[2.2] A Storm of Ice and Fire - Avatar of Fire CI Whispering Ice - Uber Viable!

New Videos!
https://youtu.be/A1BL_M_OwUw 2.2 Uber Atziri
https://youtu.be/8c-Ku_RxE6E 2.2 Wasteland Clear
https://youtu.be/MJsegnPAQBQ 2.2 Raider Ascendancy Demonstration - Gorge Clear


Old Videos






There are a few whispering Ice builds out there already. Why use mine over the others? I think my icestorm tooltip will speak for itself:



I will be upfront in saying that this is not a budget build. If you want whispering ice to perform admirably, you need ~10 exalts of investment. I have invested far, far more into my personal build.

Also, this is not a build for budget PCs. There's a lot of VFX spam going on while playing and you need a good PC if you want a playable framerate. Party members may not appreciate your presence.

So, why play Whispering Ice? Because its fun as hell, and it looks cool as hell. There are stronger builds out there - cyclone, caustic arrow, bladefall (yawn). You don't play these because they are unoriginal and boring - that's why you're looking at this build. You want something interesting.

Pros and Cons

Pros:
-Fun, unique build
-Looks freaking awesome
-Staff provides a free 7-link, and no need for more than a 4-link on your armor.
-Can run most map mods, -maxres + elemental reflect combo and bloodmagic are about the only showstoppers
-Surprisingly tanky with high damage output
-Can kill Atziri with relatively low-end gear(!)
-This build gives you the Specialist achievement (woo!)
-Infinity wisdom scrolls

Cons:
-Highly restrictive gearing
-Not cheap if you want to tackle Tier 10+ maps
-Graphically intensive, may be problematic for you or party members
-Highly mobile enemies can be hard to handle



To do this build you need a Whispering Ice. No way around that. These are cheaper than they used to be, but are still probably expensive early on in a temp league. This is the only required piece of gear for the build. The rolls on the staff don't matter hugely, with high %int being more important than cast speed.

Note that any support gem socketed into The Whispering Ice will affect your icestorm skill, regardless of whether the sockets on the staff are linked. This means that a 6-socket The Whispering Ice functions as a 7-link at a fraction of the cost of any other 6-link staff.

Stats

Stats with Astramentis instead of my OP amulet





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Build Theory

Intelligence is the most important stat for this build - it gives us ES, icestorm duration, base damage AND damage scaling, and mana. Stacking a lot of this stat lets us be both tanky and an offensive powerhouse.

With 50% increased intelligence (doable, but difficult) each 10 int node provides 15 int, which gives us the following:
3% increased maximum energy shield
1.5% increased spell damage
+1.5-4.5 base ice storm damage
+0.0225 seconds ice storm base duration
+7.5 base mana

That's a lot of benefit from a 10 int node!

To that end, we avoid most nodes that don't provide int themselves or are not next to ones that do. Why take nodes that "only" provide damage when we can get so much more from others? Accordingly, nodes like Heart of Ice that are normally considered good are skipped in favor of nodes that benefit us in more than one way. The build even routes around normally good nodes in order to get more intelligence.

Unfortunately, the gear that provides us with the most intelligence is pretty lacking in the resistances department. To alleviate this, we need an absolute ton of resistances from our passive tree and on our jewels. This is why we use Scion as our class - easy access to jewel slots and resistance nodes.

Why Avatar of Fire?



Cold to Fire is a very powerful gem. It adds a fraction of cold damage as fire damage - this directly adds to our base damage, and gets scaled by all our modifiers. Combined with Avatar of Fire, it also converts 100% of our cold damage into fire damage. This means we do a single damage type, making our penetration gem effective, and most importantly means we get to "double dip" on cold and fire damage increases - both %increased cold damage and %increased fire damage will improve our damage with full effect. This makes the Snowforged node very strong, providing a full 50% increased damage. Jewels can also have both increased cold and increased fire damage, and we get the full benefit of each.

Compared to a pure ice damage build, Avatar of Fire gives us a very large damage increase. Note that because the icestorm skill created chilled ground, enemies affected by the skill are still chilled even if we do pure fire damage.



So How Much DPS Does Icestorm Even Do?
This is actually pretty difficult to measure in any meaningful way, but we can do some calculations if we want to feel better.

In the tooltip listed higher in this thread, our "Avg. Damage" is shown as 13,300. This is the damage per ice spear that falls from the sky. Icestorm drops one of these every 0.1 seconds, and with my 4.5 second skill duration that means that 45 spears should fall per cast.

Now, not all of these are going to hit a given target. Against smaller creatures, maybe only 2-3 per cast will strike the target. If we assume that a creature is hit three times, it will suffer 13,300x3= 39,900 damage from one cast. With a cast time of 0.31 seconds, that would be 128,000 DPS to small targets! But wait, that damage takes place over the 4.5 seconds of the skill duration... so this is not a DPS measurement that makes any real sense. You cast the skill, and some unspecified time later your target will die - it is not immediate, and this means a lot of casting and then running off to the next pack while a group dies behind you. Make sure your loot filter makes noise for important drops!

We can get a more meaningful DPS calculation against large, stationary bosses like Atziri. These creatures have enough health to sit in an icestorm for the full duration and have big enough hitboxes that most or even all of our ice spears can hit them.

Let's be generous to our target and assume that only half the ice spears from an ice storm hit it. In practice you can achieve even more than this, but its hard to say with certainty. If half the spears hit, our target takes 13,300 x 23 = 305,900 damage over 4.5 seconds. Multiple icestorms can overlap, so dividing by our cast time makes logical sense here and we can estimate a sustained DPS of 986,000! Wow! This is, however, only after 4.5 seconds of continuous casting, which you rarely get to do in a boss fight.

Now, I don't claim that this build does almost 1 million DPS because that's a silly calculation based on some very specific circumstances. You can be assured though that the clearspeed is quite acceptable as my videos should show.


What do you need in order to kill Uber Atziri with this build?

I want to clarify a few points regarding this matter, since the character I showcase in this build guide has evolved considerably since its original incarnation to become overpowered in every sense of the word.

You do not need legacy standard items to run Uber with this build.
You do not need Skyforth to run Uber with this build.
You do not need a 900 ES chest to run Uber with this build.
You do not need perfect jewels to run Uber with this build.

This build first killed Uber in Warbands league, before Skyforth was a thing and with no legacy items. And this was before Ascendancy classes - the build is only stronger now!

What you do need are the following:
11,000+ ES
5000+ icestorm tooltip with conc. effect
Boots with 20% or more movement speed

That's it.

Skill Tree



Bandits


Ascendancy Points
This build got a hell of a lot better with Ascendancy. The Scion is able to take two mini-ascendancy perks from the other classes, and these let us pick up some nice stuff.

Three of our Ascendancy points are spent getting Berserker. This gives us leech without needing to use a support gem, as well as 10% more damage. We pay for this by taking 5% increased damage ourselves, but this penalty is pretty minor.

Our other three points have some options, depending on your playstyle and how much offense or defense you need. I've tested a bunch of these, and here are some of the best options:

Offense - Elementalist. With a fire golem active, we gain a very significant boost to our damage. The extra elemental penetration is a nice boost as well, and the reduced elemental damage mostly counteracts the penalty of Berserker.

Balanced Offense/Defense - Occultist. A nice boost to ES and some passive ES regen. We also gain increased damage whenever we kill a cursed enemy, which is all the time thanks to blasphemy.

Defense - Heirophant. The 8% of mana added as ES will grant you over 1000 ES after all modifiers are accounted for. If you need a large boost to ES (maybe you're wearing a Black Sun Crest?) then this could be useful to you. Unfortunately the totem bonuses are wasted here.

Map Clear Speed - Raider. Yes, Raider. The 10% chance for a frenzy charge on kill is enough to keep you at full charges if rushing through a map, which means Onslaught all the time, baby! 12% more damage, 32% cast speed, and 20% move speed! This is a crazy fun way to play. Unfortunately, raider does not offer an int node on the way there like the others do. In addition, its bonuses do not help at all versus bosses like Atziri. But if you are the type to run Gorge maps all day, then look no farther than the Raider.



Gear

Here's what I use. It was very expensive. You do not need gear as good as mine to kick ass with this build! Below, I'll talk about what else you can use.


My Gear:


Jewels:


Gear Options:


Links


How to level as Whispering Ice
Hey! This staff requires level 33. Surely you dont want to wait until level 70 when you've respecced your build to use it? Its crazy fun to level with!

Accordingly, I've prepared a tree that both allows for effective leveling with icestorm and can respec into our final build using no more than the respec points you are given for completing all the quests. Orbs of regret are expensive!

Prior to hitting 33 I suggest leveling with firestorm, as it has a similar feel and is considered a powerful leveling skill. Try to nab a +1 to fire skills wand or staff.

Trees:


Links While Leveling

When leveling, you likely want to use Spell Echo - Elemental Focus - Controlled Destructon - Fire Penetration - Faster Casting - Reduced Mana. Mana costs are really hard to sustain while leveling, so some of these may need to be swapped for cheaper alternatives. If you find yourself unable to run all your support gems, use item rarity as it has no mana multiplier! Free loot!


Frequently Asked Questions About This Build

I like it! Good Job.

hi,

i have a question, what do you mean by double dipping?
Do you mean that snwoforged gives you 50% increased fire damage?

"

arkandor escribió:

hi,

i have a question, what do you mean by double dipping?
Do you mean that snwoforged gives you 50% increased fire damage?

Yes, exactly that. We get the full benefit of both increased fire damage and increased cold damage - snowforged gives 50% increassed damage, quality on cold to fire gives 20% increased damage, and my jewels are giving ~40% increased damage each.

This makes cold to far a far larger damage increase than any other support gem.

Thanks for the reply, i might play it myself but i have another question.

Did you consider Eye of Chayula (or other ways of stun avoidance) instead of going all the way to unwavering stance. It would free a lot of points to go crit or aura notes, or is Astramentis so strong to justify this many passive points for unwavering?

"

arkandor escribió:

Thanks for the reply, i might play it myself but i have another question.

Did you consider Eye of Chayula (or other ways of stun avoidance) instead of going all the way to unwavering stance. It would free a lot of points to go crit or aura notes, or is Astramentis so strong to justify this many passive points for unwavering?

Here's a breakdown on Eye of Chayula vs. Astramentis

Astramentis provides 90 more intelligence (assuming an avg roll). In order then for Eye of Chayula to be a better option, we need to get 90 int worth of value from the skill tree (not necessarily in the form of int) from the nodes that we save.

We spend 12 nodes getting to Unwavering Stance. Thanks to brute force solution, four of the +10 str nodes become int nodes instead. We also get a +30 int node along the way. In total, our 12 nodes get us 94 intelligence, 40 strength, and stun immunity.

Is there anywhere on the tree we can get 184 (94 from tree, 90 from astra) intelligence or similar for 12 nodes? Messing around with gear tells me that 10 base intelligence corresponds roughly to 9% increased damage. Its also 3% increased ES (we have 57% increased intelligence, so 10 base int = 15.7 actual int) and 8 mana.

Ultimately, Astramentis is giving us the equivalent of 162% increased damage, 140ish mana, and 54% increased energy shield for 12 nodes. Can we beat that elsewhere? Heart of Flame and Heart of ice would be 142% increased damage for 10 nodes.... and no ES. The unnatural calm wheel would give us 48% increased ES, but no damage for 6 nodes. I can't find anywhere on the tree that gives us similar value per node as using unwavering stance and Astramentis.

Another issue is that without astramentis and those strength nodes along the way to Unwavering Stance, we have only about 100 strength and 70 dex! We need 111 dex for Hypothermia and 151 str for Rallying Cry. Fixing THAT problem will cost even more nodes or require sacrifices on our gear.

This comparison really shows the power of the intelligence stat with this build. We're getting significant offense AND defense with every 10 int node, which lets us journey to opposite sides of the tree in search of the most efficient nodes.

TL;DR The 100 all stats on Astramentis is well worth the journey down to Unwavering Stance.

Added video of Uber Atziri kill.


:D :D :D :D :D


Is this the first Uber kill with a Whispering Ice build?

Hey, can you upload a video of the first two fights?

Then I can add your build to https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/982394

"

Chundadragon escribió:

Hey, can you upload a video of the first two fights?

Then I can add your build to https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/982394

I'll have to do another run for that, but happily. I need some better flasks before I make another run, hopefully I can have an improved video within a week or so.

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Baalorlord escribió:

"

Chundadragon escribió:

Hey, can you upload a video of the first two fights?

Then I can add your build to https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/982394

I'll have to do another run for that, but happily. I need some better flasks before I make another run, hopefully I can have an improved video within a week or so.

That's awesome and yes you would be the first with a Whispering Ice =)