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

@Cjin -- so the two "mores" currently stack? I.e., we were getting ~41% more damage before? Shit. So many thing to read carefully and so easy to misinterpret something for several years.

So, yes, a nerf and down to 25% more. At least one change would be to put Hypothermia in the bossing staff instead of arcane surge (29% versus 25%.)

I'm hoping the arcane and the %int nerfs will be overcome by the extra damage from staff crafting.

I was doing some math on the crit version that i'm running. And made some changes on the tree. There was no significative impact on ES, the evasion got a nice boost. In terms of damage sadly there is a nerf.

Before nerf = 1.617.662,9 per shard
After nerf = 1.496.927,2 per shard

its ~7,5% dmg nerf in the final damage. This setup will keep performing extremly well because the damage is alerdy high and got buff on defenses! Not counting the new Cold Cluster Notable passives, that can increase the damage even more!

The Regular version with block and mid/low damage will feel more the impact of the nerf, since the spell damage from arcane surge buff was removed nd it was linked on the staff. Kill Pinnacle bosses at the beginning of the league will be a pain with this version. The best choice here, on my point of view, is to move the arcane surge to vortex link, and link someting else like Energy Leech, Elemental Penetration Hypothermia or Awknd Added Cold Damage on the staff.

The damage loss for non-crit variation is around 13%. Not counting the new Cold Cluster Notable passives, that can increase the damage and mitigate the loss!

Both variants still viable in the end!

For the league start on acts, alerdy tested too, the Explosive trap + Frost Blink + Heralds still fine. On lvl 32(act 3) swap the Explosive Trap with Eye of Winter + Inspiration + Cold Pen and in the end of act 4 link with Unleash.

For wands, Now we need to craft the prefixes at Craft Bench and the recipes for added elemental damage to spells can be found on:

The Solaris Temple Level 2 (act 3): Adds (12-16) to (23-27) Fire Damage to Spells;

The Crystal Veins (act 4): Adds (10-13) to (19-22) Cold Damage to Spells;

The Causeway (act 7): Adds (17-23) to (34-40) Cold Damage to Spells.

It's all you need to reach A10 kitava under 6 hours and do some Heists at lvl 50-65!

The character atest_III on my profile still working fine just need minor ajusts.

"

Graiaule wrote:

Hmm, levelling up as spark appears to have been nerfed, and explosive trap as well! BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD.

Spark should still be fine, it's only until Act 3 anyway. The biggest killer for ALL levelling options is the removal of the wand/sceptre vendor recipe. That decision makes no sense at all to me and is BRUTAL. Doesn't matter what you level with now, it's going to be painful compared to the last few seasons.

"

Darkscis wrote:

"

Graiaule wrote:

Hmm, levelling up as spark appears to have been nerfed, and explosive trap as well! BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD.

Spark should still be fine, it's only until Act 3 anyway. The biggest killer for ALL levelling options is the removal of the wand/sceptre vendor recipe. That decision makes no sense at all to me and is BRUTAL. Doesn't matter what you level with now, it's going to be painful compared to the last few seasons.

You just get flat dmg implicit and craft %spell dmg instead of the other way around, doesn't seem that bad.

Hello, lovely people! It appears we have a new league starting in 1 week time. And it's going to be one of those cheap and dirty ones where the league mechanic is super simple with just a bunch of extra mobs in your face, plus there is an OP crafting method that's never going to be added to the core. Just another variation of the Scourge craft and recombinators. I smell some ridiculously OP crafted Whispering Ice staves.

Sanctum is not added to the core game yet, so we cannot save 3 skill points with Elemental Overload on a relic in 3.21. This option will likely return in 3.22 though.

But there are also balance changes. Nerfs and buffs.

The nerfs:

1. Arcane Surge had two separate damage mods: 20% MORE damage global, and 20% MORE damage with supported skills (this was the main reason it was socketed into the staff). Those mods were multiplicative, i.e. this gem granted us 1.20 * 1.20 = 1.44 = 44% MORE damage.

Now they are replacing the first mod with 20% inc cast speed, and buffing the second one to 26% (remember that we get +1 level in the staff; at present it adds 1% to the second mod). So instead of 44% MORE damage we are getting only 26% MORE, i.e. 12.5% nerf.

There are better support gems for damage, such as Hypothermia (30% MORE) and Energy Leech (25% MORE if ES not full, or 43% MORE if ES is full; remember that Trickster is always leeching). For the fights where you can keep your ES full, EL is basically the same as the pre-nerf AS, so you'll do the same damage. And if you are constantly getting hit then you'll be better off with Hypo dealing about 10% less damage. Then again, EL with non-full ES loses 12.5% so it's probably going to be better on average anyway. Especially with the new instant leech.

There is a mana sustain question without Arcane Surge. You can trigger it with another skill such as Vortex every 4 sec. But it will be a lower level one. We'll see how that works.

2. Caster Mastery option for 1% inc damage per 16 Int is gone. The magnitude of this nerf depends on your gear, it scales with your Int. My final 3.20 PoB (with Hatred and all the uber stuff) loses about 10% damage. And the cheaper your gear is, the less significant it will be.

However, this only means that you can take +1 Intensity earlier on. At lv 100 it's one of the options for the final points, and it's slightly better than spending them elsewhere. But without the 1/16 Int/Dmg option, the value of this one increases because it's not an extra copy of the same mastery anymore, you get a full value with Polymath.

Overall, this is a small nerf, or maybe even a buff! We'll see when the new tree becomes available in PoB.

3. Leech Mastery: Max total increased ES leech is 25% (down from 30%). This is a very small nerf. We have 70% inc leech cap from the nodes leading to it, so the total is now 95% instead of 100%.

However, there is now a new option to make 10% of leech applied instantly. Just like in the old times when Vaal Pact instantly healed you to full as long as you didn't get one-shot. So this may actually be a buff too! We'll discuss it below.

4. Clarity and Discipline MRE options are gone. This matters only for the Hatred variant. But we got an MRE buff which is probably better anyway.

The buffs:

1. Mana Mastery: 12% MRE is back! This will solve all mana issues and make adding Hatred a whole lot easier. It may also resurrect the Occultist version! Although the Trickster is pure love at the moment, so I don't feel like spending time on that.

2. Armour Mastery: Take 10% physical hit damage as chaos, i.e. a flat 10% phys hit mitigation. Not a whole lot of value really, since not many bosses deal pure phys damage anymore. But it's another Mastery for Polymath. Depending on the tree I suppose.

3. Cold Mastery: Inflict cold exposure on hit. This lets us get rid of Frost Bomb/PWoC. However, since it doesn't list the value, it's likely a -10% cold resist, as opposed to -15% on FB/PWoC. But it's applied a whole lot more reliably, without a need to get hit. Very good for bosses like Sirus or Maven. There is also an Elemental Mastery option to increase the exposure to -18% that may or may not be worth taking.

4. ES Mastery: Use 60% of max ES for stun calculations (up from 50%). A minor buff.

5. ES Mastery: 100% inc ES from helmet. I'm not sure exactly how this will be calculated. If it effectively doubles ES on the helmet then it's cool. With the Int/ES scaling we get about 6x ES from items, i.e. a 300 ES helmet will give you an extra ~1800 ES. But if it serves as another "100% Inc ES" helmet mod then it's additive with the prefixes on it and will not be quite as good.

Either way, taking a second copy of ES Mastery will be a waste of points. So then you'll have a choice between some extra ES and stun mitigation. I kinda doubt that extra ES will be better. But we'll see.

6. Evasion/ES Mastery: 1% inc Evasion per 5 Int. That's a LOT of Evasion! But do we really need it? In maps you are already unkillable. And against the bosses the chance to evade their attacks is lower, plus Evasion won't save you from spells - which is what most bosses use to kill you, not attacks. Doubtful that this will be worth it, but still another Mastery option.

7. Leech Mastery: 10% of leech is instant! Oh boy! Between this and Trickster overleech, I suspect that we'll just always be at full ES and can take full advantage of Energy Leech support. The Writhing Jar will heal you even better vs the invulnerability phases at Uber Eater, Uber Sirus and Uber Uber Elder.

The big question is whether or not to take a second copy of Leech Mastery (Light Eater). It also gives +30% leech cap (taking it to 125% total). With 10% of it being instant... if you didn't feel immortal yet, you definitely will with both of these masteries! But it costs 4 points.

And if you take only Ethereal Feast then it remains to be seen what's better: 95% increased leech cap or 70% inc cap plus 10% instant leech. Instant leech doesn't care about the per-second cap, so I assume it's better. But not 100% sure.

8. Glacial Cage: "Enemies permanently take 1% increased Damage for each second they've ever been Chilled by you, up to a maximum of 10%". Icestorm automatically chills everything it hits, so after 10 sec any boss will be permanently taking 10% inc damage.

However, this is not the same as 10% MORE damage, not even close. This is additive with other sources of the enemy taking Increased damage, such as Unnerve, Bonechill, Punishment, Aspect of the Spider, Inquisitor (Asscendant version).

Depending on where this cluster is and what else it gives us, it'll probably be worth taking for this effect and Cold Mastery.

Overall

The nerfs are not quite as dramatic as they look at first glance. The new stuff looks pretty damn nice. I think overall THIS IS A BUFF!

W8 i just watched full presentation and...

To unlock crucible tree for uniques you need forge map with mod that allow to unlock on unique item....

wtf so we can't get smth useful on our whispering ice before maps/highend(i think forge map items not gona drop so often and before you start maps)

and to forge 2xUniqes in chance to get smth useful you need special item...

So to get smth cool on our staff it gona be big pain in ass...

For me it's just unfair that if you use unique weapon as your core build item, you don't get anything from league mechanic in league start...

Only if we don't switch to WI on 33 lvl and just do acts/till yellow maps, using wands-other skills we getting smth from league mechanic...

ES Leech in 3.21

Now let's talk about leech and the implications of the instant leech returning in 3.21.

Every time Icestorm hits the enemy, an instance of leech is created. It recovers N% of the damage as ES (but no more than 10% of your total ES) over 5 sec and then disappears. Each icicle creates its own separate leech instance. The total recovery from all active leech instances is capped (as Maximum Total ES Recovery per second). So no matter how many active leech instances you have, you can only leech a certain % of your max ES per second. And as soon as your ES is full, all leech instances are removed.

That is how it works with the regular leech that has always been around. This is why increasing the leech cap was so important. This is why we took the longer path at Ethereal Feast, increased the cap with Leech Mastery, and took Ghost Reaver despite losing ES recharge.

However, the reworked Trickster in 3.19 gave us ES overleech: getting back to the max ES does not remove active leech instances. You keep leeching for 5 more seconds after you stop dealing damage, until all leech instances expire.

And now we are getting the instant leech back (at 10% efficiency). Let's see how it will affect this build.

We are leeching: 1.3% (Ethereal Feast) + 2% (Soul Drinker) + 1.9% (Energy Leech) = 5.2% of the damage dealt as ES.

Even with very modest budget gear, 5.2% of each Icestorm hit is more than 10% of your total ES. For example, you hit for 100k damage, that's 5200 ES leeched, enough to fill the cap up to 52k ES. Therefore, you are always leeching the maximum possible 10% ES per hit.

With the new leech mastery option, 10% of that 10% is instant, i.e. you instantly heal for 1% of your max ES per hit. One Icestorm hits 5 times per second. Fully stacked 5 Icestorms hit 25 times per second. So you get up to 25% of your max ES leeched per second from a single target, depending on how often they move.

This is in addition to the regular leech that is subject to a per-second cap. With just Ethereal Feast that cap is 14% of your max ES per second.

Together, instant and non-instant leech recover 39% of your max ES per second. Will that be enough? We shall see in the actual game play.

If 39% is not enough, we can take Ghost Reaver again and double the non-instant leech, making it 53% total.

THIS IS A BUFF.

"

archwerewolf wrote:

W8 i just watched full presentation and...

To unlock crucible tree for uniques you need forge map with mod that allow to unlock on unique item....

wtf so we can't get smth useful on our whispering ice before maps/highend(i think forge map items not gona drop so often and before you start maps)

and to forge 2xUniqes in chance to get smth useful you need special item...

So to get smth cool on our staff it gona be big pain in ass...

For me it's just unfair that if you use unique weapon as your core build item, you don't get anything from league mechanic in league start...

Only if we don't switch to WI on 33 lvl and just do acts/till yellow maps, using wands-other skills we getting smth from league mechanic...

We don't get anything until yellow maps. But do we really need any help getting to yellow maps? I don't think so. Icestorm is super OP for leveling as it is. Switch at lv 33 and just ignore the league mechanic for 1 day, get to maps faster instead.

This is one of the temporary OP leagues that will not get added to the core game. But it's in every single map. So after getting to yellow maps you won't feel it lacking anymore. Craft random OP buffs on your staves.

And in red maps you'll start getting the opportunity to merge them together, recombinator style. That's where the real crazy OP shit will start happening.

damn @Kelvynn, i was about to skip this league, but nerfs/buffs breakdown got me really hyped!

i remember vaal pact insta leech, daaaamn

for anyone who didnt got a chance to try it (and how cool it is) it's your time now!

"

Kelvynn wrote:

This is one of the temporary OP leagues that will not get added to the core game. But it's in every single map. So after getting to yellow maps you won't feel it lacking anymore. Craft random OP buffs on your staves.

And in red maps you'll start getting the opportunity to merge them together, recombinator style. That's where the real crazy OP shit will start happening.

You need to get to "Crucible's endgame takes place in The Forge of the Titans" to unlock tree on unique


And it's unmodifiable so you can't scourge-alt rolled it for mod

So main question's:
1) how often gona it drops
2) how often dat mod
3) what minimum progress you need to start drop it

Mb they gona be cheap to buy and unlock's ton's of Whispering ice till get smth cool...but if not...well it's sucks

So you get lucky with forge map drop with dat mod - you unlock and got shit tree)
need another forge map to unlock

Well mb it gona be profitable to run with wands/bows/etc to try get smth cool and sell it. but you need understanding what valuable for other builds in weapons....

And to recombine you need 2 whispering ice staff ...so it really gona be hard to get smth cool

and yeah to recombine 2 uniques you need dat item with unknown drop rate...."secret higher version of forge map".