Unusual CoC Cold Snap build (now with videos)

really nice char idea, i think i will test that in the coming season
i always liked coldsnap and coc chars
finally someone put them together, cheers

Keep me posted on your progress/experience with this as you're going along, once the new league starts. I doubt I'll make another character following this same build, but it's so much fun to play that I might end up coming back to it.

I think that there's room for improvement in the ring slots, as using SA + Chain halves the cost of your primary skill (and leaves 80% of your bow's damage as phys instead of converting 50% to lightning), so you might be able to ditch Thief's Torment for some leech/regen rings that carry other stats, too.

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SinisterDexter wrote:

Keep me posted on your progress/experience with this as you're going along, once the new league starts. I doubt I'll make another character following this same build, but it's so much fun to play that I might end up coming back to it.

I think that there's room for improvement in the ring slots, as using SA + Chain halves the cost of your primary skill (and leaves 80% of your bow's damage as phys instead of converting 50% to lightning), so you might be able to ditch Thief's Torment for some leech/regen rings that carry other stats, too.

Will do! I'm looking to tweak the build - though this will probably be moot after the passive tree changes but nonetheless: in your opinion, how important are the two nodes Ballistic Mastery and Aspect of the Eagle for this build? Pardon my ignorance, I've never played rangers in PoE. As a refresher, here are what the nodes do:

Ballistic Mastery
20% increased Projectile Speed
15% increased Projectile Damage
+20 to Dexterity

Aspect of the Eagle
20% increased Physical Damage with Bows
20% increased Accuracy Rating
+10 to maximum Life
4% increased Movement Speed

I'm guessing projectile speed will make the arrows arrive faster to more readily trigger CoC but I can't be sure. I'd like to incorporate more life into the build and keep it about 105-110 points, so I wanted to see which nodes I could get away with. Any insight on the matter would be appreciated! My thoughts are to do something like this at the moment: https://poebuilder.com/character/AAAAAgIAAv4EfgW1DkgRlhXwFr8i6iQ8JJ0k_SaVJ6ksnC0fMHEwfDnUOkI6WD1fQsNJUUt4TLNQMFFHUlNVS1WuWm1d8l_hYeJiWmNDayRtGW17b_JwUnDVfXV_xocZh9uMNo2_j6aV6ZeVl_Sdo6CfoaSio6dcr-u1SMBRwfPGos3q037UI9te3aje9t-E4dvjhOdU53To1vBC8-r8q_66fyvWiu967g4j9u_wWkiquKp_jX35YxrbVvp0QXfXAdGVyN-YJyH-CdadYqydqkp9h3ZnoPzF

You could pretty comfortably drop Ballistic Mastery -- the main benefit of the projectile speed boost is that chained arrows are less likely to miss moving targets, which is handy but not crucial.

Aspect of the Eagle is worth keeping, though, as every part of it except the 20% damage is useful to you; if you're planning to use leech/regen rather than Thief's Torment, even the 20% damage will improve your leechable damage a bit. Especially since you're only 1 point away from it, it'd be pretty criminal to leave it on the table.

The rest of your build looks good, though I'd also advise you to spend the point to pick up that first Evasion and Life node at the Ranger origin -- 18% evasion is great, and flat life bonuses are always good to have (because they're added to the life total before any percentage increases are applied, so with the 224% life you have in your tree, the flat +12 life from the node will actually give you ~39 life).

If you're not planning to run double curses like I do (which is entirely defensible, since there are way better boots out there than the ones I'm wearing), you might consider picking up the frenzy charge node and the 4% evasion per frenzy charge node -- this would let you drop two +10 dex nodes on the way to Ondar's Guile (the ones under the Heavy Draw/Deadly Draw cluster), so it'd cost you the same number of points. Then you can use Frenzy (can leave at level 1 to keep costs down) + GMP/LMP + CoC + curse in place of my Split Arrow + CoC + curse + curse to sustain move/attack speed and evasion bonuses.

Thanks, the frenzy + curse idea sounds like a great idea. I do indeed plan on using SA over the LA, and maybe ditching Windscream. Now since the required links are SA > Chain > CoC > Cold Snap, I'm toying around with what the 5th link could be provided that mana regen/leech permits. I believe a 4th link atm is about 34 mana. 12(SA) x 2(Chain) x 1.4(CoC) = 33.6, if my math is correct. I'm looking at Cold Pen, Increase Aoe, PCoC, Increase Crit Strikes/Dmg as the possible options. Going to mess around with it as soon as I can get this test ranger in Standard going.

Yeah, ~33 mana sounds right. Increase AoE is effective; Cold Pen will work, but will increase the mana cost further, so it's probably not a good idea. PCoC won't help you because you should be wearing Voll's Protector in any case, which will generate all the power charges you could need (and PCoC alone won't generate enough, since it can give you at most 1 charge per attack, while Voll's will give you 1 for each enemy you crit against). Increased Crit Strikes could be helpful if you're struggling to get your crit rate up; crit damage will be less useful because of the intrinsically low crit rate on Cold Snap (mine caps out at ~30% crit even with charges up); but in any case, either of these will also apply their mana multipliers to your SA.

I use Arc in my 5th slot, which is nice because it can't miss (just like Cold Snap), applies shock stacks, and also benefits from the Chain support.

If you want to do something hilarious (and it might actually be effective if you're running in an aura-heavy group), try Summon Raging Spirit in your 5th slot.

EDIT: Seems like it'd just be better to use frenzy...
EDIT2: Maybe not, you tell me.

Thought I'd go over this with you before I invest some currency

-Run blood rage. To run it with -60% chaos resist we need either a ton of life regen or blood dance boots.
-Thought I'd invest 2 points getting the extra frenzy charge near Ondar's Guile + the 4% evasion.
-Again, I thought why not, and got frenzy charge duration and another max charge right above acrobatics(could get 10 dex over duration, both seem negligible). That's 2+2=4 extra points, I thought I could simply get rid of the primal spirit + mana node, the accuracy node near the start, and maybe an elemental damage node.

First time I'm actually mapping this out.. Assuming 5 frenzy charges(Easy with blood rage). Underlining the things that I think actually make a difference.

We Lose


We Gain


Not sure if I missed anything, now that I look at it, blood dance + blood rage seems like a bit of a waste of all that generation, but I think we need the boots.

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgIAAF4C_gR-BbUF-QguDPIOSBGWFfAWvxmOIuokPCT9JpUnqSycLR8wcTB8MgE51DpCOlg9Xz7PQsNJUUt4TLNQMFFHUlNVS1WuWm1d8l_hYeJjQ2skbRlte2_ycFJw1XfUfXV_K3_Ghs6HGYfbjDaNv4-mlemXlZf0myabjZ2joJ-hpKKjo4qly6dcp9Sv67Ewshm0OLVIu-O95sBRwfPEosaizerPetN-1CPWitpk217cFd2o3vbfhOHb44TlGedU53To1u2D8ELz6vlW_Kv-uv7I

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Darkray Vectors + frenzy seems nice, too.
6 Charges is 24% evasion, 30% attack speed, 30% movement speed, 12% dodge. However, it seems like it'd be a huge pain to refresh charges every 6-7 seconds.

Workable either way if you're using Frenzy to CoC your curses. I'm not sure that Blood Rage is worth it, though, since the life leech won't help you much, and it's easy enough to keep frenzy charges up if you're using Frenzy to throw curses.

If anything, I'd consider taking Atziri's Step for the extra life and spell dodge (in my experience, the most dangerous things aside from ele ref packs are phys spells).

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SinisterDexter wrote:

If you've got two 4-links to work with, then yeah, I'd run
Just remember to leave your Lightning Arrow at level 5 or below to keep your costs under control.

what happens to the dps you gain from leveling it then?
it stays pretty much at 13/14/15 cost

also, what is the priority for the gear? you seem to have a little bit of ES, evasion and Armour in everything.

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what happens to the dps you gain from leveling it then?
it stays pretty much at 13/14/15 cost

also, what is the priority for the gear? you seem to have a little bit of ES, evasion and Armour in everything.

I'm not exactly sure how mana with CoC works, but with LA/CoC/GMP/Chain/Cold Snap, its

12 x 2 x 2 x 1.4 mana = 67.2 per cast.
15 x 2 x 2 x 1.4 mana = 84 per cast.

If you add cold penetration or concentrated effect, it's more like
104 mana per cast vs 130 mana per cast.


This 17 mana per cast makes a huge difference for what is pretty negligible damage. The difference between level 5 LA and level 20 is 45% increased projectile damage, and your actual projectile does like, 300 damage. So 300 x 5 targets(max amount) = 1,500 damage per cast. 45% increased is 2,175. So really you're talking a 675 damage increase for like 20% more mana. When you're in the 20/30/40k dps range, 675 only amounts to roughly 2% damage increase.

I personally prioritize evasion while running grace, you have a decent amount of +% EV from passive nodes.