[1.2.1] Crit Glacial Cascade Build - Cheap & Powerful - 1.3 passive tree added

Thanks for the build!

I started leveling, I'm level 58 and it's only happiness (for now: p)

I had a Taryn's there a few days, so all is well :)

My gear atm

What do you think about concentrated effect and increased area of effect? Or even both?

Why did you skip the Fingers of Frost chance to freeze or the Breath of Rime/Heart of Ice nodes? Those seem pretty good to me.

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Gakashi wrote:

What do you think about concentrated effect and increased area of effect? Or even both?

They're both great supports, but they don't beat the utility of the pcoc (power charges giving +350% increased crit chance), added lightning (applies shock & some nice damage), spell echo (ridiculous amount of increased cast speed, and halves your mana costs since the 2nd cast is effetively free).
If I had a 6L though they would certainly be the next logical choice of support gems to use.

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HeinousAnus wrote:

Why did you skip the Fingers of Frost chance to freeze or the Breath of Rime/Heart of Ice nodes? Those seem pretty good to me.

I didn't skip them so much as prioritize other stats more highly; if you focus too much on flat % damage you're going to wind up with less damage than if you mixed in decent amount of cast speed / crit chance / crit multiplier etc. It's a balancing act; depending on your gear you might get more/less damage depending on what you pick. Stacking a lot of crit on your gear is not cheap/easy which is why it is quite heavily focused in the tree (as opposed to flat % damage increases).


It's also worth noting that these cold% nodes do not benefit the physical damage aspect of glacial cascade - while the % elemental damage nodes also don't benefit the phys side, they do I believe increase the damage on the added lightning support gem.

Thanks for the build, I'm currently working my way in HC with this build, it's really good (: I like the fact that I have a lot of health :P

Also, I'm wondering when I should pick up the "+1 Power Charges" passive skills. I'm currently lvl 39 in HC (thank god I'm not dead xD first time in HC).


Edit: I was wondering what level should each aura be?

Thank you,
DokiVio

I'm thinking of trying out a build like this soon, but I have one question first. What would it take to make this build viable without Eldritch Battery?

I was wondering if there's anyway to make this build more defensive, like any nodes we could pick up that would make it more defense based or anything?

Edit: Also what's the point of using spell totem with vaal summon skeletons?

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DokiVio wrote:

Thanks for the build, I'm currently working my way in HC with this build, it's really good (: I like the fact that I have a lot of health :P

Also, I'm wondering when I should pick up the "+1 Power Charges" passive skills. I'm currently lvl 39 in HC (thank god I'm not dead xD first time in HC).


Edit: I was wondering what level should each aura be?

Thank you,
DokiVio

I'd be careful about using this build in hardcore, it's not really defensively based

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IGotGuts wrote:

I was wondering if there's anyway to make this build more defensive, like any nodes we could pick up that would make it more defense based or anything?

Edit: Also what's the point of using spell totem with vaal summon skeletons?

I answered this in a previous post, but in summary immortal call and lightning coil are both good choices as is opting to take more health nodes.

I dont use vaal summon with spell totem, check my skill gem setups

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dweorg wrote:

I'm thinking of trying out a build like this soon, but I have one question first. What would it take to make this build viable without Eldritch Battery?

It doesn't really *need* EB, I'm just lazy and dont like having to use mana pots. Since it's a life based build getting EB for 2 points is a no brainer for the free mana pool boost it gives.

Pre 1.2 it felt like adding too much AoE made GC hit bosses like 1 times at best.. is this a problem with the 1.2 AoE changes to Glacial Cascade?

If its not I might be going absolutely ham with the AoE nodes and on gear :P

Loving this build, up to level 74 in 3-4 days and annihilating everything i come across. Total gear cost for me was about 35-40c, of which half was for a 4L Carcass Jack. Only issues I run into are some of the Vagan missions where the potions aren't enough to heal through the dmg, but I can live with that.

Made 1 small change and grabbed the 1% life regen near the templar staring area instead of 5% health. Having no regen was makin me sad.

Node priorities for me were shadow starting area, beeline across to templar section for Amplify, then picking up the remaining AOE nodes. After that I alternated picking up crit and health clusters. Last nodes I did/will pick up are the nodes between Ele Dominion and the witch start + the crit multi cluster near Shadow area.

Has anyone tried this with an Alpha's Howl to see if we can skip EB?

IGN: ZionistPig