[2.2] PHC - Chaos Vaal Ice Nova Elementalist *SPLOOSH* 170mil xp/hour
  Last league (THC) I had an Aylardex Cold Snapper that barely did enough damage to clear low tier maps. She was abandoned until I put a 5L Vaal Ice Nova in a Taryn's Shiver and took her to 90. This is a much improved version of that build. Using the same mechanics that make Vaal Molten Shell so strong (see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXnnJPFpRmw) but with substantial differences and additional conversions, we have this *fun* mapping build full of double dips and deeps. Vaal Ice Nova
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It's a nova that causes another nova around each enemy (and box/pot) it hits. If you stack AoE and have enough targets in range (you can just hit with the edge, you don't have to sit in the middle and get pummeled) and you have enough damage (we do!) you obliterate swaths of mobs. It works great in open maps but also chains around corners and through obstacles so you're not limited by tileset.
It's tactically and stylistically different from VMS and VSpark but can be built in similar ways. It's impressive. Elementalist
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The most important Ascendancy nodes:
Shaper of Desolation: Elemental Conflux. This procs if you've killed recently, so it's nearly always up. Conflux causes whatever type of damage you're putting out (even chaos) to ignite, shock and chill. This means our Herald of Thunder is always up. It means we get bonus shock damage, and burn damage in addition to.... Beacon of Ruin: Old friend prolif, without the damage penalty. It's not big, but all these kinds of damage you're putting out spread (sometimes to the target themselves) and everything melts. Our cold to fire conversion ring, Pyre, can muck with this at times but there are still plenty of pretty circles smoothing your clears. Your HoT prolifs as well. Third node: Whatever you like. Liege of the Primordial is what I choose as it provides the most consistent damage increases and mechanical exploits. We'll breakdown the text: 40% increased Damage of each Damage Type for which you have a matching Golem So the Chaos Golem would give us 40% increased chaos damage which is great, but the Flame Golem gives us that 40% as fire, which will be converted and 20% increased damage because that's what Flame Golems do. The Chaos Golem would give us more physical reduction, but... Your Elemental Golems are Immune to Elemental Damage This is not really important aside from not having to recast your Golem as much, but Chaos is not an element so it's excluded from this. And finally... 100% increased Effect of Buffs granted by your Elemental Golems This doesn't apply to the Chaos Golem's physical reduction. It does double the Flame Golem's 20% increased damage though, netting us a total of 80% increased (chaos) damage as long as the golem is alive. Not bad. Gear @ 88
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Gear dump then explanations for each slot in descending order of mandatory-ness: Totally Mandatory
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2 Consuming Darks for full fire to chaos conversion. Cheaper than last league due to the nerf. The spell damage roll goes from 40-60% and you should get a higher roll if able. Oh, and FREE poison damage. Carcass Jack for the AoE. The bigger our novas, the more things get hit, the more things die, the more souls we accumulate to cast again. With the nerf to the AoE clusters on the tree plus missing out on the AoE near Scion start due to our Ascendancy class, AoE is at a premium. Life roll is the most important variable to shop for. Pyre Ring is what makes this all work. It turns our cold into fire so the Consuming Darks can make us chaos monsters. Better res rolls are good, and this ring is seen as vendor trash tier so it's quite cheap. The last line is important: "Ignited enemies you hit are destroyed on kill." If they blow up, there is no prolif left...but...that only happens when a monster is killed *directly* by a spell, so if it dies from the conflux, the poison from CD, other prolif, etc it leaves a corpse as normal. Anyhow, it still helps and everything is extra dead very quickly. We'll go over damage conversion more in the Tree section. Highly Recommended
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Vaal Caress a unique from previous leagues brought back en masse by Cadiro. If you can find a +2 to Vaal Gems corruption with a BBBG on another piece of superior gear, have at it, but these are plentiful and come with a little life, resist and respite for you Silver flask as well Blood Dance for the easy frenzy charges and regen. Frenzy charges scale everything we want so much we can't pass them by and I still like the regen from these (~4-5% with the tree and gear). I fear degens. Losing some of the attack speed from our Whirling Blades does hurt though. 60% Glacial Cascade physical damage converted to cold enchant helm means that our Glacial Cascade gets more of the elemental scaling we're doing. GC still takes full scaling from Spell Damage but this results in as much of a Chaos Cascade as ever possible. If you're using a different single target / starter skill, see if there's a desirable enchant for it. GC's great for this build tho. Atzir's Promise gives us extra damage and 2% leech on top of that. It's cheap and you only have to worry about the elemental roll when shopping. Pop the flask before casts of VIN or when there's danger. Other Jewelry
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Resists and life with your last ring slot. Same with the belt (protip: use poe.trade's new display of suffixes and prefixes to easily find a high life belt with 2 decent resists and an open suffix to craft for super cheap). Other stats you're gonna need are Strength, Dex, Mana and Mana Regen. Balance it all out while considering the plethora options your amulet brings. After gearing everything else I found I didn't need an amulet with any resists (our tree is very friendly for resist gearing) or stats. A +1 curse amulet is an option, as our HoT is always up. I opted for a cheaper option of +1 frenzy charge on a silly Ungil's Harmony. Ungil's is great for this build as its downside (negative crit multi) has already been made moot by Elemental Overload on the tree. The +100% crit chance smooths the pros for EO and we get some life, mana and stun recovery on top. Vaal away. Jewels
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We lose Chill of Corruption as an option with our conversions, but Sacrifical Harvests are still there (and still expensive). Vaal viridians or save up and buy one (or two (or three)). They're really just mandatory QoL items. While you're getting those, the new unique Izaro's Turmoil is a perfect fit. We get *both* the cold increase and then the fire increase for ~45% increased damage on a mid roll jewel. Shop around, these are a steal for us at 5-10c. Tree
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Tree at 81: http://poeurl.com/Bf4 I consider this to be the base tree, go where you want from here. Up Atrophy for even more damage and the Shadow dex jewel spot are good ideas. A few points of interest: Snowforged: Yes, it double dips with Pyre giving us 76% damage and 30% crit (we *always* want Elemental Overload up and we don't want to use a a utility skill to proc it). Explosive Impact: Yes, we're that serious about AoE. Fire/Frost Walker: Nice for pathing, FREE resists for easy gearing and leveling. These only count at face value. The fire also scales the burn damage from conflux. MoM:With a high level Clarity I have over 400 mana unreserved, which is not very much, but I still think it's worth the 1 point investment. Skills / Links
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5L Chest: Glacial Cascade > Faster Casting > Conc > Void Manipulation > Increased Crit Chance GC is not mandatory for your single target / soul gathering skill. I picked it because: -We want a cold skill to ensure we benefit from both cold and fire nodes on the tree -It's strong and scales well with our tree. All the AoE we have means we can use Conc and still hit multiple targets. -It's strong enough we don't need echo, which locks you in place a bit, especially when you don't have a ton of cast speed, because one wave kills most anything. -We can spare our 5th link to get the crit chance up to ensure EO is always up. If you're unable to use a GC enchant helm it's probably best to use another (cold) skill. Ice Nova seems like an obvious choice but use whatever you're comfortable with. +2 Vaal Gem Gloves (or whatever): Vaal Ice Nova > Inc Aoe > Echo > Void Manipulation Quality on VIN is important. It's only .5% per q, but you want a 20q. Best way to get this is to buy someone else's failed attempt at a 21/20 Ice Nova gem. I paid 20c for mine and have seen 20/20 VIN listed as low as 10c in PHC. Worth it. Auras and 3 links that could be 4 -Arctic Armor -max level Clarity -Herald of Thunder > Curse on Hit > Warlord's Mark note: If you decide to get a +1 curse amulet check your colors first and see what curses are appropriate. Vuln and Temp chains are good options. -CWDT > IC > ID -Golem > Minion things > GMP if Flame, Fortify if not Flame -Whirling Blades > Faster Attacks (quality if possible) > Fortify Another option may be putting Anger in an Essence Worm ring. If you can handle the resists elsewhere and maintain the mana it's like a mini Added Chaos Damage gem. Leveling
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This is an easy build to level. Stretch for resists around the tree to make gearing easier for merc+ and take the life near them. I used Glacial Cascade in a reverb rod (GC > FC > Controlled Destruction) after 28 with a Cloak of Flame, the Pyre and a Mokou's ring. You do lose the defensive chill effect from GC with Pyre though, so you may just want to pocket the ring until later. Vaal Ice Nova is hilariously bad early on and isn't usable as more than a gimmick until you get into your Carcass at 62. You can start mapping as soon as you'd like. Bandits: Oak / Kill all (or help Kraityn for the WB attack speed) / Kraityn for Frenzy Videos
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T4 Promenade map at 72 https://youtu.be/8vG3S7JKGSM T6 Strand map at 80 https://youtu.be/Ec6ayLq7UPg T8 Canyon map at 79 https://youtu.be/GnnUYoePfvc T12 Shipyard at 88 (ping spike) https://youtu.be/V2YZQxiglv4 T12 Shipyard at 88 (sloppy clear, best res) https://youtu.be/Kfw-kcnZSk0 So much damage. The only limit to your character's progression is your map pool. Tooltips
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Tooltips are lies. here's some anyway:   Last edited by sleevelessless#4649 on Apr 6, 2016, 2:42:17 AM Last bumped on May 17, 2016, 10:51:28 PM
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That is some nice clearspeed.
But let's be honest, I doesn't have much in terms of defences :S |
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175% life from tree, AA, 3 charge IC, 4.8% life regen, fortify and reflect immune. That's fine for a caster and nothing is alive long to enough to threaten you. The closest I've come to death was offscreening multiple CB packs and zoning out for a couple seconds before staunching.
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Nice build. will try it. can you please give me some ideas of perfect gear for this? and do u go for armour or what? thanks.
p.s. The Consuming Dark Fiend Dagger costs like 40 chaos each.and carcass like 25 aswell, damn thats expencive. no alternatives? Last edited by Srax0#1648 on Apr 2, 2016, 6:32:00 PM
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" Armour on the helm is nice but not necessary; we're not scaling it much. High HP rolls and capped resists are more important. " CD is mandatory for the damage conversion. You can go with whatever chest you've got, but you will absolutely notice the loss of AoE w/o a Carcass. The build requires some investment. |
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Can you update this abit please, what are the best items I'm thinking Heretic's Veil Deicide Mask or vaal vertex and go hybrid life/es
when most the items u need have little life and u can stack es on boots and helm, have hybrid nodes. tree path looks abit weird but it's working great some how... feeling abit squishy on hc atm. IGN - @SlutOhMyy (Ambush)
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You've got a lot of cool things going on it. It inspired me to make an elementalist yesterday. One thing though, the lack of defenses terrify me. My computer/connection can be wonky sometimes so I typically like to play with layered defenses for that extra buffer.
I am considering doing and EB/MOM/ZO variation of your build with dual curse temp chains and enfeeble on blasphemy. If you were to run something of the sort, what would your skill tree look like? What do you feel is expendable? Edit: playing in PHC as well Last edited by Fujibayashi#1286 on Apr 4, 2016, 1:09:11 PM
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" Heretic's veil would only save you 4% on mana reserved with 1 curse running on blasphemy, and you would have to drop AA or HoT to run more than that so you wouldn't get much value out of it. Even running 2 curses in it and dropping HoT curse on hit (again HoT prolifs and does substantial damage) would leave you with struggling to cast with a low level clarity. You could put your VIN in Vertex and upgrade to more defensive gloves, for sure. For hybrid go up the witch ES start and grab Arcane Focus and Melding at the expense of whatever damage nodes you prefer. Carcass isn't suited well to hybrid builds though and you wouldn't be able to reach higher levels of eHP without sacrificing the chest or losing full chaos conversion with a shield. I'll update the guide to reflect that Atziri's Promise is an important source of 2% leech and if you're not using a helm with the Glacial Cascade conversion enchant, using another skill to collect souls is optimal. |
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" I have frequent connection issues as well, and I try to fit in every layer of defense possible. Atziri's Promise is a great cheap flask that should be fit in the moment you hit 68. Pop it before every VIN cast for extra damage and leech. I would run dual curse off of HoT before dual blasphemy and save 45% of my mana from being reserved while doing more damage. I would get the 2nd curse from an amulet to save skill points. For EB/MOM/ZO I would just take EB. There's not enough regen on the tree to make ZO worth it. I think you would have to gear with a lot more ES as well, potentially losing frenzy charges all together. Since we're also casting off of mana there's concern of dipping into ES for that and losing souls to vaal clarity would be huge damper on VIN casts. Damage nodes and jewel slots can be expendable. You can hit 200% life if you sacrifice 3 jewel slots and take the last 4% mana/life node near the witch start. |
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Another defensive option is to take Paragon of Calamity with your final ascendancy points. I have no experience with it, but it should mitigate some elemental damage and you get the buff from cold as well as fire damage. You can then ditch the golem and have another 4L for an additional CWDT set up, CWS > Molten Shell, or whatever else you like.
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