[3.5] Winter Orb CwC Ice Spear | MoM | Elementalist | Leaguestarter

Updates

23/12/18 - Since people keep asking me stuff ingame instead of reading the thread I will from now on ignore all questions from direct messages, sorry. Pretty sure everything has been said in this thread, just read through it.
13/12/18 - Added Flask and Jewel sections
12/12/18 - Included leveling skilltrees in the Skilltree section
12/12/18 - Added Shaper video

Quickstart

https://pastebin.com/2GphHXyF

Pros
- Decent mix of clear speed and bossing capability
- Can start on a very small budget and be upgraded as much as you feel like
- HOI shatters are always fun
- Feels decently tanky for a caster

Cons
- Can not run elemental reflect mods
- No leech mods can be sketchy on difficult maps
- No ZoomZoom build (no shield charge/whirling blades/QOTF)

Videos

Shaper Full Run
Hydra Full Run
Chimera Full Run (sorry for the trade, need every chaos this early in the league)
Red Elder Boss Fight

Will try to add more later!


Topics

Introduction
Hello, this is my first ever build guide, so any feedback is highly appreciated. Ever since I'd seen the Winter Orb and Ice Spear reveals, I knew I wanted to play a CwC version of this as my league starter. Luckily for me, it turned out to be actually quite good! So I wanted to share this build for people who might be interested.


Concept
Run around and re-cast Winter Orb for clear and make use of the added Ice Spear DPS to kill bosses. Pretty straight forward really. However I wanted to also make the build somewhat tanky, which often struck me as a problem when playing Elementalist. So I decided to go with MoM and stack some additional defenses on top. Use an Arctic Breath - Bonechill Support totem to increase DPS in long fights and pop Vaal Righteous Fire and Vaal Clarity when needed. Frost Bomb is another 25% cold penetration to throw onto bosses. Flame Dashing around not only makes for a nice dodge but also provides us with Arcane Surge.


Offense
Winter Orb and Herald of Ice take care of any trash clear you might need, up to T16s. Combined with Ice Spear it also really dishes out quite some respectable single target DPS, even with mediocre gear.


Defense
Freeze and chill everything. Additionaly we make use of Warlord's Mark to leech and get endurance charges to provide additional physical damage reduction and improved Immortal Call duration.






Gear

Weapon
You want a shaped Eclipse Staff with Power Charge on Critical and all the damage multipliers you can get. The holy grail would be to get a staff with PCoC as well as Cast While Channeling, so you could slot in another Gem into your setup. If you happen to get this, you can slot in Added Cold Damage/Cold Penetration or just Faster Casting for quicker orb stacking if you don't care about more DPS.

Until you can get a decent staff you can easily use Divinarius and a generic ES shield with good damage mods.


BodyArmor
Loreweave is hands down the best option here. I am going to switch ASAP to one as well. You can use pretty much whatever in the meantime. If you do not have a staff yet a +1 Tabula or Skin of the Loyal will be a nice damage boost.


Ring
You need one elder ring with "Curse enemies with level 8/12 Warlord's Mark on Hit". This is a great option for tankiness and sustain. Until you have or can afford one of these, you can use a generic ring with other stats and slot "Curse on Hit" and "Warlord's Mark" into your Herald of Ice-Setup. Keep in mind this will only work on trash though and will not let you leech vs. Bosses, so get this ring ASAP.

You can substitute this with the unique Mark of Submission if you just can not get a rare elder ring in the beginning.


Other
The rest of the gear and jewels is just to fill stats in this order:

Life
Resist
Crit Multi
Cast Speed
Flat Spell Cold Damage
Generic Spell/Cold Damage
Crit Chance

I would also highly recommend to put "n% of damage taken gained as mana over 4 seconds when hit" on one piece of jewelry. Feels really good in a MoM setup, but that's just my opinion.

A great pick if you do not need resists on helmet is Starkonja's Head with a Winter Orb Enchant.


Jewels

Try go get as much crit multi as possible on your jewels. Here is a trade link for what I recommend searching for:

https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Betrayal/9kB8E8sK


Flasks

Diamond Flask
Seething Divine Life Flask
Quicksilver Flask

Make sure to get Warding, Staunching and Heat as Suffixes. Warding must be on Diamond or Quicksilver. My favorite affix is "Experimenter's", but feel free to change them to your liking.

The Wise Oak
Dying Sun

If you don't feel like using Wise Oak or can't get Dying Sun yet, a good old Atziri's Promise is also a very nice pick. Alternatively just pick any utility flask of your liking when not using Dying Sun.

Make sure that Cold Resistance is your highest to take full effect of Wise Oak. Having all 3 Resistances balanced is the best case, but very hard/annoying to achieve.


CurrentGear




Gems

Winter Orb - Cast While Channeling - Ice Spear - Greater Multiple Projectiles - Hypothermia - Controlled Destruction

Spell Totem Support - Arctic Breath - Bonechill Support - Faster Casting

Frost Bomb - Vaal Righteous Fire - Vaal Clarity - Increased Duration

Flame Dash - Faster Casting - Arcane Surge (LVL 7)

Cast When Damage Taken (LVL 7) - Immortal Call (LVL 9) - Summon Ice Golem (LVL 9)

Herald of Ice - Onslaught - Curse on Hit - Warlord's Mark

You can drop Curse on Hit and Warlord's Mark as soon as you get a ring that curses enemies on hit with it (refer to gear section if needed).


Misc

Ascendanices

1. Pendulum of Destruction
2. Shaper of Desolation
3. Beacon of Ruin
4. Mastermind of Discord

Note: You can swap Mastermind of Discord for Paragon of Calamity if you just want reflect immunity and some extra leech while working on atlas progression. Later on Mastermind of Discord is a really juicy damage buff though, so I'd recommend swapping back to it, at least for bossing.


Pantheon

Soul of Lunaris
Soul of Shakari


Bandits

Help Alira


Leveling

You can use pretty much whatever you like. As an example I went with this:

LVL1-12: Freeze Pulse - Added Cold Damage - Added Lightning Damage
LVL12-28: Ice Nova - Added Cold Damage - Added Lightning Damage - Controlled Destruction
LVL28: Winter Orb - Lesser Multiple Projectiles - Added Cold Damage - Controlled Destruction
LVL31: Replace Added Cold Damage with Hypothermia
LVL38: Replace Lesser Multiple Projectiles with Greater Multiple Projectiles

You can then slot in Cast While Channeling and Ice Spear as soon as you get a tabula / other 6link, or right away if you already have one. It is in my opinion very pleasant to level with.

Node-Progression:
Arcanist's Dominion
Heart and Soul
Heart of Ice
Cruel Preparation
Breath of Rime
Quick Recovery
Light of Dinivity
Holy Dominion
Deep Thoughts
Mind over Matter
Inspiration
Constitution
Potency of Will
Deep Wisdom
Coldhearted Calculation
Trickery
Blood Siphon
Written in Blood
Infused
Doom Cast
Nullification
Annihilation
Exceptional Performance


Feel free to ask questions (only directly in this thread please), I'll try to get back to you.
Last edited by XenoPOE on Dec 29, 2018, 6:19:06 AM
Last bumped on Feb 9, 2019, 11:57:36 AM
Looks good, will try it out! :-)
Große deutsche Community mit TS, Forum und Infos gesucht? -> http://www.exiled.eu/
Do you think you can provide a leveling tree breakdown in POB?

Thanks for this build, looking forward to play with it after I'm completely bored with totems...( about 70% bored lol )

Nice one I will try it out as soon I'll get some currency. Just curious why no one is recommending Mark of Submission as a substitute for elder rings with warlords mark on hit?
Nice guide :) Keep it up
Going to give this a try for league
"
Nice one I will try it out as soon I'll get some currency. Just curious why no one is recommending Mark of Submission as a substitute for elder rings with warlords mark on hit?

Fair point, I will add that and thanks.

"
theeze wrote:
Do you think you can provide a leveling tree breakdown in POB?

The leveling section has a list of notables I recommend to get in that order. :)

I also included leveling skilltree drafts in the Skilltree section.
Last edited by XenoPOE on Dec 12, 2018, 9:55:01 AM
This build is just insane for leveling! I've never had such a great time playing PoE for five years now :) Ok so here is my inventory for leveling:

Heartbreaker is forgotten unique wich is realy great for free culling strike and nice spell dmg. I was using this until level 55...

As for now I'm having fun with this build it has all I need nice defence and realy enjoyable playstyle. Thanks for the build and I'm starting saving for a good staff.
I'm trying to compare similar builds on POE.ninja and I see in the beginning of the tree you take cast speed as opposed to spell damage to what I see most go for, any reason for this?

I understand Winter Orb is a channeling skill, but is it really that significant over Spell Damage nodes? I've never used winter orb so I don't know the feel of the skill, I'm just curious.

"
theeze wrote:
I'm trying to compare similar builds on POE.ninja and I see in the beginning of the tree you take cast speed as opposed to spell damage to what I see most go for, any reason for this?

I understand Winter Orb is a channeling skill, but is it really that significant over Spell Damage nodes? I've never used winter orb so I don't know the feel of the skill, I'm just curious.


Probably it's all about frequency of casting orbs while you are chenneling and while youre off channeling that's why in this build we are also stacking the skill duration. Winter orb is a bit OP in this case you will literaly kill all white mobs instantly just runing around.
Last edited by intermission140 on Dec 12, 2018, 5:32:07 PM
Thanks for share! I'll vive a try this afternoon, atm im witch arc self-cast buid.

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