[1.3] The Frozen Shotgun - Ice Shot, HoI, shatter the world

This build was never intended to be the best clear speed. Depending on the circumstances, and with good gear, it can actually clear packs delightfully quickly, but do not expect it to clear like a crit, Herald of Ash prolif, or Tornado Shot/Puncture build. That’s not the point and I’m okay with that!

AoE attack links:
Ice Shot + Weapon Elemental Damage + Pierce + Added Cold Damage + Elemental Proliferation (+ Cold Penetration)

I previously used Physical Projectile Attack Damage instead of Pierce here for even higher top-end cold damage for freeze chance/duration. Pierce seems to give overall faster clearing speeds since freezing white/blue packs shouldn't be a problem anyway. Only danger of Pierce is that you're more likely to off-screen an ele reflect pack before you can see it.

Single target attack links:
Ice Shot + Weapon Elemental Damage + Faster Attacks + Added Cold Damage + Cold Penetration (+ Physical Projectile Attack Damage)

Auras:
Reduced Mana + Clarity + Purity of Ice (+ Blink Arrow) (currently in my helm)
Reduced Mana + Herald of Ice + Added Cold Damage + Increased Area of Effect (currently in my gloves)



Standard Cast when Damage Taken setup:
Cast when Damage Taken + Enduring Cry + Immortal Call + Increased Duration (currently in my boots)

This is mostly protection against those insta-death occurrences like charging mobs, a horde of dropbears, etc, although most of the time they’ll be frozen before they get to you and you can happily walk a few steps to the side and continue blasting away.

Skill Tree:
here.

• Normal - Help Oak for +40 Max Life
• Cruel - Help Oak for 18% physical damage or kill all three for the skill point
• Merciless - Kill all three for the skill point

Damage:
It’s important to keep in mind that the tooltip damage in this build is misleading. For packs, Herald of Ice does a massive chunk of (overlapping) area damage and the tooltips don’t take into account the 25% increased damage to frozen targets from Celestial Punishment, 5% cold damage penetration from the skill tree, or the 30%+ additional cold penetration support on the single target Ice Shot. The Ice shot cone damage is also boosted by the 20% from the tree and 12% from Carcass, which isn't shown on the tooltip (initial projectile) damage.

At level 77, with some gems sitting at only level 12 (e.g. faster attacks on the single target attack and added cold on the aoe attack), and without having picked up Catalyse yet, this was my tooltip damage:




Defenses:
Your only real defense is keeping everything frozen, chilled, and slowed--that said, it's surprisingly difficult to die, even with my relatively low life pool. That said, this build was played on Torment and I have died at least once while mapping.

Uniques:
Asphyxia’s Wrath - Important for the 20% physical to cold conversion and up to 10% chance to freeze. The chill duration is nice, but generally things will just be frozen anyway. While I originally planned on using a corrupted one with an extra 10-20% physical to cold damage conversion, it’s worth noting that in packs, you’re already getting 100% cold damage conversion in the cone part of your Ice Shot, so this would give you a bit better freezes on your primary target (or in single target situations when there are not smaller monsters around). I am currently using one with +1 arrow for just a little better coverage and often overlap on the resulting cones (and that double-barrel shotgun feel!), but 1% cold damage leech could be another possible alternative that I haven’t played around with.
Rashkaldor’s Patience - Some much needed Dexterity, solid life and mana, 5% extra chance to freeze, and a sweet 20% increased duration of elemental status ailments on enemies. In addition, the 10% reduced attribute requirements for items helps us with the bow Dexterity requirements. The downside to the amulet is moot since we’re Resolute Technique anyway! This build will function without Rashkaldor's, but it fits in really well.
Carcass Jack - Some solid Energy Shield to boost our mana via Eldritch Battery, life, resists, and the delicious area damage/radius. Carcass Jack isn’t necessary, but it synergizes quite nicely.
Doryani’s Invitation (cold variant) - Some resists, increased cold damage, 10% extra freeze chance during flasks, and a tiny bit of cold leech to keep us topped off most of the time. Doryani's belt is also not mandatory, but the tiny bit of leech will top off small damage and here again it synergizes really well with the build.
Asenath’s Gentle Touch - These are mostly just for the auto-cursing. See below.



Being a Resolute Technique and non-attack-speed-scaled (e.g. ele buzzsaw) build makes getting a great bow relatively cheap, compared to other popular bow builds. We can look for high phys but without attack speed and without regard for crit chance or multi. A slower hard-hitting bow also supports the heavy shotgun burst feel of the playstyle.

We get 35% chance to freeze from the passive tree, along with up to 10% from Asphyxia’s Wrath, 5% from Rashkaldor’s Patience, 10% from Doryani’s Invitation (while a flask is active), and up to 10% from quality on Added Cold. This gives us a total of up to 70% chance to freeze. On top of this we get 60% freeze duration from the passive tree plus 20% from Rashkaldor’s Patience, for 80% total increased freeze duration. Add Temporal Chains as well (see Curses below) and freezes can last quite a long time.

Similarly, for chill, we have 60% increased duration from the passive tree, plus 30-40% from Asphyxia’s Wrath, 20% from Rashkaldor’s Patience, and 40%+ for a level 16+ Added Cold Damage for up to 160%+ chill duration--oh, and things are automatically chilled when (if) they become unfrozen.

You can get an additional 10% freeze and chill duration for your Ice Shot if you feel like getting quality on your Elemental Proliferation.

Asphyxia’s Wrath has the interesting property of decreasing curse radius while transferring curses from slain enemies to a nearby enemy. I considered using a standard curse on hit setup, something like Split Arrow, Chain, Curse on Hit, X, but part of the play style and safety of this build is leading with our Ice Shot to immediately freeze the whole screen. While you could lead with Ice Shot followed by a curse on hit volley and then back to more Ice Shot, I found that the auto curse mechanic given from Asenath’s Gentle Touch actually worked really smoothly. As if things aren’t already slowed down enough from 80%+ freeze duration and 160%+ chill duration, let’s slow them down even more with Temporal Chains--which also gives us an additional huge boost to our freeze duration!

We don’t really get any benefit from the curse transferring mechanic since Herald of Ice generally means if something dies, the explosion will hit (and thus curse) everything around it anyway.

Honestly, I think my dream goal here would be to get a corrupted pair of Asenath’s that also curse Elemental Weakness on hit, and then dip up to Whispers of Doom on the passive tree, corrupt our Rashkaldor’s for +1 curses if we can spare the Dexterity, or work in some Windscream boots.

Initially I wanted to try to work Frostbite into the build for even more freeze chance, however I think the benefits of auto-cursing and the fact that the extra freeze chance is arguably less valuable than just the increased freeze duration that Temporal Chains gives us, makes Asenath’s still quite attractive. If anything, the extra damage from Elemental Weakness on top of Temporal Chains would possibly be as nice as Frostbite’s cold resistance reduction and freeze chance.

I leveled with Ice Shot pretty much from the beginning, as soon as I could use the gem at level 4. You can run your full AoE attack setup in just a 4L Thousand Ribbons, along with Asphyxia’s Wrath (corrupted for +1 arrow if you can) and Death’s Harp for yet another free additional arrow. Since we won’t grab Resolute Technique for a while, the crit from Death’s Harp actually works out pretty well for leveling and compensating a little for the lack of all the freeze chance that you won’t have yet. I used Elreon jewelry and Clarity to delay needing Eldritch Battery or caring about getting ES or mana on gear until higher level, but you can easily grab Deep Thoughts, Soul Siphon, and/or Righteous Decree temporarily if you find yourself struggling with mana at any point.

As far as the skill tree, I started out grabbing Coordination, popping up to Written in Blood, around and down to Heart and Soul, then over to Elementalist and Celestial Punishment. From there you can decide what’s the most important: Resolute Technique as your accuracy starts falling off drastically, Purity of Flesh and Discipline and Training if you feel like you need more life, or start grabbing the cold wheel at the top of the tree for extra damage.

Obviously gear costs will vary widely by league, time within the league, and the current meta.

Rashkaldor’s: ~15c
Asphyxia’s Wrath: 10-15 @ 1 alch + 1 vaal a piece: ~15c
5l Carcass Jack: 2ex
5l slow phys bow: hard to price since they’re not really popular/sold. 10-20c for the bow + linking yourself
Asenath’s Gentle Touch: 1 alch
Doryani’s Invitation: 5c (will drop rapidly in price as more people are farming Atziri--can probably get them for 1-2c by the end of a league)
Rares (helm, rings, boots): Primarily you just need to cover your resists here plus get some life. In all probably only ~5-10c for covering the basics. As with most builds, you can obviously invest a lot more currency into the slots for perks like high +dexterity, %WED, % cold damage, etc.
While quality is nice on your Added Cold gems, it’s not necessary. If you’re short on currency, you can always buy 10-15% gems for cheaper and then work them up over time. Or level some extra in your weapon swap and use the GCP recipe once they hit 20.
Total: 4-6ex, depending on the bow and time in the league.