[2.0] Whispering Ice + CI + High int. Safe and very strong

Hello and welcome to my guide for the new unique staff, The Whispering Ice



I'll detail down my journey from level 1 all the way up to end game.









The skill 'Icestorm' is unique in that it's tied directly to the staff and is buffed by every support gem socketed into the staff. This makes it a 7-link. There are several options available to the staff and how you socket it likely has a lot to do with how you prefer playing. My current gem slots are:

Hypothermia, Cold Penetration, Faster Casting, Spell Echo, Concentrated Effect, Increased Area of Effect. This makes my staff GG-BBBB. For boss fights where I want to up the damage further, I swap out Increased Area of Effect to either Added Chaos Damage or Added Lightning Damage. For normal farming though, the area becomes a bit too small without the aforementioned gem, as such I recommend it.

The staff has two modifiers: 1% increased Spell Damage per 10 intelligence and one hidden mod, which increases the spells duration by 0.35 seconds for every 100 intelligence you have. Due to the fact that the duration scales up so heavily by stacking intelligence, the gem "Increased Duration" loses value rapidly. At my current intelligence level, the skill lasts for 5.6 seconds - I can stack quite a few of them before the first one expires.

Other support gems that can be utilised include. Lifeleech, Ice Bite, Power Charge on Critical/Increased Critical Strike/Critical Damage, Iron Will, Added Cold Damage and probably more that I'm forgetting. However, I found my current setup the strongest for my personal playstyle.




77 Plateau. Fracture, enfeeble, monster extra fire damage, bloodlines






When this staff was anounced it immediately piqued my interest and I began thing of how to create a build with it. I decided I would do a high budget variant in standard but I will likely do that after the league has ended. I might update this topic with that then.

When I purchased this staff I wanted to see what other players were doing but none of the other builds appealed to me (along with two of them being made for standard pretty much) so I did a lot of tinkering and spent more than a few regrets to get a talent tree that looks like this:


This is for a level 85 witch, with every bandit killed in every difficulty. We want skill points.

I am currently using 6 jewels but the plan is to fill out the remaining skill points with at least three more. The nodes we would allocate are right below the double curse cluster, right next to chaos inoculation and the one between marauder and templar. I am currently using the following jewels:



The two Brute Force Solution gems are placed in the western part of the tree, to make the path to Unwavering Stance less punishing.

Now, lets delve into the build and what we are doing. The build is focusing highly on intelligence and energy shield. Due to the very specialised gear required, it can be fairly expensive to get resistance gear easily. Jewels are a great source for this and there's some very appealing nodes on the tree that give good resists. This is also why Scion is strong, you path to the south by taking 28% all resists in 5 points, which helps immensely.

With my current gear I am sitting at just above 10,000 energy shield which I feel is a pretty comfortable amount. My character sheet looks like this:



The Scion variation would look like this:


You would lose out on the starting ES nodes at the witch, but you gain 28% all resist and 1 extra jewel socket by the same level. (Obviously you can pursue the witch energy shield nodes after this should you so desire)

Explanation for the build: I found that stacking mainly intelligence provides the biggest boost to effectiveness and efficiency. I clear maps very quickly & safely and the build does not feel sluggish at all (I don't need a mana flask and I can spam the very high cost Icestorm). Since we stack a lot of intelligence, we get a lot of energy shield and mana. Since we get a lot of energy shield, we might as well go for Chaos Inoculation and make it work. There's a big drawback to Chaos Inoculation though; being stunned. I tried doing the "Pit Map" boss at level 70 or so before I decided to respec to Unwavering Stance. Let's just say it was not a fun ordeal, a lot of monsters from all directions just stunlocked me until death. There's another option to Unwavering Stance and that is the unique Eye of Chayula. I am no fan of it though because you lose out on so much stats from your amulet slot.

Since the skill is high in cost (it is a 7-link, after all) we need a decent mana pool (provided by the stacking intelligence) and good mana regen. We get a decent bit from the tree (105% as Witch, 100% as Scion) and the remaining we would get from our rings / amulet / jewels & clarity aura.

When it comes to resist, Witch gets 28% and Scion gets 56% from the tree.



This section will cover my current setup as well as what would be ideal in every slot.

Current equipment:


The staff has been covered in the second section. I will talk about the other items.

Helmet: Black Sun Crest. This helm gives a percentage increase to Intelligence, up to a max roll of 15%. Even though you lose out on resists and a lot of energy shield potentially, this helmet is incredibly strong for this build and I would recommend it in a heartbeat. Another option would be to go for a good rolled rare helmet with +40-50 intelligence and as much energy shield / resists as possible. I don't think The Vertex is a very good choice by comparison, as most of the stats are pretty wasted and there's no intelligence on it.

Chestpiece: A chest armor with as much energy shield as possible and then as much intelligence as possible. You may note here that mine doesn't have resists, I make that up elsewhere. Links on the chest aren't really interesting as we're not running any fancy setup that requires it. We get all the links we need from our staff. As such, I am content with simply having the sockets I got currently.

Gloves / Boots: Ideally you get high energy shield, intelligence and resists (maybe even movement speed on boots). I had little luck finding gear containing all of this though and I had to sacrifice the intelligence on these two parts to make the resists be ok.

Belt: Bated Breath. Up to 45 energy shield, 10% increase in damage, ~25 intelligence and then the most important stat: 50% increased Energy Shield Recharge Rate. The last mod is huge and a great boon for CI users as you can replenish your very large pool extremely quickly in a fight. Other good options would be Doryani's Invitation if you feel that you need the resists & want to go for the leech route. A rare chain belt with high es and resists is also good, but you won't be able to get any intelligence.

Rings: I simply wanted as high energy shield, intelligence, mana regen and mana as possible. Could not find suitable rings that also had resists so my rings has some improvement needed. Best in slot would be 2x Perandus Signet, but they're very expensive currently and I have not been able to get any.

Necklace: I am currently using Astramentis, which gives me 109 to all stats which is great for this build, as I won't need to waste any nodes for dex. This also opens you up to use a max level Vaal haste for example, as the dex with astramentis + black sun crest will put you quite high.

Flasks:
Topaz with bleed removal, Ruby with burn removal, Granite with curse removal, Sapphire with freeze removal and a Quicksilver with charges/movement speed. The latter is mainly for convenience, but i haven't felt the need to get another defensive flask.

Gem links:

There are multiple ways to utilise our vast mana pool. One given is to use clarity. It's no longer as costly which is great. Besides clarity, Discipline is a given and then you can run another aura for maybe 35% or two heralds if you get some mana reduction talent on the tree (I have opted not to do so, though)

Currently my auras are Clarity, Purity of Lightning and Discipline. I am simply using the purity due to unoptimised gear. When I replace it, it will be either with Purity of Ice (helps versus reflect) or Herald of Ice for a bit larger clear speed. No other auras are really that interesting or they're simply too costly. Arctic armour is also a very viable option here.

I run auras in my helmet due to it being +1 to socketed gems, which is a nice bonus.

I have a cast when damage taken setup as well: Ice nova level 13, Cast when damage taken level 9, Enfeeble level 12. If I take unforseen damage monsters usually get chilled by the nova and their damage reduced via enfeeble. This helps immensely as I don't want to run any warcries.

Besides this I have a chaos golem linked with minion life. Why this over flame golem? Any bonus survivability is great and he's fairly tanky himself, whereas when I tried flame golem it died all the time. No bonus with a dead pet. Pro tip: If you manage to vaal orb your chaos golem to level 21, put him into the helmet to get the damage reduction bonus to become 5%.

Lastly, I have my damage curse & movement skill: Frostbite + faster casting + flame dash.

I also slot herald of thunder, herald of ice, arctic armour and purity of ice should I ever need to swap around on the fly. In my weapon swap I have mainly gems for my staff.




Witch start


Scion start




Needs doing:

Jewel discussion, theory crafting section (Spell damage vs intelligence)

Reserved for additions

Just found this staff 2 nights ago! Thanks for posting this, I've come up with a very similar tree after deciding that going down to Unwavering Stance is more worthwhile than using an Eye of Chayula. I still have to do close reading through the details, but this is more or less what I expected to be building towards. I may try for a bit more % damage on the tree instead of getting up to 14k Intelligence and let you know how it goes when I'm a higher level.

"

Yossarian42 wrote:

Just found this staff 2 nights ago! Thanks for posting this, I've come up with a very similar tree after deciding that going down to Unwavering Stance is more worthwhile than using an Eye of Chayula. I still have to do close reading through the details, but this is more or less what I expected to be building towards. I may try for a bit more % damage on the tree instead of getting up to 14k Intelligence and let you know how it goes when I'm a higher level.

I wish you all the luck with trying out the build - it's really fun! I've kind of painted myself into a corner with my jewel slots because they have so much of my resists, so I can't really get more spell damage nodes until I get higher levels (I intend to finish the right part of the top of the tree cold cluster tonight though, and then take 1-2 of the witche's starting spell damage nodes)

So far though I am very happy with my very large ES pool as maps feel like a breeze. I don't like dying and the damage in the later maps (79-80 can get quite.. interesting) so I want to avoid that as much as possible. Well, without becoming a full on turtle as well

Soon as I get some more lightning resistance somehow I'll drop purity of lightning in favor of herald of ice, though

Okay, my character is just about to start maps so I thought I'd come back with some observations. I've currently got this tree: So, very similar to yours with just a few changes in pathing. I've got quite a bit less energy shield at the moment, only about 5.8k. I'm at just a little over 11k Int, so 4.5 duration on Icestorm, and I think I'm at around 12k tooltip with Conc Effect - Cold Pen - Echo - Faster Casting - Hypothermia - Increased AoE. I swap between Increased AoE and Added Chaos. I'm thinking of just dropping Increased AoE entirely; since I have some AoE nodes on the tree it feels just about right without it. Added Chaos gives very little benefit so I've been trying to think of another really strong gem to use and coming up blank.

I was thinking of swapping to Life Leech as my 6th gem and picking up Vaal Pact and Ghost Reaver, but I don't think that this is really worth it. I don't think that 2% leech would be enough to allow me to facetank through reflect maps except when I have a sapphire flask going, and it would be so many extra points on the tree that it really feels like a waste. I'll probably just save reflect maps for other characters. At this point I'm tempted to just throw on Item Rarity as my 6th link and hope to get lucky.

Other things to note: I've got to pick up a Vaal Discipline like you suggested. I've never done CI before and it's very different not being able to mash my flasks when I start dying. Also a tip if you work out your resistances enough to run Herald of Ice. You can link it with Curse on Hit and Poacher's Mark for a chance to get free frenzy charges. I've been running Elemental Weakness but leveling Temporal Chains and Frostbite. I'm thinking of picking up double curses because Temp Chains on top of the Chilled ground is so strong. I don't think there's anything else right now; super strong build at this point and I'm sure I can get to 12k Int at least, more if I get the resists to switch to Black Sun Crest.

Pretty good budget version of the build :)

I'm running a high budget whispering ice build at the moment so just seeing what others are doing, much similarities in the tree and I like your efficiency. I've often looked at pathing down into Unwavering stance but can't convince myself to spend the points as 75% avoidance of stun while casting from practical application and nimbleness is enough for me.

Thanks for the read :)

"

WaffleT wrote:

Pretty good budget version of the build :)

I'm running a high budget whispering ice build at the moment so just seeing what others are doing, much similarities in the tree and I like your efficiency. I've often looked at pathing down into Unwavering stance but can't convince myself to spend the points as 75% avoidance of stun while casting from practical application and nimbleness is enough for me.

Thanks for the read :)

Hi,

I wouldn't necessarily call this low budget - it's more of a temp league build though because you likely won't get the items you use in any league but standard

With that said, thanks for the feedback! I didn't have to give up a lot from my original build to pick up unwavering stance (1 jewel slot) so I definitely think the tradeoff is worth it. Really dislike the idea of dying to chain stuns.

if you go lowlife you might as well go lioneye's paws though?

"

allana wrote:

"

WaffleT wrote:

Pretty good budget version of the build :)

I'm running a high budget whispering ice build at the moment so just seeing what others are doing, much similarities in the tree and I like your efficiency. I've often looked at pathing down into Unwavering stance but can't convince myself to spend the points as 75% avoidance of stun while casting from practical application and nimbleness is enough for me.

Thanks for the read :)

Hi,

I wouldn't necessarily call this low budget - it's more of a temp league build though because you likely won't get the items you use in any league but standard

With that said, thanks for the feedback! I didn't have to give up a lot from my original build to pick up unwavering stance (1 jewel slot) so I definitely think the tradeoff is worth it. Really dislike the idea of dying to chain stuns.

if you go lowlife you might as well go lioneye's paws though?

Sorry if it came off offensive what I mean is that the build would work on any budget. The high budget one are specialised around certain essential items that you'd need to rework the build if you didn't have.

I understand. Stun can be very annoying to deal with. I did die a few times to chain stun early about level 80s before I got warlords mark on curse on damage taken and casting more and running less to resist any stuns. Immunity is definitely nice to have.

I'd rather go Over lowlife Lioneye's Paws as 0% movespeed is better then -20% and the stats on it don't really add anything for this build. Buut in the end I like the flat ES and 20% elemental resistance from the Rainbowstride boots more then the 3 nodes I'd get for swapping

what are exactly our defensive skills?

only codt ice nova (enfeeble is not casted with codt right?)
and arctic armor?

"

Cador2 wrote:

what are exactly our defensive skills?

only codt ice nova (enfeeble is not casted with codt right?)
and arctic armor?

There's gem slots to run a more inventive defensive setup - I like cast when damage taken enfeeble/ice nova myself. You can consider icestorm to be a really strong defensive option in itself - it's pretty much permafreeze on mobs until they die. But you could easily get a 6 socket chest with some nifty combination should you so desire, I've yet to felt the need for it at this time, though!