(Stormweaver) Max projectiles cold converted fireballs. Cheap, easy, powerful, FUN! (T16+ ready)
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Max DPS To-do list/experimental build fork:
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MAX AOE/MAX PROJECTILES tree: https://maxroll.gg/poe2/passive-tree/p2j1o0vz Gem change: swap arcane tempo for magnified effect. We lose some freeze chance, climate change, 1 jewel slot, and the 'heavy frost/thin ice' nodes, and in return we gain 134% increased area of effect and some AOE damage. My fireball explosion radius is now 2.9m. Concept here is scaling the damage further by ensuring that our significant number of explosions always overlap for multi hits. So far this has excellent results and is in line with what goes on in PoE1(or any ARPG) with circular aoe dispersion/overlap in terms of actual dps gain. - More fireballs overlap on packs, resulting in instant rare detonation more often and in general less spammy but more reliable damage. - Better terrain detonation coverage in 'closed' maps (IE: crypt) - One fireball cast detonates an entire cascade frost wall placement, without leaving any 'spares'. Those frost walls have huge aoe also so get overlap as well. - Bigger coverage for all of our utility spells like cast on freeze exposure, and frost bombs. - Better/bigger/more consistent 'chunks' in boss fights. - Apparently no downsides I can see or feel from dropping the nodes mentioned. It was questionable if 'climate change' was working at all. - Bonus: ember fusillade now has enough AOE to noticeably shotgun. Downsides are felt in the freeze buildup on packs. We don't have quite as much stopping power in terms of freezing now, but I think the increased overlap is making up for a lot of it. Now that we are in 'endgame endgame', we need to figure out a way to achieve maximum DPS for smooth and reliable boss killing and advanced league content. We have nice chunky damage with our shotgun right now, but there is also a way to add damage to this build while retaining our clearspeed. We are going to experiment with different gear setups and passives to see what can be achieved, but the tl;dr of this process is we will be culling some defenses/extreneous utility passives, and picking up the biggest bang for the buck damage notables, and getting a proper jewel setup for bossing/sanctum/ultimatum. I'm fairly comfortable in saying that this build won't be nerfed or nerfed severely, and will be far down the list of things GGG will be concerned about after this holiday downtime reveals the crazy stuff going on, so I think the effort wont be in vain. I will update the build guide with my findings, but anyone who has scaled this type of damage in poe before should know what its about. Basically we are going to try and get some AOE notables and jewels to try and get maximum explosion overlap for our balls and our walls, and go for the biggest and most effective shotgun possible, rather than sustained spammy dps. If you have ideas and are up there in the maps/bosses, feel free to share your thoughts. Dec 17 Patch note update/build revision (Build is alive and doing great):
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17 Dec patch note: our build received a great BUFF? Wildshards now doesn't 'chain fire' added projectiles, but adds total projectiles to the circular explosion. They fire instantly instead of 'spiral firing' which means we have more reliable and consistent 360 coverage in league content like breach and ritual. We can adapt our single target usage by placing frost walls on bosses and blow them up at close range. We are now a fireball super shotgun, instead of a fireball machine gun.
I'm being real with you when I say that the functionality of the build changed significantly, but it is no longer such a gimmick. The instant 360 shot is AMAZING for difficult league stuff and shotgunning at close range. The build works great and is T16+ ready! Progression update/endgame status:
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Update 21 December: T16 double corrupt/Breaches/Ritual/+4 boss difficult and level 91 complete. We now have around 150% cast speed and cast 2 fireballs a second. This amount of spam is necessary for breach as a caster, and lets us 'stand off' and obliterate packs warping in before they can charge us down. T15/16 breach seems to require the %mana on kill gems, at least for fireball. I don't see how to sustain enough mana otherwise to deal with this mess. Farming 10 room ultimatum very comfortably. We absolutely delete any bosses in ultimatum thanks to their universally large and ideal hitboxes for maximum frost wall shotgunning. Build works great in ultimatum and isn't adversely affected by too many of the modifiers thanks to us freezing everything and having enormous burst damage.
T15+ map and map bosses tree: clicky Current gem links below pushing T16/enhanced map bosses.
Gems
This is what I have been using to do relatively juiced T15 maps, double corrupted T16's and map bosses very comfortably. Note we dropped wildshard on fireball, this is because we slow down a bit and just spam stuff down off screen if we need to. I take wildshards for league content, and keep it in my inventory if needed. This build becomes a strong boss killer once you fully adopt frost wall shotgunning and stay in close and keep it up. I have seen frostwall+5 fireball shotgun combo hit up to 350k. These gem links focus on pure survival and dueling juiced rares and bosses. Clearspeed is still fine, just not quite as overkill oppressive. Honestly think taking a real shield might be a good idea in super crazy maps.
Fireball (Arcane tempo, scattershot, controlled destruction, inspiration) (switched to full mana neutral offscreen spam to do T16's, it's just an endless horde of monsters sometimes...) Ember: (Unleash, Rising Tempest, Considered Casting, fork) (Excellent supplementary single target damage, and forks through our walls/to our walls to detonate them also) Frost wall: (Spell Echo, Ingenuity, Spell Cascade, Conc effect) (emergency spam+huge boss/big target damage) Flame wall: (Fortress, Magnified Effect) (don't bother casting on trash if you 1 shot packs anyways) Frost bomb: (Strip away, fast forward, elemental focus) (combine with curse on resist maps) Hypothermia: (Hex bloom, heighten curse) (combine with bomb on resist maps) Sigil of power (weapon switch): (Duration, energy barrier) (drop on top of the boss when its frozen, and then resume shotgunning) Cast on freeze: (Frost wall, inevitable critical, cold exposure, impetus) ((automated exposure just for quality of life, havent found a boss CoF spell I like yet)) Arctic armor: (Glaciation, Deep Freeze, Frost nexus) (anti swarmer/hasted mob tech, freezes anything that gets on you for 8+ seconds). Archmage Concept: We use Blueflame Bracers to turn fireball to ice damage. Then we use huge cast speed and firewall and buff zones to cover the screen in freezing empowered projectiles, while automatically placing walls with cast on freeze for our exploding projectiles to bounce off or detonate on. We DELETE bosses by placing frost walls on the boss and shotgunning them in melee range.  TL;DR Level 90 Endgame build and gem links mobalytics:click me (RIP nerfed) Upsides: +++ Great mapping clearspeed with only 2 buttons. +++ Extremely safe, freezes everything easily with usually just one volley. +++ 360 degree coverage. Your projectiles go everywhere, so shooting behind yourself to cover ambushing mobs and freezing them happens automatically. ++ Cast on freeze works well while clearing. You can have mana issues if you go too crazy with this though. (Yes, post nerf CoF works) ++ ES and MoM build, so can easily get a huge defensive layer that scales massively with investment. (ES will probably be nerfed, don't get too attached). ++ Deletes bosses in close range, in conjunction with frost walls. ++ Works with any garbage gear, most of the build power is baked into passive tree, cast speed, spell interactions and overlapping explosions. + Ethical. Works well but you work for it. Probably wont be nerfed, frost wall + fireballs is obviously the intended usage. Downsides: --- Huge amount of projectiles means some mechanics are hard to see, also potential to lag you if your hardware isn't there. You will die because you couldn't see floor effects sometimes. I think this actually lags the game engine itself, not the pc. I've played this on my laptop and my good pc and the game still hiccups with a lot of projectiles. -- Somewhat of an RNG build. The primary support gem Wildshards is a 20% chance. Non wildshard works also if you crave reliability. - A melee spellcaster vs bosses. Our primary damage comes from fireball shotgun, and we need to be on top of bosses to do that vs our frost walls. Fun, but dangerous unless your boss knowledge is on point. - Damage types spread between two spell schools. +Fire buffs our primary damage, but we miss out on +cold which could help supplement our situational damage with our secondary frost spells. Getting 'all spells' is prohibitively expensive, usually. - Building crit is difficult unless you sacrifice projectile nodes, which are the whole point of the build. - Zero physical resist means the higher you go in maps the most potential you have to get one shot by physical damage. - Ethical. Does not have any heinous gimmick that it abuses. You aren't going to feel tremendously unbalanced. Is it fun?: It's very fun. Shotgunning fireballs with 20% rng chance for a hilarious and massive screenwide aoe is fun. Skill expression with usage of frost wall and terrain for ideal projectile explosions is large. Is it effective?: Ridiculously. Screen clears T13+ just spamming fireballs through flame walls. Perma-freezes everything and kills them easily. Offscreens rares before you even see them, sometimes. Kills 'large' boss types swiftly and easily. The scaling is there for mapping, we double dip on +Fire levels for buff fireball damage, and also projectile damage through fire wall. Requirements: Blueflame Bracers. These turn fireball into a truly amazing spell that does almost everything.  Core passives: clicky Note: This the core of the build. You should decide from here what type of defense you want to build and how, or if you want to just go full offense. If you want ES then get all the es nodes. If you want MoM/EB its right there. If you want recoup its there also just get it. Example builds, I have played all of these and they all work, they just feel different and have different benefits. This build maps so rapidly that gold is never an issue for respeccing and experimenting. All builds require massive mana regen. Post "nerf" Level 87 T14/15 ES/MoM max projectiles super shotgun: T14-15 map and map bosses tree: clicky (Currently playing) Main build ---> Level 80 hybrid ES/MoM defense layers:click (huge combined HP pool to take big hits, easy to play) Level 80 less projectiles, more cast speed, more survivability:click (good for bossing, we proc cast speed on crit using inevitable critical on frost wall. For clear we use inevitable crit on cast on freeze frost wall) Level 80 max ES no MoM:click EB/MoM/CI glass cannon by Highertimes:click (EB requires specific and possibly expensive gearing, and is more vulnerable to 1 shots without extreme investment. Be warned.) At the moment I run hybrid ES/MoM no EB, because I simply need the big hp pool due to the dangers of big single physical hits. Hybrid is very flexible and lets you play more offensively or defensively based on how dangerous the situation is. IE: you can back off and use your mana for defense if your ES just got gibbed, or you can push hard and fast if your ES isn't in danger. Ascendency: Stormweaver 2+4: Arcane surge. 6: Scouring wind for damage or elemental damage ES recoup for defense. Storm is useless for this build. 8: Fireball and frost wall spam from cast on freeze actually build up chill, so double chill nodes might work-ish? I'm not convinced chill is actually useful as a debuff, even stacked. Maybe in high tier maps. There is probably a way to get enough shock chance to make double shock work with this build, and that would be the biggest damage gain. Haven't figured it out yet or gotten 8th point. Deadeye is probably really good also. +1 projectile and 20% more damage on projectiles would work extremely well with this particular gimmick and several other spells I can think of. The travel cost isn't really that extreme, and also takes you by several great notables. Fireball spell really amplifies number of projectiles moreso than any other spell at the moment. Starting as deadeye also gives you access to several interesting projectile notables for speed and power. Mana issues for clear can be fixed with 2% on kill jewels and sufficient amounts of gear. Arcane surge is nice of course, so you can get it on crit if you want. Literally Anything can run this setup and screenclear with freezing fireballs. Taking advantage of other ascendency gimmicks can probably enhance things in unusual and potentially very powerful ways. Stormweaver gives us an admittedly big boost to cast speed, mana regen, and exposure and is GREAT for that, but those can also be overcome with gear. This is an ascendency agnostic build, feel free to experiment. Will it be nerfed?: Freeze and wildshards were both nerfed in 17 dec patch. However, the build still works great and has more consistent single target damage now. Frost wall damage will probably be nerfed next, but that's a small component of our build, so it looks safe...for now. Is this a gimmick? It looks like a gimmick...: It was a gimmick, now it's pretty balanced imo. These are the gem links, ordered by situational use. Spirit gems: Use Archmage(clarity) and Cast on freeze (frost wall, inevitable critical, cold exposure, impetus) for automated wall formation to reliably shotgun our freezing projectiles everywhere, even on open maps. The crit+cold exposure lets us automate our exposure to a large degree. 190+ spirit: Drop clarity, add Arctic Armor(Glaciation, Deep Freeze, Frost Nexus) - amazing defense vs chargers, just really excellent. Push to 190 spirit asap, huge quality of life improvement. or Grim Feast for the massive double energy shield buffer if you are clearing quickly. Try out both and see what you like, they are different styles of defenses. Clearing Fireball (wildshards, scattershot, unleash/arcane tempo/controlled destruction, (player choice but recommend inspiration on 5L if having mana issues) Flame Wall (Magnified effect, Fortress) Mana tempest(premeditation) (Used for a big fireball unleash, then you move out of it, if you aren't using unleash fireballs drop this spell) or, if you desire reliable single target damage we drop mana tempest and take... Ember Fusillade (unleash, considered casting, rising tempest, fork) (This skill works really well with added projectile nodes and unleash. Replace unleash in fireball with arcane tempo. Try it out!) Usage note on ember fusillade:
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With our projectile nodes, around half the time we get a 9 stack from one button press of Unleash EF. Level 18+ EF has 10 total embers. Unleash causes 2 of those repeats to have progressively 'less' damage. Ember gains 'more' damage from stages of firing. We gain maximum damage from ember by simply casting 2 or 3 times to overwrite the 'less' projectiles, and gain maximum amount of maximum 'stage' projectiles for FAR less mana and cast time, than without using unleash. 9 projectile unleash EF is good through firewall as a simple fast cast addition to our standard rotation. Double/triple cast max stage empowered EF is a truly powerful nuke with high action economy, and is worth setting up on rare mobs or bosses. If you don't proc added projectiles on your first unleash, don't worry about it and keep skirmishing. It recharges very fast, so just hit it again.
Fork is totally optional, but I really like it because it has good synergy with our frost walls, and a 10 stack fork ef does a whole lot of freeze buildup in packs also. It's basically like having fireball unleash on demand, except as much faster casting spell that can also single target. Fork remains good vs bosses, because it spreads out and hits any frost walls around them, letting us 'shotgun our walls' at range, if we need to due to the situation. Very versatile, and thematic since it multiplies the number of projectiles on the screen. Rising Tempest is excellent here because we are always going to be 'doing stuff' prior to firing EF. Ef has very fast cast speed but is not spammy, so its going to be gaining a huge bonus from all the 'stuff' we have done up until it unloads. Considered casting barely impacts the cast speed of the spell, since its so quick by default. For no real downside, we get 40% more damage. That's a no brainer for our focused single target skill. This 'more' damage works very well with the 'more' from stages of firing. A note on rolling: if you are dodge rolling while using EF, it has a high probability messing up, because your character does not maintain their facing while dodge rolling. It changes their facing to the direction of the dodge roll, then turns back when its done. At least that's what the spell acts like if it fires during dodge roll. So, if you are trying to get big EF casts, wait to roll. Rares Frost bomb (Strip away/Fast forward/Elemental focus) Hypothermia (Hexbloom, heightened curse) Frost wall (Cascade, Spell Echo, Conc effect, Ingenuity) (How you use frost wall makes or breaks the build. Experiment with this setup and see what you can do) Bosses Weapon switch sigil of power, switch back. How to Boss: 1) Keep flame wall up 2) Drop frost walls on the boss. 3) Shotgun the walls and the boss at the same time. 4) Use frozen boss to set up sigil of power, and then repeat frost wall/fireball combo until dead. 5)Sprinkle ember fusillade if moving/avoiding mechanics. Basic gearing tips: - Get 30% runspeed on boots asap. Biggest quality of life gain by far. Spend your ex to get 30% runspeed ASAP, don't think twice. Slam 30% movespeed boots that aren't full for extra stats. 30% movespeed is the biggest and most important defensive stat in the game. - Make 5L fireball to fit inspiration on, and 3 to 5 "2% mana recovered on kill" gems your priority for spending your currency while getting into maps. These things go a long way to making the build feel smooth and high speed! Protip - when searching trade site, change the currency filter to exalt. Dont drop divines on these gems until you are extreme endgame and min maxing. Just grab a few shoddy 2% ones and roll your own mods on them. - Chaos resist!!! chaos damage does DOUBLE DAMAGE to energy shield in PoE2, and there are a lot of really annoying chaos ground effects. Try to get it up to 50% minimum in maps, it's a night/day difference. - Get your extra spirit from your chest and your necklace. You need 160 total to start with, and then eventually 190 to add a defensive layer like arctic armor or grim feast to the build. - Use the stun immunity charm by default. We really don't have much stun threshold with this build, and this will save you often by preventing chain stun. - Use the freeze immunity charm for towers or any map with lots of the freezing mobs. You can eventually get freeze duration reduction on your boots, but until then this will save you. Important Gear Note regarding build damage engine: - Cast speed is king, because we are fishing for extra projectile procs and especially wildshards. Cast speed 100%, as much as you can handle mana wise. about 50% increase feels good to me. Also just sheer quality of life as a caster. - +Levels to FIRE spells effectively double dips, because we are shooting projectiles and empowering them with a 2nd fire spell they pass through. - Mana is critical because we are archmage and also intend to switch to MoM someday. - 20% quality on fireball is +10% chance to fire 2 projectiles. - Increased fire damage does nothing, it applies after conversion happens so you get no benefit. Try and get something like this. This was a 5ex wand. +mana and +regen is super important on top of the spell levels and damage.  Advanced/Scaling note: Mana regen is probably the most important way to ramp up reliable damage in the build. Our whole gimmick is casting as fast as possible to fish for wildshards and rng extra projectiles, but without enough regen we both make ourselves vulnerable and run out of juice. Taking a bunch of extra jewel nodes and cramming regen+ other helpful stats in there might go a long way. If there was a way to fit mana remnants into this build and get it to work, that would be nice. 2% mana on kill jewels are the real answer, but getting them is difficult and very expensive. Everyone wants these. I think they will probably be removed eventually for being too good, but for now how many of these you can fit into your passive tree determines how fast you can go.  I just dropped around 40ex to get 3 2% mana on kill jewels like this. Even with only 6% mana back, my clear speed and safety went up dramatically, and no more worrisome moments from cast on freeze draining the bank. I will try to get 2 more and get up to 10% mana on kill. You need these to be safe in MoM, straight up. That's why they are so expensive. Will be nerfed to max 1% is my guess, or removed entirely. Extreme outlier in terms of jewel power here. Chase gear/expensive items: Our build uses two spell schools, so we absolutely are after the +4 all spell levels wands with cast speed, mana and spell damage, and the +2 all spell levels focus with cast speed and mana. These particular types of items will run us multiple divines each. We need +levels on amulet, and we still need to maintain mana and cast speed. Also at least 50ex+. Getting those combined spell schools is important for our wombo combo on the boss, since frost wall is actually quite powerful. F.A.Q.
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How do I get 160+ spirit?: You get all the campaign spirit, and then you get a chest and necklace with spirit on them. If you're a madlad and manage to get 190 spirit then I recommend running grim feast also.
What should I do before archmage/cast on freeze blueflame?: Run 2 or 3 skeleton warriors with meat shield, elemental army, last gasp to tank and taunt for you. They are decent CC and will let you hard cast what you need to. You can even put a scepter in your off hand if your resists are good, and run a small army of hooligans to taunt for you. Honestly it doesn't matter that much, take the opportunity in the campaign to mess around and try some different things. Why not just go pure fire?: Freeze and cast on freeze are too good. This build offscreen freezes dangerous caster/ranged mob packs and also stacks up walls around them. It's extremely safe, thanks to the massive freeze buildup locking down the most annoying mob types. Why not go pure ice?: We did, thanks to blueflame bracers. Flame wall is there to empower your projectiles. Why not, etc. etc. etc.? The point of the build is fireballs. Feel free to do what you want if you think it will be cool, but that's my focus. Baawww fireball hurts my eyes!: change the graphics settings so it doesn't create the annoying flash effect on detonation. I agree its mega annoying after the 100th time. Turn on particle culling if its still too much. Performance issues: turn down 'lights' all the way. Turn on 'dynamic culling'. If still having problems, use DLSS/downscaling. Experimental: Need a way to fit lightning -> cold conversion into the build while retaining our defenses, to fully pen with archmage and steroid. Cast on freeze. Despite the moaning, this actually works pretty good now in a balanced way for sub 1 second cast time spells such as frost bomb and cold snap. With blueflame bracers making fireball freeze very effectively, this becomes a viable tool to run along with archmage. I dropped the skeletons since everything stays frozen. Maybe bring them back for annoying bosses, IDK. Other uniques?: Im sure there is more tech out there waiting to be utilized. I found this belt and its been great. Highly recommend. Really really good for MoM obviously, and is probably mandatory for MoM.  Leveling?: starting out I just spammed the frost shard staff ability to perma freeze stuff, and sprinkled in a bit of flame wall and sparks and fireballs. Ember fusillade + flame wall was my bread and butter vs bosses. Use spell echo comet on bosses if you cant shotgun them. Blueflame is a level 33 item, equip is as soon as you can. Raging spirits were good also, as I recall. I meant the leveling tree...: Just follow the core passives north, and then pick up the projectile nodes last. Focus on or expand your defenses first if you feel squishy. Re-speccing is easy and cheap(ish), so don't feel intimidated by the choices. Are you a real madman? Do you hate your gpu and want to punish it? Try this:
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 The funny thing is that it splits off your own frost walls, letting you shoot through them safely. It almost kind of works despite having no buff to spell damage. I am assuming that the tremendous amount of projectiles gain flat damage from firewall, so it just chews things down with volume. This is just for fun if you want to see something stupid. There is probably some broken build out there just waiting to be discovered that uses this though. Just watch. There is definitely a way to break the game here, I can feel it. If you want to see some goofy stuff then put a frost wall fortress around yourself, switch to the bow and then fish for wildshard unleash proc.  Yeah.The split fireballs also auto target whatever enemy is closest, which means we dont need arena walls anymore. This might actually be some sort of boss killing tech, just gotta try it out. Blackpill: Deadeye probably does it better. Last edited by Konried#2763 on Dec 22, 2024, 6:29:34 AM Last bumped on Dec 22, 2024, 3:20:08 PM
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do you have a passive tree for this?
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thanks so much! This looks very fun to play, can't wait to try it out
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" It is extremely fun. It's not quite as cracked as cast on x, but it has a very rewarding rng based screenwide explosion that is also super effective, so the dopamine reward is huge. |
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Do you have any gear examples or suggestions for stats to look for on gear?
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" +spell levels and +mana are the most important things for the damage, how you live to do the damage is up to you |
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" And GGG can't wait to nerf it... I use so much to make good cast on freeze build and i would love to try that but damn, no resource :( |
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Is it effective vs boss that isn’t up against a wall and getting shotgunned? Looks nice
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" Fortunately a ton of map bosses have arenas with walls that help shotgun all the projectiles off of. Even if you don't have that, you can make your own walls with frost wall to get a similar effect. A ton of the maps are 'corridor' maps with lots of walls, so its usually a very effective skill. Even in open map types you get good effects vs detonating into packs, or against your frost wall. Last edited by Konried#2763 on Dec 15, 2024, 6:50:20 PM
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