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

On your boss staff (the one you have) set it up like this:



I'm not sure how important the cast speed is I switched from 10 to 9 without noticing much difference. The 18% intelligence is very important. Someone more knowledgeable than myself will probably chime in.

It's simple to add the sockets and 5l the staff, I've made a few of them already and sold them off via divination cards. I only intended to 5l my 6l staff but the 6l popped out in less than 15 fusings before I even saw a 5l. If I was looking for 6l I'm sure it would have been different :P

I've been leveling all the gems myself without too much hassle. The spendy stuff comes when you start looking at corrupted belts and amulets and such.

Okay clear! I am gonna buy the new staff now! And then the gems...

Okay guys got it! Take a look:) I hope now I am good?:) any more suggestions:)

"

Kelvynn wrote:

Mana is not an issue at all, even with lv 21 WO. Enchant your boots, they will give you all the mana you need.

A more advanced thing (as seen in my boots): Discipline - AA - Bonechill - Enlighten (I dropped Ancestral Call to make space for Enlighten). This way, when I need to use a Purity aura, I don't have to take out Bonechill. With Enlighten I no longer reserve 100% mana in that situation. Being able to keep Bonechill against the endgame bosses is very nice.

An even more advanced thing:

4 jewels with 1% mana res corruption are the same as 1 small mana res node (such as near CI). Only works with 4 because of the rounding.

Thanks for the tips! I hate the lab with a passion and boots with that mod are too pricey so I purchased this ring:



It has great mods for this build otherwise, only problem is that now my Spell Cascade is no longer triggering with Frost Bomb, ha ha! But wow I'm mowing down the mobs like butter now. Going to try the Enlighten gem which should help with mana issues as well.

"

Mighty_fist wrote:

Okay clear! I am gonna buy the new staff now! And then the gems...

Okay guys got it! Take a look:) I hope now I am good?:) any more suggestions:)

Looks good, I'd try to 5 link the clearing staff and add Controlled Destruction to the link. In my experience 5 links come around really fast just be sure quality is at 20%. The other staff is good, linking that one further can cause mana issues.

"

teknik1200 wrote:

On your boss staff (the one you have) set it up like this:

I'm not sure how important the cast speed is I switched from 10 to 9 without noticing much difference. The 18% intelligence is very important. Someone more knowledgeable than myself will probably chime in.

It's simple to add the sockets and 5l the staff, I've made a few of them already and sold them off via divination cards. I only intended to 5l my 6l staff but the 6l popped out in less than 15 fusings before I even saw a 5l. If I was looking for 6l I'm sure it would have been different :P

I've been leveling all the gems myself without too much hassle. The spendy stuff comes when you start looking at corrupted belts and amulets and such.

I use a 4link aswell, though i went with having Conc effect and Elemental Focus out of the links. Mostly cause i figured, i wanna have Winter Orb being able to chill enemies and have as much range as possible.


@Kelvynn regarding the mana and the aura's+enlighten.

I was running Discipline, Herald of Ice and a 2link Arctic Armor + Bonechill, and i never have any problems swapping Arctic Armor for Purity of Ice when doing Uber Elder and stuffs.
Reserved Mana goes from 90% to 95%. No need for Enlighten - unless you simply have too small a mana pool for a 5link like that.
As far as my gradeschool math tells me, Arctic Armor is 25% mana, Bonechill is 120% multiplier, so 20% of 25 that's like 5, so AA costs 30% with bonechill, so unless you are using a 4link and inadverdently linking Bonechill to like.. Herald of Ice(?) you shouldn't need to use enlighten with your aura's.

I think..?

Discipline 35%
Herald of Ice 25% (30% when linked with Bonechill)
Arctic Armor 25% (30% when linked with Bonechill)
Purity Aura 35%

35+30+30 and you are sitting at 95% reseverved normally and you go to 100% when using purity, if you've linked Bonechill to both AA and Herald.

It's real damn early here, sry if i'm ranting.
:-) Love the build <3<3

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?

Hi guys! Thank you very much all for the support! I would still like to ask some questions I hope you have patience to answer them. The thing is that I have been playing this game few leagues but since I don't play a lot and quite rare I NEVER killed Shaper/red Elder/Uber Atziri/Grandmasters/NEVER killed Catherina nor completed the whole Atlas. NEVER had more than 20 challenges completed. That is why I don't have a lot of currencies to have everything so here is my question. Could somebody help me decide what are the PRIORITIES for me to do for the build in order to be stronger and go deeper in the Altas? I am gonna write all possible options and you can just tell me which I should do first/second/third etc.

1. Make the flasks all of 20% quality and also needed affixes. Then which affixes?
2. Make all gems 20% quality.
3. Make some gems 21 level with 20% quality.
4. Change all my gear? (In case the gear is crap?)
5. Buy Might of the Meek and put it instead of the rare jewel.
6. Find better rare jewels?
7. Corrupt all my unique jewels.
8. Get good enchantments for my boots or other gear?
9. Link the staff for 5 link.
10. Link my body armor for 5 link and get 6 socket there as well for another gem.
11. Corruplt belt.
12. Corrupt amulet.
13. Change gems? (Such as blood rage instead of increased duration?)
14. Upgrade all Pantehons which are needed?
15. Get level 90 at least?
16. Other suggestions not mentioned?

Managed to hit 40/40 challenges last night!

The last challenge (with the Atlas Objectives) was quite a tedious one but with constant spamming of T16 maps (for Uber Elder farming) it become a bit easier it seems. From my experience additional objectives spawned faster when i was chaining T16 maps compared to chaining lower tier maps (additional objectives spawn "randomly" after completing in average 9-10 T16 maps).
Average number of Atlas objectives spawned was 7-8/day (this value include the mandatory 4 that spawn every day).

Now regarding the build some thoughts about the Occultist cold version of it when it comes to end game experience:

-With the introduction of the new veiled crafting mods this league, the build gain even more power then the previous version of it (%increased attributes, hybrid +Int and %quality, hybrid +maximum ES and +maximum life and so on).
With these new available crafting mods and with the additional ES available from Occultist Ascendancy i was able to reach some Int and ES values that i never thought i would reach at the start of the league: 2585 Intelligence and 18.850 ES at level 100 and i believe these values can be further increased to over 2600 Intelligence and over 19.000 ES with some gear improvements.

-This league i managed to level my first ever character to level 100 thanks to pure breach stones runs; yes it not cheap and some may say it is not "ethical" also but it was a "too good to refuse" option to get to 100 without being afraid of dying and loosing in 1 second hours and hours of hard gained exp. Some part of the currency spent on pure breach stone runs i got back by leveling Enlighten gems in swap Staff (from 12x Enlighten gems leveled to lv3 during breach runs i got lucky and managed to corrupt 4 of them to lv4 which brought me a nice return of investment).

-Uber Elder was never as easy as it was with this Occultist cold version of the build, it's first time for me when i was able to regularly farm it(killed up till now around 40 Uber Elders most of them deathless) and this because of a few important factors:
-insane ES value this build was able to reach.
-% increased ES recovery granted by Soul of Arakaali which made the ES leech values going higher than ever.
-permanent immunity to chill, freeze and stun.

-with this version of the build and with the values i was able to hit, all the Shaper Guardians(even with very rippy map mods) were just a walk in the park.

Just 1 example :
-max resistances + reduced curse effect + % increased damage Hydra and Phoenix done with Frostbite instead of Enfeeble, without Purities (of Ice or of Fire) and without specific flasks (Sapphire or Ruby) are melting in seconds without any close to death experience.

-also this league managed to kill 7 Auls, some of them around 530-550 depth with some bad mods, fights that would probably have been way harder on my previous fire version chars played with this build (chars that were also stacked with end game gear and with very high Int and ES values).

Now regarding some gem setup modifications i tried lately here are some interesting conclusions:

-with very high Int and ES, for everything except Uber Elder, i removed Blood Rage and Chaos golem from the CWDT setup and changed the Soul of Arakaali with Soul of Solaris(this helps with physical damage mitigation lost by removing the golem).

-i moved Frost Bomb and HoI to CWDT-IC setup and started to use Vortex+Bonechill in the following setup:
Vortex-Bonechill-Arcane Surge-Flame Dash.

This way i brought back Bonechill which was previous linked to AA but had to be removed to free a spot for Clarity (i use Watcher Eye's jewel with % of mana gained as extra ES while using Clarity)

The increase of damage output can be seen easy when fighting T16 Guardians (Shaper or Elder ones) and T16 multiple Syndicate spawns, spamming Vortexes under just melt them way faster then before.

Also with Vortex-Bonechill setup incursions become even easier to be done inside the time frame (those who have issues with clearing incursions in time just try self cast Vortex-Bonechill setup and also socket a Vaal Righthouse Fire in a gem slot and use it on arhitects and you will see how easier is to clear the incursions in the time frame)

For Uber Elder, Herald of Ice is switched with Purity of Ice (those who are advising to switch AA with PoI should think twice, HoI is almost useless in Uber Elder fight while AA helps a lot with mitigation of the Physical damage and there is physical damage in Uber Elder fight).

I kept the Blood rage + Chaos Golem setup together with Soul of Arakaali for Uber Elder fight since the increase in leech values is needed here if you want to tank all the crap that is happening and also because Vortex spamming during this fight is not quite feasible since you don't stay most of the time in melee range to benefit from DPS gain from Vortex spamming under the targets.

"

Mighty_fist wrote:

Hi guys! Thank you very much all for the support! I would still like to ask some questions I hope you have patience to answer them. The thing is that I have been playing this game few leagues but since I don't play a lot and quite rare I NEVER killed Shaper/red Elder/Uber Atziri/Grandmasters/NEVER killed Catherina nor completed the whole Atlas. NEVER had more than 20 challenges completed. That is why I don't have a lot of currencies to have everything so here is my question. Could somebody help me decide what are the PRIORITIES for me to do for the build in order to be stronger and go deeper in the Altas? I am gonna write all possible options and you can just tell me which I should do first/second/third etc.

1. Make the flasks all of 20% quality and also needed affixes. Then which affixes?
2. Make all gems 20% quality.
3. Make some gems 21 level with 20% quality.
4. Change all my gear? (In case the gear is crap?)
5. Buy Might of the Meek and put it instead of the rare jewel.
6. Find better rare jewels?
7. Corrupt all my unique jewels.
8. Get good enchantments for my boots or other gear?
9. Link the staff for 5 link.
10. Link my body armor for 5 link and get 6 socket there as well for another gem.
11. Corruplt belt.
12. Corrupt amulet.
13. Change gems? (Such as blood rage instead of increased duration?)
14. Upgrade all Pantehons which are needed?
15. Get level 90 at least?
16. Other suggestions not mentioned?

I was in your shoes 12 levels ago

1. Flasks is cheap, and suffixes can be done with beast crafting very easily. Just get a good prefix with alteration orbs, and beastcraft the suffix you need. With this build you don't need many suffixes : only staunching and warding are mandatory. You can even get flask to more than 20% quality with Hillock in Research.

2. For some of your gems (the expensive ones), you can level the gems to lvl20, and sold them with a gemcutter prism to get a q20% lvl1 gem. It's a lenghty process, but I did it (ex : for winter orb in the boss staff the gem level doesn't really matter). Look at gems with 15%+ quality, it is often cheaper to get that and use a few gemcutter prisms than buying a q20% gem. Some gems are really cheap (<10c), even with quality. Quality on your gems can make a really nice boost to your character's DPS.

3. Very random process, I'd say 1 in 4.

4. Gear looks ok for now at your level, upgrade it one piece at a time when currency

5. I would get a watcher's eye jewel before Might of the Meek, even if it is more expensive, it is a huge boost to our survivability.

6. You rare jewels look ok to me

7. I tried it and I had very poor results, even when doing a live search and corrupting 1c jewels when I could buy them fast enough. I just bought what I needed to get immune to silence, to corrupt blood (it was expensive on fertile mind but very cheap on brute force solution), to hinder, increased damage. Never more than a few chaos each.

8. I looked at the market for ES boots with the right enchant it is very underwhelming atm. I would put that low on your priority list if you can solve the mana problem with a mana flask or a ring with the right affix.

9. Huge boost to clear speed for a moderate price (150 fuse with the crafting bench)

10. not too expensive upgrade, but I would do the staff first.

11. Keep your belt as it is for now, corrupt it only if you have a spare. It will ruin it 25% of the time I think.

12. Same as 11

13. You don't really need blood rage for 95% of the game IMO. I'm playing without it for a long time and I'm dying maybe once every couple level.

14. Upgrade Lunaris or Solaris if you are playing without blood rage.

15. Yes ! I find it quite fast as the build is very durable. Not dying means not losing xp.

16.

I am sure other people with more experience than me have more things to say (maybe I'm even wrong on some topics). But I feel that you should do number 9 asap, then go or number 1, 10, and 5 if you have the currency. Number 2 can also become expensive, but can be done one gem at a time. Getting to level 90+ should happen just by playing the game !

"

Tides5 wrote:

@Kelvynn regarding the mana and the aura's+enlighten.

I was running Discipline, Herald of Ice and a 2link Arctic Armor + Bonechill, and i never have any problems swapping Arctic Armor for Purity of Ice when doing Uber Elder and stuffs.
Reserved Mana goes from 90% to 95%. No need for Enlighten - unless you simply have too small a mana pool for a 5link like that.
As far as my gradeschool math tells me, Arctic Armor is 25% mana, Bonechill is 120% multiplier, so 20% of 25 that's like 5, so AA costs 30% with bonechill, so unless you are using a 4link and inadverdently linking Bonechill to like.. Herald of Ice(?) you shouldn't need to use enlighten with your aura's.

I think..?

Discipline 35%
Herald of Ice 25% (30% when linked with Bonechill)
Arctic Armor 25% (30% when linked with Bonechill)
Purity Aura 35%

35+30+30 and you are sitting at 95% reseverved normally and you go to 100% when using purity, if you've linked Bonechill to both AA and Herald.

It's real damn early here, sry if i'm ranting.
:-) Love the build <3<3

Discipline + AA linked to Bonechill + Purity of Ice can't be used without Enlighten since you get to 100% mana reservation.

Discipline + AA + Purity of Ice reserve 95% of your mana leaving you with 5% mana unreserved- this is doable, i am using this togheter with Clarity which puts me to 3% unreserved mana (81 mana free) in Uber Elder fight which is ok since Winter Orb is only in a 3-link setup in bosses stuff and the mana regeneration covers the casting cost.

Discipline + Herald of Ice + Purity of Ice reserve also 95% of your mana leaving you with 5% mana unreserved - this is doable also but never used this setup, maybe good for some high level depth Delve where areas have %increased cold damage.