[3.21] Cheapbunny's Frozen Legion Glacial Cascade Battlemage Inquisitor
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[Can anyone point me how to include items in posts, so I can make this a little prettier once I have some more time?]
@Kosai @Cheapbunny Here's my crit/WoC theorycraft variant. I play slow, so I have just gotten through yellow maps/lvl 88, and my gear needs a lot of work. I've never gotten to endgame content in any league, so I don't know what gear is expected at that point. I focused on Frozen Sweep damage, so my choice of Wave of Conviction may not be the best backup spell choice in the late game. PoB only goes to L90 because that's as far as I ever expect to get :P https://poe.ninja/pob/Ngl Kosai--I looked at The Winds of Fate previously (damage is comparable to Marohi Erqi) and it seems to make half of your hits do no damage. That might work on a Ignite build, but it didn't seem to fit here. I didn't explore rare staffs or staff tree nodes. Please share if you can get better mileage from staves :) Cheapbunny--let me know if you think this is different enough to justify it's own thread. I haven't gotten far enough to feel ready to make a build post, but I don't want to hijack your thread either. ------ Frozen Legion -> Marohi Erqi -> Instruments of Virtue feels like an obvious archetype. The theory for our builds is very similar, and I think the damage is too. Instead of making my own build thread, I'll just add notes in this post regarding any major different choices I've made. I'm also worried about my defences; I focused the theorycraft on damage and my base defensive layers are lower than I expect for red maps. Why use Wave of Conviction?
Spoiler
Wave of Conviction has a high Added Damage % (synergy with Battlemage). Once we get more than 25% phys->cold conversion, it should also reliably apply Cold Exposure.
Why Inquisitor instead of Forbidden Flesh/Flame?
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Instruments of Virtue is part of the archetype. Inquisitor also gets Augury of Penitence (enemies take 16% increased elemental damage) and Righteous Providence (easy 150% increased crit chance, can get over 200% inc depending on gear), and either Inevitable Judgement (ele pen) or Sanctuary (enemies take 15% inc damage on your Consecrated Ground).
Heirophant has 3 good nodes, but we don't have totems or brands, and we don't really focus on spells for Arcane Surge. Guardian could get four defensive nodes, but they don't synergize with the rest of the build. Maybe would consider if I could squeeze Herald of Purity in. How to scale damage?
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I wasn't super-concerned about scaling my spells, because I don't personally care about clearspeed. Wave of Conviction and Frostblink should freeze or chill things enough that I can mop up with Frozen Legion if needed. (WoC still seems to be hitting hard enough that this isn't a problem yet.) i) Ignore attack speed--we want to keep attack speed > 1sec for Mace Mastery (12% chance for double damage) ii) Cast speed limits WoC's range. Find a cast speed you're comfortable with, and stay there. iii) Spell damage doesn't help Frozen Sweep. Avoid it. iv) We grab a lot of attack/melee physical damage for FS: mace and two-handed are both good here. v) Melee crit chance & crit mult are both good for FS. vi) Accuracy often comes along with crit chance! vii) Elemental damage, cold damage, and physical as extra [any] help both FS and WoC. viii) We have decent chance for double damage from the tree. The Magnate gives ele res, 5% triple damage, and another 10% double damage. Arn's Anguish might be better if I had a way to get endurance charges; this is a strangely charge-free build. ix) Bonechill on Frostblink (increased cold damage per % chill) and Heatshiver (cold as extra fire damage per % chill, or 100% for frozen). x) In the absence of curses, we take Inevitable Judgement for an extra 10% elemental pen--or treat ele res as 0% on crits. [Disclaimer--I have Vengeance->Hextouch->Temporal Chains, which could be a -res curse, but I don't see it trigger on bosses yet so why bother?] If you have enough pen or -res to go below Inevitable Judgement's "ignore res", then Sanctuary can give you "enemies take 15% increased damage" if you can find a source of Consecrated Ground--because who stands still? xi) Replica Hyrri's Truth gives +dex, crit mult, and lvl 22 Hatred (with 120% increased efficiency after adding mana quality). Gems:
Spoiler
Slight differences here.
My setup: Anomalous Frozen Legion->Divergent Pulverise->(Awakened) Melee Physical Damage->Increased Critical Strikes->Concentrated Effect->Increased Critical Damage Anomalous FL gives increased CDR, because you need it from somewhere. Divergent boosts the More damage on Pulverise, and attack speed shouldn't matter. Frostblink->Divergent Bonechill->Anomalous Increased Area of Effect->Increaed Duration Divergent Bonechill increases effect of chill. (Superior increases chill duration, which doesn't apply to Frostblink's chilled ground.) Anomalous Inc AoE reduces damage but increases AOE. We're only using Frostblink for the AOE chilled ground, but you can use Divergent for a smaller inc AOE if you don't want to lose damage here. Anomalous Frostblink is an option for additional AOE, but Superior Frostblink gives increased effect of chill (& freeze) which IMO is more important. Phantasmal Wave of Conviction->Divergent Trinity->Elemental Proliferation->Anomalous Inspiration->Anomalous Cruelty->Iron Will Phantasmal WoC converts 20% physical to cold. That's good as we want to apply Cold Exposure. Divergent Trinity converts 10% physical to a random element--this should keep cold from being always the highest, and kep Trinity relevant. At full Resonance it's 30% more, and at half+ Resonance it gives 16% ele pen to WoC. (Increased Crit Damage and Concentrated Effect are good alternatives if you're not getting full Resonance.) WoC doesn't crit as much a Frozen Sweep, so ele pen is useful more often. Other gear notes:
Spoiler
* Get cooldown on boots. * Look for phys->cold on gloves? (I'm still using Brain Rattler while I save up for the squeaky mallet, so I don't need cold conversion for WoC just yet.) * Rings, gloves, boots are all life/res. * Body armour is an open slot--whatever 6-link you can get with good base defenses and life, +int if you can manage that. There are probably some great implicits or influences I haven't thought of here. Carcass Jack has a nice 50% inc boost to AoE and has competetive +life, but a well-rolled rare should just be better. Essence of Hysteria is 25% inc AOE if you really want that. * Flat physical damage scales immensely; prioritize it as much as possible. * Strength will be high, so any +int should also boost crit %. * I haven't found room for cluster jewels, but past L90 we have some points to play with. There are several nice options: Graceful Execution helps with accuracy & crit, Force Multiplier and Weight Advantage give double damage... We also have several auras that might have good side effects on the Reservation Efficiency jewels. * Watcher's Eye really wants +crit chance while affected by Hatred. That's a flat + rather than increase, so it scales beautifully. One general note about this variant: Overall DPS is about the same as non-crit, but damage is much more spiky here.
Spoiler
For Frozen Sweep, PoB shows me 8% of hits get triple damage, and 29% of hits get double damage. This leaves 63% (just under 2/3) of all hits "normal". 64% of all hits (just under 2/3) are crits on top of any triple or double damage, and we have a 5.3x crit multiplier.
This gives a damage multiplier from x1 (22% of hits) to x15 (5% of hits); the single most likely combination is a "normal" crit at 5x multiplier (40% of hits). When you get a string of non-crits (especially if they're single-damage), it can be confusing why you're doing so little damage. Other times, you get a lucky triple-damage + crit, and the boss just poofs. Getting Frozen Sweep to shotgun is also very important in keeping DPS up. (After fiddling around with bodyarmour crafting, I got the crit% above 80% with single-hit FS of 470k on Uber pinnacle bosses / 1.5M on pinnacle bosses. Higher is definitely possible.) Side note for comparing DPS: for Frozen Legion/Frozen Sweep, actual DPS is limited more by cooldown than attack speed or cast speed. (At least, I'm not going to spam single-use Frozen Legion!) POB also doesn't ask how many uses of Frozen Legion you have. Depending on AoE, walls, etc, you may get FS to shotgun. I recommend comparing per-hit damage rather than DPS. Comparing Frozen Sweep to other skills DPS can also be confusing. |
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What do you do for ailment immunity? flaks? pantheon?
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@StrykeSlammerII
Your build seems very different to me, I think your frozen legion do most of the damage, WOC is just a support. To link an item, you can click on your character portrait at top of the page, then it will pop your in game inventory, click on the item you want to link, it will create a link to the item in your post. |
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" Reduced shock effect from pantheon, immune to frezze/chill from flask. Does not care about ignite because the build has high regen to counter it. |
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" Half of our builds are similar so I wasn't sure how different they really were. If I can get through red maps, I'll put up my own build post. Thanks for explaining how to link items! |
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hello, i like gc as a skill so i'm quite interested in your build, but i have one question. how is this build doing without spell suppression?
sorry if this question is stupid, i'm not very knowledgable on some aspects of the game so i'm trying to learn stuff. and sorry for my english it's not my native language( |
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" In term of tankiness, I dont feel too much different with my other spell suppress capped characther, I think because it has higher ehp/regen/molten shell. |
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ok, got it, thank you for reply)
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Looks like there are a total of 3 curses, elemental weakness which triggers frostbite and punishment off the gloves? How do you get to 3 max curses? One extra from the gloves but I'm not seeing where the third comes from, unless I missed something? Still very new. Thanks.
Last edited by caseCo825 on Feb 12, 2023, 1:01:57 AM
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The third curse comes from the amulet enchantment, Whispers of Doom. It's 3 gold oils.
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