[VIDEO]The Battle Mage/Witch - CI cold crit [NEMESIS]

Freezing pulse - The Battle Mage/Witch CI

Made by: Mihai Radu devian art

not a complete guide, its in the making! - will resume more tomorrow
updated 29 november
December 2nd

video clips of the cold crit gameplay
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Olg1inbAycc piety run
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWNEwoCc2aE 68 map "springs"

even made a youtube video of me doing an 76 academy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFN7VCxR6CQ&feature=youtu.be
the quality is a little bad so will make a new one when i have time.
been having a lot of questions lately so thought this might help for
people doubting the potential freezing pulse have!

INTRODUCTION
Well from some days ago i decided to do a guide that is orientated around
being viable for end-game, as well as being functional in early and mid-game.
In this guide i will cover everything about leveling, gems, gear and even the group aspect of mapping for HARDCORE/NEMSIS.

I have seen many new people asking around about what build is easiest and cheapest plus what build they should go and to be honest everyone should play what they feel like and not be limited by the choise of cheap and easy builds, this way you will maximize your experiance and always have fun while leveling and stomping mobs as an exile!

PRE-LEVELING
Before we start with the leveling we always look at what skill we are gonna primarily use, this being the Freezing pulse and also what gear we might need for the mid- to end-game.

but whats most essential is that you get a Quality Freezing Pulse which is very important, since then you wont have the need to stand in melee range when pulsing, but also gives you a more effective damage range.

Freezing pulse lacks a bit of damage at the mid-game so to counteract with this is to make sure that our character haves a good amount of survivability while the damage comes from the level of the gem.

KNOW YOUR LIMITS
so we have to ask us the question how do we achive this? is it a 4link that we need? is it gear? Or just plain damage from leveling the gem? To explain this as easy as possible i can say 1 thing only and that is Freezing Pulse stands out a lot when it comes to the level of the gem.

Many people compare Freezing Pulse to EK by being one of the most powerfull spells out there and gets the high damage benefits mostley by levels of the gem. So now that we have identified the problem we now know that we have to level the gem as much as possible.
And as for gear we mainly focus on getting as much survivability or enough off life, armor and resist for easy farming in fellshrine/ledge/docks and city of sarn so that you reach a high enough level so we can walk through the content without much of a struggle, but that doesnt mean it will be a faceroll remember that, its very important not to get ahead of yourself while playing this in hardcore.


Leveling
Ok now we are starting to level our cold crit CI witch, we now know that we have to have quality freezing pulse and gear with some resist,life and armor.
so while leveling what links do we use?

I would personally recommend when leveling to use a 4link as fast as possible and link it in order Freezing Pulse - Lesser Multiple Projectile - Faster Casting - Mana leech.
this is to be able to counter your mana problems but still this might not be enough so we always make sure to run a level 3 clarity aura, the reason to why only level 3 is because higher levels will only be a hassle and take a lot of mana from you and be more of a struggle then a benefit to have it running in higher levels then 3

remember that you wont be able to run Greater Multiple Projectile(GMP) untill you have reached higher levels where your mana pool gets bigger and easier to sustain by gear and/or by enough levels.

AURAS
In the leveling stages you should always run Clarity with maybe Grace or Purity if you can spare the mana depending on your gear and remember to not level Clarity past level 3 because then it becomes more of a burden then being helpful because of the mana usage it haves.

When you have reached high enough level to switch to Chaos Inoculation(CI) you run Grace & Disciplin

Grace is for the armor boost you get with Iron Reflexes(IR) and Disciplin is for the Energy Shield(ES) boost you get combined with all the ES nodes

LMP VS GMP
In a nuttshell GMP provides more damage and damage distribution at the same time it gives you a better crowd control then you do with a LMP. The only reason why you use LMP is for leveling and you should ALWAYS use GMP when possible



Leveling & passive tree

Growing pains

while leveling i recommend using this tree as a guide for what you should go its important you grab all the life nodes and damage nodes since this is what is gonna make your build very powerfull on the later stages. Remember there is alternative ways of leveling so this tree is if you are leveling as a freeze pulser from start and can be alternated and changed depending on what type of freeze pulser you are going but since we are focusing on crit base freezing pulse this is the tree!

Bandits
Normal: passive
Cruel: passive
merciless: passive

reason to this is because the passive point is much better then having 4% cast speed and for me and my playstyle doesnt feel that beneficial so i just get my cast speed from quality GMP+faster casting, and that feels enough for me + with the cast speed on the wand

Keystone passives

The CI Frost Queen & finished tree

The Frost Queen!

this is what the build should look like on a budget when you are finished with it, which is at level 75-80.
and if you need some mana regen, since your gear might not allow sustaining your mana you can get the mana regen nodes + the extra % mana nodes to at the beginning of the witch tree.
but if you really have good gear and dont need the extra mana regen you can always skip those nodes

Auras that are being used on a finished character is Grace & Disciplin and nothing more, the reason i use grace is for the extra amount of armor it gives and the same with Disciplin especially when you have the aura buff nodes

Essential Gear (must have)
now that we are ready to switch to CI we have to look at what gear we might need that is essential for our build and what its gonna make the build strong!


The reason we need Eye of Chayula and Dream Fragments is because characters with CI are more susceptible to stun and status ailments because of their low base life. Status ailments like freeze can be prevented with the item Dream Fragments which makes you immune to being frozen.

This will prevent you from either being stunlocked to death A.K.A. stutter of death or frozen and killed slowly while you can't move your character for 5 good seconds or more

After we have aquired these two items to increase our survivability greatly we can move on to the other 2 items we will need to make this build work better!


Maligaros is kinda self explained and it boosts your crit chance values by a lot and will make you do more damage at the same time it will make you leech mana more efficently, and the boots its just for the ES and mana boost it really gives and will help the freezing pulse leeching since the more Mana you have the higher rate you can leech mana and sustain your Leeching

Positioning
while playing freezing pulse it is also very important that you position yourself fairly good because you cant be running around in a pack of mobs and hit as little as 2-3 mobs per pulse, you have to try to maximize the damage you gonna deal to as much mobs as possible!

that is why positioning is equaly as important as just having good damage, because your job is to try damage as many mobs as possible and freeze as many mobs as possible, also keep in mind that the more mobs you hit the more leech you will do to!


here we have example A where you are infront of the mobs but cant effectivly pulse them all down, so what you can do is move to the right side and pulse them all at once


example B here is a excellent way to position yourself where you are infront of all the mobs
and can start pulsing away not as ideal when it comes going downside where you have a limited vision compared if going upwards instead

End Game
When it comes to end game there is diffrent ways to play it and diffrent play style to
Freezing Pulse let it be items and/or CI vs Life-based characters! the reason i chose CI
is because i like the idéa to tank at the same time im being really offensive.

and i also want people to realise that really end-game gear is never gonna be cheap and the reason to why i did this guide, so i want people to have an understanding that to make a build work is never easy and making a budget build is doable! but we always reach a point on how to min-max your character and doing so will never be easy so please remember.

so off we go to end-game!

Void Battery


a very simple item but yet very complicated since it will require to make use of
power charges and will make you have to respecc in to them and skip other nodes but
in the end will greatly increase your damage both crit wise and on average hit and
not just tool-tip dps.

with just this simple item it will make you gain more spell damage and also more
crit chance then normal meaning your average hit will be much higher

and this is the tree for void battery that i use on my level 93 witch
Frost queen

Also when having this item you cant just straight away jump the gun and start using it
beacuse its very essential on having a 6-link for making use of this item



this is the 6-link im making use off, it can be improved and im still looking for a
better ES chest then this since i feel that i can still get a 950ES chest with better
resist then this

and another keystone that is VERY important for this build



I have had many debates about this keystone in this thread and i consider this
keystone being essential for almost ANY CI-Build including mine but to the recent
changes to this league where they moved VP very far away and at which it requires
a very high amount of points to be able to get it, made it very difficult to have it
and forced me to not get it until i reached level 90 else i would sacrifice
to much damage and would make it in-efficiant.

the reason i picked this keystone passive is because to counter reflect as much as possible
and with that high damage with a void battery will make it very dangerous on reflect maps
with just this keystone passive it will make reflect map like it was never there.

and to counter the reflect even more you can always run around with a sapphire flask and pot
just before you are about to deal damage and will be able to leech back some ES

per request here is my gear


shield can be better, helm is hybrid because of the armor boost i get from IR so i run around with 8.2k armor and 7.7k ES might change it to pure ES if i find a decent one 400+ ES that is

tool-tip
having people asking me my tool-tip dps lately so wanted to update this guide with it
and some minor changes i made on my tree



for crit multi i got heartseeker and throatseeker



even made a youtube video of me doing an 76 academy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFN7VCxR6CQ&feature=youtu.be
the quality is a little bad so will make a new one when i have time.
been having a lot of questions lately so thought this might help for
people doubting the potential freezing pulse have!

my current tree Frost queen!





passive tree and gameplay video
level 88 and on-going

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Olg1inbAycc here is a video where i do a piety run in merciless ofc, nothing that hard really but will put up a video where i do maps for the people that are interested! will edit this guide a bit more tomorrow and clean it up a bit

here is another clip me doing a 69 map springs, nothing special, just to show people what they can expect in maps with the right gear.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWNEwoCc2aE

And what about if i dont find an early quality FP ? where i can get it ? im asking it cause i start a witch yesterday..

"

alexj89 wrote:

And what about if i dont find an early quality FP ? where i can get it ? im asking it cause i start a witch yesterday..

everything will be answer'd pretty soon friend, just making this guide atm and its not going as fast as i want it to be :P but i recommend you going with normal freezing pulse then or buy one with quality for 3-4chaos in trade chat.

the weakness of freezing pulse with no quality is that you have to melee them to do effective damage

You can use Faster projectile support or Karui ward

"

Navac wrote:

You can use Faster projectile support or Karui ward

that is true, it will help if you dont have a quality on FP

How hard you MF with this? Im trying to find a good cheap MF build where I won't have to swap gear and crap.

"

Vexorr wrote:

How hard you MF with this? Im trying to find a good cheap MF build where I won't have to swap gear and crap.

i dont recommend MFing with this gear unless u have good MF gear with ES since this is focused on being CI and being 100% chaos immune

updated the guid so take a look for the people who are curious

With the decision to take iron reflexes you are forced to run the Grace aura (it would be pointless otherwise). With clarity and discipline that leaves no room for purity of elements. If i calculated right that leaves you with 46 cold/59 fire/48 lightning resist. And that is definitely NOT VIABLE for hardcore. Usually one would compensate that with a Kite shield, but for CI that is no option.
Another consequence of that desicion is that you have to spend 10+ passiv points that are no longer available to take some mana/mana regeneration nodes (for example deep thoughts) so you are forced to use mana leech on your freezing pulse instead of cold penetration. Consequence: You loose 30+ MORE damage (not only increased) and also suffer on your defense as that means shorter freezing durations.
Your opinion that GMP is always better than LMP also overlooks some hidden side effects. The 200% mana multiplier also is responsible for the imbalanced mana pool. If LMP would result in being able to avoid mana leech and use cold penetration instead, the overall damage would be much higher even with only 3/5 of projectiles.
I don't think the additional armour from IR can make up for the loss in dps and the loss in resistances.

BTW no Doom Cast but Bloodthirst instead?

"

Bada_Bing wrote:

With the decision to take iron reflexes you are forced to run the Grace aura (it would be pointless otherwise). With clarity and discipline that leaves no room for purity of elements. If i calculated right that leaves you with 46 cold/59 fire/48 lightning resist. And that is definitely NOT VIABLE for hardcore. Usually one would compensate that with a Kite shield, but for CI that is no option.
Another consequence of that desicion is that you have to spend 10+ passiv points that are no longer available to take some mana/mana regeneration nodes (for example deep thoughts) so you are forced to use mana leech on your freezing pulse instead of cold penetration. Consequence: You loose 30+ MORE damage (not only increased) and also suffer on your defense as that means shorter freezing durations.
Your opinion that GMP is always better than LMP also overlooks some hidden side effects. The 200% mana multiplier also is responsible for the imbalanced mana pool. If LMP would result in being able to avoid mana leech and use cold penetration instead, the overall damage would be much higher even with only 3/5 of projectiles.
I don't think the additional armour from IR can make up for the loss in dps and the loss in resistances.

BTW no Doom Cast but Bloodthirst instead?

sry but i have maxed resistance, if u didnt know u get the CI nodes with +8 all resist i run this on 75+ maps and im still not done with the guide still explaining several stuff and more stuff haves to be explained plus there is nodes near the templar tree that gives you +20 all res for just holding a shield that is just under the mana reserved over templar tree for just 3 skill points which im gonna get + that it gives extra ES also.

saying its not viable for HARDCORE when i clearly run it on my nemesis character :^) but i do understand your argument plus the guide is not finished and there is some thing still missing but will soon come

plus i run this with just 1 mana pot and can sustain my mana without problem with just 1 mana regen node + with all the int you take for taking other nodes near the witch areas that gives you +ES% per 5 int + 1mana per 2 int.

i have doom cast which is beside the CI node dont worry, everything is not done yet! have patience(missed it ofc when putting up the tree).

And as for GMP, its far superior when it comes to LMP no question about it, lets say you run a 1k LMP compared to a 800 dps GMP says it all 800x5=4000 while 1000x3=3000, gives you more crowd control and a more spread with the damage so you dont kill yourself in reflect and to achive the spread you just pulse them from a further distance then normal.
plus im going to put up a video when i run 75 maps solo to show some people that there is nothing wrong with this build.

plus i dont lose much DPS compared to having one without IR because if you are going to get all the crit multiplier you are going to kill yourself to reflect in maps, i already have enough crit multiplier with the gear and some nodes that goes with crit chance + crit multi.

and why would i run clarity if i can sustain my mana with no problem at all with just mana leech? plus since i have all the mana reserved nodes i can run purity on lvl 88 already checked myself on my old HC character, and you have to keep in mind that this is by far no easy build plus cold pen is not a must i do agree with you though that cold pen is very good but im gonna run it on a 6link when i find the chest that im looking for.

right now i have 3.2k DPS on my freeze pulse as a CI character.
but thx for the pointers with the tree must have missed the doom cast which is a must for a FP since this build is crit based CI