" The Winter-Arc Crit ": Simple, cheap, safe and high dps 30k+ ( 2.0 updated)

Really enjoying this build so far and finding a lot of the additional input from others to be very helpful to be able to tailor things to my particular circumstances and needs.

For instance, I still haven't found a CWDT gem in this league for any of my characters so for now I'm using a Cast when Stunned linked with summon skellies, frost wall and shock nova. I'm using the last mainly because I had a spare slot, it's lightning damage and also it dropped with 18% quality so it's a decent item to level up.

This is not super-efficient but may just save your bacon when you need it such as with leapers in Sceptre of God. It will only trigger when you're stunned, and then only 30 something percent of the time (say one in three) which is not high enough for my liking but beggers can't be choosers. The benefit of combining multiple skills is that when you're stunned each is rolled separately to see if it will trigger. So you could have none trigger, all three, or a combo.

Frost Wall will give you a handy barrier to protect from continuing damage and allow you to regroup; Shock Nova will benefit from your extra Lightning Damage nodes and the Skellies are always great distracters for enemies.

As I'm only level 42 so far I thought it might help to list a basic leveling guide to help others with the early stages.

Skill Tree

So straight up to Elemental Dominion, keep going to Lightning Walker then stop and backtrack to Annihilation for the early Crit benefit. Some will suggest this is not a great use at an early stage but right from the start I'm using Lightning Tendrils and the Crit benefit against powerful enemies can be very useful.

Once you've attained Annihilation continue past Lightning Walker and up to Cruel Preparation. As we're a non-armour character the extra life is really needed early on. In other builds I've often shunned life for extra damage or armour/evasion but I've learnt the hard way, Life is very helpful and will get you out of some sticky situations.

From here keep going up to Heart of Thunder for some good boost to our Lightning damage skills.

Now I chose to go left into the Templar tree as I felt the points to be gained there were good for early progression plus it was way too early to head towards EB. So left from the end of the Lightning Walker nodes and down to Light of Divinity. I detoured along the way and picked up the +30 Dex node to help equip some better gear.

Down to Elementalist then right to Discipline and Training. That's where I am right now at level 42 and I have 8 skill points yet to be allocated. I hadn't really needed them yet so I've just been saving them up till I felt the need for them. I'm probably going to use them to head all the way to the right of the tree and finish just before Coldhearted Calculation. That way as skill points come a little slower my next allocations will almost always be towards useful skills rather than just 'empty' intelligence points.

Then it will just be pick up whichever remaining nodes are going to supplement what I feel are my worst shortcomings at the time (i.e. life or crit or more damage). Currently I'm following this skill tree previously posted by another contributor in this thread (sorry, I forget the original author or I'd provide the credit).



Equipment

Almost entirely self found so far with a focus on Life, Energy Shield, Resistances and for weapons extra spell damage.

Early on use two wands and if nothing else use the recipe to craft +1 Lightning Damage to them both. Before too long you should be able to find a rare wand or two with extra spell damage, +1 Lightning and a couple of other useful stats. Don't worry about shields because your aim is to run around and not get hit in the first place. Wands will give you much better damage and in my experience with Torment is that caster shields with good extra spell damage (more than 10%) are few and far between. In fact, I don't think I've found a decent one yet in this league.

I'm currency poor right now so only my helm and boots are 4 linked, everything else is 3 or 2 linked even. Not much point linking or crafting low level items that you'll probably replace in another 5 levels.

One item I can't recommend strongly enough for leveling in this build is the unique Reverberation Rod. You can equip it at level 24 and I highly recommend you spend the currency (cheap as chips, should be able to get it for 1C) and do so. This you should 3 socket and 3 link right away. I've been using it with Arc, Conductivity and Curse on Hit. I get +1 to all those skills, my hit automatically weakens enemies and they quickly get zapped again for no extra mana. This is not an end game item but it will carry you far in the game.

One note about this set up, it appears that the Curse on Hit only counts the first strike as a hit, the extra chains are not hits so it won't curse those enemies behind. So if you're taking on a pack with a powerful enemy try to mouse target them directly to get that first hit if you can. Honestly you could replace both those gems with something to get more power out of Arc but I'm a lazy curser so this suits me for now. I may change this later though.

Of course, at level 35 pick up the cornerstone for this build, the Three Dragons helm. I would advise buy the top quality item with 30 Resistance seeing as you're going to use this helm for the rest of the life of the character. Spend the currency and 4 socket and link it.

Gems

So as mentioned earlier I started with Lightning Tendrils for early game until I started to find Arc powerful enough to use regularly. I still have LT in my other +1 Lightning wand combined with Lightning Penetration and added Lightning Damage for now. I find this very helpful if a pack or a heavy hitter is too close and my Arc has already cursed them. Just spam away with LT and you're bound to get a Crit in there which is awesome.

Other early skills I recommend are Cold Snap, great for slowing down a powerful enemy early on and allow your lightning to do it's damage. Also has a good chance to freeze and that will help your lightning damage. I'm still using it on occasion now.

Spell Totem. Get this. As soon as you can. I didn't have an extra Arc at the time so I set mine up with Glacial Cascade, Cold Penetration and Increased Critical Strikes. With this Dominus was a walk in the park in Normal. Fastest and safest take down I've ever had including Multistrike Melee. Happily took on multiples of his minions at the same time, froze them or at least slowed them then zapped them silly. Destroyed his own lightning totems, kept the damage in his face and all the while I'm Arcing away at him. Was awesome fun! For an added bonus this is the first time Dominus dropped a Unique for me so icing on the cake :) (OK, it was a Kaoms ring but still, happy to have at least one Unique drop from him).

Once I equipped the Three Dragons mask I switched out the Glacial Cascade gem (no more chance to freeze from it you see) and fitted Arc instead which I'm still using.

Arctic Armour is equipped but I'm rarely using it just now. Haven't really had the need so far but I'm leveling it as we go.

Herald of Thunder is also equipped just for a bit of extra damage but I will swap this out at some point for Herald of Ice.

I'm also running clarity right now which means I can spam my attacks and not worry about running out.

The last Gem I'm using is Vaal Summon Skeletons. This has been invaluable in my solo progression and I can't recommend it enough. My standard use is when battling Kole, Brutus, Dominus, etc. is hit them with Cold snap, deploy totem in their face, cast VSS, Arc them for lowered resistance then get in close and LT them to Crit failure. It may not be as viable later in the game but to date this technique has just been awesome. If nothing else all those Minions provide an outstanding distraction for enemies allowing you to get yourself away from danger.

Current Gear



Bandits

Normal: Oak. Don't underestimate how useful a flat 40 life is. With additional % nodes this becomes very powerful and is well worth the investment.
Cruel: Kill All
Merciless: Kill All

I'm just about to tackle Merveil next and will update this once I'm toward the end of Cruel to provide any updates and shortcomings with particular items or skills.

What you guys think about that tree? Wouldn't it be better with those 5 elemental damage nodes near Trickery and 4 near Elemental Equilibrium, instead of those crit nodes? It's 96% elemental damage together, don't know if it would scale a lot with 2 doryani's catalyst, anyone knows?

Hey :) To be honest I find your build very good and quite relaxing to play, the only problem I have is the Arctic Armor usage. I just don't have enough mana regen to maintain it. As I see, you don't have it linked with reduced mana (it wouldn't work together anyway, right?). I have my clarity on level 13 (+16.5 mana/s) and Arctic Armor on level 7 (-72 mana/s while moving). My whole mana regen is about 60 mana/s. The only mana regen nod I'm missing is "+40% mana regen". I doubt if this makes that huge difference, to allow me to maintain lvl 19 Arctic Armor. It's obvious that I'm doing something wrong, the question is - what is it? :)

Finished testing Doryani Catalysts vs 2 rare wands.

I got these two rare wands for 1ex each+4alch,4chaos and 285 chroms for crafting:



I removed and second one similar roll that i sold,price for them is around 2.5ex each,cuz they are nice rolls.

Anyway when i replaced doryanis with these two rare wands i got 1200 dps,7% crit chance more on arc(now 40% without power charges)and about 60% more crit muultipler.So another proof that doryanis are PURE WASTE.

Wands with 2.5ex cost(with crafting)simply beat up doryanis which cost around 5ex total,maybe a slightly less.

And later in torment league you`ll probably find even better wands than mine,cuz they are nothing too special.On standard you have BRUTAl rare wands with more than 100% spell dmg,more than 100% critical strike chance,global critical strike chance and more multiplier.But for that you`ll need a lot of exalts or even mirror.

djokosrb can you look at my post (3-4 posts up i think) and maybe take those elemental damage nodes and then check? I don't know if it all scales or those % are just from base amount, but 200% ele dmg from 2 doryanis and then another 100% from nodes, well, it seems huge.

@Shadov1
Yeah 200% ele dmg seems huge,but cant stand against 100% crit for spells and crit multiplier,combined with some 60-70% spell dmg on rare wand.
About the tree well depends on your thoughs,i found crit nodes better.

off topic:If someone needsim your man :)

"

djokosrb wrote:

@Shadov1
Yeah 200% ele dmg seems huge,but cant stand against 100% crit for spells and crit multiplier,combined with some 60-70% spell dmg on rare wand.
About the tree well depends on your thoughs,i found crit nodes better.

off topic:If someone needs

im your man :)

Interested in the gloves..... Sent you a PM

Is Vaal Pact absolutely crucial here? Well i just tried to write something but backspaced whole thing, point is, is it so hard on end game that you absolutely MUST have vaal pact? I never got so far.

is cloak of defiance best way to go for body armor?

So exactly which of these builds you have posted would be best to look at for a more permanent end game build? I really like the idea of this build here, I'm a new player and trying to build myself right, so I can get into the game and start building up my fortune. I feel an Arc Witch of some variant is the way to go for me starting off, just not sure what my best choice would be for someone looking to hit end game and be able to start farming without gimping myself, and becoming useless. Thank you for your time and help in advance, I greatly appreciate it.