[Cold-CI-Build] Freenzy Pulse !
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Hello,
I'm here to share the build i'm currently playing with my witch. Maybe there is already some threads related to this build (which is I think something classic) but I didn't read all pages of this forum :) Before showing you the Passive Talent Tree, I will explain you which skill I used, and why, and the orientation of the character. (By the way, sorry for possible mistakes!) " Before starting this character, I had these things in mind : - Offense : use frost spells to freeze my targets - While the mobs are frozen, having a fast ES recovery speed will help to survive - So, using ES as main defensive ability. So, Chaos Inoculation is the way to go (immunity to chaos damage, but 1hp. Save me a lots of HP nodes, and life/chaos resist on the gear!). - Maximize the chance to freeze the targets : more crits, and more spell => fast casting. " Freezing Pulse (damage/control)
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Your main, if only, damaging skill. Very efficient in multi-targets, really decent in mono-target.
The %quality on this skill adds Projectile Speed. See Faster projectile for details, it helps a lot! If you can have a 15%+Q Freezing pulse, you can skip the Faster Projectile support gem. Support -Lesser Multiple Projectiles / Greater Multiple Projectiles* : More projectiles. You can hit multiple time the same target with one spell => resulting more damage, and more chance to freeze the target ! -Faster Projectile : Works really great with Freezing Pulse : in fact, the %projectile speed will increase the effective range of the spell. You can hit things out of the screen with Faster Projectile ! -Added Lightning damage : Adds lightning damage to the attack. Lot of crits => lot of shocks stack. Nice combo ! Works better with GMP. -Added Chaos damage : Adds chaos damage to attacks. More raw dps than Lightning damage. -Fast casting : More spells, more frozen targets, more damage ! MOAR ! -Cold penetration : The best support to multiply your DPS. Multiplicative with all your other %spell/cold damage. -Mana leech : to be able to sustain this skill with a high cast speed ! -Critical strike chance : More crit chance, for more freeze/damage. *LMP vs GMP
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Ok, let's talk.
LMP will give you 2 additionals projectiles, with as drawback 30% less damage and 150% Mana cost increase. GMP will give you 5 additionals projectiles, with as drawback 50% less damage and 200% Mana cost increase. However, the spread of the projectiles of GMP is higher than the spread of LMP. So hitting a target with more than 3 projectiles is hard. Maybe if you are really on close combat with the mob, but this is not somewhere you like to be as a witch ! One other thing : the indoors fights. I hate doors. A lot. It is really annoying to see how Freezing Pulse works (or, to be honnest, don't work) with doors. Half of the time, the spell is not able to spread on the other room, it is "blocked" by the open door. When it works, you will only see one pulse hits the targets on the other side. If you use GMP, this pulse will do less damage. And, the manacost increase by GMP is very hard to sustain. So to be honnest,  I'm not convinced. EDIT : However, I've lvled a GMP and used it with manaleech. Seems legit for the moment, I will try to grind some level and switch back to LMP after this, and try to make some comparisons). Ice Spear (control/damage)
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600% crit chance in second form ? Hell yeah !
Your ability to freeze things to death. So when I'm casting Freezing pulse you're going to say ? Hey, but.. Spell Totem ! Support -Spell Totem : Cast your totem aroud you (or even in the middle of a pack of mobs) and see this little devil freeze your opponents. -Elemental Proliferation : A f*cking must-have in this combination. Really impressive to see how many mobs your spell totem can freeze on one hit with the proliferation. Something like the half of the screen ! -Lesser Multiple Projectiles : Add more spears, more chance to hit/freeze a target, condition which would spread with the proliferation. C-C-Combo ! Why not adding a Fast Cast support Gem ? Well, not mandatory. Especially with the next ability ! Ice Spear as a main ability ?
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Why not using Ice Spear instead of Freezing Pulse as main damage ability ?
- Freezing pulse will hit more targets (a lot more targets) : you will clean areas faster with freezing pulse. - The manacost of Ice Spear is higher than Freezing Pulse (much harder to have enough mana regen will all support gems) - The damage on close mobs (first form) is *boarf*. And the animation of Freezing Pulse is way much cooler :D Blood Rage (self-buff)
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Self buff, you will gain 4% physical life leech, and more damage when low life.
You suffer a loss of 4% of you HP by second, as Chaos Damage. BUT, you will earn an Frenzy Charge for each mobs you kill during the buff duration. (performing a kill will reset the buff duration. This build is using Chaos Inoculation, so there is no drawback. There is no mana reservation, like an aura. Even if the first part is usless for us, 5% Fast cast per charge is nice. Very nice, in fact. With this build, i have 5 charges, so 25% fastcast (for the comparison, see Haste, for 40% manareservation you will only have 14% fastcast at lvl 20...). Keep this spell lvl 1. The only thing you need here is Frenzy charges. Support -Fast Cast : The only support that could help. You will cast this spell frequently, so casting it faster is nice. The manacost is low (lvl1), so reduced mana is worstless. Why not Increased Duration ? Because the increase duration will work only on the initial buff, not on the buff duration reset you have when you kill a mob. So, useless. Frostbite (debuff)
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Debuff cold resist (even if the cold penetration is better in term of efficiency on high resist, this skill is great), and more freeze chance. Must have for a frost build !
Support -Increased duration : Could help on boss ! -Reduced mana : to spare some mana. Not the most effective choice, but if you have a free slot with your auras... Frostbite vs Critical weakness ?
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The %Critical strike chance given by Critical Weakness is not better than the %freeze chance from frostbite.
And the resistance debuff will give you more damage than the critical chance + damage, especially versus high cold resists mobs. Frost Wall (control/utility)
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I like my walls. They are indestructibles, saving my asses a lot of time, intercepting some spells (like fireballs), helping for kitting a mob, usefull to split a boss from these allies (hi, Elemental Reflect!) to be able to kill it, etc.
Too short at first, but will increase with lvls. Currently at 3.2s duration, it is great. Support -Increased Duration : Mandatory for this spell. If possible, %quality on Increased duration. (each %quality is equivalent to 1 lvl of the gem. This is a pure strength gem, so... Lightning Warp (utility)
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Good utility spell to avoid a death-in-a-corner. And usefull to travel quickly on some areas !
Support -Faster Casting : when you want to use this skill, you want to use it fast ! So, FastCast could not harm on this spell. Clarity (aura)
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MAN-DA-TO-RY. The best aura in the game for mana-users. And this build will burn your manapool into nothing in seconds. Yess, 4 pulse / second with something like a manacost of 70 per spell... 280 mana/s... you definitively need a LOT of mana regeneration.
Support -Reduced Mana : will save you a LOT of your manapool. The pool is not that important (the regeneration is better) but having a pool allow you to compensate a lack of regeneration. Discipline (aura)
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Using the Energy Shield, this gives you an equivalent on a great ES gear piece. Mandatory as Chaos Inoculation player (the Energy Shield is your life!), unless you have a kick-god-ass stuff.
Support -Reduced Mana : will save you a LOT of your manapool. The pool is not that important (the regeneration is better) but having a pool allow you to compensate a lack of regeneration. " We are using Blue, Green and Red gems. Blue would not be an issue (you start as a witch) but Green & Red, yes. GREEN : You need to level cold penetration, lesser multiple projectiles, faster projectiles. Each of them give you a little bonus, but all together justify putting some DEX nodes. RED : For the strength, you will need extra Might node only for Reduced mana or Increased duration (spell totem doesn't have an heavy requirement). Worth it or not ? You will need to calculate this with your gear (for exemple, is a level in reduced mana more effective than 8%mana, etc). I choose to do it, it cost only 3 points on the build for a +80 str. bonus I don't like to rely on the stats on my gear to allow me to level my gems. It is very frustrating to don't be able to swap a gear piece because of this. This is my choice, but you can just save some nodes by using your gear for these requirements. Strength : ~110/120 Dex : ~110/120 " AAaaah, build. Yes. Now we know which skills we are going to use, which support gem we will need to level, which kind of stats we need, it would be possible to think about a build. Not before. This is my build : lvl ~70 : Frost CI Build - Freenzy Pulse ! Build Appendice 1 - Bandits
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Normal : 8%@ / 40 Mana / 1 Passive skill points. Your call. I'm using the 8%@, because I'm a Anya-lover ;)
Cruel : 4% Fast Cast. More efficient than a skill point. Your goal ! Merciless : 1 Frenzy charge (~5% fast cast). Moar ! " You need : - %mana regeneration - Energy Shield gear - +mana - @Elemental resistance (goal : 75@ ASAP) - %crit chance When you are hitting 30% critchance on Freezing pulse with a mana-stable base, you can search for spelldamage, cast speed, etc ! " I'm playing softcore, so this build is not optimal for an HC-toon. I think it could be easy to adapt, by taking more %ES node (and sooner). But it will work. " The strength of this character : - Fun to play (a lot of skill to use in a fight) - Nervous (fast cast, keeping the charges up, etc) - Brutal (you will freeze thing to death very quickly) - Kitting-master with frost & walls for annoying elites. The weaknesses of the build : - Having some trouble with Merveil in Merciless... but that's it (I wasn't using spell totem at this time, so the P1 was very hard.) - The damage output of a lightning spec will be higher (thanks shock). But he, wen can't have all the candies, right ? ;) Hope you enjoy this guide, I will try to keep it "on date" and add some leveling info & vidz :) Don't hesitate to post, and help me to find more optimizations for this build ! See ya o/ Last edited by Felkor on Feb 15, 2013, 7:52:30 AM
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Ergh, unable to post : i Have a character ' [ newline ' inserted from nowhere... Works in preview but not in submit :( any idea ?
EDIT : Ok, found why, the forum doesn't support the list module :( Last edited by Felkor on Feb 11, 2013, 10:24:58 AM
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" Heh, I had the same problem. :) | |
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thx for sharing your build looks great
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What is your main weapon and what equipment are you using , thanks for sharing the build
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I see you skipped over 'throatseeker' passive (crit multiplier). Have you done comparison's between crit multiplier and attack speed to see which comes out on top?
Also, like the previous post, I would like to see what equipment you're using with this build. Thanks for the build! | |
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@beemac : I've skipped it because it was not something I see as a mandatory.
=> More crits = more chance to freeze. => More fast cast speed = more spells, then more crits = more chance to freeze. But, let's try some maths. Assuming the following stats : 1000dmg per attack 2 Attacks per second 0% fast cast 30% crit chance (on the spell, not stats/nodes) 100% crit multiplier. Your dps will be (ignoring ennemy resistance) : Damage * Attack_per_second * ( 1 + ( Crit_Multiplier * Crit_Damage ) ) <=> 1000*2*(1+(1*0,3)) = 2600 dps. Now : I'm adding 10% crit damage here : 1000*2*(1+(1,1*0,3)) = 2660 dps. I'm adding 10% cast speed here : 1000*2,2*(1+(1*0,3)) = 2860 dps The castspeed, as the critmultiplier, are additive, so +1% castspeed will give you the same dps increase when you have 0% castspeed or 100%. Same thing with critmultiplier. We can easily agree to say that 1% castspeed > 1% crit damage. But we have, for 5 points, 70% critmultiplier (Throatseeker). For 5 points, we have 16% castspeed (Nimblness + 2*3%castspeed). 70% CritMultiplier : 1000*2*(1+(1,7*0,3)) = 3020 dps. 16% CastSpeed : 1000*2,32*(1+(1*0,3)) = 3016 dps. All of this is done considering 30% critrate on the spell. With an higher critrate, the crit multiplier will scale better. For exemple, with 50% critrate, 70% critmultiplier will give you 3700dps, for 3480dps for 16% fastcast. As you can see, for 5 points, we have approximatively the same dps increase. But I really enjoy the fast cast. More fun to play, and it gives you some survival : Easier to cast a totem, (and your totem will cast more icespear => more frozen targets), a wall or something like that :) And, by the way Throatseeker is not defintitevely skipped. Would be my next target after gathering all %castspeed nodes ! During 70 => 80 :) @Quazzo This is my current gear :
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Not optimal. I'm trying GMP now, and changed Faster Attacks with Mana Leech. Works great, I will remove some manaregen ! (Change my build in this way, spare 4 node points => here). Need a 6 slots to adds Faster projectiles & Cold Penetration :-] Last edited by Felkor on Feb 14, 2013, 2:20:52 PM
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The spread on Freezing Pulse (and fireball, ice spear and probs all other projectile skills) with GMP/LMP depends on how far are you aiming at, so as long as you keep the mouse pointer on the edge of the screen, shotgunning with GMP is ridiculously easy. With the same logic, if you want to have a huge spread, keep the pointer close to your char.
IGN: Jid
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" but ice spear does not work with spell totem, at least for me. do u mean ranged attack totem? what am i doing wrong about how spell totem does not work with ice spear? these are the items i tried using both for ice spear(free cast) and ice spear totem. why does ice spear not work with my spell totem? obviously im using ice nova on the totem for now because i cant get ice spear to work. ty Last edited by pantsb0t on Feb 19, 2013, 4:56:50 AM
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really nice guide! It helped me a lot building a new frost witch^^
But i got one question, since you use CI and bloodrage, wouldn´t it be great to use also the passive skill node "Ghost Reaver"? With BloodRage you have a Lifeleech of 4%, or was it 5%? xD So Ghostreaver would be great i think, cause of the Energy Shield "Leech" then? What do you think? Will it work? best Regards Edit: Bloodrage leeches only "physical Damage" back. Damn it!! would be so nice xDD But still i think it´s possible with "Global Leech" skills or items, or? Last edited by xXStormXx on Feb 20, 2013, 10:38:31 AM
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