Noob here, been building in my own way. Please tell me if there are any major gaps.

Hi all, I'm fresh into ARPG, and I'm level 22 so also not deep into PoE2 yet. I haven't followed anybody else's build, just been doing my own thing, and leaned towards frost sorceress uninfluenced. But I can't help but notice that people have been enjoying a frost sorceress meta and now it's nuked, etc. The thing is, I don't know much about the cast on freeze anyway - I don't have trigger gems, I don't have comet, I don't know how energy works. And honestly, I don't care too much about things that are not available to me yet. I will discuss what I'm doing with what I have, and please tell me if I am doing horribly.

The first thing that I'm immediately noticing is that EVERYONE is using frost bolt. I spent a good while on it, and honestly, found its synergies quite unfun/annoying on a controller. Without having point-and-click on a controller, both ice nova and cold snap are TERRIBLE to use on frost bolt. Cold snap is not the worst, because it generally pops the nearest bolts. But ice nova targets the farthest bolts and doesn't pop them, and when I need a close-range crowd control ice nova, it's targeting some bolts outside of the screen. It's infuriating.

Instead of frost bolt, I'm getting much better results with my staff's freezing shards (+7 now, vendor sells +8 that requires lev 26). I put fast cast on it, it is very fun to cast, and by investing in freeze passives I am actually getting quicker freezes with my freezing shards than frost bolt. I can still use cold snap to pop frozen enemies, and most importantly my ice nova is saved and not abandoning me chasing some faraway bolts.

Besides the above-mentioned for mobs, my main damage dealer against stronger enemies is the frost bomb. Love it. I toss a bomb, roll in so they don't walk away from the bomb, ice nova, shoot some shards, cold snap when frozen. Again, this is what I'm enjoying on a controller. I'm also using arctic armor, and hypothermia.

My passive investments have been heavy on spell damage, cast speed, cold, crit, freeze, and energy shield. I have spent nothing on mana (except in gear) because I seem to be always full on mana unless the enemy has some drain mechanic. I am also ignoring chill/slow because freeze seems more useful/fun.

So... am I missing anything major? As you see, I'm not looking far into the future, I'm just using what's fun at the moment, investing in passives that are immediately useful. But let's say I do get trigger gems, and the storm trigger in ascendancy, etc. I'm going to have high freeze, high crit, so I think I can try some things. I am in act 2, will do the ascendancy soon.

Thanks.

Side note: I posted this on reddit first. It got immediately downvoted, and then queued for moderator approval. This is not the first time. As a new player, anytime I am trying to engage with the community, I am noticing that a general discussion is usually discouraged while meme-like opinions are always on the front page. That sucks, and I am trying out the forum to see if the vibe here is any different. If the way I'm presenting my thoughts is flawed, then please advise how I can be better.

The vibe is definitely different here on the forums. Reddit is an echo chamber of elitists most of the time. The forum users are far more willing to throw in their advice when asked.

As to your progress. Based on what you have mentioned in your post - you seem to be on the right track. I am almost to maps now in PoE2 so I have a little perspective on progression beyond where you are currently at.

You are doing the right things by investing in damage/cast speed now. Freeze is good to have because it reduces action speed to 0. This means that you are safe for a few seconds.

You may consider, down the line as you move towards Cruel difficulty post Act 3, investing into a couple of things I did not hear mentioned. I will list them out here

1) Cold Penetration - this ensures that your hits are affected less by enemy strengths to cold damage. You will want to find those nodes and see how feasible it is to pick up 10-20% penetration.

2) Make sure that your resistances are being taken care of on your gear. Some resistance is better than no resistance. Once you progress, each act has a resistance penalty that is applied. So if you are not upgrading your gear along the way and accounting for resistances - you will die VERY quickly.

3) The icons on the Boss Health Bar have icons on the right side. Look for icons that are RED. This means the boss is weak to those elements. If there is only an ARMOUR icon - it means they have armour but not a strength/weakness. Noticing these things made my life a lot easier.

4) Mana/Mana Regen/Mana Recoup is going to become more important in cruel difficulty when you start adding more support gems to your skills to boost your power. As your power increases via support gems, so does the mana cost associated.

A note on Ascending - the first trial is based on honor. When you are hit, you lose honor. Look up a guide to Sanctum and give it a quick read before going into it so that you have a general sense. I won't give any more details because it can be very fun to experience it for the first time.

Feel free to reply or post follow up questions as they come up. I'll try to keep an eye on the thread. Im sure some others will pop in here (and may have already by the time I post this reply)

Thanks tons. This is exactly what I needed. And you were pleasantly thorough and helpful!

1. Cold pen: I invested a bit during Act 1 boss. But then respecced back to general damage/crit. I should return to cold pen.

2. For resistances, I am not yet sure if int armors are poor at resistances, and if I should consider getting some dex and str points for tanky gear. I have a dex amulet that is letting me put on some cool int+dex rares I found. But honestly, I haven't been paying attention to the res. Will do. For now, arctic armor and energy shield are doing pretty well.

3. Yeah, I noticed the boss res mechanic. That's why I use the hypothermia curse. It serves well. I feel that going one element may be a bit risky. Maybe later I should diversify.

4. I didn't realize that the support gems change mana cost significantly. Good to know. But yeah, I will get mana when I need mana.

Ascension trial: I know about the honor system but otherwise staying blind to enjoy it more.

Thanks again.

Regarding point 2 of your reply to me:

I did a bad job of communicating what I was talking about. Allow me to try that again.

If you open up your Character menu and look below the stats, armor, evasion, there is a section that has

Cold Resistance, Fire Resistance, Lightning Resistance, and Chaos Resistance.

For Acts 1-3 and then Cruel Act 1 - don't worry about Chaos Resistance. Some of the boss fights deal heavy fire, cold or lightning damage. If you can get some runes that offer those resistances, slot them into your armor pieces to boost. I suggest 20+% fire, some lightning and some cold.

You will notice that once you clear one act and move to the next, there is a penalty applied to your resistances of -10%. You really want to avoid staying in the negative on those. Some quests in the next act will give you items that actually negate those penalties.

How to get more artificers orbs

Disassemble (from the bench in town) any equipment drops that have rune slots. This will earn you an artificers shard for each rune slot in the equipment. 10 of those shards will earn you an artificers orb that you can apply to your own armor to add a rune slot. This is incredibly useful on your armor and your weapon.

You can also check vendors everytime you level up. This will refresh their stock in the shops that are in town. As you progress, those costs go up. So your first town will always have the lowest cost items.

Early on it is important to disenchant (option with NPC) anything that is blue or rare (but you can't use it or sell it for decent currency). This will earn you transmutation and regal shards respectively. 10 of each will give you an orb you can use on your own equipment.

Sell all white drops that do not have rune slots for gold.
Disassemble any whites/blues with rune slots
Use your discretion on any yellow/rare items you find


Phew - that was a lot! Let me know how you do on the first ascension! Happy Hunting Exile!