[2.0.4] WrinkleFace's 'Popsicles Everywhere'. BM/Dual Freeze Pulse Totems/Tri-Curse. Top 250 1MHCFB

'Popsicles Everywhere' is a party support build that focuses on achieving a high freeze chance to facilitate the slaughtering of defenceless monsters. It utilises a high life pool to cope with the more dangerous mod rotations during this current One Month Flashback League, and can easily attain over 10k armour. The builds strength lies in its ability to consistently freeze enemies, but it also benefits from the ability to triple curse, rendering most monsters utterly incapacitated. Run in a party, it can offer massive defensive boosts to your party members, especially melee builds, while increasing overall clear speed and survivability.

The build places a high amount of focus on jewels, notably jewels that offer Freeze Chance and of course the irreplaceable Rain of Splinters. While solo play is certainy possible, in a party environment it really shines and as such it should be treated as a pure support build. It's fun, fast and you feel like an absolute bad ass freezing everything. Despite ripping to my pc at 80, I've made it back to 90 with ease. Give it a shot!

Freezing Pulse Totems

Freezing Pulse is the core of our build and for good reasons. It's damage effectiveness and scaling is amazing, and the % quality effect of the gem is amongst the best in the game. For each 1% quality on our freezing pulse we gain an extra 2% increased projectile speed ,adding up to a total of 40% increased projectile speed at 20% quality.



This projectile speed is further complimented by the use of a Rain of Splinters gem. While I don't think this jewel is 100% necessary for the build, I highly recommend getting one as soon as possible as it will increase your overall effectiveness immensely.

I originally planned this build with a 5 link in mind for the offensive set-up A 6 link would add a marginal boost to dps, but is definitely not necessary.

I rank the importance of skill gems in a 5 and/or 6 link as

5 link: Freezing Pulse – Spell Totem – Hypothermia – Cold Penetration – Faster Projectiles
6 link : Freezing Pulse – Spell Totem – Hypothermia – Cold Penetration – Faster Projectiles – Faster Casting

As an additional point of note, the quality effects on Spell Totem, Hypothermia, Cold Penetration and Faster Projectiles will hugely benefit this build and should be acquired if possible. With the free unlinked slot, I chose to run Vaal Cold Snap as I consider it an excellent defensive skill due to the sheer amount of chilled ground it leaves at higher levels, and the +1 bonus from Taryn's Shiver is quite nice too.

I should also add that I recently began leveling quality gems, so my current ones may appear low level.

Curses

While I stated above that freezing pulse is our core, our curse set-up is equally as important, especially with regards to the survivability of our party members. Having tested a number of curse mechanics/set-ups in the past I chose to use ball lightning to spread the curses.



As we will be triple cursing, another 5 link set-up will be necessary. While people will note that two 5 link set-ups would not be considered 'budget friendly' the benefits of a third curse greatly outweighs the cost of doing so in my opinion.

I rank the importance of skill gems in a 5 and/or 6 link as

5 link: Curse on Hit – Ball Lightning – Temporal Chains – Frostbite - Enfeeble
6 link : Curse on Hit – Ball Lightning – Temporal Chains – Frostbite - Enfeeble – Greater Multiple Projectiles

I should also add that quality on Curse on Hit, Temporal Chains, Frostbite and Enfeeble offer reasonable benefits, and increase the effect of our curses as well as the duration/consistency of our freeze. If you're wondering about Vengeance in my free socket, consider it a visual wake up call I need from time to time :)

Defensive Set-up

I chose to run two Cast When Damage Taken set-ups on this build, though I only consider one truly necessary.



Firstly, I went with the tried and tested combination of Cast When Damage Taken – Immortal Call – Increased duration – Molten Shell




For the second set-up I chose to run a lower level Cast When Damage Taken with Arctic breath – Greater Multiple projectiles – Increased Duration. I've found this set-up to be quite useful both as an early warning system and as a method to create more chilled ground, and increase the potency of our freeze.


Mobility/Utility


I chose to run chaos Golem with this build for more survivability, given the nature of some mod rotations. Flame Dash is linked to Faster Casting for obvious reasons, with enduring cry filling in the last of four links.

As you have probably noticed above I use the unique staff Taryn's Shiver. This staff is quite affordable at the moment, and the benefits it offers to our chance to freeze, as well as its increased damage make it a crucial item to pick up. While I do think its possible to replace it with another staff, the 8% chance to freeze it offers synergises well with our overall theme of stacking chance to freeze.



In keeping with the freeze chance theme, I chose to use Rashkaldor's Patience. The chance to freeze it offers as well as the 20% increased Duration of Elemental Status Ailments on Enemies make it a must for this build. I should also state that this item is quite cheap and I attained a high life roll Rashkaldor's for about 2 chaos.



A pair of Windscream boots (Cost around 5 chaos for a good roll) are also vital to this build for our triple curses. While these boots offer low armour, the benefits they offer greatly offset that loss in physical reduction. Indeed I would argue that the movement speed alone they offer makes this build far more potent.



I chose to focus on acquiring a high armour hybrid chest plate to ease the strain on rolling curse colours (Blue x4 Green x1(2 Green on Six link). While this is not an absolutely necessary path to follow, I did find that it eased the transition as well as the strain on my Chromatic supply.



As you will notice, the rest of my gear focuses on Life, Armour and Resistances, with some small focus on getting the Dexterity required to use my Dex based skills at high level.

Jewels play a large role in this build, even larger than I had originally estimated. I originally considered getting a number of jewel sockets (with rain of splinters as a definite), but quickly changed my mind after seeing the benefits of jewels to his build. In total, the finished build utilises six jewel slots, with most of them focusing on Chance to Freeze, Life and Cold Damage. This method allows us to attain a 18% chance to Freeze (max) from our jewels alone.

The leveling process for this build is quite simple and very familiar. I used dual Flame Totem for leveling (As we will already be taking Ancestral Bond) up until my transition at about lvl 70. The transition is quite easy. As a lot of the totem nodes that are considered a must in any totem build (Iron wood/Totemic Mastery) are easily accessible to Marauder, we can cut down on the amount of respecs necessary when the time comes. I will add a leveling guide in the future/on request

Normal: Help Oak
Cruel: Kill All
Merciless: Kill All

Current Skill Tree
https://poebuilder.com/character/AAAAAgEAPfxYY8bYXz_2SIzPKS58uBo-J-0ZLtlhVw3xrMauxPZo8q9sC2GiAPAfmjvhc4Kb7DhmnnIPwxNY5aPyWivvDhQgz36tjcBmBLMQzNIh378OPBRx2XyCB_JBJbzgw9tPGJG8nzpS42oWb_rSSsQsp_auFE38S6QZtiwl3xv6AefYvf4Ktz6DzDwt-JOMRiu2g19T1I2C0eSfARdUTC0RD6yY99eboY9GIoGeoVZKjjzv6zsNVcY6WM0WUfsfGB0UZlSFe5RvWAc5Uhhq15ZoWInYcqmxQvMRcYVoZfObOYo=

Finished Skill Tree
https://poebuilder.com/character/AAAAAgEAPfxYY8bYXz_2SIzPKS58uBo-J-0ZLtlhVw3xrMauxPZo8q9sC2GiAPAfmjvhc4Kb7DhmnnIPwxNY5aPyWivvDhQgz36tjcBmBLMQzNIh378OPBRx2XyCB_JBJbzgw9tPGJG8nzpS42oWb_rSSsQsp_auFE38S6QZtiwl3xv6AefYvf4Ktz6DzDwt-JOMRiu2g19T1I2C0eSfARdUTC0RD6yY99eboY9GIoGeoVZKjjzv6zsNVcY6WM0WUfsfGB0UZlSUb1gHOVIYateWaFiJ2HKpsULzEXGFaGXzmzmKMJdG19Wm7TyQVScvWfMaOIV7Nukkqg==

As a side note on the finished build, you will notice that the majority of the remaining nodes are spent on damage. If you feel a little too squishy these can be easily substituted for my life, which can be attained from the Scion wheel of health.

Feel free to drop me a message here or a pm in game any time if you have any questions. I'm far from being a POE expert, and I'm always interested in hearing perspectives/opinions. Thanks! Shout out to Nathan 'Konzika' Konz for his help on the build