[3.10] Winter Orb League Starter Build

HI JeansJoe, Thank you for your build. I really like it. I have a question that is the Convert cold to fire still viable for the 3.9 since I got the scepter add fire to spell. Just want to confirm before I use it.

And is the tree up-to-date now?

I'm running this as my starter build this league in SSF SC. I'm slow af, though, only at white maps - working on my second watchstone. This is also my first League where I've made it to the endgame content. Had a Summoner back in Betrayal, but stopped in the middle of Act 5, so I'm also still fairly new.

I noted you updated the build to indicate that it is currently not capable of finishing League content (Sirus/Elder). While reading up on builds for this League, I would run across builds that touted to be good Delve builds, but I'm not familiar enough with the game to know what constitutes a good Delve build. Would your Winter Orb build qualify?

I really like the Delve content, but haven't really done too much with it yet. Was hoping I could focus this character on Delving while I level a Summoner for endgame content (found a Baron and a couple other Summoner items while leveling this one). Should be able to go a little quicker, too.

Hey, thanks for the build. This is the first build I used in POE and I'm having a lot of fun being able to experience late game content for the first time!

I am confused as to why the 6th skill gem on carcass jack is controlled destruction, when there is a lot of invested critical strike chance and multiplier.

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I am confused as to why the 6th skill gem on carcass jack is controlled destruction, when there is a lot of invested critical strike chance and multiplier.

I had that question at first, too. I assumed Controlled Destruction reduced your crit chance to 0. However, best as I can tell (still a noob, myself, though), Controlled Destruction reduces base crit chance by 100%, not total crit chance. So the heavy investment in critical strike chance helps make up for the loss in crit chance from Controlled Destruction.

Consider the following situation:
Base crit chance: 5%
Increased crit chance: 300%

Without Controlled Destruction, your crit chance would simply be increased by 300%, up to 15% (0.05 * 3 = 0.15).

With Controlled Destruction, your crit chance would be 10% ([0.05 * 3] - [0.05 * 1]).

Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

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svplank wrote:

"

I am confused as to why the 6th skill gem on carcass jack is controlled destruction, when there is a lot of invested critical strike chance and multiplier.

I had that question at first, too. I assumed Controlled Destruction reduced your crit chance to 0. However, best as I can tell (still a noob, myself, though), Controlled Destruction reduces base crit chance by 100%, not total crit chance. So the heavy investment in critical strike chance helps make up for the loss in crit chance from Controlled Destruction.

Consider the following situation:
Base crit chance: 5%
Increased crit chance: 300%

Without Controlled Destruction, your crit chance would simply be increased by 300%, up to 15% (0.05 * 3 = 0.15).

With Controlled Destruction, your crit chance would be 10% ([0.05 * 3] - [0.05 * 1]).

Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

edit:
I Looked it up in Path of building.
In PoB my current chance to score a critical strike is 75% with Flask and 50% without Flask.

I get
+ 833% From all Sources like Items, Tree, basecrit, Golems, Auras
- 100% from Controlled Destruction
= 733%

So Controlled Destruction doesn't rob you of crits alltogether - it just lowers their chance at the trade of more spell damage.

The wiki has the actual math formulas for it and PoB applies those. So you are still able to crit but just a little less often. But for me being at 50% or 75% with flask this is a lot of chances to crit. With 3 Projectiles shooting out at least one maybe two will be a crit.


If you click on the Controlled Destruction gem in PoB it shows you alteratives for it.
The green ones give you higher damage, the red one lower.
an awakened added cold damage would be the best one to use according to PoB.
(awakened) Elemental Focus is listed high - but I would not recommend it because it robs you of Elemental Ailments - meaning Chill/Freeze
Awakened added chaos damage might be an option but I would rather use cold damage for chill/freeze effects
Awakened Cold Penetration is an option - especially for bosses
Concentrated Effect is NOT an option. Using LMP instead of GMP already is a downsize to area damage. using conc effect just makes the area the projectiles hit smaller and therefor actually lowers your chance to hit. GMP lowers chance to hit single target because the first als last projectile will mostly shoot short/far of a single target.

So apart from Awakened Added Cold Damage I see no other gem that can actually be better as a 6th.

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svplank wrote:

I noted you updated the build to indicate that it is currently not capable of finishing League content (Sirus/Elder). While reading up on builds for this League, I would run across builds that touted to be good Delve builds, but I'm not familiar enough with the game to know what constitutes a good Delve build. Would your Winter Orb build qualify?

I really like the Delve content, but haven't really done too much with it yet. Was hoping I could focus this character on Delving while I level a Summoner for endgame content (found a Baron and a couple other Summoner items while leveling this one). Should be able to go a little quicker, too.

Summoner definitely brings the damage for the Bosses I'd say.
For Delve you should look at something like a CoC Whirlwind build or a trapper/miner I'd say. I am currently around 200 delve and I don't dare go much further down. The incoming damage at this point is just too much for the lifepool.
The strength of this build is definitely with farming maps at the moment. Soe metamorphs are somehow 10 times stronger than others and will oneshot me. others with scary mods are almost no problem.
But keep in mind that I have Mark of the Shaper equipped - which can somehow be met by really well rolled rare rings but not exactly. So for SSF this is a little harder to achieve.

"

shinhajoon wrote:

HI JeansJoe, Thank you for your build. I really like it. I have a question that is the Convert cold to fire still viable for the 3.9 since I got the scepter add fire to spell. Just want to confirm before I use it.

And is the tree up-to-date now?

yes - the tree is now what I am currently using.
Cold to Fire and the Triple Herald are not effective any more. The changes to resistances on enemies are just too strong now. Previously it was nice to be able to shock, burn and chill enemies and profit from all of those effects. Now there is this huge threshold of cold resistance that you have to penetrate to actually do some damage. That is why I dropped the other two heralds and use the Curse now.
Actually having any other damage than Cold on your gear is not helping at all.

With one exception: added fire damage to burning enemies and the likes.
For example my Elder ring has added Fire damage to burning enemies. My Flame Dash applies burning with burning ground. Burning is not ignite and it does not need to penetrate a fire resistance. It is just flat added to the target as long as it is burning.

Having Fire damage to spells on a weapon applies this damage to the HIT your Spell does. For hits the damage has to penetrate the resistance first. So you actually deal very little fire damage with this.


Example:

Mark of the Shaper gives me 21-63 Lightning Damage = 42 average
Winter Orb has 220-333 Cold Damage = 276 average
I assume you can just do the average like (min+max)/2
So Frost damage = 6,6 * lightining damage

Lightning gets 212% increase from tree
Cold gets 292% increase from tree - about the same

Effectively Lightning does 884 damage
Cold does 34.781

if you divide that then you have Cold damage 40times as high as Lightning damage - even tho Lightning gets almost as much damage as Cold does from Tree and gear!
While the base damage is 1:6,6 the actual damage is 1:39,3

This is because of cold penetration being in effect. while lightning damage is applied with a factor of 1 cold damage is applied with 1,74
this is on regular enemies with 50% resistance

On Shaperbosses you have
0.5 for lightning and
0.91 for cold damage
(0.7 for chaos damage)


The golems are an easy pick at the moment, they give us some damage boost without investing anything into gear or mana pool. They may not be the best solution but they are a nice one. especially since they tank quite a bit of attacks - which in return means more time to channel winter orb.


"as extra chaos damage" is still a good roll. because the chaos resist for bosses is lower than the elemental resist so it is easier to apply that.

Here is one solution that works for end-game bosses. Quite high DPS (1 mil) with 12k effective life. Mine has about 30-40 exalts invested, but I only did that to upgrade it slightly. You can easily get to 10k eff. life and 800k dps with minimum investment.

I actually made it from lvl 94 to 95 without dying once to random mobs and metamorphs with an aggressive play style (when properly selected and by avoiding chaos ones).

https://pastebin.com/kPsmnMK1
In socket two we have the Glorious Vanity Doryani gem which is not supported in PoB. That is one of our main ES sources and why we can get to 12k by scaling life. We could get to 13+K by changing rings, but that's overkill I think.


Proof that it works well:
https://ibb.co/311H6j2

Please remember that with Winter Orb, your DPS is constant. You don't just stop and shoot at bosses every once in a while. GMP also reduces DPS a lot but in reality increases it because more than 1 projectile will hit, especially with bosses. The build works well if you like this skill.

How do you run zeal + hearald + frostbite/blasphemy. I cant run all 3 at the same time, too much mana reserved?

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Ddog589 wrote:

How do you run zeal + hearald + frostbite/blasphemy. I cant run all 3 at the same time, too much mana reserved?

Blasphemy only works with which removes the reserved mana cost completely here.
Herald takes 19% because of ascendancy
Zealotry 50%
and Clarity takes 190 mana at level 13.

So the simple answer is:
run Herald + Zealotry + Clarity leveled up to level 10-ish. You want around 200 mana unreserved to be able to cast without delays. Clarity is a huge Quality of Life thing.

Blasphemy only with the neck.
If you don't have the neck use a Curse on hit setup or use manual curse for bosses only. A ring with "Curse enemies with level 5 Frostbite on hit" is an option if you don't use the Shapers Mark setup yet - however a level 5 Frostbite is a lot less powerful than a level 20/20

question... What is the purpose of the Vaal Righteous Fire in this build? The damage is relatively low as it's not cold (unless I'm missing something). It means it takes longer for your Vaal Cold Snap to gain souls. And sacrificing life and energy shield makes a less-than-reliable "oh shit" skill. I'm sure I'm missing something somewhere, I just can't see what.

Related inquiry: is it something that you only use in end-game? It seems like having it in for leveling is not super beneficial

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KMSSR wrote:

question... What is the purpose of the Vaal Righteous Fire in this build? The damage is relatively low as it's not cold (unless I'm missing something). It means it takes longer for your Vaal Cold Snap to gain souls. And sacrificing life and energy shield makes a less-than-reliable "oh shit" skill. I'm sure I'm missing something somewhere, I just can't see what.

Related inquiry: is it something that you only use in end-game? It seems like having it in for leveling is not super beneficial

Vaal Righteous Fire adds 28% more spell damage while active, the skill isn't meant to be a damage dealer itself, rather a DPS boost for bosses and such. Only use it when you feel your DPS is falling a bit short for bosses.

Hope to have helped!

Edit: Wrong data, now the spell damage is correct.