupted blood on flasks is very nice.
A reuse/use on max diamond flask should be good to take crit chance to 100%.
Willclash progression is no implicit normal/corrupted (<5c), 90% cost/reservation multiplier corrupted (<15c), +1 max power charge (10div or so), both implicits (just buy a mageblood). The reservation multiplier will save you from having to buy an Enlighten, so it's definitely worth it early on; though getting the right colors might be annoying. The double implicit barely exists because double corruption temples are expensive. Sockets are Determination/Grace, Hatred, Herald of Ice/Arctic Armor/Tempest Shield, Enlighten/Tempest Shield; so R/G=G=G/B=B
Bronn's with AoE gem level, increased damage
Badge of the Brotherhood with Hatred effect, cold leeched as life
Other possible items are:
Precursor's Emblem (topaz or cold and lightning two-stone) for a variety of effects, including max power charges, life regen, suppression, extra cold as chaos (may not be spell?), increased damage, flask charges, etc., but the extra power charge is most needed and most expensive.
A good Circle of Fear increases damage an OK amount, but synthesis implicits are all you get in exchange for necessary resistance stats.
Atziri's Promise is extra spell damage as chaos.
Everyone's using Progenesis apparently.
Rumi's and Wise Oak for the same thing they've done for years.

Watcher's Eye mods:
Determination/Grace: armor, block, phys reduction, suppress, avoid.
Hatred: base crit means you don't need it anywhere else, all other hatred mods don't increase damage enough.

Forbidden Flesh/Flame options are all Occultist. In order of increasing effectiveness and price will be Frigid Wake (bad but also only 1div each), Void Beacon, and Forbidden Power. These are relatively cheap as Flesh/Flame jewels go, probably just because this isn't a ranger build.

Other/clarifications:
Zealotry and Hatred are about 1% dps of each other.
Currently trying to figure out replacements for Badge of the Brotherhood.

Can you use mageblood in this build?

Just saw someone PM'd me (a month ago, sorry) for a PoB with my changes, so I'll post it here. https://pobb.in/8Q8ec3Lxhn4E
I didn't import my items (because they're not great), so the stats won't line up. As per my changes, you don't need as much strength and can go for a dex glove for access to a suppression modifier. Tulfall is more damage than Void Battery with all other max charge sources, so play around with it; especially if one is much cheaper than the other.
PoB is not quite correct as ingame I do need a jewel with some reservation efficiency to cram in everything at once.
Looked at the change to transmuted Frostblink coming in .24 and it looks like we'd have to pick up Nimbleness, the cooldown small passives in the Mysticism wheel, or change the anoint to Fleetfoot. Probably the latter as we have cast speed from frenzy charges. I haven't actually done the math on it.

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Can you use mageblood in this build?

You'd need a bismuth flask and even then might still need to shuffle around some resistances, but sure.