[2.1] Mind over Matter Freezing Pulser - safe, good damage and affordable

Hello :)
I've been following your guide and one thing I noticed is that you have weapon elemental damage. Why is that? It doesn't raise Freezing Pulse's damage at all as it's meant for the weapon itself and not casting.

Oh, it was there just for leveling it up, and because it didn't occur to me to actually support Herald of Ice with something (there's Hypothermia in that spot now). How far along are you?

Oh okay! but I noticed you have a ring with weapon elemental damage aswell which made me wonder :D
Right now Freezing pulse has 25k dps. I have yet to get 5 link on my PoH. I'm lacking a bit of survivability (doing better now because I'm focusing on that right now).
I'm using vaal ice nova to clear larger packs and the damage on FP seems good so far.
I began doing maps like 3 days ago, at first it was pretty chaotic but I'm getting the hang of it. I'm easily clearing a t5 map right now (usually the problem are the bosses). The build is pretty fun and not really expensive at all. Guess what can make it expensive is the desire for max rolls on gear or with all sockets already.
So for now, I'm going to stick to upgrading survivability and then I'll let you know when I feel like I've hit the "progress cap" :)
Great job with the guide mate and thanks for the quick reply!

Ascendancy preview time!

Since we still don't know the subclass for Scion and being able to go to both side of the tree is important for this build, not much to go on here. However, a new unique ring has been shown today:

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1581354

Essence Worm
Unset Ring

Has 1 Socket

+2 to level of socketed Aura gems
Socketed gems reserve no mana
40% increased mana reserved

Since I'm already running Dream Fragments as a ring with no life and little resists I was curious if such a ring might be used instead. Socketing a level 20 Clarity would save me 280 mana. At level 93 I have about 1800 total mana, so the ring would make Herald cost me an extra 180 to 220 mana (depending on if I use Hypothermia with it). But Dream Fragments itself already gives me more maximum mana, about 130 at my level. Thus in the current setup Fragments seems better (unless you want to socket Herald and lose the Curse on Hit package, in which case we could save 540 mana from Herald and have Clarity cost an extra 110 or so, well worth it).

However, this ring might be worth using in a different setup. I'm thinking about wearing two of that ring - one for Clarity and one for Herald, having to lose the Curse on Hit package - which would allow me to get to 1.1k unreserved mana even without a Pledge just by reserving no mana at all. That would allow me to run something like Doryani's + Shield with high %increased spell damage, which would be very strong defensively (in addition to Mind over Matter + Acrobatics + Coil) but damage would certainly suffer. Any other good options for weapons outside of Pledge for this build?

I think Freezing pulse it's the most beautiful skill in the game, I'm playing Dual Freezing Pulse totems with Rain of Splinters and consuming dark + Pyre Sapphire for chaos convertion.
50k x 2 totems x 3 projectiles each totem beats the game.

New unique items aside, I haven't played this build much recently with all the theorycrafting of new builds for Ascendancy going on. But after taking a look at the Scion Ascendancy subclass I definitely think this build will be able to use it to good effect.

I would pick Scion again, take Deadeye + the Ranger start with the subclass points. This gives us an additional projectile (allowing us to drop Lesser Multiple Projectiles) + projectile speed + balancing Freezing Pulse's damage decrease over a distance by gaining Far Shot. It also saves us a number of points going from Scion to the Ranger area.

The tree would then look like this at around level 80:



With the saved points, we can now take the points behind Acrobatics as well for additional defense - or take Occultist's Dominion and some cold damage for offense. The gear would look pretty much the same except we can now boost our damage with Empower instead of Lesser Multiple Projectiles.

The alternative would be to pick Templar - Hierophant for even more mana and a mini-MoM, plus free Penetration, AoE or leech from Herald's explosions. We would then path to the Shadow area (but not the Ranger area) through the Witch nodes. This is also a strong option with less raw damage (since we need Lesser Multiple Projectiles) and less projectile speed but definitely viable.

What I'm not sure about is the new Elemental Overload node. It doesn't take many points to reach and gives a lot of damage. But we would have to crit at least once every eight seconds. At 5 casts per second and 5% crit chance, the chance to crit within four seconds of Pulsing is 65%, so taking in account the time to move between packs and pick up loot I'm not sure how reliable the damage increase from that node is. If it takes two or less points to pick up I'd go for it.

Great build man, love this. Reminds me of my old Ice Spear account :D.

Where do I go from here? I'm kinda stuck as I can't see the passive tree and I have 12 points left :p. Looking forward to Ascendancy builds update.

Thanks for the praise! It will take a few days for me to update the guide to Ascendancy since I don't have much time and the Labyrinth makes setting up new characters more time-consuming (not that I'm complaining!).

This link should do the trick for level 80ish:



Of course, before you collect your sixth Ascendancy point you actually have to path to the Ranger area through the normal tree and refund later (or is there a workaround?).

Happy Pulsing!


I also see that the Essence Worm ring turns out to be pretty affordable (10-20 Chaos on Perandus). I'll definitely have to think more on how to incorporate one or two of those into the build while still triggering Warlord's Mark semi-reliably.