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

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ragebarr wrote:

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graboubou wrote:

Just starting trying this build. Feels okay for now (considering my really bad stuff)

I know my stuff is still really bad and still missing a bunch of passives, but I have a hard time understanding what will make it tanky (sry i'm noob at POE).

What will make it able to not die against big physical hit that would OS you since we don't have armor ? How do you deal with 8+ essences rares ?

Just some napkin math to add context to Winter's answer:

This build can easily reach 10k+ ES. For the same level of investment most life builds would be at ~5k HP (maybe a bit more, maybe less).

If we take a 10K phys hit that would 1shot us (assuming we don't block/evade it, which as also mentioned by Winter happens relatively often), we can calculate that the life build would need 50k armour to reduce the damage by half (and still pretty much be 1-shot by that hit). That's a pretty significant amount of armour it takes to avoid that same 1-shot.

On the other hand, that 50k armour build will reduce small hits (1k or less) by 90%, which we won't, but to compensate we are leeching 20% of our ES per second (so 2k/s in this example)

(Info on Leech/Armour from poewiki if you want to read more)

Ok, i'll trust that ;)
Off I am boosting my ES !

Btw another question, is there some kind of milestone to reach before taking ghost reaver or should I take it asap ?

Not having natural ES regen seems really scary to me

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graboubou wrote:

Ok, i'll trust that ;)
Off I am boosting my ES !

Btw another question, is there some kind of milestone to reach before taking ghost reaver or should I take it asap ?

Not having natural ES regen seems really scary to me

Having Overleech is mostly the big milestone. Once you have that, whenever you finish a fight, you'll get a few seconds of regen, which will replace the natural one quite nicely. The only times you might feel the difference is in labs or bosses invulnerability phases. The former can be solved by hitting the pillars and the latter with a flask (usually the Withering Jar).

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milkytwix wrote:

So, here I am on my way from 99 to 100 - and I got one-shotted almost once a day, which makes the grind not doable. I have the feeling I die more often than before, when I switched away from the block node to full damage - is it really that way? Are others struggling as well? The flight from 98 to 99 was a blast, compared to this, died once, and that was due to brain lag and not an "oops I am dead" one shot (from for example a meteor in an exarch map out of nowhere, or a huge explosion in a deep delve, or.... u got it). Kinda frustrated right now...

The block nodes are incredibly useful, defense-wise. Negating 40% of hits is an incredible layer of defense, especially when mapping.

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milkytwix wrote:

So, here I am on my way from 99 to 100 - and I got one-shotted almost once a day, which makes the grind not doable. I have the feeling I die more often than before, when I switched away from the block node to full damage - is it really that way? Are others struggling as well? The flight from 98 to 99 was a blast, compared to this, died once, and that was due to brain lag and not an "oops I am dead" one shot (from for example a meteor in an exarch map out of nowhere, or a huge explosion in a deep delve, or.... u got it). Kinda frustrated right now...

That's the reason why I dont use block. You have 50% chance to block, but you also have 50% chance to not block, and when it's heppen and you dont have hartstopper on hit phase you probably dead by 1 shot if you dont have enought ES to tank the hit.
If you want to reach lvl 100, chose wisely the exarch or eater pilars, they can give you negative resistences and the meteor. Or go as maven instead eldritchs. Or better... pay for few 5-ways!

1-shot with this build?

Do people even know what 1-shot means?

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whiterockxx wrote:

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milkytwix wrote:

So, here I am on my way from 99 to 100 - and I got one-shotted almost once a day, which makes the grind not doable. I have the feeling I die more often than before, when I switched away from the block node to full damage - is it really that way? Are others struggling as well? The flight from 98 to 99 was a blast, compared to this, died once, and that was due to brain lag and not an "oops I am dead" one shot (from for example a meteor in an exarch map out of nowhere, or a huge explosion in a deep delve, or.... u got it). Kinda frustrated right now...

That's the reason why I dont use block. You have 50% chance to block, but you also have 50% chance to not block, and when it's heppen and you dont have hartstopper on hit phase you probably dead by 1 shot if you dont have enought ES to tank the hit.
If you want to reach lvl 100, chose wisely the exarch or eater pilars, they can give you negative resistences and the meteor. Or go as maven instead eldritchs. Or better... pay for few 5-ways!

That's against bosses. However, if you're trying to get XP, you're not running bosses. You're doing content with a high concentration of small mobs (mapping, delve, 5-ways, breachstones).

If you receive 100 hits, you don't care that it's a 50% chance. It'll average out overall and reduce damage taken substantially. It's the same with Evasion (though Evasion has entropy, but that's another topic). It makes you substantially tankier, even though some hits are not mitigated.

Even against bosses, block chance might save your life. If you can tank one hit but not two, for instance, having 50% chance to block damage means that over two hits, the odds of getting killed are one in four (50% X 50%). And against bosses with attacks that hits multiple times in a row (think Veritania's shower of ice, Searing Exarch's annihilation or Uber Shaper's bullet hell, for instance), the odds of not blocking any of the hits is extremely slim.

I liked ice storm in ancient leagues and would like to play it again.
However, the self-cast theme is giving me doubts. Most bosses, including all recent pinnacle bosses, move a lot so the huge DPS potential of stacked ice storms is negated.
Taking the hit from budget PoB (240k), if you are LUCKY you can maybe stack 2 storms before boss moves away. That would be ~2.5m DPS if I am not wrong (2 hits every 0.2s). Definitely not "melting", heck, even a buffed Essence Drain does that much damage. Especially with the very low area it covers due to concentrated effect and Intensify it's easy to lose out on damage. You lose all your DPS as soon as boss steps 1 inch away, basically.

So is this truly a 'boss melter' or more a 'run after boss trying to get some hits in' build these days? (yes ik about target lock but you are forced to move a lot anyway to dodge mechanics)

Thanks.

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Jasmira wrote:

I liked ice storm in ancient leagues and would like to play it again.
However, the self-cast theme is giving me doubts. Most bosses, including all recent pinnacle bosses, move a lot so the huge DPS potential of stacked ice storms is negated.
Taking the hit from budget PoB (240k), if you are LUCKY you can maybe stack 2 storms before boss moves away. That would be ~2.5m DPS if I am not wrong (2 hits every 0.2s). Definitely not "melting", heck, even a buffed Essence Drain does that much damage. Especially with the very low area it covers due to concentrated effect and Intensify it's easy to lose out on damage. You lose all your DPS as soon as boss steps 1 inch away, basically.

So is this truly a 'boss melter' or more a 'run after boss trying to get some hits in' build these days? (yes ik about target lock but you are forced to move a lot anyway to dodge mechanics)

Thanks.

Well, the budget version sure will not melt pinnacle bosses.

The high-end version can reach much higher and then become quite efficient with bosses, including Ubers. However, it will never be as damaging as the top meta boss-killers, who reach dozens of millions of DPS and insta-phase Ubers. Its strength comes from being very versatile and tanky. It's a jack-of-all-trades builds. Once you've built it completely, you can do any content you like.

As for the amount of storms, it depends on the boss. Something like Maven or Shaper will often stay in one place long enough to stack 4-5 storms. Something like Sirus, however, won't let you do this. And for certain phases/bosses, like Searing Exarch or Maven Nucleus, you can keep five storms on target quite consistently.

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daflipp wrote:

1-shot with this build?

Do people even know what 1-shot means?

Try to do maps with Exarch influence and grab all IIQ pillars, reach -30 fire resist and take a meteor when use a flask.... You'll understand what 1-shot looks like.

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Jasmira wrote:

So is this truly a 'boss melter' or more a 'run after boss trying to get some hits in' build these days? (yes ik about target lock but you are forced to move a lot anyway to dodge mechanics)

Thanks.

If you want to melt bosses, the crit variant is the way to go.
If you have low/mid budget and want to count on your luck tanking boss hits and runing around, Regular/block is the way to go.