[1.3] ✭✭ Nova Witch ✭✭ - dual Apep's Rage (a tribute to d2 nova sorc)

Hey guys and welcome to my Nova Witch build.
There were times I teleported through Diablo 2 cow levels and baal chambers with my cute sorc and killed everything with my devasting nova combination. I always liked this kind of playstyle and tried to do something similiar in Path of Exile. Furthermore I like making builds around uniqs which are not often used...
Here I want to show you how to use and sustain dual Apep's Rage Wands in a strong combination with Ice Nova, Arctic Breath, Eldritch Battery, Cloak of Defiance, Rime Gaze and Herald of Ice + Thunder.



The patch 1.3 provided us the opportunity to get the reduced mana cost of skills nodes from the tree. Here I picked up to 43% reduced mana cost of skills to sustain dual wielding Apeps Rage. You still got the drawback of 37% increased mana cost from skills by using them both, but the high mana pool of Eldritch Battery, % manaregen from gear and passiv and aswell the manaleech from Warlord Marks let you easily sustain the manacosts.
Apeps Rage provides you with a lot of flat added chaos damage and the highest cast speed of all wands. By picking up as many fast cast nodes and increased aoe radius in the tree and from gear, you're maximizing your Ice Nova and Arctic Breath damage strongly! Acrtic Breath linked with lmp or gmp provides us a very nice singletarget nuke, thanks to the shotgun effect. Mind over Matters from the Cloak of Deviance gives us the additional tankiness.
Herold of Thunder linked with curse on hit + Warlords Mark + Frostbite + reduced Mana gives us enough sustain to teleport right in a group of mobs and start casting Nova. Therefor you need a 5l, thats why I putted them into my Cloak of Defiance.
Ice Nova gets placed into a Rime Gaze, which gives us all we need. Nice amount of es, 10% cold damage, mana and the lvl 15 concentraded effect gem. So we use Ice Nova + Spellecho + Faster Casting + Cold Penetration + (concentraded effect).
I placed the bossnuke skill Arctic Breath into my boots and provided it with Spellecho + LMP + concentraded effect.
For teleporting around like in the old d2 times, I use Lightning Warp + faster casting + reduced duration. Thanks to the very high fastcast rate, the playstyle of the build is f**king fast and makes somuch fun!!!
In the Maligaros gloves I use the classical setup with cwdt + immortal call + increased duration + Arctic Armor (you can manually switch it on or off).

Videos


My Gear


Skilltree



If there are some people interssted in my build, I can extend my guide and give you some more detailed informations.

Thanks for reading and feel free to ask!

up

Liking it man,like the idea of it.

I really Liked your build but how's the crit chance? I prefer to take a more CC aproach with ice nova

And why not use a carcass jack with this build?

Like ur build!

1 question, how does ur arctic armour/increase duration trigger with lvl 1 CWTD?
Or do u just use CWTD for immortal call and activily cast AA when needed?

"

Fveras wrote:

I really Liked your build but how's the crit chance? I prefer to take a more CC aproach with ice nova

And why not use a carcass jack with this build?

I got a crit chance of almost 30%. I just specced into crit for chance to freeze and shock. It also adds a nice amount of damage, but you need to get enough suvivability via the gear and tree instead of focusing more into crit in my opinion!

I decided to use Cloak of Defiance instead of Carcass for the surviability. I like to teleport into groups and start spaming icenova with the crazy amount of castspeed and chance to freeze this build offers. But sometimes you get damaged and cant stand this with a usual caster specc/gear. Therefor the synergy of Mind over Matters from the cloak + Eldritch Battery of the tree provides us with enough defense.

"

1 question, how does ur arctic armour/increase duration trigger with lvl 1 CWTD?
Or do u just use CWTD for immortal call and activily cast AA when needed?

The Arctic Armor gets not triggerd in the cwdt setup, so you can use it manually. I just placed it there, because I had no other gem slots left...
By using Warlords Mark, you always generate endurance charges, thats why I dont need a endurance cry gem in my cwdt-setup


It's nice to hear that you guys like my build!


greetings

awesome build ! Using Rim Gaze to simulte a 5L Nova is a great idea! also i love how youve used the skin transfer mtx ;)

ive never seen a d2 nova sorc, is there a video on youtube for comparison ? XD

just a few comments:

you dont actually need reduced mana on your HoT, it only needs 25% of mana anyways, and you still will have plenty of mana left. That means you could run a third curse with the help of windscream boots - so running assassins mark on top of warlods and frostbite could be really beneficial for your dps and crit chance.

how much did you pay for 2 apeps?

concerning the cost of the build, it seems pretty damn effective; i cant wait to see you doing higher maps or even atziri?

Also i would like to see your character screen offense/defense, how much of your damage is chaos dmg?

thanks for that, I also love my skin-transfers :)

Sadly I dont have any d2 nova videos, 12 years ago I was not able to record videos...
but I found something similar on youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YE4yVAAQRc8

Its a good idea to get rid of the reduced mana gem and add another curse, I will give it a try... but it will be hard to get maxresis for me

I payed 1ex for every apeps, so all in all 2ex

When I have some time and not at work, I will provide you with more detailed informations concerning offensive/defensiv screenshots and so on.

up

oh man, i miss doing cow runs with my nova sorc... or selling rushes :P so fast, so fun! may have to give this a shot... have an old sc witch laying around with a free respec from forever ago...

thanks :)