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

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Tecken1407 wrote:

Planning to update this guide?

Honestly, there shouldn't be any difference in the build. One more skill point to get to the second curse notable. The rest stays pretty much the same. We get more damage against Pinnacle bosses from the curse changes and a bit less against rares, but that won't change how we build.

The new Uber Sirus flask might be interesting to clear, but it's going to be very high-end.

The PoB already showed a build without Kalandra jewellery, so it's up to date on the gearing side (synthesized rings and influenced amulet).

We probably want to self-cast the curses now (per the earlier discussion in this thread.)

The chest becomes: frostbite - elem weakness - unbound ailments - faster casting, so only need a 4L.

2 slots are available for ??? -- suggestions welcome. I'll put portal in one for sure, but no idea what to use for the other.

Self-casting is what, 30% more damage on bosses? That's why. And trash doesn't need cursing (usually.)

@WinterHiko -- let us know how the lightning levelling goes. Just FYI I found Spark intensely annoying as they go everywhere, not where I am aiming. And don't underestimate chill's slow. I haven't tried Arc, though.

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Graiaule wrote:

@WinterHiko -- let us know how the lightning levelling goes. Just FYI I found Spark intensely annoying as they go everywhere, not where I am aiming. And don't underestimate chill's slow. I haven't tried Arc, though.

The thing with Spark is that only one of the projectiles has to hit per cast (you can't shotgun with that spell), so you basically spam an area to hit every monster. It's a bit annoying though, because of the slow move speed of the sparks, which lead to spamming 2-3 cast instead of 1 and slowing you down. That's why I might go for Arc, which chains instantly. I might also take a look at fire spells, but I've never played one yet.

@WinterHiko: Well the best levelling spell only matters until you hit level 33 or so!

What I found that works best in practice (for me at least) is an AOE fire and forget spell paired with a high dps single target spell.

Frost bomb and freezing pulse is that for me. Since both are cold, I can take advantage of the +cold damage passives. (Note I drop the frost bomb AHEAD of me and move past it.)

It'll be interesting to see what you come up with.

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Graiaule wrote:

@WinterHiko: Well the best levelling spell only matters until you hit level 33 or so!

What I found that works best in practice (for me at least) is an AOE fire and forget spell paired with a high dps single target spell.

Frost bomb and freezing pulse is that for me. Since both are cold, I can take advantage of the +cold damage passives. (Note I drop the frost bomb AHEAD of me and move past it.)

It'll be interesting to see what you come up with.

I might wait a bit longer than level 33, depending on my drops. Is the staff tradable for alchs on the first day?

I leveled a scion with Frost Bomb and while it was efficient, the delay between casting and killing just wasn't doing it for me. I prefer instant spells and seeing the result of the cast right now. Feels better to me, but it's entirely subjective.

Unless I'm mistaken, the only cold damage passives we use in the leveling tree are the ones on top, which are directly adjacent to identical lightning and fire ones, so I'm not too worried about the element of the spell. Quest lines already give us several respec points (unless you're speedrunning the campaign and skipping all optional sidequests), which should cover the cost. Maybe I'm making lifeharder on myself, though.

I leveled a Contagion + Essence Drain Shadow in SSF recently and it had incredible clear, but the Chaos damage nodes are further in and it requires a bit too many respec points to my taste for just a leveling setup.

I'll take a look at fire spells and decide between that and Arc, probably. Might go through the options tonight. Fire spells would mostly be for a change of pace.

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WinterHiko wrote:

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Graiaule wrote:

@WinterHiko: Well the best levelling spell only matters until you hit level 33 or so!

What I found that works best in practice (for me at least) is an AOE fire and forget spell paired with a high dps single target spell.

Frost bomb and freezing pulse is that for me. Since both are cold, I can take advantage of the +cold damage passives. (Note I drop the frost bomb AHEAD of me and move past it.)

It'll be interesting to see what you come up with.

I might wait a bit longer than level 33, depending on my drops. Is the staff tradable for alchs on the first day?

I leveled a scion with Frost Bomb and while it was efficient, the delay between casting and killing just wasn't doing it for me. I prefer instant spells and seeing the result of the cast right now. Feels better to me, but it's entirely subjective.

Unless I'm mistaken, the only cold damage passives we use in the leveling tree are the ones on top, which are directly adjacent to identical lightning and fire ones, so I'm not too worried about the element of the spell. Quest lines already give us several respec points (unless you're speedrunning the campaign and skipping all optional sidequests), which should cover the cost. Maybe I'm making lifeharder on myself, though.

I leveled a Contagion + Essence Drain Shadow in SSF recently and it had incredible clear, but the Chaos damage nodes are further in and it requires a bit too many respec points to my taste for just a leveling setup.

I'll take a look at fire spells and decide between that and Arc, probably. Might go through the options tonight. Fire spells would mostly be for a change of pace.

Staff is a few chaos the first day, when you reach level 33 it will probably not even exist or be 10c+.

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Firestrike9 wrote:

Staff is a few chaos the first day, when you reach level 33 it will probably not even exist or be 10c+.

Depends on how fast you level, obviously. I've seen staves for sale at 1c or 2 alch 3 hours into the league. Remember, you don't need a 6S 18% one immediately...

Hey guys! I've been waiting for the PoB update to see the exact consequences of the curse changes, etc. but they seem to be running very late this time. It's Wednesday and still no new PoB. Hmmm...

I'm very busy in December and my play time will be less than usual. Then again, there are no major balance changes that affect this build. Not much needs to be changed. That's great since I won't have time to spend on development.

Looks like the Occultist version got gutted. It already had mana issues, and now they made it even harder, plus the Malediction nerf? Oh well.

Stun avoidance got nerfed. Which doesn't affect the Ascendant in any way. Still gonna be the easy and beginner-friendly version. For the Trickster, it's going to be a test of how much stun avoidance we really need.

I'll just play the Trickster again. It's been by far the strongest overall version. Now there is new exclusive loot on the uber bosses. Explode flask on Uber Sirus, a big prize that should be worth quite a lot, and super useful for this build too. That boss was a pain on both Occultist and Ascendant because of the degen ground. But nothing special for Mr Trickster!

Brute Force and Fertile Mind are corruption-only jewels now. I don't actually know if this is going to make them more or less common. People used to just destroy or vendor most of the byproducts of jewel corruption. Plus all the jewel cards are going to give corrupted ones. I wouldn't worry about it too much.

For the curses I'd really like to see an updated PoB. It only matters for the uber bosses though. Everything else gets destroyed. Frostbite and EW -should- be a little stronger now, even in the Hextouch version. I don't like the idea of self-casting curses on the bosses since they are not instant.

There is also a new support that creates a cursed ground. It may be useful against some bosses, but we'll have to see how that works and what's the size of that ground.

Punishment may be an option instead of one of the elemental curses too. Just for some specific targets (e.g. Uber Sirus and Uber Maven).

The biggest overall issue I see is the state of crafting. In the last 2 leagues we've enjoyed some really OP crafting methods that are not available anymore. And Harvest got destroyed. So now it's back to how it was before 3.11, except that Exalts are dirt cheap. Still, crafting an endgame amulet or chest will be a whole lot harder than in the last 10 leagues. Now, instead of 2.7-2.8k Int you should realistically expect 2.5-2.6k Int with the same budget. The overall damage will be lower, the uber boss fights longer. And that's another reason to go with the Trickster - his survivability.

Harbingers should be super useful again. Spec into them and you'll have tons of annuls and the new fracture orbs. This will make crafting good gloves trivial. And some decent rings before you can afford synthesized ones.

Anything else I'm missing? I'll check for new PoB tomorrow and see if anything needs to be updated. But there shouldn't be any significant changes to either Trickster or the Ascendant (RIP Occultist; I won't have time to deal with all the nerfs there).

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WinterHiko wrote:

Do not forget that we have a natural free 50% to avoid stun because we always have ES. With a 22% cluster and another gear modifier, we already avoid 75% of stuns altogether.

That's not how it works. Different types of stun mitigation are multiplicative, not additive.

https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Stun

If you are CI, and you have 25% Stun Avoidance (e.g. on gloves), then your chance of getting stunned by a hit that does enough damage is:
(1 - 0.5) * (1 - 0.25) = 0.375, i.e. you have 62.5% chance not to get stunned.

If you craft 25% stun avoidance on both gloves and helmet, then it's:
(1 - 0.5) * (1 - 0.25 - 0.25) = 0.25, i.e. you have 75% chance not to get stunned.

Another avenue to explore is Corundum flask:
-- 30% increased Stun Threshold
-- Cannot be Stunned if you've been Stunned during Flask effect
-- Base duration 7.5s

Craft that with gain charges on hit, instill auto-reuse on full charges or enkindle for more duration and hit it manually. And then you can only be stunned every once in a long while.

Also, we have 30-40% stun and block recovery on The Stampede, which shortens stun duration.

It doesn't look like stuns are going to be a serious issue even after losing the jewel implicits.