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

Hey.
Need advise for surviveability in Standard, not Legion, just good old standard.
how can i optimise my build for Delving surviveability or at least to optimise it in any way.
i am dying too much,
thank u very much

my build is public

my o my.

1. flasks. You don't need rotgut and the hybrid is bad. You have 50% bleed on boots, but you need bleed immunity from flasks or elsewhere (malevolence watcher eyes with bleed immunity is cheap even on standard). You don't need poison immunity (ci), or freeze immunity (ascendancy)

chemist's flasks (apart quicksilver). with curse and shock immunity, burning is nice too. (and of course bleed immunity if you don't have it elsewhere). Be aware that consecrated ground is not that useful as we move non stop, but there is nothing better. Quartz is nice, as it's phasing is not interrupted by skills like the one from the gem. My setup: quartz, quicksilver, basalt, sulphur, witchfire.

2. Ascendancy. Withering presence is particularly useless as you are CI and so chaos immune, and you deal no chaos damage. Get profane bloom. Hinder is nice, that's what aspect of the spider is for.

3. gear. You get flat damage in lot of places (in jewels too). useless for dots. your amulet is crap as you don't "attack". Your helm only redeeming qualtiy is the -9 resist. Your left ring has only one useful non crafted affix.

4. your tree. Where to start?

- You have spiritual aid but don't use it. It's used mainly for the weapon prefix that gives 90+ increased damage to minions. You don't have that on your weapon. You can get rid of retribution and other stuff too.

- You use ghost reaver, with a dot that doesn't leech much... Ok you have a mana issue. Get a jewel that leech mana for 1c, it's all you need. (or better boots leech enchant).

- finish the insightfulness wheel, now.

- Path of the savant bad. Utmost intellect good.

- you don't need the crit chance node to trigger elemental overload.

- there are plenty of little things you can optimize. The biggest one is the the use of jewels like "might of meek" or "energy from within" + melding wheel. If you browse back a couple pages, you will find some very optimized tree (mainly by SonsOfKhoral)

5. skills.
You have blasphemy in your helm, but no curse...

If you have the mana for "flesh and stone", use it. (in sand stance). I personally love the mana reservation nodes in the tree (sovereignty, and the node under CI).

get vortex lv21 as soon as you can.

The hard part is how to plug a curse. Blasphemy is an option but it reserves a precious skill gem and mana. You have ring affixes (warlord mark) but not very useful for the build. A compromise is to get Herald of ice - curse on hit - frostbite on your second hand obliteration. This way, you have you ee setup on your main weapon against bosses with witchfire curse, and full clear speed with your obliteration. The only downside is to recast HoI each time you swap.

6. In general.
Wicked Ward is still strong, the not interrupted part is still ass saving. Wicked ward is 50% less regen, that's basically what you get from zealot oath. Ghost reaver is 50% less recharge. Recharge is 20% of es per second, and what is "protected" by wicked ward. So you have to chose what to "sacrifice". However as our main skill is a Dot, Ghost Reaver is the least useful of the three keystones.

All in all, what does kill you? big one shots? damage over time (I suspect bleeding). If it's big one shot, you might investigate some "#% physical damage taken as cold damage" affix. Else you do like everyone else and reroll as trickster.

I've played this build the last 2 seasons (betr_sara & syn_sara). My profile is public.

This season, I thought I'd try something a bit different - try to see how far I could get on as cheap gear as possible. That and with the decimation of flat ES in the ascendancy, I thought I'd see how malediction and 3 curses plays.

Pretty much everything on my new character (gimped_leg_occultist) was had for cheap, < 10c per piece. In fact cerebbus limb + aegis auroa was supprisingly effective until I found the sceptre in the trade site for 45c! The shield was about 5 dense fossils on a 1c base. (cerebus and aegis are still on the alt weapon switch)

The body armor was the most expensive part, 1ex.. mainly b/c it was corrupted and not divined before vaaling presumably..

Oh, and cinderswallow cost me 60c, mainly for stun immunity since taking malediction prevented taking vile bastion, but the mana regen on kill is nice until I manage to farm the damn boot enchant. (Will probably just do cruel lab, since it is .4% vs .5% for merciless vs .6% for eternal.. that and i HATE the lab with a passion!)

As equipped, PoB says it is just over 1M dot dps (480k shaper) with 9122ES.

With that said, I'd appreciate from feedback and suggestions with a few caveats.
1) I realize that frostbite impressence precludes me from using EE.. For normal maps, this is no big deal. Not sure for shaper+, but looks like that decision costs me about 160k dps. Despair impresence would fix that problem, but would create the problem of how to get a 3rd curse.
2) I looked at might of the meek, but doesn't seem to increase my stats much. Shield increases by 50ES and about 10k shaper dps.
3) Still trying to decide if I prefer frostblink or flame dash. Trying both, hence they are both still socketted.

Right now, as I level, I plan finishing out taking the arcane expanse wheel, utmost intelligence wheel and maybe lord of the deal notable.

Any thoughts or critique would be greatly appreciated.

"

roselan wrote:

my o my.

- You use ghost reaver, with a dot that doesn't leech much... Ok you have a mana issue. Get a jewel that leech mana for 1c, it's all you need. (or better boots leech enchant).

I can't find any jewels that leech mana.. I must be missing something? What is the exact thing to search for?

TIA

Thanks Roselan for the input.

(my o my is a statement ^^)

I guess , i mixed up some things during new league build and old Build.

i will follow your advises as good as possible.

indeed i had an eye on the left ring as well :)

thank u very much :)

"

toxic678 wrote:

I can't find any jewels that leech mana.. I must be missing something? What is the exact thing to search for?

TIA

I'm so sorry and you are absolutely right, the only mana leech on jewel is for "Physical attacks". I got really confused here.

So boots enchant is really the only decent source of (mana) leech for Vortex.

Hey hey.

The change from Occultist to Trickster bring what benefit?
This thread is over 180 sides long now.
A little bit hard to find those infos...

ofc i will change without asking^^ when this is way-2-go.

Btw:

i changed jewels
i changed Helmet
i changed many Skills in the Tree
i tuned Ascendcey to Profane Bloom

This looks much better!

- You don't need to take the 10 int node where you use energy from within.

- Pain attunement does nothing when you have CI (you are always full life with CI).

- you took the minor nodes in the Arcane expanse wheel, but not arcane expanse itself (it's out of your might of the meek influence)

- I'm pretty sure that you are aware of it, but your malevolence on your obliteration is turned off each time you swap weapons.

- Your boot enchant might mess up your EE setup (I'm not sure about it).

- for 3 points you can take the "entropy" notable on the bottom right, if I member correctly this ends up with more dps than arcane expanse. But's it more personal preference at that point.

The trickster comment was in jest as it feels quite more tanky than occultist right now.

:D
thank u very much for your help and the Time it takes.

some things i am indeed aware of.
some not. i will pay attention on it.
Fixed the nodes.

i use Enfeeble instead of Malevolance right now.
mistake?


Trickster is no MUST have? or is it worth it to respecc?
i guess, i give it a try.
wich trickster nodes must i take?

Forget about trickster, it's a new character entirely (duelist) and honestly not worth leveling a new character for Vortex only. I'm just very sad that occultist was nerfed so much.

You already use a curse (through witchfire brew), so enfeeble is kind of useless as you can only apply 1 curse. Malevolence is not a curse. (with vortex, I prefer frostbite to enfeeble, mainly with herald of ice for clear speed).

It all depends on the mana you can reserve (99%). I see your enlighten is soon lv3, it will help quite a lot!

To what I see you still use blasphemy in your helm with no curse. I guess you do some tests.

Aspect of the spider is really good. if you have a free suffix on a piece of gear you plan to keep, you can get "Fenumus, First of the Night" on the market for 100 chaos and craft it in you menagerie. (if you have free prefix and a crafted suffix, you can scour the crafted suffix, craft spider in the menagerie, and bench craft a new prefix). But you might still get mana reservation issue.

"Flesh and Stone" (in sand/stone stance) is very strong too. I would start to replace the blasphemy gem in your helm with it.

So:
- malevolence
- (vaal) discipline
- flesh and stone.

Enlighten lv4, or lv3 with the mana reservation node under Chaos Inoculation.

With a bit more cash and mana reservation nodes, you can fit aspect of the spider.

With a LOT more cash, aul's amulet with malevolence mod (20ex), and then Shavronne lowlife, etc.