Cold Witch - need help.

Currently I use Freezing pulse + Faster Casting + Ice nova, Frost bomb, Clarity. Have 21 free skill points - my skill tree looks like these now
http://www.pathofexile.com/fullscreen-passive-skill-tree/AAAABAMCARBYLJxEq1WughCPpt-K37DpAg==

Help me to decide which branch will be better -
1. ES. 26% ES + 10% ES recharge rate
or
2. Mana. 24% mana + 30% mana recharge .
:P

Plan to get Elemental overload and build further around it. Read that new update will have good cold skill to build critical hits just like Storm orb for lightning skills.

Btw, what will happen to my Perundus League character after league will end? It will be transfered to standart league or will just cease to exist?

My guess is that this is your first char. As such i recommend going for a life based char, meaning don't plan on going chaos innoculation or focus on energy shield. Take life nodes and make life mods on gear and capping your resistances your priority.
Take Quick Recovery next for life and mana reg. The next few points
You can check my character DieYoungStayPretty for a complete freezing pulse tree. I prefer going to the shadow side first.

I wouldn't build around elemental overload on a crit build (which is recommended for freezing pulse). A high crit chance with additional crit multiplier will get you much more damage than elemental overload which is a keystone for builds with little crit (10-20% crit chance).

For leveling get Bitterdream as weapon. You get it from the vendor when selling the following support gems (level 1): hypothermia + ice bite + cold penetration + mana leech + added cold damage + reduced mana.
Buy a Goldrim cap to help with resistances. Use poe.trade; you should find one for less than 1 chaos.

After perandus ends your char will be transfered to standard.

Thanks for the answer but I already invested into shield skills a lot of points and it looks like beyond recovery for now - link . By the way why I should concentrate on getting life passives instead of shield ones?

I don't have reduced mana or life leech to buy this wand. You think that should really help? I still have Lifesprig as wand.

What cold skills are most efficient? Is there any good video or thread about it? As I progress, I feel how fast Nova and pulse lose their effectiveness. Can I make it to an end game with these skills? What kind of support gems I should use with them?

Where / how I can get better gear? Any good guide video or something on that matter?

Where I can see that skill tree for DieYoungStayPretty character?

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SunL4D2 wrote:

Thanks for the answer but I already invested into shield skills a lot of points and it looks like beyond recovery for now - link . By the way why I should concentrate on getting life passives instead of shield ones?

Life mods can roll on every gear, even ES and ES hybrid gear, whereas ES can only show up on ES gear. That restricts the available gear pool. The amount of ES is also mediocre on low level gear.
Usually people level as life builds even if they plan on making a CI character that uses ES and then spec out of the life nodes they've taken and get ES nodes when they are around level 60. You don't do this with your first char because once you make the life->ES transition you gotta have your high level/endgame ES gear ready. But with your first char you don't have that; you use that char to farm said gear.
Leveling as ES based char on your very first char in POE will be very frustrating. You'll die a lot and risk hitting a wall in merciless and maps.

But as you've already chosen to do so you might as well use that char to learn the game and then start a fresh char on june 3rd in the prophecy league.

"

SunL4D2 wrote:

I don't have reduced mana or life leech to buy this wand. You think that should really help? I still have Lifesprig as wand.

Bitterdream is the best leveling weapon for freezing pulse. It saves a lot of sockets on your chest as the spell in bitterdream will be automatically supported by five supports. As you can have a three link on your weapon that makes it practically an 8 link.

"

SunL4D2 wrote:

What cold skills are most efficient? Is there any good video or thread about it? As I progress, I feel how fast Nova and pulse lose their effectiveness. Can I make it to an end game with these skills? What kind of support gems I should use with them?

Freezing pulse is a very solid spell that also works in endgame. In a Bitterdream support it with faster projectiles and spell echo (once you have access to it). Without it the usual setup for FP would be FP - cold penetration - spell echo - faster projectiles (if you don't have projectile speed from other sources like your wand, the karui ward amulet or quality on your FP gem). If you feel uncomfortable with only one projectile you can try replacing fater projectiles with lesser multiple projectiles. That hurts your damage and defense (as you have to get closer to enemies) but covers a bigger area so you don't need to reposition that often.

If you go the ES route you may want to use a discipline aura and a clarity aura if you have problems with your mana. Herald of ice and herald of thunder are also recommended though as CI you probably won't be able tu run them both. A life based char can as you don't have a need for discipline then.

Early on use frostbite curse. Warlords mark is highly recommended as it gives live and mana leech, but a witch won't get it as quest reward. If it doesn't drop you'll have to trade for it. If you run dual curses use Warlords mark and assassins mark once you have a high crit chance (probably around level 60-70; then AM is better than frostbite). To apply two curses at once i use firestorm (can be level 1)-curse on hit- curse 1-curse 2. As elementalist with mastermind of discord using a fire spell every now and then gives you additional cold penetration for your FP.
If you don't want to selfcast the curse you can also link it with curse on hit to herald of thunder. If your crits apply shock the secondary damage of hot will then apply the curse(s), though not as efficient as the firestorm combo.

"

SunL4D2 wrote:

Where / how I can get better gear? Any good guide video or something on that matter?

While leveling use whatever you find. Except for goldrim i wouldn't spend currency to buy leveling gear. Once you reach level 60+/merciless you can use poe.trade to buy upgrades for your gear.

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SunL4D2 wrote:

Where I can see that skill tree for DieYoungStayPretty character?

Right click my name. That opens my charcter sheet. Under the characters tab you can view my chars and their trees.

That's a lot of useful info. :P

What does CI mean btw?

So basically prefering ES over Life skills restrits freedom of gear choice?

I noticed that Faster casting doesn't get much love from anyone. Is it really such useless skill and other support skills are much better? What about Increased critical strikes?

Would Cold Penetration work if socketed into Bitterdream? What if I socket Cold Penetration into another part of the gear?

Also I find Glacial Cascade more effective than Freezing Pulse now? Maybe I should use it instead? What support gems are better for this skill?

Btw what I can do with excessive skill gems and jewels I get? If they are not rare and don't have any quality.

Damn 20+ characters. How you didn't get tired of this game yet? :o

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SunL4D2 wrote:

That's a lot of useful info. :P

What does CI mean btw?

So basically prefering ES over Life skills restrits freedom of gear choice?

CI = Chaos Innoculation. It is a keystone on the upper right side of the tree. If you don't take life nodes/have life mods on gear and just stack energy shield, chaos damage will kill you very quick as it ignores the energy shield and directly damages your small life pool. Poison clouds from zombies, alchemists in the sewers, poison arrow bandits in act 2 will kill you easily. Besides a low life also means that you will get stun locked. That means damage you receive will stun you proportional to ratio of the damage to your max life pool. If you run into fast hitting monsters you risk being perma stunned and killed with a low life pool.
The threat from chaos damage can be avoided by taking CI, while stun can be avoided as CI by wearing an eye of chayula amulet. But that leaves you with the gear predicament. And taking CI early (below level 60+) is a horrible idea. Don't do that.

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SunL4D2 wrote:

I noticed that Faster casting doesn't get much love from anyone. Is it really such useless skill and other support skills are much better? What about Increased critical strikes?

Spell echo is just better than faster casting. Besides as a cold spell user you want to freeze stuff. That means hit as hard as you can as the freeze duration (and if you freeze at all) depends on the damage of a single hit. Hitting more often but with less damage per hit just lowers your freezing chance while rising your mana needs.

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SunL4D2 wrote:

Would Cold Penetration work if socketed into Bitterdream? What if I socket Cold Penetration into another part of the gear?

Bitterdream already comes with implicit cold penetration support.
If you want to support a spell you have to link the support to the spell. In the case of bitterdream your spell has to be socketed in the weapon to gain bitterdreams supports.

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SunL4D2 wrote:

Also I find Glacial Cascade more effective than Freezing Pulse now? Maybe I should use it instead? What support gems are better for this skill?

You can use almost the same supports as with freezing pulse. While freezing pulse is a projectile and can be supported by faster projectiles or lesser multiple projectiles, glacial cascade is an area of effect spell, not a projectile. Instead of the projectile support gems you can use area of effect supports like concentrated effect, though some generic support like controlled destruction would be better (despite the crit penalty; it is also a good support for FP).

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SunL4D2 wrote:

Btw what I can do with excessive skill gems and jewels I get? If they are not rare and don't have any quality.

Keep them; maybe another char can use them. If you don't have enough space vendor that stuff.

BTW the POE wiki is a useful ressource for common questions. http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Game_mechanics for some mechanics basic and http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Quest_Rewards to plan your gem rewards might be of use for you.

Thanks!

One more thing - is there any list of skill gems that might be sold (something rare or something that appears later in the game) to other players for worthy currency item (like orb of fusion or chaos, etc) or avoid (like first mission rewards skill gems) ?

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SunL4D2 wrote:

Thanks!

One more thing - is there any list of skill gems that might be sold (something rare or something that appears later in the game) to other players for worthy currency item (like orb of fusion or chaos, etc) or avoid (like first mission rewards skill gems) ?

Unless the gems are level 20 or have 15+ quality there isn't much demand, because most can be purchased from the vendor. Check poe.trade for specific prices on leveled/qualty gems if you happen to have one you'll like to sell.

Baba Bing, why you used Controlled destruction gem in DieYongStayPretty elementalist build? Sholdn't it reduce critical strike chance to 0% and you have so much crit' nodes and equip? Or you had crit. chance at considerably higher value than 100% ? :o

Increased critical strike chance works on your base crit chance and is additive with other crit increases/decreases:
If the base crit of your gem is 6% and you have 500% increased crit and the 100% decrease from controlled destruction, your overall crit is:
6% base x (1+ (5 - 1)) = 30%