[1.0.0] "This witch is crazy" A cold/crit/discharge guide

Keystones

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Chaos Inoculation :
I don't own a shav's. I might actually never get one. I hate chaos damage. I want CI. Nuff said.

Ghost Reaver :
Pretty much core for any self caster that uses CI.

Vaal Pact :
"Hey buddy, come back here !"
Even though reflect has been slightly nerfed (from 20% to 15%) you'll still kill yourself quickly without Vaal Pact. Auras being reworked means you can't stack as much defense as before. Therefore, you *need* Vaal Pact. The fact that it was moved at the bottom of the tree is kind of a hassle, but it isn't that bad.

Unwavering Stance : - Now OUT OF THE BUILD
I personally didn't plan on wearing that old Eye of Chayula forever. Good news is it was brought somewhat closer to us. Let's get it too.
-------------- I came to realize that there are better ways to use the aura and US points, and that unless you already have a god-tier amulet, well, EoC will do just fine.

Spells

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Freezing Pulse : I always loved this spell, it deals great AoE damage, works well together with Ghost Reaver / Vaal Pact
Cold Snap : My love for that one came a bit late, but it is almost as good as FP while soloing, and definitely far superior in maps where melee builds outshine pretty much everything else.
Discharge : Gives you a blast while leveling, can be a life saver at times. Overall a really fun spell. I want to focus on that though : This is NOT a mono-discharge build. It offers discharge an interesting place but doesn't revolve around it.
Ice Spear : Makes walking up to the enemy safer, particularly if said enemy is ranged. The new "Far Shot" affix will make this even more important.
Blood Rage : Grants basically 6 frenzy charges.

The Build

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Here is what i'm using at the moment, level 77. Changes from previous version are :
- Specced out of Unwavering Stance
- Took a couple of STR nodes to compensate for the lack of STR
- Got to "Void Barrier" to increase ES and elemental resistances
- Took "Blast Radius" to improve the AoE of every single spell (curses, cold snap, discharge)

Why going through the shadow side instead of the templar side ? Because of several reasons :
- You'll be stacking STR needlessly while having quite a low dex.
- Going through the shadow side allows us to pick up some great nodes and frenzy charges (which are free due to CI + Blood Rage)
- You can't actually snatch nodes from the Templar / Marauder area. You have to circle around it meaning most of the points you invest there are 100% "dead" points.
- You get 94 str from the tree, meaning you need only +15 from your items (Eye of Chayula) to wear level 20 str gems (Life Leech and Reduced Mana)

Bandit rewards :

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Normal : Skill point
Cruel : Skill point
Merciless : Power Charge

I added them for reference, but keep in mind that these are personal choices. You could entirely skip the power charge thing and adapt your tree accordingly, get another frenzy... It's really up to you.

Next goals :

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Those have changed quite a bit as i've gained a couple of levels :
-> Getting to Elemental Dominion for more base damage

Personal preference varies from there, you should aim for a level 90 build at most :
-> Getting to Whispers Of Doom for built-in dual curse I personally use Doedre's Damning if I need it.
-> Grabbing some more crit chance and multiplier
-> Reaching for Sovereignty

All those will be quite the end of the build,do some math and choose what suits you best !

For a "step by step" leveling guide, check the second post.

The Gear :

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Here's what i'm using atm :

Things are getting better, and the items I wished to replace prove to be quite viable if not core.

These are the flasks i'm running :

Links

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By order of importance :
Freezing Pulse : FP (q20 if possible) + LMP + Life Leech + Mana Leech + Faster Casting + [Increased Critical Strikes | Cold Penetration | Power Charge on critical]
Discharge : Discharge + Life Leech / Increased AoE / Mana Leech
OR :
Cold Snap : Cold Snap + Increased AoE + [Increased Critical Strikes | Increased Critical Damage] + Life Leech + Elemental proliferation + [Mana Leech | Increased Critical Strikes | Increased Critical Damage]
Ice Spear : Ice Spear + GMP + [Faster Casting | Power Charge on Critical | Mana Leech | Spell Totem] - Pick two depending on your needs / taste. Remember that Totems won't grant you power charges though.
Auras : Reduced Mana (don't bother with quality) + Purity + Discipline + [Clarity | Whichever aura your party needs]
Misc : Blood Rage + Increased Duration + Faster Casting

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Level 66 Grotto Map : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVJDV25zSG4
Level 66 Tropical Island Map : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELxB4n1DcMo
Level 66 Dungeon Map : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lv_ACWIjdWQ

Vaal Pact feels like a debatable choice. It is one. You can clear most of the content without it. 18% reflect is ok without it. 20%q Life Leech might be enough to clear -max resist + a source of reflect. But even then, you'd get killed easily by ranged attacks or monsters getting in range.
Here's how it works :
Without Vaal Pact, you can only leech 20% of your max ES per second. Meaning that with 5k ES you could leech back 1k ES per second. Considering :

- 2k tooltip DPS (which is easy to obtain)
- 15% reflect on mobs
- 77% cold res

That means you'll take 2000 * 3 * 0.15 * 0.23 = 207 damage / second / mob from reflect. Which means that if you hit more than 5 monsters at once, you may start loosing ES. Nothing to worry about. However :
- Freezing Pulse's DPS is inconsistent, it has highs and lows. If you don't crit, mobs won't notice you. If you do, you shred them. This means you could hit really hard for a couple of seconds and be unable to leech back.
- This scenario means that 5 mobs with 15% reflect are enough to "use up" all your leeching capacity. Any extra damage won't be healed immediately. You won't notice it on small packs, but if a couple of hard hitting mobs sneak up to you, they'll tear you down.
- This is only 15% from a rare mob. There's no "Players are cursed with elemental weakness" or "-XX% to player elemental resistances".

Also, please note that since we'll have overall lower ES compared to other builds, playing without Vaal Pact means we can leech less than said builds.
Discharge also becomes quite risky and looses its "life saving" potential.

There are two "roads" to Vaal Pact. The first one goes through the Templar area, and meets Unwavering Stance. Could look like this around level 80 : Templar Route
+ 140% crit chance / 40% multiplier
+ 1 more power charge / +15% charge duration
+ 8% radius
+ 60 int

~ Can't be stunned yet w/o using Eye of Chayula but still needs +15 dex from gear
~ No aura nodes

- Down 45% increased ES
- Down 22% elemental resistances
- 7/3/3 Power/Frenzy/Endurance charges vs 6/6/3 meaning an overall weaker discharge
- Down 12% increased mana / 20% mana regeneration
- Down 46% Cold damage (inc. spell damage nodes)
- Down 5% Chance to freeze

Those would pretty much even out around max level. But almost nobody reaches max level. Neither you or I will likely play this build past level 90. The shadow route feels much more reliable in my opinion, as there's still room for snatching a couple of good nodes here and there - eventually branching out to the Templar side.

Freezing Pulse VS Cold Snap

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Both are really great spells, that don't serve the same purpose.
Freezing Pulse is much more or a damaging ability than an actual "freezing" mechanism. It benefits from cast speed and LMP, dealing a quick succession of multiple small blows. Cold snap, on the other hand, hits once, with increased chances to chill and freeze, and longer debuff duration.

So which one should you take ?

As far as leveling or running solo through a map is concerned, it's really up to you. In "discharge-happy" areas, i'd consider taking cold snap for greater crowd control. But in some cases, you can't just walk in and blow everything up, because this is not a pure discharge build. In this case, you could get better results using freezing pulse.

In groups, Cold Snap could win hands down due to superior AoE crowd control. But if you need to be dealing damage, it'd be better to keep it as a good back-up spell and stick to freezing pulse as a main damaging ability.

One thing to note is that cold snap is a LOT safer than freezing pulse since you can cast it at a longer range, and potentially "AoE snipe" monsters around corners, spreading the "freeze" effect to their surroundings.

Curses :

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This build can make use of the following curses :
-Frostbite
-Critical Weakness
-Elemental Weakness
-Temporal Chains

Frostbite is quite obvious : We're spamming cold damage from all our spells, and lowering the resistances while increasing the chance to freeze on-hit just makes perfect sense.

Critical Weakness increases your chances to crit by a flat amount (more detail on the linked page) and makes your critical damage skyrocket. Use with caution against reflect mobs.

Elemental weakness is a weaker frostbite as far as cold damage is concerned, but it'll improve the damage of your discharge - and potentially help other casters, as well as melee characters that use "Added fire damage" and the likes.

Temporal Chains is a bit special but works too : it will double the duration of debuffs such as freeze and chilled on monsters. Please note that it does NOT halve the "ailment threshold" which is 300ms. Meaning that a 300 ms freeze will still be ignored, while a 350 ms freeze will last 700ms instead. Source

Choosing which curses you apply is group dependent. For solo pay i'd go Frostbite + Crit weakness or Frostbite + Temporal chains, though anything could work just fine.

Even though this is not "advanced" material, I wanted to keep the first post as clear as possible, so here we are !

Early levels (21 points)

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Build (click me !) :
Start off by taking life nodes, ES doesn't matter yet. A decent health pool will be needed to survive chaos damage later on.

Gear (don't click me):
early on, all you really need is a couple of slots to start leveling your gems. Aim for life, ES isn't interesting. Move speed on boots is always nice though not mandatory. If you are lucky enough to have Dream Fragments and Eye of Chayula that early, wear them. Keep clarity up at all times for mana regen.

Ending normal (43 points)

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Build :
Getting a bit more life, Nullification and some more ES nodes as the gear will start providing more. Some crit chance and damage nodes to be able to actually kill something.

Gear :
Keep going for life over ES if you can't get both. Some mana never hurts, and elemental resistance will be needed for cruel. Remember to switch your rings/gloves/boots or whatever gives you elemental res according to the area you are in. There's no point in stacking 75% cold res in the crematorium.

Mid cruel (57 points)

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Build :
We keep building towards more mana, ES and crit chance. By now you should be able to gear up by yourself. Keep chaos damage in mind during Act 2 cruel and eventually carry an Amethyst flask with you.

Merciless ledge (level 54 - 67 points)

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Build :
Respec the life nodes, and grab at once :
- Chaos Inoculation and the nodes behind it
- Ghost Reaver
- A life leech gem linked to your main spell

From there, just follow the main build and you should be fine.