Immortal Chronomancer - 13k ES CI, <2s recoup, one button map clear (180% rarity) (added video)

So I sold the gear on the ED+Cont build to make something else for now. I still think it's one of the easiest builds to stack rarity and farm with. Just want to try out other things.

I like defensive builds, with either DoTs, freeze shatters or triggers. So decided to test how good ES recharge delay is if you stack it with the new sorcerer ascendancy (and she also gets 60% of ES as armour which is a lot).

Just starting maps with the build. Went Ice Nova for clear with self-cast comets for tougher mobs. No Frostbolt use to keep things simple (and also keep mana costs low). Just Frost Bomb + infused Ice Nova. Comet with Zarokh's Refrain (3 echos) drops 4 Comets down per cast. Also have spellslinger which drops 3 Comets on demand. So far bosses can't survive a 7 Comet barrage.

My ES recharge delay is currently 0.66s. Also using Blasphemy+Temp Chains and Arctic Armour so it's very tanky. Will see how things play out when I get to T15 maps. If the build is good I'll make another thread for it. It will definitely be able to tank a much higher max hit phys damage than the recoup Chronomancer. But not sure how it will handle multiple incoming hits whilst standing on degens, etc.

Edit:

I also tested Spell Totem since it only costs 6 passive points to get it working with the Infusion of Power notable that gives a power charge when consuming infusions. Since this build is always consuming infusions. However, it's trash. Even if it didn't cost 3xpower charges, it's barely functional. I wouldn't it then, even if just for bosses.

I set up a 6L Spell Totem with Comet:
- It has 25% less cast speed so it was only casting a Comet ever 2.5 seconds or so.
- It has a 12 second duration (with duration investment). So it only ever got out 4 casts of Comet over 12 seconds.
- This build could only summon a totem every 9 seconds or so (since Frost Bomb has a cooldown of 4.6s and I only get 2 infusions per Frost Bomb)
- The totem targeting radius is very small. It will not attack mobs unless they are very close to it. Seemed to be about half the screen radius.

Also tried out Frost Darts with the Spell Totem just to see if a faster casting spell would work fine. It still barely did anything and the targeting was bad. It seems to not track targets and instead casts where the mobs were at the start of its cast. Very bad. Don't bother trying out the Spell Totems.



Edit2: Already running into mana issues close to lvl80. Also the Ice Nova build is always limited by how fast you can get infusions. Can only cast Frost Bomb once every 4.6s so it can't go much faster than that. Ice Nova without infusions is pretty bad. There aren't really many other skills in the game that seem fun to play:

- Tornado looks interesting but there's very few ways to generate ground effects easily.
- Ignite and poison builds don't seem that interesting because you scale them almost like a regular crit build
- Most other elemental skills also use infusions which is too clunky to enjoy
- Mana sustain for most builds gets annoying
- Minions might be interesting but I never liked minion builds that much
- I never liked playing melee or bows unless it was to trigger spells. But since triggered spells have a huge mana and spirit costs, it almost never seems worth trying to solve.
- CoC does work if you spam mana potions though

So only other thing I can think of trying is maybe Volcano ignite. It doesn't need infusions and the damage on the initial eruption is higher than every other fire spell (except Flameblast) if channeled to 4 stacks. Flameblast would be used for bosses or rares. Though have to channel Volcano to 4 stacks with a 0.8s cast time. Seems clunky thinking about it.


To summarize, every road seems to lead back to ED+Contagion+Unearth. Most other things feel bad to play. The new ascendancy has been pretty good defensively but there's no fun skills to play it with. So I'll probably switch this cold sorc back to ED+Cont and limit test the defense in endgame maps to compare it to the Chronomancer's recoup stacking approach.

Hey!

I bought some of the build items directly from your hideout, thanks for selling them at fair prices, not those extremely inflated ones!

Anyway, I copied the build exactly and I believe I even managed to improve it by around 10–15%, however I didn’t feel the build was very smooth. I ran some semi-juiced T15 maps and felt some difficulty with the damage. The build’s eHP is fantastic, the few times I died were because I took a boss hyper beam without having my flask active.

Could you explain better how you run your maps? I feel like I’m struggling with skill usage, so I’ll list below how I use them:

1. Contagion, I use it on some packs and then Unearth to get the minions.

2. Essence Drain, I use it once on rare mobs.

3. Chaos Bolt, I spam it mostly on rare mobs.

4. Dark Effigy, (?)

5. Entangle, (?)

6. Despair, I use it once on rare mobs.

Overall, this is how I play, but I’m unsure about how to use Dark Effigy and Entangle. I also feel like I have to use Contagion many times, it’s as if my minions don’t last long enough, or I end up with too few minions (4–6) and I’m forced to cast Chaos Bolt several times to make monsters’ life go down.

Thanks for the guide!!

My PoB: https://poe.ninja/poe2/pob/13525

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IkarusRDS#0532 wrote:

Hey!

I bought some of the build items directly from your hideout, thanks for selling them at fair prices, not those extremely inflated ones!

Anyway, I copied the build exactly and I believe I even managed to improve it by around 10–15%, however I didn’t feel the build was very smooth. I ran some semi-juiced T15 maps and felt some difficulty with the damage. The build’s eHP is fantastic, the few times I died were because I took a boss hyper beam without having my flask active.

Could you explain better how you run your maps? I feel like I’m struggling with skill usage, so I’ll list below how I use them:

1. Contagion, I use it on some packs and then Unearth to get the minions.

2. Essence Drain, I use it once on rare mobs.

3. Chaos Bolt, I spam it mostly on rare mobs.

4. Dark Effigy, (?)

5. Entangle, (?)

6. Despair, I use it once on rare mobs.

Overall, this is how I play, but I’m unsure about how to use Dark Effigy and Entangle. I also feel like I have to use Contagion many times, it’s as if my minions don’t last long enough, or I end up with too few minions (4–6) and I’m forced to cast Chaos Bolt several times to make monsters’ life go down.

Thanks for the guide!!

My PoB: https://poe.ninja/poe2/pob/13525

You're doing most things fine. Main things are:

- Use Prolonged Duration II as well on the Unearth. It will make the minions last a lot longer. Also you got to be quick enough to spam Unearth on corpses. Once the contagion wears off on the corpse, the minions you summon from it won't have contagion. So you have a few seconds to use the corpses after things die. Also if you haven't already, make sure you put 20% quality on Unearth. The 50% increased movement speed the minions get makes them insane. The minion duration should be around 35 seconds.

- Entangle with poison is both for the additional slow and to enable Dark Effigy to attack. Dark Effigy will do nothing unless the enemy has a chaos debuff (contagion, ED and poison are the main ones). Dark Effigy will also shoot out projectiles faster if the enemy is affected by more of these. Entangle is just a convenient way of applying poison which we didn't really have before. So Dark Effigy is just some extra damage for bosses or things like Ritual etc. But it's not needed if bosses are dying fast enough. I didn't use it in 0.3 once fully geared. However since it's easy to apply poison now (with Entangle), it's just free extra damage if you have time to cast it.

- My general mapping gameplay was just casting Unearth on corpses as things die. Then throwing out an ED when I had nothing else to do. Also ED on rares and then spamming chaos bolt on them. Though once gear is good enough (got as much +skills as possible and a good wand with a lot of increased damage), rares die without chaos bolt spam. Can see how fast they die in the 10 breach video, often before I see them.

- One main other thing with mapping is trying to follow your Unearth minions around as much as possible. If they go too far offscreen, they despawn, which is probably the problem you are having. The minions are really good at tracking down the next mobs, even offscreen, so it's actually good to follow them. Usually when I don't follow them, I just run into a dead end with no mobs. With the new feature that GGG added where all rares and events are revealed on the map at the end, it's easy to track back and clear that section of the map if a big section was missed. Though this is quite rare unless it's a massive maze layout map.


Also something I realized recently is that ED only snapshots your stats when the projectile hits things. Not when you cast it. So Zenith II is often not going to add its multiplier if you don't get mana above 90% before the projectile hits the boss. So it might be better to drop Zenith II from ED and use Drain Ailments instead for the 35% multiplier. However Drain Ailments will require use of Entangle to poison first. Zenith is still decent for the 25% cost efficiency though and if you can get mana up quickly.

I've been experimenting with some charge regen tech and made an ignite build in the last day. Damage and clear feels slow although the build is pretty immortal with 15k ES at lvl80 and 0.68s ES recharge delay) So I'm not going to make a build thread. Just posting the tech here incase someone can improve or make use of it.

If you can get down to the bottom left hand side of the tree and pick up Roaring Cries notable (or anoint it), you can get Endurance charges quickly even without any mobs around. Also if you take the Resonance keystone on the right of the tree you can get Frenzy charges instead.

All you need to do is use a Talisman in the 2nd weapon set. Then spam Ferocious Roar with the following setup a few times and you'll get charges:

Ferocious Roar + Enraged Warcry II + Raging Cry

How it works:
- Bear gets an Endurance charge when spending 15 rage
- During the 8 second Warcry cooldown you can spend 15 rage to Warcry which will give you an Endurance Charge instead of consuming one.
- Raging Cry generates rage which combined with Roaring Cries means you can spam Ferocious Roar infinitely for charges, even in hideout.

You can use this setup for any build that requires Endurance charges (or Frenzy charges if you take Resonance keystone). Or to generate Rage or Glory, etc.

This is the build I tried with it. Went with Explosive Spear to test out ignites because it does a lot of damage when using a frenzy charge. Got down to the bottom left of the tree by using weapons swap passives. If you can reach the jewel socket near Zealoth's Oath then there are enough points to travel with weapon swap passives to Roaring Cries.

https://poe.ninja/poe2/profile/SaiyanZ-3112/character/Saiyan_FR

PoB in case I test something else:

https://poe.ninja/poe2/pob/136ec

This tech can probably be used to get Endurance charges for a spell totem build since you can get charges very quickly. But totems are kind of bad. They don't use infusions and can't use cooldown skills, which makes them viable for a tiny fraction of spells (phys and chaos), though these usually have long durations already, like plants and chaos skills. So there's no point in pressing multiple buttons to get out a totem as far as I can see. Plus the totem target range is pretty low and they have very slow cast speed.

So I think I'm done with the league now. Hopefully they add some fun spells to play in 0.5. I want stuff like Winter Orb from POE1.