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

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Dulaku wrote:

Hi, great build, first time leveled as CI and definitely the strongest build I've played so far.

A question though, even with ~8k ES I keep dying to Uberlab traps, have any survival tips?

Aside that, I notice that you neglect cast speed a lot in the tree and jewels. Now, Icestorm damage formula is complicated but boils down to 2 aspects: Hit damage (tooltip) and Casts per second, multiply by duration and enemy cover fraction* to get peak dps.

I ran some numbers and from a dps standpoint, a 3% cast speed node adds as much as 30 INT. There's a similar neglect of %ES nodes, there are quite a few effective 10%/point nodes within reach, so trading some base damage for DPS and ES is possible. Precision nodes in Templar area have cast/attack speed plus some movespeed which is always nice. Other than that, 9-11% cast speed jewels are like a chaos on poetrade...

*for a small enemy (radius = 2), lowest cover fraction is 16%, with CE and on big bosses it's gonna be a lot higher.

Quicksilver flasks > lab. It doesn't matter how much ES you have since the traps do percentage damage. But running very fast helps a ton. And leaping directly onto the sentries, most of them are in safe spots.

Cast speed doesn't matter all that much because we almost never just stand in 1 spot and spam cast. Most of the time you cast, move, cast, move, etc. And on the bosses that you facetank it doesn't make any noticeable difference since you outleech them, who cares if they die in 10 or 11 sec. Sure, if there was a way to increase cast speed by a significant percentage without sacrificing more DPS than you gain (e.g. Faster Casting) then it would be worth it. But I can't think of a situation for that other than an easy trash clear. For the top bosses you need DPS more than cast speed.

%ES nodes may give you slightly more ES than just Int nodes, but Int nodes give you ES AND DPS. You only need as much ES as you can lose in 1-2 sec before you leech it all back.

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TeaAddict wrote:

I have about 5k es right now with Discipline. I still get frozen for a while even with Auxium.

I have these gloves and boots right now:

Should I upgrade them to:

A) I found boots with half the int, but triple the ES
B) I found gloves with half the int, but again, triple the ES

Resists are the same.

Auxium doesn't stop you from getting chilled/frozen, it just reduces their duration by a lot.

Gloves: no, find something with high Int and just more ES. Don't lower your Int in half.
Boots: no, and you need movespeed too. Find something with 40+ Int, movespeed and ES.

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meyogi wrote:

But correct me if i am wrong here, wouldn't the jewel socket at scion's only give me a max of 34Int.

It gives 44 Int. The same node (between the 2 jewels) is converted twice.

Didn't I add that to the Q&A already? This question keeps popping up every other day...

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Thefatpunk wrote:

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Kelvynn wrote:

I just can't put it into the main guide because it's only possible in this one league.

The belt is part of the game now, not just the league. It's just the int roll you can't get which you don't get on the Auxium anyway?

I see absolutely no reason to recommend Auxium over a crystal belt besides currency.

You can't get ANY Int roll on belts outside of this league. Without Int a belt with just some ES and resists is only a temporary crutch until you find resists elsewhere, not worth trading the chill/freeze protection of Auxium for. The other Int belts (Perandus Blazon and Bated Breath) are not good enough either IMO (although Perandus is Ok for flask enthusiasts).

I just got these all.

I know they all have low int (I will upgrade them soon).

It's just hard trying to find something with the right colors, high int, es, and resists without having to craft the sockets myself which is also expensive.

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Dulaku wrote:

Hi, great build, first time leveled as CI and definitely the strongest build I've played so far.

A question though, even with ~8k ES I keep dying to Uberlab traps, have any survival tips?

Trap damage is proportional to your max HP (or ES), so it makes no difference if you run through them with 1K HP or 8K (in fact some speedrun builds only have like 2K total health). ES actually takes 40% less damage from traps to compensate for the fact that you have less armor and can't chug potions.

I also had a lot of trouble with traps initially, but eventually you learn all the possible layouts (there aren't that many of them) and will know where you can afford to run through and where the safe spots are.

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Kelvynn wrote:

not worth trading the chill/freeze protection of Auxium for.

Wrong. Auxium doesn't prevent you from getting chilled or frozen. You still need to keep a unfreeze flask. It's a worthless belt since the crystal belt is now added into the core game. The resists, insane ES, and other stats a rare belt offers far outweigh the Auxium and helps the build tremendously. Let it fucking go already.

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monkuar wrote:

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Kelvynn wrote:

not worth trading the chill/freeze protection of Auxium for.

Wrong. Auxium doesn't prevent you from getting chilled or frozen. You still need to keep a unfreeze flask. It's a worthless belt since the crystal belt is now added into the core game. The resists, insane ES, and other stats a rare belt offers far outweigh the Auxium and helps the build tremendously. Let it fucking go already.

While I agree that crystal belts are better along with the Int essence, it's wrong to say that Auxium does not prevent freeze. From the wiki: "If the duration would be below 0.3 seconds, the freeze effect is not applied."

Auxium helps with this particularly if you have a very large ES pool, which sadly this build doesn't really get. But it still helps against smaller hits, since we have almost no increased health at all to avoid getting frozen by every single small cold damage hit.

In a league without essences, a perfectly rolled Crystal belt has a maximum of 131 Energy shield. A perfect auxium has 90 (which would be much less expensive, crystal belts are insanely expensive, on EHC you're looking at 40 chaos just to get an ilevel 84 for crafting)

So really what a crystal belt offers you outside of essence is slightly more flexibility with resistances. If someone is having trouble with resistances, I'm sure they can make the call themselves that they can be diligent and pre-emptive with flasks, and make the switch.

No need to be a jackass about it. There's a reason these are guides and not "rules for playing the build" Adapt it how you see fit.

So I'm currently at lvl 85, 8200ES and 7000dps with Conc effect. I went with Occultist. There are still few things to improve, but could we possibly establish "what is enough" to tackle shaper? ES/DPS wise?

Does Mastermind proc of BL autocast or from Orb of Storms exclusively?

When i was looking at the scion Version of this build, the damage is double, 18 000 dps With conc and procs, and the witch Version 7-8 k.

HGow come you say witch do more dmg??

Witch Average Damage :

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teharos wrote:

Does Mastermind proc of BL autocast or from Orb of Storms exclusively?

Mastermind does not proc from triggered skills, only from ones you cast manually.

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paraply wrote:

When i was looking at the scion Version of this build, the damage is double, 18 000 dps With conc and procs, and the witch Version 7-8 k.

HGow come you say witch do more dmg??

You must have been looking at fully powered in-combat stats, with EO active. And probably from 2.2 (before the Ascendant Berserker nerf) or without Life Leech (it can be replaced with a DPS gem for easy content).

With the same setup and gear, the Witch'es avg Icestorm out of combat is at about 8k while the Scion's is at 9k. But the tooltip avg hit is NOT the DPS, it's only the avg dmg of 1 hit. Our DPS is much much higher than 8-9k. Due to Pendulum and Mastermind that kick in, the actual DPS of the Witch is higher than the Scion's.