CI Cold Witch (CI at lvl 40!) Ghost Reaver & Zealoth's Oath - by iNotSure - [Updated on 28-02-2013]
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Welcome to the "CI at lvl 40"-Witch Guide
Here's the idea behind this build: Since the OB came out I was desperate to make a CI character. After Invalesco already did a viable build for the Shadow I wanted to try something different and came up with this cold damage Witch which will be at Chaos Innoculation around lvl 40. _________________________________________________________________________ Changelog:
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v1.2 28-02-2013
-Changed the tree and the route to take -Added Zealoth's Oath, deleted Vaal Pact -Explanation added why I specced out of Vaal Pact -Current gear changed v1.1 19-02-2013: -Made minor changes in the tree to get Ghost Reaver a bit faster -Updated everything up to playing experience (lvl 41) -New Layout -Added the history of the build -Added Playing tactics -Added vision and future skillpoints -Added prefered skills/cursus/aura's -Added my gear v1.0 06-02-2013: -Start Thread, not tested yet. _________________________________________________________________________ Why Cold and not Lightning or Fire damage? The reason I chose Cold damage for this build is to up my chance of survivability. Especially when just going CI you will need to take every chance to be more safe. By going for crit on Cold damage you will ensure mobs won't get near you when you crit (and thus freeze them). _________________________________________________________________________ History and story behind this build:
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When theorycrafting this build I came up with the following: At lvl 40 you should be halfway through on Act 1 on Cruel difficulty resulting in 7 free passive skill points (you will kill all the bandits in Act 2). This will give you 47 skillpoints to spend on lvl 40.
After this I planned out my build by spending the 47 points and after that respec into CI (this build will be showed to you in stages later on in the post). After that I calculated how high my ES would be with only white items, Inner Force and Discipline. I will show these stats later on in the post as well. When seeing the result of my calculations, the look and feel for the planned out build I started playing, and till thusfar with good results. _________________________________________________________________________ The build in Stages: The first 20 skillpoints will be tricky for survivability but when playing cautious and with some experience you should be fine. Mainly because of the cold resistance in Act 1. I only went for survivability here. For the next 15 skillpoints I repeat the thought behind the first 20 points: Survivability! And working towards the ES nodes I will need to take later on. The next 12 points you will begin to spend some points on upping your ES. At the last point you should be level 40 and killed Captain Fargreaves for the free (and 7th) skillpoint: Now we will start refunding 10 skillpoints. You already will have 8 refundable skillpoints so you will need 2 Orbs of Regret. Either be lucky to find them or trade for them. After refunding the skillpoints your tree should look like this: And now you are ready to spend those points again and go into full CI: _________________________________________________________________________ Explanation Ghost Reaver & Zealoth's Oath: Normally you will see builds with only Ghost Reaver and Vaal Pact, I however found a different path. Let me explain myself: Getting Vaal Pact will cost 6 passives, expensive passives we don't want to waste. Also the effect of Vaal Pact is overrated. Ghost Reaver will do fine on it's own. Next to that Vaal Pact negates the effect of Zealoth's Oath (regen won't work). So why Zealoth's Oath you might wonder. The reason is I would like a constant ES regen, I would feel so much saver. Thats the reason I took one 8% life node to get the 1% life regen in the Templar Tree. Also it will cost 3 passives less then when getting Vaal Pact, a good deal. Now many of you will say that 1% regen isn't that much. You are correct. However I will be running Vitality. A completely leveled up Vitality will give 1,5% regen / second. However this will get buffed by 30% by Inner Force making it a total of 1,9% regen / second. Add the 1% to that and you'r almost at 3% ES regen / second. This is alot. 6000 ES is quite normal (maybe even low) for alot of CI builds and based on that number you would almost have a constant ES regen of 200 / second. Very good for the survivability and I don't think Vaal Pact would beat this. _________________________________________________________________________ Calculation of ES: You will need the following items and all is based on white items:
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Helmet
 - Iron Mask (24 ES / 74 Evasion)Chest  - Sage's Robe (79 ES)Gloves  - Embroidered Gloves (31 ES)Boots  - Satin Slippers (32 ES)Belt  - Chain Belt (20 ES)This will give you a total of 186 ES Now with all the nodes we took from the tree to buff the ES this will result in a total of: 552 Energie Shield. (This is still without Discipline and the effect of Inner Force on Discipline). This is based on the white item level stats. Blue's and yellows will boost this number bigtime. Then with discipline on your ES with white items only would be: 835 Energy Shield. (This is confirmed in my build). _________________________________________________________________________ Future Skillpoints: The next 15 skillpoints are important as well and should be high on your priority list (This is where I am at the moment / will be going shortly): The rest of the build will be focussed on crit and getting higher DMG and ES. You can pick the order you want to and feel you need to take. So when you feel weak damage wise go for (elemental) dmg first, If you want more crits go for crit first, if you want higher ES go for the second Body & Soul. Its just how you want it to be: Personally I will be going for Body & Soul first, after that I will take the nodes in the Templar tree. Lastly I will go towards the Shadow tree. When I feel that I need more ES I will go for Nullification as well, but that's realy endgame and still far far away. _________________________________________________________________________ Playing tactics:
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As said Act 1 can be hard. You are a weak and pale female, going for cold damage when alot of mobs resist cold. But no worries! Rushing for the HP will make it all okay. Ice Nova is made for Act 1 as well. The spawns of Seawitches, the Flickers? You scared? Don't be, let them come and just use Ice Nova. Try to get a 3link as soon as you can get LMP. Use Freezing Pulse in combination with either Increase Critical Chance or Increase Critical Damage.
Act 2 is a breeze. Ofcourse you will get to deal with Chaos damage but by then your Freezing Pulse does a nice base damage and when facing archers just cast, move, cast, move and it will be fine. Because you are week try to farm Fellshrine or Western Forest a bit for better gear if needed. Hardest thing in Act 2 will be Vaal. Take some skelletons with u or party up with a friend or open party and you will be fine. Don't try to take him on yourself with Freezing Pulse, this will be reckoned unwisely but bold. Act 3 is a breeze. Just use the cast, move, cast, move-thingy and you will be fine here. I didnt farm in Act 3 as I was feeling safe enough. I did Piety in a group but could have done it alone. Dont try to take her on alone though when your resists aren't maxed out. _________________________________________________________________________ Skills: Freezing Pulse linked with - Increased Critical Strike Chance - LMP - Life Leech (-Faster Projectiles - Faster Casting/Added Chaos Damage) Spell Totem linked with - Ice Spear - LMP (GMP) - Faster Casting Aura's: Discipline & Vitality (linked with Reduced Mana) (If you can manage try Haste, if you have Mana problems stick with Clarity) Curses: Go for Enfeeble, Critical Weakness or Frostbite You will have some left over sockets, feel free to use them for whatever you like. I always like to use a second spelltotem with skelletons when I need to kite bosses. My Gear (at lvl 45):
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My ES with Discipline on is almost 1700ES (this is at lvl 45) Well I hope I'll get some feedback on this and ofcourse I hope people will be "less scared" to use CI as it is still very viable IMO. Feel free to whisper me ingame. My IGN is: IceIceBabyCI Postcount +1 Last edited by iNotSure on Feb 28, 2013, 4:37:27 AM Last bumped on Feb 22, 2017, 9:41:34 AM
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A little update here: Just done with Act1, so almost at 50% ;)
Still going easy with Freezing Pulse and Ice Nova. Got Clarity on atm, dont need my mana potions anymore. But at this stage it still has very little to do with CI. I will update when I've spend 35 points. Postcount +1
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Had some problems. Finished Act 2, wanted to enter Act 3 and game crashed. When restarting the game I couldnt join any instances or area's and was stuck at Act 2 city.
So I dumped all my stuff and started again. Lvl 21 atm, still going strong. Survivability is doable in Act 2 but need more damage. So I will get the damage nodes before extra life + the 30 strenght node. The Onyx Amulet will take care of that :) I'll go take a nap now. Tomorrow I'll get to 40 and post my results and findings about this build. Only using self found gear and will show the results as well with only white items to see if my calculations were right. Postcount +1
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I put a point in CI at level 27 yesterday, currently in the pyramid. The chaos damage snakes there were too annoying for me, so I'll see how it goes. The build currently looks something like this:
I'm not sure whether to go towards the Shadow part of the tree or towards the Templar part. Templar would take longer to get to, and I need some survivability, and I could get ES nodes quicker in the Shadow part of the tree. |
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CI at level 27 seems like a deathwish to me. How high is your ES? It cant be high I think?
According to my calculations you would be at a max of 300ES and that would mean you would have some nice gear... And upping your survivability would be your number 1 priority. I would go for the ES nodes below the Witch Tree starting point. They are closest by. But would still mean you need to do some serious leveling with low ES. Won't be easy ;) Postcount +1
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" I would totally go Templar because you can get more ES and the nodes with ES add armor. CI/ES build will be extremely weak on armor and you will want as much as you can get. Physical damage hits are going to hurt. | |
" I had about ~330 ES at lvl 28, when I killed Vaal. My gear wasn't that good, mostly magics with +energy shield. I used some Orbs of Alteration and Trasmutation to get those magic items though. The main issue so far is regenerating ES. I died a few times at Vaal, mostly due to bad dodging, monsters that deal chaos damage are somehow still my biggest problem, they just do so much damage to my ES. Act 3 was ok, until I went into the Crematorium. There was a Unique with regenerate life + allies regenerate life, and it was hard to kill him, because I wasn't able to walk away to regenerate ES, as that monster regenerated life so quickly. I eventually made it though. Level 2 went incredibly bad and I died a lot more than I expected, which I blame on ping and the behaviour of those fire rolling stone masses... I clearly dodged their rolling attacks, yet I lost loads of ES and died when they were still half a screen away. Their fire trail would appear in its entire length, even if I froze them before they started rolling. Weird. Piety hurt really bad, I died like 10 times, until I figured I'd need more lightning res, but then I still died a few times more. The main problem I figured out so far, are monsters with ES or life regeneration. My damage isn't that high and once their ES is down, my ES is usually halfway gone already (if they are ranged), so I can do little to no damage to them before I have to retreat to regen ES. Getting stunned is also kind of annoying. And as mentioned, chaos damage enemies do loads of damage. Is their piercing damage now subtracted from my ES? I remember them not hitting that hard before I had CI. Now at level 30 and 418 ES, so I'll see how it goes. In "normal" fights, I usually end up winning with about 200 ES without getting away to regen, so it's not that bad I guess. I'll try to get some ES nodes to the right, and then try to get to the templar part. I'm desperately short on skill points though. |
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Ah you play softcore :) Im playing HC so thats why I said it would be suicide (which it clearly is).
Ill try to level up now to level 40 and will let you know how much ES I have and how my dmg is, maybe it will be of some help. Im halfway through Act 2 and so far no problems yet. But I know from experience that the last bit will be a pain in the ass. Postcount +1
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CI is awful enough as it is, getting it at level 40 means you'll never level up at all.
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how can u put point in life when you plan on using CI.
I am level 40 i have not taken CI and dont need it yet, its my first caracter so gear is just normal. This is a good place to fix your toon. For example as a frost mage 8% more mana is no good, you would rather put point in mana regen. Variant build is welcome, but life increase on a CI build... http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgMAAv4FQgVbDH0PxBBpEH8RLREvEVAWvxdUHNwd2SKBLJwspiy_LR8tRzCXMtE3ZjeDOYo7fDvhQZZCw0NURKtFR0bXT79QQlWuVkpXK1qmXcZd8mBtbRlwUnDVdYp4unyDfVN_xoIQgpuH24hCi3qLjIw2jjyOZI6-j6aTJ5UEmZqdgJ6hn3uio6brpyuus6-btQS2hrb3tvq4k7jKu9bAUcHFwfPDbcaezfrUBdzH3fPfhN-w4XPi9-Qi6rrrY-wY7SDyHfPq96Y= Have fun! And go buy my stuff... Shops: 522765 / 1094567 / 1147014 Last edited by Kuruguhn on Feb 8, 2013, 12:19:54 PM
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