[1.3.x] The Arctic GroundCoC

Main idea

The build idea started from reading comments on reddit, posted by
bobthebastard with his Critlash GS CoC 2h staff build.

That sounded interesting, and I wanted to try it out myself after 1.3.0

In contrast to mainstream CoC builds which all scale damage with projectiole-based attacks and spells with the use of GMP, this build instead scales AoE to make Ground Slam and spells hit as many targets as possible, as well as spell crit chance in order to have better damage and elemental status effects.

There were a lot of problems at first, but most of them had been solved by now and I am quite happy how the build turned out.
It has both high clearing speed due to its massive AoE which hits most of the screen,
good singletarget / bosskilling ability with the use of Vaal skills, and fairly good survivability by being able to freeze most enemies before they become a threat.


Strengths & weaknesses





Build setup
Ice Nova is used as a main skill for clearing packs because of its huge AoE
Glacial Cascade is used as a second ice-based skill which scales with AoE in order to provide more directional damage and kill ele resistant enemies faster

The main skill setup:
4L : Ground Slam - CoC - Ice Nova - Glacial Cascade
5L : Increased AoE for clearing / Conc Effect for dangerous bosses
6L : one of Empower / ICD / ICS / LL / Multistrike / PCoC

For bosses you can swap Ice Nova with Flamesurge, and Inc AoE gem with PCoC or Conc Effect
If you have any source of flat fire damage, no matter how small, it will still ignite enemies with Ground Slam, giving Flamesurge 50% MORE damage!

Herald of Thunder is used to deal damage and to dual-curse with an Assmark and Ele weakness.
Herald of Ice secondary effect of exploding shattered enemies is extremely useful - with increased AoE the explosion becomes large enough to affect many enemies at once,
sometimes exploding the entire pack in a domino effect after the first explosion goes off.

Herald of Thunder setup:
HoT - CoH - Assmark - Ele Weakness

Using both skills that deal cold damage allows to run Purity of Ice to help with ele reflect.
Ele reflect is dangerous, however you will not die to it if you see the aura / rare first.
Generally speaking, hitting Sapphire + Atziri flasks should be enough,
but you can manage without Sapphire if you try to attack only 1-3 enemies with reflect at a time.

You also have 4 + 3 gem slots which can be used for anything you wish.
I chose to dedicate them to Vaal Skills, and my personal setup can be seen in the gear section.

2.0 Skilltree

Works only in offline skilltree planner!

* Shadow / Templar

Gear selection

Helm - Rat's Nest - has everything needed for CoC build
Armour - Carcass Jack - we need as much AoE as possible
Doryani's Invitation - cold version. Needed for the 1% cold damage leech, plus a lot of ele damage.
Rings - Diamonds if possible, otherwise look for the ones wioth highest life and resists
Amulet - ideally with crit multi + high life rolls

For Gloves and Boots there are 2 variants:
1) Levelling (up to 85 or so)
Gloves - Maligaros - crit chance / multi / dex / ASP - everything that we need.
Boots - rares which can roll 4B colours, needed for HoT-CoH setup
2) Endgame
Gloves - rares which can roll 4B colours, needed for HoT-CoH setup
Boots - Atziri Step. Extra spell dodge helps against reflect, pushing spell dodge to 46%, and combined with Vaal Grace can give you 80% spell dodge, allowing to dodge almost all spells for a shot time.

Weapons
Main weapon - a scepter with Vagan's signature mod "Hit's can't be evaded". Ideally mastercrafted with Elreron's mod.
Offhand weapon - a dagger with 80% implicit crit chance, 80+% spell crit chance and some spell damage if possible.
Divinarius is an option but I decided against it because 10% increased AoE don't really make up for the loss of crit.

Weapon crafting

* Temporary weapon (cost 4 alc + aug + regal)
First, get any scepter with Vagan's mod, preferably the one with 1.4 APS.
Aug it, then regal. Now you have a scepter with some 2 random mods which can be useful or not.
After that, mastercraft local weapon crit chance on it. Done!

The weapon I used up to lvl 80:


* Properly crafted weapon (cost is many regals + 2ex + some alcs and a few chaos)
Get as many scepters with Vagan's mod as possible. Buy them from other players for a fusing or two each.
Regal all of them. Yes, regal, don't aug first.
Now, look if it has exactly one or two of the following mods:
Increased Spell damage / Increased Critical Strike Chance / Increased Attack Speed
If it doesn't - its bricked, vendor.
If the sceptre has one mod from the list, and some other random mod - its bricked - you may dispose of it.
If it does have exactly one or two mods from the list, decide if you are happy with the roll(s).
I was fortunate to roll 19% attack speed, which is higher than what can be crafted with masters, so I used that scepter as a base.
For example, if it rolled something like 10% increased spell damage I would have vendored it.

Now, when you have the scepter with 1 / 2 needed mods, first apply Elreon's "Can have multiple crafted mods" metamod.
Next, craft all the missing mods from this list:
- Increased Attack Speed (Vagan's crafting bench)
- Increased Critical Strike Chance (Vagan's crafting bench)
- Increased Spell damage (Alira's crafting bench)
- 1% of Cold damage leeched as life (Alira's crafting bench)

You should end up with something like this:




Bandits

Norm: Oak
Cruel: Krait
Merc: Alira

Videos

* Dry Peninsula (lvl 73 map)
* Precinct (76 map)

* Salvas Builds - The CoCSlam (example gameplay + commentary) posted by ZweihundertMorder

F.A.Q.
- Why not just use a Doryani's Catalyst / *insert and other weapon name here*?
- "Hits can't be evaded" mod is essential to have 100% chance to hit without any accuracy

- Why not use a Divinarius?
- You can use it, but in my opinion 10% increased AoE is not worth loosing crit chance compared to a good rare dagger.

- What about using Cold Snap?
- it consumes power charges way too fast, leaving you with no charges most of the time, which makes it incredibly dangerous to run with

- How do you run on mana without any mana regen?
- "x mana gained on kill" mod from jewelry. Yes, I am serious. For low cost attacks it is actually very useful and covers all your mana needs. Alternative approach is to use Elreon's jewelry - this will allow you to get free or almost free attacks, but is somewhat expensive to craft.
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If you have any questions / suggestions / critique feel free to share.

Could you post a more up to date video with stats? (Current lvl, Offense / Defense tabs)

The only issue I have is procs per second. Ground Slam will only proc once per attack (I think) where as Spectral throw will proc on each projectile as it goes out and comes back.

After the 1.3.0 CoC cooldown nerf this may not be as much as an issue though.

I'm curious how you feel defensively with Acro/Phase Acro as your primary defense? Especially since you don't take a whole lot of life, and with GS you can't stay too far away.

Sure I'll post new videos soon.
I respecced my other char so now I can test it at lvl 88.

With new tree I have 160% life which I think is enough for standard with a ranged char.
Also don't forget that freezing enemies adds a huge degree of survivability which other non-cold based builds are missing.

Ground Slam will have a chance to proc once per each enemy hit. So in big packs you will get a lot of activations. This can be seen in the video in the boss room -
Singletarget is almost never needed aside from bosses / exiles, and for those I have 5 vaal skills now. Main problem is that vaal skills aren't levelled much yet so their damage can be subpar when they don't crit.

I don't like relying on Vaal skills because if they don't finish off the boss you get stuck.

What about something like 4L - Molten Strike, Multistrike, CoC, Glacial Cascade (or other DPS spell)

"

Agent_Wesker wrote:

I don't like relying on Vaal skills because if they don't finish off the boss you get stuck.

What about something like 4L - Molten Strike, Multistrike, CoC, Glacial Cascade (or other DPS spell)

I already tried Molten Strike for CoC activation and it proved highely unreliable.
Also, facetanking most endgame bosses is suicidal, you want a ranged attack in the first place.

Currently I have 5 (well technically 4, need to colour Maligaro to 4B in order to have 5 slots, so far no luck) slots for Vaal skills all linked to Spell Echo.
My Vaal Flameblast lvl 16 tooltip is 1200 average damage for 1 stack, so 12000 for 10 stacks.
Since its linked to echo, it fires 2 times per activation. Vaal Flameblast automatically releases at 10 stacks.
Currently I have 50% chance to crit with it assuming max charges, with 320% crit multi.

So, in theory, when running 5 Vaal Flameblasts, I can output max of 5*2*12000*320% = 384000 damage before resorting to regular attack.
This is with lvl 16 gems, with lvl 20 this would be more like 500000 damage. Plus ele weakness and Assassin's Mark damage increases.

This isn't that much compared to other builds which use OP attack damage scaling, but for me its quite sufficient.

What skill you use for lvl up?

When were you able to fully switch over to ground slam CoC? Roughly what percent crit would you think is good to start? Thanks for the build. I'm in the late 50s now and my crit is only about 21%. I think I just need to fill out the tree.

I am have only 20+ % crit on 50 lvl . Why in CoC build you take spell crit nodes ? or i do something wrong. Have preaty nice crit dagger ( crit spell/chance\multi\ 8,7 base crit ) but i don know what to do

"

What skill you use for lvl up?

Any spell you like really.
Fire Trap / Flameblast linked to Chance to Ignite and Ele prolif,
maybe Glacial Cascade.

Main issue with self-casting would be insufficient mana - you will have to run Clartity to compensate, and carry 1-2 manapots as well.
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Spell crit nodes are to increase spell % crit chance and damage obviously. I would have liked to get more global crit nodes instead, but the ones that are left are kinda far away from the current tree.

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I probably wouldn't switch to using CoC until being able to equip Rat's Nest and Cast on Crit gem levelled to 15, so it would be char lvl 60 or so. If you try it earlier you will just end up with hits after hits of no spell activations.

Also, both Assassination (Shadow) and Disemboweling (Templar) nodes are essential for CoC to be effective, so you need to get those before switching to CoC setup.