3.0 | Morphyne's Arctic Breath Elementalist [SC/HC Viable]

Introduction

What's going on ladies and gentlemen, back again with another build that is not like the others that I have attempted. The goal with this build is to clear as fast as possible, without worrying about being stunned and freeze as much as possible to give us more survivability while running rippy map mods. Our main focus of damage is from freezing enemies to gain 60% increased damage from our amulet, and to chill to make hypothermia proc and since our arctic breath already leaves chilling ground, we have a multiplier of damage all the time. In this build we also have 6 projectiles and since shotgunning is achievable, more projectiles means more damage. My main prospective for this build was to make an Elementalist so she could handle some reflect mobs, while being able to take on breaches in HC difficulty and so far, it's turning out to be a huge success! So if you like freezing enemies on and off screen while chaining big shatters, this build is definitely for you.




Video(s)




- We have a 55% chance to freeze, so survivability is quite nice.
- We obtain a pretty decent life pool, 206% from passives alone.
- Gain a free Arctic Armor from chest piece.
- Incredible clearing speed.
- The build price is fairly cheap.
- Our final setup gives us enough mana regen to not need a mana potion.
- Leveling this build is a cake walk through the bakery.



- Since this build is built around our projectiles exploding, our single target damage isn't so great so positioning in boss fights is key so we can make all 6 explode around the boss for optimal dmg.
- Even though we have Paragon of Calamity from our Ascendancy passives, we cannot run elemental reflect maps due to shotgunning. DO NOT ATTEMPT!
- This setup requires a high amount of dexterity, so we either have to gain some from passives or build some on our gear. (I find getting them from passives is a lot less stressful)
- We need a lot of cold resist in order to give ourselves a bigger amount of evasion from Perfect Form.
- Even though hitting things off screen is nice, we have no clue if we're attacking reflect mobs or corrupting blood.







In this section, will be posted some great uniques that I would recommend and others that will be required to run this setup. In this section however, I will not post any recommended items for a CI setup. Only to keep the options of using a setup much similar as mine rather than completely changing our entire setup for the sake of grabbing CI. I will try to post some alternatives in a different forum post if you guys want to build around CI.

Mandatory Uniques



Recommended Uniques










As Elementalist, we will be taking passives as follows: Paragon of Calamity > Liege of the Primordial > Pendulum of Destruction > Shaper of Desolation.

I know it's crazy to think about taking Paragon of Calamity first, but it is more than required for this build. Since we do a lot of shotgunning, going against a reflect mob at a low level will more than likely kill you. I've almost joined the standard league due to reflect a few times during leveling, so I chose to run it first. Liege of the Primordial is a great second choice. We gain a lot of damage from our golems (Fire and Lightning to be exact). Pendulum of Destruction follows next, to give us bigger AoE for our shotgunning when our skulls explode and of course to do 100% increased damage. Shaper of Desolation was actually something that I found interesting. It was a tie between that and Mastermind of Discord. Since we never run a fire spell to cause the cold pen, I felt like it was a useless spec into my ascendancy and on our way to Shaper of Desolation, we grab more freeze chance and the conflux adds some nice damage since now we can shock and ignite, so I ended up choosing that.


Bandits



Passive Tree



Pantheon






Main Setup

Arctic Breath > Spell Echo > Greater Multiple Projectile > Hypothermia > Cold Penetration > Increased AoE

Curse Setup

Orb of Storms > Curse On Hit > Frostbite

Auras/Golems

Enlighten > Lightning Golem > Grace > Arctic Armor

Defensive Setup

Cast When Damage Taken > Immortal Call > Increased Duration > Fire Golem

Movement

Lightning Warp > Faster Casting > Less Duration > Swift Affliction

Extra Setup

Herald of Ice > Ice Bite > Vaal Grace













This build was a lot of fun! Leveling with it was more than easy, especially if you can get a Halycon early on. I'm currently running T7 maps with this setup at level 78 in HC Breach. Haven't had too many scary moment, even from breaches. I will eventually post a quick video on the clear speed and maybe soon some end game bosses. Will keep you guys posted, but as for now if you would like to leave a comment below, I will get back to you as soon as I can. I Hope you guys enjoyed this guide! And as always, Stay safe out there!






F.A.Qs

So why run a Doon Cuebiyari?
For one I love this weapon. And since we are grabbing life to stay away from the chance of being stunned easily, we can gain a lot of strength from passives and gear. I am currently at 400 strength which mean 50% damage from the weapon alone. Not too shabby.

The Touch of Anguish is so useless, why use it?
Not entirely. It's actually pretty genius for this setup. To break it down so it all makes sense, we get 30% cold damage right off the bat. Some % crit chance to help proc elemental overload. We have a 20% chance to gain a frenzy charge on killing a frozen enemy. Since we freeze all the time, we generally max out our frenzy charges on the first pack. Our Arctic Breath's chain clearing packs off screen. And a nice 10% chance to freeze to help gain those charges. Pretty amazing if I'd say so.

A Witch without CI? What kind of sorcery is this?!
I know it seems odd and I have a great explanation! Since we run a very useful amulet, we cannot rely on an Eye of Chayula for stun immunity. We do have an option to run boot enchantments to help avoid stuns, and it's totally do-able. I for one am not a fan and it's a little time consuming to find the enchantment for the right boots you want. With this setup, we focus on two main stats that help us stay alive a lot better than CI, Evasion and Life. With the combo of the two, we are much tankier in heated situations and with the perfect form, we reach a fair amount of Evasion rating. Also with a great life pool, we are better resistant to being stunned.

How is the map clearing speed? Can we handle Breaches?
Quite well as a matter of fact. We constantly move without any hesitations and our damaging freezes ensures that we are safe during big fights. Breaches are so easy, even if we don't freeze anything, the trail of chilled ground left behind makes everything move slowly and gives us time to reposition.

I don't really understand the Arctic breath mechanics...
To sum up exactly what's going on here, take it from Kwitch
, a helpful source that got me to understand a little better. "Your 'tooltip' damage x your total projectiles does not = your actual dps number. Our DPS is actually very hard to define, and it only applies to how many overlapping fields of projectiles manage to hit targets, single or otherwise. On bosses especially, unless you achieve very specific positioning near collision objects, AB can feel low on damage."








Scorching Ray Totem Build
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1768529

Vortex Ignite Totem Build
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1828077





Change log

2/12/17 - Cleaned up the passive tree a little bit. Changed from 120 passives down to 112 and got rid of EE since we are building a pure cold damage build.

2/12/17 - Brightened up the blue text in the skill gems section.

2/12/17 - Added a Jewel Spoiler in the Gear Setup section to explain what jewels we will be using.

2/12/17 - Added a Graveyard video to show what the build can do.

8/21/17 - Updated the passive tree to suit the changes in 3.0. Fixed the gem setup so that you can run all three aura gems. Made changes to the Bandits section. Updated the title.

Reserved.

Thanks for the build guide, I enjoyed reading through it. A couple of thoughts for ya.

The blue color for a guide, '#0000FF' is very hard on the eyes, I would love to see it brightened a bit for readability.

I really liked thinking about how your Touch of Anguish works, and yeah I can see how you get up to max frenzy charges quickly. . . My question for you though, especially on hardcore, is does this really outperform a shield? Chain looks like fun, but AB also has the limitation in that it doesn't do damage on 'contact' with monsters, only when it 'explodes'. An AB projectile that chains specifically has not exploded. I tested it a lot for my own AB build and wished it did damage on passing through monsters. It likely feels pretty amazing, I'm just not sold on it.

I would really like to see your stats for defenses and offenses. I realize you will want to say 'this is not my ideal gear' etc, but I just want to see where your character is at with it, now. You can press 12345 if you want, I just want some kind of idea what going evasion as a Strength based life caster looks like.

Your reflect concerns are valid, however I think it might be possible to run reflect content. You might not think it worth the time investment, but likely a Kaltenhalt/soul or Saffell's, combined with a Purity of Ice granting a combined total of 9% max cold resistance would do the trick. Even swapping out your CwDT enfeeble for Warlord's Mark, but again it's totally up to you.

Since you linked all of your gear without your gem links, we can only guess as to what your intentions were for some of them. I imagine you are running your 'Curse' setup in your Doon? Shame you can't easily get three greens for your 'Extra' setup to live there, as the Iron Will is a waste for simply Orb of Storms.

I had this issue as well, and I want to make sure you are aware of it when explaining AB mechanics to others.... your 'tooltip' damage x your total projectiles does not = your actual dps number. Our DPS is actually very hard to define, and it only applies to how many overlapping fields of projectiles manage to hit targets, single or otherwise. On bosses especially, unless you achieve very specific positioning near collision objects, AB can feel low on damage. Only in your initial description and your discussion of Snakepit was it potentially confusing... but it's a confusing mechanic to begin with. That's not on you. ♥

You stated that you prefer the 60% increased damage over 20% penetration. I believe the 20% penetration is likely more damage overall, and especially in your setup. You are running EE for your Lightning Warp + Orb of Storms stuff, but -20 penetration combines with EE and your cold pen will actually put monster resistances into negative resistances. When this occurs, a new 'multiplier' exists which will function identically to having an extra 'ef' multiplier in your gem links. Bringing monsters to even -1% resistance is kind of a big deal.

I can see how EE helps ya, but I wondered if 5 points for EE was really worth it. If you're going to stick with Halcyon, and you really don't care about pen, wouldn't you prefer those 5 points spent somewhere like Storm Weaver (for 43% increased cold damage + mana regen, and a small boost to your lightning dmg) for 4 points, or even Ice Walker (44% increase, 15% cold res with your Perfect Form)?

You never really discussed your jewel choices. You picked up the Melding Wheel which is arguably terrible for HP based characters, but we have no idea what you socket into the nearby socket. Are you performing any conversion there? How about the jewel socket below Mind over Matter?

(If you aren't doing anything fun with the jewel socket near Melding, would you consider Blood Drinker as higher priority over Melding, as it's equal in efficiency point per point, and also grants us evasion, dexterity, and an additional 6% with the next point?)

You picked up a lot of Dexterity on the tree, how close is your gear to removing the requirement of these? Is it possible?

Is Deep Thoughts for your total mana pool to allow you to cast skills after all of your reservation? It's 2 points for 28% increased maximum mana and 20% regen, and +20 Int. Would you consider Righteous Decree for 2 points to be better? 28% increased maximum mana, and 9% reduced cost of active skills?

You've given us a 121 point tree for your build. For all of us who are not yet level 100, would you consider giving us lower point trees so we can 'progress' through your build in the order of priority you consider from your own experience?

And finally, any kills yet with the build, bosses or tier maps etc? Would love to hear how you've done with it in Über Izaro and the like.

*edit*: Is frostbite effect the lab enchant you really wanted? Can you list off any other recommendations you would desire?

Cheers!

"

Kwitch wrote:

Thanks for the build guide, I enjoyed reading through it. A couple of thoughts for ya.

The blue color for a guide, '#0000FF' is very hard on the eyes, I would love to see it brightened a bit for readability.

I really liked thinking about how your Touch of Anguish works, and yeah I can see how you get up to max frenzy charges quickly. . . My question for you though, especially on hardcore, is does this really outperform a shield? Chain looks like fun, but AB also has the limitation in that it doesn't do damage on 'contact' with monsters, only when it 'explodes'. An AB projectile that chains specifically has not exploded. I tested it a lot for my own AB build and wished it did damage on passing through monsters. It likely feels pretty amazing, I'm just not sold on it.

I would really like to see your stats for defenses and offenses. I realize you will want to say 'this is not my ideal gear' etc, but I just want to see where your character is at with it, now. You can press 12345 if you want, I just want some kind of idea what going evasion as a Strength based life caster looks like.

Your reflect concerns are valid, however I think it might be possible to run reflect content. You might not think it worth the time investment, but likely a Kaltenhalt/soul or Saffell's, combined with a Purity of Ice granting a combined total of 9% max cold resistance would do the trick. Even swapping out your CwDT enfeeble for Warlord's Mark, but again it's totally up to you.

Since you linked all of your gear without your gem links, we can only guess as to what your intentions were for some of them. I imagine you are running your 'Curse' setup in your Doon? Shame you can't easily get three greens for your 'Extra' setup to live there, as the Iron Will is a waste for simply Orb of Storms.

I had this issue as well, and I want to make sure you are aware of it when explaining AB mechanics to others.... your 'tooltip' damage x your total projectiles does not = your actual dps number. Our DPS is actually very hard to define, and it only applies to how many overlapping fields of projectiles manage to hit targets, single or otherwise. On bosses especially, unless you achieve very specific positioning near collision objects, AB can feel low on damage. Only in your initial description and your discussion of Snakepit was it potentially confusing... but it's a confusing mechanic to begin with. That's not on you. ♥

You stated that you prefer the 60% increased damage over 20% penetration. I believe the 20% penetration is likely more damage overall, and especially in your setup. You are running EE for your Lightning Warp + Orb of Storms stuff, but -20 penetration combines with EE and your cold pen will actually put monster resistances into negative resistances. When this occurs, a new 'multiplier' exists which will function identically to having an extra 'ef' multiplier in your gem links. Bringing monsters to even -1% resistance is kind of a big deal.

I can see how EE helps ya, but I wondered if 5 points for EE was really worth it. If you're going to stick with Halcyon, and you really don't care about pen, wouldn't you prefer those 5 points spent somewhere like Storm Weaver (for 43% increased cold damage + mana regen, and a small boost to your lightning dmg) for 4 points, or even Ice Walker (44% increase, 15% cold res with your Perfect Form)?

You never really discussed your jewel choices. You picked up the Melding Wheel which is arguably terrible for HP based characters, but we have no idea what you socket into the nearby socket. Are you performing any conversion there? How about the jewel socket below Mind over Matter?

(If you aren't doing anything fun with the jewel socket near Melding, would you consider Blood Drinker as higher priority over Melding, as it's equal in efficiency point per point, and also grants us evasion, dexterity, and an additional 6% with the next point?)

You picked up a lot of Dexterity on the tree, how close is your gear to removing the requirement of these? Is it possible?

Is Deep Thoughts for your total mana pool to allow you to cast skills after all of your reservation? It's 2 points for 28% increased maximum mana and 20% regen, and +20 Int. Would you consider Righteous Decree for 2 points to be better? 28% increased maximum mana, and 9% reduced cost of active skills?

You've given us a 121 point tree for your build. For all of us who are not yet level 100, would you consider giving us lower point trees so we can 'progress' through your build in the order of priority you consider from your own experience?

And finally, any kills yet with the build, bosses or tier maps etc? Would love to hear how you've done with it in Über Izaro and the like.

*edit*: Is frostbite effect the lab enchant you really wanted? Can you list off any other recommendations you would desire?

Cheers!

Hey there Kwitch, let me start off by saying, Whoa! Lol This was a lot to think about and I'd like to answer each one of your paragraphs here with a detailed response so we can cover a lot of ground here. Note, I love the fact that you're so dedicated to finding all the details and you have cleared a lot of confusion and I definitely applaud you for that.

As for the guide, I do notice that the blue text can be a little drab and needs a bit of changing up, I honestly just grabbed the base color from a forum post to use, but I will definitely change in the future!

Onto Touch of Anguish, it's honestly personal opinion when it comes to using it for AB. On HC it does it's job with clearing speed with the chaining effect goes off into a direction and explodes some monsters. I would definitely have to agree with you, for HC a shield might be a good bet when it comes to doing end game maps and I'll mention that with an update to the build guide. You have to take into account however, that Touch of Anguish is not only chosen for the chaining and frenzy charges but for the bit of cold damage we receive and the increase to freeze chance. Overall, I found it to be a great item for such a great price.

Here's my numbers for defense and offense; At Lv 78 with the passives I currently have, I'm running 13990 Evasion which totals out to 57% chance to evade. And of course the 30% chance to evade spells from Perfect Form. My Life currently Is a touch under 5k, 4.7k life, but I'm missing some key life nodes that I'm build towards. :)
My Offensive numbers currently sitting in town without Elemental Overload and Frenzy Charges just hits 10k. Fully buffed I'm reaching about 18k. As I said I have about 400 Strength and I'm still missing a lot of big passive nodes which I'm aiming for here in the next 4 levels.

It's definitely reachable to run reflect content. As you said it's personal preference whether or not you'd like to take the time to switch up your setup a little bit in order to run them. Personally, I just ignore them. I can kill reflect mobs and that's all I really need achieve so I don't kill myself from hitting something off screen.

As for my gems, you're right my links don't make sense with the gem-setup that I've currently posted. The gear that I'm currently using that I have posted is actually a set of leveling gear that I have used, I just felt the need to post something in that section to give readers the idea of what stats they need to build towards on gear. I could get 3 greens on my Doon, but by god it would take a lot of chromes haha.

The mechanics of AB are definitely hard to describe in a text format. The tooltip DPS is definitely going to be off since we are calculating multiple number of projectile damage from each projectile due to the shotgunning that's happening there. It's quite a tongue twister! You actually pointed out something I forgot to post on the Cons of this build and that is positioning is key and bosses could take a miserable time to kill since we will most likely have to back them into a wall to shotgun them down. So thank you for that! :D

I like your idea of dropping EE all together and grabbing some key nodes that would help increase the overall cold damage. I get that if you're going to run EE, you should be dedicated to dropping enemy resists and in this case, running a Pandemonium Amulet would benefit that deeply. I got to rethink some of my passives and am going to update my tree a little bit to further focus on dropping EE, and running some more cold damage. Was even thinking about dropping cold pen on my setup and grabbing Controlled Destruction.

For Jewel choices, I honestly have a few things in mind but I was aiming to grab as much as I could without spending a lot of passives to grab them. Was primarily going to focus on getting some that had stats such as life, cold dmg, aoe dmg, freeze chance and so on. For positions on the tree, melding was a bad choice of life nodes, so I am going to respec them for a bigger life node. As for grabbing deep thoughts, there's three major reasons why that node is amazing for this build. It's helps our mana regen which is also the deciding factor as to why I grabbed shaper for the 40% mana regen, the increase in mana, and the 20 intelligence since we will be putting a Efficient Training Jewel there to give us an additional 50 to strength. Once again, I will be making updates to the build guide to further explain this. :D

The Dexterity on the tree in my opinion is quite necessary. However, you can have gear with dex rolled on it to replace some of those nodes. Unfortunately, we would need something like 80 dex from gear and I chose instead put strength on my gear to further my damage and grabbed a couple of dex nodes here and there.

I do agree, a full level 100 tree is quite unnecessary seeing how most of us don't achieve level 100. I will definitely re-do the tree and post a more updated one with a better achievable goal in mind.

The progress of the build has taken me to tier 7 maps so far. Uber Labs is in my list of goals but as for now, I'm currently working on gearing up a little bit and leveling to a good point to where I think I can do Uber Labs without dying. :p

And no, Frostbite isn't the enchantment that I wanted but it was the one I got doing merc labs for the first run lol.

Thank you so much for your input! I've got a lot to think about and I will be making some detailed changes to the build guide. It might take some time since school has me at my fingertips, but I will try to put some time into getting it fixed!

Cheers!

Good to read all of that. I would still be curious if 9% less cost of skills wouldn't do the same task of 20% mana regen, but that would require some science/testing and as you've stated busy busy.

Do you mind if I add your build to the build guide list? I personally love AB and there are drastically few builds for it.

"

Kwitch wrote:

Good to read all of that. I would still be curious if 9% less cost of skills wouldn't do the same task of 20% mana regen, but that would require some science/testing and as you've stated busy busy.

Do you mind if I add your build to the build guide list? I personally love AB and there are drastically few builds for it.

Please do! I'd like to see more people play AB builds as well. I will test out the difference in mana regen to less cost to spells and get back to you. :)

That's all good, but i can't see bf setup with poison. Jk
Fantastic build mate! :)

If I'm not mistaken, the increased Critical Strike Chance modifier on Touch of Anguish is a local modifier and applies only to attacks with the weapon (which you aren't doing) and is not global critical strike chance.

The other stats (chance to freeze, frenzy charge generation, cold damage and chain) are all great synergies for your build, nice work!

"

kezz wrote:

If I'm not mistaken, the increased Critical Strike Chance modifier on Touch of Anguish is a local modifier and applies only to attacks with the weapon (which you aren't doing) and is not global critical strike chance.

The other stats (chance to freeze, frenzy charge generation, cold damage and chain) are all great synergies for your build, nice work!

Ah, that you are right sir! Just did a quick take off and on of the weapon and it does not affect crit rating. So thank you for pointing that out! It however is amazing and I love it so. :)

I'm planning on looking at my Freezer Burn AB build a bit for next league, as I was inspired a bit after thinking about AB again with you.

With that stated, how often do you 'feel' Shaper grants you good elemental status effects? I love mastermind, but I may drop it and test w/ shaper.

Also, I had a fun/foolish idea of running this as a scourge build. Just so we can whirling/shield charge and still get the double damage effectiveness for burns (As I am 100% fire conversion). Still thinking about it.

would love your input on those two items, thanks.