2.2 Budget Glacial Cascade/Frost Nova Inquisitor: Endgame on a 4l

Hello to everyone that decided to open this build guide. I wanted to roll a Glacial Cascade build for Perandus, having never used the skill; the only question was what ascendancy to use. I settled on the Inquisitor because while virtually any build can clear trash effectively many struggle with bosses. The Inquisitor has an elemental penetration on critical strike buff that seemed to be very strong for this purpose, while many other spellcasters had overkill damage for mobs or utility points. It was a long journey(figuratively) and my build changed while I played further and adapted to any problems I faced.

During the first iteration of this build, far before I had planned a guide, I was shocked at how squishy an otherwise typical spellcaster was when faced with map monsters in Ascendancy. Chimeral with no damage mods, random snakes, porcupines, etc.. would shred my character when just a month before I could faceroll with even squishier styles. But the build changed -many times- and now I can make my way through high tier maps quickly and safely using the budget build.
Update: I have now cleared Poorjoy's and extensively farmed tier 10-15 maps; the damage holds strong, largely due to the crit penetration. I'm using Glacial Cascade exclusively now because it is safer and I'm still running the budget gear. I will be attempting Aztiri runs later.
Update 2: Atziri down. It was extremely easy getting to Atziri herself, but to kill her without dieing yourself will require some dancing. Be certain that your Glacial Cascade will not penetrate through one clone and hit the mirror during split phases.




Defenses:
-Up to 5 end charges
-CWDT immortal call for burst damage and big hits
-Arctic armour, chaos golem, and a basalt flask for physical damage reduction
-8k+ hybrid life pool with around 5k of that being life at level 80 on a budget
-Vaal pact life leech
-Outrange everything with Glacial Cascade if you choose to
-Stun immunity
-Can use a shield to boost your effective pool and get some block
-Fortify on whirling blades

The main points of the budget build:
-Use a Voidbringer for crit, high es, and as a main skill 4l(+1 to your cold gem)
-Use Kaom's Roots to not die to stuns or have leeching interrupted
-Use Ice Nova on safer map trash mobs to clears faster
-Use Glacial Cascade on bosses and dangerous maps because it has more real DPS(hits twice, usually) and because you can outrange extremely scary bosses
-Blasphemy+Warlord's Mark to sustain mana, leech life, and have, either endurance charges, or immortal call up
-Vaal Pact+Ghost Reaver to buffer incoming damage

Make sure to keep a single mana flask handy for curse immune enemies or for bosses where you are Cascading from outside of WM radius. You should be able to cap your resists through armour pieces and rings pretty easily so you can grab full damage mods for jewels. Chaos resist is rally nice now that chaos mobs have been buffed.
You can use a spell crit shield for more tankiness if you make up the crit through a higher roll dagger and diamond rings
4l skill: Ice Nova/Glacial Cascade-Increased Critical Strikes-Spell Echo- Elemental Focus
Note: Critical is also used to to proc Inevitable Judgment which does not show on tooltip DPS. Righteous Providence provides 100% increased crit which also does not show on tooltip.


For Inquisitor nodes we first go to Inevitable Judgement and then grab Instruments of Virtue. Instruments will give you a massive DPS boosts via the recent spell, which will always be up when you're attacking, and recent attack (i.e., whirling blades) which will always be up when you're traveling between mobs or on bosses where you fortify.


I rolled the daggers going for spell damage and any other relevant mod, prayed for-and whiffed- the regals and crafted the third roll. You can craft around 60 spell crit, and if you are going dual dagger with voidbringer then you probably won't need more. Getting a good critical shield will definitely be more difficult but the additional tankiness will be worthwhile if you're planning on high level mapping. Don't mind the vaal skill in the chest: it's really just a placeholder until I can transition out of voidbringer late game.

Gem Links:
3l: Faster attacks-Whirling Blades-Fortify
4l: Glacial Cascade-Increased Critical Strikes-Spell Echo-Elemental Focus OR Increased Critical Damage(dependent on your stats)
3l: CWDT-Immortal call-Summon Chaos Golem (can add increased duration for a 4l if you want)
2l: Warlord's mark-Blasphemy
1l: Arctic Armour
5l chest if available: Vaal Storm Call-Increased Critical Strikes-Increased Critical Damage-Spell Echo-Concentrated Effect (Using this to supplement your damage against bosses will allow you to burst even higher level ones down in under 2 seconds)

Voidbringer sells for around 5 chaos, and Kaom's an alch. 4 mod Jewels were surprising cheap for me, going at 2-7 chaos apiece; make sure to compile a list of all relevant mods including critical/SD when ___, and CS,SD, crit with elemental/cold skills when searching. I'd link mine if I knew how.

I currently do around 30k dps using level 19 GC and 40k using Ice Nova- both in my Voidbringer. No quality on the gems yet. Bear in mind that this does not account for the crit bonuses or the elemental penetration that inquisitor brings, and you really don't need more damage than this as I have now completed Atziri, Poorjoy's, load's of high tier maps, merciless Malachai and lab, etc... Core Malachai may be a different story. It's also been a safe road since I worked the build out; my leveling has gone smoothly and I plan on making it to 90 with few to no deaths, at least hopefully.
Note: Have made it to level 90. Now do around 33-34k.










These leveling skilltrees are just suggestions which follow the end game tree closely allowing you to respec using only passive quest reward points, but will also allow you to get a node network early while the content is easy and avoid the temporarily weak critical nodes, so that later on you can grab more meaningful nodes. If you are leveling and have access to some chaos then I recommend grabbing one early jewel socket, running clear mind, and buying a lifesprig. If you feel squishy while leveling then either look for life/res gear or path out of the way to pick up some life nodes from the end game tree. Remember to grab warlord's mark-blasphemy at some point, and be sure to grab vaal pact by the time you're getting to a mapping level. Get Ghost Reaver only when you have enough ES to act as a buffer. Do not try to level primarily with energy shield.

Things to beware when mapping:
-Curse immune(still doable)
-Elemental reflect(you will die)
-Physical reflect(not as dangerous and you can swap to Ice Nova if the map allows for it)
-Blood magic
-High damage chaos enemies if you haven't invested in resist (e.g. Alchemist possessed uniques)
-High burst damage immediately after your immortal call wears off (e.g. porcupines)
-Temporal chains, and not just for the clear speed loss

Will update with gearing, leveling, and just further details soon.

Great timing for you to release this guide, with me also trying my hands at an Ice Nova/Glacial Cascade build.
Looking forward to the updates

I've now cleared twinned Colosseum using the budget build; although, to be fair, if the map were to have had damage mods I probably would have died once or twice in the boss room. Even without that it's not as if I would be promoting this build as hardcore viable.

I've finished deathless Death and Taxes now. If you are interested in doing the map the simple strategy is to whirling blades out of fire's flameblasts, and glacial cascade straight through the SRS. You definitely want to run away from the winter's ice nova and leech shield off animate weapons if necessary; whirling blade out of the icestorm and otherwise GC straight at him. Straight up facetank thunder. The finale simply alternates between elemental attacks and you can do the same as before.

I've also farmed a few more Aztiri now. I didn't really have a strategy posted because it was so easy but I guess for a lot of people she would be considered a final boss so I'll post a few thought there as well. The trash really doesn't bear any threat but they do serve the purpose of charging up your vaal storm call, and actually for anyone scared of dying to split phase atziri- which is pretty much the only time you can die in apex with this build- there is a bit of a cheesy strategy involving storm call that I didn't actually bother with; The thing is that you can have multiple vaal skills loaded, and there are enough mobs prior to atziri where you can load three seperate vaal storm calls and simply use one each split phase to gib the clones. The only thing you have to do is relocate one charged storm call from w/e in your inventory or socket to replace the previously used, and thus uncharged, storm call in your 5l. Anyway, I didn't actually bother with this because it really isn't that hard to kill the clones once you know that you just have to dodge the flameblast-which comes at regualr intervals- and not get hit by the storm calls-a little bit more random and really the only danger in apex when paired with a flameblast to hinder your movement-, and even then I had the one standard storm call that I always have to gib whatever boss. I don't bother much with the vaal duo; the first one can be brought down to 1/4 life before ducking out, and the second to around 1/2. When the first pops back out you kill it immediately and then toss down the vaal storm call to kill the second, now enraged, vaal. For the vaal trio you simply head out and attack the ranged member, dodging the spikes and degen cyclone trail. Afterwards kite the dual striker and then finish off by facetanking the cycloner with vaal storm call popped. They all die in just a few seconds. This build has probably the easiest and laziest trio clear that I've done so far.

Anyway, there isn't much left to update. I've removed the high end build because it's pointless: the 4l build can obviously do end game well enough, and anyone that has access to the exalted necessary for a high crit 5l/6l build without voidbringer probably has enough experience to know what to do. I doubt I'll reach that point myself because I've accomplished most of what I set out to do this league, in addition to now having my highest leveled character in PoE, and I've simply invested my currency in attempting to roll new daggers -they still suck though when you consider my investment. The only things I haven't done yet are core Malachai and uber, maybe if I try them out I'll add an update to the initial post. So if there do happen to be any lurkers with questions, criticisms, or whatever, feel free to post them because otherwise I consider this guide to be completed and will not be posting many updates, barring perhaps a major patch change, moving forward. Have fun everyone!

can you post a video?

This looks really nice build and suits perfectly for a casual player like me. I think I will try something similar to this for the new league. Few questions: do you run clarity or discipline and what do you think of starting as a shadow? Cheers!

"

leijo wrote:

Few questions: do you run clarity or discipline and what do you think of starting as a shadow? Cheers!

I run Clarity on mine. I'm 55 right now, so this may change later on, but without Clarity I run out of mana in just 6 attacks, and then I have to wait about 3 seconds before I can attack again.

With Clarity lvl6 however, I only have to wait until the Spell Echo animation is complete.
EDIT: I do suppose that Warlords mark will keep you full with its mana on hit. I find that I often kill enemies outside of it's range, though.

@unTop: What level do you have your CWDT at? And how much crit is enough crit to drop elemental focus?


EDIT:
I find it often very helpful to see the build in action before I start playing a character. I chose to play this one anyway, but because someone in the thread requested a video also, I decided to quickly record one myself.


As a disclaimer, I'm not at maps yet, and my gear isnt very good, so it will probably get a lot more powerful.
I hope you're cool with me making a vid on your build, unTop :)

Sorry, I quit playing after 1 month of Perandus and forgot to check this topic. I don't run clarity because warlord's mark gives me all the mana leech I need to sustain indefinitely in fights. I'll update later for my CWDT in case you or anyone else are checking. Also, I do use elemental focus in my 4l because freezing mobs is largely irrelevant with how tanky I am and how quickly they die. Bosses won't be freezing either way so elemental focus is a solid dps boost. But again, if your dps isn't up to par then maybe you can check whether swapping in critical damage will be worthwhile for the freeze -for me, crit damage in place of elemental focus is a 3-4k dps drop.

Edit: CWDT is at level 7. I can't say why it's that level exactly because I've been off for 3 months but I can say that non-boss mobs won't be killing you anyway, and the relatively low level will let you mitigate more damage overall because you can cycle endurance charges with WM effectively enough.

Is this build still working in Essence? And which jewels should i place in slots?