[0.3] Whispering Ice Blood Mage - Viable for Everything

I've been a huge fan of The Whispering Ice in PoE 1 for many years, and I've been maintaining my Icestorm build through many leagues. Now that this staff has been added to PoE 2, I wanted to try recreating the same play style in this game.

There are currently two things lacking in PoE 2 that make it impossible to have quite the same level of fun as in PoE 1:
1. There is no way to cast spells while constantly moving, nothing like the Cyclone-CwC tech.
2. There is no way to leech ES from spell damage. And only one spell caster class capable of leeching life (Blood Mage).

This is my best attempt at making a Whispering Ice build similar to PoE 1. Hopefully, in the future they will make spell leech more available and add more mobility options.

[0.3] +5 Citadel
[0.3] Uber Arbiter

[0.3] Full Build plus Leveling Trees and Items

This build is based on the Blood Mage's ability to quickly recover life and mana while using them both as defenses. It does a good amount of damage in a decent area.

The Whispering Ice staff grants two skills:
1. Icestorm (sustained AoE hit damage that scales with Intelligence).
2. Heart of Ice (an aura that applies a strong chill).
Icestorm also consumes chill to produce empowered hits.

Blood Mage has an innate 10% spell leech. And uses Life Remains and Mana Remains to quickly recover life and mana. This form of recovery creates an overflow, effectively increasing life and mana pools by 50%.

This build also converts 25% of incoming damage from hits into damage over time (that it can easily outleech). And another part of incoming damage is taken from mana, while recouping the same amount of damage as mana over time.

This is a crit build (90%+ crit chance). It draws several benefits from critical hits:
- instant life leech with Atziri's Acuity
- extra remnants for more recovery
- extra damage "if you've crit recently"
- extra damage with 400%+ crit damage bonus

This build becomes functional at lv 75 (the minimum required level for The Whispering Ice) and is complete at lv 94. Some small damage nodes can be added after that, depending on how high you want to go.

In the current league prices, I started at lv 75 with about 200 ex total budget (this was not my 1st character). Probably can start even cheaper.

Some of the items I have right now (in PoB) go for 1-5 div. Good jewels can be found for ~1 div. Nothing super expensive.

There is a possible big upgrade for damage - Rakiata's Flow support gem that is currently about 20 div. More than the rest of the items combined!

Of course, I cannot predict future prices.

You can level to 75 any way you want. I used Spark. There are leveling trees, item sets and skill sets in the PoB data.

Icestorm:
1. Overabundance II for +1 storm (make sure you take Preservation to have the storms last long enough!)
2. Considered Casting for 35% MORE damage
3. Elemental Focus for 25% MORE damage (because Icestorm cannot freeze)
4. Cold Mastery for ~15% MORE damage. Can swap to Concentrated Area for bosses (but Conc is not good for map clearing). Replace with Rakiata's Flow if you can ever afford it.

Heart of Ice:
1. Slow Potency
2. Cold Mastery

Life Remnants, Mana Remnants:
1. Harmonic Remnants II
2. Remnant Potency III

Place in any free sockets with Life/Mana Remnants or Heart of Ice:
- Cool Headed
- Warm Blooded
- Strong Hearted
To use all 3 of them, you need to get 5 extra Spirit on amulet or body armour. If you don't have that, drop Strong Hearted and use an anti-shock charm.

Arctic Armour:
1. Cold Mastery
2. Knockback
3. Freeze
4. Cold Penetration

Sigil of Power:
1. Magnified Area II
2. Prolonged Duration II
3. Cooldown Recovery II
4. Rapid Casting II

Elemental Weakness:
1. Heightened Curse
2. Prolonged Duration II
3. Efficiency II
4. Fire/Cold/Lightning Mastery

You can turn Elemental Weakness into a mega curse by assigning it to Weapon Set II and using Weapon Set Skill Points (see PoB).

How Do I Use Weapon Set Skill Points?

If/when you get Rakiata's Flow support for Icestorm, drop Elemental Weakness.

Make sure you max Fire/Cold/Lightning Resistances. It's possible to max Chaos as well. Or at least get it to 50%+. You can see my actual gear in PoB.

The Staff

Gloves

Amulet

Body Armour

Boots

Helmet

Belt

Rings

Jewels

Charms

1. Vitality Siphon
2. Sunder the Flesh
3. Grasping Wounds
4. Crimson Power

The first two are extremely important and very easy to get during the campaign with the quest Barya/Ultimatum.

3rd and 4th are only important after switching to Icestorm (lv 75+). You can get both of them together in the lv 75+ Sekhema or Chaos Trial - whichever one you like more (or hate less).

All possible Resistances whenever there is a choice.

Act 2: charm effect duration

Act 3: elemental ailment threshold

Walk around, see a pack of monsters. Cast Icestorm on them and keep walking. They will die to sustained damage, you don't need to wait for it to happen. Move, cast, move, cast...

You have 4 Icestorms at your disposal. While clearing the map you typically want to place them in 4 different spots for max area coverage. Works really well vs mechanics like Abyss, Breech, Ritual, Delirium. A rare monster may be worth stacking 2 storms.

When fighting a boss: cast Sigil of Power right on top of it, then keep casting Icestorm while walking around it (ideally without leaving the Sigil circle). Cast Elemental Weakness once in 15 sec. Dodge the telegraphed 1-shots.

You want to be close enough to the enemy to pick up life/mana remnants (automatically).