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

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ChristyMacAndCheese#4277 wrote:

Anyone figured out a way to do damage without Archmage?

I don't think anything can do damage without Archmage, and I really don't like it, it feels we're forced to play lightning if goes to archmage

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Seeders#7506 wrote:

Here's my build - Crit Eye of Winter and Comet with frost wall and frost bolt utility and blink.

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3643825

Can I ask why you're using acceleration and not deceleration?
I suppose the damage comes from the projectile that spit out from the spiral?

and from what i've seen in your twitch, can the projectile bounces off with frost wall if you use ricochet?

I'm just a level 70 weenie and CoF comet refugee, but I've been clearing level 5 maps pretty safely and fast with frost wall + self-cast comet. I have a second wall also CoF. Basically I just manually cast wall with cascade as a defensive tool and taunt (most) enemies and then manually cast comet on top of it. It annihilates pretty much anything I come across. For harder stuff I use a low level bomb to apply exposure and curse and then just do the same thing as with normal mobs. I haven't really noticed the nerf to repeated freezes.

For the passive tree I've chased down all the ES and crit nodes including innoculation and eternal youth. I don't really struggle to survive and just rewind occasionally for positioning or if I take a huge hit from something. I'm not really sure where to put my 3rd asc. points but I am enjoying rift and apex.

I was lucky enough to get an everlasting gaze but the rest of my gear is 1ex stuff. Lots of ES, crit and stun threshold as well as the usual. Sapphires with ES are cheap and the node for ES on helmet is amazing. I have just shy of 4k ES.

I do have to say though, I just finished act 3 cruel yesterday and a LOT of the mobs from the timeskip areas just walk through frost wall. The stun threshold helps but it is infuriating

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ruleshellz#0578 wrote:

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ChristyMacAndCheese#4277 wrote:

Anyone figured out a way to do damage without Archmage?

I don't think anything can do damage without Archmage, and I really don't like it, it feels we're forced to play lightning if goes to archmage

There doesn't seem to be many fun or interesting ways to scale anything right now. It's funny, in POE I just wanted to skip the campaign to get to endgame and for POE2 it's the exact opposite. I enjoyed the campaign and now the end game is boring because every way to build a character is so generic.

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Casia#1093 wrote:

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monik390#5560 wrote:

EoW noted. I respecced out of Surge for now, need 10 more lvls to get it. Probably, can fit it instead of Cold Snap later.

About frost wall. It has more life with more +x cold spell gems. Atm, Freezing Shards take a few casts to break a wall, with icicle and passive. Frost bomb and Comet are the only reliable Wall destroyers for me.

And I don't consider using low lvl of the gem bc it's a very strong shotgunning skill against big bosses. I consider adding damage supports to it later.

thats interesting on your experience with frostwall. I do keep swapping my gems around to try out new things. But generally, I find my overall damage keeps in pace with frost wall hp.
normally don't even run icicle. just the passive. That results in about 4or 5 frostbolts, or 3 EoW to smash. and coldsnap/frostbomb 1 shot them.

I like icicle, but as always limited by links.

I have Frostwall -Deep freeze -considered casting -conc effect on my walls.
Frost bomb- mag effect, -second wind, -strip away
cold snap- cold mastery, -inevitable crit, -elem focus
Frost bolt= scattershot -arcane tempo, -acceleration.

(yea, Im back to frostbolt. ha. its just the best at freezing long range.)
I prefer it to shards too.

I think Cof+frostwall was silently nerfed at some point there.
Two frost walls had separate charges. They share charges now. I think it's still the most efficient though.
walk through a zone/map spamming frost bolt. it freezes long range, decent spread with scattershot.
spawns frost walls. icicle on those, which it then also pops for more aoe damage.

I'm not even sure how you are running archmage. hah. I was really struggling with mana even without it.

was at 105regen, 1400hp, 1600mana iirc. (135 regen when arcane surge procced). and I was really struggling with mana even in t1 maps/cruel. And was looking at the passive tree, and not seeing much, that I hadn't already taken.

I have actually swapped back out of eb/mom. It feels safer. yes, 1400+1600mana is 3k ehp when my mana is full... my mana is never full.
at best its usually closer to 50% during any combat. 2400ehp. often closer to 25%.. 1800ehp. 105 mana regen is about 16seconds to refill mana.
flasks which do like 480 over 3s.. before mom. which nukes them down to 240 over 3s I believe.

so back to the split. 24% damage taken from mana. 1500hp+600es/1050mana. 135 mana regen.
1860 ehp+600es. my mana never budges. the es helps with 1shots out of the blue.. but is not consistent enough to consider ehp. will probably actually swap to armor. Although do look prettier in ES dresses usually.


for your crit/blasphemy build, I was wondering if a malice scepter is actually a good idea.
Aoe Critical weakness in your presence. Aura, not curse.
+100 spirit.

Big hit to cold damage, spell damage, and +skills admittedly. only minion skills on them. mana, mana regen, spirit, presence area, and int as useful stats.


now.. if would could CoF mana drain...

Hi! Can u post your build updated? tks

Build update.

Gear, Passive tree, T15 map gameplay, and the bossfight (2 bombs, 1 comet): https://youtu.be/9-sDO6WNW8I

Passive Tree (lvl 87): https://maxroll.gg/poe2/passive-tree/buut01xo

Stats: 1.2k life, 3.2k(w1)/3.4k(w2) mana. 75% All Res (Chaos too).

Skill gems:

Sigil of Power: ...
Freezing Shards: Leverage - Supercritical - Arcane Tempo - Fork.
Time Snap: Ingenuity.
Blasphemy: Temporal Chains - Magnified Effect.
Frost Bomb: Second Wind - Spell Echo - Considered Casting - Cold Mastery (or Fast Forward)
Flame Wall: Fortress - Persistence.
Mana Tempest: Murderous Intent - Inspiration - Premeditation.
Comet: Elemental Focus - Hourglass - Inevitable Critical - Concentrated Effect.
Frost Wall: Deep Freeze - Glaciation - Spell Cascade - Icicle.
Archmage: Lightning Mastery.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So:

First of all, I decided to generalize weapon sets - instead of major difference between trees with 24 points each, I went down to 4 points difference:
- 1st weapon set has just slightly more crit now.
- 2nd weapon set has just slightly more freeze build-up now.

While I was running too different trees I noticed I was lacking crit on my 2nd WS, and cast speed/freeze build-up on my 1st WS. As a result, Freezing Shards didn't clear well, and other spells didn't freeze well.

After fixing it, it became more comfortable to play overall.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Next, it's true that I was inspired by this:

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Casia#1093 wrote:

A reddit post by Hammer2daface.

https://www.reddit.com/r/PathOfExile2/comments/1hg66bj/frost_bomb_chronomancer_proof_of_concept/

video and this link aren't exactly the same. no EB in the vid.
https://maxroll.gg/poe2/planner/txyg0mhk

He's using "painters servant" unique gloves to tri element.

- I did my tests. Painters Servant is shit w/ Archmage, it splits the damage before it, so ignites are still extremely rare. To fix it - I just went with Flame Wall. Almost guaranteed ignite w/ Freezing Shards. Echoing wheel...is insane.

- About Frost Bomb. In general, I prefer Spell Echo. Spell Cascade only for Delirium/Breach paired with Fast Forward. Forthcoming wheel is good enough to run without Fast Forward in other cases. Breach is still hard. Delirium/Ritual became doable.

- About Frost Wall. I went full Freeze build-up setup here, no problems at freezing bosses anymore. Btw, icicle alone is enough for me right now, w/o Shattered Crystal (free 3 points).

- About Freezing Shards. I decided to go with Leverage - Supercritcal just to shotgun frozen targets since I removed Cold Snap entirely. Also, it helps in clearing trash sometimes when I feel not using frost bomb on 1-2 white mobs. Freezing Shards are fairly strong in close combat 1vs1. And Fork is good with Frost Wall - projectiles pass after forking. Problem - it has just 4 supports on lvl 18.

- Explored power of jewels. Like this one:



Completely removed Archmage problem on mapping.
Next points are all for jewel slots. Can be too powerful to ignore.

- Damage. Yes.

Those are good things.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So, about bad things.

- Breach is still a problem, unlike Delirium. Idk, I saw some spark-CoF shit and that's how breaches should be cleared. Something like that is out of my reach right now and I don't know how to fix it, besides making spark off-set.

- While mana on kill is good, mana regen is shit, and I don't like it. Had a couple of issues with mana drain on bosses (I run with that atlas keystone).
Atm on ~250/s regen, and it doesn't feel good at all.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Overall, the build is kinda strong and fairly safe. I died just 2 times while leveling 80-87. In breaches.

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O_Aga8opswlhs#5728 wrote:

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ChristyMacAndCheese#4277 wrote:

Anyone figured out a way to do damage without Archmage?

xD If you see any "decent" youtube vids everyone is using Archmage to promote his/her build as overpowered,whilst the skill is actually broken to not use...I dont think something can compete with it at the moment.

There is a fundamental problem that forces us to use Archmage anyway.

Mana cost of skills on a higher end. It is already so high that there is no reason not to use Archmage bc we must get a big mana pool no matter what.

Atm, the cost of my Frost Bomb is 770 mana w/ Archmage. W/o it - 588.
And yes, I get more than double the damage for like 25% more mana cost.

We have to use it.

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Defirus#5828 wrote:

Hi! Can u post your build updated? tks

https://maxroll.gg/poe2/planner/ok1h10v7

This is my current setup. gems are current. sorry didn't mock up the gear.
passive tree, has multiple progression setups.

I am currently at level 72 in t2 maps. (I take my time and experiment a lot, instead of pushing progression)

gems are for 4l. 5l/6. bombs are the primary dps. I want more damage/aoe on them, first.
considered casting probably will get swapped to bomb with 5l for example.

I do still use cold snap for pack clearing. freeze one target, cold snap. and cold snap either kills, or freezes everything else, while shattering walls, or just direct contact. which then chains into more cold snaps.

Sadly, elemental focus is terrible due to this. nice raw damage.. but we want EVERYTHING actually building freeze, including coldsnap. because coldsnap is actually AoE. Same with the other, "consumes freeze to deal more damage" support. we don't actually want to consume freeze.

frostbolt is largely for long range freezebuild up. I just dont like eye of winter. or shards much. and shards also requires a staff. Ive had more consistent luck with wands/shields.
if you HAVE a good ice staff, great.. but, I'm not going to build around it..
people do sleep on one aspect of frostbolt. "explodes on terrain in aoe". this is how you kill viper. frostwall push her into the edge of the map. then spam frostbolts. frostbolts hit the dudes, and shotgun her. this has viable uses here and there in tight spaced maps as well. but is not reliable. and walls do not count as terrain.

anoints. not sure honestly. tons of great stuff. not sure which is. 100% yes that one.
CDR nodes down in merc? skill cost reduction ones? more recoup?
actually yes. Volatile catalyst. greed, guilt, ire. 10% cdr/aoe. that'd probably be first choice, unless someone points out something better. some kind of DR maybe.

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monik390#5560 wrote:

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O_Aga8opswlhs#5728 wrote:

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ChristyMacAndCheese#4277 wrote:

Anyone figured out a way to do damage without Archmage?

xD If you see any "decent" youtube vids everyone is using Archmage to promote his/her build as overpowered,whilst the skill is actually broken to not use...I dont think something can compete with it at the moment.

There is a fundamental problem that forces us to use Archmage anyway.

Mana cost of skills on a higher end. It is already so high that there is no reason not to use Archmage bc we must get a big mana pool no matter what.

Atm, the cost of my Frost Bomb is 770 mana w/ Archmage. W/o it - 588.
And yes, I get more than double the damage for like 25% more mana cost.

We have to use it.

if you want to do some experimenting. check out "conservative casting", "mental toughness", "Deep trance" "price of freedom"
whats your life regen/recoup if any at? would price of freedom just murder you instantly?

ring quality... I.. don't even know what that is. what is that from, whats it do?

rest of the gear isnt 20% though. haha.

Finnaly i think i got stuck on the game as a cold spellcaster, act 3 cruel at the viper map, too many mobs, they dont die quick enought, they hit very hard, i run out of mana and ice walls, havent found the heart there yet.

Crazy how the best freeze builds do not use cold spells(besides comet)