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

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gruumine wrote:

given that from time to time I get frozen in the delve..I wonder if there is a way of getting 100% frozen immune...

I only care about freeze issues in fights like Uber Elder/Aul, both encounters are heavy cold damage fights and getting freezed = Death if you can't remove it.

For these fights I bought a cheap Watcher's Eye (50 chaos) with %increased ES recovery rate when affected by Discipline / Immune to freeze when affected by PoI and replace my current +ES gain on hit one.


%increased ES recovery rate (it raises our ES leech cap) is better than + ES gain on hit in boss fights so thats a very good trade-off.

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Graiaule wrote:

Hmm. I replaced Immortal Call with Vortex-Bonechill, and quickly died twice, once being one shot by the Pool boss even through a full stack of icestorm.

So maybe IC still has its uses. I'll go see how I do in the next few hours of play without it.

I came up with the following Scion level 100 tree after trying various approaches and assuming I will never get an Emperor's Mastery or a Watcher's Eye. https://pastebin.com/eCDjNXYw . Ignore the gear, I just used what I had on. It was suitable for comparing dps/ES choices, though, and these were what I got.

It's possible I should add Exceptional Performance instead and take 3 points from somewhere.

Comments appreciated. I suspect Kelvynn has left us so we can do the builds for ourselves and so he can feel that he finally has taught us The Way.

Use level 20 SteelSkin instead of IC, for character with no armor like we are, SteelSkin it's better

I optimized your tree a bit : https://pastebin.com/PGDMDT1j

Emperor's Mastery may be extremely expensive but Emperor's Wit is still affordable, it cost around 2 exalts and give us 6% increased Intelligence

And if you cant afford a Watcher's Eye with + ES gained on hit , you can definitely afford one with % increased ES recovery, this one is more cheaper(starting with 25 chaos right now) and is very good against bosses or enemies which hit hard because it increases our max leech cap together with the max ES regeneration value.

And if you still use Arctic Armour, link Bonechill to it not to Vortex, AA chill enemies for 30% so Bonechill linked to AA make chilled enemies that hit you take 30% more damage (can be increased by %increased chill effect nodes from passive tree).

Linking it to Vortex, the chill effect converted by Bonechill to %more damage is 10% to enemies that are affected by chilled ground (can be increased by %increased chill effect nodes from passive tree)

More DPS please:

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NoImagination wrote:

More DPS please:

GZ :)
Me unlucky in dat league, 800 alt and no shaper vaal regalia with %int+int/ES -(

This took 2200 alts, I haven't done the maths but I think this is closer to the EV than the 800 Kelvynn talked about.

Amulet's EV is about 10k alts (each mod is approx 1/100) but I luckily saw one on the market for 4ex.

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lilianmarius wrote:

Use level 20 SteelSkin instead of IC, for character with no armor like we are, SteelSkin it's better

I optimized your tree a bit : https://pastebin.com/PGDMDT1j

Emperor's Mastery may be extremely expensive but Emperor's Wit is still affordable, it cost around 2 exalts and give us 6% increased Intelligence

And if you cant afford a Watcher's Eye with + ES gained on hit , you can definitely afford one with % increased ES recovery, this one is more cheaper(starting with 25 chaos right now) and is very good against bosses or enemies which hit hard because it increases our max leech cap together with the max ES regeneration value.

And if you still use Arctic Armour, link Bonechill to it not to Vortex, AA chill enemies for 30% so Bonechill linked to AA make chilled enemies that hit you take 30% more damage (can be increased by %increased chill effect nodes from passive tree).

Linking it to Vortex, the chill effect converted by Bonechill to %more damage is 10% to enemies that are affected by chilled ground (can be increased by %increased chill effect nodes from passive tree)

That's quite clever on the tree optimization. Yeah, you always want to overlap Brute Forces wherever you can; I overlooked the opportunity at the bottom left. And getting the +10 str node on the way to Arcanist's Dominion is also smart for people using the Three Rat talisman. So I get another jewel slot for that. Well done.

I switched to Flesh and Stone instead of Arctic Armour. I do feel subjectively less squishy.

I looked at Steelskin. 2209 absorption of 70% of incoming damage (or 2403 if I corrupt it) didn't seem like a whole lot. IC absorbs 35% of elemental and phys damage, and at 20Q it lasts 20% longer. Steelskin's cooldown is reduced 10% at 20Q. It'd be easy enough to try both and see how they do, though.

Where does it say enemies that hit me get 30% more damage taken if I link AA to Bonechill? I only see "increased" in the gems text.

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Graiaule wrote:

Where does it say enemies that hit me get 30% more damage taken if I link AA to Bonechill? I only see "increased" in the gems text.

That "increased" in Bonechill description is in fact %more, trust me it all comes down to confusing semantics GGG use. Chill effect granted by AA is 30% so monsters take 30% more damage .

Same for Inquisitor Ascendancy passive - Enemies nearby take 10% increased damage is in fact translated into : enemies nearby take 10% more damage. Just semantics :)


Regarding crafting Shaper regalia , was trying to craft my own, spent about 500 alterations with no luck but at least i made this :



Hit T1 intelligence and T2 % increased ES with alterations then lucky regal T1 flat ES lol

Decided to spend my only 2 exalts and multicraft it like this (ES mods were high) till i will get another Shaper Vaal Regalia to try to obtain T1 % or flat ES and T1 % increased intelligence

Conclusion : build is not dead , it never was and probably it will never be in the close future!

BTW i can craft now 6% attributes on chest (unlocked it after buying and unveiling around 30 veiled chests "of Hillock's veil") and as previous league craft is FREE for IceStorm users, just the cost of teh craft must be payed (4 chaos)

Here is a screen of my current lv 96 char (VanillaIce_Storm), i am quite happy with the numbers i managed to put on it in this start of the league:



And keep in mind that all the numbers (ES , Intelligence, tooltip) are higher than Kelvynn had in Synthethis league with a level 99 char at the end of the league, with the only downside of loosing chill and freeze immunity and some regen on kill from Occultist ascendancy

Hm who tried elementalist? more dmg or not so tanky?
and what pantheons(for cyclone me lunaris/gruthkul)?)

And yeah..lilianmarius you are best)

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lilianmarius wrote:

Conclusion : build is not dead , it never was and probably it will never be in the close future!

People always see a nerf and write a build off, but the fact that something is worse today than last season does not mean it is now bad.

What's your plan for legion Lilian? We move too slowly to do this properly, but can we get enough DPS and enough damage persistence that it works? I'm doing Elder Arid Lake at the moment, and I don't have the DPS to cast in the NE, activate the pillar, and then clear the SW.

I think we have to optimise for damage and movespeed, but I've not quite got there yet. By thinking along these lines, perhaps we can improve on the default build. We're so good at surviving that it's hard to find good tradeoffs.

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archwerewolf wrote:

And yeah..lilianmarius you are best)

Hey... For friendly competition: I have more int and more DPS at 2 levels lower! 1.5k less ES though. Turns out that I suck and sometimes die/and/or get bored of the grind (a very underrated skill).

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NoImagination wrote:

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lilianmarius wrote:

Conclusion : build is not dead , it never was and probably it will never be in the close future!

People always see a nerf and write a build off, but the fact that something is worse today than last season does not mean it is now bad.

What's your plan for legion Lilian? We move too slowly to do this properly, but can we get enough DPS and enough damage persistence that it works? I'm doing Elder Arid Lake at the moment, and I don't have the DPS to cast in the NE, activate the pillar, and then clear the SW.

I think we have to optimise for damage and movespeed, but I've not quite got there yet. By thinking along these lines, perhaps we can improve on the default build. We're so good at surviving that it's hard to find good tradeoffs.

You cant clear more than 60-70 % of any Legion encounter in high end maps no matter the damage, the mechanics of the league are not fitting very well for how Ice Storm build its damage, it's the timer, it always was the timer that kinda break us. In Incursion we had the same timing issue, now i clear T16 Incursions from Alva with no issues at all (DPS is way higher than it was in Incursion league), but in this Legion league i cant do much other than rush to symbols mobs and rare ones (for challenge) and nuke them as fast as possible and as many as possible before the timer expire.

In the end is not about clearing entire legions in maps every time, is about being able to do entire content of the league (5-army fight seems very hard regarding both time and damage from the mobs, not many builds can do that instance) , the endgame boss fights like Uber Elder and deep Delve Aul and so on and for myself i always try to do as many challenges as possible (36 at least) and i am confident that i can do 36 this league until the end of it.

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NoImagination wrote:

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archwerewolf wrote:

And yeah..lilianmarius you are best)

Hey... For friendly competition: I have more int and more DPS at 2 levels lower! 1.5k less ES though. Turns out that I suck and sometimes die/and/or get bored of the grind (a very underrated skill).

:) If you take in consideration the duration of Icestorm yes MAYBE having a bit higher int your DPS cab be a bit higher (PoB does not take in consideration IceStorm duration when calculate Average Shaper hit value). But without that i am 100% sure that how i allocated skill points at the moment for single target DPS and clearing DPS PoB show me higher values compared to those displayed when i simulate your character gear and tree.

Check your single target IceStorm tooltip and tell me the value that is displayed in game :), it cant be higher than 16800, i bet is somewhere around 15.000.

Keep in mind that in game tooltip value does not count penetration from gems and skill tree nodes (which PoB does when calculate average hit)

And one more thing, Intelligence nodes increase way less the damage of Winter Orb compared to cold penetration nodes or spell damage nodes and this can hurt the clear speed also.

At what tooltip Icestorm DPS and ES should I try to start running the following content?

4-faction Legion Encounters
Shaper
Uber Elder
Uber Atziri