I want help on my ice witch build

of course he uses static blows on every char he builds, it triples/quadra your DPS when target is shocked, its prob the most important talent point you ever spend.

"

Kripp is currently streaming. He use freezing pulse and static blows. In fact all his build use static blows.

http://www.twitch.tv/nl_kripp

BTW if you have the gear yellow bosses die really fast with freezing pulse and static blows. Watch Kripp stream if you don't believe me.

So basically if I move 5 points and switch one gem you're saying I can quadruple my damage? While this sounds too good to be true (and a future nerf bat candidate), I'm up for that! A few question before I go for it:

1. How can it triple or quadruple my damage if Shock stacks to 120% damage? Isn't that double? I have a Lightning witch main with SB and the full monty of Shock-helpers and it never felt like quadruple.

2. Does this require uber-gear? I'm sure Kripp's gear is far superior to mine. Does it need 4 Pulse per second or something? Because the proc chance is going to be low. I can swap in dual cast-speed wands and an amulet but I doubt my mana can handle that.

3. Will it work just as readily with Ice Spear? Because I do considerably more damage with Spear since it pretty much 95% crits. And it's the spell I use for far targets. Or does it fire too slow to stack?

"

GhostlightX wrote:

So basically if I move 5 points and switch one gem you're saying I can quadruple my damage? While this sounds too good to be true (and a future nerf bat candidate), I'm up for that! A few question before I go for it:

1. How can it triple or quadruple my damage if Shock stacks to 120% damage? Isn't that double? I have a Lightning witch main with SB and the full monty of Shock-helpers and it never felt like quadruple.

2. Does this require uber-gear? I'm sure Kripp's gear is far superior to mine. Does it need 4 Pulse per second or something? Because the proc chance is going to be low. I can swap in dual cast-speed wands and an amulet but I doubt my mana can handle that.

3. Will it work just as readily with Ice Spear? Because I do considerably more damage with Spear since it pretty much 95% crits. And it's the spell I use for far targets. Or does it fire too slow to stack?

2. Kripps gears is top of the line. You have to look far and wide to find gears better than what Kripps own. PoE is gear intensive however increase elemental/spell damage gears are easy to come by. You shouldn't have problem stacking shock.

3. http://en.pathofexilewiki.com/wiki/Status_Ailments#Shock

"Shock causes affected targets to take increased damage. This can be stacked up to three times on one target. In this state, monsters or players take 40% more damage per instance of Shock from all sources. Under the effects of 3 stacks of Shock, an enemy would take an additional 120% of the damage that would normally take without any Shock effects, no matter the type or source of the damage."

The main reason why even lightning builds take static blows is it has a 20% to shock no matter what. In order for lightning damage to shock without Static Blows it must do critical damage than shock applied. With Static Shock every hit you will get a 20% shock regardless of critical.

If you freeze a mob that means that you did a critical hit. As far as I know you can't freeze without a critical.

http://en.pathofexilewiki.com/wiki/Damage_Types#Lightning_Damage

I have absolutely no doubt that I will proc the Shock. However:

"If the duration (of Shock) would be less that 300ms, it's ignored entirely (the effect is not applied)."

This mechanic is in the game specifically to prevent people cheezing Shocks just by adding a Lighting gem and taking Static Blows!

The issue I have is with the amount of lightning damage I would be doing with an Added Lightning gem. It will be absolutely tiny. A level 16 Lightning gem adds 4 to 74 Lightning damage, for example. ONLY the Lighting damage counts towards the shock duration and if it is less than 1.1% of target's max Life, you do NOT get a Shock at all. Even if it is more than this threshold, the Shock lasts a mere 0.276 seconds plus the excess. This means the Shocks I do would be extremely brief.

Hence either the entire strategy would not work with my gear, OR I'd need to be hitting fast enough that my next Hit will arrive before the Shock ends. I'd need almost 4 Pulses per second, which is why I asked about gear and whether Ice Spear, a slower spell, would work.

Now compare to my Freezing chance. My Ice Spear pretty much always crits but sometimes the target doesn't freeze, even Whites. Some targets never Freeze! This nothing to do with critting, it is because the cold damage I am doing when I crit is less than the threshold required. For Freeze this is 3% of target's max Life.

So If I know for a fact that I am occasionally failing to deal 3% of target's Life with a 6500 dps Pulse and a similar Spear, I would have little chance of dealing 1.1% with an Added Lightning gem that delivers 74 damage on a good day.

Hopefully this explains my concerns.

"

Killia wrote:

of course he uses static blows on every char he builds, it triples/quadra your DPS when target is shocked, its prob the most important talent point you ever spend.

"

Kripp is currently streaming. He use freezing pulse and static blows. In fact all his build use static blows.

http://www.twitch.tv/nl_kripp

BTW if you have the gear yellow bosses die really fast with freezing pulse and static blows. Watch Kripp stream if you don't believe me.

thats just wrong.

AT BEST it will increase your dps by 120%. 120% modifier just can not triple/quadruple your dps. makes no sense.


also you need very high castspeed and dmg to even profit reliably from your shocks since they will be damn short. ( means you need great gear and the rest of the build to help that)



crit on the other hand also gives you plenty chance to shock (my fp is at almost 43% crit), overall boosts your dps alot (since it scales damn good) and gives you pleeeeeeenty of freezes which are the reason you play cold builds in the first place. if all you want is dmg go lightning.