[2.4] {HC} Occultist CI Crit Freezing Pulse - Ascendancy Update

This won't be the fastest clearing build you've ever played, its not designed for party play. You won't get youtube videos or reddit threads about it. But it will work on a budget. It will get you to end-game content. And as long as you've had some practice, it will keep you alive.

This build has killed merciless Malachai on hardcore.

If you want something different to what everyone else is doing to get you through the toils of hardcore, this build did pretty well for me, currently sitting at level 90 with 43k DPS and 12k+ ES and comfortably clearing T11/12, however I'm sure its capable of more if I had the motivation.

WHAT YOU WON'T BE USING:

Life leech. Life regen. Armor. Evasion. Mind over Matter. Cast on fucking Crit. Lightning Coil. Stun immunity. ES gain on hit. Totems. More than one unique item. Unique jewels. A huge currency bank.

Yes, you read that correctly. You won't be using any of these things.

WHAT YOU WILL BE USING:

A double defensive curse CWDT.
Energy Shield... lots of it.
A natural ES recharge, amplified through jewels for faster start of recharge.
Freezing Pulse with crit - high damage, good in all stages of levelling, freezing multiple targets.
Arctic Armour. The chilling ground alone synergies well with Freezing Pulse on close enemies.
Frost Wall. Yes, that is still a skill, part of your CWDT setup.
CI's accessibility to utility flasks and the Witch's flask nodes.
A FUCKING QUARTZ FLASK.
Avoidance to stun while casting nodes, and....
Leo's most OP crafting mod, up to 35% chance to avoid being stunned.
A shield and Rainbowstrides, for that small bit of block and spell block.
Fortify, procced through Whirling Blades.
Two Vaal disciplines with increased duration for (some) seconds of panic button "oh shit" moments.
Chaos golem, later transitioned into an Ice golem. This little bastard is your personal damage sponge.


THE BUILD:



Before going CI, you're probably want to going to aim for something like this:



You'll notice here I've specced out of crit and into spell damage which is what I would do for levelling, most will be explained in...

PATHING:

What you do for the first twenty levels doesn't really matter. I would begin by getting Occultist's Dominion first, followed by value points in Frost Walker (specced out of later), going to Deep Wisdom, the ES nodes and Life and Mana. You'll want to pick up those stun avoidance nodes as soon as possible, since its highly desirable for the Witch's squishy nature and you'll need that dex pretty early for Herald of Ice. I'd probably then go along to the right to crab Nimbleness for the move speed and more stun avoid, followed by heading up through crit to Deep Thoughts and Cruel Preperation. I'd then take these earlier levels to travel, both towards your double curse Whispers of Doom and Unnatural Calm (both grabbed after Act 4 when you have access to CWDT), but before that go towards Purity of Flesh and Sovereignty. After this you can follow up by grabbing small nodes for DPS, crit, stats and whatever you like, until around level 60 where you'll be going CI.

LEVELLING:

Getting standard Hybrid gear while levelling with an ES base, a wand with some spell crit and spell damage, some stats for Dex and Str which you'll be needing and all the other basics like resistances and mana regen is what you want to aim for while gearing up for level 60. Use whatever you want really, just don't die and remember that your ES will get burned a lot faster at these lower levels, even when it seems like you have a lot.

You'll be running Clairty, Herald of Ice, Arctic Armour and Discipline as your auras, or as many of them as you can afford. If you're having trouble balancing your mana, heading to Sovereignty will help you a lot, but the value mana and mana regen nodes at the start of the Witch tree should give you all you'll ever need, easy to spec in and out of it. Get a little bit of mana regen on one piece of jewelry and you should be fine.

You can link Freezing Pulse to things like Added Lightning, Faster casting and Lesser Multiple Projectiles earlier on, but your 4L setup around the end of Act 4 wants to be:

Freezing Pulse > Faster Casting > Spell Echo > Cold Penetration

You might be cringing at the idea of not using LMP, GMP or Life Leech but I got to level 90 quite comfortably without the use of any of these. I'll elaborate more on gems and links later on.

WHEN TO GO CI:
Looking back at my screenshots, at level 64 I had 1.3k life and 4.7k ES. I was in act 4 of Cruel, over-levelled since this was the period I had the most trouble with when testing in awakening beta. Looking back, Normal act 4 was more difficult. At this point I could have honestly went CI around level 60, providing you have at least 4k ES. You'll end up with something like 5-6k ES, depending on your gear but the best way to tell is if you ever feel like your energy shield is actually being bursted down to a point where you still have to use life flasks. If you feel like the only time you use life flasks is for chaos damage, like I found in Dried lake in Cruel, then its probably time to go CI. If your energy shield is not being taken low enough to resort to relying on your life, you're better off going into CI and respeccing your points to get an extra 1k ES instead of being super vulnerable to chaos damage, however, if it makes you feel more comfortable to rely on life and invest more into it that's up to you. It depends how much practice you've had with an ES build, if you feel comfortable with the play and if you ever need to use life potions for anything other than chaos damage. As I said, around level 60 with around 4k ES towards the end of Cruel/start of Merciless, you should be ready to take that Chaos Inoculation.


GEARING:

I'll carry on talking about levelling gear.

Around level 50, your most expensive pieces of gear will be a pair of Rainbowstrides and a clean white 5L ES chest. Rainbowstrides are still on my feet at level 90 and I would be hard pressed to change them out for anything other some really GG ES boots or Skyforth, for obvious reasons. They're available early, provide great ES, good move speed, a really nice 20% all res, some mana which you'll be needed and some spell block. There's no reason these shouldn't be on your feet, unless you're like me with a foot fetish and like looking at the Witch.

I'll make a sub-section here for crafting, since what most people consider your most core pieces of gear are your most easy to roll and craft and can be done so at a low level; your dagger and chest piece.

Crafting:

Your dagger is very, very simple. Grab whatever Dagger has the highest implicit crit available to you at your level. roll it with alts until you get Crit chance for spells, augment it, regal it, then craft Spell damage with Catarina. Ez pz. Any other mods are just bonuses.

While levelling I used something like this:



Around level 50, buy a white 5L ES base chest.

Go to: http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Item_affix#Energy_Shield

Roll it with alts until you get the highest available tier of Local energy shield available for the ilvl of the chest. Hope to augment and regal it for some sort of a resist, then send it to Haku and get up to 68% Increased Energy Shield and you're good to go. My chest cost me around 5 chaos this way around level 50 before going CI and I rolled a couple of others on the side. If I got lucky and it was an improvement, I'd swap it out. Aim for a 400-500 chest piece with this method and you'll be getting the most bang for buck you can imagine. Its simple and cheap and it works. This is a bit better than what I would have had at level 50, but it carried me until 90:



Everything else you should already know if you're a hardcore regular, just get your ES and Life as high as possible while making sure your resistances are capped and you have enough Dex for your gems and gear.

END GAME GEARING:



This is the gear I'm currently running with and it should answer most questions about your late game gear.

Your chest needs to be 5L'd with 500+ ES, your dagger needs as high of a crit chance as possible (make sure its for spells and not local crit) and crit multi with added (x) damage to spells are desirable with around that 40% spell damage mark. Your shield wants to have at least 90% crit and 300+ ES, all other stats are bonuses or to help you cap your requirements. I stacked Dex on my gloves and helmet where necessary (you can craft the dex onto both) while trying to get as much ES and resistances that your budget can allow. You'll remove this requirement for your helmet later on and spec into a node of dex on the tree and I'll explain why later. Your belt is straight forward and actually very cheap, get any chain belt with +40 ES and resistances and you should be looking at around 10 chaos, use a blessed orb to get the most out of the implicit. Your rings should aim for Int, as much ES as possible, some mana regen and resistances, crit is an expensive bonus, as is the craft for % increased ES which costs a divine from masters. Talisman league gives the opportunity to get the amazingly good % Increased Global Defenses amulet, which you'll want to buy with another mod of % increased ES. If you can find one like this with some extra crit, spell damage or resistances, you're gucci. Your boots are Rainbowstrides and they are beautiful.

When you manage to level up the master Leo to level 5, you'll be able to gain access to the most OP mod available to CI users: chance to avoid stuns. This is huge. Get as much ES and Int as you can on your helmet, a resist or two but make sure that it has a suffix available to craft. 25-35% is a huge amount of chance to stun when paired with your avoid stun while casting nodes and if you've got the currency, roll it until you get as high a stat as possible. Credit to this little gem goes to: @Banjoe_____

GEMS, LINKS AND JEWELS:

You'll be able to see my links in the gear above, but just in case....

Whirling Blades > Faster Attacks > Fortify (Needs to be on your dagger, very important)

Cast When Damage Taken > Enfeeble > Temporal Chains > Frost Wall

Chaos / Ice Golem > Minion Life > Minion Speed / Elemental Resistance

Freezing Pulse > Faster Casting > Spell Echo > Cold Penetration > Power Charge on Crit

Vaal Discipline > Vaal Discipline > Increased Duration > Faster Casting

Auras : Discipline, Herald of Ice, Arctic Armour, Clairty

Six link:

If you hit the dream and get a six link, you have some options. LMP / GMP is the obvious choice here, I've been putting this in at lower level maps for quality of life and then going back to a single projectile with Cold Pen for boss fights but if you're doing any serious content, always use Cold Penetration, always. Since its hardcore, although I haven't really missed the leech it is the obvious choice if you can invest the 1 point into Ghost Reaver, since it will fix one of your biggest weaknesses: prolonged damage from many sources. If you're greedy as fuck, get Increased Critical Damage.

Jewels:
My jewels are very simple, I want Increased ES % and faster start of recharge, with some sort of damage on top. Stacking these jewels gives me 31% faster start of energy shield recharge, with tree nodes giving me 5k ES regen per second. This has eliminated almost all need for Leech or life regen.



BANDITS:

Skill point, Skill point, Power charge. Done.

FLASKS:



Whatever you do, don't fucking roll a sapping flask. This takes your life to replace mana and if you're CI, this will kill you.

Your flasks are one of your main sources of defense and for good reason, since its very easy for a CI user to get the absolute most out of Utility flasks and we increase this with the Alchemist nodes.

I've posted the Granite I used before I got a Rumi's. You can keep your Granite and Jade flasks up at almost all times, just be aware when you might struggle for charges. If you see a group of monsters and they're coming straight for you, fucking pop them before they hit you and not afterwards. These flasks will provide you with 50% physical damage mitigation and 50% evasion, which are increased a little bit from the ES nodes on both the Ranger and Templar sides which you venture into for other reasons. This is a huge amount of defense and its all from pushing CI to use as much as its available to, instead of stacking these stats on gear.

I use a mana flask for Staunching because Bleed and Degens are your most dangerous types of damage source, especially when you don't use leech. Unlike Freeze, however, you don't need this to be a constant immunity, more of a "purge". Mana flasks have the best flask usage in the game. With a Divine Mana flask of Staunching, this gives me six fucking charges to purge a bleed from puncture or corrupting blood, while giving me unlimited mana if my regen isn't enough.

Your quicksilver is possibly the flask I would most consider to change, since you'll be using Whirling Blades for mobility and only use your quicksilver to get around in confined spaces where you can't whirl and blade. It does, however, have a 7 second uptime with Alchemist and you can use it 3 times with an Ample prefix. I roll the Heat suffix here since it gives me 21 seconds of freeze immunity. Unless you're in some PVP scenario, this should be all you'll ever need.

And the best, yet least used until last. The quartz flask. When the Ascendancy changes come through, this baby will finally be in the spotlight, however I do believe it to be one of the strongest flasks in the game for opening boxes and when you're CI. One of your biggest weaknesses is getting surrounded by melee mobs that might not hit you for a lot of damage but they might be able to stun-lock you. At this point you'll try to move but you won't be able to, because of the way AI pathing works they will surround you in a closing circle until you can't move out. At this point I would use Whirling Blades, Fortifying myself and get the fuck out with the help of my granite and jade flasks, providing a nice sudden boost in both defenses and mobility. However, in rare circumstances, you'll find it hard to do this and you'll be cornered. I strongly believe this to be one of the most dangerous situations to CI users and being able to phase through all of those enemies in a panic moment and get out to safety is priceless. Popping all of your flasks before opening a strongbox will not only give you all those defenses but this is where the situation I just described happens the most. I feel very comfortable opening boxes with a Quartz flask and it gives you more confidence to go balls deep into large packs of monsters. Since you'll be shattering almost all of your enemies via cold crit, you don't leave any corpses, which is also great for box opening with detonate dead. I roll Heat suffix on my Quartz since ignite is a degen and in hectic situations, I don't want to be unable to regen for 4 seconds, so this not only purges it but makes me immune long enough to regen and kill the pack/escape.

WEAKNESSES AND STRENGTHS:

I'm going to give you your weaknesses first since I'm not arrogant or oblivious enough to think this is a perfect build or makes you immortal. You're never safe in Path of Exile, you will die in hardcore, this is almost inevitable unless you're part of the elite 0.1% of highly skilled players.

Always stay at a distance, kite mobs as much as you can. When they get closer, you'll do more damage and have more chance to chill them. When you crit, you'll freeze them. Use this to your advantage. You don't have to rush in for any of this cast of crit, lets run gorge in 1 minute bullshit. This is hardcore and you want to stay alive. Stay at a distance, let mobs come to you and kill them before they get to you. Arctic Armour will chill enemies in melee range and if you attack them as well they should freeze. Use whirling blades to keep your distance or play it cool and dance through enemies to proc fortify.

Getting surrounded by many melee mobs, as stated before, is very dangerous. Always try to avoid it and always have your flasks up and running when you think shit's about to go down.

Your clear speed is not that great, however it does improve. If you take it slow and steady and don't roll crazy map mods I promise you'll stay alive. If you rush in you put yourself at a disadvantage. This build is not made for taking sustained damage in small areas, which means...

Kaom is the most frightening boss you'll come across outside of maps. Normal Kaom was the hardest thing in the game for me, since it was a new league, I was a fresh spawn and I had pretty bad gear. If you're well geared your life will be much easier. The hardest part of this build is levelling. If you can get into Merciless, you're good as gold and you'll have a hard time dying. However if you're going to die, its probably in the Act 4 of Normal and Cruel. Keep this in mind and try to upgrade your gear as much as possible as soon as you enter Highgate. Aqueduct was where the cool kids hung out during the beta and you should do so too if Dried Lake feels too scary. Always try to over-level for act 4 and play very cautiously through Kaom and Daresso's area - they are the most dangerous tilesets in the game for you, since they're filled with many small monsters in closed spaces with degens.

Avoid Vagan. He's just a dick and you don't need anything he's selling.

Outside of those weakeness, your strengths shine pretty well. You will freeze or kill almost anything that tries to approach you (as long as you're hitting it) because of Freezing Pulse's mechanics of gaining damage at the start of the projectile. As things get closer, they take more damage and makes them more vulnerable to chill and freeze. If they're right on top of you, they're also going to get chilled through Arctic Armour. Take this, Enfeeble and Temporal Chains, which will be on everything as soon as you take damage, everything is very slow, hits less often, hits less hard, takes more damage, is frozen/chilled for longer and generally has a really shit time when trying to attack you. Your frost wall is also something I haven't mentioned, which is fucking great against all types of Melee mobs. Take too much damage up close too soon and 3 frost walls will instantly separate you from your attackers. If this fucks you over too much, you can Whirling Blades through the walls to safety or use that OpieOp Quartz flask.

All of these things also work great in PVP.

A little story about what I survived:

In this build I took the most damage I've ever taken in Path of Exile in one instance and I don't believe I would have survived if I was anything else. I was in a Bazaar, tier 10 map with 100%+ quantity. I should have taken a screenshot of the map mods, but from memory.... Monsters had increased crit chance and crit damage, Frenzy charges, Power charges, 70% extra lightning damage, 70% extra fire damage, 25% more damage and a couple of other mods which I think were exiles and humanoids. I've never really had trouble with the Bazaar boss (however Crematorium, Necropolis and Jungle Valley bosses you will want to avoid) but I got charged by one of the elements, I'm pretty sure it was either lightning or ice. It crit me and shocked me and I took over 10k damage. There were also the ranged humanoids from the grand arena whailing on me at this point, but I popped all of my flasks and whirling blades out to safety, having my shield recharge in a second. I had just over 11k ES at this point, and after the hit I had around 700 ES. This is the most damage I've ever taken and although a tanky armor build would have worked well here, this was an insane burst of elemental/physical damage, while shocked and crit. You are amazing at taking big one-shots like this, however the prolonged smaller instances of damage over a long period of time are more deadly. You won't get one shot but you could die a death of a thousand cuts.

GALLERY:

Here you'll find some screenshots of while I was levelling, so if you're following this build you can give yourself some targets or see a little bit of where you need to be. The ones at the end are the moment I hit level 90.



And here we are with my current gear, hopefully this should let you see everything you need to. I posted my defense twice, one without flasks up and one with them up. You'll see I have 71% crit chance with 380% multiplier, 43k DPS (revised build) and 12.1k ES.



SUMMARY:

There is more detail here than some of you need to know, but hopefully this should answer most questions you'll have if you end up deciding to try this build. You don't use a lot of the current meta's ResidentSleeper tactics but instead end up with an off-beat way to stay alive and deal some pretty decent damage. Your clear speed is not the best as I stated but I haven't pushed this very far, with a 6link and GMP I imagine it would be much more pleasant but I don't have 15 exalts ready to drop as a lot of other builds seem to state as a pre-requisite. I said before but this was my first character rolled in 7 months into a fresh league played completely solo and I reached level 90 in hardcore Talisman with some decent stats, however the league is pretty vanilla. Take it slow and you'll stay alive as long as you can make it out of Cruel.

CI Cold crit was always an old favorite way back when and its definitely still effective.