[1.3] Snap Crackle Pop - Low Life Cold Snapper (no shav/lorica)

Start of Video at Double Vaal

Jump to Trio

Jump to Atziri

Tanking 5 Viper Strikes in 75 vulnerability map

Soloing Bameth, Chaos Beyond Unique, in descrated 76 map

Shipyard

Shrine

Desecrated Necropolis

I use two cold snaps. One is used for AoE and crowd control (freezing prolif) and the other is used dpsing down bosses/rares.
DPS Cold Snap :

Prolif Cold Snap

Unreserved Life: 842 out of 2627


So I want to talk about the viability of low life with chaos resist is. The non low life builds I normally play end up with -60% chaos or at most like -25% and yet they survive the common sources of chaos dmg in maps. -60% chaos resist characters take 6.4x more damage than someone with maxed chaos resist. My 868 unreserved life pool effectively acts like a 5500 life pool character with -60% resists. On top of that life regeneration also are 6.4x more effective. One instant flask heals my ENTIRE life pool instead of just 1/4 or 1/5 of it. My 82 life/s regen also acts as 500+ life/s for a -60% character which is pretty ridiculous. Life regen on gear is suddenly not useless. 7 life/s on that chest that bricks the price suddenly gives 45 life/s which is the same as 1% regen for someone with 4500 life. I get absolutely 0 degen from desecrated ground and very little from those poison alchemists. Strongbox poison clouds and a large # of viper strikes are the only chaos damage I'm afraid of.

After playing this build from 65 to 86, I have to say that I rarely feel in danger from chaos dmg. I think the ONLY dangerous part of a chaos resistance low life build is how visually small your life pool is. Your life pool might be functionally large against chaos, but you have fewer pixels to use to notice you're taking damage.

There is no leveling guide. If you can't comfortably get to maps without a guide then this build probably isn't for you. If you want to minimize respecing, use a cold spell (FP, glacial cascade). If you want to level as low life check out this guide. I've never tried personally but it looks solid and fun.

Bandits - Always kill

With Conduit:
Barebones lvl 63
Recommended lvl 89 build

Without Conduit:
Barebones lvl 63
Recommended lvl 88 build

AoE Cold Snap on staff (freeze version): Cold snap - AoE - Prolif - Cold Pen - Conc Effect - Empower

Dps Cold Snap (on chest): Cold snap - Conc Effect - Spell Echo - Cold Pen - Faster Casting

For bosses, I sometimes switch to pure dps on staff: Cold Snap - Empower - Spell Echo - Cold Pen - Conc Effect - Faster Casting

Self cast curse: Frostbite

CwDT - Enduring Cry - IC - Duration

Auras:
Purity of Ice - *Option* - Discipline - Reduced Mana
*Option* - Clarity - BM - Reduced Mana

Options (Choose 2): Purity of Fire (I dropped this), Purity of Lightning, Herald of Ice

Putting Herald on BM uses less life and might even let you remove reduced mana (depending on your life). Some possible replacements are blind, vaal haste, vaal grace, or vaal discipline. I personally chose to put a purity on BM and herald on mana which gives me a little more breathing space for mana.

Maintaining low life:
A lot of variables come into play for getting lowlife. You can vary a # of things to achieve lowlife (<35% life):
-Level of Clarity
-Level of BM
-Level of Reduced mana
-Reduced Reservation from tree
-Life on gear / tree / levels

Remember to check your lowlife status each time level, respec a passive, or change gear!
Remember you can drop a gem level by vendoring it with a scouring orb!

Here's my current gear:


How to gear up:

Required:
Romira's Banquet for PC generation
Lori's Lantern helps every part of this build but we particularly need it for light radius and chaos resist.

Staff:
If you're on a budget, grab a Taryn's Shiver. 4L is enough to get going, but the more the merrier. If you can splurge the ideal would have +3 to cold gems, spell dmg, cold dmg, cast speed, mana regen.

Helm:
The Broken crown is really cheap and really good for chaos resist. The Vertex has better ES if you can afford it and I also use it to push clarity / herald of ice one more level. If you are even richer, get a high ES rare with chaos resist.

For the rest (chest, ammy, belt, gloves, boots):
Cap your resists (including chaos, you probably only need 50% at this point)
Get enough dex to use skills (108 will give you all lvl 20 gems)
Get enough life so you don't get stunned/frozen at every hit (at least 2k)
As much ES as you can get your hands on
Rest is up to you (spell dmg, cold dmg, cast speed, mana, mana regen, and remember life regen's not useless!)

Budget uniques right now in torment can all be bought for a total of 1.5ex. Another 20-30c is enough to gear up to something functional. Only about 50 elemental resist on each item is needed to cap you out (less if you're running all 3 purities). You only need about 40 chaos total between the non-uniques to cap that out as well. You should be able to hit 4.5k ES with absolute crap gear. It's not pretty but you can definitely run with it. I had 4.5ES when i switched into lowlife and the freezing gave me enough measure of safety.

Flasks:

Ideally I'd like to switch the eternal into a seething divine life flask of dousing. Another option is Doedre's elixir as it offers a convenient way to get a PC on the off chance you miss your first cold snap. I personally think the miss is pretty rare so I don't use this.

Use your prolif cold snap for crowd control and once everyone's frozen use the dps cold snap to kill. The more you use the prolif cold snap, the safer you'll be but the slower you'll be clearing. Find a nice balance. If your ES gets low just only use prolif cold snap until you start to regen.

Some notes about freeze proliferation:
-Remember that shattered corpses don't proliferate. If you kill everyone that's proliferating the freeze then everyone can attack you again. Because of this, I generally don't cold snap on the same exact place twice in a row.
-Along the same lines, try to keep as many whites/blues alive during boss fights so you have something to proliferate freezes from if you can't directly freeze the boss. You should be able to directly freeze most bosses.
-You can prefreeze strongboxes. Lure some monsters close to the strongbox and freeze them before opening. Everything pops out frozen.

Things to be wary of (that are special to this build):
-Missing your first cold snap sucks. Just suck it up and wait or if you're in trouble, tp out.
-High map level poison cloud strongboxes are scarier to me than ice nova.
-While desecrate might functionally do damage to you, it'll still stop ES from regening
-Avoid degen effects in general as they keep damage on you and stop regen (particularly ignite). This is one reason why you should get at least one staunching and one dousing flask.
-Be extra careful of reflect. You have 0 leech and 0 regen while you're fighting a reflect.
-If you're running on budget (and thus have shitty ES), be extra careful to freeze or dodge those gap closers. High phys dmg is this build's biggest threat especially at low ES.

The faster ES recharge start nodes are only in the recommended build but are ABSOLUTELY necessary if you want to run Atziri. All the bosses simply dish out WAY too much damage too consistently for you to get 6 seconds of peace to recharge. Vaal discipline also offers some emergency ES regen. At minimum, I'd say get 2 vaal disciplines. I personally drop conc effect and frostbite on chest for it.

For gems, go full dps mode on the staff. Leave your chest for some freeze prolif. This will be helpful for trash mobs in double vaal and trio.

These fights WILL be hard especially if you haven't run atziri on another character. In the end practice makes perfect. I've now completed numerous deathless runs now (After a LOT of practice) as well as deathless runs without using any of my vaal disciplines, so it can be done. If your goal however is to find a build that runs atziri safely/fast/efficiently I definitely would not suggest this one.

Dealing with Double Vaal:
Nothing particularly special to this fight. If you didn't know, try get both bosses low before killing one as the other enrages. Also, run CCW around the entire stage when trying to regen. It's the easiest way to avoid the ball lightning. Hopefully you have purity of lightning as well as flasks to mitigate damage. Try to keep the summons under control. The more there are out, the harder it is to regen.

Dealing with Trio:
Order: Titty bitches - Enrager - Cycloner
Try to kill titty/enrager AS CLOSE TO THE CENTER AS POSSIBLE. This is huge for helping us out in the end. Titty bitches will naturally be near the center, but if you kill the enrager at the edge, you have a permanent spot for degen that'll shaft your ES recharge. Make sure you have at least 2 staunching flasks to deal with bleeding. Also keep an eye on the cycloner's chaos damage. You won't ever be in danger as long as you're aware of your lifepool.

Dealing with Atziri:
I personally completely drop my entire chest's gems for vaal disciplines. I charge them throughout the entire map. If you charge efficiently throughout the map, you should have be able to get 1 use in vaal, 2 uses in trio, and still have 5 up for atziri.

For split, focus on the flameblaster. Your chill/freeze actually works during this phase which helps immensely. If you can position yourself outside of stormcalls you can abuse the freezing to really dps her down. You won't permafreeze but it'll be enough to make her stutter making avoiding the flameblasts pretty trivial (comparatively). The puncture you'll have to tank. When you get low either run around and dodge until regen or vaal discipline.

For the summons, swap out faster casting for AoE. Should be straightforward assuming you have enough dps. Sadly they don't get chilled/frozen.

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