CI's Wet Dream - Crit - Doulbe/Triple Curse - Cast When Stunned - Ice Caster

New Video:
60% cold resists map: https://youtu.be/JBCU8MX44GA




This is the most versatile build I have ever done. With limitless flexibility, it takes care of business with ease, be it single target, aoe or toughest boss fight. And the build is very afordable.

The key to the build is


Bitterdream frees up your 5L/6L chest slot, so we get to use it for Cast When Stunned. This is what CI's wet dream is about. You get stunned a lot being CI, but you don't feel the effect of stun at all if you get roughly 30% stun recovery on gear which is very easy to get. With this set up you pray to get stunned every second you play. :P


My current 5L for Cast When Stunned:



You may swap in whatever gems best fit your needs. I use discharge because we have 6 power, 4 frenzy and 3 endurance charges almost all the time. Some magic and rare mobs with high cold resists you may find hard to kill, but with Discharge, Shock Nova and Fire storm it deals with them easily, and most of all it can potentially one-shot bosses. This is the difference from CWDT, you fully level out all gems linked with Cast When Stunned. I'm still experimenting with the last socket on a 5L. You can do Increased Crit Chance, Crit Multi, Elemental focus or another spell. If you have a 6L, more power to you.



Off hand Utility:

No other choice. I got my near perfect roll for 1ex. A cheap roll costs 20c.



Bitterdream and Divinarius don't cost much, so we have 2 sets of them, but you can also use a high ES shield with spell dmg mods on off hand for 2nd set. Corrupted Bitterdream is not necessary but nice to have, and it's not hard to get since it's a 1 alc unique if not less. On 1st Bitterdream we use Ice Nova, since no other spell clear trash mobs faster. link it with Spell echo and Increased Crit Chance(or Increased Aoe if you want to kill mobs offscreen). On 2nd Bitterdream we use Glacial Cascade linked with Spell Echo and Life leech. This is for single target, boss fight and elemental reflective mob. So there is reason to use a high ES shield for this combo, but high ES gears are so easy to get nowadays, I don't really feel the need for it as it loses the ability to use Whirling Blade. Its AOE is actually not bad either since we take a lot of AOE nodes. Maps like Underground river, I strictly uses Glacial Cascade.



Skill tree is generic Occultist cold caster crit and aoe. We take crit and curse Ascendancy points. So if you are already a crit spell caster, it's very easy to adapt to this build. Give it a shot if you find your current build is lackluster or boring. I promise this build will keep you enjoy the game much longer. I didn't bother to find out how much the exact DPS is but at level 87 I'm already
clearing maps as fast as my lvl95 archer. With the way of my skill gem setup, this toon is as tanky
as any. Anyway lots of gem combos are debatable, as is the skill tree point distribution. I'd like to hear your suggestions and cirtics very much if you care to share.



Skill Tree:


My Gears and Skill Gem setup:


Flasks:

Reserved.

Nice build, I use a similar one (Bitterdream and Divinarius for Ice nova), but I didnt go CI and took Vaal Pact for insta regen. So no stun when damage taken.
Also, for bosses, I switch to a 6L Pledge of hands (Glacial Cascade, Cold Pen, Life Leech, Increase Crit, Added Cold and Concentrate) for max DPS, I think it's better than a Bitterdream for that. It allows you to kite difficult bosses.

Instead of herald of ice for cursing, you could try lightning warp, I saw that on another ice nova build and it looks neat since you warp into the pack and then nova them.

At first I took Occultutist too, but it was not so nice, since I switch to Elementalist I increased my DPS. The Element Conflux is just awesome (the shock+burning damage is so neat against bosses). And having an ice golem with 3X the increase crit is nice (1 more with the ascendency and 1 more with the enchant on the helmet). I also took Pendulum of destruction because why not.

"

Nice build, I use a similar one (Bitterdream and Divinarius for Ice nova), but I didnt go CI and took Vaal Pact for insta regen. So no stun when damage taken.
Also, for bosses, I switch to a 6L Pledge of hands (Glacial Cascade, Cold Pen, Life Leech, Increase Crit, Added Cold and Concentrate) for max DPS, I think it's better than a Bitterdream for that. It allows you to kite difficult bosses.

Instead of herald of ice for cursing, you could try lightning warp, I saw that on another ice nova build and it looks neat since you warp into the pack and then nova them.

At first I took Occultutist too, but it was not so nice, since I switch to Elementalist I increased my DPS. The Element Conflux is just awesome (the shock+burning damage is so neat against bosses). And having an ice golem with 3X the increase crit is nice (1 more with the ascendency and 1 more with the enchant on the helmet). I also took Pendulum of destruction because why not.

I really like your ideas especially the 6-L Pledge. I'm sure it does more DPS with Glacia Cascade, but i'll have to wait to try it till i can afford a 6-L.

Opposite to you, I converted to Occultist from Elementalist at around lvl85. I felt the damage was harder to scale with Elementalist because there aren't just many good dps nodes left other than the cold damage ones. Doing both crit and Elementalist nodes are sort of redundant, cuz crit does all the ailment effect already. By taking crit and generic spell damage nodes, you are free to use any damage type spells, it serves the purpose of Cast When Stunned better so that I get to shock and burn. And with Occultist we are able to double or triple curse. Using Lightning Warp for curse, I'd have to have another spare 5-L or 6-L for multiple curses. So it's just not viable, but I really like this idea too.

For golem, I'm just too lazy to self-cast it, so mine is linked with CWDT at level 4. Plus my crit
chance is at 90% with charges already.

Thanx for the input. There are so many ideas we could all learn from each other. :)

Well since I'm not CI, I cant use the cast when stun to burn and shock. And it doesn't work for dangerous boss. And burning/shocking is especially good against them.

At first I choosed Occultist so I could get the double curses without having to go to the left of the tree (I wanted to get all crit, life and vaal at right) but in the end I had to go left. There are just too much good nodes in the templar zone and double curses is on the way :D
Maybe Occultist is better for survivability... especially for CI.

Crit is good for freezing, but, correct me if I'm wrong, it doesn't burn without the elemental conflux... unless I got fire damage, however the burning wouldnt be much since it concern only the fire damage. With elemental conflux my cold damage burn with 100% chances, so I get max burning.

Well, I self-found my Pledge of Hand and got it linked in less than 150 fuses, so I was really lucky. I hope to find some Skyforth such that I can maybe change Assassin mark for another curse (frostbite ?) or refunding my passives skill and just use one curse (Warlord).

I do decent damage, so I'm not sure that a frostbite would be useful. For now, I'm trying to find ways to improve my survivability (need more life I think). I guess you get a lot of ES ?

I also tried to use Pyre, the damage are even greater with everything exploding everywhere, but loosing the freezing is really dangerous. In general it's the freezing that keeps me alive. :-°

I have 9k ES, with a shield i can get 11k ES, but without much AR/EV it feels weaker than 5k life.
The survivability is indeed an issue, that's why Cast When Stunned comes into the picture. We have no problem with trash mobs, as they either get one-shot'd or frozen. I don't care to shock or burn them. Cast When Stunned with multiple damage type with crit applies the ailment effect on the harder mobs that don't instant die/cann't be frozen. My video isn't very good an example cuz I cann't face tank that boss. I'll do another video showing how often Discharge is going off on the boss I can face tank and how fast they die.

Also, give Frost Wall with CWDT a shot. All our spells go through it. With instant lightning warp and whirling blade, it poses no danger to ourselves. It's a must have if you don't have good AR/EV.

Yeah 9K is like a lot, I only got 3K life.

My other witch (in standard) use Ice Wall because she doesn't go into the melee. I thought it would useless for Ice Nova witch, but it seems not as it pushes mobs and I gain time to heal. I also traded Increase Duration for Enfeeble (so CWDT + Immortal Call + Enfeeble + Ice Wall for max protection).

Moreover, I tried a neat think : Lightning Warp + Less Duration + Curse on Hit + Frostbite so when I warp in pack they got max damage/froze then explodes thanks to Herald of Ice + Curse on hit + Assassin Mark giving me power charge.
For bosses, I just take out the Curse on hit so I can Frostbite from distance and increase my DPS for my Glacial Cascade (which is already very high haha, it's very neat).

So I switch between 3 curses (+ Warlord Mark for regen but with blasphemy) depending on the circumstances, very nice ! :D

Thanks for the advices !

Good call on Lightning warp! Inspired by it, I'm now doing triple curses and thinking about quad curses. Occultist gives a damage boost per curse on enemy. :P But I'll have to move Cast When Stunned to a 4-L or find a corrupted gloves with Cast When Stunned mod. More ideas more headache! Now I feel playing like a melee but more power!

And I also revamped the skill tree quite a bit. Dropped AOE nodes near Sion and picked up Vaal pact instead.

Yeah no need for more AOE. With Divinarius, Carcass Jack and a corrupted belt I'm at +75% AOE for my Ice Nova, which is really enough to kill ranged.

Vaal Pact will improve your survivability a lot. It's even possible to kill elem reflect with a life leech gem if you drop cold penetration.

how are you generating power charges?