[3.25] Ivory Tower attribute stacking LL Ice Spear CoC Inquisitor

This build is really bad at magic find, our rings are so much of our base stats that ventors is a huge damage cut and if you cannot cap your crit chance even by running increased crit strikes and inspiration you should probably hold off on running it as coc altogether.

Did alot of upgrading this week. Thoughts on this so far? chaos res is low - too expensive to get it. I think I'm in a good place though. Next up I think is to try to fit in Determination with more reservation efficiency..

20M DPS - 9.2k ES - 1313 STR - 1337 INT

https://pobb.in/VBz5c_6N666e

Any tips what can be some obvious upgrades here?


https://pobb.in/BU0ZxtRRz7z5

Feeling super squishy at the moment and dying multiple times in juiced t14's, can't really fit it Determination or afford the double jewels, they're super expensive at the moment.

For both of you the really big upgrades remaining are swapping your cyclopean coil for a hunter stygian with %attri, str and int and getting a glimpse of chaos with +1 proj, it will force you to revamp your flasks for more resists but it will address chaos resist and offer about 20% more damage over crown as long as you anoint tranquility somewhere. Additionally you are on the wrong clusters. the 8/3 clusters are cheap and workable but they are massively weaker then running even a meh 12/35 cluster with at least one of str/int and life/es. Additionally this is not a build that stacks a meaningful amount of armor, iron reflexes is not worth it really, with the advent of guardian's blessing it is possible to run an additional aura but the build is not well positioned to run an additional offensive or defensive aura, as there is just not enough armor available in the build for it to be meaningful at the content that this build excels at (sim, super juiced deli and ubers) instead I would recommend looking for phys taken as ele corrupts on rathpith and a phys taken as ele watchers to massively boost survivability.

For more individual specific build advice, life and %es are the most important mods on the jewels, crit multi is nice but contributes roughly as much damage and less survivability. A proper greatwolf is an enormous advantage over even a perfect astramentis, if you are using ice spear for this then you are basically required to run nimis, without nimis you are better served running a skill with actual built in aoe such as ice spear of splitting or blazing salvo. This build requires at the higher end triple elemental flasks and you should really take the barbarism wheel (life, all resist and max fire resist) defiance banner is not worth needing to take the champion of the cause wheel and zealots oath is not worth a skill point over a crit wheel or additional distance on a cluster for splits. Take the points saved from that to use for the 12/35 cluster, if you cannot afford a 12/35 a 12/25 with the appropriate mods is usually much cheaper and is not significantly worse. Additionally instant leech is non negotiable with this build, we hit so quickly and often that we leech approximately 1.5x our entire massive ES pool as instant leech each second, instead of getting es leech on a charm look for stuff like fortify + cannot be stunned while fortified (lets you drop unwavering) or just str&int/%str for the best raw stats. Once you've saved up enough another good purchase is a 8% or if you're ridiculously rich 15% increased explicit defensive mods ivory tower. It is vanishingly rare to find one of those on sale for less than 10 divs but it is worth it for this build as it is functionally ~7 or 14% more es. Finally as a stretch target for when you're absurdly rich, either searing purity fff + mb and resort flasks or sanctum of thought fff, each is roughly as expensive, mb offers some additional utilty such as easily hitting the 7.57 aps breakpoint while sanctum of thought is much more damage and raw survivability. See my appended PoB for my character running a version of this build from last league for an idea of where to go from here.

https://pobb.in/1mBYIZqk_QS0

Edit: Additionally I entirely fail to see the point of flesh & stone, this build does not in my experience struggle with getting burnt out by enemies prior to engaging them, you frostblink into the pack while cycloning and then ice spear rapidly kills everything on the screen and you repeat as needed, if you are going to run a 25% res skill run tempest shield, it is not especially useful in mapping but it is life saving against some uber bosses who can rapidly chain hard hitting spells loaded with absurd amounts of pen to kill you through all of your defenses if you don't have a way to get out of the way in time. Additionally I did not notice it at the time but neither of you are taking the melding wheel, that wheel is four of the strongest skill points possible for this build, take them.

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Bulletti90 wrote:

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Bainand wrote:

High budget (requires proj scaling, nimis, or pierce to feel good)

- Soulrend of Reaping. Very good single target and clear, along with base energy shield leech but required awakened GMP, nimis, and pierce to feel good.

- Ice Spear. Better single target than soulrend of reaping, but feels like a bit less clear. Also requires awakened GMP, nimis, and pierce.

One issue I have is the colors on my Ivory Tower; I'm working on Vorici'ing it myself for at least 1W. I'm also looking at getting pierce from boots with the hunter mod, but a pair of decent boots is like 40 div and I kind of blew my budget on awakened CoC, Adorned and its jewels, and other stuff I don't even remember. Gotta build up some more wealth to grab a proper pair of boots and a helical ring (currently running Goldwyrn and some okayish 7 div Ventor I found myself) since I'm not even crit capped with this lack of str and int. I could get pierce from anointment, but replacing Utmost Intellect is like -20% DPS.

You can always use the pierce gem to get pierce. For me, 21/20 pierce is only a 5.1% DPS loss from the increased critical damage gem, and getting pierce on boots, clsuter jewels, or annoint would lose me 10% damage or more. I also found that in super high density juiced maps, 2 pierce from piercing shots was not enough since the projectile would need to pass through 3-4 enemies before getting to "second stage" where it always pierces, so I was losing quite a few projectiles.

If utmost intellect is losing you that much dps it probably means you aren't crit capped without it. I lose a lot more damage swapping increased crit damage out for pierce than I do swapping utmost intellect for piercing shots and in my experience two pierces prior to return is enough in basically all content since nimis causes the return to pierce all enemies and either your in a pack where your returns are going every which way or you're hitting a boss where one pierce is all you actually need, if you aren't on nimis ice spear is probably not the correct choice for anything except boss fights because while it shotguns admirably its aoe is tiny. Additionally pierce on boots is an option but its incredibly expensive and not much of an upgrade over stampede (pierce/tailwind on crit/cdr boots might let you hit the 10.5 aps breakpoint with a mageblood or the legacy helmet enchant) and it can be difficult to manage manacosts in that without running the flask craft which means no curse reduction or aps improvement unless on MB, where the flask craft basically takes the place of the sanctum of thought FFF you cannot run due to needing searing purity.

Awesome guide! It's helped me understand things as I've built and played my Ice Spear CoC Inquisitor this league. Only thing is I kinda feel like I have mana issues when I'm spinning in a pack, I see my mana go down to zero really quick.

Here's my pob https://pobb.in/AuHDpej2JqB9.

Also, Nimis looks like a dps downgrade according to POB should I still invest in one?

Thanks!

Nimis results in less damage per ice spear but it also causes all projectiles to return, its a lot less needed with ice spear of splitting and its full damage output pretty much only ever shows itself in late sim vs kosis and vs uber bosses, but with normal ice spear and at least one pierce, nimis is a 6x damage multiplier as it makes each of the four splits from snipers mark return to hit the initial enemy and causes the initial projectile to double dip, PoB does not have a reliable way to calculate it and the delay is long enough that it mostly just provides significantly greater aoe in mapping scenarios. It does however provide the biggest damage boost when you really need it.

Trying to get the trigger rate but, my numbers don’t match the pob. I have level 5acoc and 27% increased attack speed. But I the trigger rate is different than in the pob. Anyone smarter than me care to take a look?
https://pobb.in/t08JVED6w2Fn
Thanks!

Edit: After some reading. I realized the issue was the loss of the helm enchant. Serves me right for only skimming the text the first time through.

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Bainand wrote:

Ultimately, this build can run anything and that is part of the fun for me. If I get bored of one spell, I can swap in another one for a set of 40 maps or so.

Indeed. I found Lancing Steel of Spraying to be vastly superior to Cyclone for any and all of the content I have done. With Nimis, you gain superb clear, move faster, and eliminate the need for pierce with Ice Spear unless you're doing single target by being so deep in the boss that no projectile misses and hits the 2nd stage to return later.

I fell in love with Crackling Lance of Disintegration, Firestorm of Meteors, LC of Heavens, Blazing Salvo, and a few others. The fun part with Lancing Steel is that I can use up to three spells without losing much effectiveness while still getting a high trigger rate. I also tried a HH in the empowered 5 ways and found it to be good enough for 5 rows of rewards. I couldn't get that much with Cyclone and Mageblood.

I will never go back to Cyclone and the one spell limit imposed by aps. Lancing Steel doesn't care what your attack rate is.

You can even do Frostbolt + Ice Nova with Lancing Steel, but it feels kinda clunky without increased proj speed.