[2.2 ELE] Atherakhia's BEGINNER FRIENDLY Arctic Breath Elementalist Witch

So, what does this build do? The short answer is Freeze. This build is able to lock down whole screens of monsters with chill and freeze, keeping them away from you, thus keeping you safe and sound.
The long answer isn't really much more complicated, either. Use Arctic Breath to chill & freeze, with Herald of Ice causing a lot of icy explosions. In most cases, you only need Arctic Breath to clear all of a map. Curses and everything else is usually just needed for bosses, but more about that in the Skill Section.

Here, we don't find many surprises to experiences players but as I hope this guide will help new players above all else, I'm gonna go into detail a bit. Veterans might find a few skill choices that seem odd but I really got to say it works just great.

Main Attack: Arctic Breath
Arctic Breath + GMP + Faster Projectiles + Spell Echo
Well, seeing Arctic Breath (AB) here isn't much of a surprise, after all you saw it in the build name. Faster Projectiles could be replaced by something else but I see it as a great help for easier and faster play, being able to easier hit fast moving targets.
Greater Multiple Projectiles (GMP) costs you a lot of Tooltip-DPS... but I tell you: Don't trust the tooltip. From all those 5 projectiles, only one can hit a single target, making it seemingly terrible for hitting bosses or lone enemies. AB explodes on impact though, dealing its full damage to everything in a radius. A boss standing close to a wall can easily be hit by two or three such explosions. That's why the tooltip lies.
Spell Echo is great to increase DPS in general but there are also quite a few ways to apply freeze easier if your target is chilled. As AB produces lots of chilled ground, the second wave of Spell Echo'd projectiles is almost guaranteed to freeze.
Once you get a Five-Link, you can put in Hypothermia. This really raises your DPS to awesome levels. 20-39% more damage against chilled enemies – meaning just about all enemies hit by your second wave. Plus, more freeze chance, which we love.
You don't really need a 6L for this build and I didn't really think much about what I'd put in there.

Buff: Herald of Ice
Herald of Ice + Ice Bite + Mana Leech + Blind
Usually, I try to avoid support gems on Heralds, as the increased cost hurts your mana economy. A lot. In this case, though, I had a lot of spare sockets and started experimenting a bit once I could afford socketing and linking.
Mana Leech and Blind cost no additional mana, so you just need some sockets. The Leech keeps you casting longer without problems. Blind hasn't got a great chance to trigger but it still has a chance to proc on every herald explosion. And you get a lot of those.
Ice Bite was the last gem I added... and I was very surprised. You get about a 50-65% chance to get a frenzy charge on kill. I didn't expect the herald by itself getting many kills but it turned out I was very wrong. You get a lot of frenzy charges, which boosts your DPS quite nicely.

BFF: Ice Golem
Summon Ice Golem + Minion Life + Minion Damage + Life Leech
Everybody needs a friend and yours is an Ice Golem. Though this is not a crit build, we appreciate the little boost it gives us to set off Elemental Overload.
The Support Gems make him a little more resilient. You could swap out Minion Damage for Resistances but those few percents don't do terribly much on merciless difficulty.

Curse: Frostbite
Frostbite + Increased Area of Effect + Increased Duration
The obvious choice. Cursed enemies take a lot more damage and are more likely to be frozen. Usually, you don't even need that but with all your passives and the curse, screens blow up with icy shards of dead monsters.

Battlefield Control: Frost Wall
Frost Wall (+ Increased Duration from the Frostbite Links)
I keep this spell in the same 4L as Frostbite. It's not a spell that is used all that often, especially to be cast actively. This build uses it to keep bosses out of melee range and set them up for better 'shotgunning' – hitting them with overlapping areas from the Arctic Breath.

Panic Button: Cold Snap
Cold Snap + Faster Casting + Hypothermia
Quick damage and a high freeze chance in a small area. What we really need it for, though, is to hit things behind things that AB cannot get over. Ravines, railings, shelves & tables are an insurmountable obstacle to AB but Cold Snap can go over it, freeze enemies solid and keep them cold until you get around to hit them with AB.

Movement: Flame Dash
Flame Dash (+Faster Casting + Hypothermia from the Cold Snap Links)
Everybody needs a movement skill and ours is flame dash. You could use Leap slam if you got a staff but it wouldn't profit from our increased cast speed passives and thus be slower. It can also be used to pass through the frost wall, should you ever need to get to the other side real quick.
A little note on using Flame Dash: It works much better when holding Shift while casting it.

Debuff: Frost Bomb
Frost Bomb – No Support
A skill I highly underestimated just from looking at its description. You put it down somewhere and it creates pulses that reduce enemy cold resistance and life regeneration. You're probably wondering why you would use this when you also got a curse that is twice as good. First off, they stack. Roughly -60% to cold resistance reduces most bosses to negative resistance, making them easy prey. Second, the bomb stays on the ground for a few seconds after casting it, releasing more pulses. You can easily put it down right beside a Strongbox, open it, flame dash out and blast away the debuffed enemies.

This is what my Passive Tree currently looks like. Not many surprises. I tried to get all the ice damage and freeze chance I could, along with a fair share of life & energy shield. The critical strike cluster supports Elemental Overload (EO) and increased AoE is useful for about half our skills. Unless you get a lot of Dexterity from your equipment, though, you will need the +30 Dex close to EO to use all your green gems.
Something I really enjoyed about playing this character was the fact that it has a consistent playstyle right from the start, unlike other builds that only really get going around level 60.
Bandit Rewards are quite simple. Oak's Health on Normal, Alira's Cast Speed on Cruel and Kraityn's Frenzy Charge on Merciless – I missed out on the last one because I did not realize how useful Ice Bite would turn out to be.

With this Witch we go all out Elementalist but even without it being in the title you probably would have guessed.
With your first two points, you get Shaper of Desolation, making all your elemental damage able to inflict all status ailments. When this triggers, even bosses you can't freeze collapse under the combined debuff from shock and the huge burning damage.
With your second visit to the Labyrinth, you chose Beacon of Ruin. This means that all your Elemental Status Effects are contagious, as with Elemental Proliferation – for free!
The third run to the labyrinth won't work out well for a long time. I couldn't get through yet but I plan on getting Liege of the Primordial with it – boosting cold damage, crit chance and helping my little golem buddy to stay alive longer.

This section might seem a bit too full of uniques for a beginner build but they are quite affordable and you only need them in your sixties. Plenty of time to get some chaos orbs and find players selling them.

Taryn's Shiver

Hands down the best weapon you can get so far. More than 100% increased damage, +1 to cold gems, cast speed, freeze chance... equipping this staff will feel like suddenly jumping ahead 20 levels.


Doryani's Invitation

Usually quite expensive but you don't need one that has terribly good stat rolls, you really just want this belt for the cold leech. This is fixed at 0.2%, regardless of the item's other stats, so you can just go along and try to get the cheapest possible.
A note to new players: There are 4 variations of this belt, one for each element, plus a physical. Make sure to buy the right one!


Berek's Grip

Yea, this is why this will never be a 'budget'-build. For experienced players, I don't need to introduce this item. For new players: This thing is expensive. You will need to save up your orbs for quite some time to get it... but it is so worth it. You leech life and mana (because Shaper of Desolation makes you cold damage shock) while gaining damage, life and resistances. I bought mine for 25 Chaos in the Perandus League – but if you can afford it, it is easily worth twice or three times as much.


Rashkaldor's Patience

A little trinket that gives you a huge boost in all the right places. More status chance and duration is plain awesome. Not getting Power Charges is something we couldn't care less about. The implicit Dex bonus, along with the global 10% reduction in attribute requirements will probably free up a passive point from the +30 Dex node, which you can then put wherever you want.
Also, it's dirty cheap for how good it is.


Chest Armour

Quite a No-Brainer. Once you get to level 71, you look for a normal or magic 5L Carnal Armour on Poe.trade, then you alch and scour it until it turns out fine. I spent 2 Chaos on buying it and 3 or 4 Orbs of Alchemy and Scouring. When looking just at the Energy Shield, you may consider Vaal Regalia but the Carnal Armour is much more likely to roll those green sockets you need and even gives you a bit mana as an implicit mod.


All the Rest

Here you see the rest I'm wearing. Pretty straightforward. Try to stack as much resistances as possible, to balance out the rather lackluster resistances from your Uniques. Some Life and ES is nice to get but far less important than resistances. If you get a few mods that really don't do anything for you, don't worry, you're still going to do very well.


Flasks

You want a life flask that has instant recovery for when you get in a tight spot, along with some flask that removes freeze, mostly for opening strongboxes.
For Bleeding, you need an Utility Flask, like Basalt, Silver or Stibnite. When you have that mod on a mana or life flask, the immunity ends as soon as the flask effect restores your mana or health completely. Utility Flasks always have their full duration, giving you bleed immunity for as long as you need to kill that Corrupted Blood Rare or Corrupted Bloodline Pack.

Playing this build up all the way through merciless isn't hard. You start out using freezing pulse, putting in support gems as you go and switching to Arctic Breath at Level 28. The only things you got to look out for are Elemental Reflection Rares, for obvious reasons, and Level Design. Arctic Breath gets blocked by a lot of things, which takes some time to get used to – but once you manage, you can use this to your advantage by overlapping AB's AoE.

I started mapping right after unlocking the Eternal Laboratory in Merciless, letting Piety & the rest wait until around Level 80.
When doing maps this build has a good clear speed for being that cheap and has little trouble with most maps themselves.
There are a lot of mods you don't really like though. Elemental Reflection is impossible to do, period. A lot of others are hard, too, like cold resist or chance to avoid status ailments... but as long as you go with mods you are comfortable with, this build survives just perfectly while leveling up quickly.