[3.20] Ice Dancing Queen - Icestorm/Cyclone/CI - Viable For Everything

OK, so GGG is backing off and un-nerfing things they nerfed. Even with some fluff on top.

Mana multipliers are getting un-nerfed. This means we most likely won't need Inspiration anymore. And maybe not even Clarity or Dreamer. Nice!

BTW, with 5S staff you don't need Inspiration already. I don't have 6S yet, but with 5S I outregen any mana spent easily.

Flasks will give 4 sec of immunity. For us this mostly means curses. Nice. With auto-triggered flasks we can run curse maps again easily. Moreover, the curse mods on maps will no longer have increased effect, they will be just basic curses.

Arctic Armour will grant freeze immunity! That's the final thing Ascendant was lacking! AA will be making a comeback, together with facetanking bosses. I think we'll need to use Enlighten to add it while keeping everything else. But we have a free gem slot from moving AS to the staff anyway.

Not sure when all that goes live, probably next week. So just hang on for a few more days and then this build will be even better than before 3.15.

Started the league late so I just reached maps, I haven't played this build since the elementalist and then marauder days, acts are still a breeze with this and the uniques and I had no mana issues while leveling, even dropping inspiration in the 5 sockets so I started running HOI, but since AA is getting freeze immunity it might be a good idea to put it instead of HOI. When I'm finally geared (missing body and cyclopean wtf 12% atts for 28 chaos is expensive as hell) I'll try facetanking bosses again.

Great all round build!

In regards to my previous post about cold resistant zombies, I believe I now understand what was going on.

I think I spawned cold-immune mobs.

Yeah, I didn't bother to read the monster descriptions on the various expedition chests before, because we were OP, right?

So all I had was a little bit of lightning damage still and that's how I was able to whittle down the mobs so slowly.

That is cool and I am happy GGG is doing this to get people to pay attention.

Can I ask some questions on crafting equipment for this build?
I am using this build in SSF standard (too lazy to redo everything in a fresh league) and gradually improve the equipment for several leagues now (skipped the harvest league).

I use the classic version right now (don't have thread of hope yet), 2542 int and ~12k ES:



Helmet
I'm fortunate to have a hunter exalted orb. So I use a lv79 base. lv75 is needed for 10% int and all other hunter suffixes are lv80+. This does mean int is at most 50. So I spammed with Spite essence which can reach 58 int. After many re-rolls, I finally got good ES and exalted it.

Body Armor
I don't have crusader exalted orb. So I added the influence using harvest (shaper has a higher chance when all suffixes are considered, 3.272% vs. 2.178%. I had to use 'alter influence' several times, though) and this allows me to use lv86 base for better ES rolls. I'm fortunate that a few 'defense' harvest crafts gave me a high ES roll. Then I switched to 're-roll keeping all prefixes'. This craft is relatively rare, but I got the %inc after a few attempts. Having both the %inc and int seems too rare to me and I need resist too, so I am focusing on re-rolling the value of suffixes now.

Glove
The suffixes were full on that glove (it is not crafted). I used 'remove attack' harvest craft in heist league so that I could add 'aspect of the spider'. It is no longer available now, so I guess if I want to craft a new one (for better ES), I need to follow the same steps as body armor. The 're-roll keeping all prefixes' craft often leaves open suffix (it may still add prefix, so better to make sure there are three prefixes before the re-roll to avoid unwanted ones).

Questions
1. Can I combine 'Prefixes Cannot Be Changed' bench craft and essence? Looks like a more deterministic way to get int on glove. However, craftofexile says that I can't apply essence when that mod is present.
2. I crafted several cold damage cluster jewels with 'Cold to Core'. Is there an easy way to know whether the node can be allocated before the socket? When there is only one notable, it is always between the two sockets. When there are two notables, 'Cold to Core' is always the one between the two sockets which requires more skill points to allocate :-(.
3. Are there any tricks to craft rings? Corrupting seems too risky because find/craft a usable one (int + ES) with good resist is quite difficult and the possibility to get the %inc corruption requires > 10+ * 4 attempts on average (assuming vaaling only gives an implicit 1/4 of the time).
I allocate the atlas passive to drop synthesis item in synthesis map, but no luck yet. I also ran lots of heist for the synthesis jewellery, still no luck. The only close one is a '12% inc dex' belt.
4. How rare are the emperor jewels? I may run some uber lab if the drop rate isn't too bad.
5. I did 2 Sirus A0 (I'm still not used to his die beam in the last phase), and no thread of hope. I hope that the unique is not restricted to a specific awaken level?
6. Resist seems like a problem. Right now I have all 77%. But with thread of hope (at least -10%) and switching to the tree for cluster jewels (does that tree give less resist?), how many extra resist do I need to find (maybe I have to get some from the ring / cluster jewels)?

BTW, how does wave of conviction work? Is the damage used to determine the type of the exposure from all sources or only from wave of conviction?

How is this build this league? I played this build back in Blight league and really liked it. My only problem with it was it caused the game to run like garbage(especially with awakened spell cascade.)

I know they changed the skill awhile back. I assumed that killed the build. Is it still at a comparable strength to what it was before they changed it? I'm considering playing it again this league.

So I just got 6S in my staff and checked the mana regen without Inspiration.

Working just fine! I'm outregenning it with lv 19 Clarity, and slowly losing mana without Clarity.

Bye-bye, Inspiration! :) And if they un-nerf the mana multipliers just a bit in the next patch then we won't even need Clarity. Or Dreamer (3 points), may be more valuable.

The Betrayal %incr attr chest craft has been secretly buffed to 8% (unless it was done last league and I was completely oblivious to it.)

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Graiaule wrote:

The Betrayal %incr attr chest craft has been secretly buffed to 8% (unless it was done last league and I was completely oblivious to it.)

I think its still 6% max? Where did you see it 8% crafted?

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za6i9ka wrote:

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Graiaule wrote:

The Betrayal %incr attr chest craft has been secretly buffed to 8% (unless it was done last league and I was completely oblivious to it.)

I think its still 6% max? Where did you see it 8% crafted?

Oh, they have stronger veiled mods that can be unveiled. But crafting is still the same.

Ugh, my bad. You are correct.

There used to be three crafting tiers, 4%, 5%, 6%. Someone got 6% after two tiers, so I assumed 8% was the third tier.

craftofexile.com now shows only two crafting tiers, so that is a change.

I wonder if it's possible to deterministically get an 8% veiled mod on your gear.