[2.6] SR CWC Icestorm Crit CI ASS / 9K+ ES / Fire Conv / 7 Power Ch. / 650%+ Crit Mult. / CC Immune

Spot a pack of mobs. Cast Orb of Storm to apply curses + generate power charges. Use Scorching Ray and aim where the pack of mobs is. Icestorm will fall on your mouse cursor.

The build is operative at lvl 38, functionnal at lvl 68 (switch to CI/ Kaom's), and over at lvl 90.

Feel free to take some crit chance node while leveling to get capped, you can also start this build as life and respec later as ES, just take a few life nodes.

Rush to Vaal Pact the long way, then take a few Crit Nodes near the Witch before getting the last Power Charge on the Templar side. Finish by getting the last Witch nodes then grab the remaining Jewel Sockets.

Ascendancy :
Unstable Infusion -> Deadly Infusion -> Amubush -> Assassinate

Poe planner

Current Tree

Kraityn > Skill Point > Alira

Note that most on the resist on my gear sucks. That's because if you want Intelligence roll, it's a suffix and it takes the same spot as Resistances. So to solve the problem, either use Purity of Elements, or get some Elemental Resistances on your jewels

1 x Fertile Mind + 5 jewel with crit Multiplier for cold / elemental / spell / resists / Int
Put Fertile Mind on the left of Vaal Pact. Gives you around 80+ Int.

You have two ways of leveling up. Either going Life by grabbing a few life nodes along the way and respec once you get CI, or directly going ES (as I did). Be warned that if you level up with ES, you are still vulnerable to Chaos Damage, but you can bypass that by grabbing a few Life flasks with poison immunity. Be careful in merc, you get -60% to chaos res and it can really hurt if only have 800hp. Keep also in mind that if you level up as ES, you will be vulnerable to stuns until 68 (especially in late merc) but it's not an issue if you party (lake).

After Hillock, grab Fire Trap and Freezing Pulse. Useful starting Gear: Tabula Rasa, Wanderlust, Lochtonial Caress, Goldrim or Crown of Thorns by preference and dual Lifesprig.

- Lvl 4: Get Orb of storm and lvl it on the side.

- Lvl 8: Grab Added cold and /or Ligthing. Take 2x Increased Critical Strikes + Life Gain on Hit and level it on the side. You can use Asenath's Mark if you want.

- Lvl 10: Flame Dash. Clarity if you feel low on mana regen. Drop Lifeprig for Axiom Perpetuum.

- Lvl 12: Firestorm. Drop Fire Trap and Freezing Pulse. Take also Scorching ray but don't lvl it up, it will reduce the mana cost later and we don't need to increase it's damage anyway.

- Lvl 18: Link leveling with Firestorm : Faster casting / Concentrated Effect / Life Gain on Hit / Increased Critical Strikes / Increased Critical Damage. Link Faster Casting with Flame Dash too. Take Cold to Fire and lvl it on the side. You can start using Orb of Storm + Increased Critical Strikes + Power Charge On Critical to get power charges.

- Lvl 20. Astramentis. Help with all gems requirement + Huge damage boost when you switch to Icestorm.

- Lvl 24. Get Discipline, Warlord's Mark, and another curse of your choice + Anger that you will lvl on the side.

- Lvl 31. You can use Blasphemy with Warlord's Mark. Get Life Leech (doesn't need to be lvled up).

- Lvl 33. If you get Windscream, you can start using the other curse. Get Whispering ice but don't use it yet.

- Lvl 34. Get Immortal Call. Don't lvl it. Get Ice Golem.

- Lvl 37. You can get Zahndethus' Cassock if you want to go for leveling with ES. but drop it at start in merc to get a rare ES chest with Int.

- Lvl 38. Now we can start using Whispering Ice. Full setup for now:

Damage Setup - (Weapon - 6S): We need 4B2R in Whispering Ice with 2B linked together. The other sockets don't need to be linked. In the 2B linked, put Scorching ray + Cast while Channelling. In the other, Life Leech + Cold to Fire + Increased Critical Damage + Increased Critcal Strikes.

Boost Setup - (Chest - 5l or 4l), Link in order: Orb of storm + Curse on Hit + Warlord's Mark + Power charge on critical + other curse (If you have dual curse now). If you don't have a 5L in the chest but have dual curses, you can remove the other curse and put it in the following defensive setup.

Defensive setup (Gloves - 4L): Cast when damage taken (lvl 1) + Immortal call (lvl 3) + Increased duration + other curse.

Aura setup (Helmet - 4l): Enlighten + Discipline + Aura of choice (Elemental Resists or Anger) + Ice golem. Enlighten is not really necessary, it's more for QoL.

Movement / Other (Boots) : Flame dash + Faster casting / Leap slam + Fortify + Faster attack.

Keep Concentrated Effect somewhere.

Gear : Get a Pyre until you get Avatar of Fire. You can drop it afterwards.
You can now start leveling with Icestorm, just cast Scorching Ray over the enemy to make magic appear.

- Lvl 55. Get Voidbringer. If you did Cruel lab, drop Increased Critcal Strikes from whispering ice and replace it with Concentrated Effect if you are capped crit. The mana cost of you skill should increase, but you don't really care as most of the skill you cast are covered mostly by your mana regen. You can still use a mana flask if you feel uncomfortable in certain situations, but know that the cost of lvl 1 Scorching Ray doesn't go above 8 mana per use, which is ridiculously low, so in any situations you will always be able to deal damage.

- Lvl 68. You can start using the wonderful Kaom's Roots (you should have grabbed the dual curse node by then and I assume you already have a 5L chest. You should also switch to CI around this level). Take the curse from Cast when Damage Taken and put it in your chest. The link in you gloves should now be: Cast when damage taken + Immortal Call + (Flame Dash + Faster Casting. Variant : You can also use Faster Attacks + Leap Slam + Fortify instead if you want more movement.

You can start mapping now. Good luck !

Note: Another Gem setup is available in the "Gems + Current / Advised Gear" section, if you prefer Leap Slam + Fortify over Flame Dash.

You can do almost all maps mods, I usually avoid the no leech mods and elemental reflect.

Here I'm going to try to explain the best I can how the damage is calculated on Icestorm from what I understood.



As you can see here, you have a few values that matters :
- The Average Damage, which indicate how much damage one bolt of ice deals (13.1k),
- One Impact every 0.1 sec, which makes 10 impacts per second per storm,
- The duration of the storm, which is 3.15 sec.
- And the Cast While Channelling speed, which is one spell every 0.35 sec at lvl 20 no matter the cast speed of Scorching Ray.

That allow us to summon: 3.15/0.35 = 9 icestorms at the same time if you are constantly channelling.

Now, we have for each of these icestorm 10 impacts per second, which makes 90 impacts over one second.

We take the avg damage per impact now with this number of impacts which give us roughly 1.18kk dps. (Without any more damage from curses and at 0 mob fire resistance)

Now, what you must know is that is not your real dps. This is the best case scenario dps, in case every bolt hits the target. Your real dps is gonna depend on one thing: the chance of a bolt to hit your target. Usually not a problem in maps when hitting packs as your damage is already really high, it pose more of a problem when dealing with bosses. Two things are going to impact your dps:
- If the mob is annoying and moves all the time, then he can dodge way more bolt and get hit way less which result is some dps loss. He can also run in your storm and die quicker so it works in both ways.
- The boss size. Really. Why ? Because Icestorm works the same way as Firestorm : It's an AOE that use bolts to deal AOE. So the more the mob is large, the more he has a chance of getting hit by a bolt, therefore increasing your dps on him. At the opposite, smaller mobs have way less chance of getting hit, therefore you lose dps.

An example: Vaal twins in The Apex. These are rather large bosses, and tend to get hit a lot. Usually melt after 3-4 sec of cast on it at max power charges. Another Example: Thornrunner in corrupted area. This one runs really fast and has proximity shield. This is an example of bad combo for this build because you have to enter his shield and have Icestorm cast on him while trying to have him not run away.

I tend to think of a 20% minimum chance to hit on boss which gives us at least 220k dps. (Without other source of damage like fire pen curses or ele weakness). But it can be more or less, depending on what I just explained.

Take all these parameters into account for choosing your curses. In think the optimal one damagewise and for leech is to take Warlord's Mark and Flammability, because the first one double your leech while the second one deepens the damage while also granting you more damage to leech from. You can also use stuff like Enfeeble or Temporal Chains if you feel more confortable with it.

One last thing you have to take into account is that your dps is maximized when you have 7 power charges, which goes rather quickly to have, but also after you casted Scorching Ray for more than 3 sec, as a new storm pops up every 0.35 sec and last for 3.15 sec.

More like gifs cause I'm too lazy to upload to Youtube.

T12 Corrupted Ivory Temple


T13 Scriptorium


T14 Corrupted Shrine


T14 Twinned Mineral Pools


T14 Breach with dual Onslaught on me


T15 Daresso


T15 Kaom


The Apex


As you can see I start with a lower damage with no power charge, but it goes up quickly once Orb of Storms generate some.

So now what i'm trying to do with the build is to get a +1 power charge modifier on Whispering Ice, to be able to drop Voidbringer and replace int with high Int gloves, but still be capped crit. I will probably have to get a few more nodes on the tree or replace some gems I already have but I will post the results if I manage to do it (mostly if I keep playing with this build).

Also I don't think that this will increase drastically the dps. I guess in a range from 500-1000 Avg Damage per hit. I'll give it a try once I reach 15 Staffs to corrupt and pray RNG.

Update 4 - Added Decoy Totem in the chest, useful on some bosses. Added also some Tips for Atziri linked to this, and some more Tips about Budget / CI. Also added two Unique flasks in a potential setup.

Update 3 - Corrected the typos I saw, added some content. Added Twinned Mineral Pools and arranged videos.

Update 2 - Added Calculating DPS section. As i said in the intro, this is the calculations I came with while trying to understand the skill, feel free to tell me if you notice an error in it.

Update 1 - Added some videos gifs + some important missing sections. Everything should be in there now.