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

OK, first things first :) To link your gear just start a reply or edit your current post, scroll to the top of the page to where you see your current character and click on either the character name, the Level, or the image as all do the same thing. Your window will change and show your current character item layout. Just use your mouse to click on each item you want to show. It won't do anything visible, you won't here a sound effect or see a window pop-up saying item added, but it will work.

Once finished move your mouse to the top right of your character screen where there's a large X (make sure it's the one on the character screen, don't go closing your browser window!). When you return to your message Content window you'll see a whole lot of script which are the links to your items. Easy!

Looking at what info you have posted your first issue is resistances. With only 8% Lightning resistance, any Elemental reflect mob you encounter is guaranteed to kill you instantly. I expect that's where most of your deaths are coming from. See if you can swap some of your gear to get that resistance up, and also get something with more life on it if you can. For Merciless you want to prioritise survivability above damage always. Your armour is giving you 9% damage reduction and evasion is 8% chance to evade. Essentially both are doing almost nothing for your character so don't hesitate to drop them for resist, life and other helpful mods.

Your dexterity is a bit low and this will stop you equipping a lot of helpful gear. Also it will stop you leveling up Arctic Armour so you should try to bump that a little more.

I'll wait till you post your gear and we can see which skills your using with what combo of gems to see where else you could make some quick and easy gains.

Thanks for the explanation, I edited my post and linked my gear!

Thanks for posting your gear and here's some observations:

Because you've spec'd into EB you've removed all your Energy Shield. So your damage mitigation now is a small amount of armour, a smaller amount of evasion, Arctic Armour (good against physical and fire only) and your life pool which is not enormous.

At around level 65 - 75 I was feeling a bit squishy when it came to physical damage. I got destroyed in Solaris and Sceptre of God so left those alone for ages till I improved my stats, secure more skill points and improved my gear.

So the first easy win I see is to dump that belt! Keep an eye on your stats as the +21 to attributes could cause some problem when removed but you should replace this with a rare belt with life and resists (particularly lightning). You should be able to do this with self found stuff easily enough, particularly with master crafting to help.

I'd also replace your chest armour with a good rare instead with life, resists and maybe increased Str/Dex. Uniques are often brilliant in one very specific area, and ordinary everywhere else.

You could easily replace your gloves considering the life roll is low, the life regen is worthless because of Vaal Pact and the mana on kill is pointless. Get some with more life and resists and you'll be getting close to maximising all resists by now.

You could do similar with your boots, or keep an eye out for +Dex on some to help your stats. Although I use lightning warp to get around I still like increased move speed because believe it or not you can still dodge incoming attacks.

In your tree you've used 5 nodes in the Shadow starting area for increased elemental damage but survivability is far more important in my opinion. You can spec out of all or some of these and instantly pick up 10% extra life at Cruel Preparation, another 6% under Blood Siphon, and for three points you could pick up the nodes to Assassination and boost your Crit chance by 70%. Don't forget, freezing enemies is another form of defense for us. If you need more Dex you can also pick up Coordination for a quick 20 plus you increase your cast speed as a nice extra.

You can buy a lot of descent rare items for a chaos or two so if you're not self-finding what you need, just trade for it. If you don't have a lot of chaos then do what I did and farm. Fix up your resists first, you can work on the rest later, then farm Vaal oversoul. You'll pick up a bunch of rares along the way and you will use these (unidentified) for the 2 Chaos recipe. Easy!

You could consider dropping the Increased Crit gem from your set up and using Lightning Penetration instead. That way even when you're not Crit'ing you'll be doing more damage to enemies.

Get a totem! You have spare slots for it so make the most of them. Put three sockets in your shield, add Spell totem, arc and your Increased Crit gem and watch your survivability (and also your freeze rate) go up! Try it, you'll be pleasantly surprised! Cast it ahead of you and it will draw the leapers that would normally pounce on you. No more FOGM (Fear Of Goat Men) :)

You say your can't use CODT yet, is it because you don't have the gem or another reason? If you don't have the gem, try using the Cast on Stun gem which I found quite helpful early on. You don't have to link it to the full EC, IC, ID setup, just link it to something helpful. Devouring totem, Shock totem, a curse of some sort (temporal chains is helpful in this sort of situation). I haven't used a direct cast curse the whole time I'm playing and I don't think Assassin's Mark is all that good. 8% chance to crit... you have a 20% node right in front of you on the tree so grab that instead.

This might all be a little overwhelming at once so pick a couple of things to do first and see how they work for you. The best advice I can give is that survivability is far more important than extra DPS, so prioritise that first, particularly your resists!

Good luck and let us know how you go!

First of all, thank you so much to took the time to analyse all my character, it's very appreciated.

So, I followed most of your pieces of advice for now.

Here's my new gear

As you can see, I changed my belt, my gloves, my boots, my right ring, and my weapon.
I put Spell totam, Arc, Increased crit strikes in my shield too. And yeah, it appears to be good, but at the moment my spell totem is not at a decent level, so it dies. But it's only a time question.

In my passive three, I made few changes and leveled up (now 75). Here it is

I refund 2 Shadow nodes, as suggedted, to pick the 70% crit chance increased, and I picked the +30 dex node (little to the left from witch beginning)
Would it worth it if I take the 2x20% increased crit chance (under Assassination) ?

Take a look at my new defense stats

And my offense stats

Next step is to maybe find a 5L chest (or Tabula robe, maybe ??)

I've changed my Arc setup too : I removed Increased crit strikes for Lightning penetration, as you suggested, and it appears to help, even if I freeze less.

The reason I don't have any CWDT setup yet, it's only because I don't have the place for it. I could use chromatics on Icetomb or I don't know .. Have to meditate on that

So, my viability seems to be better, even if I need to watch my steps, but I think it's normal. It's only for the bosses, I can't take it alone.

I have few questions too
1. Does an Arc +20% (so 20% chance to shock instead of 10%) would do anything with the Three dragons 2. Because chance to shock is not equal to crit chance, nor is it to chance to freeze..
3. Does the Tabula robe could help me ? It seems it's a "cheaper" 6L (because it has nothnig else for sure). Indeed, I would have to find 55% cold resist elsewhere (because of Icetomb)
4. If I had 6L chest, would it be great to add "Chain" support gem ? (Arc, Spell echo, Lightning pen, Increased crit strikes, Life leech, Chain) ?
5. At the moment, I have too much mana (700/1600 usable, it never drops with my mana regen). Should I use that for another aura ? Which one ?


Thanks again for your help

Happy to help out if I can :)

So how is your survivability now, are you still dying a lot?

Looking at your new set up I would suggest swapping the gems in your sceptre and shield. You're far more likely to kill with your arc totem than your lightning warp so you'll get more freeze proliferation that way.

My damage is helped significantly by dual weilding wands which have a fair amount of increased Crit chance and +2 to lightning gems, but also by a lucky drop amulet which gives me 20% increase to spell damage. Keep your eyes open for something like that with other stats that can help your character.

my current Arc set up is doing 9390 dps but is even more effective than that thanks to lightning penetration so don't worry too much about the numbers as they don't always tell the full story.

Your set up benefits though from some defence with your shield which I lack, and the Doryani's has the elemental proliferation and elemental life leach which are certainly helping you. If you find a good wand you can always try dual wielding and see if that suits your play style. I've actually considered going the other way and using a shield.

Your new gloves are great, a really good addition. Why did you use the boots though, is it mainly for the 'cannot be frozen' mod? I think you could still find some better boots with some more helpful stats though. Go rare, not unique and use your masters to craft an extra mod if you can. You can get some great gear this way for next to nothing. With your resistances capped you're unlikely to be frozen anyway because you shouldn't be getting hit to begin with as a caster.

What flasks are you using? For all my builds I'll carry a remove bleeding and remove freeze flask as a minimum

Yes, picking up the extra Crit nodes under assassination would help, every extra bit does but you may want to save those skill points depending on where you want to go next. How far are you intending to take your build? This will determine how many points you'll have to spend and whether you can plan on taking a particular node that requires you to spend extra points to get there. For now though you can always try them out and refund them later if you need.

When you say you're having trouble with bosses, do you mean in maps? There's a bunch of maps I don't run because the bosses are just too challenging. One thing that has helped me greatly with bosses though is the Vaal Summon Skeletons. If you can pick one up I highly recommend it. My gem is at level 19 now but it's not supported by anything else however my instant army makes a great meat sheild to keep me safe. My standard Dom run strategy is arc and totem him into his second form, wait till he transforms then cast a fresh totem, cast Vaal Skellies, drink my Jade flask, zap him for about 10 seconds with arc then finish him off with my culling magic find lightning tendrils. Proceed to picking up loot.

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I have few questions too
1. Does an Arc +20% (so 20% chance to shock instead of 10%) would do anything with the Three dragons

My understanding of this (an hopefully others will correct me if I'm wrong) is that the Three Dragons converts our shock to freeze, so a 20% quality Arc would increase our freeze chance by 20%.

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2. Because chance to shock is not equal to crit chance, nor is it to chance to freeze..

See question 1

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3. Does the Tabula robe could help me ? It seems it's a "cheaper" 6L (because it has nothnig else for sure). Indeed, I would have to find 55% cold resist elsewhere (because of Icetomb)

Tabula is a 'cheap' 6l but it's best used for trying out different gem combos to see what works, or if a build can only function with 6 linked gems. We don't need that for this build at all. Sure, every extra link helps but right now none of my gear is more than 4 linked. You also need to keep in mind that you're sacrificing any stats you would have otherwise had on a chest piece and you need to make that up in the rest of your gear.

My advice is don't get so excited about uniques, they're niche items for assisting a build but most of your really good items will be rares.

Now that I've said that, the Doryani's belt should be a good addition for this build with good resists, armour, increased lightning damage and more elemental leach. I'm looking to pick one up myself soon.

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4. If I had 6L chest, would it be great to add "Chain" support gem ? (Arc, Spell echo, Lightning pen, Increased crit strikes, Life leech, Chain) ?

Chain only works with projectiles and Arc is a spell. Even if it did though, you wouldn't want to use it because it halves your damage. You should be managing mobs quite well and only having issues with bosses now, where you want increased damage, not less.

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5. At the moment, I have too much mana (700/1600 usable, it never drops with my mana regen). Should I use that for another aura ? Which one ?

I've been considering this too as I'm in the same boat but I have no spare slots right now so I haven't really looked into it. I'm also considering using a Cloak of Defiance and am not sure if I'll need the extra mana for the MoM aspect. Also, when using AA and spamming Arc in big fights my mana does deplete so I do need the extra pool for now.

Thanks for trying out the changes and reporting back as I'm sure you're helping a lot of other people with their builds as well!

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I have few questions too
1. Does an Arc +20% (so 20% chance to shock instead of 10%) would do anything with the Three dragons

My understanding of this (an hopefully others will correct me if I'm wrong) is that the Three Dragons converts our shock to freeze, so a 20% quality Arc would increase our freeze chance by 20%.

This is understandably incorrect :P

Three Dragons changes the status effects that each elemental damage type can apply. So chance to shock would then apply to fire damage instead of lightning damage because fire is what has a chance to shock. What you are looking for is chance to freeze. Similarly, you would use freeze duration nodes instead of shock duration nodes. Sorry to burst the bubble, but this build has been wrong theory-wise in that regard since the beginning :( (not that my build guide was perfect either :P)

Here's what mine looks like:


So while to increase damage you would still use lightning damage nodes, to increase freeze chance, just like you would a cold spell without 3D, you would pick up freeze chance nodes.

Thanks for the correction and of course you're totally right! It is always the one part of the Three Dragons that I've found most confusing. So in our case our Lightning Damage is still Lightning Damage but it causes freeze based upon achieving a Critical Strike, or on the percentage roll of any stats that have a chance to freeze.

In fact, I recall a while back I even questioned someone's skill tree where they had pursued the three nodes to Static Blows as being wasteful as Arc no longer caused shock although this would be useful if equipping Pyre because we'd be converting cold damage (from Herald of Ice most likely) to fire, which now has a chance to shock. Yeah, confusing isn't it!

So while I'm eating humble pie for getting things wrong, let me also correct my statement that Chain doesn't work with Arc. I've just looked again and it absolutely does work with Arc although I still think it would be a really bad link to add. You'd be halving your damage for a couple of extra chains and with a mana multiplier of 175% it just doesn't make any sense. Even at level 20 you would still be doing less single target damage than without it and realistically our mob control should be just fine already. It would really hurt our ability to damage bosses so I'd advise staying away from it.

Thanks again for all your help.

survivability are now much better. With a totem, it sure attracks mobs so I have an additionnal chance to clear all that mess before to be hurted. But even without the totem, with my capped resist, it gives me a good chance.

For the boots, it just dropped for me. I didn't buy them. I only bought gloves, belt and Doryani's Catalyst (the cheapest one, but still).

I swipped my shield and my wands gems setup, so now my Spell totem is in Doryani's. But I don't really see any difference with the 20 Ele proliferation

For the bosses, yeah sometimes in the map, even the low level ones, the bosses are just too powerful. Sometimes it 1 hits me, or 2 hits back to back so I don't have the time to get away.
I still only have 2k4 life, maybe it's the main problem..
But, it's a great idea to use vaal summon meat ^^

For the crafting, I don't really know how it works. I just had my hideout and I'm still discovering benefits about all of that. As I said, I didn't play for months

My flasks

To be honest, I didn't put attention on that.

But now, I'm totally confused. Should we use the Perkar's build ? If our build is based on the freeze chance, should we take nodes that give freeze chance ?
If yes, then we should take lightning damage nodes and freeze chances, splitting the nodes we have ... Is it still interresting ? Is there any advantage to make Arc to freeze with Three Dragons instead of simply use Freezing pulse or something like that ? Because, we loose the "10% chance to shock" of arc ..

I don't know, I'm confused haha


What I understood, it's we have to use Pyre if we don't want to loose all our shock chance.. But I'm still wondering if the Perkar's build would be more effective..


EDIT : I bought Pyre (2 chaos) and I can't tell if I shock or not. When I kill mobs without freezing, the corpses are not electrified, ever. And Herald of Ice is on

Oh there is definitely still reason to use 3D with Arc. Arc+3D is the BEST way to freeze.

If someone can post a screen of a cold skill that does 4000 dmg non-crit in one AoE hit, I might change my mind. Seriously. Grab those freeze chance/duration nodes. Get all the crit chance/mult you can. Put leftover in health/lightning dmg and game over.

A bit of proof if you want

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMyqiaDGdOU

and that isn't even my final form :P

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perkar wrote:

Oh there is definitely still reason to use 3D with Arc. Arc+3D is the BEST way to freeze.

If someone can post a screen of a cold skill that does 4000 dmg non-crit in one AoE hit, I might change my mind. Seriously. Grab those freeze chance/duration nodes. Get all the crit chance/mult you can. Put leftover in health/lightning dmg and game over.

A bit of proof if you want

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMyqiaDGdOU

and that isn't even my final form :P

May i have a look at your items?