[2.0 updated] Shmizz's hardcore perma-freeze guide

why tempest shield over cwdt, enduring cry, and immortal call link? I am scared to switch to tempest shield

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Heldagrif wrote:

why tempest shield over cwdt, enduring cry, and immortal call link? I am scared to switch to tempest shield

CWDT immortal call is only strong against a large amount of physical damage taken from multiple hits in a very short amount of time. The idea of this build is to freeze 95% of the enemies you will fight, so things like large packs of rhoas, skeleton archers, and leap slammers will be frozen the vast majority of the time, lowering the effectiveness of cwdt immortal call. I take tempest shield over immortal call because it has the chance (albeit small) to help you live longer against enemies that you can't freeze permanently, so very dangerous enemies. cwdt immortal call won't help you against kole or that one sub phys powerful crits colossal skeleton that just happened to desync next to you that one time.

Hi Shmizz,

what do you think about this slight variation of your passive tree? I removed the entire scion life wheel (+49% HP), the +40% mana regeneration node and the +30% spell damage from the Shadow start and walked a bit into the Templar area.




Changes:

Variation:
+55% spell/elemental damage
+12% cast speed
+5% chance to freeze/shock
+1 power charge

+35% HP
+30 flat HP
+12% all res
+5% effect of buffs on you


Cons:
-30% spell dmg from shadow start
-40% mana regeneration/-1% life regeneration (Shaper node)
-49% HP (Scion life wheel)
-20 flat HP


Sums up to:
+25% spell/elemental damage
+12% cast speed
+5% chance to freeze/shock
+1 power charge
+5% effect of buffs on you
+12% all res
+10 flat HP

-40% mana regeneration/-1% life regeneration
-14% HP

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Tanit wrote:

Hi Shmizz,
what do you think about this slight variation of your passive tree?

It depends what you're looking for. Your variation has less life, life regen, and mana regen but quite a bit more damage. If you feel your character is tanky enough to afford dropping that life/regen and possibly a level in arctic armour, and you feel you need more damage, this is a better build. I would recommend it for softcore players. Also if you happen to get a void battery you would be respecing to get every single power charge anyway so you would use something like this.

Thanks for the reply.

Yeah softcore is what I'm playing atm. I'm usually a hardcore player, but started with a friend in softcore recently to show him around. I think -14% HP is not that big of a deal, even for hardcore. Since I play self found the +all res makes up for that (kinda). And the bonus damage helps clearing stuff before it becomes a danger.

Although I know that the real dangers are the ones that simply happen to oneshot you. My last death was with lvl 69.. congealed blood popped out of the ground without me noticing. I only saw some fireballs on the whole screen and started running with a quicksilver flask.. not fast enough for the bleeding remover pot and 2 seconds later it was over. About 5.5k HP/ES gone in an instant.

And I found this sweet little piece yesterday in normal act1, which should solve all the link problems that may pop up:

Hi, I got a question.Is 100% pierce essential?Can I replace the nodes on the right with only quality pierce gem (around 70%)?

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BlackAdderBG wrote:

Is 100% pierce essential?Can I replace the nodes on the right with only quality pierce gem (around 70%)?

That depends what you are looking for out of the build. If you are playing a support role just freezing everything permanently for your party I would recommend keeping your pierce chance at 100% so you are guaranteed to hit every mob. If you are playing solo or your party is not depending on you to keep things frozen you can definitely drop the pierce nodes and grab more damage or defenses. It mostly comes down to personal preference.

Great ,thank you.

updated for 1.3.1

Been playing this for the 1 month hardcore race recently. level 63 at the moment and just finished up on piety. kind suprised i made it this far, ive played hardcore in the past but not at all recently. Enjoying the build though, definitely going to spend some time shopping because my gear is pretty bad at the moment and i still need to get my gems/links set up right.