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

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Jadran wrote:

I made a terrible mistake this league. I started with this build, went to level 95 with it, then thought I'd try another build, which will be more fun, more DPS, tankier and/or more well-rounded.

Well. I've tried FOUR other builds, some popular, some niche. Went to early 90s with all of them. Plot twist: they turned out not more fun, certainly not tankier and for sure not more well-rounded than WI.

So now after losing about a month worth of time that I could've spent working on my challenges with WI, I'm back to this build. And having fun again and clearing all content.

Don't be like me. Stick with Whispering Ice.

You are absolutely right.

There was a time when I was also thinking of starting another char, but then I always remembered a friend that told me, I should concentrate on 1 char, otherwise i will spread my currency on different builds, and none is really good.

In the beginning I had problems in real life, so I couldn't play the first 2 weeks.

When I started everything was much more expensive, starting with 1c (when I looked at the beginning it was only 1 alch).

It was a problem for me to buy better gear, because what I found was not good at all.

But I sticked to my first char, the WI Trickster, and I could improve it alot.

I had to make a break again because of some health problems, so when I continued, everything was even more expensive.

In the end I found some divines and could sell some items for divines, so I could improve my char, but then end nobody was selling the items to improve my char further.

But I did 40 challenges thie league for the 1st time:) though I also bought some challenges I could not do.

I'm really happy with the Trickster and his good defences.

Can totally agree

I think this league it was easy to get high Int values due to the crazy Kalandra jewelery. I am at 2494 now and my gear is not perfect by any stretch. Could probably go over 3000 with (much) better investment. But 2500ish feels good enough for all content (I haven't done uber exarchs / uber mavens / etc.).

So in 3.20 that will be gone, we might have to find new tricks or gearing for similar Int will be more expensive.

I just hope they won't nerf Trickster, it's not any of the top played Ascendancies, so GGG's hammer might just miss it (?)

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Jadran wrote:

So in 3.20 that will be gone, we might have to find new tricks or gearing for similar Int will be more expensive.

Nah, we'll just use 7% int craftable rings instead, like we used to prior to Kalandra. These will give nearly as much int as the Kalandra rings.

The real benefit of the Kalandra rings was the ~90% resist we could find on them. Two rings alone took care of 2/3 of our resist needs.

Well, essence farming seems to be gone in 3.20.

In 3.19, I would fill out the atlas tree and always pay the 3c to get 4 essences to spawn. Every 50 maps or so I'd sell all of the deafening essences for 2-3 divines -- a nice additional income with essentially zero effort.

Anyone got any ideas for something similar? I'm specifically looking for something I can do in parallel while doing maps besides getting maven/etc orbs. Basically, I had 3 things running in parallel: drops from map, essence farming, maven/elder orb collecting. First time ever I had no currency issues at all.

Now I'm going to lose about 1/3 of the income. Hmm. Sadly, nothing obvious comes to mine, which is why I am asking.

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Graiaule wrote:

Well, essence farming seems to be gone in 3.20.

In 3.19, I would fill out the atlas tree and always pay the 3c to get 4 essences to spawn. Every 50 maps or so I'd sell all of the deafening essences for 2-3 divines -- a nice additional income with essentially zero effort.

Anyone got any ideas for something similar? I'm specifically looking for something I can do in parallel while doing maps besides getting maven/etc orbs. Basically, I had 3 things running in parallel: drops from map, essence farming, maven/elder orb collecting. First time ever I had no currency issues at all.

Now I'm going to lose about 1/3 of the income. Hmm. Sadly, nothing obvious comes to mine, which is why I am asking.

Heist is pretty easy, just open a box and pick up few items.

You can take the nodes that increase chance for map boss to drop Conqueror/Guardian/Synthesis maps.

But if you want zero effort, like opening breach/ritual is too much, there are no many options.

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Graiaule wrote:

Well, essence farming seems to be gone in 3.20.

In 3.19, I would fill out the atlas tree and always pay the 3c to get 4 essences to spawn. Every 50 maps or so I'd sell all of the deafening essences for 2-3 divines -- a nice additional income with essentially zero effort.

Anyone got any ideas for something similar? I'm specifically looking for something I can do in parallel while doing maps besides getting maven/etc orbs. Basically, I had 3 things running in parallel: drops from map, essence farming, maven/elder orb collecting. First time ever I had no currency issues at all.

Now I'm going to lose about 1/3 of the income. Hmm. Sadly, nothing obvious comes to mine, which is why I am asking.

You can still farm quite a bit of essence if you're specced into it. You get 2+ essence monster every map with 2-5 essences. It's still a good amount of currency and it's free.

You could also spec into Ritual. It's a good payout if you get all of the nodes and we'll get the option this League.

@Cjin -- apologies if I sounded lazy.

I did quite a bit of heist, with the atlas tree optimized for that.

I had my atlas tree optimized for conquerors/maven etc. (surprisingly I got very few conqueror map drops.)

I did delve and the delve bosses.

My point was more that essence farming was very efficient. I got 4 essences rather than 1 (@WinterHiko -- it's only 1 per map, and more if you get lucky -- maybe.)

I enabled the full Ritual nodes on the Atlas tree also but I failed to understand where the benefit was. All I found were minor amounts of currency, zero worthwhile items, and maybe a few scarabs etc. Yes, I rerolled them when they looked bad. I gave up after about 200 of them.

I also maxed out the Expedition nodes on the tree for a while, but had very bad luck with logbook drops so gave up on that also.

The only thing I didn't try was Bestiary, actually. I suppose I am saying that farming Essences was the best way I found of farming currency in 3.19 from the atlas tree.

Huh. So I did respec my atlas tree multiple times. I guess I'll try Bestiary this time.

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Graiaule wrote:

@Cjin -- apologies if I sounded lazy.

I did quite a bit of heist, with the atlas tree optimized for that.

I had my atlas tree optimized for conquerors/maven etc. (surprisingly I got very few conqueror map drops.)

I did delve and the delve bosses.

My point was more that essence farming was very efficient. I got 4 essences rather than 1 (@WinterHiko -- it's only 1 per map, and more if you get lucky -- maybe.)

I enabled the full Ritual nodes on the Atlas tree also but I failed to understand where the benefit was. All I found were minor amounts of currency, zero worthwhile items, and maybe a few scarabs etc. Yes, I rerolled them when they looked bad. I gave up after about 200 of them.

I also maxed out the Expedition nodes on the tree for a while, but had very bad luck with logbook drops so gave up on that also.

The only thing I didn't try was Bestiary, actually. I suppose I am saying that farming Essences was the best way I found of farming currency in 3.19 from the atlas tree.

Huh. So I did respec my atlas tree multiple times. I guess I'll try Bestiary this time.

Being lazy is not (necessarily) bad thing. It makes you optimize to get most with least effort. But if there were something that gives you 10 divines/h for no extra effort, everyone would be doing it. And the game is (supposed to be) balanced with risk + time consumption versus reward in mind.

The great benefit of essences was that you got guaranteed reward worth few chaos every map, but they cannot give you 10divines from one map, no matter how lucky you are.

@Cjin -- exactly! Low variance rewards are nice when you can always get them.

It looks like Harbinger is now worth doing again, for the fractured shards. I'll give that a shot and see how it looks. They'll still drop ancient shards, and I assume exalted shards too, so they should add up nicely.

Patch notes that affect us that I was able to find:

1. Brute Force/Fertile Mind require corrupting other jewels to get. GGG appears to have forgotten that there's a div card that gives Fertile Mind.

2. Hextouch curses are weakened, but we will still use them.

3. Stun immunity is going to be harder to get. We will have to use the Tolerance cluster (4 passive points) until we can minmax our gloves/helm. Stun immunity is no longer an available modifier on gems.

So, overall, seems like we lose a bit of dps and a bit of tankiness from the weakened curses and the fact we're not going to get 24 int on our unique jewels, as well as losing 4 passives.

We'll also need to figure out a new passive tree layout for the cluster jewels because Tolerance short-circuits the existing tree. I suspect the old Hatred tree will work but I haven't tried it yet.