[3.1] The Blinding Blizzard - Whispering Ice Berserker - Viable for Most Everything

Culling strike is a 11,11% more damage, not a 10% more one.

And I'm pretty sure the Trickster node mechanics will not be nerfed. Because it's not like double dip (which was exponential when this one is additive).

By the way, now after all those revamps... i kinda want to try make totem variation of that build, when we have totems from ascendancy, and pretty good leech from chieftain.

Is anybody ever tried it, by the way?

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Aldehy wrote:

Wouldn't the correct way be to divide the multipliers: 1.19/1.15 = 1.035 so a 3.5% difference in damage?
Or, with my numbers above: 1.29/1.15 = 1.12 so a 12% difference.

Oh, you're right, I was too hasty there. Yeah, the difference in damage is not quite so drastic.

So far the best thing about the Scion is the extra Int that translates into extra ES. Another good thing is pathing: Elementalist has to waste more points getting down to VP. Overall, the Scion seems to get about 1k extra ES over the Elementalist. That's nothing to sneeze at. I'm going to try Black Sun Crest again and see if that's worth it.

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Zelvas wrote:

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CrystallineDIVA wrote:

Hello, since you are revising your build for the upcoming ascendancies, you mind me asking why you are not self-casting Ice Storm?

It seems a bit odd to me that noone likes to self cast it using totems and triggers...

What about duration nodes, since you have fairly high base duration of Ice Storm, would that be worth it at all?

Also, for your CI needs, I think AscendantEle/Inqui is (not by far) the best option at the moment.

Greetings

because the manacost of selfcasting is something like 111 mana while cwc+sr is negligible.

And self-casting doesn't let you react quickly. The old self-casting version used Spell Echo which is by far the best thing for a spell as slow as Icestorm. You'd get 0.45 cast time but it would cast twice, i.e. you'd stop for 0.9 sec and can't do anything during that animation. With CwC you are free to stop casting and move at any time. It felt so much better when I tried it for the first time in 2.5 that I don't want to ever self-cast again.

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Med1umentor wrote:

By the way, now after all those revamps... i kinda want to try make totem variation of that build, when we have totems from ascendancy, and pretty good leech from chieftain.

Is anybody ever tried it, by the way?

Yes. I tried WI totems with Chieftain at some point. But they are too slow. They self-cast, Spell Echo doesn't work with totems, so the only thing you can put there is Faster Casting, but that's still way too slow. It worked for most content, but it felt like crawling through maps. And any mobile boss was a huge pain, i.e. Shrine Piety and stuff like that.

Totems are also very vulnerable to phys damage, I had to switch to another char to kill Uber Trio, they pretty much instantly killed my totems. Although Uber Atziri herself was a joke after that since Chief totems are immune to fire. But it's not worth it just for that 1 target.

And of course that 1% leech from the totems is not enough, even with Chief regen. You have to run around and dodge everything big. Not my cup of tea.

Alright, RIP Trickster, Harness the void got nerfed (but not the effect of chaos added)

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Added a new notable - Harness the Void: Grants your hits a 25% chance to gain 25% of Non-Chaos Damage as Extra Chaos Damage, 15% chance to gain 50% of Non-Chaos Damage as Extra Chaos Damage and 5% chance to gain 100% of Non-Chaos Damage as Extra Chaos Damage.

Thank Kitava! At least now I don't have a temptation to play that class with WI. It would have been really awkward for this build.

Interestingly, they did not nerf the double dipping with the 'gain X as Y' mods. I guess the abuse of those Elder mods will continue. But that's beside the point.

I'm currently testing around with the updated path of building (Ascendant: Ele/Inquisitor). Maybe i step into a noob trap, but elemental focus gives me more dmg than fire penetration, even against Shaper. Using scorching ray, cast when channel, cold to fire, conc effect, life leech and ele focus/fire penetration.

The patch notes don't currently describe the change to Pain Reaver that ruin Berserker for this build. Is that an omission or did they change their mind?

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Naramie_VI wrote:

I'm currently testing around with the updated path of building (Ascendant: Ele/Inquisitor). Maybe i step into a noob trap, but elemental focus gives me more dmg than fire penetration, even against Shaper. Using scorching ray, cast when channel, cold to fire, conc effect, life leech and ele focus/fire penetration.

PoB has always shown higher damage with EF (or even CD) than with FP. But that is a 'noob trap' indeed. It may actually produce slightly higher damage vs the Shaper, but not enough to really bother with a different gem color.

The problem with replacing FP is that it screws up your mapping. Random mods on the magic/rare mobs or the map itself can make stuff harder to kill without FP. If you use 2 staves, I guess you can replace FP with EF in the boss one. But then again, Izaro with full buffs can be a shining example of how important FP is. Without FP he can become near immune to your damage when he has elemental buffs and/or charges.

Overall, I found this swap to be not worth the trouble.