[Pathfinder] Quarterstaff ACC/STR-stacker (Beginner-friendly, Low-Budget, Skill-tester)

Current Progression: T15

Itemization is very easy for this build since we only need one cheap unique which is Pillar of the Gods. I also use Black Sun Crest for the great amount of stats it adds to our character. Ideally it should be 20% Quality but I bought this one for 5 Exalts. In Solo Self-Found (SSF) we can get this early in the game by gambling on a Quarterstaff as we get into town for the first time and corrupt it ourselves once we've upgraded it. In trade league I recommend buying a low item level since it will require fewer Blacksmith's Whetstone to upgrade to 20%. They only cost 1 Exalt for a decently corrupted one at the moment. Ideally you want one with 20% Quality and the corrupted implicit Adds # to # Cold Damage otherwise you can get one with 3 sockets which is cheaper and add 3 Glacial Runes instead of 2. I got mine for 5 Exalts but it didn't have 20% Quality to improve the physical damage unfortunatly. Each point of damage is very important since the weapon damage scales by 10% per 5 Strength.



Black Sun Crest however is more expensive for a good rolled one. They are very cheap early in the league, but increase on price as the league progresses. However a lot of bad rolled uncorrupted ones cost 1 Exalt and 3 can be reforged to reroll the stats one it which is a lot cheaper than using a Divine. Just note that only uncorrupted can be reforged.



For every other item you'd want 2 resistance modifiers and STR. For gloves and Rings we want Cold Damage to Attacks as it adds the value as weapon damage and two good rings can literally double our damage.
Generally since leech is no longer a good source of sustain we need at Life and Mana on kill which we can get on rings or gloves.

Core Nodes




Ascendancy Order
Traveller's Wisdom
Running Assault
Relentless Assault
Shattering Concuction

For general zone clearing Hand of Chayula -> Ice Strike -> Herald of Ice (Shatter) is enough to clear large packs of enemies and Tempest Bell for can be used to one shot rare monsters.
Glacial Cascade being melee is very good in Sanctum to deal with annoying enemies at a range or bosses to apply Cold Exposure until we get Shattering Concoction from our 4th Ascendancy when bosses are doing wind-up attacks before we re-engage the boss.
For bosses we use the combo usually we only need to combo once as our boss damage is very high except for Sanctum where we might have afflictions that increase Boss survivability.

Combo
Ice Strike to 4 combo points -> Hand of Chayula -> Infernal Cry -> Tempest Bell -> Shattering Concoction (Skip if not Ascended) -> Ice Strike -> Staggering Palm (Heavy Stun Trigger) -> Ice Strike -> (Repeat if necessary) -> Killing Palm

The reason why we don't open with Hand of Chayula is because we as much uptime on our curses for the damage window and don't want to Freeze the boss too early and miss out on the window where we can hit the boss uninterrupted from the Freeze and Heavy Stun.

Skill gems
Our focus should be on meeting requirements and upgrading our main skill gems with Uncut Gems, Gemcutters Prisms and Jeweler's Orbs with the exception of Tempest Bell that I leave on 0 Quality until the rest are upgraded. Hypothermia that requires high INT should be kept at lower levels and upgraded whenever we add more INT on our skilltree to upgrade our main skills.

Ice Strike
This is our main damaging ability and want to keep it maxed as we progress. Mana can become an issues at higher levels I'd recommend swapping out Martial Tempo with a damaging support gem to reduce mana spent especially above 4 attacks per second. In the endgame it is possible to grab the Blood Magic node to convert mana cost to Life.

Tempest Bell
Our second priority is Tempest Bell since the campaign is full of boss encounters. We want to increase this to get more bell hits to avoid destroying the bell.

Herald Of Ice
To make group clearing faster we want to quality Herald Of Ice as our second priority to increase the Shatter explosions which becomes more important as we reach mapping.

Freezing Mark
Our best curse as we want to increase freeze build up for easier freezing on bosses and to make sure that we freeze to Shatter explode minions since white monsters can sometimes die before we get a chance to freeze them.
As we use Hand of Chayula as our opener on group clearing to apply our curses it also provides us with a second explosion that makes sure our Herald Of Ice kill almost anything it comes in contact with.

Hypothermia
Mainly for boss and rare killing since most of them have high elemental resistances it helps us kill the them in a matter of seconds.

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