[2.0] Double Crit Freezing Pulse (Budget and Beginner Friendly!)

Hi, posting my FP build. I played it on Warbands and as of making this guide am level 92. This build uses two Freezing Pulse set ups, one for single target and one for multi target and stacks lots of projectile speed to make Freezing Pulse cover the screen. For defenses the build hopes to freeze everything it touches and everything it can't freeze it wears down with hit and run tactics, surviving many big hits with a large effective health pool and sustaining with ES regen and surgeon flasks.

This build can be done as a Witch, Shadow, or Templar.

Play this build if you like:
That sound when you crit with a spell
That sound when you kill a frozen enemy
Doing lots of damage at medium range
Freezing everything on the screen
The responsive feel of a spell with 0.65 second base cast time

Consider another build if you:
Want to be able to run reflect maps without gimping your damage (consider a Freezing Pulse totems build, IIRC Pohx made a guide for this patch)
Want to be effective against bosses at super long range (consider an Ice Spear build)
Want to be tanky (consider a non-crit Arctic Breath build)
Want to be able to MF or Cull with just a few gear swaps (consider non-crit Ball Lightning)
Want a rock-solid HC build

Stats Screenshots

Note: Just posted these by popular request. I was at less than half this tooltip dps for a long time and still doing well in medium-level maps. Also remember the tooltip for Freezing Pulse lies a little bit because the projectile loses damage as it travels.

Tree

Notes on the tree: Prioritize getting to the clusters of notables in Shadow and Templar and save going for the crit notes for later in the game, like 70+. In particular, I delay the crit cluster north of templar (along with that life/chaos wheel) for late merciless when the crit multiplier and the chaos resistance become more important. Also, I personally didn't get the power charge node near shadow until 91.

Gear


Notes about gear: When buying wands, I look for high crit chance and high projectile speed, and then one or two other useful mods like added cold to spells, spell damage, cast speed and crit multiplier. The reason we go for wands over daggers is the projectile speed which is only available on wands and is not an otherwise easily available stat. It also saves us from having to use faster projectiles on our Freezing Pulse setups.

For the chest piece, it's useful to get a 5L evasion/ES chest because it makes it much easier to color for Freezing Pulse which generally wants multiple green links.

For the amulet and rings you want to try to get offensive stats as they are some of the few body armour pieces that can give offensive stats for casters since you can't get cast speed from gloves like attacking builds can get attack speed.

The unique I am using right now is Geofri's and would consider The Vertex to be a suitable replacement but it's not nearly as cheap. See the uniques spoiler for other uniques worth considering.

Links

Notes about Links: If you are rich it's preferable to have level 4 corrupted empower in the 4L instead of Added Cold, but the latter gets the job done. For the other utility skills, I use Elemental Weakness as my curse because I do a lot of partying, Flame Dash as my mobility skill because it's so responsive, and Flame Golem as my golem because it's free damage. For mana reservation, I use Herald of Ice and Arctic Armour almost all the time. Clarity is used in maps without minus/no regen. I use Purity of Elements in maps with Elemental Weakness instead of either Herald or Arctic Armour. Herald of Thunder is perfectly viable but I don't use it because I don't think it's worth the mana with how much I've invested in cold damage specifically with the cold pen gems and the heart of cold wheel at the top of the skill tree.

Uniques


Flasks

Notes about flasks: Seething Divine essential for emergencies, Surgeon's Eternal of Staunching for countering corrupting blood and puncture, Quicksilver of Heat makes freezing strongboxes doable, the 4th flask is a utility slot that can be replaced depending on the map mops and the Divine Mana Flask of Warding allows you to remove curses 5 times against annoying cursing enemies and in particular hexfont.

Bandits


Videos


Jewels


Maps

nice guide, any notes to bandits?

Also, whats the highest level content you are able to make and what maps are to avoid. Any IIR options?

What about a Void Battery? Could that work or do you need the projectile speed from rares?

Thanks for the guide. I can't wait to try it out.

Here's a thing for you to consider:

Herald of ice + curse on hit + assassin's mark = free power charges without pcoc, because when you shatter-kill packs, you curse them as hoi explosions go off, and then immediately gain power charges.

Obviously, doesn't work vs tough single bosses, unlike pcoc, but it certainly frees up a link in fpulse 5L.

"

opel65 wrote:

nice guide, any notes to bandits?

Also, whats the highest level content you are able to make and what maps are to avoid. Any IIR options?

Edited OP to include bandits, map notes and other stuff.

As for the highest level content, solo it's hard to say as I typically run high level (78+) maps with friends because it's hard to sustain a pool solo so we bring each other along for the XP and loot and just each contribute a chisel to lower the cost per person.

On IIR, I think it's not really suited to IIR but you could do it. The nature of IIR in the game is such that you really want to be stacking IIR and IIQ together for it to be worth it. That said, there are options. For trash mobs, you could run dual wield cameria's mauls on your weapon swap and/or put item rarity in the 5-link. For bosses, I find I can't find uses for all the sockets in my gear (hence the random Raise Spectre) so you could easily run a Flame Totem - Culling Strike - IIR setup somewhere.

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bottlehead93 wrote:

What about a Void Battery? Could that work or do you need the projectile speed from rares?

Personally I value the projectile speed. Freezing Pulse loses damage as it travels so projectile speed increases damage in addition to making it travel crazy far. Also 2 void batteries would be ~35 ex on warbands and my entire character is not even worth 10 ex. Well, maybe it is but still 35 ex for just my weapon slots is a lot. If I had a ton of currency (like 35 ex) I'd try to get a crazy good +2/3 cold eclipse staff with caster stats, 6-link the staff and my chest, run faster projectiles in both 6 links and then spec out of the dual wield nodes and into Serpent Stance. 6-link in the staff would be the single target and it would be FP - Added Cold - SpEcho - Cold Pen - Empower - Faster Projectiles.

What about LL and reflect?

It might be worth to try to switch spell echo for increased critical damage when facing certain bosses. Having spike damage instead of higher dps might be enough to still freeze some of them.

"

T_Reich wrote:

Here's a thing for you to consider:

Herald of ice + curse on hit + assassin's mark = free power charges without pcoc, because when you shatter-kill packs, you curse them as hoi explosions go off, and then immediately gain power charges.

Obviously, doesn't work vs tough single bosses, unlike pcoc, but it certainly frees up a link in fpulse 5L.

That's very interesting!

I too am going to try this guide, my FP witch is terribly wrong.

One questin

I'm following these tree and only have like 1.3k life at level 50

Are you basically mean't to stack up on ES because you take so little life nodes?