[3.5] The Blinding Blizzard - Whispering Ice CI Elequisitor - Viable For Everything

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Ivan_Sorenson escribió:

And u can go pure Occultist WI Build with full cold. More ES, Hexploding, extra curse etc.

Con:
- 16% res
ele reflect immunity
consec ground
2nd Golem
40% inc Herald

pro:
2nd Curse
stun immun
no longer need of vaal pact
250 flat es, + 32% increased es
Malediction
extra chaos dmg for 4 sec after kill

In my Mind, it's a good option for SSF without dex changing jewels :)

With three curses and cursing hexproof enemies you could also drop LL for a dps gem and run a warlords mark blasphemy or curse on hit setup.

Warlords + Discipline + AA should leave enough mana for lvl 1 SR.

Im gonna try the idea for this build in 3.5 with frozen orb and I really want to do it with occultist.

Losing the inc Herald and extra golem mean little to me, as does losing consecrated ground. Losing the 16% pen is bad, but you also gain Malediction for 10% increased damage taken to enemies and 10% damage reduction for enemies. Losing reflect immunity kind sucks, but it's not that bad to have to ditch Ele reflect maps. I've had to do it on other builds.

Some of the pathing becomes weird, though. You can take the Skill Effect Duration cluster on the left of the Scion area instead of the bottom, but the 28% all res from nodes below Scion are hard to reach, and those help out given that resists can be hard to get with so many uniques and Int on all rares.

I just went and checked full cold. Adjusted my 3.3 character to it (WIncurScion in my profile) quickly. Since Winter Orb isn't here yet, I looked at other channelled skills and chose Storm Burst because it can crit.

Herald of Ice instead of Ash, naturally. Hypothermia instead of CtF. Of course, it would be unwise to waste the freeze potential, so no EF or CD. Cold Penetration is then the natural choice for the 6th gem.

Snowforged loses almost half of its value, but it gives +crit, i.e. +freeze. Trickery also becomes slightly more valuable. Crit is still not one of the main goals, we still don't have skill points for it and go with EO. But an occasional crit now serves two purposes instead of just one: activate EO and freeze. Between a crittable channelling skill, Icestorm and CWDT BL, crits happen often enough to keep EO up.

This allows us to drop Orb of Storms. Frost Bomb is awesome, so it becomes the 2nd skill (after the main channelling one). Keeping Orb of Storms as a 3rd skill would be a bit awkward. Dropping it frees up sockets for something else.

We lose Combustion and Scorching Ray debuff (~43% penetration) but gain 25% on Frost Bomb that has 2 practical advantages: it doesn't require channelling to reach full power and it's a long duration debuff.

Losing Izaro's... Dunno if that's still a big deal. I haven't used them in the last 3 leagues at all, since we switched back to Scion. Int is so much better than raw damage. I consider Izaro's in the same category as Sin Trek - you gotta get rid of it sooner or later anyway.

So I switched that Standard char to cold and went for a test run. The tooltip looks hilariously low since it doesn't take into account Cold Pen and Hypothermia. But in PoB the numbers are close enough to the fire version (just don't forget to check 'Target is chilled'). And it works fine. I was freezing trash and even rares in T16. Herald explosions are fun too. Boss confirmed that the low tooltip is just an illusion - they die just as quickly.

I then did the ultimate test: Uber Elder. No problems, looked pretty much the same as with the main version. Frost Bomb is actually easier to use than Orb of Storms because you can Frost Bomb a boss across the screen instead of getting near them to plant the Orb.

All in all, the cold version is already viable, just slightly less powerful than the fire version and less flexible in gear selection. And this is without Winter Orb. Anything that this skill can add will be a pure gain.

Leveling Winter Orb may lead to mana issues, but we've already seen in the Betrayal trailer that +1 curse becomes a craftable mod. Warlord's Mark as 2nd curse may be an easy solution to any mana issues.

So far so good!

What about using new ice spear as our channeled skill? It would scale off our cold damage, give nice crits for freeze and EO proc.

Throw in frozen orb and there is ice getting flung all over the damn screen

Potential mana issues maybe?

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gladiatorpie escribió:

What about using new ice spear as our channeled skill? It would scale off our cold damage, give nice crits for freeze and EO proc.

Throw in frozen orb and there is ice getting flung all over the damn screen

Potential mana issues maybe?

Ice Spear is not a channelled skill. In the latest revamp video, you can see that the character is performing a casting animation for each cast.

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Kelvynn escribió:

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gladiatorpie escribió:

What about using new ice spear as our channeled skill? It would scale off our cold damage, give nice crits for freeze and EO proc.

Throw in frozen orb and there is ice getting flung all over the damn screen

Potential mana issues maybe?

Ice Spear is not a channelled skill. In the latest revamp video, you can see that the character is performing a casting animation for each cast.

Ohh ya. Idk why in my head I remembered it being a single cast animation.

Can i ask something?
I'm not against cold version or something. Moreover, i would probably only be glad to use it instead as i like chill and freeze.

But why the decision to "switch to cold version" comes from the addition of the winter orb?
Winter orb can be fully converted into the fire as easily as icestorm. Or am i missed some detail?

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Med1umentor escribió:

Can i ask something?
I'm not against cold version or something. Moreover, i would probably only be glad to use it instead as i like chill and freeze.

But why the decision to "switch to cold version" comes from the addition of the winter orb?
Winter orb can be fully converted into the fire as easily as icestorm. Or am i missed some detail?

It's more that Scorching Ray with 100% Cold-To-Fire conversion allows for a boatload of synergy, and a full Ice setup was woefully inefficient in comparison.

Now that we can, theoretically, do a pure Ice version it'll take some experimentation to see if it's actually superior to a Cold-To-Fire version. It may end up being on par and down to personal preference or Scorching Ray may still be the superior option in the end.

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Med1umentor escribió:

Can i ask something?
I'm not against cold version or something. Moreover, i would probably only be glad to use it instead as i like chill and freeze.

But why the decision to "switch to cold version" comes from the addition of the winter orb?
Winter orb can be fully converted into the fire as easily as icestorm. Or am i missed some detail?

The reason we convert to fire in the first place is to synergise with SR's fire penetration debuff it applies. If we swap the channeling spell to Winter Orb, then we no longer get SR's fire pen, so we have to find a good alternative. Frost Bomb has a great cold penetration debuff, which means we can't keep converting our cold damage to fire damage.

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Solaxus escribió:

The reason we convert to fire in the first place is to synergise with SR's fire penetration debuff it applies. If we swap the channeling spell to Winter Orb, then we no longer get SR's fire pen, so we have to find a good alternative. Frost Bomb has a great cold penetration debuff, which means we can't keep converting our cold damage to fire damage.

Nope, that's not the "reason", at least not the main reason. Kelvynn used 100% conversion long LONG before scourching ray was even introduced... (i think even before CwC was introduced too).
It was mostly for greater damage using both cold and fire nodes, because there were quite a little options to get damage if you have only cold.
Tree was reconfigured so many times since then, so i don't know how is it now. Nevertheless, what i want to say that leaving out SR isn't really a reason to not using conversion anymore (as it was used long before SR existed), that's why i asked if i missed some winter orb anti-synergy.

P.S. But i guess even without fire nodes, if push comes to shove we now have "spiritual aid" that now absolute universal cluster of damage that can open the horizons :)