[3.6] The Blizz Sorc - Icestorm/Winter Orb CI Occultist - Viable For Everything

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FrooostyTheBlowman wrote:

Is having one staff to switch gem for boss much more convenient then swapping two as needed? Would the two different gem set-ups also provide noticeably more damage?

It's more convenient to have two as you can swap them in combat with a button press. The boss staff leaches more, the clearing staff wipes maps clear in an instant. I put auras and things that are always active on my mouse buttons and mapped the weapon swap to R to be easy to key.

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lilianmarius wrote:

Managed to hit 40/40 challenges last night!

Congrats! I'm up to 2200 INT now and coming up to level 97. ES is only 10.5k so I could use a bit more there.

thanks you :D Dusting this build off I haven't played it in years :D

Well I solved my mana problems without the boot enchant. Turns out that Lv 20 Frostbomb costs 19 mana, so with the 110% multiplier from Arcane Surge it only brings the cost up to 20 due to round off shenanigans. That means with my -7 ring it dropped me to 13 mana which is not enough to trigger even a level 1 AS. However, a Lv 21 Frost Bomb costs 20 mana, which puts the cost up to 22 so we then can subtract 7 for 15! And for some reason Lv 21 Frost Bomb gems are dirt cheap...I paid a whopping 7 Chaos for this one:



So combined with my new ring and a Lv 1 Arcane Surge I'm back in action. Very slight drop in damage boost, but I can live with that. So much easier than triggering the boost with Flame Dash.

This was all so I could use my second staff which clears out mobs like a dream. And for big hitters and bosses I've nearly doubled my DPS from the single staff setup...this is the only way to fly!

Hello. If one wanted a little more safety for trash mobs could you use life leech, and if so for what would it be substituted? Or would you sub out a few things? I have been using two staves so I have the standard boss setup. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

Dame

what kind of Whispering Ice gem setup people are suggesting nowadays if you use Watcher's Eye with Life Leech when using Vitality? I've been trying different ones and can't really decide what's the best.

Winter Orb + Cast While Channelling + Concentrated Effect + Ice Penetration seems pretty much needed, but I'm struggling to decide what 2 gems to run. Been trying Controlled Destruction, Spell Cascade, Elemental Focus, Hypothermia, etc.

And btw, why people are running 21/20 Spell Cascade? Quality increases AOE and that's what you want to do with this build. Also 21/0% quality ones cost almost nothing.

Edit: Mana cost won't be problem and I can run 5 or 6 Linked Whispering Ice. Running -20 mana cost so I'm covered.

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Tonu wrote:

what kind of Whispering Ice gem setup people are suggesting nowadays if you use Watcher's Eye with Life Leech when using Vitality? I've been trying different ones and can't really decide what's the best.

Winter Orb + Cast While Channelling + Concentrated Effect + Ice Penetration seems pretty much needed, but I'm struggling to decide what 2 gems to run. Been trying Controlled Destruction, Spell Cascade, Elemental Focus, Hypothermia, etc.

And btw, why people are running 21/20 Spell Cascade? Quality increases AOE and that's what you want to do with this build. Also 21/0% quality ones cost almost nothing.

Edit: Mana cost won't be problem and I can run 5 or 6 Linked Whispering Ice. Running -20 mana cost so I'm covered.

The answer it's quite simple :

for bosses : add Controlled Destruction + Hypothermia
for trash(clearing): 5L Winter Orb in the following setup :
Winter Orb - CwC - Cold Penetration - Greater Multiple Projectiles - Controlled Destruction
Add Spell Cascade to this 5L setup in the trash(clearing) staff.
If you really want 6L Winter Orb for trash(clearing) you can remove Spell Cascade and add Hypothermia since Spell Cascade does nothing for WO.

I really don't understand why people are still asking for the staff gem setups when these were already repeated over and over in this thread.

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lilianmarius wrote:

The answer it's quite simple :

for bosses : add Controlled Destruction + Hypothermia
for trash(clearing): 5L Winter Orb in the following setup :
Winter Orb - CwC - Cold Penetration - Greater Multiple Projectiles - Controlled Destruction
Add Spell Cascade to this 5L setup in the trash(clearing) staff.
If you really want 6L Winter Orb for trash(clearing) you can remove Spell Cascade and add Hypothermia since Spell Cascade does nothing for WO.

I really don't understand why people are still asking for the staff gem setups when these were already repeated over and over in this thread.

Because most of the people don't read the thread, and i can understand that. As if anybody have time to casually read through 100+ pages of 90% useless information and chatting.
And reading several last pages also is questionable solution, cause there is no way to tell for sure if somebody conveniently talked about "your question" right before you got here. If anything, chances of this quite close to zero in big threads like this.
As long as this will not be quoted in the main guide, people will ask this endlessly.

P.S. Moreover, even if this will be added to the guide, lazy douchebags "people" will still ask, but atleast portion of the actual decent people will be cut out.
P.P.S. Also, i would say that in clearspeed-setup with GMP, i find it quite strange that everyone still preferred spell cascade.
I'm not gonna argue, cause you guys play that build much more than me, but still find it weird, cause the only things that actually survived WO setup are the singles with huge hp, almost never in groups, and would rather benefit from concentrated effect making it pseudo-singletarget setup (pseudo, because it's only 5l instead of 6l. But atleast without spell cascade it doesn't have absurd reduction in power and actually almost as potent as 6l). It was especially felt better in incursions, where normal and magic packs still pooped like a garbage, but those absurd rares with tons of health goes down 4 times faster than usual without switching weapons which quite clunky when you don't have time in incursions to stop casting, check if anything can prevent you from changing then change and cast again, that lost time you can use to kill that thing even without changing which is quite sad.
tl;dr, if anything really surviving WO barrage, it would be faster to single it out with single target, rather than use spell cascade for the lonely target. And full powered 6l WO-setup is quite good in single target too to compensate for the last slot, so...
When i moved to that setup, i never felt any need to switch between my weapons anymore. 6L WO setup + 5L icestorm singletarget setup in one weapon dealed with anything that game throwed at me.

6L WO is kinda hard to sustain only with lab boots enchant and -mana cost rings are not an end game option in favor of corrupted %increased int rings.

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lilianmarius wrote:

6L WO is kinda hard to sustain only with lab boots enchant and -mana cost rings are not an end game option in favor of corrupted %increased int rings.

I agree, but well, -7 mana ring and "storm weaver" node made it up for me enough, and i don't even have any lab enchant :)

Moreover, i didn't really talked about 6L WO.
I guess, yeah, i personally have it, but i used 5L before i obtained watcher's eye with "leech by vitality" (so that 6L would actually matter, and wouldn't be just "life leech" gem).
What i meant, that even in 5L WO setup, i don't see any meaning in spell cascade.
The only nuisance is when you are completely surrounded and WO just firing in random directions without actually killing anything, but that's quite rare case, and i still can target icestorm into myself to still obliterate anything that surrounding me, as fast as with spell cascade.
So yeah, i'm not gonna argue anymore than that, just wanted to bring that idea here as alternative. I really think that using spell cascade in WO+GMP setup is weird, way too overboard, and detrimental to build perfomance. But would rather not argue with veterans on that, cause apparently i'm the only one who thinks that way. So be it, i guess.

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lilianmarius wrote:

6L WO is kinda hard to sustain only with lab boots enchant and -mana cost rings are not an end game option in favor of corrupted %increased int rings.

Well for me, getting a -mana ring was way, way cheaper than a corrupted %inc int ring (I ruined several good rings trying on my own). Once I get my end game boots I may try for the lab enchant and then try for the rings, but they are mostly a pricey pipe dream at this point.