Cold Chronomancer Megathread. T16 (+2) video added.

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KinglyLion#5996 wrote:

would you mind sharing your current skilltree and skillgem setup? been reading up in this thread and your build looks very interesting, would love to give it a try!

Sure! I shared it somewhere up a bit, but here's my current version:
https://maxroll.gg/poe2/planner/8a4sc0bi

Some notes:
- Pre-fire some frostbolts in the direction where you move.
- Don't blink in. Use blink to reposition yourself for better line of frostbolts or to retreat.
- Use frost walls on big mobs and bosses. You can put hypothermia on them.
- Use Comet on fat rare mobs and bosses. I'm still experimenting with it, but considering removing Spell Cascade from Comet.
- Bosses of small size may be tricky and require you to follow their mechanics and dodge their attacks, because the only way you can kill them is with comets.

The way it works:
1. Frostbolt with Scattershot, Unleash support gems and Additional Spell Projectiles (18% chance) passive spawns a lot of frostbolts per cast. As soon as it touches the pack of mobs - it freezes them and triggers CoF.
2. CoF Cold Snap with Spell Echo explodes not only the frozen mobs, but also nearby frostbolts and frost walls. All these chain explosions potentially freeze more mobs, but usually just kill everything instantly.
3. Leftover frozen mobs you can kill with second manual Cold Snap.
4. In some cases where mobs survived and have temporary immunity to freeze (diminishing return) - you can finish them off with small combo of Frostbolt -> Frost Wall -> Cold Snap on Frostbolt. This will explode the frostbolt and frost wall and usually this burst is enough to finish stuff off. Big monsters can be killed with frost wall alone. You can also use Comet in some cases.

I still have socketed Flame Wall and Ice Nova, but I rarely use them. I guess you could easily incorporate Frost Bomb into this build to help finishing stray monsters.

Heres my actual right now. lvl 61 act 3 cruel start.



(jewels suck. one minion, and spell crit. other is mark effect/speed.)

yes, I'd want 1500 min life before maps. ideally closer to 2k.
Already I have the 20% of damage taken from mana. 1 point for 24%.
2 points to all natural for the free resists. next.
+8 points to mental pers after. (might respec out of heart of ice to speed that up.)

mana is an issue at that/this point. adverse growth, and aspiring genius.


mom is still a major choice.. it would free up 12 points. then cost 2 for Mom, and 2 for EB. leaving 8 Free free.
7 could be the other arcane surge nodes...

feel like I am talking myself into it while I type..

I think I am. going to test it out at least. respec the 4 points out of lucidity, and go mom/eb.

pre respec. 814 mana, 101.9 mana regen. 443 ES.

post: 1184 mana, 76.5 regen. 0es.
(since, now the ES on gear matters more, I 20%'d them. 1231 mana, 79.5 regen)

79 is much lower then I would like. 101 was barely enough at 24% damage from mana.

Also to confirm some math.
my mana flask is 465 over 3.5s.
Which is 132.8/s normally.
with MoM its reduced to 66.4/s.
Then arcane Blossom is x1.15= 76.4mana/s from the flask.

Are there important other passives to take if I take Heavy Frost? I took it and didn't really feel like it did much on its own.

Also I want to hear from people who are further than me on how they are handling getting 1-shot by enemies (especially bosses).

Guess I'll weigh in with my perspective. Playing Cold Chronomancer in SSFHC.

Just reached maps, did not use Cast on Freeze so far. Only got 4 ascendancy points, 2 in the cast speed and 2 in the slow aura.

For defenses, I'm stacking raw eHP (life + ES), got about 1.9k life and 400ES right now. Besides that, I'm running Blasphemy with Enfeeble + Temp Chains together with Zone of Control. As long as I'm anywhere near the mobs, they are slowed. Especially nice since we freeze and chill often, too.
Once I have more spirit (ssf and unlucky with gear..), I'll pick up Grim Feast to stack up on ES.
Long term I'll probably get the "reset" ascendancy points, or try out the recoup strat..but I think that's more for when you've got a bunch of jewels that go together with it, and have a bigger HP pool to work with (10k+), so probably in the late 80s / mid 90s, level wise.

For offense, I'm using Freezing Chain (or whatever the ability from Gelid Staff is called) together with Glaciation and Chain. Then manually cast Cold Snap.
If there's beefier mobs, I use either Frost Wall (big mobs), Comet (big packs/really tough rares) and/or Frostbolt + Cold Snap.
It's slow, but works for me, at least so far.

Might post an update once my gear is better and I'm near yellow/red maps, if I'm still alive by then.

I don't get the maths but this helmet is great.
ES goes from 800 to 1900 (with 1200 life).
Great layer of protection for quite cheap.

https://poe2db.tw/us/Atziris_Disdain

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MacArnolf#6537 wrote:

I don't get the maths but this helmet is great.
ES goes from 800 to 1900 (with 1200 life).
Great layer of protection for quite cheap.

https://poe2db.tw/us/Atziris_Disdain

You lose resists though, which are harder to get this time around. And the head slot is good for that. I'm not seeing any good unique that would turn things around that would compensate for the loss of a resist.

That unique works for acts but when you get to mapping resists are too important. Especially Chaos resist because there is a lot of chaos and poison around.

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TrainwreckX#1101 wrote:

Also I want to hear from people who are further than me on how they are handling getting 1-shot by enemies (especially bosses).

You're still going through acts? Bosses in general are just going to one shot you, the whole defensive layer we have while going through the acts is that we can quickly freeze lock them (hence the heavy investment in frost build up). The bosses in general are built heavily around their one shots that need to be properly dodged. The build does, however, kill bosses fairly quickly.

As for mobs I'd really start investing in some gear. Mobs in general shouldn't be one shotting you, unless it is the big ones which just hit hard, which are meant to be dodged. You're more likely to get killed by being swarmed rather than a straight one shot. But we are squishy. For myself I was well geared by Act 3 cruel so I could add a defensive layer of Blasphemy - Temporal Chains - Encumberence - Magnitude and I switched to Apex of the Moment to further slow enemies to prevent them from swarming me and I could pick them off by freezing and having cold snap trigger.

I do heavily use Frost Nova alongside Frost Bolt to quickly freeze and shatter enemies with cold snap.

I'm at level 70 and mapping has been fairly simple I've got 75 on all my resists, except Cold at 68%. I've got 1600 HP and 590 ES going and now investing my level ups to faster ES recharge.

For stats I'd suggest aiming for like 52 Str and 52 Dex so you'll have good access to equipment with HP and ES.

did another test.

let myself take damage. timed the duration of recoup, with a stopwatch.

6.4s
6.67s
6.41s.

Both with life and mana. confirming Pliable flesh does work with mana recoup.
And, it is shortening the actual duration, not magnifying the rate over the same time.

Why is it 6.4 not 6?

8s x.75= 6s
8s/(1+.25)= 6.4s

This is an infinite formula. 100% increased rate, thus would give 4s rate. 200%= 2.67s. 300%=2s 400%=1.6s we will never hit zero, and break the game.

Smart games use this for CDr as well. so 100% cooldown reduction does not gives skills zero cooldown.

Frostwall 3s cd. 22% cdr.

3/(1+.22)=2.46s cd.
yep.


So, a chronomancer recoup should expect, 4s reduced to 3.2s Recoup with Pliable flesh.

This build is perfectly fine, I got the first boss down with 1 level lower than the guide would indicate and in 1 try. I think it's just super important to always upgrade your items while leveling. Like the level 5 staff made a huge difference.

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Casia#1093 wrote:

However, Chaos damage/poison bypass it. (bleeding as well, but that can only happen if the physical hit made it past the ES in the first place.)

Oh god I forgot about that, its been years since I played a caster in POE 1. Usually stick to Ranger/Duelist lol

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Madlancer#7814 wrote:

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Casia#1093 wrote:

However, Chaos damage/poison bypass it. (bleeding as well, but that can only happen if the physical hit made it past the ES in the first place.)

Oh god I forgot about that, its been years since I played a caster in POE 1. Usually stick to Ranger/Duelist lol

I've seen people say that is wrong. in poe2, chaos does not bypass, it only deals double damage to ES. I don't know which is correct.

I could have sworn it was bypassing. however I may simply have had too little ES to notice.