The Cold Cannon [HC] Projectile CoCS Wand ~ Avoidance / Flask / Coil / Resistance Tank

Thanks ChesterSam! And thanks for your guide as well. Good idea too. It is definitely worth looking into for those that don't use a Cast when Damage Taken setup.

DLimited, yeah that sounds like a good idea.

TomRaidcrash, nice wand and Lightning Coil! I'm actually trying to make one myself in Beyond, but keep ending up with awesome caster and attacker wands that I have to further craft and sell, lol!

By the way, I'm currently recreating the character in Beyond. I just began leveling last night. I'll be doing a budget Quill Rain + Tabula Rasa CoCS character with the same gem setup, farming Piety and Dominus until I get another 6L Lightning Coil and craft my wand. This is the temporary tree I plan to use. There should also be some guide updates soon.

Hey Iao! Good job on the well written guide, it's very informative and helpful to people new to CoC =).

Is the damage okay even without spell damage nodes? My friend told me that you'll be casting so fast that it doesn't matter but I've never played CoC before so I'm not sure.

How much critical strike chance do you have with all power charges up?

Thanks FallenBandit! This build is quite different from the normal CoCS build but I'm glad it helped. :)

The damage is definitely alright without many damage nodes. The "increased damage" nodes aren't too necessary because of how easy they can be stacked with gear and gems (Greater Multiple Projectiles has 38% increased projectiles damage at level 20, Saffell's Frame has up to 30% increased spell damage, Herald of Ice with 20% quality provides 15% increased cold damage, a good wand can have a lot, a good amulet can have a decent amount, etc.). The fact that I need to invest in stacking a ton of defenses to deal with elemental reflect is probably a good indication of how much damage this build can deal.

Currently with my RIP'd level 88 character I have 83% critical strike chance with a wand that has 11.04% base critical strike chance. If I was to get another Diamond Ring it'd be brought up to 86/87%, which means with Assassin's Mark I reach the cap.

I'll be updating the guide with a few things. Today I think I'll write a full explanation of the chosen gear. I also want to do a pros and cons overview. I'll also be adding more options for the passive skill tree at some point, such as using Revelry (which I don't recommend it for Hardcore and will explain why).

Someone asked me the best way to level this build before switching to Cast on Critical Strike, so I added a pretty extensive info dump at the end of the guide. I'll probably do the rest of the updates I mentioned tomorrow.

Hi

Is lightning coil totally mandatory? For rampage not beyond.
Doesn't help for elemental damage, you can get shocked, and it requires sick lightning res. And it's boring, no speed no charge.

What are your thoughts on:
- kaom (with a 6l windripper). Should be as efficient to avoid 1 shot and for the rest leech does the work
- queen of the forest (speed...)
- voll's protector (removes the need to use Pcoc or curse on the 6l)

In Rampage it wouldn't be necessary. Voll's Protector, replacing Power Charge on Critical with Arctic Breath or Arc, would be quite nice damage-wise. I don't recommend using Windripper with Kaom's Heart because the lack of spell/elemental damage modifiers and elemental leech.

I wanted to play with bows :/. Got too much of a taste of "why not a witch" with wands.

There are still options to get damage and leech. Rearguard, eventually corrupted, doryani's invitation and the direct damage + shock stacks from windripper should kinda make up a little bit for the damage (also less intel -> points in elemental damage).
But yeah when i compare any setup i can do, windripper just seem to trade some damage for IIR/IIQ :/.

Only really cool thing is that i get to keep king of the hill passive, which i find totally awesome.

And I get the possibility of a second 6 link... which I don't know what to do with =). Maybe a frenzy double curse on hit, or a huge cwdt...

Thanks for the advice anyway. Don't have all that stuff yet except doriany, just a plan for future stuff to buy. Still fun with quill tabula.

And as a sidenote, assasin's mark directly in the 6 link instead of Pcoc is quite nice except for bosses. Saw on guy do that on reddit, tried it, it's fast and fun. Except the freaking annoying sound ^^.

On the contrary I actually feel awesome using using a wand as a Ranger. I don't know, there's just something cool about using it rather than a wand. But maybe that's just me, haha.

I'm not saying there aren't options, but it definitely doesn't compare to the Saffell's Frame + wand setup. Doriyani's Invitation is a nice addition but can also be used with the wand setup.

Amusingly my initial planning for this character was to use Windripper + Drillneck using the Pierce support gem in the CoCS chain and taking the Piercing Shots node. One of the 6Ls would be Lightning Arrow for multiple targets, and the other for Barrage for single targets. Though I found that even with that setup the damage would maybe be on par with the wand setup but would be sacrificing a lot in the way of defenses.

Oh and thanks for the tip on using Assassin's Mark! That's actually a pretty awesome idea. I think I'll probably use it for map clears, and then switch to PCoC for their bosses.

One thing I don't understand is the benefit of projectile speed on ice spear. It always co verts to second form at the same distance and the second form doesn't have innate pierce, so how does projectile speed benefit the ice spear at all? It's so good its almost mandatory for FP but it seems like a pretty minimal bonus for spear.

I'm leveling up my version of this now. I play standard so I plan to go dual wield and take twin terrors to make it easier to stack MF basically looking to melt Merc Act 3 bosses down into loot, so not nearly as demanding in terms of defenses required. One other thing I plan is to have a second cast on crit link with barrage/coc/Assassin's Mark/Summon Skelly. Just as easy as cursing and also comes with a stack of meat shields.

Ice Spear is somewhat slow in its normal form. With the projectile speed increases you'll see a major benefit when it comes to hitting things that aren't closeby. So when you have to kite away from say a ridiculous enemy with Powerful Crits, it's gonna be a lot easier to hit it from far away. Basically it makes aiming and timing much easier when you want to hit things with the second form specifically, for the pretty-much-guaranteed critical strike. Plus it looks a lot cooler. :)

Twin Terrors should be pretty damn awesome for a non-hardcore version. You can probably get near the critical strike chance cap with Power Charges doing that, and surely with Assassin's Mark even without critical strike chance on jewelry. A separate CoCS for your curse and Summon Skeletons sound pretty cool.

You could even switch Power Charge on Critical in the Summon Skeletons socket so you can put Arctic Breath or Arc in the damage-oriented CoCS if you want to, similar to what ChesterSam suggested earlier in the thread.

Have fun with your new character!