[1.3] The Crit Philosopher - CI Crit Cold Witch - Freezing Pulse, PCoC & Echo

In the next worst-case scenario, one will not have any additional freezing chance nor any additional freezing duration increases. Let's say that the Cold damage dealt will be C, which is the variable we would like to know.



So we need to deal 3% of Target's Max HP or more as COLD DAMAGE. That means lowering cold resistance (e.g. using Frostbite) or adding more cold damage (Added Cold Damage support gem or hitting a Shocked enemy) we increase the chance of freezing enemies. Please look at this flowchart for better understanding.

Crit is great if you have enough damage.
A powerful strike is better than lots of tickles.
Slower, but precise.
Fewer, but better.
Hit hard, make them feel the cold.

One of the most interesting aspects of Path of Exile is that Critical Strikes are applied to a whole pack of monsters, instead of rolling a strike differently for each monster. In other words, you execute a precise attack which results critical, not an average attack that could strike them in critical spots. Because of this, most builds look for a high critical (from now on referred as crit) chance in order to explode enemies.

What is a critical strike?
A strike that critically hits your enemies. By default, the damage multiplier of a critical strike is 150%, that means 1.5 times the damage you would have inflicted if it wasn't a crit. The critical chance for all attacks is by default 5%. We refer to these default values as 'bases'. The base crit chance for spells is different for all spells. Freezing Pulse, the spell we will be using, has 6% crit chance base. Our crit chance can't be more than 95%.

Critical strikes also have a chance to inflict elemental ailments to targets. Fire burns, Lightning shocks and Ice Chills and Freezes. Freezing Pulse will (you guessed it) freeze our enemies, rendering them defenseless in the field of battle. Frozen enemies shatter to pieces. Isn't that nice?

Some builds use Cast on Critical, a green skill gem, to proc other spells automatically if they crit. Lots of crit chance means more rolls. More rolls means more spells casted automatically. We will focus not just on the crit chance, but on the multiplier too. That way we can achieve a balance between many hits and powerful hits. We're aiming for decent amount of hits with great damage output.

3L - Freezing Pulse, Lesser Multiple Projectiles, Added Cold/Added Lightning
4L - +Life Leech
5L - +Power Charge on Critical

Replace Added Cold/Lightning for Spell Echo as soon as you get it. Append it to the setup if you can afford a 6L. Increased Critical Damage works wonders too.
If you have Doryani's Invitation or some kind of cold leech (Catarina's mod) and enough ES, you can swap Life Leech for any other red gem. IIQ or Empower are top notch.

The first thing you need is a Freezing Pulse gem. It's a blue skill gem, and it looks like this
You can get one for free as a reward for completing the first quest if you're a Witch. You can get another one by completing the second quest (Medicine Chest) if you're a Witch and in case you missed the first one.

Freezing Pulse is a cold projectile. It does cold damage, and that's all, just cold damage. This projectile, however, has some remarkable features like 6% critical strike chance and the ability to pierce enemies in its path. The downside is that Freezing Pulse can't go over terrain like walls or trees. Freezing pulse also dissipates at some point, so it's a very close range projectile and that means that it's risky, but manlier. Freezing pulse does more damage and has a better freezing chance at the start, and it will decrease over the distance traveled by the projectile.

Per 1% quality, Freezing Pulse will get 3% increased Projectile Speed. More speed means the projectile moves quicker, so if it dissipates in 1 second, then it will still disipate in 1 second BUT it will be farther away. So, quality in your Freezing Pulse gem will increase the damage, the range and the freezing chance of your projectiles. If in the middle of your journey, you find/buy a Freezing Pulse gem with quality, don't hesitate to level it up too.

How do I improve the power of my Freezing Pulse? Area covered by one projectile is not enough? Well, because Freezing Pulse (from now on FP) counts as a projectile, area of effect increases are not useful. Pierce is not needed, because of FP's inherent penetration. And also because of this penetrating effect, Fork is not a viable option. Lesser Multiple Projectiles is the way to go, and this is our first support.

With Lesser Multiple Projectiles (from now on LMP) 2 projectiles will be added, but damage will drop by 30%. The damage penalty is reduced as you level up your LMP gem. Use this as soon as you can, it will speed up your leveling process.

Our second support will add some damage to our projectiles, and that is your choice between Added Cold Damage or Added Lightning Damage.

Added Cold is a green gem, Added Lightning is a blue gem. With Added Cold you'll have a better freezing chance. Using Added Lightning will deliver more damage over all. Which one you use depends on your playstyle. What do you prefer? More crowd control? More damage?

The fourth link will be gaining some life, so we're using Life Leech.

Not much to say. It's a red support gem, and you can not get it in the Witch questline, you'll have to buy it or get it from Marauder, Shadow, Duelist or Scion in Act1 in Cruel difficulty.

The fifth link is the core of this build, the Power Charge on Critical Strike.

Each time you crit there will be another roll. If it procs, you'll gain a Power Charge. Each Power Charge gives 50% increased crit chance. You can have up to 7 Power Charges (under normal circumstances):

-3 by default
-3 more in Skill Tree
-1 more from Alira in Merciless

That is 350% increased crit chance. There is also a great passive skill which gives you Spell Damage for each Power Charge you have. Think about it.

If you are rich or very very lucky then you can think about getting a 6L. There are a lot of options for the sixth link in this build. Faster Casting for faster casting (duh), Increased Crit Damage, Increased Crit Chance, Projectile Speed, Mana Leech, Cold Penetration. It all depends on what you want or need. Echo IS a great option!


As soon as you get Spell Echo, start leveling it. Replace Added Lightning/Cold with Spell Echo and see the results. Echo does 90% of the damage, but increases casting speed AND adds an additional cast. So it's a free spell. If your regen is high enough, the second cast will give plenty of time to replenish your mana and keep casting FP. The godly part is that the cast is repeated, so if you got a Critical Strike in the first cast, then your second cast will be Critical too. Isn't that great? More crits mean more frozen (or shattered) enemies, yay.

Now there is a real con here. The second cast is automatic so you can't control its animation or anything. Your reaction time will need to adjust to the new timers, because you'll cast twice, but you'll be standing in the same place for a longer period. Beware of big hits. Other than that, I think Spell Echo is great.

If by any means you have enough leech (through Doryani's Invitation or Catarina's mod), you can swap life leech for another red gem. IIQ and Empower are great alternatives.

Go CI when you reach around 3k ES, you have all 7 Power charges (spell increased per PC and duration) and are able to sustain both Clarity and Discipline. Get Ghost Reaver too.
When you go CI, get Chayula first, and then get Dream Fragments ASAP (or else you'll die).

CI means Chaos Innoculation.
There are 3 types of damage in Path of Exile: Elemental damage such as fire, cold and lightning damage; Physical damage and Chaos damage.
Elemental damage is reduced with elemental resistances. Physical damage is reduced with armor. Chaos damage is reduced by chaos resistance, which is a very rare trait. Chaos damage also ignores your Energy Shield, and goes through it, depleting your life quickly till you drop and lie dead on the floor. With each difficulty, Chaos damage is deadlier. At later stages of the game, Chaos Damage can kill you in a matter of seconds. It is very scary. So you need to master it. Let it enter your body and flow through your veins. Feel it. It is the power of chaos inside you. You're now immune to chaos damage. But you have 1 health point lol.

Chaos Innoculation is a Passive Keystone in the Passive Skill Tree located in the upper part of the tree. This passive gives you absolute Chaos Immunity (100% resistance) BUUUUT will leave you with 1 HP. Because of this fact, CI characters need to stack stupid amounts of Energy Shield. Lots and lots of it, otherwise you'll be killed in two hits. That's why we're looking for pure Energy Shield (from now on ES) in our gear till we get a good amount, let's say, three thousands of it. By the time you get 3000 ES you'll be over level 60, probably.

Before going CI you should have all 7 Power Charges, the increased Spell Damage per Power Charge node and the increased duration of your charges. If you have all of these requirements, then you're ready to go CI. But getting Chaos Innoculation is just the first step of many in this journey of power and wisdom. As soon as you get CI, you need to re-spec all your life and chaos resistance nodes since you won't be needing them. A full clear of the quests in the game gives you 18 re-spec points. If you need to re-spec more, you'll have to get Orbs of Regret. They are not that expensive., though.

Since you have no life left, Life Leech will be useless until you spec into a Passive Keystone called Ghost Reaver which leeches Energy Shield instead of Life; it's just what you need and it's to the right of the Witch starting point in the Skill Tree, between the Witch and the Shadow.

There are some other issues I need to address here. Stun Duration and Freezing Duration are dictated by target's maximum life. Since you re-spec'd all your life nodes and the Witch is delicate and tender, your health points would be kinda few. Because of that, you'll get stunned and frozen every now and then. For that, my friend, exist some special unique items that are mandatory in this build.

First is the Eye of Chayula unique Onyx Amulet.

This amulet will prevent all stuns on you, and will give you a boost on rarity. Get it with as most +X to all attributes as you can, since you will need those attributes to level your green and red gems as well, and will result in better evasion, mana and mana regen. Eye of Chayula is not expensive.

Second is the Dream Fragments Sapphire Ring.

Dream Fragments is a great unique that grants you with 0% chance to be frozen (you can still be chilled, though). It also gives you great mana and regen, and some cold resistance. This little baby is a bit pricey though. Get it as soon as you can.

Now that you're ready to go, please notice there are other great dangers out there. Caustic Flasks and Blood Magic (map mod, passive skill or gem) can kill you if you're not paying attention. Be careful.

Click here
Start by taking one point on mana regen and ES (right). Then pick spell damage¹ (left) and go up to Elemental Dominion. Pick some crit chance and multi on your way out, and pick the three HP nodes there.

I suggest going to the left side first. Upgrade your defenses by getting some more HP nodes and Strength and Dexterity only if you need them. I am certain this is not the shortest path to reach most nodes, but this way is easier to respec later on.

Time to get to the right side of the tree. In this side we'll get more HP nodes, Spell Crit Chance and a little bit of Mana Reserved reduction. As in the last progression, get the Dex and Str nodes if you need them to continue leveling your gems.

Around this time you should have a decent life pool and a decent Energy Shield pool. Try getting your 5th link to incorporate Power Charges and get the true potential of the build. Get yourself some more ES nodes and some Aura nodes in order to have both Clarity and Discipline up and running at all times.

If, and only IF you have enough Energy Shield² then you can start respeccing most of the HP nodes and get Chaos Inoculation. Don't forget to get your Eye of Chayula ASAP. Dream Fragments can wait a little longer, but it is important too.

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After your CI transition, your tree should look similar to this. The switch includes getting Chaos Inoculation, the 3 ES nodes behind it and Ghost Reaver, and Faith and Steel. You should also start going for block.

From here on, your build will grow in all directions: getting more damage, a little bit more Energy Shield & Armor, more mana and increased cast speed. Block nodes are always the best choice if you don't need extra resistances. Remember that a tree should be optimized in order to complement your gear and not the other way (unless you're rich).

Please notice this is the "cheap" version of your CI build, meant to be the first contact with the playstyle. Though it has some decent nodes that were useful when you were life-based, you should slowly transition into full ES/Block/Evasion instead of armor using additional Regret Orbs. Check the current tree below.

Movement 4L - Lightning Warp, Reduced Duration, Faster Casting. Added Lightning Damage is optional but recommended.
Auras 3L +1 - Clarity, Discipline, Reduced Mana. Purity of Elements is situational. Vaal Discipline if things get really ugly. Use Tempest Shield if your mana allows it. Add Herald of Ice as soon as you can.
Curses - Assassin's Mark all the way. Frostbite if you need more safety. Elemental Weakness if you went for Added Lightning. Enfeeble if you expect things would be painful.
Buff - Blood Rage if you're already CI.
Defense - Arctic Armour, level it as high as you can sustain while moving. Other than that, move and don't let anything hit you. I also suggest using manual Enduring Cry.

You can use the CwDT combo if you like. I personally don't think it fits in this build.
Skellies totem is useful as decoy too, or Vaal Skellies to get extra cover in battles.

As stated before, playing Freezing Pulse means you'll be close to the enemies. You need a movement skill to get near them or to escape if necessary, so I'd recommend Lightning Warp.

At early stages, Lightning Warp is useless, but as soon as you can get Reduced Duration and Faster Casting, you'll be using it every now and then.

Get another Added Lightning Damage in case you want to go man mode and shock enemies with it, I highly recommend it.

The recommended auras for our Witch are Clarity and Discipline.

Clarity will help you sustain your spells, it's top priority.
Discipline will give extra defenses to our Witch, especially since there are not many life nodes near the Witch area in the Skill Tree. Though it's very useful, you probably won't have enough mana to sustain both Clarity and Discipline at early levels. Don't worry about it, turn it off and level it as you go. We'll need Discipline later.

Along with the auras, please get yourself a Reduced Mana gem.

It's a red support gem. You can now get Reduced Mana in the Witch questline, Act 1, Cruel difficulty.

There is another Aura which will give you extra survivability if you're in trouble (mostly if you are already CI), and that is Vaal Discipline.

Vaal Discipline gives you increased Energy Shield, and prevents Energy Shield recharge delay to be extended because of damage taken. Is like your life pot if you're CI, but it needs WAY MORE charges. Use it carefully.

When you reach Merciless, you'll find yourself with a whole -60% to all elemental resistances, so you'll need gear with high resistances, or a Purtiy aura.

Purity of elements is a blue skill gem which you can get in the Witch questline, in Act 1 Cruel. If you're afraid of reflect, take Purity of Ice.


The priority of auras is Clarity first and always, then Discipline as soon as you can sustain BOTH of them AND have some extra mana for a few Freezing Pulses. If you need resistances, consider taking Purity of Elements (or fire, ice or lightning if you need only one) instead of Discipline. Remember you NEED the Reduced Mana gem. Get it!

We'll also be using some other mana reservation skills that are not auras but are treated like so: Tempest Shield and Herald of Ice.


Tempest Shield is basically free lightning damage without doing anything. It also increases Block Chance, so you'll be blocking and dealing damage at the same time. It's pretty nice if your mana can sustain it. Put it along with your Auras (and the Reduced Mana gem).

Herald of Ice is an extremely powerful gem that increases cold damage dealt by your spells, and creates a mini cold explosion every time an enemy shatters. It reserves mana as well, so you'll need maybe another Reduced Mana Gem somewhere.

Your damage will be compromised if some mobs are cold resistant. That's why we use curses: Assassin's Mark, Frostbite, Elemental Weakness and Enfeeble occasionally.

Frostbite decreases cold resistance in mobs, and also grants an increased chance to freeze them. An increase in cold damage and freeze chance will help you freeze your enemies more often. This is your main curse while leveling. Get it at Act 2 in Normal difficulty in the Witch questline.

Another useful curse is Elemental Weakness. Ele weakness reduces cold, fire and lightning resistances but grants no other bonus. Why is this useful? Well, if you are using Added Lightning Damage, then both your cold damage AND your lightning damage will increase. Increased cold damage results in an increased freezing chance and duration. Increased lightning damage results in increased shock chance and duration. Shock status results in a 50% increased damage received. That 50% affects all types of damage: 50% increased cold damage (which results in more Freeze chance/duration) and 50% more lightning damage (which blahblah). You get the drill. You can get Elemental Weakness, which is a blue skill gem, in the Library quest in Act 3 in Cruel difficulty with any character.

Enfeeble, on the other hand, is a situational curse. If things are getting ugly and mobs hit too hard, Enfeeble is the curse of choice. You'll be dealing less damage, yes, but remember there will be no damage if you're dead. Get enfeeble, the green skill gem, from the first quest in Act 3 in Normal difficulty if you're a Witch.

Assassin's Mark (previously known as Critical Weakness) is a really good alternative which brings more damage overall, some mana and life gained after killing an enemy and granting and refreshing power charges at the same time.


Whichever is the curse you're using, I suggest linking it with reduced mana (the one you use for Herald of Ice, for example.)

There will be a time in which mobs will become tougher, and you will need more damage to stop them on their tracks. One way of improving damage output in a time interval is improving cast speed. Some Freezing Pulse guides suggest using Faster Casting gem as your 5th link, but there are other ways to improve cast speed without losing the benefits of Power Charges, and that is using Frenzy Charges.

Frenzy Charges are green, and you can have up to 3 charges by default. Each Frenzy Charge gives you 5% Attack Speed and 5% Cast Speed. How do you get these charges? Using Blood Rage.

Blood Rage is a green skill gem that can KILL you. Blood Rage inflicts Chaos Damage to your character while increasing Attack Speed and Life Leech from Physical Attacks when you're in low life. Why on Earth should we use a skill with those stats if we don't have any attacks or physical damage? Well, when you get into the real fun (when you become Chaos Innoculated) you'll be getting free frenzy charges without any fear of dying. Get Blood Rage in Act 3 in Cruel difficulty if you're a Witch. Don't use it until you grab Chaos Innoculation, it will be useless otherwise.

But so many dangers and no defense at all? You can use many different ways to prevent being damaged. First of all, you're a Witch. Witches are thin and delicate, and they break easily if you're not gentle. Consider avoiding damage as much as you can using your escape tool (Lightning Warp). Sometimes it will be very hard to avoid damage, so you need to mitigate a little of it. Get Arctic Armour, the green skill gem, in Act 2 Normal and Act 3 Cruel if you're a Witch.

This skill activates and then will drain mana to stay active until you run out of mana. The mana drained per second increases if you're moving, so be careful not to run out of mana. If your mana regeneration is high enough, you can keep it active no matter what. Level it up as you go, and take a guess if it is convenient to keep it active at all times or just when you're in trouble.

Have you heard of the CwDT combo? CwDT stands for Cast When Damage Taken, and is a red support gem that allows you to cast instantly and at no cost all skills linked that are under a level treshold when a damage limit is surpassed.

How is this useful? Well, you get a Cast When Damage Taken gem at level 1, and link it to Enduring Cry, Immortal Call and another utility gem (usually a shield, a curse, a decoy or Increased Duration).

Enduring Cry taunts all nearby enemies and grants you Endurance Charges (orange charges that increase elemental resistance and decrease physical damage taken) depending on how many enemies were taunted. Those Endurance Charges are instantly used to trigger Immortal Call, which consumes all those charges in order to give you momentarily immortality. This combo is pretty useful if you know you will be hit a lot. But don't. You're not meant to be hit. Love yourself, be safe.

Anyway, if you want to use this combo, get a 3 linked item (at least) with all three sockets red. Don't forget that CwDT has a treshold for both skill gem levels AND damage. If you want it to proc more often, then keep it at level 1 so the damage limit is lower and thus easier to proc. Remember that linked skills (Endurance Cry and Immortal Call) need to be equal or under the CwDT skill level limit, which is 31 at level 1. That results in CwDT level 1, Enduring Cry at level 5 and Immortal Call at level 3. Also notice that the order of the links DOES MATTER. Cast When Damage Taken is first, Enduring Cry is second and Immortal Call is last. CwDT is obtainable in Act 3 Merciless. Both Enduring Cry and Immortal Call are NOT obtainable in the Witch storyline, so you'll have to trade or get it via drop.

You can also cast Enduring Cry manually to have some endurance charges up at important times, which will give you up to 12% physical damage reduction (4% per charge) and some Elemental Resistances too.

Lastly, if you need decoy, you can use a totem that spams Skeletons, or Vaal Summon Skeletons if you're in need of a helping hand. Or many hands.

Both Spell Totem (red) and Summon Skeletons (blue) are obtainable in the Witch questline. Vaal Summon Skeletons (blue) is not, trade or farm corrupted areas.

I'd recommend any combination of Sanctified/Divine/Eternal Mana Flasks and utily flasks (like Granite and Quicksilver).
All your flasks should be Q20% and rolled with the Surgeon prefix.
All your flasks should be able to defrost you (if you don't have Dream Fragments), and remove Bleeding, Shock and Burning status. A Warding flask is nice but not necessary.
Don't forget the Surgeon prefix.

If you're running out of mana too often, consider getting a Lavianga's Spirit (unique Sanctified Mana Flask) or using Vaal Clarity.
If you're having trouble to keep your charges up, take a look at Doedre's Elixir (unique Greater Mana Flask) but beware because it can get you killed.
If you can afford it, get a Rumi's Concoction (unique Granite Flask).

Because you're CI, life flasks are useless. From now on, you'll use mana flasks and utility flasks. Granite Flasks are used to get armor if things are getting tough, Jade flasks to get evasion, and Quartz flasks if you need to run away. Quicksilver flasks are useful too, as well as resistance flasks like the Ruby, Sapphire and Topaz flasks.



Now, remember we are building a CI Cold Crit Witch, so our Witch will be dealing LOTS of Critical Strikes. That's why we should get all our flasks with the "Surgeon's" prefix. The Surgeon's Prefix will get charges for our flasks everytime we land a critical strike (charges count differently on every mob, the bigger the pack struck with a crit, the more charges you'll get!).
And since magic flasks can have up to two mods if we craft them ourselves, we want an extra mod for each of our flasks. We'll need a remove Bleeding effect (that's of Staunching suffix for you), a dispel Shock effect (of Grounding), a dispel Burning effect (of Dousing) and a dispel Frozen and Chilled effect (of Heat). If you have Dream Fragments already, you can swap the Surgeon's Flask of Heat for a Surgeon's Flask of Warding, which will remove all curses on you and will prevent you from getting cursed again during its effect.



And don't forget to get them to 20% Quality! Mana flasks replenish more, and utility flasks have a longer duration if we improve their quality. Improve the quality of your flasks (and your items in general) before crafting them; using quality improvers (Stones, Scraps and Baubles) on white items will increase the quality by 5% instead of 1% as if used on a yellow one. Blue items quality increases by 2%. Unique items increase by 1% as well as rare items.

If you're running out of mana too often, consider buying a Lavianga's Spirit Sanctified Mana Flask.

Lavianga's replenishes lots of mana in a small amount of time, and will allow you to cast spells at no cost during its effect (but since you're running two auras, you won't be able to cast more than two or three free spells). You can also use a Vaal Clarity gem, which lasts longer, but has fewer uses and replenishes more slowly.


If you find that sustaining your Power Charges is difficult, take a look at Doedre's Elixir.

Doedre's Elixir is a mana flask that can KILL YOU (if you're not careful) but will grant you one Frenzy, one Power and one Endurance Charge while removing 20% of your Maximum Energy Shield.

If you've got the coin, Rumi's Concoction is an excellent upgrade for your Granite Flask for its added block chance.

Along with your Shield and Tempest Shield, Rumi's Concoction will be your dearest ally when confronting tough enemies.

It's pricey, I know. But it's completely worth it!

Get Catarina. Elreon is a great choice too. The rest of the masters should be chosen according to your preference. If this Pulser is your main character, then please don't ever get Vagan; the lovely redhead is insanely better.

Masters were introduced in v1.2 of the game. They provide interesting recipes to better craft your items in order to get your 'perfect weapon' or 'best armor in the game'. In order to get a master to help you, you should get some good reputation first.

Masters will aproach you when exploring Wraeclast, and will ask for a mission. If the mission is accomplished, your reputation with that master will increase. When some certain reputation levels are obtained, masters will offer a Hideout.

Each master has their own hideout. Each hideout can have up to two masters in it, including the hideout "owner". If the hideout "owner" reaches level 5, they can upgrade it to invite an second additional master. If the "owner" reaches level 7, then the hideout will be big enough to hold 3 additional masters. So a master level 7 will hold 4 masters, the owner and three additional masters.

When the time comes, you will have to choose between 4 of the 7 possible masters. If this character is your main in the league, I recommend choosing Catarina and Elreon. The rest is up to your prefence :)

Full run here. I use Life Leech gem instead of IIQ (what I normally use). Watch me play safer but get 0 drops. Also, this was when I still had my 5L.

Map mods:
►2 Rogue Exiles
►Ele Weakness
►-16% max resistances
►18% Physical Reflect

Highlights:
►1:34 Augustina Solaria
►3:10 Piety
►3:37 0 drops
►4:50 - 7:20 Catarina mission
►7:20 show auras and FP setup
►9:20 Wilorin Demontamer

I'm aware there's a bit of audio/video desync at the end. Please try to ignore it.

You have several options. If this char is your main (or if you really like them) you should start optimizing both your tree and your gear. Slowly transition from the hybrid armour/ES nodes to full block and Eva/ES nodes.
Get a better wand, or craft one if you can afford it.
Get all your gems to 20/20.
Get another set of core gems (Discipline, FP, etc) to 20/20 and corrupt them. Good luck.
Start using Divines (or buy items with better rolls) in your uniques.
Improve your belt & rings with Blessed Orbs. Don't ever use a Blessed on your Chayula if the +x to all attributes is superior to 16.

I hope you're not bored by this point, because the real fun begins here!
The first thing you'll need to do is to transition from your hybrid build (armor & energy shield nodes) to pure ES and block nodes. This is only achievable by leveling, so you'll need to play. A lot!

In the meantime, you'll feel the need for more ES, or more damage. Maybe more mana for your auras (or Tempest Shield or Herald of Ice) or perhaps you'll need more attributes in order to get your gems to level 20. Where do you get these little bits you're missing? From your gear, of course! That's why we'll need to improve our gear as much as we can.

What can improve? Well, lots!

For example, the implicit rolls of a ring are easily rerolled with Blessed Orbs.
Take a look.
I Master Crafted more ES in the ring, and then used some Blessed Orbs on it and became this!
The Implicit mod (x% increased Global Critical Strike Chance) went up from 27% to 30%. So now I have more critical chance!

But that's only 3 percent! Is it really worth it?!
IT IS! That's what optimizing is, getting a series of little improvements in order to get the maximum efficiency out of our gear.

What happens next, then? Maybe getting a new one (with better mods) would be wise. That depends on your currency, and if you don't have another goal in mind (or other char/build to feed).

Another example of gear optimizing would be my previous Eye of Chayula. This:

Is no longer used. I bought a Max roll, Legacy one (for about 18 times its normal price, of course):


That way I was able to downgrade my Blood Rage (since leveling it doesn't do anything special for us casters), and getting a +30 extra Dexterity points. Then I respecced the Alacrity node from the tree (-30 Dex), and invested it in a block notable.

This is pretty interesting and fun to do. All these little improvements lead to better stats and thus more damage and survivability.

But WAIT, THERE'S MORE!

Your gems will slowly get to level 20. Max level, awesome! But, are they at max quality? Aha! That's something we can improve, then.
Sell a lvl 20 gem along with a Gemcutter Prism in any vendor, and it will give you back the gem with max quality (20%) but at level 1.

You'll need to start all over again so you get them at max level with max quality. THAT'S MAX POWER FOR YOU! Nah, just kidding. There's even more power if you corrupt them with a Vaal Orb. I'll show you when I corrupt my set lol.

Then start saving currency in order to start crafting wands and Regalias and such. This all adds a new meaning to the game. The next level of Path of Exile. Good luck on your journey!

"

My experience so far on playing this build:

- you can easily lvl up to 40 without buying any stuff
- since you have reached cruel a2 or a3 you will get some troubles cause of the phys dmg
- you need to get some new gear and you should start using granite flasks
- i would recommend to have allways your resits as high as possible
- the main troubles you will have playing from lvl 50 to 70 if you dont have the right or recommended gear
- You will have some heavy troubles without following uniques: Rainbowstride, Rathpith, Eye of chayula and Doryanis. I would say Dream Fragments is a must have too but you can handle the freeze with our flasks too. Since you dont have them you will have some incoming frustration waves
- Generally only with high end gear party playable (endgame)
-Think about to have a 2nd high lvl arctic armour to switch in for party playing

Some playing tips could be:

- New starters should think about getting Eldritch Battery with ES Gear to run a higher arcitc armour. Since you will go for CI!
- A really nice and underrated skill setup is : Vaal Ice nova -> inc. area with quality -> added cold dmg with quality -> cold pen (there are some other gems you can easially change for cold pen)
- In my opinion cast when dmg taken will help you to aware somr of tge heavy dmg you will get since you are geared up. Choose your setup. Some could be: lvld cwdt -> quality ele prolif -> quality cold pen -> quality cold snap.

Chek the original post here