Adistridos' Generic Tanky Cold Crit Witch. Permafreeze bosses.
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Passives and Leveling
Current Build: lvl 87, 105 points http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgMA37DfioIQB6UC40myLJwQWAVCr5tBlq6z0PVMsy0fUDAEB5Ug214fAuvkg9trF8HzNsVfKlXGvOqio4Ie2CQ6WMBUf8YPxNsLpwgI9GpDflkRljt8uJPa3Z2uDkgHHrjK6-4abGNDXfKVLij6muDkIhZvcNVCw_DVgsdFnSlPjmQkqonT34SP-klR-ehTUoV97DiCm_emNulwUgL-6_VBhxo4tvrjaow2ZJ3DCbc-p4RVS_IduZP-CpBVYeLyRdi9JpU64TWSFr-mV_6PAx5N4x9B Leveling guide: Before you start, if you have the currency, go ahead and buy the best deal you can find on a quality level 1 freezing pulse, and two quality level 1 ice spear gems. Use any GCPs you have/find on your highest quality ice spear gem, trying to get it to 20Q. Also, start leveling up an Added Cold Damage gem from level 1. Start off by taking the nodes up to Elemental Dominion, then grab the mana regen node. Grab Frost Walker and go through the Annihilation cluster up. Don't take the power charge just yet. Grab the Cruel Preparation cluster and Deep Thoughts, then head over left to grab the dex node that you'll need to use some of your gems. Next, head down and grab Quick Recovery, Shaper, and the scion wheel of life. Don't worry about the fact that you will be going so many levels without taking damage nodes; FP's damage carries like crazy in the early game with a 4L and decent spell damage wand and shield. Next, we go right. Grab the Heart and Soul cluster. Don't grab EB just yet. Continue right to grab Written in blood. Go further right to all the nice passives in the Shadow start: Coldhearted Calculation, Freeze, Trickery, Blood Siphon, Coordination, and Sniper. At any point past this, you should take the dex node on the right if you need to. Personally, I did. Take Eldritch Battery. Start using your Arctic Armor, and switch out any mana potions (if you still have them) for a granite and a sapphire. Go left again to take Purity of flesh. This is the last life node we will be taking for a very long time. You should have about 4k HP at this point. Now we start investing in crit nodes. Start off by taking the shadow's power charge, the witch's power charge, and the witch's spell damage per power charge nodes. Next, take Assassination. Take Doom Cast. Take Throatseeker. Take Arcane Potency. Take the Templar's power charge and Elementalist. Take the Athleticism cluster. Grab the crit multi near Doom Cast. Take the Fingers of Frost cluster, except for the freeze chance node on the left. Take the Influence cluster. Grab the Shadow's cast speed into elemental damage starting nodes.
Auras
Clarity, Purity of Ice, Herald of Ice.
Bandits
Normal:Help Oak Cruel:Kill all Merciless:Help Alira
Gear
screenshots of character stats
defenses and unreserved mana  lvl 19 arctic armor  7 power charges GMP ice spear DPS  7 power charges Added Cold Damage ice spear DPS 
skills/links
While leveling up, use the following 4L: Freezing Pulse LMP or GMP Spell Echo Cold Penetration Of course, in endgame, when you have crit, Ice Spear is strictly better, even in point-blank range. Once you get your 5L cloak of defiance, use the following 5L: Ice Spear GMP Spell Echo Cold Penetration Increased Critical Damage If you can afford a 6L, add in either elemental proliferation or power charge on critical. The rest of your gear is dedicated to the following gem links: 3L: Lightning Warp Faster Casting Reduced Duration 3L: Assassin's Mark Temporal Chains or Frostbite Increased Area of Effect or Faster Casting 4L: Cast When Damage Taken Enduring Cry Immortal Call Increased Duration 4L: Ice Spear GMP Faster Casting Power Charge on Critical 4L: Clarity Herald of Ice Purity of Ice Reduced Mana Unset ring: Arctic Armor
Thoughts on Itemization
Try to get a decent unset ring, like I have. Very helpful as a place to put your arctic armor. Make sure you have at least one item that is hybrid armor/es. It makes it much easier to roll the colors for the Cast on Damage Taken setup. Invaluable for avoiding being bursted down by hordes of heavy hitting enemies, like bone rhoas or giant skeletons with damage mods. Try to get lots of dexterity and strength on your gear so that you can avoid putting points into it in your passives tree. Of course, try to get mana regen on as many pieces of armor as possible. Try to get high spell damage on your shield. Try to get projectile speed on your wand. Very helpful. If you have GG gear with insane resists, you can run Maligaro's for more crit. You will want to obtain a 5L/6L cloak of defiance at some point. You should be using Ice Spear as your main damage skill rather than Freezing Pulse once you have a 5L and are past the point where you have taken Throatseeker. (If you get a 5L before you get a decent amount of crit nodes, use Added Chaos Damage with your freezing pulse.)
Freezing Pulse vs. Ice Spear
Once you have a 5L and decent crit nodes, Ice Spear is strictly better. It is better not only at long range, but also against enemies in close range. Its superior damage makes up for its slower cast speed, and 1% higher base crit chance is just icing on the cake.
Thoughts on Playstyle with Ice Spear
Many people, when they use Ice Spear, run away from mobs in an attempt to get enough distance so that ice spear hits with its second form. Don't bother doing this. Not only is it a pain in the ass (especially against mobs that can close distance quickly), it's also a waste of time. Overall, when it comes to the mobs that are already too close to get hit by the second form of ice spear, you're better off just shotgunning them with point blank ice spears.
Videos
Last edited by HHHHHH on Oct 18, 2014, 5:26:50 AM
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Tree link ain't working.
Why do you recommend quality on ice spear (or projectile speed on the wand IF you are using ice spear and not freezing pulse)? Ice spear already ranges off screen; its damage doesn't diminish over distance and the transition point between first and second form is fixed and unaffected by projectile speed. Unless you want to PvP and make it harder for the spears to be dodged by a human player i don't see any point for projectile speed. | |
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1. Even if it does already hit offscreen, why not hit further offscreen?
2. It just feels better. 3. Monsters will dodge your projectiles. When they do it, it will not be intentional, but they will still sometimes do it nonetheless. (Especially annoying, extremely mobile mobs like snakes, undying outcasts, and birds.) Projectile speed helps us lock these mobs down quicker so we don't spend as much time chasing them. 4. Sometimes it actually is convenient to use freezing pulse. This is basically only when you are surrounded on all sides by a massive pack of enemies, such as in Zana missions when you are just warping around looking for the lodestones, etc. The increased "cone of fire" of FP helps in these situations, and a little bit of proj speed goes a long way with FP. I suppose that I should be replacing that wand with something that has higher damage stats though, haha. It was only recently that I came to the realization that Ice Spear is so superior. I suppose that wand is a bit of a holdover from when I used freezing pulse. | |
" Having faster projectiles hit so far off screen just means you may hit a random reflect pack or kill something and having it drop something valuable you may miss. " Agreed. " Some mobs are really annoying, but it's not worth looking and paying more for if you don't need to. " You can Lightning Warp away or into a corner and just spam like normal. You could say, "Look for cheap projectile speed wands as you level up just for the temporary use of FP or those that want to stick with FP." Otherwise, it would be a waste to spend significant currency on something like that. Also, why are you showing a screenshot of Ice Spear with no LMP/GMP? Kind of no point without multiple projectiles unless you're showing for some single targeting, but why would you micro your links mid-gameplay like that? Rest of build and tree looks good. | |
" This. Here is a list of gems where quality makes much more sense than on ice spear. No one should waste a GCP on an ice spear gem before he has max quality on the following gems: LMP/GMP (10% incr. cast speed) cold penetration (10% incr. cold damage) spell echo (10% incr. spell damage) incr.crit.damage (40% incr.crit.damage) herald of ice (15% incr. cold damage) elemental proliferation (10% incr. freeze duration). As freeze duration modifiers are calculated before applying the 300ms threshold this means that one can freeze bosses with 10% higher life pool than without the additional freeze duration (same effect as doing 10% MORE damage in terms of making it past the threshold). | |
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i missed it or you don't leech life?
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