2.3 - The Frost Nuke™ - Crit Vortex + Herald - Full screen explosions

Hey! Me again. Took me a long time to find something interesting after my last build and quite frankly I almost quit the game until Vortex showed up.


Disclaimer
Unlike my other popular builds, this build isn't focused on murdering bosses, but on map clear speed. Now don't get me wrong, it'll kill bosses up to tier 14 quite comfortably, but this is meant to level up real fast at medium cost.


The Build

This build revolves around self casting the new Vortex skill and the synergy of the elementalist ascendancy (now buffed!) with a 4L herald of ice. It creates chain reactions that destroy entire screens (or more).

Videos
Full Atziri + Some boss kills
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6miA9BjYo9I

Examples of chain reactions in a Tier 15 map
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2e3QF4rBoQ

Arid Lake + Domination
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJ3zrzGI8kg

Overgrown Ruin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rMF_5ta3cg

Items


The only "required" item is Carcass Jack (could also be done with the new Beast Fur Shawl I think). Everything else is just a bunch of rare items. You'll sink some currency in your wands, but the rest can be self found.

Flasks


The writhin jar flasks are to be used for blue packs in high tier maps and bosses.

Bandits
Normal: Kill all
Cruel: Kill all
Merciless: Help Alira


Links

Vortex -­> Spell Echo -> Added Cold/Cold Pen -> Cold to Fire -> Increased Critical Strikes -> Empower
For a 5L, you can remove Empower.

Herald of Thunder -> Curse on Hit -> Assassin's Mark
This is how you get your Power Charges.

Herald of Ice -> Increased Area of Effect -> Increased Critical Strikes -> Added Cold/Hypothermia(hard to see any difference between the 2 spells. Hyperthermia reserves less mana tho)
This is where the magic happens!

Lightning Warp -> Less Duration -> Rapid Decay - Clarity (low level)
Rapid decay helps reduce the cast time of warp.

CWDT (LVL8) -> Molten Shell (LVL14) -> Summon Flame Golem (high level)

CWDT (LVL9)-> Increased Duration (LVL20) -> Immortal Call (LVL2) -> Summon Ice Golem (high level)

Skill Tree


Jewels

Basically try to get as much crit multi, crit chance, area damage, spell damage, raw damage as you can.

Elementalist Ascendancy Points


DPS


This doesn't tell the whole story. Elemental conflux + prolif being always up means that everything is shocked (thanks to herald of thunder). And then once you've hit something with Vortex, everything is ignited for a significant amount on top of shocked (which also increases the ignite damage) and then herald of ice propagates the whole chain. It's important to remember that Vortex also leaves a pool of damage over time which in this case is hitting rather hard as well.


Conclusion

Fun. Fast. Powerful. That's my trademark. Would there be ways to get tankier? Sure probably. I like to kill things before they get a chance to kill me. This build does that. It's a buttload of fun. Hope you enjoy!


**Will add more later**

any tips for leveling?

Could you please tell us your dps on average? Post screen possibly? Thanks man! This looks so fun!

Nice build. Lookin like a good successor to Supernova.:P What do you do about reflect? What is full charge DPS? Have to tried 7L PoH and staff crit nodes? Have you tried two Voids?

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Aim_Deep wrote:

Nice build. Lookin like a good successor to Supernova.:P What do you do about reflect? What is full charge DPS? Have to tried 7L PoH and staff crit nodes? Have you tried two Voids?

I haven't tried 2 voids.

The thing is with the changes that were made to wands, it's hard to go back to pledge. Back when you and I had competing ice nova builds, pledge definitely had an edge over daggers and such. But right now, wands have a bigger implicit, they have a new tier 1 cast speed, a new tier 1 spell damage AND wands and daggers now have a higher chance of rolling caster mods which means it's easier to find good ones. So wands are the winner here I'd say.


I'll take a screenshot of my DPS if that's what people want, but it really doesn't tell the whole story.


As for reflect, Herald of Ice damage can't be reflected so I just avoid hitting reflect altogether (and I roll over reflect maps). Prolif and herald take care of the reflect mob.

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eek98azn wrote:

any tips for leveling?

Just slap on vortex as soon as you can and play the game. It's a very strong skill.

DPS only means something apples to apples... I just wanted a baseline so when I try LL to see if its worth AOE loss.

I will use this to one shot boss with VRF

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Aim_Deep wrote:

DPS only means something apples to apples... I just wanted a baseline so when I try LL to see if its worth AOE loss.

I will use this to one shot boss with VRF

Oh it's REALLY hard to argue against AoE loss in this particular situation because there's more than just vortex that benefits from it.

More AoE means HoI has a bigger explosion, which in turn thanks to prolif applies the status ailment to monsters slightly further away and the chain reaction happens a lot more often.

Notice I'm not even using conc effect in my Vortex links. I've tried a bunch of things. Conc, Inc AoE, Controlled destruction, etc. Turns out the inc crit strikes is needed. With 5 power charges I end up at about 85% spell crit chance which is perfect.

hi, just want to say, I love the build! I've decided to play it myself, with just a few tweaks here and there. Just wanted to ask (this is probably a stupid question) but how do you use HoT, HoI, and Clarity all at the same time? I dont have enough mana to reserve for all 3, and it seems like if I had just a bit more and could use all 3, I wouldnt have enough mana to cast skills. Thanks for posting your build :)

EDIT : I didnt realize that after getting a few more levels, I can now use all 3. I guess I was trying to level Clarity up too much. I assume that's why you take so much mana regen? To be able to have extremely low mana and still be able to cast. My apologies for the dumb question previously, but again, grats on the great build. GLHF

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Govenor04 wrote:

hi, just want to say, I love the build! I've decided to play it myself, with just a few tweaks here and there. Just wanted to ask (this is probably a stupid question) but how do you use HoT, HoI, and Clarity all at the same time? I dont have enough mana to reserve for all 3, and it seems like if I had just a bit more and could use all 3, I wouldnt have enough mana to cast skills. Thanks for posting your build :)

EDIT : I didnt realize that after getting a few more levels, I can now use all 3. I guess I was trying to level Clarity up too much. I assume that's why you take so much mana regen? To be able to have extremely low mana and still be able to cast. My apologies for the dumb question previously, but again, grats on the great build. GLHF

Yea the mana + mana regen on gear and the little bit on tree paired with the life wheel that reduces mana cost and a mid level clarity balances out perfectly.

Also Vortex has a surprisingly low mana cost to begin with, so that's nice. I have about 90 mana unreserved and I can cast non stop without issue.


Glad you like the build! It's super fun.

That's awesome! I'm still leveling mine right now, but I almost wish I had started the league with a Vortex build now, because I agree, it is super fun! And about the mana thing, that sounds good. Hopefully by the time I start mapping, I'll have enough mana/regen to run all 3. Right now I'm missing out on my CoH HoT so I can use clarity + HoI. Thanks again!

EDIT: I also wanted to ask you, is there a certain order in which I should take my Ascendancy passives?