Delaile’s Chaos Inoculation [END GAME] Cold Crit Witch GUIDE [Gameplay Videos] included

UPDATED for 0.10.3
Added Groupe Gameplay Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yvM7RWT-b4

Introduction:

I was playing a CI Cold Crit Witch in Closed Beta and i liked the fact to be immune to Chaos Damage and to not have to bother around with Life on gear and so on. Because i played alot different Builds and Classes and know specific Items i was pretty fast able to figure out a Bulletproof End Game CI Build. The obvious downsides of Chaos Inoculation are the Stun- and Elemental Status Effects-Mechanics. If a melee hit will stun you or a Elemental Status Effect is apllied to you, is depended on your Life before you took CI (if you want know more about mechanics-> Mechanics Thread). That means if you don't do something against that every single fart which would hit you in Maps or higher level areas would stun, freeze, burn or shock you.

The Idea:

Building around CI with Items and possibilities to eliminate the Downsides and make a pretty straightforward CI Build for around Level 70!
A Major Keystone in that Build is “Ghost Reaver”, the advantages are pretty obvious you deal damage and regenerate your Energy Shield with that. To ensure a constant “Leech” you should be able to do constant damage. This is the point where the mentioned specific Items are needed.

These two Items prevent you from being stunned and frozen, which are your biggest enemies as a Chaos Inoculation Character! If you have these two Items you can play pretty comfortable because of the fact that you are able to Leech constantly through doing damage.

Burning and Shock Status is in my opinion no danger compared to a freeze or some stuns in a row. But to that, later more.

Skills, Curses and Auras:

Main Damage Ability: “Freezing Pulse” sawed-off Shotgun

5 Linked: Freezing Pulse - Lesser Multiple Projectiles - Faster Casting - Increased Critical Damage - Life Leech

6 Linked: Freezing Pulse - Lesser Multiple Projectiles - Faster Casting - Increased Critical Damage - Life Leech - Mana Leech

Possibilities: Cold Penetration or Chaos Damage or Lightning Damage instead of Increased Critical Damage
Thats on you for what you are aiming... Math for that in the Q&A Section!!
Greater Multiple Projectiles instead of Lesser Multiple Projectiles,
if you have the Mana or a 6Linked Chest and Mana Leech go for it if you want!

4 Linked Spell Totem: Spell Totem - Ice Spear - Greater Multiple Projectiles - Faster Casting

Blood Rage: Since you don't get Chaos Damage you'll like the 3 Frenzy Charges from Blood Rage :-)

Auras: Discipline, Grace, Purity and Clarity or Haste all combined with “Reduced Mana”
If Haste or Clarity depends on your Gear, if you have a 6L Chest you don't need Manareg anymore. Purity helps a lot with the Resistances because of Dream Fragment and Chayula you are a bit limited to get Resistances easily. Maybe you will ask yourself why Grace, you will understand that after reading “The Build” section. But anyway there are varieties possible, it's simply a question on taste and/or Gear.

Curses: “Frostbite” is your best Friend as a Cold Crit Witch if Monsters have Frost Resistances.
In a group is “Elemental Weakness” probably the best way, so everyone can benefit from it.
Critical Weakness is an option too. It simply depends on the environment you are playing in.
I have mostly Critical Weakness and Frostbite in my gear linked with Increased Area of Effect.

As you can see there is enough room for other Skills like “Cold Snap”, “Frost Nova” or something else you like.

The Build:

There are some variations of that Build which are depending on your Gear.
Lets start with the Basic Level 70 Build with a 5 Linked Chest...



It should look like this more or less. With a 5 Linked Chest you will need a big Mana Pool and Manareggen Passives. If you pass the 70ties you just aim for more Crit Chance and more Critical Damage Multiplier Nodes. From Level 80 you can take the other 5 Energy Shield Nodes in the middle or you boost your Crit Chance, it depends how good your Gear is and how much Energy Shield you have and if you feel comfortable or not.

Lets speak a bit about the chosen Passive Nodes:

Major keystones are obviously Chaos Inoculation, Ghost Reaver, Buff Effect - Inner Force and the Nullification Nodes.

As you can see i take all Energy Shield/Evasion Rating Hybrid Nodes from the Shadow section.
These Nodes are very Powerful, they amplify your Energy Shield and Evasion Rating and the Nullification Nodes also give you 10% All Resistances, that's the point where you understand why i use “Grace” as an aura in that Build.
You’ll reach very good Evasion Chances with “Grace” from those Nodes and in addition we take the 3 “Buff Effect - Inner Force” Nodes, which amplify every Aura on you and even Flask Buffs which is very powerful. You’ll get more Energy Shield from Discipline, more Manareggen from Clarity, more Casting Speed from Haste, more Evasion Rating from Grace and so on, isn't that awesome?!

So at this point you get an idea how that Build works, you amplify every Aura, you raise your Energy Shield as high as possible while you pump your Damage too. The best defence in that Build is your Cold Damage. The more often you crit and the higher your Crits are, the more and longer are your enemies frozen and you regenerate your Energy Shield with Ghost Reaver and Life Leech.

One of the big advantages of that Build is that you don't have to take Health Flasks with you.
This makes Room for 1 Topaz Flask, 1 Ruby Flask, 2 granite Flasks and one Quicksilver Flask.
You will crit like a Maniac which means your Flasks should regenerate on Critical Hits.
This are my Flasks:
Spoiler


As you can see i use 2 granite Flasks which has almost a 100% increased Armor mod on it.
That means i get ~ 10,5k Armor while I use one of that Flasks, because of the Buff Effect Nodes.
With Determination Aura in a Group i reach 16,5k Armor, I have two of these Flasks i can almost use them permanent because of that Crit Recharges. 10,5k Armor means 45% Damage Reduction against Level 80 Monsters! So you can imagine how tanky this Build is if played right.
With a Wand Templar in a Group and Conduit i can have almost 90% Damage Reduction everytime i need it (3 Endurance Charges and Determination Aura).
For Lightning Damage Dealing Monsters i have my Topaz Flask and for the Fire Monsters my Ruby Flask.
As you can see this is really a Bulletproof Build!

Let me show you a Level 84 version of that Build with a 6 Linked Chest which i am playing at the moment:



Final Build:

Some Points left for Dex or Str Nodes if neccessary, some variations possible for own taste and needs etc.! I would even recommend to respec the right circlet with 6 Nodes and Nullification for the left 6 Nodes Body and Soul Node circlet in late Endgame...
Simply there is room for optimizations for own needs and preferations!

Short Gameplay Videos:

Solo Map:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3wv0-cXNOI

Nothing special, i even forgot to use Blood Rage after Boss Kill...
But atm i have no Time for more :-)

Group Gameplay:
Level 85 Dual Wand GMP+FP Action for easy Maps and fast clearing:
A easy rare lvl 70 Map, Facetanking everything
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yvM7RWT-b4

My Actual Gear Set:

Spoiler


Stats and more:
Spoiler




Bandit Rewards:

Normal: Mana
Rest: Passive Node

Q&A Section (interesting Questions and Answers from this Thread listed here):

Spoiler
How "Ghost Reaver" works:
Spoiler


It depends on your "Maximum Energy Shield" listed in the character panel.



You can leech a maximum of 20% from your maximum per second...



That means in that case:

5987 * 0,2 = 1197,4 -> You can leech per second a Maximum of 1197,4 ES Points.

Which you can see popup in the defence panel while you are leeching Energy Shield.



Cold Penetration, Increased Critical Damage, Added Lightning Damage or Added Chaos Damage:
Spoiler
Let's do the Math for a hypothetical Case: A Monster -Curse Immune, 0% Cold Resistance-

"Increased Critical Damage" Case:
In my Case we have a critical hit chance from around 28% and a critical strike multiplier at 518%.

An average hit do (414+621)/2=517,5 damage,
an average critical hit do 517,5*5,18=2680,5 damage.
After 100 Hits we would have 72 normal Hits and 28 Critical Hits,
that results in a Total Combined Damage of around 112,3k Damage

"Cold Penetration" Case:
Replacing the Level 18 Crit Damage gem with a Level 18 Cold Pen gem results in a 360% Crit Multi at still 28% crit chance.

A level 18 Cold Pen Gem penetrates 33% Cold Resistance
-> This will result in an effective -33% cold resistance. The enemy will take 33% more cold damage.

New Average normal Hit is 517,5*1,33=688,275 damage
new average Critical Hit is 517,5*3,6*1,33=2477,79 damage
Which results in a Total Combined Damage from 118,9k damage after 100 Hits

118,9/112,3=1,05877 -> Results in a more damage from approx 5,9%

That maybe seems not that much but you have to consider how the Penetration Mechanics work,
If you are doing a Map for example which has Increased Cold Resistances on Mobs and you confront a Mob which has Extra Cold Resistances, that Mob can have easily 150% Cold Resistance.
The enemy has +150% Cold resistance, but is capped at their maximum cold resistance of 75%. The enemy is cursed with Frostbite before being attacked, which causes them to lose 47% Cold Resistance.
The enemy first loses 47% resistance, bringing him down to +103% cold resistance. He is still well above his maximum, and his resistance value remains at 75%. The 33% penetration then results in an effective 42% cold resistance.
So as you can see: Penetration is not the same as losing resistance, which changes the target's resistance value. Penetration does not modify the target's resistance, instead it treats is as lower than it is. This is important when considering a target that has stacked their resistance value past the maximum resistance cap of 75%.
And the quality on Cold Pen Gem increases your Cold Damage which is very nice!

And if a target is curse-able and has not that much Cold Resi you can achieve a very high negative value which boosts your damage very well.
Only Downside is to get 3 Green,2 Blue and 1 Red Sockets in an Energy Shield Based Armor Type,
it could eat a lot chromatic's :-P

"Added Chaos Damage" Case:
It is pretty similar with Added Chaos Damage if a monster has high Cold Resists or a Energy Shield you will do more Damage with that gem. But there are also cases where you would do more damage with the Increased Critical damage gem. I would say they are pretty comparable!

"Added Lightning Damage" Case:
With a 20% Quality Gem you should be able to Shock Targets often and for a duration which should be enough that the next Pulses benefit from it.
In terms of huge HP Monsters i guess its not that effective but in other cases it can be the strongest Support Gem. It simply depends if you can Shock Targets constantly...

Conclusion:

Cold Pen > Lightning Damage > Chaos Damage ~/= Increased Critical Damage

Cold Penetration gives you in every imaginable Case more flat Cold Damage, its not dependent on RNG!




Final Words:

I started to play this Build with Level 70 and around 3k Energy Shield which worked pretty well for me. Eye of Chayula and Dream Framgments are pretty much a must have in my opinion.
In addition to these two Items i recommend a 20% Freezing Pulse to expand the Range, so you don't have to hug every time, every monster to do well Damage.
In my opinion this Build has huge advantages compared to a hybrid HP/ES Build, you can just concentrate to get ES on gear and cap your resis, you dont have to bother around with Chaos Damage and Chaos Resistances, you get the full benefit from Life Leech because you have one huge "Life Pool" nothing splitet as in a hybrid build would be and as you can see on my gear it is not that hard to reach 6k ES...

If you have any Questions i will try to answer everything if i have the time and the mood for it.
Thanks for reading and have fun!

Cheers
Last edited by Hulio225 on Mar 14, 2013, 11:26:23 AM
looks good! do you have a video of you soloing maps without any trouble?
What bandit rewards did you take?
i am planning to make a summary video about that build with some action... maybe it will be finished on the weekend!


edit: thx, i forgett to mention the bandit stuff... added

cheers
Last edited by Hulio225 on Feb 20, 2013, 12:15:44 PM
Why not trade the +10 Int/+10 Dex for +30 Dex/+4% MS near the Nullification?
You may even drop one +30 Dex node or don't even need any +Dex on gear... or, idk...
Just seem to be better.
Last edited by SirLawliet on Feb 20, 2013, 1:37:57 PM
More or less the same build as me, but i skipped ghost reaver and life leech, and instead went for more dps.

edit: the build at lvl 72

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgMAAuMC_gVCBVsHYwelDkgPxBEvEVARlhVQFvMXVBzcHdkfAiKBLJwsvy-dMtE2PTbFN0c3ZjgbO3w74UGWQsNDVEVHRtdJsk-_VkpXK1qmXcZd8mBta6xtGXBScNVzU3WKeLp-WX_GghCIQohri3qMNo48kyeVBJmanaOeoZ97oqOly6cIpyuvm7UEtve4k7jKu9bAUcBUwcXB88Nt1AXYJNzH3fPfhN-w4vfjhOaB62PsGPId_Ks=

Second question, since you're using blood magic, why not take the additional frenzy buff between the two nullification nodes and also one more by helping kraytin on merciless?
IGN: Gahrlaag
Wiki - http://en.pathofexilewiki.com/wiki/Path_of_Exile_Wiki

Move de sync from de bathroom to de kitchen for better flow!
crisis solved.
Last edited by Gahrlaag on Feb 20, 2013, 1:50:11 PM
Really dumb newb question here...

But how do you have 10k armor? You are running a pure ES build and you have 45% damage reduction.


Am I missing something?
"
SirLawliet wrote:
Why not trade the +10 Int/+10 Dex for +30 Dex/+4% MS near the Nullification?
You may even drop one +30 Dex node or don't even need any +Dex on gear... or, idk...
Just seem to be better.


yes you are right with that +30Dex/+4% MS, it comes from that time where i needed every es node asap... i was able to get nulification faster from the other side :-)
and the dex is usefull you can use higher lvl support gems or haste aura, you can modify it if you have enough for your purposes...

thanks!
"
hoiland wrote:


But how do you have 10k armor? You are running a pure ES build and you have 45% damage reduction.

Am I missing something?


Granite Flask :


=> approx 8k Armor -> Buff Effect and Inner Force Nodes -> 8k *1,3 = 10400 Aromr

Because every Crit recharges one Flask Charge i am able to maintain the Buff with 2 Flasks pretty long.
cold penetration > increased critical damage imo. Good job

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