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

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FourArmz wrote:

Is the crafting shown on the scion page still working after harvest nerfs?

Do you see any harvest crafts being used in that crafting?

Hey guys! I've been very busy with other stuff (as I always am this time of the year). Sorry for neglecting the forums.

I'm enjoying the Trickster so much! In this league I'm targeting Uber Sirus for his new uber loots, and the Sanctum league mechanic.

Sanctum was still getting tweaked, so I've been waiting for the big patch before finalizing my thoughts on it. But overall, for this build the way to go is: swap Ball Lightning with Frostblink, start casting from distance, then jump onto them. And the latest changes in 3.20.1 only make this play style better (even less damage in melee range). Also, Resolve is useless - it's all about Inspiration! Many relics and boons give you serious amounts of Inspiration, and it's not capped. By the end of a Sanctum run, with some luck and careful planning, you can have 50 Resolve and 800 Inspiration and roflstomp all enemies.

Make a list of room names and what they do! It can make your Sanctum farming a whole lot easier.

I've been giving Uber Sirus some serious thoughts - now that he's a top target rather than a novelty. If you look at my character, you'll see some new things compared to 3.19.

The curse changes in 3.20 resulted in Punishment becoming the better choice - especially for Sirus! But for any boss really, the overall damage from 100% to dead is higher with Punishment that with EW. And it also debuffs the enemy to do less damage.


Changes to jewels mean that you have to look for different solutions for stun and corrupted blood. Both of which turned out to be completely irrelevant for the Trickster for regular mapping or Sanctum farming. You don't get stunned much in maps even with no stun avoidance other than the innate 50% from having ES. And the overleech totally cancels out CB.

However, if you plan on farming uber bosses, you have to get more serious about it. Ubers can stun quite often. And don't even think about Uber Sirus without CB immunity.

For the stun, the ES Mastery option for stun threshold based on ES proved to be enough. The mana was a bit tight at first, but I got Clarity Mana Recoup on the Watchers Eye (it's very cheap).

Also, using IC lv 6 and PWoC lv 8 to make sure I always recoup more mana than the CWDT link spends.

More expensive options are Enlighten (we have a free socket!) or crafting a helmet on a lab enchanted base (mana reservation for PoE, Clarity or Discipline).

CB immunity can be easily found on a corrupted rare jewel. But we don't have a socket for it in the high end setup, with the Eye, Megalo, etc. Corrupting Emperor's Wit would be prohibitively expensive. However, somebody reminded me of a cheap jewel that's been around since 3.10 but just didn't fit the play style... until recently!

It attaches grapsing vines to you for standing still. The Stampede cancels the ms debuff. After 5 sec you can have the max 10 vines, resulting in dealing 20% more damage and receiving 10% reduced damage. Trickster can facetank most bosses easily and take advantage of it. Even on the uber bosses, standing still for 2-3 sec between jumps (Frostblink cancels it) is still good enough to justify spending 2 skill points.

And finally, the biggest problem with Uber Sirus is his X-beam. It makes you take more damage, and it slows you down - just when you need mobility to avoid the Clone Circle and the DIE laser. If only we had something that could make us unslowable... Oh wait... One Step Ahead in the Trickster Ascendancy!

But how to get it? There is absolutely no way I'd drop the overleech for it. Dropping Polymath would lose a massive amount of damage. That leaves Heartstopper. Technically, when you are geared enough, you no longer need it for most anything. It's still nice for Uber Sirus. And I'm still not super well geared. So the solution I've found is to get the 5th Ascendancy on the Flesh/Flame jewels:

Heartstopper is the cheapest (cost me 1.5 div total), and I took One Step Ahead on the mini-tree.

When I get better gear, I'll totally replace it with Opportunistic for more damage. But at the moment I'm sitting at just 2.2k Int. Last 2 leagues had awesome league-specific crafts that kinda spoiled us. Now it's back to basic crafting, and harvest got murdered. And it's only 10 days into the league.

What can a 2.2k Int Trickster do? How about farming the hardest boss in the game... xD

New video: Uber Sirus

I'll try to update the guide with the new stuff soon.

Muahahahaha! Yes, that's in a lv 83 Sanctum. Guess there is a cap on Inspiration too. But seriously...

New video: The Sanctum Boss (lv 83)

The final ("Beyond") version does real (non-resolve) damage. Way too little of it, in my opinion. Super gimp.

The only danger is the invulnerability phase when you are supposed to dodge between the waves of lightning damage. But the Trickster can simply bring The Writhing Jar and eat some worms to keep the overleech going.

Are you sure about Punishment's DPS? My current PoB says Elemental Weakness gives about the same DPS increase (25% more), but all the time. If we're using Culling Strike, that's 40% of the life's boss that actually benefits from it and that's a 60% increase instead of a -30% elemental resistance. With 3 Cold to the Core and 2300int, I'm already at 400% increased damage, which make the jump to 460% feel quite underwhelming, especially for less than half of the boss' uptime.

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WinterHiko wrote:

Are you sure about Punishment's DPS? My current PoB says Elemental Weakness gives about the same DPS increase (25% more), but all the time. If we're using Culling Strike, that's 40% of the life's boss that actually benefits from it and that's a 60% increase instead of a -30% elemental resistance. With 3 Cold to the Core and 2300int, I'm already at 400% increased damage, which make the jump to 460% feel quite underwhelming, especially for less than half of the boss' uptime.

Increased damage TAKEN by the enemy. It's multiplicative with increased damage done by you, effectively a MORE modifier. It is additive with other similar mods such as Unnerve (10%) and Aspect of the Spider (15%). Still, adding 60% to that is a lot.

I've played with numbers in PoB. The overall damage from 100% to 10% is about the same as EW, slightly better with my gear from 3.19. But:
- it debuffs the enemy;
- it's safe vs reflect (Uber Atziri and The Feared);
- in mapping, a typical tanky rare is already below 50% by the time its pack dies (especially useful against Soul Eaters);
- melting Uber Sirus from 50% down is priceless.

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Kelvynn wrote:

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WinterHiko wrote:

Are you sure about Punishment's DPS? My current PoB says Elemental Weakness gives about the same DPS increase (25% more), but all the time. If we're using Culling Strike, that's 40% of the life's boss that actually benefits from it and that's a 60% increase instead of a -30% elemental resistance. With 3 Cold to the Core and 2300int, I'm already at 400% increased damage, which make the jump to 460% feel quite underwhelming, especially for less than half of the boss' uptime.

Increased damage TAKEN by the enemy. It's multiplicative with increased damage done by you, effectively a MORE modifier. It is additive with other similar mods such as Unnerve (10%) and Aspect of the Spider (15%). Still, adding 60% to that is a lot.

I've played with numbers in PoB. The overall damage from 100% to 10% is about the same as EW, slightly better with my gear from 3.19. But:
- it debuffs the enemy;
- it's safe vs reflect (Uber Atziri and The Feared);
- in mapping, a typical tanky rare is already below 50% by the time its pack dies (especially useful against Soul Eaters);
- melting Uber Sirus from 50% down is priceless.

Good point, I missed that. How do you calculate the damage increase from 100% to 0%?

EDIT : To be more precise, I'm trying to reconciliate the fact that PoB tells me that the increase in damage is about the same with EW and Punishment while the enemy is low life (25% more). I'm not even running Aspect of the Spider, so it should be 110% to 170%, or a rougly 55% more multiplier. With PoB's calculation, that would be a 25% dmg loss while above 50% and no DPS gain under 50%. We'd be trading that 25% dmg while over 50% for the defensive capabilities.

I might be missing something obvious.

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I'm enjoying this build a lot, lucked out with a really nice body armor craft.

Here's my current character: https://pobb.in/UwqIWHNGmHSI
How can I improve it further? I'm thinking about getting a rare amulet but str/dex requirements will be a pain, also opportunist forbidden jewels and getting some more levels.

Also, does anyone have tips for the sanctum final boss? The labyrinth phase is too long and unforgiving since we have nothing to leech from. I failed it twice now

Gz , you re a lucky man with this chest armour. I don't want to start to craft mine chest armour cuz i know it will be 3-4 div spent minimum in equivalent of spites+annul+exalts

Great guide Kelvynn. Played the ascendant version quite a few leagues ago and loved it. Great balance of defense, offense, and mobility. Came back a couple days ago after skipping the last 2 or 3 leagues and decided to try the trickster version. Love it so far, but only 83 right now. Anxious to see how it plays compared to what I remember of the ascendant version once I get around level 95.

Hi
Are these jewels ''Forbidden flesh and flame'' only for ubers? I I do mapping I would rather stay with 'Fertile mind' & 'Brute force solution'?