[3.8 Video Guide] Beginner Friendly: Winter Orb Inquisitor [Uber Elder & Fast]

This thread goes through all the details of the build, for gameplay & TLDR guide version check out: Winter Orb Build Guide Video

If you have any questions you can always come to my twitch stream to get them answered or just to enjoy the stream: Ghazzy's Livestreaming Channel

BIG NOTE:
Since some are missing the fact that the original idea to this build is from a Chinese player who posted his version on Reddit I have now moved this post to the very top and it's also the very first thing being pointed out in the video. Me & a friend tweaked the build to be in our opinion more optimal and created a full blown build guide out of it which did not exist when this was made.

Path of Building Link for the guide: https://pastebin.com/iFuQV8xV
Simply go to "Import/Export Build" > Click the "Import from Pastebin" paste the link in there, and then click "Import"


Trickster Version: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2485094
Elementalist Version: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2270586

NOTE:
The DMG calculations in PoB seems to be extremely off and only count for the average hit dmg of 1 projectile, despite the fact that the explosions from each projectile is able to shotgun. So with this build you can take your DPS and multiply it with 7 to see the actual DPS output of your Winter Orb.


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Is this build for you?

1. If you are looking for a Winter Orb build that has good enough single target damage for the end-game!

2. A build capable of competing in the clear speed meta.

3. Boss kill potential despite being designed as a clear speed build.

4. A cheap yet very effective clear speed build.

5. If you prefer a build guide that has a video linked to it.

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How the build functions:

You level up the build generally by not using Winter Orb itself, you can read the leveling tips further down in this guide.

Winter Orb is a channeling ability that builds up stages up to 10 (12 with helmet enchant from uber lab), that then decays over a duration. The higher the stack is the more frequent your orb you've created over your head will shoot projectiles that then explodes on the ground in an AoE based damage area. This AoE damage shotguns, which means that each projectile can hit the same target, this is why we use weapons like Beltimber. This makes the build function very similarly to a Blade Vortex build where you charge up the ability, then you move through the map whilst your ability kills everything to then only stop briefly to recharge a few stages of your ability.

A lot of people have complained about the lack of single target Winter Orb has, so I've designed this build to sort that issue this way:

The Winter Orb is designed to be our generic clearing ability which also helps Ice Spear via Combustion as well as itself.

So for single target we are using an Unleash - Ice Spear combination that looks like this:

- Ice Spear, Unleash, Controlled Destruction, Cold to Fire, Elemental Focus, Added Cold


This allows Winter Orb to drop enemies fire resistance on enemies and you only use Ice Spear for harder enemies and/or bosses which completely destroys them!

The core design of this build is to simply explode enemies with Herald of Ash using Winter Orb and then delete bosses in no time at all with the Unleash Ice Spear.

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Build Enabling Items:

The only truly enabling item would be the Beltimber as this makes you able to ignore using GMP support gem in your Winter Orb setup as well as scales your Ice Spear single target significantly. Before you can afford the item you simply want any weapons that would scale Elemental, Spell, Cold or Projectile damage.

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Defence & Utility

The build is designed to explode everything it comes near and on top of this it has well over 5000 eHP + Acrobatics & Phase Acrobatics which makes it a very suitable beginner friendly build.

The utility toolkit comes in the form of the following:
Vaal Righteous Fire, this is used as an extra damage boost for bosses or tougher enemies such as the Immortal Syndicate members!

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Pantheon Choices:

Pantheon List

Major God:

- Soul of Lunaris
Basically just helps with avoiding some projectile damage as well as chaining projectiles from our golem to us.

OR

- Soul of the Brine King
This is used to avoid getting chain stunned, however, we should always have active stages of Winter Orb so this shouldn't be needed. I prefer Lunaris myself.

Minor God:

- Soul of Shakari
Reduces chaos damage taken and if you upgrade it you're immune to poison

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Skill-gems & Setups:

Ice Spear:

- Ice Spear, Unleash, Controlled Destruction, Cold to Fire, Elemental Focus, Added Cold

Note:
Unleash is not shown in PoB but it will repeat the DPS displayed 3 times more with slightly less dmg (26%) making the single target DPS insane with the click of 1 button every 2-3 seconds. Do keep in mind that you need to stay a bit back so the projectiles reaches the second form as well as aiming the mouse as far away as possible to avoid spreading the projectiles. Also note that faster projectiles modifiers are bad as the second form won't happen as early which means you want 0% quality on your gem.

If you decide to use the higher budget items such as Yoke of Suffering, it is important to make sure Ice Spear can shock enemies, at which point Elemental Focus is replaced and Added Cold will take its place. If you then add another socket to the links it would be Slower Projectiles.

Winter Orb:

- Winter Orb, Increased Duration, Combustion, Infused Channeling

Note:
Before you get yourself a Frostferno you're gonna want to change Infused Channeling or Duration for Cold to Fire. We are mainly clearing with this ability and making sure it applies Combustion on bosses for the insane single target damage provided by Ice Spear.

Auras:

- Hatred

- Herald of Ash

- Herald of Purity

- Vaal Righteous Fire, Increased Duration

Note:
The Herald of Purity doesn't do much for us, but by having it linked in the Malachai's Artifice with Hatred being applied to these minions, they will then apply Cold damaged Elemental Equilibrium which significantly increases our fire damage dealt to enemies.

Vaal Righteous Fire is only used for increased damage vs bosses in general.


Mobility/Utility:

- Leap Slam, Faster Attacks, Fortify

- Portal

CWDT:

- Cast When Damage Taken, Immortal Call, Wave of Conviction

Note:
Make sure to keep CWDT at a low lvl I prefer lvl 3 and Immortal Call cannot be higher than lvl 5 with that in mind.

Wave of Conviction with Avatar of Fire allows us to make enemies take even more fire damage from our Winter Orb & Ice Spear!

Regarding Charges:

Intuitive Leap is used to reach Overcharged however, vs bosses like Shaper and/or Uber Elder you can use something like Power Charge on Crit via Orb of Storms if you wish.

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Skill-tree & Ascendancy Nodes:

Ascendancy Nodes:

You start with picking up Sanctuary, to reach Pious Path.
After this you want to go for Righteous Providence, after this we are skipping Inevitable Judgement as we want to penetrate enemies resistance which is why we are picking up Instruments of Virtue to increase our damage dealt as well as enhancing our generic clear speed!


Leveling skill-tree, 34 points

Leveling skill-tree, 71 points

Finished skill-tree

Note:
Once the skill-tree is finished you should focus 100% on adding more jewels to it!

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Leveling Tips:

What skills to use:

You start of by using Freezing Pulse which should be linked with Arcane Surge and either Added Cold or Added Lightning.
Once lvl 12, you should pick up Arc, now this gives you 2 different options:
1) Self-cast, this means you want to pick up Elemental Overload and have the links look like this:

- Arc, Arcane Surge, Added Cold, Added Lightning

This can later in act 2 get the additions of Faster Casting, Controlled Destructions which would replace 1 of the added supports and Arcane Surge.

The other approach looks like this which I personally prefer:

- Arc, Trap, Multiple Traps, then either Added Cold or Added Lightning

At this point you can still spec Elemental Overload but will then require you to use something like Orb of Storms to proc as the traps won't proc it for you. This should carry you all the way to the point where you can switch to Winter Orb!

LvLing Auras:

In Act 2, you'll be able to get Herald of Ice & Herald of Thunder. This won't change till you hit act 3 in which case you can switch your Herald of Ice for Wrath.

If you do so, make sure you get yourself a weapon or shield to have in your off-slot that is not active, to lvl up your Herald of Ice in. This is also a good opertunity to get 1 or more Winter Orb gems to lvl in your off-slot as well so you don't forget to add those. This is done to avoid having an under lvld gem when it's time to transition.

General Tips

This setup should have no problems carrying you all the way till you want to transition, so when is the best time to transition to Winter Orb?
You simply stop at Blood Aqueduct in Act 9, to farm 9 Humility Divination Cards this will then be handed in to Tasuni in Act 9 town for a Tabula Rasa. At which point you should have no problems playing with Winter Orb, I do strongly recommend making sure you have the Malachai's Artifice with a Lightning Golem, all of these links are visible in the skill-gem setup in this guide.


Bandits:

- Save Alira for the crit multi/res.

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Gearing & Stat Priorities

With the unique items suggested the body armour can literally be anything from the classic Tabula Rasa to an Atziri's Splendour or any rare hybrid Evasion/ES chest piece with good life as well as resistance rolls. My preferred choice to keep budget down is to use Shroud of the Lightless, you'll however deal less damage than a proper 6L.

The base items of this build really doesn't matter as we don't care about the base defensive stats such as armour(str), evasion(dex) or energy shield(int). So instead the base items will follow the stat priority listed in this guide.
However, the attribute requirement of the items will base how hard it is to chrome (color) which will be the only thing we will think about when planing our gearing.
So, if you need 4 blue sockets in an item the recommendation is to get an item that has Energy Shield (int) base or a hybrid base which includes Energy Shield (int).

By using this chrome calculating website: https://siveran.github.io/calc.html you can easily track how hard it will be to chrome the colors you need. This YouTube playlist can help a lot for new players and also includes a few tricks when coloring items with the "wrong attribute requirements" for your build: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLuu-MdPs0Af8A4e3gSsJ1xDKNNcdFwY1r

Note:
It is generally preferred to use Energy Shield bases as it provides us with another layer of defence to our eHP.

High Budget Gearing:

The build offers a lot of options, one style I really liked myself is to chance orb a Malchai's Artifice from an ELDER Unset ring, this allows us to utilize Mark of the Shaper for a very noticable damage increase.

Another option is to pick up Yoke of Suffering which allows our fire damage to shock enemies. Ice Spear is one of the very few abilities in the game that can somewhat reliably reach the 50% increased damage taken threshold which makes this item one of the biggest damage increasers. However, you must drop Elemental Focus support gem and change it to Slower Projectiles or Added Cold if you're using a Shroud of the Lightless.


Defensive Stats:

1. Life
2. Resistances
3. Strength

Offensive Stats:

1. Cold Damage
1. Spell Damage


Jewels:

1. Flat Life
2. Cold Damage
2. Spell Damage/Spell Damage whilst dual wielding


Flasks:

1x Seething Life FLask of w/e Staunching
1x Dying Sun a cheaper option would be to make sure you have more fire res than any other resistances and use The Wise Oak
1x w/e prefix Diamond Flask of Warding
1x w/e prefix Silver Flask of Dousing
1x w/e prefix Quicksilver flask of Heat

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Recommended Unique Items:


Recommended LvLing Uniques:


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Outro:

This thread goes through all the details of the build, for gameplay & TLDR guide version check out: Winter Orb Build Guide Video

Before you start posting questions I would recommend checking the video. I am as always available in my stream!

Hope you guys will enjoy the build! Below you can access my other build guides:

Build Guides


//Ghazzy

* Reserved

Video added :)

nice build for sure. i invested a little more into the weapons which allows me to skip the ice spear setup. winter orb does enough single target dps imo.

yoke of suffering is a nice idea which i have to try for sure.
If you are interested my char-link is below

https://www.pathofexile.com/account/view-profile/Malbini/characters

Didnt understand pob says Templar have a little bit more fast movement/attacking rate than the witch or shadow, but how !?

I am playing this build for the race and I was wondering why you dont pick inevitable judgement instead of going pious path. Most of the time you are moving and this way you could also use a different chest because you dont need the elemental penetration anymore.

Or does the sanctuary + pious path do more damage compared to a different chest and inevitable judgement?

(copy pasta from the trickster thread)

I extremely rarely comment on my threads due to lack of time and therefor focusing on my youtube comments instead.

However, there seem to be a huge problem for a lot of people using this build as a league starter. The niche design of it requiring uniques that drops from guardians which are towards the absolute end-game will ALWAYS be expensive.
Now, with that said, the build is still more than fine to play as a low budget build functioning as a league starter.

There are multiple options some are gone through in the guide as well, so here's a run down of what you can do and what I'm currently doing myself as I'm running the Inquisitor version of this atm in Flashback Hardcore.



Use 6L Winter Orb with Cold2Fire support (including Avatar of Fire), make sure Combustion is there. This is WAY more than you need to use for smooth clearing.
Since builds utilizing Frostferno has caused that to go up in price higher than expected you will simply be using a 4L Ice Spear, however, I personally felt that you'd be better of utilizing something like Vaal BV or as what I'm currently running; Lightning Spire Traps.
Example of links:
Lightning Spire Traps - Trap/Mine DMG - Elemental Focus - Lightning Penetration (NOTE: This is prior to Avatar of Fire keystone, at which point you should be using an Ice spell with Cold2Fire included).



The comments seems to range from people having no problems at all who understands this situation and a lot of people being frustrated so let's put this all to rest and help you guys out.

As many of you know, I rarely respond on the forums, if you are having issues with your build, pop your question on the YouTube video and I will personally take care of you. You can also join our www.discord.gg/GhazzyTV in which we have both a general poe channel as well as a build review channel to help you with this and/or any other builds you might need help with.

Hey guys,

I'm having some serious issues getting my guides updated in time for this league. As many of you know, I'm not a full-time streamer I work parttime job(s) to make ends meet and a few weeks ago I lost the job giving me guaranteed shifts. With this in mind I signed a contract a bit over a month ago to work at a rock festival here in Sweden (Sweden Rock Festival) which is where I'm sending this message from.
I've borrowed Hannas laptop so that I could make sure the guides got updated in time, however, I'm working 16-20h shifts with almost no sleep and just now finished the patch notes before heading to bed. So without looking at the tree in detail I will therefor give my verdicts of the builds further down in this post on all my build guides.

I sleep in a caravan during the event with 0 power supply so getting the computer charged is my main priority for tomorrow so that I could hopefully get PoB working on this shitty Apple laptop and I hope I can get the guides updated before Legion releases.

With this said and before I leave comments below specific for each guide I've posted this to:
Myself and many others are discussing builds, reviews, my guides over at my discord server www.discord.gg/GhazzyTV where you are more than welcome to get help from myself & many other PoE veterans on a daily basis, specially now before a league release. I'm able to get my phone charged at the work place but I'm unable to have the laptop there for a variety of risk reasons,

I hope you can forgive this one shitty situation out of the 6 years I've been making sure build guides with quality is available for the community and hope I can deliver on this release as well..





The Winter Orb skill took a huge nerf bat to the face, however, without seeing how the build looks with numeric values on PoB it's impossible to determine if it works on a theoretical level. The boss damage has been untouched we are only concerned about the clear damage / speed. it SHOULDN'T be a problem for this build though.

As mentioned above, I hope I can make sure the tree & PoB as well as the guide is sorted before release. In case this thread gets spammed I would love if someone could help Quote this message for new people to see the message so that noone is left in the dark which is very important to me and I hope you guys will have an amazing league start. I'll be back on Sunday to salvage what needs to be salvaged and then create new inspiring guides for the community!

CURRENTLY UPDATING ALL MY BUILD GUIDES LIVE AT www.twitch.tv/GhazzyTV