[2.2 Whispering Ice, Lowlife, Pure Unique wearer 1900+ Int, updated]

First order of business is to head over to deep thoughts and elemental overload for easier leveling

Around this point you can start using whispering ice and the Int from gear should carry you in damage so go down towards Forsight, leadership and then up to influence

Next we head to grab Charisma and grab the socket along the way for more Int

Primal Spirit is good for the mana regen and you pick up pain attunment and arcane vision whenever you go lowlife, we get practical application around this time as well to reduce stuns that occur

Now you can grab the damage nodes. The two notables in shadow and templar are best because they give Int as well as damage stats

Lastly is the AOE nodes, path of the savant and the misc jewels along with the +30 dex nodes that will become Int after the jewel socket converts them. At this point you should have a feel for what you want first

So with 2.0.2 the duration of ice storm was cut by 1/3 for people running high levels of Int and no %increased duration.

Stacking duration will lead to a longer storm then previously but now the build really need to get some % duration which previously it didn't need to so its a nerf.

Here is my current level 100 skill tree

It drops avatar of fire since temp chains + chill combo was nerfed and getting the freezes back helps the build still be very cc heavy.

This change makes fire penetration only work at roughly 70% effectiveness. Against really tanky bosses the increased duration gem will be more effective. For bosses that die within 6 seconds before the extra storms could be stacked up anyway fire penetration is still the best option.

Avatar of fire is still the best damage option. Most people still use it and it might still be better. I just miss freezing and its easy to swap back and forth

I'm currently running the fire version of this build. So far I'm very happy with the results. It has more damage then previously as the cold to fire gem now has a juicy 30% more mutiplyer and 20% increased damage quality bonus. Also the snowforged node in the tree double dips for 50% increased damage in 1 node. Big damage increase from before.

Current Gear/gems

Tree

Videos

Int Calculation

Flasks

Bandits

Alternate Item options

Math Time!
Since 100% of our damage is cold damage with avatar of fire and cold to fire support gem we get full effectiveness from all cold damage and fire damage increases.
The cold to fire gem got huge buffs in 2.0 gives a 30% more damage at level 20 and 20% increased damage at quality 20. This alone was what made me look into using it as those numbers are really really solid for a support gem. The next best gems for a non crit icestorm being added cold damage, Iron Will and Increased duration which would all give a fair amount less damage then cold to fire.

Next we look at the efficient nodes in the tree we can now take

Fire Walker 18% damage
Snowforged cluster 33% increased fire damage and 43% increased cold damage both of which apply at full effect with full conversion.

This is then 18 + 33 + 43 = 94% increased damage for 5 nodes (avatar of fire, fire walker and 3 snowforged nodes) as well as 30% crit and 18% fire resistance.

Lets compare that to getting Heart of ice, for simplicity sake we'll say that we don't need to spend that extra travel node to get to it and 30% crit and 18% fire resistance is equal to 3% cold penetration. (3% cold penetration is pretty good but you'd need to sacrifice some points somewhere to make up that 18% fire resistance which would cancel that out)

So heart of Ice which is considered pretty much the best cold damage nodes is 10 + 12 + 12 + 12 +25 =
71% increased damage for 5 nodes

94 - 71 = 23 so be going avatar of fire we becomes 23% increased spell damage more efficient.

Adding this into the value of cold to fire gem it becomes 30% more and 43% increased spell damage as a gem choice. Currently I don't see a better damage option as a support gem.

Another thing is that due to the tiny increased mana cost of cold to fire 110% we can worry less about reserving almost all of our mana. Swapping to a higher cost support gem is likely to cost us a couple of points in the tree into mana regen which would also be at the opportunity cost of getting more ES/damage even more leading the math into cold to fire's favour.

If you were to use cold to fire without avatar of fire to get the damage but still shatter then, these numbers would all get lowered due to the new math without 100% conversion. The biggest factor is your penetration gem would be reduced in effectiveness, I'm not certain how much of a damage loss you would see here as its really tricky to quantify how much damage the penetration gem is giving at full value and only 70ish% value. Either way I wouldn't recommend dropping the penetration gem as its the biggest damage gem out there for bosses.

Arguments against avatar of fire:

"I could go crit" Yup if you go crit then a critical damage gem is better then cold to fire. Just gotta find that fire resistance somewhere. Probably a Jewel.

"I like to freeze and shatter" Totally legitimate. I do miss the shattering, at my damage level I felt like killing everything in one echoed cast was more important then a freeze since they wouldn't hit me after getting caught in the storm anyway but I do admit to satisfying sound of shattering.

This choice was to maximise my damage efficiency but make sure to maximise your FUN! :)

Mapping Damage w/o Conc effect

Boss Damage with Conc effect

Defensive stats

Through discipline a 6% aura effectiveness node grants more ES than a 6% increased ES node because this is flat ES that then goes through our massive %ES scaling from our high Int total.

Knowing that the best defensive option is to get all the easily available increased aura effectiveness nodes from around the tree.

With all the reduced mana reserved we can also run all 4 purities to make our resistances shoot up to nearly capped just from auras. With a Shavron's wrappings for lightning resistance and the walker nodes in my tree we only need 5% more cold and fire resistance from a jewel to be capped at 81% all resist letting all our gear be whatever we want it to be and letting us choose the biggest ES and damage gear without need to worry about covering resistances

The current setup is https://poe.mikelat.com/#_rmMR1/kDpKz9W/z75hkVb/86LBSxb
However there is many alternative setups if you drop empower and play around with where things are. I do recommend this setup though as flat levels on discipline gives very significant levels of ES. (Note that the enlighten gem is not actually level 4 but getting +1 from being in the Vertex)

81% all resistances is a very high total for any build so you will feel very tanky against elemental damage of all kinds.

Some people have swapped herald of ice for arctic armour and I understand that choice. I don't feel like its needed though and its a big damage loss. The flat damage from herald of ice isn't that huge but the 15% global cold damage from its 20% quality version makes all the difference