[2.0.0 Warbands] Kenzorz's Hybrid Life/ES with MoM Crit Icestorm (Whispering Ice) build
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Stats
Offense
 
Defense
  
Total Intelligence Maths for the curious
Passive tree: 453 INT
Jewels: Roughly 20 INT per rare jewel (x3), Brute Force Solution converts at least 60 STR to INT = ~120 INT My gear: 42+47+41+40 for chest/helm/gloves/boots, 50+65+84 for ring/ring/amulet = total 369 INT 453+120+369 = 942 Int before Whispering Ice's bonus 942 * 1.17 = Roughly 1102 Int after Whispering Ice's 17% Increased Intelligence
Passive Tree
Bandits:
Normal: Help Oak for +40 Life Cruel: Kill all Merciless: Help Alira for +1 Power charge Core build, 105 points used My passive tree at Lvl 93, 114 points used
My Gear
What to look for in Gear
For each equipment slot, the stats are listed in order of priority. Of course if you need to sacrifice some intelligence to get more defensive stats go for it.
Helm: Intelligence, Life, Elemental Resistances, Energy shield, Mana Body Armour: Intelligence, Energy Shield, Life, Elemental Resistances, Mana (Body Armour is your largest source of flat ES that's why it's priortised here) Gloves: Intelligence, Life, Elemental Resistances, Energy Shield, Mana Boots: Intelligence, Life, Elemental Resistances, Movement Speed, Energy Shield Belt: Life, Elemental Resistances, Energy Shield Rings: Intelligence, Elemental Resistances, Life, Energy Shield, Mana Amulet: Intelligence, Whatever stats you're missing.
Gems
Icestorm supports:
Spell Echo: There is no debating this support. Gives a huge boost to cast speed and allows you to cast twice at the cost of 1 cast in quick succession.
Concentrated Effect: Allows each individual hit to deal a lot more damage and increases the likelihood that you will be able to freeze things. Also having a smaller AoE reduces the spread of Icestorm making it more accurately hit the area you target. Cold Penetration: There is no debating this support, it is a huge boost to your DPS in any scenario and without it you will deal very little damage to enemies with higher cold resistance. Power Charge on Crit: As this build is a power charge focused build it is important to have some source of power charge generation. Increased Critical Damage: This is a crit build on a softcore league, go all the way. Faster Casting: I considered using Hypothermia over this but being able to cast faster allows me to kite much better, you may prefer to use Hypothermia though.
Auras
Clarity: Necessary to keep your mana regenerating faster than the cost to cast your Icestorm continuously.
Herald of Ice: Provides a decent boost to cold damage and the on kill effect boosts clear speed. Herald of Thunder:: I used to use it but the damage boost is so small it's not worth reducing the amount of unreserved mana I have for Mind over Matter. Purity of Elements: Can be used on Elemental Weakness maps or simply when your resistances aren't capped since it can be difficult to cap resists when looking for gear since Intelligence takes up a suffix slot on rare gear, like resistances do.
Utility
Curses:
Temporal Chains: When combined with Icestorm's chilled ground effect enemies become extremely slow and you have plenty of time to move out of harms way. Assassin's Mark: Provides a substantial DPS boost and additional method of generating power charges. Enfeeble: Combined with hitting slow with Temporal Chains, enemies don't hit as hard. Warlord's Mark: If you want some life leech, I personally don't use it though. Other utility: Decoy Totem (supported by Minion and Totem Elemental Resistances + Increased Area of Effect + Increased Duration): Decoy totem can give you breathing room by taunting mobs away from you while also gathering mobs to it. When mobs target the totem you can Icestorm those mobs to chill/freeze and/or kill them before they deal much damage to the totem. Basically the totem protects you while you protect the totem! Increased Duration makes it so you don't need to recast the totem so often.
Vaal skill
Vaal Storm Call (supported by Increased Critical Strikes + Lightning Penetration + Spell Echo): A good skill for a kiting playstyle, for some bosses you may need to retreat before going back in at times, Vaal Storm Call is good since you can leave it and forget it while you retreat to continue dealing damage from safety (along with your long duration Icestorms)
Vaal Storm Call isn't mandatory to this build you could honestly use anything you like.
Jewels
Brute Force Solution when placed in the jewel slot to the left of the Templar start converts +60 Strength in the radius into Intelligence (you can get +30 additional intelligence by pathing to the Catalyse notable if you wish to while still being somewhat efficient) Rare jewels that should have as much Intelligence as possible as well as any other stats you may need (such as Dexterity to equip gems such as Cold Penetration).
Leveling
Get to Lvl 33 (the level requirement to use The Whispering Ice) as soon as possible using Lightning Tendrils and/or Ball Lightning and Flame Totem and switch to using Icestorm as soon as you hit Lvl 33 and socket gems that you can use at the level such as Faster Casting.
Past level 33, get a cheap low level amulet with as much Intelligence as possible such as and watch your Icestorm DPS skyrocket. Just focus on getting life and resists on gear while you haven't reached the point where you're seeking end game gear, do not worry too much about maximising the amount of Intelligence on rares for now. The passive tree progression below is just an indication of what you should be aiming for in the end, take different things depending on your situation. 23 points used. Insert the Brute Force Solution unique jewel in the jewel socket on the left of Templar start for a huge boost to int when you can equip The Whispering Ice 43 points used. You may choose to get the Whispers of Doom notable earlier if you wish. 66 points used. You may start taking power charges earlier if you wish. 83 points used. You may take the Righteous Decree (Templar 22% mana notable) node earlier if you feel you need the mana and reduced mana cost. 105 points used. From this point onwards take whatever suits your needs. Want more damage? Go for spell/cold damage nodes. Want more life? There's some life nodes available. If you are lacking resists the Elementalist notable in the Templar area helps. Don't bother with Intelligence nodes unless you're either near a jewel socket or you are very close to a 100 intelligence milestone.
FAQ
Q: What's MoM?
A: Mind over Matter, a keystone on the passive tree that allows you to split damage between your life and mana (note I said life, not ES) 70:30. Q: How does MoM interact with a hybrid life/ES build? A: First energy shield takes the 100% damage from the hit until it depletes, if there is any % damage remaining when your energy shield hits 0 then your life and mana take the remaining damage in a 70:30 to life and mana respectively. So if you took a hit that dealt 5000 damage, and you have 1000 ES, 4000 life and 2000 mana you would take 1000 ES damage (so 4000 damage remaining after dealing damage to ES) and 2800 life damage and 1200 mana damage (the remaining damage is split 70:30 between life and mana). I believe this is how it works. Q: Don't you have problems with your mana taking too much damage? A: No, kiting and letting my energy shield recharge while I'm taking no damage because the mobs are soooo slow allows my energy shield to protect my mana as well as my life. Q: Why don't you go CI? A: How about no. Seriously, CI has so many downsides (permastun, perma status effects due to low life pool). Q: Why don't you go low life? A: Too expensive. I like effective, affordable builds. Q: Why don't you use Perandus Signets? A: I don't wear many uniques so I'm better off with rare rings that give int, life and resists. Q: Why don't you use Black Sun Crest? A: Would need to sacrifice life, es, resists for that. It's already hard enough capping resists while getting as much int, life and ES as possible. Q: Why don't you use Doryani's Invitation (Cold version)? A: I simply feel I don't need it since I have life regen and Surgeon's life flasks. It's a good fit in the build though if you're not sacrificing too much for it. Q: Why aren't you using Bated Breath? A: Why am I not wearing that piece of garbage? I'm not going to sacrifice my largest source of flat life and resists for a small amount of intelligence and damage lol. Q: How do you deal with Corrupted Blood and bleed? A: Using a Surgeon's Ruby Flask of Staunching. Surgeon's flasks synergises well with multi hit skills since each hit will restore a flask charge and you can practically keep this flask on at all times. Of course you can use any sort of buff effect flask for the same purpose of being immune to bleed. Q: Why Templar over Witch, Shadow or Scion? A: Templar gains +5% increased life/mana over other classes at his start and he gets a lot of both life and mana regen, if you don't need any of those stats you can easily switch over to the elemental/spell damage side of his start and the build will still be efficient while Witch's spell damage path is the only decent starting path, Shadow only has one side you can start as as a cold caster, Scion is way too inefficient passive point wise. Q: No life leech? A: I personally feel I don't need life leech at all and that my life regen and Surgeons life flask keeps me alive. It is good to socket a Life Leech gem though, you could replace Critical Damage or Faster Casting with it if you prefer. "so you can see who has more PvPenis" - Chris Wilson "Everyone can at least be exposed to Leo's PvPenis" - Chris Wilson Last edited by Kenzorz#6970 on Aug 20, 2015, 11:43:25 AM
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Great guide! Currently leveling this build right now and things have been smooth sailing so far.
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Glad you enjoy it :)
Thread update: Added a video running a Lvl 79 map trying to showcase as much of the build as possible. "so you can see who has more PvPenis" - Chris Wilson
"Everyone can at least be exposed to Leo's PvPenis" - Chris Wilson |
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Thread update: added hall of grandmasters video.
"so you can see who has more PvPenis" - Chris Wilson
"Everyone can at least be exposed to Leo's PvPenis" - Chris Wilson |
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Going to try this out will reply in a couple days with how it feels
ign: _Carta_
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How well do you think this build would fair for us normies who don't have Q20%+ gems?
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" Q20 gems aren't necessary at all. "so you can see who has more PvPenis" - Chris Wilson "Everyone can at least be exposed to Leo's PvPenis" - Chris Wilson Last edited by Kenzorz#6970 on Aug 9, 2015, 8:27:01 PM
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Could you please try and go through a bit better on how your obtaining soo much int? I am running a similar build, have really forked out for some good int rare's and really am only missing 2 pieces - about 100 int, my staff is 14% int which i need to reroll but im currently sitting around 700 int....not 1100
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" Passive tree: 453 INT Jewels: Roughly 20 INT per rare jewel (x3), Brute Force Solution converts at least 60 STR to INT = ~120 INT My gear: 42+47+41+40 for chest/helm/gloves/boots, 50+65+84 for ring/ring/amulet = total 369 INT 453+120+369 = 942 Int before Whispering Ice's bonus 942 * 1.17 = Roughly 1102 Int after Whispering Ice's 17% Increased Intelligence Are you using Brute Force Solution? A lot of the Icestorm guides I've seen on the forums where people are having trouble getting int none of them are using this jewel. "so you can see who has more PvPenis" - Chris Wilson
"Everyone can at least be exposed to Leo's PvPenis" - Chris Wilson |
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Thanks for such a quick and in depth reply. I started off with a generic jewel based cold build so my tree is slightly different. I can link you it if you like? im sitting around 900 int at the moment which is a bit better
Im using brute force but like i said i'm Scion so tree is a bit different. The concerning thing for me is that im only on about 1800 dps with charges up etc and am struggling a bit. My gear is quite nice but i have a feeling a lot of the loss could be due to not as much crit and no 20% gems? would you have any advice? i really like your build and the way you have avoided the whole meta "perandus" and unique set up, its much more user friendly with perandus being 5ex each right now. Thanks in advance Murph P.s - been looking over i have around 310 int from the tree but i am only level 81. As far as gear im near enough exactly the same. I have a feeling me having a lot lower crit/multi is where the big dps loss is coming from. Trying to rework the tree a little at the moment. Last edited by Madmurphy123#7472 on Aug 20, 2015, 2:21:24 PM
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