[2.6] The Curse Whisperer - Tri-Curse CI Whispering Ice Berserker - Viable for Everything

I would note that I found running the Lab as an ES build noticeably easier than when I ran with life-based builds.

The fundamental difference was the rare occasions I would (a) be surrounded by bleeder traps (b) have no mobs around (c) have 0 healing flask charges. (That would typically happen when I would take a wrong turn and needed to backtrack.)

As an ES build, I'd just wait for my shield to regen and run through.

As a life build, I would generally die (there are unavoidable trap combinations sometimes.)

That's mainly a problem for Uber Lab of course, as we'll have Vaal Pact then and lose any life regen.

So my question is, just how helpful is MoM in this case? 30% of damage applying to mana means 70% of damage still applies to life, right? So you still can bleed to death, correct?

It also looks like we won't get Vaal Pact until around level 60. Didn't that cause problems for you?

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tsunny wrote:

Well the wording is "Life Leech is applied to Energy Shield instead while on Full Life" so it might actually work with VP. Then again, until we test it, no way to really know.

Right, the leech applies to ES on full Life, i.e. you get GR. But it doesn't say anything about it being instant, while VP now specifically says that it only affects Life, and GGG clearly stated that VP will not do anything to ES. I wouldn't count on this belt to be an exception from that rule. Most likely it's simply GR on full life. GR sucks now.

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Graiaule wrote:

As a life build, I would generally die (there are unavoidable trap combinations sometimes.)

There are no unavoidable traps in the Lab. Some of them are really hard to figure out, especially the ones in the dark, but every single one of them can be navigated without taking any damage. It just takes time to learn each of them, and often it's not worth the time.

I've done a whole lot of Uber Lab runs on Beta with just 1 Life flask, similar to this one

except it's anti-freeze instead of armor. And 2 high speed Quicksilvers:

The other 2 flasks are the mandatory staunching that you always have on you, and I bring a Basalt/grounding for Izaro:


Most of the traps are simple enough to just run through. For the ones that look scary, pop Quicksilver, run through and hit the life flask when you take damage. The amount of damage to Life is much smaller than to ES. It takes a lot of hits to kill you.

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Graiaule wrote:

It also looks like we won't get Vaal Pact until around level 60. Didn't that cause problems for you?

You should be able to get VP at lv 38. You don't need MoM that early, or AoF, etc. The path from Marauder to VP is 40 nodes, or 43 if you take the 2 sockets for Int conversion jewels. You'll have more points than that by lv 38, so you can even take something else along the way.

Just don't take VP before switching to WI. And you can do the Normal Lab first too. They nerfed Normal and Cruel Izaro by a lot in 3.0, he's totally impotent now. Sunder is still OP by the time you reach Act 3, so you can do it with Sunder, take Pain Reaver for the leech, and then switch to WI and take VP.

Did you read about the chill changes?

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Chill no longer slows enemies by a fixed amount for a variable duration. Now, Chill will slow enemies for a duration of 4 seconds by an amount based on the Cold damage dealt to the enemy. A purely Cold hit which removes 50% of an enemy's life will slow that enemy by 30% for 4 seconds, scaling linearly down to 0% at no Cold damage dealt.

This is not even the worst part:

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Chilled Ground, or any Chill not caused by a Hits, has a slowing effect of 10%, unless otherwise specified.

So the chilled ground effect of WI, which is stated as being created "on impact", will now only slow by 10% instead of the 30% in pre-3.0.

This is yet another MASSIVE nerf for this build and imho the final nail in the coffin.

Yep, as I understand, chill has been nerfed massively. Ground effect is 10% instead of 30%, and I'm not sure about AA (asked but didn't get any reply yet). It would be stupid if AA got nerfed to the fixed 10% chill too, so maybe they plan to add level scaling to AA.

But this whole chill/shock debacle is stupid. Chris looks like a fool trying to justify it and apologize for his team's incompetence. There are so many things those 'players with 1000 hr+ experience' overlooked or forgot about, uniques that lost their main function, builds that were never OP yet got completely destroyed, etc. And things that make no sense whatsoever (like getting 50% shock when you hit the enemy for 50% of its life: you already hit it for 50% hp, why would you possibly want to hit it harder with your next hit?? you'll kill it with or without that shock). I'll be surprised if this thing gets into 3.0 like this. They'll probably take it back and tweak it a lot before trying it again.

But there is still one thing that could end up good: they promised to get rid of boss immunities after changing the way chill/shock works, remember? They haven't done it yet, but if they do remove boss chill immunity then even 10% chill on bosses will be very good. I'll take that instead of chilling trash for 30% any day.

Well, if anybody doubted that this build was viable as Life-based, worry not: it is.



This Beta sucked. Tons of bugs and crashes, almost SSF, tiny market, insane prices for high tier maps, some were never for sale at all. I never found any T1 rares, eventually just went with 2 rare rings to cover for missing resists. Spent pretty much everything I've farmed to get a Kaom's Heart and some maps, and finally, on the last day completed my Shaper set. It was my one and only shot at him. It was not deathless. But I succesfully facetanked him and he died. In a live league it should go much smoother.

I'll be out of town for a week and won't be able to play PoE, but will probably read the forums and try to post the first version of the Life/MoM build before the release. This is definitely what I'll be playing in 3.0, unless GGG throws in some last minute nerfs that ruin it.

Thanks a lot man for all the effort you put into this. I wish to enjoy this build in 3.0 too. Cant wait to see the new challenges. I guess i will have to level my first berserker.

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Kelvynn wrote:

Well, if anybody doubted that this build was viable as Life-based, worry not: it is.



This Beta sucked. Tons of bugs and crashes, almost SSF, tiny market, insane prices for high tier maps, some were never for sale at all. I never found any T1 rares, eventually just went with 2 rare rings to cover for missing resists. Spent pretty much everything I've farmed to get a Kaom's Heart and some maps, and finally, on the last day completed my Shaper set. It was my one and only shot at him. It was not deathless. But I succesfully facetanked him and he died. In a live league it should go much smoother.

I'll be out of town for a week and won't be able to play PoE, but will probably read the forums and try to post the first version of the Life/MoM build before the release. This is definitely what I'll be playing in 3.0, unless GGG throws in some last minute nerfs that ruin it.

congratulations! thats no small feat.

nonetheless, being able to somehow kill shaper isnt enough for me personally to consider a build "viable" in the sense that I want to make it my league starter...

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Black_Gun wrote:

nonetheless, being able to somehow kill shaper isnt enough for me personally to consider a build "viable" in the sense that I want to make it my league starter...

Kek. The WI build has never been a league starter build for me -- I have always needed to run another SSF-oriented build in order to get the currency to purchase a WI!

Kelvynn, does the life build need a Kaom's Heart to feel as strong as the old CI build?

Awesome, thanks for your hard work!