[2.6] Flash Freeze Ice Shot Ranger
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This is an updated version for a Crit Ice Shot Ranger by in_your_FACE, I have gotten his permission to post and update the build to keep this very awesome build alive. There will be links to his youtube video and the original thread below.
 Do you want to freeze all the mobs on your screen and listen to the glorious sound of shattering ice? Do you love to have your offensive attack also be one of your defensive mechanics? Are normal Tornado Shot/Barrage builds getting old and stale? Then check out the "Flash Freeze" Crit Ice Shot Ranger.
Pros
-Main attack can freeze enemies becoming a defense against melee
-Fast clear speed -Atziri Viable -Not expensive to build
Cons
-Evasion based means you will eventually get hit
Step-by-step Leveling Trees
Bandits
Normal - Oak - +40 life
Cruel - Kill All - Passive point Merciless - Alira - Power charge
Ascendancy
Deadeye
Fast and Deadly - Projectile damage and Attack/Projectile Speed.
Ricochet - Skills Chain one additional time. Far Shot - Projectile attack gain damage the farther they travel, up to 30% more damage. Endless Munitions - Adds an Extra Arrow, gives flat Accuracy, and increases the Area of Effect on Balst Rain and Ice Shot.
Raider
Way of the Poacher - Increased Attack Speed and chance to gain Frenzy charges on kill or on hitting a rare or unique enemy.
Avatar of the Slaughter - Movement/Attack Speed and Attack damage per Frenzy charge. +1 Frenzy charge. Quartz Infusion - Gain Phasing at full Frenzy and on kill and a small chance to dodge attacks. Avatar of the Veil - Increased Elemental damage and increase to movement speed, immunity to elemental status ailments, and small spell dodge chance while Phasing.
Pathfinder
Nature's Boon - Reduced Elemental damage taken, chance to not use flask charges, and gain charges every few seconds.
Master Alchemist - Immune to Elemental status ailments, increased elemental damage, and increased chance to freeze shock and ignite all while using a flask. Veteran Bowyer - Extra damage of a random element, damage penetrates resists, enemies affected by elemental ailments give double flask charges. Nature's Adrenaline - Increased movement and attack speed while using flasks.
Lab Enchantments
Gloves - Of War series - This enchant gives you spectral copies of your weapon on kill for 10 seconds and has a cooldown of 5 secs. These take into account bonuses you have (example from frenzy charges and auras) and also copies any additions to arrow count from items and ascendancy.
Boots - Either Increased attack and cast speed if you've killed recently or increased movement speed if you haven't been hit recently. Helmet - Ice Shot damage, Blast Rain damage, or Blast Rain has a % chance to drop an additional blast.
Gem Links
(6 links listed in order of Importance) (Slivertongue users see below for Ice Shot links) 6 link (Not required to be 6 link) - Ice Shot - Greater Multiple Projectiles - Chain - Weapon Elemental Damage - Faster Attacks - Added Cold Damage (Or Ice Bite if you want to generate Frenzy chrages) 6 link (Not required to be 6 link) - Blast rain - Concentrated Effect - Weapon Elemental Damage - Faster Attacks - Slower Projectiles - Physical Projectile Attack Damage 4 link - Cast When Damage taken - level 7 - Arctic Breath - level 10 - Summon Ice Golem - level 9 - Greater Multiple Projectiles - Max level 3 link - Herald of Ice - Curse on Hit - Assassins Mark (Entirely Optional 4 link) - Enhance 2 link - Blink Arrow - Faster Attacks Anywhere - Hatred
Slivertongue
6 link without Rigwald's Quills - Ice Shot - Greater Multiple Projectiles - Fork - Weapon Elemental Damage - Faster Attacks - Ice Bite 6 link with Rigwald's Quills - Ice Shot - Greater Multiple Projectiles - Weapon Elemental Damage - Faster Attacks - Added Cold Damage - Ice Bite
Gear
Rare Gear
Weapon - You want to look for a bow with Crit chance/multi, Physical damage, and Attack speed, or use one of the optional uniques.
Rings and Amulet - You will want to get crit, flat physical, life, attack speed and any resists that need topped off. Armor - You will want life, evasion, and resists. You will need more of all those for each unique you opt to take in place of each gear slot. Quiver - You will want a Spike-Point Arrow Quiver with life, crit chance/multi, flat phys, elemental damage with weapons, and any resists that need topped off. Belt - You will need life, elemental damage with weapons, and resist as needed. Obviously, it will be very hard to get all of this on all your gear but try to get the best you can as you need resists to be at 135% (Or 165% if you are afraid of Elemental Weakness) in merciless to be capped and as much life as possible. Once you have that start looking for crit chance/multi, elemental damage with weapons, flat physical damage and attack speed.
Uniques
Required
This will be placed in the left ring slot next to your bow to reduce the amount of reflected elemental damage so you don't kill yourself on elemental reflect mobs.
Optional
Remember that for each unique you take in place of a piece of rare gear you will need to increase the stats on the remaining rare gear. It is possible to take a lot of the uniques if you are willing to spend the currency to stuff the rest of your gear with all the stats required.
Weapon
I realize I have a legacy Chin Sol linked for this but a non legacy will be just fine, I just didn't have one at the time of posting. This is a very cheap alternative to finding that one god rare bow and gives you great damage up close once you get used to it. I highly recommend this as a starting bow once you get to the required level. If you take the Deadeye Ascendancy this bow can be a more powerful alternative to Chin Sol. With the Slivertounge we will remove the Chain support and put in a Fork support on our Ice Shot links. This will mean the initial shot will fire five arrows that each split into two on hit and give arrows 100% increased crit chance, then chain on their second hit (because Deadeye gets a free chain), then 100% pierce chance and cause bleeding to any enemies they pierce. Don't forget that each of these hits will have an AoE backblast. End result, full use of the bow's bonuses and lots of dead ice. Alternative to adding Fork, if you can get a Rigwald's Quills this bow becomes BiS (Best in Slot) for Deadeye. Remove the fork and add Ice Bite or a damage gem for added kicking powers. This has replaced Reach of the Council due to its nerf. This is now basically an exact copy of Reach with slightly lower damage but gains an implicit critical chance and a very large critical multiplier. It also sports the same added arrows and a similar attack speed bonus.
Chest
Great armor with a very high Evasion rating maxing at 2140, scattered resists, and as long as you have at least 11,250 Evasion the reduced movement speed explicit is non-existent and anything above that is an increase in movement speed. Another great choice with great evasion and the one-of-a-kind bonuses. If you haven't been hit in the last four seconds you take 20% less damage and if you have been hit in the last four seconds you get 50% increased evasion rating. Great for making sure the one hit that gets through your defense does less damage and any following hits miss.
Helmet
Great helm with Crit chance, Attack and Movement Speed, good Evasion, and a bonus increased Rarity of items.
Gloves
Attack Speed, Crit chance/multi, and Evasion. All you can ask for in gloves. A more expensive alternative to Maligaro's Virtuosity, you lose some crit chance but you gain mana leech, Rampage, and Unholy Might for three seconds after each Rampage stage.
Boots
Great pair of Boots, they have a great Evasion roll coupled with Life and a 30% Movement Speed. Bonus chance to dodge spell damage.
Flasks
For Flasks you will want two Life flasks, a Jade flask, a Quicksilver flask, and a damage flask. On your Quicksilver you will want at least the "Of Heat" suffix for freeze immunity. On at least one of your Life flasks you will want the "Of Staunching" suffix for Bleed removal. For a cheap damage flask I recommend Atziri's Promise but if you can wing the currency Taste of Hate would also be a good choice. For the rest of your flasks the "Surgeon's" prefix is great on the build because you crit all the time and rolling for "Of Reflexes" suffix for increased Evasion rating everytime you hit a flask.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Why use Added Cold damage (ACd) over Physical Projectile Attack damage (PPAd)? (or equivalent damage gems)
A: PPAd is better during leveling and while Ice Shot is the only thing converting phys damage. Once you get the Winter's Spirit Node Added Cold Damage becomes better because of the high amount of cold damage the build does. the quality on Added Cold Damage makes it even better. ---------------------------- Q: Is this build HC viable? A: Technically, no. Though there are a few who have taken it to mapping in HC, but Evasion as a mechanic says that every few hits you are going to take damage and one day the stars will align and that hit will kill you. ---------------------------- Q: Only one jewel socket? What jewel should I put there? A: Yes the build only has one jewel socket and even if you wanted another one the points you would use would be better spent going for more life than another jewel socket. With this jewel you will want 2, 3, or 4 of the following rolls: - #% increased damage - #% increased physical damage - #% increased physical damage with bows - #% increased projectile damage - #% increased area damage (Blast Rain and Ice Shot both have AoE tag) Others that can be considered are: (I would only pick one if I had to) - #% attack speed - #% attack and cast speed - #% attack speed with bows - #% increased max life ---------------------------- Q: Can you make your characters public so we can see what you have and build towards that? A: Unless you were very comfortable with this build that wouldn't be a great idea because as you may have seen in the videos I don't run with much life. I also share gear between the Raider and Deadeye so one of them is always missing something. The main reason is I run tests to find ways to make it better all the time as well as test old things to make sure they still work. Some gems on my character may not match and sometimes I wear things that aren't easily attainable like a Reach that was from Prophecy League with near max rolls.
Videos
Atziri in 2.6
Full Atziri - https://youtu.be/FEbZ2w42O_0
I used a Deadeye with Slivertongue and Rigwald's Quills with much lower life (700-1000 lower than what is easily attainable with minimal investment) than the build normally has. This was the last set I had, I did two runs deathless without recording to get myself comfortable with it again since it had been a while and as soon as the recording started I became terrible for some reason and ruined four sets while recording. (I brought in another build to complete the four). I still feel this one was a good run even though I made a mistake fighting Atziri. FF to Twins - https://youtu.be/FEbZ2w42O_0?t=1m4s FF to Triplets - https://youtu.be/FEbZ2w42O_0?t=2m46s FF to Atziri - https://youtu.be/FEbZ2w42O_0?t=5m3s
2.5 Videos
T14 Shaped Promenade - https://youtu.be/JxWvgz1bUkc
I used a Deadeye with Slivertongue and Rigwald's Quills with much lower life (700-1000 lower than what is easily attainable with minimal investment) than the build normally has and used only my anti-bleed flask. More than anything this video was made to prove a point but does showcase the build very nicely and how I move and attack which is a lot harder to explain through a forum post.
2.6 Videos
T12 Plateau - https://youtu.be/120TYHHVh1Y
I used a Deadeye with Slivertongue and Rigwald's Quills with much lower life (700-1000 lower than what is easily attainable with minimal investment) than the build normally has. I used the Ice Bite gem links listed above, under the Slivertongue dropdown, also the Sibyl's Lament Coral Ring. By the time I got around to editing I forgot what mods were on the map, nothing super painful but still had pack size. If you like this build or want to give props to the creator make sure to check out https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1597020 and watch his video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqZww21fG0g Seriously, this has been my favorite build to start with every temp league it's so solid and fun to play and I have to give all credit to in_your_FACE for making it. Last edited by Xenovenom#3211 on Mar 26, 2017, 8:30:57 PM Last bumped on Dec 15, 2018, 2:30:01 AM
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2.4 Edits
Edit 1: Added Endless munitions as a Deadeye ascendancy option for Uber lab instead of Rupture.
Edit 2: I did, by mistake, put up a max tree that took two Frenzy charges which would assume you have Raider or Ice Bite. This has been fixed and a tree has been put in that takes more projectile damage at the end rather than Frenzy charges.
2.5 Edits
Edit 1: Reworded Raiders ascendancy to match the changes. I also reset one of my Rangers to test the Raider's new bonuses and keep up with changes for that ascendancy. Otherwise no change in the build.
Edit 2: Added and updated the Q&A section.
2.6 Edits
Edit 1: Update Passive Skill Trees, Updated Uniques Required and Optional Uniques, Added 6 link options for both attack skills (Due to popular demand), and Reworked Raiders ascendancy due to elemental damage increase.
Edit 2: Added a T14 Shaped Promenade Video and will update that again once 2.6 comes out and I can run it with changes. Edit 3: Changed Deadeye Ascendancy due to something that was brought to my attention. Fixed pathing on the passive trees. Edit 4: Changed Ice Shot links and reorganized Slivertongue sets in their own drop down to clear out the confusion being created with Ice Shot links. Also added a section for 2.6 videos. Edit 5: Updated the FAQ section and added a T12 plateau video and an Atziri video. Keep and eye out for further updates as time goes on. If you noticed something I've missed send me a message ingame or in the thread and I will look into it. As of 2.6 this thread has gotten a lot of attention, I was trying to reply to every post that has been made and answer every question. This is kind of draining me as I do sometimes have to spend a large portion of my playtime doing this, especially when I can't get to it for a long period of time. From here on I will only be able to respond to questions that aren't getting answered by anyone else. If you are experienced with the build and can answer a question please do try to help and if you don't know the exact answer you can re-quote it and I will answer it when I can. Last edited by Xenovenom#3211 on Mar 26, 2017, 8:26:11 PM
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well what he says in the video is wrong. he says that with chin sol the chaining arrows get the more damage benefit from close monsters, and this is incorrect, technically.
an arrows more damage modifier from chin sol AND point blank is based on its total distance traveled from its origin (you). when a projectile forks or chains its still considered the same projectile meaning its total distance continues to grow, meaning you lose the more bonus even if its chaining backwards and towards you or if the next chained monster is 1 step away. freezing is great and i love my freeze build but the DPS and crit on this build seems too low to get consistent freezing on higher level mobs and bosses. definitely great for up to mid tier maps though for sure |
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Death's opus.
Also, endless munitions over rupture. +aoe size, +1 proj. +acc for less crit reduction... no part of that is not ideal for crit Ice Shot. Last edited by Casia#1093 on Oct 23, 2016, 1:41:35 PM
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" Keep in mind this is a link to a build from 2.2 so some thing may have changed, but with the "Point Blank" mechanic, when using the Chin Sol you want to be close to the enemy, so the arrows will not travel far and most packs will be tightly grouped meaning the chained arrows wont travel far to get to the next enemy. You are right though as they chain the will gain distance and the damage will decrease and if the enemies survive all the chains the bonus may be gone by the last chain but you will have another shot right behind it with full bonus again. Also, yes it was great up to mid-ish tier maps but I do have the ability to clear T15 maps and Atziri with this build so I do not believe it is limited to mid tier. " Death's Opus is a great bow I will not lie, but it is only a leveling bow. Top possible dps is still under 200 and the Chin Sol can get more without the Point Blank bonus. I will add Endless Munitions as an Uber lab option for those who would like that over Rupture. I do however see that as playstyle choice over any functionality. The area of the backblast on Ice Shot is at best 20 degrees so a 20% increase only means a 4 degree difference which will be split into 2 degrees per side. It does help but I doubt you will notice it. The extra projectile will give you more damage but with five arrows chaining 3 times that's basically 20 arrows assuming each hit enemies on the initial shot and every chain. With Slivertounge and Fork it will be more helpful because arrows that fork get 100% increased crit chance but you still have five arrows that split to ten when they fork and an additional arrow will get two more forked arrows to hit more enemies. However you are choosing this over increased crit chance on bleeding enemies and we have a 1 in 4 shot to bleed every hit with normal bows and always bleed with piercing arrows with Slivertounge. Accuracy is always good though, I have no problem with that. Thank you both for the replies and criticism, I want to strive to make this guide as good as it can be and other viewpoints do help greatly since no one can see every possibility. |
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Hi. How do rangers get arctic breath. Is it from a drop?
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" It's a vendor reward for Templar, Witch, Shadow, and Scion for the "Sever the Right Hand" optional quest. So you will either need to use another character to get it, buy it from someone, or hope you get lucky and get it as a drop as you level. |
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very true about chin sol. it is by far the best dps bow you can get if you stack point blank. even if you don't, its stinkin high. highest dps for a unique by miles.
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" I wouldn't stack point blank (support gem or passive) on anything because it does have an unwritten penalty that you have to dig to find. At a certain range it does start to give you a negative damage bonus down to -50%. I agree that it does have great damage vs cost but we do have to remember along with most bows in this build you will have a 26% damage penalty from GMP where even a non-legacy Reach does not have this and at that point it has more dps than the rest. Legacy Reach is by far the best but these will soon be hard to justify for cost unless you have one. I think the Slivertounge has a bad reputation because of all the bonuses but it was clearing high tier just fine carrying a second person in party and it will still have full power at range. |
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the 100% more bow damage far outweighs not having to use GMP for the less damage. even if you use that extra socket in the reach for a full out DPS support, it won't have more than chin sol if you're using the close damage boost. so long as you're using that bonus though.
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