[3.6] Low Budget - 10 Curse Winter Orb CI Occultist - 6.8 mil Shaper DPS. VIDEO BUILD GUIDE

Description:


The idea for the build is based around the new Vixen's Entrapment gloves. They allow you to cast 5 curses with one button press. Combine this with Doedre's skin, which can apply 6 curses on an instant cast effigy (kind of like an instant totem with blasphemy curses) and it's possible to have 11 curses on a pack of enemies in an instant. We instead opt for 10 curses, as only 10 of them provide any real benefit, and getting an additional curse would use an item slot.

Taking Occultist gives us the best ES nodes in the game, and gives us HUGE dps with Malediction. Having 10 curses on the enemies means we get 80% of our elemental damage as chaos. Then by converting 90% of our cold to fire, that malediction buff is based on 190% of our damage, not just 100%.

VIDEO BUILD GUIDE:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eD4bxy_PQ_I&feature=youtu.be

PATH OF BUILDING:
https://pastebin.com/3rRNDkSE
(Added extra curses to flasks and jewels because POB also doesn't understand the "socketed curses bypass curse limit." The rare gear is from Mathil's winter orb, so it's realistic, but expensive. We do not use the aspect of the spider or warlords mark on hit from the ring and amulet, so you don't need those, which makes the jewely WAY cheaper. There is a "budget" skill tree that's almost as good, but doesn't take as many jewel slots, since the jewels are quite expensive.)

SKILL TREE:
Standard Version with Jewel Slots: http://poeurl.com/ckRL
Budget Tree: http://poeurl.com/ckRM
LVL 50 Leveling Tree: http://poeurl.com/ckRP


SKILLS:

WINTER ORB
Winter Orb is our primary skill. We choose it because it can continue to do damage while we are casting curses, making it a better choice than other self-cast skills that will output no damage while you are casting. Here's our DPS with fully buffed shaper DPS, with flasks, charges, and malediction buff. (With vaal righteous fire it's 1.5 mil).


CWC ICE SPEAR
When you need to take down tough bosses, you can add CWC Ice Spear to your winter orb, and get some huge DPS. (With vaal righteous fire it's 8+ mil shaper dps)



GEAR AND GEMS:
The build uses several uniques. 3 days into the league and they are all very cheap. You can buy the whole set for less than 20c.

VIXEN'S ENTRAPMENT
https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Vixen%27s_Entrapment
This is new new unique set of gloves that let's you apply multiple curses easily, gives you capped spell damage leeched as ES, and also let's you apply an extra curse.



DOEDRE'S SKIN
https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Doedre%27s_Skin
This chest piece grants you "Doedre's Effigy" skill. It was recently buffed so that the Effigy (basically a blasphemy curse totem) is now instant cast, so it will no take any time to put down and won't interrupt your gameplay. It also has 3 chargers on a .5 second cooldown, so you can easily cover an entire screen with curses. Most importantly, these curses bypass the enemies curse limit. Allowing us to apply 10 curses, since we have 1 by default, 1 from vixens entrapment, and 2 from the skill tree.



DOEDRE'S SCORN
https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Doedre%27s_Scorn
This helm gives us up to 20% increased damage for each curse on the enemy. Obviously, this provides tons of damage in our 10 curse build.



REALM ENDER
https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Realm_Ender
Since we are using our chest for 6 curses, it's a good choice to use a 2h staff in this build. And we're in luck because the perfect staff does exist. Realm Ender gives us a lvl 5 cold to fire, which is huge. It makes the staff an effective 7 link, and helps us abuse the Malediction chaos buff. It also gives +3 to our winter orb and our ice spear, letting us run around with lvl 24 spell gems.


If you want the really big DPS, which you won't need 99% of the time, take out faster casting, conc, and infused channeling, and throw in CWC, Ice Spear and Controlled Destruction.

PYRE
https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Pyre
The Pyre ring converts 40% of our cold to fire, allowing us to reach 90% conversion. This allows the 8% chaos from malediction to be based of 190% of our damage, rather than 100%. Huge damage boost.

BOOTS
We use rare boots with ES, resists, movespeed. The links here are up to you. You can run Zealoty for damage. You can run arctic armour and herald of ash for balance. Or you can run grace for an additional defensive layer. The blood rage setup is to proc ES recovery from soul of arakali, but you could also throw a vaal righteous fire in here.




WILL THIS BE ANY GOOD? UNBUFFED DPS?
The biggest critiques of the build are:

Q: Will it be clunky to get 10 curses on enemies?

A: No. Winter orb will continue to deal damage while we curse. We have lots of cast speed, faster casting gem, and a duration cluster, so our stacks will be easy to max. We have very fast curse cast speed, and we cast 4 curses at once (plus like 150% curse duration) and Doedre's Skin is really easy to use and instant cast, so it won't interrupt our flow of play.

Essentially, you just push your curse and your effigy at the same time. Boom, 10 curses in .25 seconds, meanwhile winter orb continues to deal damage.


Q: Won't you only have big DPS while mapping but not on bosses, because the malediction bonus chaos won't be up on single targets like Shaper?

A: This build does get huge amounts of damage from the malediction chaos buff, however, it still does VERY juicy damage even if you have no extra chaos.


NOTE: THESE DPS NUMBERS ARE FROM A PREVIOUS POB PATCH WHICH DID NOT INCLUDE CAST SPEED IN WINTER ORB DPS CALCULATIONS. WINTER ORB NOW READS MUCH HIGHER NUMBERS, BUT I'M LEAVING THIS UP BECAUSE MANY PEOPLE HAVE SEEN MATHIL'S BUILD, AND THIS PROVIDES A NICE COMPARISON TO HELP SHOWCASE THE STRENGTH OF THE BUILD.
So let's do a little test. Let's turn off our power and frenzy charges (these come from poachers and assassins mark) and let's turn off the extra chaos from malediction. Now we can see what our DPS will really look like vs single target bosses with no mobs.

NO MALEDICTION, NO CHARGES, NO VAAL RIGHTEOUS FIRE, FLASKS ON:
Winter orb: 285k DPS
Ice Spear: 2.58 mil DPS

For some comparison, Mathil's 3.5 Winter Orb build had under the same conditions:
Winter Orb: 215k DPS
Ice Spear: 3.0 mil DPS

So even with no charges and no malediction buff, our damage is very high, and when we do have multiple enemies to kill, our damage is SIGNIFICANTLY higher. Bring a writhing jar for 4 seconds of super juicy DPS with Vaal righteous fire.

VIDEOS:
I'm still gearing up and completing atlas. So I don't have any t15 or t16 to show yet. I've only gotten up to T13. No real problems so far. Still on a 5 link, and under 1 ex of gear.

T15 - Defiled Cathedral
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Lv-xvpU9y8

T13 - Twinned Gardens
https://youtu.be/ucZeTSS5iO8

T12 - Quick look at some single target with some crappy gear. Reef boss.
https://youtu.be/mqDW1NsM6c8

OTHER POTENTIAL USES:
This 10 curse archetype can be used with many different builds. You don't have to play winter orb. I thought I would share a few more ideas, in case anyone wants to try something unique...

Divine Ire appears to be pretty good. It converts 50 phys to lightning, so with phys to lightning gem you're at 100% and you can then wear two call of the brotherhood rings to convert most of that lightning to cold. This would be very good at abusing the malediction chaos damage. Though, I chose winter orb because it's so smooth with cursing. Divine Ire will require more play skill.

Along those lines, any spell that does some damage conversion for you should be pretty good. Glacial cascade, wave of conviction, etc.

Storm Brand is another good choice. 2x call of the brotherhood for damage conversion.

LEVELING TIPS:

I used freezing pulse early on, and then used incinerate until act 9. You can use Winter Orb earlier, but having it linked to GMP is pretty much mandatory… it sucks without it.

I suggest having a 4 link before using Winter Orb, and also taking the skill effect duration cluster too.

Level with hybrid ES and life. Prioritize life first, and take the juciest life nodes near your pathing. Don't take energy shield leech too early, as it won't do much until you're hitting harder… around lvl 35 or 40.

When you get blasphemy, run warlords mark. Now you will have ES and Life leech, and you'll be tankier.

Get wicked ward after normal lab… the ES recharge is incredibly useful.

You can level with any spell really, but try to use something that does area damage, as the aoe clusters give nice damage. Take the channeling cluster near templar if you level with a channeling skill.

That's basically it. The curse portion of the build doesn't really come in to play until you have malediction. So level up to 68 or so on rare gear. Then do merc lab for malediction. After that you're ready to start acquiring the unique items and feeling the power of the build. It's ok to stay hybrid for quite a while, since you have ES and life leech. I'm 71 and haven't gone CI yet.

some tips for leveling ?

Blade Vortex at LVL 12 is probably still strong in spite of the nerf. Freezing pulse with the recent buffs should be strong. Really, any spell will work. You're not tied to any particular element or play style early on. EK might be great for leveling now.

To avoid spending a lot of respec points to go CI, I suggest taking Wicked Ward and Vile bastion from your first 2 lab runs, and leveling hybrid.

Additionally, Zizarin has this pob (https://pastebin.com/CveKpksg) with some leveling skill setups for playing an elementalist winter orb, and it can be useful as a reference for early levely gem links.

Hey, I'm following this build. Have a noob question, why do you have like 7 skills on the gloves listed?

Proj Weakness
Frostbite
Despair
POL
Anger
hearald of Ash
Artic Armour


Should you have 4 curses there? Thanks

They are not all active. I just have a few extra gem slots in the gear, so I was trying to just playing aroud with some mana reservation gems. The gloves just need to contain 3 of our curses.

Thanks for the build. Surprised how fluid it feels.

Anyone have a short video of the game play? I'm really interested in this build but want to make sure its a style I like before investing

How is it going now you have some of the gear and its a few days in?

It's going well. I'm lvl 79. All of the gear in the build is very affordable. I think you can grab all the uniques combined for under 20c, and in a week or two, I expect most of the items to be like 2c.

I highly recommend taking Malediction from merciless lab, and not waiting until uber lab as I had originally intended, because Malediction really makes the build come alive. All of the uniques are basically reliant on Malediction to work. Once I got it, the build really started blowing stuff up. Get a Doedre's skin and Doedre's scorn ASAP after you have malediction. Roll at least 5 sockets in the Doedre's skin, and throw in your curses. You'll be feeling very solid at the point.

Right now I'm on a 4 link winter orb, and I have all the gear except a Pyre. My rares are just trash I found, so my gear is mostly shit. But I've done up to tier 8 alched maps, as that's the highest map drop I've had. So right now I'm mostly being slowed down by lack of currency.

I'm still hybrid at this point, because I have warlord's mark in my chest, so I'm able to leech life and ES, and maintain both pools pretty well. So it seems a little to silly to dump the life now. I'll probably stay hybrid till after uber lab.