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

any idea to get over 100 DEX?
i have only 60ish

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fong159 wrote:

any idea to get over 100 DEX?
i have only 60ish

you can roll dex on amulets, rings, gloves, and body armor as well as jewels

Hey Shmizz, looks like a great build. I'm with you though, I like the way Ice Spear looks way more. I was wondering if you could post the passive tree for Ice Spear. I have some ideas how I think it'd work but I am tired of building a character by myself and finding out it's less than adequate at higher levels....hahaha.

Thanks.

Edit: Still for HC but not using totems to cast.

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Haeos wrote:

Hey Shmizz, looks like a great build. I'm with you though, I like the way Ice Spear looks way more. I was wondering if you could post the passive tree for Ice Spear. I have some ideas how I think it'd work but I am tired of building a character by myself and finding out it's less than adequate at higher levels....hahaha.

Thanks.

Edit: Still for HC but not using totems to cast.

I'm sure this can use a little min/maxing but the skeleton of the tree would look like this

you should be able to afford clarity and both heralds with this setup.
I would recommend that you devote all four jewel sockets to jewels with life and crit multiplier for cold skills (crit multi for cold skills has a higher roll than pure crit multi).
Your main links would be
Ice spear - Spell echo - GMP - Pierce - cold pen - hypothermia
I don't think it's efficiently possible to run pcoc in your main skill anymore so i would throw it on something else or use ass mark for power charge generation

Thank you for getting back to me on that. I'm happy I asked as what I had in mind was quite different than what you did. I believe a lot of the issue is I was speccing into more crit chance than you did, mostly because I was unsure how much I needed to have to go with Ice Spear.

A couple of questions:
I noticed you took Righteous Decree and Dynamo, does IS become that mana intensive? (I will more than likely be running a 5L)
I would have thought Throatseeker and Snowforged would have been picked up. Any particular reason you didn't, or just lack of points.

I didn't think to factor in gems. I haven't had too much exposure to them yet, good to know about the cold crit multiplier.

Thanks for the reply.

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Haeos wrote:

A couple of questions:
I noticed you took Righteous Decree and Dynamo, does IS become that mana intensive? (I will more than likely be running a 5L)
I would have thought Throatseeker and Snowforged would have been picked up. Any particular reason you didn't, or just lack of points.

I didn't think to factor in gems. I haven't had too much exposure to them yet, good to know about the cold crit multiplier.

Thanks for the reply.

Ice spear is very mana intensive, but righteous decree and dynamo completely depend on your gear. If you have no mana/mana regen on gear you are very likely to need them. If you have really good gear you might be able to get away with not specing any mana in the tree. With the nerf to EB I consider reduced mana cost of skills to be vastly superior to mana regeneration, which is why I went for those instead of deep thoughts.

Throatseeker and snowforged are simply too many points to be efficient. The pierce gem was buffed so you no longer need the pierce nodes in the tree and EB is now useless so the entire right side of the tree is really terrible point efficiency.

Wow, really like the build. I like playing a high ES max & regen with evasion build so I was I was wondering what you thought of this build (I used your's & altered the skill tree to flow with my preference a little). If you see how this could have problems or if I accidentally nerfed some important parts of your build that aren't compensated, please let me know.

Also, is there any way to keep the perma-frost without using totems, or are totems absolutely necessary?

Thanks.

https://www.pathofexile.com/fullscreen-passive-skill-tree/AAAAAwMBAuMC_gQHBUIHYwelD6sQWBB7EQ8RLREvEVAWQBZvFr8XVBpsGyUd2R8CH8cgbiKBIvQkqiTYKhMrCit4LJwtizCXNbk2PTbFNuk3gTmKQZZCw0NURKFG10myS65MLUyzUDBQQlKyUzVT1FXGVkpXKVjlWitd8l5dZp5sC20ZbWxwUnDVcYVyD3yDf8aCEIPbg_OFbYV9iEKJ04wLjDaMdo2CjjyTJ5UEna6eoZ8Bo_KnCKcrp5SuEq6zr5uxQrb3tzG5fL46wcXDE8u90PXR5NH91YHYJNlb2xrbXt-E34rfsONW42rk6-aB53TpAuwY7LD0cfrS

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Sibyll9 wrote:

Wow, really like the build. I like playing a high ES max & regen with evasion build so I was I was wondering what you thought of this build (I used your's & altered the skill tree to flow with my preference a little). If you see how this could have problems or if I accidentally nerfed some important parts of your build that aren't compensated, please let me know.

Also, is there any way to keep the perma-frost without using totems, or are totems absolutely necessary?

The biggest problem I see with your version of the skill tree is that you are simply trying to do too many things at once. life and energy shield and evasion and perma freeze and all of the energy shield recharge. Firstly I don't think essence surge is worth it at all, and it's definitely not worth it to go up near EB for only fingers of frost, so I would cut that area entirely. The same goes for depth perception and void barrier down near the shadow area. Void barrier is too many points to be efficient (6 points for 20% increased energy shield, or 3.3% each) and you do not get any benefit from accuracy so depth perception is out of the question entirely. With those two areas removed you free up a bunch of skill points, and I'm the kind of person that builds my builds with the "See life node, get life node" philosophy in mind. Since you are hybrid and not pure life, you can consider aura effectiveness nodes to be the same as life nodes since they will buff your discipline and give you more ES. I would personally change the tree to look a bit more like this


To answer your second question, totems are not absolutely mandatory and if you choose not to use totems you your replace the spell totem gem with spell echo. There are two major advantages to using totems and one relatively large drawback.
The first advantage is that everything becomes so much safer. You can stack as much crit and crit multi as possible and never have to worry about reflect damage. Totems have their own aggro table and mobs will often stop attacking you to hit your totems instead. You never have to get close to mobs, you just stick your totems in their face and stay at a distance.
The second major advantage is for any enemy that is relatively weak (meaning anything from white mobs to regular rare mobs that don't have capped cold resistance and a massive life pool) it is a lot easier to perma freeze them with two totems out rather than self casting because two totems get more casts off per second and by extension more crits off per second.

The one major drawback to totems is that they deal less damage in a single hit. On a spell totem, as you approach the end game you receive a 31% less damage dealt per cast modifier on your spell. With spell echo that is lowered to only 10% from the spell echo gem. With the changes to the way freeze works in 2.0 this means that self casting the freeze pulse JUST MIGHT put you over the threshold to cause a freeze on an extremely tanky rare or a boss mob and thus enable you to permanently freeze mobs that you would otherwise not be able to with totems. I should note that for self cast you can no longer use the rain of splinters unique jewel so you have to decide whether it is more important for you to have the extra aoe damage from lesser multiple projectiles or the more damage multiplier from hypothermia in a straight line in front of you.

Either way you play it Freeze pulse can be extremely potent, and if self cast fits your play style more I would definitely recommend trying it.

Shmizz,

Would love to get your thoughts on a slight variation to your build. I used your tree from leveling to 76-80 because that's probably as far as I'll ever get. The tree is:

https://www.pathofexile.com/fullscreen-passive-skill-tree/AAAAAwMBAuMEBwSzBUIHpQthEFgRDxEtFkAWbxdUGjgabB0UIG4igSSqJNgnLyoTLJwwlzbFNuk5ijpYOtg8LUGHQZZEoUWdRtdJskwtTLNQMFNSU9RVxlZKVylY5VnzWiteXWaeaPJxhXIPfEt8g4IQgpuDX4PMg9uD84VthX2Ngo48jmSPRpBVlnSaO5rgnqGfAaIAo_KnCKeUrhKus69sr5uxQrb6tz7AZsau0PXR5NH91YHVptgk2L3bXt-w4XPjauvu7DjtPPAf96b3wfno-tL-Cg==

Comparing my tree to your tree in Passive Skill Tree Planner, they have the following major differences:

Your tree:
+30 dex
+40 int
+20 to max mana
+10% increased life
+20% max energy shield
+20 max energy shield

My tree:
+70 strength
+35 to maximum life
+12% all resists
+7% cast speed
+15% spell damage
+26% elemental damage
+5% chance to freeze
+3% aura effect

The other reason I went down to Constitution the way I did is you can easily pick up Totemic Mastery and increased totem tankiness if they are dying quickly or totem damage/cast speed.

I'd love to get your thoughts on whether the extra damage and freeze % is worth the loss of energy shield increases especially when I'm playing in tempest league.

Thanks!!

I also noticed you didn't go for Sovereignty. Is +mana max & regen better than reduced mana reserve? I'm trying to decide between either Sovereignty or Deep Thoughts + Blast Radius (for the AoE that Sovereignty gives).