[1.2] Cold Hands - CoC + Cold Snap Bow Build (Endgame/Atziri)

Some videos can be found at the bottom, not much but they are there.

Feel free to message me at my IGN: EastWindRises, always happy to answer any questions or take any suggestions/advice to improve the build!

TL:DR - Wheres the Passive Tree? [1.2 Passive Tree]

Note: This is my current passive tree, and might be different from what is in the rest of the guide. Most of the changes on my own passive tree are because of gear choices, namely Berek's Grip.

Introduction:

I jumped back into Path of Exile with the release of Forsaken Masters. My previous build had been a two-handed Flicker Strike build which while fun, hit some walls after I reached mid-tier /high-tier maps. I decided to do something a little different this time around and went with a Cast on Critical Strikes build, but I wanted to do something different. I hate CoC Builds that just layer Fireball + Artic Breath + GMP + <token spell>. They are massive lag machines that I feel are often very ineffective because of the mechanics of GMP. Thus I decided to focus on spells that would not be weakened by your standard CoC Gem Linkup. The two spells I focused on were Arc and Cold Snap, mostly because I already had the Cold Grasp MTX so I wanted to use it! Also Cold Snap has a base freeze chance of 30% which means 95% of normal monsters will be locked frozen, posing no threat to you, and a majority of bosses can also be frozen!

My Gear (Rampage - Level 89):


Most of this gear is pretty straight forward, and most of it you can get for pretty cheap (when I say cheap I usually mean 1-2 Exalts or less), of course there are two items that are expensive and/or impossible to get. Windripper being the first, and Berek's Grip being the second.

I will state that Windripper is not needed for this build to function, I did fine with a level 70 6-Link Decimation Bow up until I was able to buy a Windripper, but the Windripper naturally improves the build 10x because of the fast attack speed and the access to high native crit chance. This allows you to sacrifice crit either on your gear, or in the passive tree, and put points and items more towards survivability or spell damage.

The Berek's Grip is an ultra rare, with at most only 300 on the Rampage League Server, possible more if people are lucky to get it via the Zana Map Machine. Berek's Grip isn't necessary at all, but what it allows you to do is to not worry about Elemental Reflect, and provides some very helpful mana leech. Even with Berek's Grip though I would not suggest doing Elemental Reflect Maps as the maps can still get very spikey, the ring simply stops you from being blown up when you shoot into a pack and don't see the elemental reflect mob in the middle of it.

The obvious lynch pin to the entire build is Voll's Protector. This build will not function to its full potential if you try to use a Power charge on Critical Strike gem, because of how Power Charge hungry Cold Snap is.

Stats!

Offensive (Tornado Shot - Cold Snap - Arc):


Defensive:


Gem Setup


Tornado shot is the Delivery skill to use with Cast on Critical Strike. A Tornado Shot supported by GMP will fire five initial shots, that will explode at the targeted area and then each of those shots will send 3 other shots in random directions - all for a total of 15 separate arrows. The mechanics of Tornado Shot, Cold Snap, and Arc, allow you to fire anywhere into a room, and have the potential to damage any target in that room regardless of the relation to your character or to where the tornado shot initially landed.

Since both Arc and Cold Snap are not projectile based, they do not suffer the 50% Less Damage penalty from GMP, thus they hit at their full potential when ever a crit is triggered. This allows for some crazy damage, with theoretical DPS upwards around 50k if all 15 arrows hit a target and trigger a spell. Arc is primarily taken for the shock effect and of course to synergy with Windripper and Berek's Gripp by granding some MF and Mana Leech. If you are facing a boss that can't be shocked, I would suggest swapping out Arc for Cold Penetration.

If you want to be able to burst down a boss fast, I would suggest switching the delivery attack to Barrage. While bosses can still be killed easily with tornado shot, Barrage allows you to make sure that every shot lands on target, which is much harder to do with Tornado Shot.

Having done Atziri a few times I found that during the Split Phase it was almost impossible to have Arc linked in my gem setup, because it would jump to the Atziri holding the mirror, and quickly kill me. To counter this I would swap Arc out for Cold Penetration, so that I wouldn't have to worry about Reflect.

Also on a note of auras and buffs. I only actively run two, Grace and Herald of Ice, but I will switch out Grace for any necessary Purity Auras to counter possible elemental reflect or specific bosses.

Leveling Passive Trees
Note: Don't be afraid to spend regrets, there are some nodes that are sometimes really good in the early/mid game that simply make it easier to level that can be shifted to other nodes in the end game.

30 points:

The Life on Kill and Mana on Kill are two clusters of nodes that make early/mid game very easy and stress free, I highly recommend them!

50 points:

Start to get tons of Crit here, and King of the Hill is hilarious and is an effective counter to a lot of melee based monsters and bosses.

70 points:


90 points:


107 points:

Vaal Pact is pretty much necessary if you want to try and counter Elemental Reflect, but again you will need something like Berek's Grip or a lot of Cold Damage leeched as Life to be able to properly counter elemental reflect.

Bandits - 40 Life / Attack Speed / Power Charges

Pretty straight forward as far as bandits go. I guess you could consider taking the 8% Resists in normal, but 40 Life is almost always better, and you get plenty of resists from the passive tree as you start to grab keystones and defensive nodes.

Videos
I have two videos:

Video Guide - 30+ Minutes - Features quick Level 74 map clear - Apologies for shitty voice, combination of awful mic and me just sounding annoying:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bE15QSSIAo

Poorjoy's Aslyum Clear (or Poorboys):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyrMQtVNhXk

5 min Crematorium Clear (Blue Map):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcWqlTRSb_4

Olmec's Sanctum:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTDMDNK8WCA

"Flawless"/Deathless Atziri Kill (TW: Earth Wind & Fire):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59sGt13gp54&feature=youtu.be

Possible Questions:

Hardcore Viable?
Maybe, if you are a flawless player and can instantly spot Elemental Reflect. Sadly with the reliance on Evasion and Dodge, combined with the fact that your chest slot is taken up by an item that does very little for you outside of providing damage, I do not believe this build is Hardcore Viable.

Can you do Atziri?
As I hinted to above, yes you can and yes I have. Will you die? Probably. Again because the build's only defenses are Evasion, Dodge and Resists, there are a few one shot abilities and spells that are present in the Atziri fights that can result in you dying. Flameblasts shouldnt be a problem with a Purity of Fire and Ruby Flask, but spears and raining spears can... and will take you down. But you can farm Atziri if you pay attention and are good with your reactions.

End Game Maps? Can you do em?
I've done all sorts of maps, including level 78 maps such as Palace or Courtyard and I found there was little to no issue running these high level maps.

Added two videos to show some more end game maps. First video is of a Crematorium map clear done in about 5 minutes. The second video is a clear of Olmec's Sanctum. No deaths, some trips back to the hideout to stash some gear and pick up some currency to roll some boxes.

Music Selection was based on Two Steps to Hell: Invincible. Also sorry for the abrupt start of the Crematorium map, I had to stop recording 30 seconds in as I realized my mic was on and there would be wicked feedback.

I'll also be sitting down sometime this week to record an Atziri kill and post that up as well.

Feel free to make any requests on map types for me to try and clear and I can record the results.

u have tornado stats on your "defensive" :)

"

adi00000 wrote:

u have tornado stats on your "defensive" :)

Best defense is a great offense! But fixed none the less ;p

Hi.

Nice build.

What about remove cold snap + concentrated effect for freezing pulse (it will use your GMP and massive shotgun) + another gem, like IIR, cold pen, increased crit damage :p.

I'm pretty skeptical this build is doable without a Windripper. Doable in terms of finishing the base game content and Lunaris runs sure, low maps okay. But the attack speed/crit chance combo is just not there on any other bow to scale well after that. I guess a rare Harbringer could get into the 1.3 APS/8.5% crit range with good rolls, but that's not likely to be cheap either and is still handily beat out by very cheap wands and daggers.

I guess what I mean is, I'd like to see those videos with cheap bows and see if it even kind of works, because it seems very doubtful to me. I'd like to run my coc build with Tornado Shot bows but it just seems like wands/barrage and dagger/ST have them completely outclassed due to base stats unless you're one of POE"s 1%.

"

Evelyus wrote:

Hi.

Nice build.

What about remove cold snap + concentrated effect for freezing pulse (it will use your GMP and massive shotgun) + another gem, like IIR, cold pen, increased crit damage :p.

Then its like every other CoC Build! Also if you remove Cold Snap you lose the benefit of freezing, as the spells don't have a very high crit chance because a lot of the Crit passives are bow focused.

"

C0Y0T3_SLY wrote:

I'm pretty skeptical this build is doable without a Windripper. Doable in terms of finishing the base game content and Lunaris runs sure, low maps okay. But the attack speed/crit chance combo is just not there on any other bow to scale well after that. I guess a rare Harbringer could get into the 1.3 APS/8.5% crit range with good rolls, but that's not likely to be cheap either and is still handily beat out by very cheap wands and daggers.

I guess what I mean is, I'd like to see those videos with cheap bows and see if it even kind of works, because it seems very doubtful to me. I'd like to run my coc build with Tornado Shot bows but it just seems like wands/barrage and dagger/ST have them completely outclassed due to base stats unless you're one of POE"s 1%.

It is doable (but naturally slower) with a rare 6L Bow, if I ever get my hands on one, or I can craft one, I will post a video of the results.

Honestly the price of Windripper hovers around 8 Exalts - 10 Exalts that I think its feasible for most people to use a rare 5L-6L Until they can farm up enough currency/gear to get a Windripper.

Edit: I'm looking around to try and grab a Decimation bow for cheap and will try and craft either +1 Gem Levels, Attack Speed, or Crit Chance, and then Master it up a little more. At most I think it will cost 2-3 Exalts to craft the bow to a useable state where the only difference between it and the Windripper is the attack speed and the IIR/IIQ Stats.

"

C0Y0T3_SLY wrote:

I'm pretty skeptical this build is doable without a Windripper. Doable in terms of finishing the base game content and Lunaris runs sure, low maps okay. But the attack speed/crit chance combo is just not there on any other bow to scale well after that. I guess a rare Harbringer could get into the 1.3 APS/8.5% crit range with good rolls, but that's not likely to be cheap either and is still handily beat out by very cheap wands and daggers.

I guess what I mean is, I'd like to see those videos with cheap bows and see if it even kind of works, because it seems very doubtful to me. I'd like to run my coc build with Tornado Shot bows but it just seems like wands/barrage and dagger/ST have them completely outclassed due to base stats unless you're one of POE"s 1%.

Can add to this that it is working well for me in low lvl maps with this self-crafted bow:



Cost met ~10 Alts for the crit chance (got lucky? don't know the odds), regaled the fire resistance and master crafted the attack speed. Still am only lvl 62, but jumped straight into 67-68 maps and these are quite doable. Mind you, the spell gems are only lvl 15 atm.

I'd like to think this bow will work on higher content as well as soon as my toon is levelled.


@OP:
On a non-related topic: why don't you Q20 you GMP? You obviously do not need the projectile dmg bonus from the LvL 20 gem, but get a nice attack speed bonus of 10% IIRC for just 1 gcp.

"

jdegrooth wrote:

"

C0Y0T3_SLY wrote:

I'm pretty skeptical this build is doable without a Windripper. Doable in terms of finishing the base game content and Lunaris runs sure, low maps okay. But the attack speed/crit chance combo is just not there on any other bow to scale well after that. I guess a rare Harbringer could get into the 1.3 APS/8.5% crit range with good rolls, but that's not likely to be cheap either and is still handily beat out by very cheap wands and daggers.

I guess what I mean is, I'd like to see those videos with cheap bows and see if it even kind of works, because it seems very doubtful to me. I'd like to run my coc build with Tornado Shot bows but it just seems like wands/barrage and dagger/ST have them completely outclassed due to base stats unless you're one of POE"s 1%.

Can add to this that it is working well for me in low lvl maps with this self-crafted bow:

Cost met ~10 Alts for the crit chance (got lucky? don't know the odds), regaled the fire resistance and master crafted the attack speed. Still am only lvl 62, but jumped straight into 67-68 maps and these are quite doable. Mind you, the spell gems are only lvl 15 atm.

I'd like to think this bow will work on higher content as well as soon as my toon is levelled.


@OP:
On a non-related topic: why don't you Q20 you GMP? You obviously do not need the projectile dmg bonus from the LvL 20 gem, but get a nice attack speed bonus of 10% IIRC for just 1 gcp.

It should work well on higher content, allowing you to run early-mid tier maps without much issue until you can save up for a Windripper. If you want to upgrade it, try to get +1 to Gem Levels on it, its a very nice little boost. And really, compare it to Windripper. Besides the speed, which is a big difference, there is very little else that is different besides the IIR/IIQ. The base damage of the bow doesn't matter at all.

Also you can likely grab a 6 Link Decimation Bow for 1 exalt and try to craft it up.

As to why no Q20 GMP. Because I'm not rich! My plan is to Q20 Arc, then Cold Snap, then Maybe GMP. As you can see I already Q20ed CoC and tried to Vaal it, with no success.