[2.6] The Curse Whisperer - Tri-Curse CI Whispering Ice EleRaider - Viable for Everything

Assuming we are taking the elementalist route, wouldn't it be better to swap life leech for elemental focus so then u can pick up shaper of desolation instead of mastermind of discord?
Because i dont see 25% fire pen being better than the 50% damage increase from shock.

fire pen would be more reliable to keep up with orb of storms. also, i'm not sure how well you can keep shock up on targets that actually are hard to kill.

50% increased vs. 25% fire pen, not sure.. its probably very close in terms of damage

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Bruderhase wrote:

fire pen would be more reliable to keep up with orb of storms. also, i'm not sure how well you can keep shock up on targets that actually are hard to kill.

50% increased vs. 25% fire pen, not sure.. its probably very close in terms of damage

shock provides 50% MORE, not "increased". and since we will certainly be using the fire pen gem nonetheless and almost all monsters, bosses included, have less than 38% fire res, the 25% additional fire pen will in reality provide less than 25% "more" damage. (roughly 18% more damage against mobs with 0 fire res.)

the issue with conflux is that you need to constantly kill things. so its very unreliable against bosses and sometimes outright unavailable (for example daresso). for trash clears, you dont need that extra damage. so after having thought about it, I changed my mind and now agree with kelvynn: taking the halved ele reflect node would be more useful than the conflux node.

Also, conflux sucks in elemental status ailments immune maps.

The half-reflect node should be a solid choice.

A 'pre-update':

I switched my Scion to a non-Berserker version and reset one of my old Witches to Elementalist and played her with the Scion's gear, to compare.

1. Scion: Berserker will no longer be reliable post-nerf, it won't work against the bosses, i.e. where you need it the most. We need to bring back Life Leech (instead of Controlled Destruction). We have been using that gem before 2.2 and it works great. In fact, the build will only get tankier. Of course, it means lower DPS. But it will only be noticeable at the very top levels: Core Malachai will take longer to kill. I don't think Uber will be any different, but will need to try.

What to take instead of Berserker? Raider. It's fantastic for mapping. You will have permanent Onslaught and all benefits of 3 frenzy charges to clear maps real fast. No need to bring Silver flasks anymore, can make it even faster with Quicksilvers and Sulphurs.

Scion is very much alive, tankier than ever, clearing maps much faster. Just lost some DPS that's gonna be noticeable only at the very high end.

2. Witch: with the massive buffs to Elementalist, Witch is now a very good alternative to Scion. The stats (ES, DPS) are very similar. The main difference is that Witch will be 'a late bloomer' and achieve the build goals (3 curses and stun immunity) about 3-4 levels later than Scion. But after that the power is about the same. The Witch being 4 levels behind the Scion will have 1 less jewel (until lv 97-ish which most people won't go for), but should have about the same DPS at lv 93 as the Scion at lv 97, thanks to all the massive bonuses to ele damage.

I'm going to post a Witch version of the build in the next few days, before 2.3. Just haven't decided on the best way to level yet.

Here's what the main choice comes to:
- Scion will level faster, get more xp per hour, reach the full potential earlier
- Witch will be safer to play (what reflect?), have higher DPS, kill top bosses easier

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Black_Gun wrote:

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Bruderhase wrote:

fire pen would be more reliable to keep up with orb of storms. also, i'm not sure how well you can keep shock up on targets that actually are hard to kill.

50% increased vs. 25% fire pen, not sure.. its probably very close in terms of damage

shock provides 50% MORE, not "increased". and since we will certainly be using the fire pen gem nonetheless and almost all monsters, bosses included, have less than 38% fire res, the 25% additional fire pen will in reality provide less than 25% "more" damage. (roughly 18% more damage against mobs with 0 fire res.)

the issue with conflux is that you need to constantly kill things. so its very unreliable against bosses and sometimes outright unavailable (for example daresso). for trash clears, you dont need that extra damage. so after having thought about it, I changed my mind and now agree with kelvynn: taking the halved ele reflect node would be more useful than the conflux node.

The choice of Asc points for the Witch is pretty easy:

Paragon and Liege are no-brainers, that's 4 points. Beacon is useless for this build because we do AoE damage, everything gets covered. Which automatically means grabbing Pendulum, and it's a nice thing to have. Mastermind vs Shaper? Mastermind of course. It's getting buffed to 10 sec duration, and that's about how often you use Orb of Storms.

Status ailments? Since everything that's chillable is already chilled by Icestorm, we don't need another source of chill. Ignite is useless for this build because ignite damage is based on 1 hit and they don't stack, i.e. it's almost nothing. That means the only reason to take Shaper would be shock. But: 1) you have to be constantly killing, which means it's going to work mostly on trash, which we already destroy easily in any tier; 2) the bosses that you really want to shock are immune to it.

Mastermind all the way.

hows this build looking for the new league? havent played whispering ice in a while

Thanks guys for your thorough input, one question though:
Assuming we take Witch Elementalist as our Wi character, which ascendancy node would u pick last, liege or paragon?
Since in the first tier of maps we run them blue(or even white) the chance of getting ele reflect is pretty slow but in the early lategame(starting from level 80 onwards) that's when u gotta start dealing with more annyoing map mods so i would tend towards picking Paragon last for our 7th and 8th ascendancy points.
What do u guys think?

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AlaeEddine wrote:

Thanks guys for your thorough input, one question though:
Assuming we take Witch Elementalist as our Wi character, which ascendancy node would u pick last, liege or paragon?
Since in the first tier of maps we run them blue(or even white) the chance of getting ele reflect is pretty slow but in the early lategame(starting from level 80 onwards) that's when u gotta start dealing with more annyoing map mods so i would tend towards picking Paragon last for our 7th and 8th ascendancy points.
What do u guys think?

1. Liege. No questions here. Golems rock.
2. Pendulum. The DPS buff will come in handy before we'll need to worry about reflect.
3. Paragon. Just in time for mapping.

You'll get all 3 of those together anyway. Do the Lab on all 3 difficulties at lv 68.

4. Mastermind. The extra DPS from penetration will come to play only in high tiers, especially against the tough bosses.

Regarding the new 2.3 Grand Spectrum unique jewels that GGG just revealed. The one interesting for us is the one that grants 6% increased ele damage * X * Y, where X is the number of this jewel used and Y is the total number of Grand Spectrum jewels used. In the case of using only one type of Grand Spectrum jewels, X and Y are the same, and the total effect is 6 * X^2 increased ele damage.

Would that be useful for this build? Let's see... We use 9 jewel sockets: 5 of them are converting Str/Dex into Int and the other 4 are just raw DPS (Izaros or better). Replacing the 4 Izaros would be easy since they give nothing but damage. If we use 4 Grand Spectrums, we get 6 * 4 * 4 = 96% increased damage, or 24% per jewel. That's only about half as good as Izaros.

But the bonus from Grand Spectrums grows exponentially, it's based on their number squared. What if we replace all 9 jewels with them? 6 * 9 * 9 = 486% increased damage, or 54% per jewel. That's only slightly better than Izaros. But the loss of Int from replacing Brute Forces and Fertile Minds will be insane, the base damage (and ES) will drop by a huge amount, there won't be much left to increase by that 486%.

Therefore, the Grand Spectrum jewels are completely useless to this build. Thanks for nothing, GGG.