[2.0] Crit staff ice crash build 300k DPS AKA the "Guitar Smasher"

https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAwEAAdwEswixE3EUIBZAFm8Yaho4HRQfGCcvMgkyiTQxNZI5UjrYOuE8BTwtPT49_D_8QXJG10d-TeNQR1H7VylX4lgHWGNYrlnzXqVfP2VNZlRmnmhYbEZvO3GFcg9ybHKpd-N35XgNeWh99YKbg1-DzITZhX2HaonYjM-PRpBVkn2Ub5hvmjuboZ_fogCmV6luqZSsqrFCtfK3PryavTa-p8AawGbBBMT2xq7G2MlnzRbXlti93CPjauRR5c_oZu0g7UTvDu988B_yRfMR9kj3MvrS-4v-Cv6P?accountName=Lurker88&characterName=Lurker

For the tree I went for as many jewel slots as possible. I think every build should have at least 4 but crit builds should have even more because of the very strong crit multiplier mods you can get on them. I have 5 right now and I'll be getting a 6th one at level 92. Other than that, it's a pretty simple melee crit tree with a bit of life.

A Hegemony's Era staff isn't necessarily needed. Until recently I used a 415 DPS rare staff which got me to around 200k DPS. The Hege is a good investment but not necessarily needed. You'll still do a lot of damage without one. The one I have is 5L because that's what I found on http://poe.trade. I don't need the 5L, as you can see.





I'm using Facebreakers, AKA ghetto maligaros, just for the crit multiplier. In fact Facebreakers will give you more DPS than Maligaro's Virtuosity and they're 100 times cheaper. I believe the break-off point where Facebreakers become better is around 50% crit chance but even if you're around 40% crit, the tiny amount of extra DPS from Maligaro's doesn't justify the 3+ exalt price. PS. the roll doesn't matter for this build.

Abyssus/rare helm

Abyssus provides a huge DPS boost with its 100+ crit multiplier but the extra damage taken can be deadly in high maps. Use it at your own risk. You could swap to it for non-physical damage bosses and use a rare helm for clearing maps.



Crit multiplier on jewels is extremely strong and it can get up to 30+% on a single one. Whatever nerfs GGG did to multiplier on the tree, they got undone when they added jewels. This is what to look for in a jewel: multiplier > attack speed > phys damage > cold damage. Jewels with a lot of crit multiplier are hard to find on poe.trade but when they're listed they're fairly cheap.

Chest: Ice crash - weapon elemental damage - melee physical damage - added fire damage - increased critical strikes/concentrated effect/phys to lightning - (faster attacks)

WED, melee phys and added fire are mandatory in a 4L. Increased critical strikes, concentrated effect or phys to lightning is the 5th link. This is down to personal preference. I swap between them but most of the time I use increased critical strikes and only use conc effect for bosses/exiles/beyond bosses. Increased critical damage is worse than these two and I wouldn't recommend using it. For the 6th link I chose faster attacks. A lot of people suggest using hypothermia but I don't think it's suited for my build. Even some bosses get 3-4 shot so it won't be very beneficial.

Helm: CWDT - warlord's mark - immortal call - assassin's mark
Pretty typical setup. Immortal call helps against physical damage bursts, assassin's mark grants some mana on kill but also helps a lot maintaining power charges and Warlord's mark gives you endurance charges, mana leech and life leech against reflect mobs (just kidding, don't hit reflect mobs)

Staff: Leap slam - fortify; Hatred; Smoke mine; Conc effect; assassin's mark These don't have to be linked, except leap slam and fortify. This gives you damage reduction when you leap into a pack. Useful 1% of the time but it's a cool thing to have. This is the skill you'll use to kill elemental reflect mobs so the damage reduction helps a bit. It's not like you'll die to reflect if you don't have it. I keep the concentrated effect here so I can swap it into my main attack. Manually casting assassin's mark is needed sometimes but not very often.

Boots: Rallying cry - increased duration; vengeance; herald of ash
The boots don't need to be linked either. You only need a 2L for rallying cry.

Gloves Summon ice golem - item rarity - culling strikes - minion life
Little Jimmy culls some of the mobs. Not very many and he doesn't have much MF but he does his best. Bless his heart. He's pretty tanky and I don't have to resummon him more than 7-8 times per map.

Note that in some cases the fire golem might give you more DPS than the ice golem. I'd recommend leveling both and seeing which one is better for you at the time. For end-game ice is better but while you level you might want fire.

The auras I'm running are herald of ash and hatred.

Currently it's Oak - Kraytin - Passive. I need to respec to get the power charge from Alira which will give me another 15k DPS.

-Getting another power charge from Alira.
-Getting a better roll Abyssus
-Boots with crafted WED
-Getting the two life+chaos res nodes in the templar area
-Getting the jewel slot below resolute technique

-Reflect will obviously be a problem if you're not paying attention. This also means that the char is not HC viable. For HC you'd need to get more life on the tree, find a way to mitigate reflect damage (maybe purity of ice), possibly use a chaos golem. All of these will impact your damage and that's not in the spirit of the build.

-Maintaining power charges with Hege's Era is somewhat difficult. You have a 10% chance to generate a power charge on about 60-70% of your hits which doesn't sound that bad but if you stop to pick up items or move between packs you can lose the charges. cwdt-assassin's mark will help you keep your charges up most of the time but manually casting the curse from time to time is needed.

-Mana problems are due to my stubbornness to not use blood magic. My ring has 0.4% mana leech, which should be enough to sustain your mana usage if it wasn't for that pesky mana leech cap. To supplement this I'm using warlord's mark and assassin's mark linked with CWDT for a bit of extra leech and self-cast abyssal cry gives a bit of extra damage as well as 14 mana regen per second. These 3 things are enough to sustain the mana as long as you're paying attention to your usage but if you make a mistake there's also a divine mana flask that can have pretty much 100% uptime if needed.

The way I set up my links and skills I can sustain my attacks but I'm at the limit. I wouldn't be able to sustain a conc effect/increased aoe combo, for example.

Here's what you can achieve with a 5L and a staff that was listed for 6 chaos on poe.trade. 4 charges up instead of 5.