[2.0 updated] Shmizz's hardcore perma-freeze guide

---Unfortunately, in the current state of the game Ice spear has been nerfed into unplayability and freeze pulse is a strictly better cold skill. With this being so I have to change the guide to freeze pulse until a time when ice spear becomes playable again. Scroll down to the bottom to see my reasoning behind this.---

Index:
Introduction
Skill mechanics
Skill gems and links
Passive skill tree
Gear and stats





What's up guys. This is the official build guide for my perma-freeze build. This is a great build for players looking for a solid starting point for playing the game especially in a hardcore league setting.


Who is this build suitable for?
-This build is very viable for both hardcore and softcore content.

-This is a very cheap build, very few items are required to make it work. The only gear you need is rare gear with life and resistances, a few pieces of gear with relatively high energy shield, and ideally a +2 cold gems staff.

-This build works best in a party where someone else can shock mobs, however it is still extremely strong solo. If you play this build and someone in your party is a burn proliferate build such as detonate dead, fire trap, or flameblast, they are going to have a bad time. Most of the enemies you fight, you will shatter. Shattered corpses do not proliferate burn damage.

-No, this build is not "atziri viable".

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Now let's get down to the basics.

Skill Mechanics:

The first thing to do is look at the skill gem:

We can see at the very top that freeze pulse is tagged as cold, projectile, and spell. This means that in any freeze pulse build you will scale the damage with cold damage, projectile damage / projectile speed, and spell damage / cast speed.

The gem also has a pretty decent base crit chance, so in this build I chose to go for a crit build.

Quality on the freeze pulse skill gem gives projectile speed, which is vitally important due to how freeze pulse functions. As the skill gem reads "An icy projectile which has a chance to freeze enemies it passes through. The projectile fades quickly, reducing damage and freezing chance until it dissipates completely"
What this means is that freeze pulse has a certain duration, and as it approaches that duration it continuously drops in damage. Moving at a normal speed, your freeze pulse reaches about a quarter of the screen. This means that it deals 100% damage when directly in melee range and fades to nothing about one quarter of the screen away from your character. With heavy investment into projectile speed, your freeze pulse can reach the entire screen away, meaning its damage decays more slowly with respect to distance and your character does not need to be in melee range to get very close to 100% damage with freeze pulse( though obviously being directly in melee range will always be the highest dps).

In patch 2.0 totems received a massive buff. They reduce the damage of spells significantly less than they used to. With this being so, I chose to make this a dual totem build, because it makes your character much tankier and it becomes much easier to deal with the mana cost of the skill.

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Now let's talk about skill gems:
The ideal setup for freeze pulse is in a 6-linked +2 cold gems +1 all gems staff. This is obviously not possible for everyone so I would rank the skill gem priority as follows:
3-link: Freeze pulse - Spell totem - Hypothermia
4-link: Freeze pulse - Spell totem - Hypothermia - Cold penetration
5-link: Freeze pulse - Spell totem - Hypothermia - Cold penetration - Faster casting
6-link: Freeze pulse - Spell totem - Hypothermia - Cold penetration - Faster casting - Faster projectiles

This priority assumes that you have a relatively high quality freeze pulse gem. If you do not have a quality freeze pulse gem, faster projectiles takes priority over faster casting in your 5th link.

It is very important to note that we do not use lesser or greater multiple projectiles. This is because of a unique jewel called rain of splinters, which allows your totems to fire two additional projectiles. The downside on rain of splinters is that totems deal 30-50% reduced damage, however this penalty is much much smaller than the penalty of using an extra gem link AND getting the 20-30% LESS damage from lesser or greater multiple projectiles. Rain of splinters is NOT mandatory, and I was running the build with a single freeze pulse all the way through the start of maps, however it is a significant aoe damage buff and should be obtained ASAP!

Auras:
Freeze pulse has a ridiculous damage effectiveness of 125%. This means ANY flat damage that you apply to it through auras or support gems or weapons gets multiplied by 1.25, giving you even more damage.
With a 125% damage effectiveness, both herald of thunder and herald of ice are mandatory, even without the secondary benefits( spell totems do not allow the secondary effects of heralds to proc).

This build will be a hybrid build (utilizes both life and energy shield) which means discipline is very strong defensively.

I chose not to use clarity and to instead use a *gasp* mana flask. This is because with totems linked to a skill gem, the skill itself becomes very expensive due to the 250% mana cost multiplier on the spell totem gem, however you only need to cast the spell once every 4 seconds to maintain the Shaman's dominion crit buff. Once the spell totem is down it does not cost any more mana. Since you have a skill with a huge mana cost that you only need to cast occasionally, you need a relatively large mana pool, but don't need a huge amount of regeneration. Using a mana flask allows you do invest only 2 points into the skill tree in mana and still maintain your skill even in a +2 gem 6link with no problems.

At a very high level, with 4 extra points in the skill tree as well as ideally an enlighten gem you can also afford to run arctic armor in this build. Many people like to hate on the new version of arctic armor, but it is extremely potent in a build like this where you don't have much armor and are quite susceptible to stuns since whenever you get stunned you are not moving and arctic armor instantly kicks in. Arctic armor also synergizes extremely well with the hypothermia support gem since you can kite a mob backwards onto your trail of ground ice which then causes the mob to be chilled and take 40% MORE damage from your totems.

Reduced mana no longer effects auras! this means you can run all three of your auras in a single 3-link with no problem.

Curses:
Since the goal of this build is to permanently freeze enemies, we must obviously use the temporal chains curse. Temporal chains slows enemies' attack, cast, and movement speeds, but more importantly it increases the duration of debuffs applied to that enemy as well. The increased duration of debuffs also applies to freeze! Thus temporal chains allows us to freeze for 40% longer. Furthermore the slow effect on temporal chains stacks with chill, meaning even boss monsters who often have too much life to freeze can still be almost locked in place because their movement speed, attack speed, and casts speed is slowed down by over 70%.

There are a few ways to apply more than one curse in this build and I would consider running 2 curses to be mandatory, while 3 is arguable and 4 is a bit excessive (but still very strong).

In the awakening you have an actual choice between whether to use frostbite or elemental weakness. Frostbite now actually does reduce the enemy's resistance more than elemental weakness does as well as giving extra freeze chance. If you are in a party with other people dealing other types of elemental damage, you obviously want your second curse to be elemental weakness so that you also buff their damage, however while solo frostbite will always be stronger.

If you choose to run more than two curses and you are in a party, from the third curse onwards is totally flexible based on your group composition and what you feel you need. While solo I would rank curses in this priority:
Temporal chains - Frostbite - Enfeeble - Elemental weakness - assassin's mark

I found it very powerful to run dual curse in a 5-link setup in my chest piece. My curse setup was
ball lightning - curse on hit - temporal chains - frostbite - power charge on critical

I use power charge on critical because it is a crit build and gaining power charges is a very large increase in your dps.

If you cannot afford the 5th link you can choose to either drop power charge on critical, or only use a single curse until the point when you can 5-link your chest. If you drop power charge on critical you might also consider running an ice spear - greater multiple projectiles - power charge on critical setup in a different 3-link, however I found that casting ice spear to generate charges AND using ball lightning to curse while also setting up totems to be an extremely obnoxious way to play, so I opted to get the 5-link.

Miscellaneous and non-mandatory gems:

Golems: I consider the flame golem to be the strongest of the three since 20% increased damage helps you freeze just that much longer.
If you feel you need more tankiness on your character the chaos golem is a very powerful minion not only due to the physical mitigation but also because he's just another thing that exists in the world that monsters might choose to attack instead of your face.
The ice golem is the weakest of the three in this build. The bonus crit you get from it is significantly less damage than the damage bonus from the flame golem and the additional accuracy provides no benefit to this build.

golems are relatively useless for damage themselves, so the only support gems I would consider for them are minion life, minion and totem elemental resistance, fortify, and blind.

Lightning warp: obviously lightning warp is a very strong mobility skill and running without a mobility skill can be very annoying

Cast when damage taken: Cast when damage taken can still be very strong with immortal call, molten shell, and my personal favorite, arctic breath linked to greater multiple projectiles to coat the ground in ice and chill all nearby enemies. If you have extra slots, throw on a cwdt. If not, it makes very little difference.
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Now let's talk about our passive skill tree:

Important notables and keystones:

Ancestral Bond: This is a dual totem build, as such you are required to get the ancestral bond keystone which allows you to summon an additional totem.

Zealot's Oath: This is a hybrid life and energy shield build and as such you need a way to gain energy shield back otherwise it becomes useless in extended combat.


Breath of Rime: The goal of this build is to permanently freeze enemies. With the changes to the mechanics of freezing in 2.0 it is significantly harder to do this against enemies with large life pools. Freeze duration nodes are now mandatory and extremely potent.

Bandits:
Help oak
Help Alira or skill point
Help Alira

The Build:

The level 100, 120 point build looks like this

Of course very few players will ever reach this point in the build, however it is helpful to everyone to highlight which things on the skill tree are important.
at max level we obtain 139% life as well as 119% max energy shield from the skill tree. This means with very good gear we can approach absurd levels of effective life (probably around 4k life and 5k energy shield, though it is completely dependent on your gear).

The build clearing a level 70 map at character level 81. Fully self found except for support gems:

While leveling, build progression should look something like this:







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Gear and stats:

Weapons and armor:
There are a few pieces of gear that this build requires to function well.
Mandatory:
On rare gear:
- either 5-link or +2 cold staff
- capped resistances
- high life rolls
- decent energy shield
Second highest priority:
Rain of splinters
Maligaro's virtuosity
On rare gear:
- Crit and crit multiplier
- cast speed, spell damage, cold damage on staff/jewelry



Flasks:
I always choose to run one bubbling and two seething flasks so I only have two flasks slots to play around with. As I said before I run a mana flask instead of investing points on the tree into mana. It is quite important to note that you do NOT always run the highest level of mana flask possible on your character. This is because when you reach 100% mana, your flask effect instantly stops and you lose all the rest of the mana you could have regenerated. For this purpose I chose a flask that restores a huge amount over a very long period of time. There is a lot of fiddling to do with mana flask usage, but it's very easy to feel it out once you start paying attention, so do whatever feels best to you.
Since I run one bubbling, two seethings, and one mana flask I only have one additional flask slot for a utility flask. I would consider the best two choices to be either quicksilver or diamond flasks. Personally I prefer a quicksilver because it has a more defensive purpose but this flask slot is totally open, feel free to throw on a granite or resistance flask if you want to.

When it comes to flasks there are some mandatory rolls that you need to get on flasks. You MUST have a warding flask and a staunching flask at all times in merciless and whenever possible before merciless. Warding is immunity to curses and staunching is immunity to bleed effects. There is no getting around this requirement.

Other helpful flask modifiers include heat (immunity to chill and freeze), iron skin on granite flasks (bonus armor during flask effect) and grounding (immunity to shock). All of these are highly recommended. Many players underestimate just how valuable getting well rolled flasks is.
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My reasoning for temporarily changing the build guide from ice spear to freeze pulse:

Did I miss something?
Have any questions?
Feel free to let me know below!
Thanks for checking this guide out guys :D

Interesting build, i just rip'd on my 65 incinerate and was thinking about doing an ice spear build because on bosses i would switch to ice spear anyway.

Couple of questions though:
I see reflect as the #1 killer on this build. If you were to not see that one rare with elemental reflect, how bad would it be if you didn't pop Sapphire flask?

Why not LMP instead of GMP?

Lastly, can the Templar do this build?

"

highwind123 wrote:

I see reflect as the #1 killer on this build. If you were to not see that one rare with elemental reflect, how bad would it be if you didn't pop Sapphire flask?

a couple times I've been just shooting spears off screen so I can't see anything I'm hitting and I'll notice my life start to go down, but it's really not too bad. the build has enough life that you won't 1shot yourself, it will take multiple volleys of max roll, crit ice spears to kill you. mostly reflect is just dangerous in combination with other things, like if you're already burning/punctured, or some archers are shooting at you at the same time.

"

highwind123 wrote:

Why not LMP instead of GMP?

GMP just hits more enemies in a wider cone. often you will find enemies are just barely outside your cone of freezing and you have to reposition yourself to make sure you freeze everything. Using LMP just makes that even more of an issue. Also you really don't need the extra damage to keep your freezes up on every enemy. the only blue packs i can't freeze permanently with GMP are the otherworldly packs that take like 90% less damage from everything when in their cloud. all white mobs, all other blue mobs, and almost all rare mobs can be frozen with GMP

"

highwind123 wrote:

can the Templar do this buid?

Yes, templar is also pretty strong. Templar gets a lot more elemental damage, though you also have to spend more points getting all the way across the tree to the shadow area because it's just so efficient. I think witch is slightly better because of its proximity, but both are really strong.
The skill tree would probably look something like this, though i have not min/maxed it as a templar myself so i'm sure there are a few inefficiencies in there

Good evening,

What about using Taryn's Shiver in this build?

And maybe farming for Koams...

"

WiseGuard wrote:

What about using Taryn's Shiver in this build?

And maybe farming for Koams...

Taryn's shiver would be fantastic in this build, i forgot to add that.
kaoms is always strong, the problem is then you have to drop gem slots elsewhere. you would have to drop your reduced duration on lightning warp, and probably your cast when damage taken setup to make room.

Hmm, yes indeed.

Having Taryn's Shiver already causes this problem, that you loose sockets but gain more damage. Not aiming for 6s 5l.

I was thinking about CWDT and Cold Snap. Wont it freeze annoying mobs? Tho i think the problem is Cold Snaps cd...

"

WiseGuard wrote:

I was thinking about CWDT and Cold Snap. Wont it freeze annoying mobs? Tho i think the problem is Cold Snaps cd...

it's not really necessary. you can already freeze anything dangerous with your single target ice spear.
cwdt also has the problem where it can't support a gem that requires a higher level than itself. If you run it in a low level cwdt you won't freeze anything because you'll have a low level cold snap. if you run it in a high level cdwt it will rarely proc because you have to take a lot of damage to get it to proc.

Hey dude, props for the build. I'm actually thinking about running it on torment but I've one thing that bothers me. Single target ice spear seems like a waste of gems for me as you only swap green gem for another green gem. Tbh I'd much rather run another ice spear with curse on hit or something like that. What would you suggest instead of that single target spear?

"

pus1k4ru wrote:

What would you suggest instead of that single target spear?

Unfortunately there is a real lack of good single target cold damage spells. Ice spear with curse on hit would be a waste in my opinion because it wouldn't deal much damage. self casting it would get the curse out faster and only consume one gem slot. You might try cold snap with conc effect and spell echo, or like gmp arctic breath traps, but for a single target skill you don't have many options. you could also rely on your ice spear with gmp for single target and just get in the mob's face to shotgun them. The damage is insanely high that way. In that case if you open up more gem slots you could try self cast immortal call/enduring cry or even throw on a vaal gem like vaal cold snap, vaal storm call or a more defensive one like vaal grace/vaal summon skeletons.

Thanks a bunch for the guide! I haven't played in a year so I don't really understand the deal with Herald of Thunder but I'll try to figure it out for myself. Just came back to the game and have been enjoying myself quite a bit.

Any tips for leveling?