[3.14] [Coop] The Codependent Ice Cream Man | Aura abusing party carry | Ice Crash + Frost Blades

We don't use a whole lot of unique items so we have a lot of choice as to what we want on each piece of gear. In general you want life on as much gear as possible and you want to cap your resistances on your own. Even though the aura bot will give you plenty of resistances it is recommended you also get 75% of all resistances yourself so you don't immediately die when you are out of range of your aura bot or if your aura bot disconnects or dies.

Do not look at the gems socketed into the gear in this section. Some of the equipment pieces in this section have gems that belong to a different build or have experimental gem setups in then. Go to the gem go to the skills and links section for info on what gems to

Other things to look for on gear:
1. Ideally you want some dexterity as we don't get to the 160 we need just from our tree. It is possible to sacrifice 1 skill point for the +30 dex node on the tree as well.
2. Chaos resistance is nice.
3. We can always use more elemental damage with attack skills, critical strike multiplier and attack speed. However these shouldn't come at the cost of other essential pieces of gear.

We basically want a 6 link staff with as much physical dps as possible. You do not need anything near as strong as shown in these examples. You can get by with a much lower pdps staff. A 5 link with 450 pdps is enough to get started. See the FAQ and gem links to see how to play with a 5 link. A 600 dps staff is great and will get you through most content. Anything above is a nice bonus but not required.

IF you have the option between multiple similar staff consider looking for staves that give chance to blind on hit or extra accuracy so you can also have 100% hit chance without your aura bot.

Note on implicits: an implicit that gives block chance is preferable. That way we can get some extra tankiness with the Glancing Blows keystone. The new Heist bases also includes a staff that offers +1 maximum endurance and power charges but this is not that great for us. We tend to have 100% crit chance so an additional power charge doesn't do much for us. An extra endurance charge is nice but the block chance is probably better. Keep in mind that this is not an essential part of the staff and should only be taken into consideration when deciding between multiple similar staves. If you find a nice staff with the extra charges implicit instead of block chance go for it.

An Abyssus is the obvious choice but a Crown of the Inward Eye also works. The Abyssus offers a lot more damage but a Crown of the Inward Eye makes you tankier.

If you have the money look for the enchantment "15% Ice Crash physical damage gained as extra cold damage".

Above are examples for what you can get on the left are the more luxurious option. Go for a tabula if you really don't have money for anything.

We do not need a whole lot from our body armor. What we are looking for is a 6 link chest with Attacks have +#% to critical strike chance with as much life and resistance as possible. The critical strike chance can help us get our crit chance to 100%. But if you have a staff with a very high base crit chance this may not even really be necessary. This build does not have a whole lot of life so getting as much as possible on it is a priority.

A note on the 'explody' mod: In my opinion it isn't worth it, especially after the Harvest nerf. We can clear a whole screen of mobs in the blink of an eye, we do not need to make that big of an investment into more clear speed. Our targets tend to explode anyway because of our cold damage and Heralds. This mods will cost you many exalts and offers an absolutely minimal advantage.

Wealth level: poor

From Gloves we also mainly want life and resistances. Look for something like this first if money is tight.

Wealth level: average


If you can afford it go for a little more resistances and try to get Spiked gloves for the melee damage implicit.

Wealth level: high


If you have a budget and are looking to upgrade you can look for some luxury mods like more attack speed, physical damage to attacks, or increased damage with hits against chilled enemies.

Spiked gloves are the best glove bases for us.

A note on the 'strike skills target an additional enemy mod'. You can technically use this mod and then get rid of Ancestral Call support for your Frost Blades to use another damage support gem but this will be expensive and severely limit your choice in gloves. Frost Blades is not our DPS skill so we do not need to go to great lengths to min max it's damage. I recommend sticking with Ancestral Call.

Wealth level: low/average


Simply get some boots with life and resistances. Movement speed is a nice bonus but actually not essential for us. We leap slam faster than the speed of light and are generally too fast for our Aura bot to keep up with us if we go through a map at maximum speed. So having 15% ms on our boots instead of 30% is perfectly fine.

Wealth level: High/very high


This is probably how our ultimate boots would look like. 80+ life, 30+ movement speed, 40% resistances of 2 elements and the Elusive and Tailwind mods. You do not need this by any means but if you have the money, go ahead.

Wealth level: average


Wealth level: Scrooge McDuck


Basic desired mods for our amulet:
-Life
-Critical strike multiplier
-Elemental damage with attack skills
-Dexterity
-Resistance
-Adds # to # physical damage to attacks

Luxurious mods for if you are rich:
Gain 15% of physical damage as extra cold damage
Non-channeling attacks have -# to mana costs (only if you feel like you need it)

Annointment
The most useful Annointment you can give your ammulet is Soul Raker. We do not benefit from claw damage whatsoever. But it's a very great node to take regardless of what weapon type you use. Soul Raker's mana and life leeching components are not tied to using claws so we can benefit from it with a staff. Even greater is that unlike most leeching nodes they are not tied to physical damage either so we can leech both mana and life even if we deal 100% elemental damage. We do not have a lot of options to get life and mana leech from elemental attacks anywhere else so this solves a big problem for us.

If you get your leech from something else like for example a cluster jewel with Fuel the Fight and Feed the Fury, you can annoint Kinetic Impacts for more damage or a life node of your choosing for more life.

Wealth level: poor

If money is tight look for a simple leather belt with some resistances and life.


Wealth level: average

If you have a little more currency to burn get a stygian vise with life, resistances and elemental damage with attack skills. The more you can get of all these things the better.


Wealth level: Elon Musk


A Headhunter is pretty funny to use on this build though arguably unnecessary. Only get this if you really have too much cash. The dexterity it provides is really nice but it's not that
great for killing bosses that don't give you the opportunity to kill a lot of rares beforehand.


Wealth level: Money can't buy this

This is arguably the perfect belt. It uses many powerful Redeemer mods and has the maximum amount of elemental damage with attacks. Unlike the Headhunter it is not reliant on killing rares to be useful. The only problem: with the current state of Harvest crafting you should not expect to run into a belt like this any time soon. Thankfully that isn't necessary to play this build, this serves as an example of useful mods on a belt if you have a larger budget.

Abyss jewel: If you use a stygian vise you can socket an abyss jewel. Examples of what you could socket in there look like this:

Look for life, added damage (physical or elemental) to attacks and attack speed if you've dealt a critical strike recently.

For rings you have two options: go for a ring with 'Trigger level 8/12 assassin's mark when you hit a rare or unique enemy' or just get the best rings you can get without AM. Assassin's mark is a nice benefit, it provides us with extra critical strike multiplier against rare and unique enemies. But that is about it. We don't need the extra crit chance it provides as we should be capped on crit chance regardless. It can be beneficial to run with it but it's by no means required. If there is a curse bot in your party most of the time it's a good idea to leave it. I would only look for rings that have this mod if you can really afford it.

A quick overview of what mods to look for on our rings:
-Life
-Resistances
-Dexterity
-Elemental damage with attack skills
-Adds # to # physical damage to attacks
-Increased cold damage
-Critical strike multiplier (warlord mod)
-Trigger level 8/12 assassin's mark when you hit a rare or unique enemy (optional)

If you are planning to run solo from time to time consider getting some accuracy on your rings as well. With our Aurabot we should always have 100% hit chance but on our own it takes some effort to maximize our hit chance.

Here are some examples of rings you can get.

Wealth level: poor

A basic ring with some life, resistances and dexterity.

Wealth level: average


If you have a little more budget also add elemental damage with attacks to your trade search.

Assassin's mark rings


Wealth level: Bezos on crack

This is not a ring you can reasonably expect to obtain without Harvest but it's an example of one of the best possible rings for us. If you can get a few of these mods on a ring it's more than enough.

1. An instant life flask. You can get this with either bleeding + corrupted blood immunity or poison immunity. If you have a jewel with an 'corrupted blood cannot be inflicted on you' implicit you don't strictly need the corrupted blood removal from your flask. If you are low on chaos resistance you can go with poison immunity instead. If you both are immune to corrupted blood and have 75% chaos resistance the choice is 100% up to you.

2. A utility flask. I went with a silver flask. It gives us onslaught which is also provided by some aura bots but we really need 1 utility flask to get curse immunity. You don't really need a quick silver as we're way faster than our aura bot with leap slam anyway. The best prefix to get on this is 20% chance to gain a flask charge if you deal a critical strike. That way you can keep the flask up permanently against bosses too. If your aura bot already provides onslaught consider using a Basalt flask instead.

If you play the solo version of this build you may need to swap to mana flask as listed in the solo variant section at the top.

3. A taste of hate. A great flask that offers us both a lot of dps and tankiness. We get a lot of extra cold damage from it and we also take 20% of the damage from hits as cold damage. The aura bot should give raise our maximum cold resistances to 90% so we prefer taking elemental damage over chaos and physical damage.

4. Lion's roar. It gives us a lot of armor and melee physical damage which we convert to cold damage. A great offensive and defensive flask.

5. Atziri's promise. It simply gives us damage. We also leech life with this flask. This is nice however this is of no use of us in the end. We will need another source of life leech that isn't tied to a flask, and once we have that we don't need the leech from Atziri's Promise anymore.

Other notes on flasks:
1.If your crit chance is low for whatever reason consider using a Diamond flask. But do not use it once we have 100% crit chance because then it does nothing for us.
2. Bottled Faith is not that good on this build. We already have maximum crit chance and spawn consecrated ground everywhere regardless. This flask is very expensive but does almost nothing for us.

Regular:
Look for jewels with as much critical multiplier and attack speed as possible with possibly life as well.

Look for jewels with 4(or 3 if you're on a budget) of these modifiers:
-Attack speed with staves
-Attack speed with two handed weapons
-Attack speed
-Attack and Cast speed
-Global critical strike multiplier
-Melee critical strike multiplier
-Critical strike multiplier with cold skills
-Critical strike multiplier with elemental skills
-Critical strike multiplier with two-handed weapons
-% increased maximum life

Look at the total crit multiplier and attack speed your jewels will give you. Not just at how many of these mods are on it. It is possible that Attack speed with staves gives you more attack speed on it's own than both regular attack speed and 'attack and cast speed' combined.

Also try to get the Corrupted blood cannot be inflicted on you corruption implicit on one of your jewels. These can be expensive so it's ok if that jewel has only 2 or 3 of these modifiers.

You may want to do the same for the You cannot be hindered implicit if you feel like you need it. In the Ultimatum league this is very useful as the league mechanic will very often inflict hinder on you.

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Cluster jewels
The most important thing is to get a medium cluster jewel with 'purposeful harbinger' on it somewhere in your tree. (Unless you are playing the solo variant). Everything else can be customized.

Large cluster jewel:
We can only use 1 of these at most and it's important that it has as few small passive nodes as possible. A good option is to get a cluster jewel with Fuel the fight and Feed the fury. This opens up our annointment slot as these nodes offer us mana and life leech. You could also go for a cluster jewel with 'Overlord' on it. This gives you fortify for 6 seconds on hit which means that you will also get the fortify effect when attacking with Ice Crash and that you can swap your fortify support out for Hypothermia for your Frost Blades.

Medium cluster jewels:
After you got the purposeful Harbinger on 1 of your medium cluster jewels you can opt for some damage related passives on the others. I chose Skull breaker and Pressure points for mine so I would get extra critical strike multiplier and a chance to deal double damage with critical strikes. This is excellent for us as we have a 100% crit chance.

Small cluster jewels:
I don't recommend using these. They cost too much skill points for us, instead just sockets a regular jewel on the end of your medium cluster jewels.

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Unique jewels
Use a thread of hope with a MEDIUM radius at the place specified in PoB. Try to get one with as little negative resistances as you can reasonably afford.

You can also choose to use a Watcher's eye jewel. Due to our aura bot being present at all times we have a lot of options as to which one we can get. This means that we can even get some very good combinations for a very affordable price because certain aura's are rarely used together.

Examples of good mods on a watcher's eye:
-Critical strike multiplier while affected by Anger
-Gain #% of physical damage as extra fire damage while affected by Anger
-Critical strike multiplier while affected by Precision
-Attack speed while affected by precision
-Increased cold damage while affected by Hatred
-Adds # to # cold damage while affected by Hatred
-Gain #% of physical damage as extra lightning damage while affected by Wrath

These may not be the only good mods but if you can get 2 of these on one Watcher's eye you have a very strong jewel for this build.

Threshold:
None. Most Frost Blades go for Fight for Survival but we don't need it. If we ignore elemental resistances the cold resistance penetration does nothing for us. And if you run with a curse bot and don't spec into that ascendancy node it's only a marginal damage boost. It also does nothing for our Ice Crash damage and we don't really need to maximize our Frost Blades damage anyway.

Our ascendancy of choice is Inquisitor. I chose this one because it offers us a lot of crit chance, the ability to ignore enemy resistances and various consecrated ground effects. Something else that makes this ascendancy a good choice is that our starting class is Templar and the Templar area is the best starting area for us on the tree. The other Templar ascandancies; Guardian and Hierophant don't complement this build at all.

First Ascendancy: Righteous Providence. This will offer us a lot of crit chance, strength and intelligence.

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Second Ascendancy: Inevitable Judgement. With 100% critical strike chance we completely ignore enemy elemental resistances. This may not always be beneficial as you can no longer take advantage of negative resistances that we could give monsters with certain curses and items. However with an Aura bot this node really shines. Normally we would only deal cold damage so we could stack cold penetration and cold resistance lowering mechanics. But with an Aura bot we also deal fire and lightning damage. We can't possibly invest into all 3 types of penetration at the same time. With this node we can also stop worrying about map mods that give monsters elemental resistances or endurance charges and the mod that gives us elemental equilibrium.

VERY IMPORTANT: If you do not only run with an aura bot but also with a curse bot this node is very bad. A curse bot will lower enemy resistances dramatically and we can no longer take advantage of this. If you are running with a curse bot drop this node and switch to 'Augury of Penitence' instead. This will make you take less elemental damage and makes every monster around you take more elemental damage.

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Third Ascendancy: Sanctuary. This will make you spawn consecrated ground whenever you stop moving for a brief moment. Both Ice Crash and Frost Blades will make you stop moving when you attack so we will spawn consecrated ground whenever we use them. Monsters also take increased damage while on consecrated ground created by you. The consecrated ground we spawn is not very large it would seem that we don't benefit much from this. But this is not the case. Aura bots tend to run Zealotry, an aura that gives us chance to spawn consecrated ground whenever we hit a rare or unique enemy. Because of our ridiculous attack speed we will be spawning it non-stop whenever there are rare or unique enemies nearby.

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Fourth Ascendancy: Pious Path. This node further improves consecrated ground we spawn. It now also offers energy shield regeneration and ailment immunity. it also allows us to keep any positive effect offered by consecrated ground for 4 seconds after we are no longer standing on it. Since we are creating consecrated ground constantly we are practically immune to freeze, shock and ignite effects and we can constantly recover the energy shield offered by our Aura bot's Discipline. These effects also apply to other players and minions on your consecrated ground so we also grant ailment immunity to our party members a lot of the time.

I personally used Soul of Lunaris and Shikari, but there is nothing we absolutely need. Solaris also seems like a solid choice, but if you want to run something else that's fine too.

I recommend to help Eramir for the 2 skill points, especially if you are planning to go with cluster jewels. If not than helping Alira is also a good option. But I recommend Eramir regardless.