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

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Kelvynn wrote:

The math looks fine but the reality was very different. I found myself out of mana unable to cast on multiple occasions. Had to take out CWDT gems during the boss fight - and was instantly back to good. I don't have time or desire right now to figure out exactly why it was happening.

The budget gear situation doesn't last very long for this build. And the difference made by 3 skill points is not significant either. You are still leveling at this point. Dreamer is very safe. The alternative is unsafe.

I think it is because of Cold Snap CWdT setup. Two lvl1 CWdT drains mana so fast as soon as you are facetanking anything and taking hit after hit.

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Cjin wrote:

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Kelvynn wrote:

The math looks fine but the reality was very different. I found myself out of mana unable to cast on multiple occasions. Had to take out CWDT gems during the boss fight - and was instantly back to good. I don't have time or desire right now to figure out exactly why it was happening.

The budget gear situation doesn't last very long for this build. And the difference made by 3 skill points is not significant either. You are still leveling at this point. Dreamer is very safe. The alternative is unsafe.

I think it is because of Cold Snap CWdT setup. Two lvl1 CWdT drains mana so fast as soon as you are facetanking anything and taking hit after hit.

Good catch! I was so confused, because I've ran the setup for a while and had no problem, while Kelvynn clearly couldn't sustain it. Adding Cold Snap in my calculations would add a 33 cost every three seconds, which is substantial, and I've never played the new setup.

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Vennto wrote:

Aight, after selling most parts and finishing any major projects so far, it is time for a final assessment of the build. Or course, this is all personal opinion and should be taken as such.

Feel of progression: 9.5/10
Mapping: 7/10
Bossing: 4/10
Invitations: 6/10
Tankiness: 7/10
Costeffectiveness: 2/10

Let´s adress all those categories one by one in more detail for a foundation of my evaluation:

Feel of progression:
For a build to feel good u also want to feel like your upgrades matter and indeed, they do. Based on what I´ve tested this league there are several milestones with over-the-top-impact, but even just getting another 100 int via charms felt great and noticeably resulted in more damage and tankiness.

Mapping:
Once the damage reaches a certain point normal and blue packs die instantly, this is when the mapping feels good. Oriath´s End was actually a game changer and made mapping feel supersmooth. But I excluded this deliberately from this category as I highly doubt a lot of players will have access to this flask at this point. If we´re talking strictly endgame, mapping might be more like 9/10, otherwise the aforementioned evaluation goes.

Bossing:
This is where the build struggled the most with unfortunately - which is due to the way Icestorm functions. The fact that you can stack up to 5 storms limits a great bossing experience to endgame bosses with not much movement. Means: Very easy time on Shaper, Elder and Uber Elder, solid experience for Eater and Exarch, but Maven and Sirus with their permanent teleporting? Absolute shitshow of experience. On top of that, adressing again my former point on how this build feels when it comes to applying curses, I heavily have to deduct further points. On maven I am 80% of the time without any curse if I dont change the setup.

Inviations:
Those are kind of in-between from mapping and bossing. You have more bosses and therefore more spots you can focus dmg on, easier uptime therefore to keep leech up and the general tankiness of the build feels solid for up to rare formed, forgotten and twisted. Hidden is a whole different level, same goes for feared... Here the build struggles more due to dmg-uptime and I generally would not count those high-end pinnacle things to its strengths.

Tankiness:
While the build certainly has a tanky feel to it, I just have to adress the fact that most of our layers are just residuals. We have a bit evasion, a bit block... The main part is a big ES shield and very high levels of leech and overleech. Those in total make the build tanky, but for my personal tastes I prefer more layered approaches which truly makes u swim in sirus-pools untouched or outright immortal if played correctly.

Cost effectiveness:
This part is probably the most controversial, but I dont think this build is looking all to good here. Fact of the matter is, it is entirely possible to create characters that farm t16, fitting league mechanics and basic invitations comfortably at a 15-20 div budget. This build however started to feel only better once Ambush and Assassinate came into play. The PoB does reflect that: Those jewels have a 95% more multiplier, which in reality is more like 60-70% because it only refers to lowlife, though helps with initial burst and stacking up power charges. The second item with that amount of power is the amulet, which puts a lot of stress on the remaining parts of the gear - so you could eigher fix the gear and simply go to simplex amulet (this is what I did) or you can craft a normal double-influenced amulet a few times and fix attributes via a craft, having less strain on gear but leaves a lot to be desired.
Overall, I dont feel like the investment gets you much value in this build, because once you push anything with 100+ divs at this point in the league, it will crush as well, so there is simply no upside.

Still, nice learning experience again, solid build per se to step your first toe into int-stacking and grats for maintaining the build-discussion. It is always appreciated

As someone who is playing this build since beginning of time and will always play this build till end of time, I have couple of points I would like to share with you.

(yeah you can argue that my approach towards playing this game is wrong but what can I say, I am in love with this build & there is no other build that comes close to the amount of fun I have with this build)

That doesn't mean this build is good for all content, there are a lot of content that other builds can do better than this build and with less investment but those builds are no fun to me (personal preference).


- Agree with feel of progression. However, I do want to add that each and every rare gear in this build can be self crafted without wasting a lot of divines, which makes feel of progression to 10 out of 10.

- I think you are wrong over here, this league I had 1800+ int and 8000 ES when I reached mapping with just 200 chaos of investment, man, it feels good to map with this build. I am at red maps now and don't feel the need to upgrade. However, I will still give it 7 out of 10 since it's not as fast as other builds are.

- In the bossing cateogry, I feel like you need to improve your game a bit. There isn't any end game boss that I haven't killed with this build, actually, I farmed the fk out of them. I do understand what you are saying though, I was once like that too but with a bit of practice and patience I learn the boss mechanics and excel at killing them without even thinking about them :) again 10 out of 10 over here

- Invitations, lol, I treat them like a normal trash monster, 10 out of 10 over here.

- Tankiness you are 100% right, I wish we have more dimensions to tankiness. I feel like once they change triskster again and we lose Evasion, this build won't feel as good as it is now but Kelvynn is pro! i am sure he will come up with something else and I don't have to regret my first sentence of this post. :)

- Cost Effectiveness you are right and wrong at the same time. let me ask you this, if someone make an item for 3 divine and sell it to you for 30 divine would u consider that item as 3 divine or 30? I consider it as 3 assuming I know how to make that item. This is what this build is all about. You have to understand this is off-meta build. So items of this build won't flood the market. There is no competition over here. So self crafting is the best way to go with this build item and u should consider self crafting cost rather than market value. second point is that this build is very time dependent, some items I have to buy early into the league when they are cheap otherwise they gets real expensive real fast. This build mention that so that should be considered into cost effectiveness category. For example, the rings we use cost 1 div at the start of the league and 20 div at the end. So would u consider that item as 1 div item or 20 div? I consider that as a 1 div item. so cost effctiveness would be 10 out of 10 however, market availability/maturity of items would be 2 out of 10.

As usual, my build summary spiked some responses I would like to adress. Do keep in mind though: My build assessment as well as my responses are targeted to induce a healthy discussion about a builds performance in comparison to others, not meant as a general critique towards the build itself or its creator. It moreover is supposed to help people that read into it to get a feedback in order to better determine whether or not they want to give a build a shot and, quite frankly, different opinions on that help. Of course, adressing the first point of your answers herewith, I don´t have the experience of 5 leagues or even years with this build but thats what makes my position at least as valuable because quite frankly a player trying the build for the first time will not have the same experience as someone that plays it for the better half of this games existence. Allright, lets dive into it:

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Also Costeffectiveness 2/10? This build is the cheapest to max out, the reason I always get a mageblood is because I have nothing left to upgrade within the first 10 days of the league.

Well I was at this point pretty much, having even Ambush and Assassinate as well as a simplex amulet in play and I think it comes down to definition, because asking 60 div from people that early in the league to minmax a build is a bit over the top. Just because a few individuals (you seem to be one of them too) can net that currency does not mean it should be held as a gold standard. I take this point though and should have maybe split the category into "early cost effectiveness" and "endgame upgrade availabilty", because one thing is for sure: The powerspike for this build is def. easier to reach than for other builds - I remember SST for example, where my helmet craft alone swallowed 80 divs.

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As someone who is playing this build since beginning of time and will always play this build till end of time. There is no other build that comes close to the amount of fun I have with this build.
That doesn't mean this build is good for all content, there are a lot of content that other builds can do better than this build and with less investment.
But those builds are no fun to me (personal preference).

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I mean, as someone who played WI for the last 5 years in a row, you couldn't be more wrong about the bossing & tankyness parts.

While I am very sure that with all your experience u have a better time playing this build, you have to acknowledge that, especially when it comes to PoE, knowledge and experience are leading factors on a builds success. I don´t doubt that I could have played better at some part. But while builds I play change, maven doesn´t. And for ME PERSONALLY, who did not run this build multiple times, the damage uptime was horrid. And this is a worthwhile experience to give to other players.

Also, I never said I failed the fight. I beat her, got my voidstone with it, farmed her a few times more and cleared all invitations on the build without any fail. That is indeed a successful build and if I sounded too hard on it, I´d like to adjust that. For me though, it didnt FEEL good to play, especially when going into moving bosses. Comparing to smth like dots is a tad unfair in that regard but just to reiterate my point, Poison- or cold-dot builds in the past had a better feeling of dmg, even when the actual damage might actually have been lower. Who knows, we don´t have real-time damage meters running with us.

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@Vennto: your observations are coming from a background where you were able to spend ~50 div that you somehow managed to accumulate in 5 days. I've tried a LOT of other builds, and there really doesn't seem to be anything out there that matches this build's ability to progress very far on a very low budget (while remaining tanky.) I'd dearly love to know of one that also has that potential damage multiplier.

Valid point and absolutely true - maybe I should have made this more clear, but in the past people called me elitist for pointing that out too obvious while it is a pretty important fact. It is entirely possible that this build performs comparatively better on a lower currency-ceiling, when compared with options of a similar cost.

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Icestorm is a target locking skill, which means if you hold the cast button the storms will keep casting on the target even if it moves.

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In the bossing cateogry, I feel like you need to improve your game a bit. There isn't any end game boss that I haven't killed with this build, actually, I farmed the fk out of them.

So, first the build is a no-brainer for bosses because it is completely trivial, and then I need to up my game to be able to handle them better. What is it now?^^ Just pointing out that little logical fallacy.

All I can say is: I played enough mavens to feel very comfortable in the fight. The name lock is indeed something I ignored, I am fine to admit that and therefore admit I might have played the fights better. Then again, we´re kind of back at the aforementioned point: You can´t compare multiple leagues of experience with a new player on the build, let alone a newer player in the game in general. Therefore I think my estimation, while incomplete, is still not entirely wrong.

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You have to understand this is off-meta build. So items of this build won't flood the market. There is no competition over here.

I can´t agree on this. You compete over synth rings and belt and while the belt stays cheap, the rings to up in price. You compete over watchers eyes and Split personalities and over mass of spite essences and right now with simplex amulets being the very best in slot you compete with a ton of people. Just because u have a cheap weapon and somewhat cheap boots and a weird ilvl-requirement for the helmet doesn´t mean the build performs completely outside of the economy race. But, of course, it is an advantage to be able to focus on fewer slots - literally one of the reason I was able to do so well in the eco.

As a last thought: I feel like my judgement was taken a bit too negatively so I would like to end it on a positive node: While I am an experienced eco-player that always makes his first 100 div within the first week of the league, it was VERY easy this time and the build was def. a driving factor to make that possible. It therefore IS a good starter and a good build, I just have my reservations to a few points that I liked to point out.

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Vennto wrote:

As usual, my build summary spiked some responses I would like to adress.

It's very common these days, people farm posts, likes, controversies just for fun.
However, I am not going to assume that you are here to do that, so I am going to reply to you rather than ignore you :)

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Vennto wrote:

So, first the build is a no-brainer for bosses because it is completely trivial, and then I need to up my game to be able to handle them better. What is it now?^^ Just pointing out that little logical fallacy.

I never said that, I don't understand what you are talking about over here. I litterally said the opposite.

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Vennto wrote:

I can´t agree on this. You compete over synth rings and belt and while the belt stays cheap, the rings to up in price.

I should have been more clear. English is not my first language so please forgive me. Basically, when I am talking about competition in the market I am talking about fully built rare items only. I am comparing our fully crafted rare chest gear, rings, head gear, belt, etc with meta-bows, meta-weapons and meta-chest gear. I am not talking about item base or unique items. So my point is still valid.

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Vennto wrote:

As usual, my build summary spiked some responses I would like to adress. Do keep in mind though: My build assessment as well as my responses are targeted to induce a healthy discussion about a builds performance in comparison to others, not meant as a general critique towards the build itself or its creator. It moreover is supposed to help people that read into it to get a feedback in order to better determine whether or not they want to give a build a shot and, quite frankly, different opinions on that help.

Your assessment was polite, interesting and well thought-out. Even though I disagreed with some of the points you made, healthy discussion and differing opinions are always important, as it gives perspectives that a third party can examine to make their mind. As such, your post was interesting to read. Plus, you are right that you have a different perspective than some of us who have played the build since before the Trickster version and know the build ins and outs.

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I take this point though and should have maybe split the category into "early cost effectiveness" and "endgame upgrade availabilty", because one thing is for sure: The powerspike for this build is def. easier to reach than for other builds - I remember SST for example, where my helmet craft alone swallowed 80 divs.

Do keep in mind that you're evaluating from the perspective of a very unique class of players. Most are quite happy with making 10-20 divines in their league. You're comparing to builds that need 80-150div to function. While I understand that when you make 100div the first week, it might be more natural to observe the top-end and the 20-80div range, if you are reviewing a build, it would be more appropriate to have different levels of investment reviewed, especially in the "cost-effectiveness" section. Something like 0-5div, 5-20div and 20+div would let regular player evaluate more plainly their own projected experience and might elicit less defensive responses.

Just cleared all bosses and thinking of going ubers now, what should I prioritize for the next upgrades? Should I go for the Split Personality with ES, save for the Forbidden Flesh/Flame?
What can I fit with Charisma at the moment? Hatred still consumes too much and I have 26% of unreserved mana.

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WinterHiko wrote:

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Cjin wrote:

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Kelvynn wrote:

The math looks fine but the reality was very different. I found myself out of mana unable to cast on multiple occasions. Had to take out CWDT gems during the boss fight - and was instantly back to good. I don't have time or desire right now to figure out exactly why it was happening.

The budget gear situation doesn't last very long for this build. And the difference made by 3 skill points is not significant either. You are still leveling at this point. Dreamer is very safe. The alternative is unsafe.

I think it is because of Cold Snap CWdT setup. Two lvl1 CWdT drains mana so fast as soon as you are facetanking anything and taking hit after hit.

Good catch! I was so confused, because I've ran the setup for a while and had no problem, while Kelvynn clearly couldn't sustain it. Adding Cold Snap in my calculations would add a 33 cost every three seconds, which is substantial, and I've never played the new setup.

Also, my Clarity was lv 18 at the time. Which is perfectly normal for that point in the game. That would be normally day 2 of a new league and you couldn't easily get lv 20 or 21 Clarity.

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Vennto wrote:

All I can say is: I played enough mavens to feel very comfortable in the fight. The name lock is indeed something I ignored, I am fine to admit that and therefore admit I might have played the fights better. Then again, we´re kind of back at the aforementioned point: You can´t compare multiple leagues of experience with a new player on the build, let alone a newer player in the game in general. Therefore I think my estimation, while incomplete, is still not entirely wrong.

Only about 90% wrong on that particular point. Killing the Maven with name locking would have completely changed your impression.

The Play Style section has a link to an Uber Maven kill where she's not even on the screen most of the final phase. For the regular Maven you can simply stand in the middle of the arena, name lock her once and never move until the next phase. Or maybe Frostblink out of the big purple thing if she chooses to do that - but never release the Icestorm button and keep her locked. You can completely ignore the slow/dot ground.

Is there some posted info about what charms are available? The trade site fails when searched for charms with int, for example, so I have no idea what is wrong with my search fu.