[3.5] Scold Snap™ - a low-life league starter Cold Snap Occultist

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Dmillz wrote:

Frostbomb is really bad for Bonechill as it only does damage and can chill with the explosion at the end.

No reason you can use both Temp Chains + Blasphemy, that's what I'm doing.

I see now, I hadn't realized that Frostbomb doesn't say anything about chilling.. I will improve on that..

I might put Frostbomb on a CWDT for now, so it applies the debuff on stronger monsters that are still alive during a fight...


The thing with temp chains + blasphemy is that I won't have space for EW or Frostbite... which could increase dps against bosses..

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kennoba wrote:

The thing with temp chains + blasphemy is that I won't have space for EW or Frostbite... which could increase dps against bosses..

Check your PoB DPS with Frostbite on and off. If you are using EE you'll find it's worth a whopping 5-7% damage which is basically unnoticeable.

Feeling pretty good on my build so far. Done pretty much all content, except can't get UE to spawn... I made a few small tweaks to the original build based on changes this league.

I think I could get a better Aegis corrupt, probably better jewelry, and an enchanted Scold's as opposed to corrupted. Ideally, I'd get a +1/+2 corrupted Shav's, but there aren't many available yet.

POB (10K ES 610K Shaper DoT):

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Dmillz wrote:

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kennoba wrote:

The thing with temp chains + blasphemy is that I won't have space for EW or Frostbite... which could increase dps against bosses..

Check your PoB DPS with Frostbite on and off. If you are using EE you'll find it's worth a whopping 5-7% damage which is basically unnoticeable.

To elaborate on this point, there are actually two factors working against Frostbite's DPS gains when fighting bosses:

1. Bosses reduce your curse effectiveness, so the amount of cold res reduction decreases. Make sure your PoB configuration is right for calculating DPS vs bosses.
2. Lowering resistances suffers from diminishing returns. If a monster already has low/negative resistances, it's often more efficient to boost DPS by other means. Here's the wiki article on penetration, if you prefer a graph to illustrate the point.

Occultist Void Beacon (-20% cold res)
Frost Bomb (-25% cold res)
Elemental Equilibrium (-50% cold res)

Is Incandescent Heart worth using (I play CI) or better is armour with 600/700 ES?
Is a shaper armour with +1 to Level of Socketed Active Skill Gems good option?

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Kirk010 wrote:

Is Incandescent Heart worth using (I play CI) or better is armour with 600/700 ES?
Is a shaper armour with +1 to Level of Socketed Active Skill Gems good option?

I vote Incandescent Heart. Better/worse evaluations will vary based on the content you're going up against, as Heart's weakness is physical hits. In my opinion, the best defensive choice will be Incandescent and "X% of physical damage taken converted to [element]" from rare gear pieces.

Is a shaper armour with +1 to Level of Socketed Active Skill Gems good option?
Absolutely.

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oregoncrete wrote:

Feeling pretty good on my build so far. Done pretty much all content, except can't get UE to spawn... I made a few small tweaks to the original build based on changes this league.

I think I could get a better Aegis corrupt, probably better jewelry, and an enchanted Scold's as opposed to corrupted. Ideally, I'd get a +1/+2 corrupted Shav's, but there aren't many available yet.

POB (10K ES 610K Shaper DoT):

Spoiler

https://pastebin.com/uirNZ8tr

Lol damn, you really had to bend over backwards to get enough dexterity. Is the all attributes craft on your ring still essential? It looks to me like you could turn that into a different suffix. Intelligence for more ES, maybe?

How frequently would you say you cast Arctic Breath? I find that long cast times discourage me from casting my support spells.

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cha_siu_bao wrote:

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oregoncrete wrote:

Feeling pretty good on my build so far. Done pretty much all content, except can't get UE to spawn... I made a few small tweaks to the original build based on changes this league.

I think I could get a better Aegis corrupt, probably better jewelry, and an enchanted Scold's as opposed to corrupted. Ideally, I'd get a +1/+2 corrupted Shav's, but there aren't many available yet.

POB (10K ES 610K Shaper DoT):

Spoiler

https://pastebin.com/uirNZ8tr

Lol damn, you really had to bend over backwards to get enough dexterity. Is the all attributes craft on your ring still essential? It looks to me like you could turn that into a different suffix. Intelligence for more ES, maybe?

How frequently would you say you cast Arctic Breath? I find that long cast times discourage me from casting my support spells.

Yeah, dex/str is rough. I could run a lower level stone golem (or not at all) and get away with removing the all attributes. I would have exactly enough strength for empower 4 at that point. *Edit: Could also swap Stone Golem for Chaos or Flame Golem

Arctic Breath I only use for real boss fights (Shaper, Uber Atziri, Elder, etc.) It's especially nice for phased fights. I was thinking a 2L could really be used in reality. AB/Vortex + Bonechill is all I need from that. AB has longer duration, which is nice for phased fights, Vortex has higher damage scaling and faster cast speed (and an awesome looking MTX).

Almost two weeks have gone by and it's time I post an update as well, especially since I've gone a completely different gearing way compared to the other poster here that updated us.

The build carried me to Uber Elder (done about 4 days ago) and I've been chaining a bit of Elder UGS since.

Current PoB (10k ES, 870k shaper dot without flasks): https://pastebin.com/hy9Bq2Em

Quick point about the tree: I've decided to go for Elemental Focus to buff our Bonechill a bit more. Compared to the previous tree I posted this requires dropping the extra ES node we didn't use for pathing near the Foresight cluster and reaching Growth and Decay via the life regen node: a total change of +2% damage, +10% chill effect, + some ES regen per second at the cost of 6% energy shield.

For the lazy, link to the gear:



Let's try to comment on some of my choices a bit.

Silver flask has been amazing for mapping due to the extra move speed, while the sulphur flask is intended for boss runs. Speaking of flask, the new flask suffix is amazing for survivability and we are now chill/freeze immune so that seems like a no-brainer.

I've completely dropped the CWDT lightning ball setup as trash mobs get annihilated anyways and my potato PC couldn't quite handle all the shocks anyways, and orb of storm is a lot more reliable while bossing, especially since it comes with a frostbite on hit. I admit I haven't tried Storm Brand yet and that's something I'd probably experiment with in the near future.

Swapping off of Scold's Bridle and Doedre's Malevolence has been insanely good since, and I don't think I could ever go back: the added damage, castspeed, and lack of self-harm are all huge quality-of-life improvements that I can't really live without after trying it. Especially important is the ability to free up the Clarity slot (which was kinda needed to sustain the gloves) and get a faster casting gem on our flame dash and frost bomb. Dash speed is amazing and feels almost instant.

I've kept a level 20 vaal cold snap for the time being because it's the superior choice while mapping to burst the boss, since everything else dies anyways with a level 20 cold snap (and a level 21 vortex, which is actually our main clear skill, despite being in a 5L).

I've thought about going for a mark of the shaper setup on our rings, but I haven't quite seen an elder ring and a crystal belt capable of sustaining the heavy attribute requirements I've put on the jewel slots so the ring is currently rotting in my stash awaiting for his moment to shine.

Future upgrade avenues:
- getting an open suffix to craft aspect of the spider on our gear (I realized I didn't have one after purchasing a Fenumus kill, whoops) is a pretty nice ~8% damage upgrade at the cost of some of our unreserved mana pool which we don't really need
- corrupted for increased discipline aura effect bated breath is a fairly straightforward upgrade, but at 1ex for a measly 80 energy shield I'm currently holding back to hopefully snatch some more significant upgrades, especially:
- faster casting gloves would allow us to drop faster casting from our quite stacked gem slots and allow us to slot something else, probably an extra aura (haste for clear speed. grace for bossing/survivability, or even purity of elements to make our gearing easier, but I wouldn't recommend the latter as basically all we can use our suffixes on are resistances). The important point to keep in mind is that this upgrade is incompatible with the aspect of the spider one since we'd be reserving 95% of our mana, unless we also do the following:
- get a clarity watcher's eye (they're not insanely expensive for maximum shield with clarity only, but get very expensive very fast if you try to add a discipline mod), and since we don't need the mana regen we can actually keep clarity at level 1 to have it reserve an insignificant portion of our mana pool so that we can fit it along with aspect of the spider

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Maxpoggi wrote:

The build carried me to Uber Elder (done about 4 days ago) and I've been chaining a bit of Elder UGS since.

Current PoB (10k ES, 870k shaper dot without flasks): https://pastebin.com/hy9Bq2Em

I've completely dropped the CWDT lightning ball setup as trash mobs get annihilated anyways and my potato PC couldn't quite handle all the shocks anyways, and orb of storm is a lot more reliable while bossing, especially since it comes with a frostbite on hit. I admit I haven't tried Storm Brand yet and that's something I'd probably experiment with in the near future.

Congrats on the Uber Elder kill! Was it deathless, or is that still a work in progress?

I agree that EE doesn't seem necessary for trash mobs anymore. The buffs to Occultist and all our primary spells were so absurd that we barely need to do anything to shred rare mobs in T16 maps. This reality also enables us to forget about Frost Bomb until boss fights (Faster Casting makes a lot of sense now).

Instead of Flame Dash for mobility, I use Phase Run. Linked with a low-level Arcane Surge, it eliminates unit collision and lets me position myself dead-center of a pack before casting Vortex. Obviously this could also be accomplished with a well placed Flame Dash, but I personally prefer the phasing and extra movement speed.

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Maxpoggi wrote:

I've kept a level 20 vaal cold snap for the time being because it's the superior choice while mapping to burst the boss, since everything else dies anyways with a level 20 cold snap (and a level 21 vortex, which is actually our main clear skill, despite being in a 5L).

If Vortex is your main clearing spell, maybe consider swapping its position with Cold Snap? "Map clearing" and "Concentrated Effect" don't usually occur in the same sentence, but that's exactly what's going on in your helmet right now. Just so I'm clear, this is not because of DPS concerns - this is to make your Vortex bigger so that mapping feels more smooth. Your pseudo-5L Cold Snap will still be acceptable damage, and combining the Snap + Vortex in a boss fight will still result in almost identical total DPS.

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Maxpoggi wrote:

Future upgrade avenues:
- getting an open suffix to craft aspect of the spider on our gear (I realized I didn't have one after purchasing a Fenumus kill, whoops) is a pretty nice ~8% damage upgrade at the cost of some of our unreserved mana pool which we don't really need
- corrupted for increased discipline aura effect bated breath is a fairly straightforward upgrade, but at 1ex for a measly 80 energy shield I'm currently holding back to hopefully snatch some more significant upgrades, especially:
- faster casting gloves would allow us to drop faster casting from our quite stacked gem slots and allow us to slot something else, probably an extra aura (haste for clear speed. grace for bossing/survivability, or even purity of elements to make our gearing easier, but I wouldn't recommend the latter as basically all we can use our suffixes on are resistances). The important point to keep in mind is that this upgrade is incompatible with the aspect of the spider one since we'd be reserving 95% of our mana, unless we also do the following:
- get a clarity watcher's eye (they're not insanely expensive for maximum shield with clarity only, but get very expensive very fast if you try to add a discipline mod), and since we don't need the mana regen we can actually keep clarity at level 1 to have it reserve an insignificant portion of our mana pool so that we can fit it along with aspect of the spider

Aspect of the Spider would be a nice addition, but sadly it won't function as a true "more" multiplier. "Monsters take X% increased damage" stacks additively with all other sources (namely Bonechill and Despair) and will suffer from diminishing returns. It's going to be very challenging to optimize these build choices, as PoB currently doesn't calculate DPS gains from Bonechill.

Despair (from your flask): 25% inc DoT damage taken
Bonechill: 29% inc cold DoT damage taken + ~20% inc cold DoT taken (extra "chilled enemy" bonus)
Aspect of the Spider: 15% inc damage taken (with three stacks)

All these mods add together (to 89%) before being applied to the damage equation. The more "inc damage taken" you stack, the less valuable it becomes. Check your "Cold damage over time multiplier" to see which is currently smaller. You'll find that increasing the lower of these two values has a bigger impact on your final DPS.

Bated Breath corruption is a noob trap, in my opinion. Discipline is such a tiny fraction of our total base ES that 10% increased AOE actually sounds more appealing. You'll probably be much more impressed by a shaped crystal belt (like the one in this build guide). You'll lose a bit of damage but gain ES, with even more perks available if you can hit multiple shaped affixes. You can also craft a crystal belt with fossils (more damage, higher chances at ES) or essences (dexterity on a belt is awesome).

I understand that you "need" Bated Breath to counter the drawback from Rime Gaze... and that's exactly why I don't like Rime Gaze for ES-based Occultists.