[2.6] The Curse Whisperer - Tri-Curse CI Whispering Ice Elementalist - Viable for Everything

Just chiming in here.. always wanted to play whispering ice early season, but events mentioned like the above make it very tough to actually do so. I recommend playing an another build to farm up dried lakes (totems/SRS/BV/whatever else), and then once you get enough then come on back to this build. Checking the prices on the staff right now and the cheapest one is 12c.. lol. Not worth it at all considering you'll be able to find them for an alch probably in a few days or a week from now. Even if you get a measly one socket one for 1 alch you can drop 10 or so jewellers on it and get 5 sockets, spend a few more on the proper colors and you're good to go. With the rest of the currency you've got from farming dried lakes/low level maps you can use it to buy some decent ES gear as you get going.

The build is super strong, but I don't think it should be league starter, maybe after the prices settle, but I think that you can profit from these prices if you're up for making a different build and then coming back to this build in a few days once the prices aren't so volatile.. lol. Awesome build though, but I think I am going to go with the templar version, as you mentioned it was the best for face-tanking OP? (And in my base it would be a very safe uber lab farmer - best loot in the game hands-down).

Edit: Standard prices have the staff at 1c, and season prices are normally 10-20+ percent cheaper than standard. So yeah, an alch in a few days to a week max and you'll be much better off than starting off with this build right at this instant. I am in cruel right now and only have 3 chaos orbs, that would normally be enough for starting you out at the CI level 33 build that the OP has listed under leveling.

I chose to start Breach with this build. I always seem to have bad ideas when starting a league... but dealing with it, I did the following:

1. Switch to Flameblast when you can.

2. Save up all of your chaos orbs for the staff -- it has dropped as low as 5c during the first day. I.e., don't buy a pyre until you have the staff first.

3. The Shav's Boots drop to 1 alch pretty fast and are awesome.

4. Save up 4 passive points and don't take CI + the next 3 until you have upgraded all your gear to good ES items. There's really no reason to switch to CI early when starting a league.

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Frak Flameblast. That sucks without the proper setup. Managed to get a staff for 4c, my entire chaos orb collection (saving fuses etc for linking/coloring.) Onward to how things were meant to be.

Managed to buy staff for 4 chaos:), too bad I dont have enough strenght to wear it, and Astramentus is too expensive for now, I ll try to find some +strengh jewellry so I could finally use it

Gonna be giving this a shot for the first time in Breach HC.



That's my level 33 setup. Hopefully its as strong as everyones saying.

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Gonna be giving this a shot for the first time in Breach HC.

Spoiler

That's my level 33 setup. Hopefully its as strong as everyones saying.

thats a nice setup!

maybe you can craft 26-30 int on the boots via cata...

btw dont go ham on breaches early on... would be a shame to rip away all that gear.

Just gonna put this out there...

Ive started using a 5s 4l WI for leveling with incinerate > cwc > incinerate > ele focus, with controlled destruction on the separate slot. I would be using it all fully linked but I cant afford to link it.

Using a level 6 cwc puts the triggering time at .42 seconds, my cast speed on the ability at this level is about .5 or so...it feels a lot smoother doing it this way (Im not locked to the second animation for echo, or indeed any animation at all).

At my level, the drop on damage per cast from icestorm is about equivalent to the damage tooltip of stage 1 incinerate (waaay underleveled and missing a link).

I think in the end of the day the scaling of int and cold damage as well as fire for ice storm will far outweigh the damage of the primary incinerate, but its food for thought, and certainly a much less painful way to cast the skill while leveling... Incinerate also doesnt target lock and has an EXTREMELY short interval of cast time, making placement and breaking of casts very smooth. The ice storm is cast at mouse location regardless of how far the incinerate beam goes, so you can cast off screen just the same as you can now - you just wont get the incinerate damage.

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Pathological wrote:

Just gonna put this out there...

Ive started using a 5s 4l WI for leveling with incinerate > cwc > incinerate > ele focus, with controlled destruction on the separate slot. I would be using it all fully linked but I cant afford to link it.

Using a level 6 cwc puts the triggering time at .42 seconds, my cast speed on the ability at this level is about .5 or so...it feels a lot smoother doing it this way (Im not locked to the second animation for echo, or indeed any animation at all).

well, using a normal setup, this build achieves a cast time of around 0.37s. using incinerate and cwc uses up two jewel sockets. the lowest damage jewel we have in our setup is controlled destruction with a 45% more multiplier. at the bare minimum, this setup would lose a total multiplier of 1.45*1.45 = 2.1. so the damage of the icestorms cast by the incin - cwc setup would be less than half, at least.

so yeah, definitely not worth it in the later stages of the game. but you're right that it might be smoother during the leveing process.

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Black_Gun wrote:

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Pathological wrote:

Just gonna put this out there...

Ive started using a 5s 4l WI for leveling with incinerate > cwc > incinerate > ele focus, with controlled destruction on the separate slot. I would be using it all fully linked but I cant afford to link it.

Using a level 6 cwc puts the triggering time at .42 seconds, my cast speed on the ability at this level is about .5 or so...it feels a lot smoother doing it this way (Im not locked to the second animation for echo, or indeed any animation at all).

well, using a normal setup, this build achieves a cast time of around 0.37s. using incinerate and cwc uses up two jewel sockets. the lowest damage jewel we have in our setup is controlled destruction with a 45% more multiplier. at the bare minimum, this setup would lose a total multiplier of 1.45*1.45 = 2.1. so the damage of the icestorms cast by the incin - cwc setup would be less than half, at least.

so yeah, definitely not worth it in the later stages of the game. but you're right that it might be smoother during the leveing process.

Consider CWC to be equivalent to spell echo (cwc level 20 with no quality has a cast time repetition of 0.35s, as well as a 9% more multiplier, while echo has a 10% less multiplier). You don't run spell echo or faster casting with CWC, because it has no effect on the repeat time of the whispering ice. So, CWC directly trades for spell echo. I assume you don't remove spell echo at any point?

So, the loss (besides the difference from CWC to spell echo which is essentially a wash or favorable to CWC) is the change of a more multiplier (it would actually likely be conc effect since that doesnt affect the incinerate, though that depends how much damage you actually get from the incinerate and how worthwhile it is) vs. casting incinerate, which is itself also supported by the other supports in the setup and all fire spell damage you have from other sources.

If it worked properly with the new beam spell I'd have no doubt it would be better because of the -resist debuff attached... incinerate is not as appealing, which is why I have doubts. That said, the quality of life increase is superb.

So I just want to update my character after exactly 24 hours of playing since the start of the league. This is my current gear



WI=9c, pyre=2c, astramentis=33c, doedre=4c, icetomb+shav's pace=2c

Now saving up for jewels & maybe a new chest. Feeling pretty good so far <3

Check the price on the whispering ice now :D Told you all to wait!

Edit: Astramentis is always worth nabbing in the 20 - 30c range, be careful of people who yolo'd them and corrupted it with an awful mod, I.e. The person selling the cheapest one now.