[3.5] Occultist Vortex/Cold Snap ES/CI - Deathless and Safe Uber Elder and T16's

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repekdusje1 wrote:

I dont understand one thing, why u use ele focus + hypothermia? I mean, u cant chill with vortex if u use ele focus, so why use hypothermia?

We have to chill with cold snap?

I have tested to use conc effect for bosses and inc area of effect for mapping, and also works very good. I swapped ele focus.

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roselan wrote:

As well, Elemental focus "Supported Skills cannot inflict Elemental Ailments" is not that much of issue. Freezing is applied by HoI and Frostbite, not vortex. Moreover, the effect propagate well out of vortex radius. That said, I'm a noob and I simply didn't think about this. I will immediately test the build without elemental focus :)

would like to weigh in here. first of all, elemental focus supports a skill that hits. the reason it supports vortex is because vortex hits first, and then creates an area of chilled ground where the DoT comes in. the "Supported Skills cannot inflict Elemental Ailments" of elemental focus applies ONLY to the hit. in other words, vortex's hit does not chill. that much is correct. HOWEVER, vortex creates an area of chilled ground. this chilled ground will ALWAYS chill. which is why, hypothermia works. that being said, I have not plugged in the numbers, but conc effect and elemental focus should give very similar dps boosts. but elemental focus is better because it does not sacrifice AOE, and has a lower mana multiplier. that is why we have hypothermia on vortex as well. because well, they are all chilled.

the current setup of vortex gives it THE MOST dps. this is indisputable. as for cold snap (whether vaal or not), it is a support/secondary skill to trigger bonechill which ramps the dps of vortex even more.

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roselan wrote:

I only use vaal cold snap when intervention come say hello or in delve when one of these harbringer shows up. They tickle.

In maps, EE is not ruined because it simply doesn't have time to trigger as everything explode. And it still works well against bosses as it's activated by storm brand and orb of storms. (that wouldn't work with obliteration, as you can't craft "trigger a socketed spell when you use a skill". This is the main reason why I switched to profane bloom instead of using obliteration. Plus profane bloom _does_ work better)


- HoI: "If you shatter an enemy, they explode and deal AoE cold damage to enemies near them." that's the bomb part.
- HoT: "If you kill a shocked enemy, lightning bolts will strike enemies around you for a short duration." As I see it, that's the auto part, which we replace with vortex. More importantly, to shock enemies we need some serious gear and skills changes.

For obliteration... why use one when you can use two? more seriously, I think it's not needed. It's rare that the explosion chain does not go off. When that happens it's on small packs (5-6 mobs) where it doesn't matter much anyway.

from what you say, which I am inclined to agree, I am pretty sure the oblits and HoI shattering will kill everything even if it interferes with the EE. so, yeah not going to be concerned with that.

bloody hell did not think of dual wielding. yeah I'm going to do that. currently I'm doing 2.3m shaper dps. with the 2 oblit, the dps will drop but be more than sufficient to handle maps. then i'll just weapon switch back and re-cast some auras for the boss. can't deny that profane bloom will feel a lot better, but I think for convenience, dual wielding would prevent me from needing to respec while maintaining the dps.

update: dual wielding oblit made vortex dps drop from 2.3m to 1.4m. but map clear is fast. for weaker bosses/syndicates, I dont even weapon switch to "bossing setup". re-casting aura's is a pain (if I could go around it I would haha). ES dropped from 10.6k to 8.4k (because no shield). but for map clearing mobs that can be 1hko-ed, it's incredibly fast. reminds me of my death oath's occultist.

I'm so very glad you like it too :)

I was very surprised to find nothing like it online. That said, I tried to swap out elemental focus for increased area of effect, and it's doesn't work. At least with my build it doesn't have the "ompf" to kill packs on the initial hit. It does with concentrated effect, but i still prefer elemental focus. There is less stragglers with ef. However, I can't tell if it's due to the gem or to the fact that i'm so used to the "normal" vortex radius.

I'm sure there is tons of possible improvements, but "it works".

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roselan wrote:

I'm so very glad you like it too :)

I was very surprised to find nothing like it online. That said, I tried to swap out elemental focus for increased area of effect, and it's doesn't work. At least with my build it doesn't have the "ompf" to kill packs on the initial hit. It does with concentrated effect, but i still prefer elemental focus. There is less stragglers with ef. However, I can't tell if it's due to the gem or to the fact that i'm so used to the "normal" vortex radius.

I'm sure there is tons of possible improvements, but "it works".

to be fair, a profane bloom idea probably would not have been conceived with vortex as the skill to trigger it haha.

that's why they have death's oaths occultist around. as for ompf, it's a matter of scaling your hit dps, which is not really the point of vortex. (i can kill white on hit, but blue and yellow's take 0.2 to 0.5s).

as for the elemental focus vs conc effect, as mentioned, there's v little reason to use conc effect. elemental focus is just superior, esp since we dont need the hit of vortex to cast the chill.

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snowmittens wrote:

After running 4 other builds I have to admit this one was the best taking on end game content

Just pull it out of storgae to handle Delve AUL and she ate him for lunch (and the build is even far from optimize)

really hope 3.7 doesnt nerf it haha. looking forward to play it and push the boundaries

Played this build enough to do stuff up to cortex/uelder. Biggest problem of the build was slow mapping. Tested this dual Obliteration thing that was suggested here and ran thru t15 map without problems and things died more smoothly than with scepter/shield. Lost about 1/5 dmg, 2k es and block but was well worth it. I have trigger gems in scepter and flame dash setup in shield. I put simply flame dash+faster casting into Obliteration and 4 excess gems slots for leveling gems and all I needed to do was press weapon swap button while mapping when betrayal mobs attacked me or went to boss or whatever. Great stuff whoever tought this. :)

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Hartsa wrote:

Played this build enough to do stuff up to cortex/uelder. Biggest problem of the build was slow mapping. Tested this dual Obliteration thing that was suggested here and ran thru t15 map without problems and things died more smoothly than with scepter/shield. Lost about 1/5 dmg, 2k es and block but was well worth it. I have trigger gems in scepter and flame dash setup in shield. I put simply flame dash+faster casting into Obliteration and 4 excess gems slots for leveling gems and all I needed to do was press weapon swap button while mapping when betrayal mobs attacked me or went to boss or whatever. Great stuff whoever tought this. :)

glad you like it. it was suggested by roselan. he mentioned to test his build out using oblits, and suggested to me why not dual wield it (I only thought of single wielding it).

After playing around 2.400 hours i killed my first uelder with this build. Need nearly all portals, but finally it works :)

The build is great and gives many opportunitys (more offense or more defence).

Thanks to all people for their advices!

update: can consider +1/+2 shav's as end game item



dps increased by 20% to 3m shaper dps as of now :D

So I'm at 9800 ES and 1.06M Shaper dps. What should my next upgrade be?

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kevinbrightblade wrote:

So I'm at 9800 ES and 1.06M Shaper dps. What should my next upgrade be?

hey there. I think your dps is really good for what you have. It's similar to what I had when I was at the same stage of item progression. I don't have significant comments for your skill tree, although I would path it slightly differently, but I think it's fine. gear wise, you have all the necessary dps. I would upgrade the helm, shield for more ES, to try and hit 11.5k ES (personal preference). others in this thread have specc-ed more defensively, getting 13-15k ES, but with lesser dps.

some things you can consider, these are item progression that will leapfrog your dps. get an Aul's (hatred/malevolence). this may push your dps to 1.3m or so (30%). go LL with shav's. this will increase dps by about 50%. get a +2 duration gem / +1 gem level chest (maybe lvl 4 empower) and this should push dps another 20%. I would balance my resistances, and consider a bated breath. it gives good dps and ES, but lack resistances.


I found rings to be too expensive for dps improvements, so I didnt invest in those. also CDOT gloves are another boost. for weapon, it's possible to find 38-50% CDOT weapons (those with CDOT implicits). for myself all these are improvements I could make, but choose not to because of diminishing returns.

some stats - without Auls I was about 1m dps and 11.5k ES. with Aul's about 1.3/1.4m dps and 11.5k ES. with Shav's LL, 2.3/2.4m dps and 10.5k ES. now with +2 shav's LL, 3m dps and 10.7k ES.

I dropped my Aul's amulet to get a CDOT amulet as I didnt think I needed to run another aura. amulet is really sexy.