[2.2] Ice Shot Elementalist - Lots of Ice explosions! Fast clear speed

This build takes advantage of the elementalist ascendancy tree to freeze/shock/ignite and prolif everything up to 2-3 screens away. The skill we will be using is ice shot with gmp+. With pierce gem and projectile weakness curse, this gives us an insanely fast clear speed and a very safe playstyle combined with temporal chains+chilled ground.

Video of a random t8 just to show off the build-



I will add more videos in the future (and of harder maps). Just wanted to do something quick that didn't take forever to render. I also liked this video because it shows that it is pretty reflect proof. I shot into 2 reflect mobs at the same time and I'm pretty sure taste of hate was down and I was still at 4-5k CI.

Passive Tree-



I focus a lot on jewel slots, and I will explain this later in the guide. I also like to get curse effect just because curse effect temp chains+ the chilled ground from ice shot is one of the more powerful defensive mechanics in the game.

Ascendancy points-

Shaper of Desolation - Beacon of Ruin - Pendelum of Destruction

Gear-



I decided to go CI because my other character had a lot of left over good CI gear. I am sure life build is fine, but I personally think CI is in a really good spot this season since you can take advantage of using a lot of awesome flasks. And soul striker is one of the best CI items.

If you go life build, Lioneye's Vision is a great choice for armor. Only hard part would be getting the correct colors, but you could potentially have a 7 link ice shot with this armor. The reason I didn't go life based is because I tried making one in a skill planner and just felt like I couldn't get everything I wanted without only having 4-5k life.

I think lioneye's is a great choice as far as bow's go because it allows us to go elemental overload. Because we cannot get very much accuracy since we are on the witch side of the tree, this allows us to put 0 points in any accuracy nodes. I am sure chin sol/any other type of bow is fine and I have not done the math on what's best, but the clear speed felt very good with lioneye's. Without lioneye's, you either have to invest into accuracy nodes or get lots of accuracy on gear, or get resolute technique. But if you go resolute technique you obviously cannot use elemental overload since you will never crit.

One piece of gear I'm currently saving up to get is The Taming Ring. Basically every single stat on this ring is amazing for this build. Would use this ring for sure if you have access to it.

Flasks-



Diamond flask is to proc elemental overload more consistently. Because we are using lioneye's, our crit chance is quite low. 2nd quicksilver/diamond flask is pretty open to what you want to use, other 3 are pretty much mandatory I would say. I just prefer having 2 quicksilvers and a more consistent way to proc elemental overload that isn't clunky like using orb of storms every 8 seconds.

Gem links-

Bow- Ice shot - Weapon Elemental Damage - GMP - Pierce - Increased Aoe - Hypothermia
Helm- Ice Bite, Herald of ice, Increased aoe, Enlighten
Gloves- Cast on damage taken - Immortal call - Increased duration - Vaal Discipline (or vaal haste if you can manage to get 4 off colors)
Chest - My chest links are kinda messed up because I didn't want to invest a ton of chromes yet to get the correct colors for 5 link blast rain. You can either just have 4 link/6 socket chest with herald of thunder/curse on hit/temporal chains/projectile weakness then hatred/blink arrow in the other spots like I have, or get a 5 link blast rain+hatred in 6th socket and 4 link herald of thunder curse on hit in boots. You would have to find a way to fit in blink arrow this way though, or go without it.
Boots- See above

Jewels-



Bandits-

Skill point/Attack speed/Frenzy charge (I messed up and don't have the frenzy charge with my build at the moment, will respec later)

Because ice shot benefits from so many different sources of damage, it's not too difficult to get really nice 4 property jewels and its especially easy to get really nice 3 property jewels. If you have a 6 link, I would try to get 5% reduced mana cost as one of the mods on your jewels. If not you may only need a couple of them and your fine.

Final thoughts on the build-

I haven't played the build too far into end game yet, did a bunch of t8-t10 maps and didn't have any deaths yet while mapping. My gear is very good since most of the gear is from my other character (who is level 98) but I think it can be super late game viable. The main issue the build has is bosses, certain bosses can be very annoying when you run out of elemental conflux and just have to blast rain them down. Bosses with adds that die quickly are no problem, but bosses like dominus would either take a long time and be sketchy or just have to be skipped. Maybe with 5-6 link blast rain they wouldn't be as bad, but I have yet to test it.

The build can do most map mods except elemental reflect/immune to status aliments. There's a lot of little mods that slow you down (enfeeble/cold resist/equiliberium/60% reduced chance to cause status aliments but your clear speed is already insanely fast so it doesn't matter too much. That's to be expected for any build that isn't chaos/poison based.

I will update this guide in the future once I have played this build more, so far I have only played it for two days but I think the general idea that I came up with is solid, the rest is just min/maxing it to be 100% optimal (and I do think this build is far from optimal, I'm sure there are a lot of tiny improvements that I have over-looked)

If you enjoyed this unique build, please check out my other unique build linked here -

It seem realy nice build but looks expensive for me for output damage. I'm realy want to try this build but not yet :(.

Thanks very much for the build guide. I think the concept is really cool.

I guess similar to Carnoso, I'd like to know what you think about playing this character on a budget, or from scratch? I'm relatively new to PoE, and I will likely only have the time to play 1 character per league. So, I wonder if this character would be difficult to do without the gear waiting for her?

Also, I would like to know what your thoughts are on how best to approach leveling the character? Going caster until a certain level? Going bow all the way? When to switch to CI? Things like that.

Again, thanks for taking the time to put together the guide. Appreciate it.

For budget I would just use lioneye's vision armor, try to 5 link it if you can. Getting 3-4 off colors is annoying but if you get 2 reds you can just do less duration instead of hypothermia. Basically a free 6 link. Not as good of a gem but you don't lose THAT much dps using it. And then for skill tree you just get life nodes and life gear instead of es gear.

The only reasons I went CI was because I already had really good CI gear from my other character. I have no idea if CI is the best way to go. Life is probably just as good but I never tested it.

For leveling you can just go any caster build you want I think, since you get a lot of elemental damage nodes on the way.

I think the build has potential and I didn't really get the chance to test it in the super end game.

There's some things you have to change to make it really end game viable. I tried to do some red maps and some of the bosses were just impossible. The clearspeed when you have elemental conflux up is amazing and one of the fastest I've seen, but the moment you lose it the clear speed is terrible. On regular t1-t10 maps it wasn't a big issue (probably because my gear was pretty good) but after that it started to fall off.

Maybe in the future I will do some further testing, but right now I'm taking a break until the next league starts. If anyone decides to play this build and test it further id be curious to see any solutions you come up with to fix some of the downsides.

Sorry I couldn't be of more help than this.

No apologies at all. I really appreciate the feedback. Seriously.

If I ever do give this build a go and find success, I'll dig this thread up. :)

I've been playing an ice shot build of my own, and for your single target questions I've had success using frost wall (spell echo + faster casting or trap/cluster trap/multi trap) and piercing through it long ways to shotgun multiple times per arrow on the second stage of ice shot.
It's definitely still kind of slow since you got to have the boss stand relatively still while you start shooting from the correct angle to get it to shotgun.

With the self cast it's definitely faster to set up, but there's less wall for you to work with, which makes it harder to aim or keep the boss still. I've tested the trap setup too and it's unreliable, but it's amazing when it actually works. Spell totem might be a good way to automate it better, but I haven't tested that yet.