Recommend a CI build for SSF?

I've always played melee and have cycloned up and down and all over town, mostly with two handed axes and swords. I've probably liked the juggernaut best out of my characters, maybe because of his disfavour and 6L astral plate? Just guessing, but that could have something to do with it.

Currently I'm running a SSF blade flurry assassin in SC breach and he's doing fine but it's just so darned FOTM. I'll probably run him up to low 80's then start another character just to be doing something different. I've never done a CI build but would like to try it.

Running SSF, I'm expecting no particular unique items and mostly trash gear, although I can use the vendor crafting recipes and master benches. I can pretty much count on a tabula though since I've already farmed 5/9 humility cards on my current guy. Hopefully I can at least be viable up to T12 or T13 maps. I kind of prefer melee because I'm familiar with it, but it might also be nice to stretch outside of my comfort zone and try a caster or archer for once.

What do you think would work?

Oh yeah, how big of a problem are stuns for CI? I always see mention of using eye of Chayula or Valyrium but are they really mandatory? Could you get by using cyclone and not have to worry about stun avoidance from gear?

Stun Threshold is determined by your maximum Life by default. Thankfully, for CI, it uses your pre-"Life is 1" value, but on optimized builds, that's still really, really, low. You are practically guaranteed to have a 50% chance to be Stunned by any Hit that lands on you and deals Damage.

Recommendation would be, whispering ice.

And yes, stun immunity will fuck you if you neglect it. You basically go from dying to not dying if you have solid character control once you grab it.

Whispering ice can get stun immunity from the passive tree though, so no biggy's.

Peace,

-Boem-

I did a tri-cursing flameblast CI occultist in Essence. Main skill setup as of end of the league (I had a different though very similar chest in Essence; that one is now on my Whispering Ice elementalist because it had a substantial intelligence bonus):

And curses (only unique item for the build; not mandatory):

I also carried elemental weakness and temporal chains with me to counter certain enemies or map mods.

Final tree link

Stats:
11k max ES
5.2k ES recharge per second
3.2k flameblast tooltip damage (without procs), which gets multiplied by 10.9 in the final stage
Able to get up to 7.8k tooltip damage by swapping support gems (again without procs)
10.1 casts per second
Resistances overcapped enough to ignore elemental weakness on maps

I don't have a guide but here's some notes on how I did it:

Flameblast isn't available until level 28, so start with whatever fire skill is handy. The starter fireball works, and firestorm is cool (or hot?) too. Start leveling necessary supports as soon as you get them. Don't forget to put some gems in your alternate weapon set for leveling.

Don't bother with a separate leveling tree; go with ES from the beginning. Look for gear with ES on it and whatever resists you need. Essences will help in making leveling gear. Chaos damage will hurt, especially in the beginning of merciless with -60% resistance. However since flameblast can be targeted very far away, up to the edges of the screen, there aren't many situations where you need to go close to enemies. Use flasks or life leech to survive until you take CI.

Here's a tree roughly at the point of taking CI (around level 60).

Do labyrinth after finishing Malachai on normal and cruel. Those occultist ES ascendancy nodes are immensely helpful.

No Chayula or Valyrium. As long as you have any ES remaining (which for CI is always) you have a 50% chance to avoid stuns anyway. Vile Bastion gives stun immunity on full ES, which isn't that difficult to maintain as an occultist.

Flameblast eats a lot of mana. Speccing enough mana regen to sustain it would take too many nodes or item mods. Use Warlord's Mark to leech mana. It will also provide life leech until you take CI.

Get a totem as soon as they become available. It helps a lot with tanking since this isn't really a tanky build. Flame Totem and Searing Bond have lower strength requirement than Decoy Totem, and they do quite substantial damage too. I use Flame Totem myself.

Flameblast with ignite is good for hit-and-run tactics. Max level chance to ignite provides a nearly 50% chance to ignite enemies. Flameblast hits hard and ignite double-dips from fire damage so the burning damage is substantial. You can run way to recharge your ES for a bit while the enemy burns.

Awesome! Thanks much guys. I had no idea about the whispering ice build since I've always just played melee but I searched up a decent looking guide here... https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1667730 I think I see what's going on and I really like the unwavering stance node he used. Yes it's far, but he got good stuff along the way and that's such a solid node. I've never been a fan of all the conditional stuff GGG has been adding lately so I'm very partial to grabbing that "always on" stun immune node.

Question on that build would be, how rare are the Incantation divination card drops? I'd be fine with running around in the forest for a few days to farm cards, but not for weeks and weeks. I farmed a set of Celestial Justicar cards in about a week or two when they still dropped in Fellshrine, and that was just about as much as I'd ever want to do for a straight up farming mission.

I also like your ideas a lot databeaver and appreciate you taking the time to explain. Going ES from the start sounds like a great idea and not hanging around in the middle of the fight all the time just makes good sense. Now I'll be torn between these builds for a bit. Comes down to permanent stun immunity or not having to farm a required unique. Looks like two good options to choose from here.

I only have one Incantation card so far (and 2/7 of The Siren, which gives a corrupted WI; probably not helpful since socketing it is stupidly expensive). No idea if I've been doing the right areas for it to drop. On the other hand I've found two Whispering Ices.

"

databeaver wrote:

I only have one Incantation card so far (and 2/7 of The Siren, which gives a corrupted WI; probably not helpful since socketing it is stupidly expensive). No idea if I've been doing the right areas for it to drop. On the other hand I've found two Whispering Ices.

I'd probably be inclined to hunt Western Forest since I'm still on A3 merciless at the moment, so no maps required and only 4 cards needed. But maybe they're too rare... I've had good luck on drops this league but sure as hell, soon as I feel like I need a particular thing it will never ever ever drop!


But my luck runs weird. In talisman league I farmed the cards for tabula rasa, then soon after that I started a new character and he dropped two tabulas. One from normal Hailrake and the other in cruel submerged passage, lol I'd guess if I farmed the cards with my current character, the CI char would then of course drop a couple of extra staves ;)

The thing with wispering is that you also need conversion jewels to make it really solid, str to int swap at marauder area etc.

But the upsides are plentiful because your playing SSF.

- only requires to 6 socket in order to get a 6-link
- free's up chest slot to be rolled purely for ES and not worry about the links (means a good ES drop can be used straight up)
- takes a lot of resist on the tree

It's actually a heavy unique dependent build if you wanna make it grow really strong. But i reckon it will do fine with normal stuff as-well and it provides good safety.

If you can free it up, run a blasphemy temp chain to go with the chilled ground you create yourself, it's a hard defense.

The way i play it is pure unique based though,

- whispering ice
- perandus belt
- 116 all stats neck(forgot the name)
- rainbow strides
- dual perandus signet (2% int per unique equiped 2x because dual wielding)

I reach around 1650 int with that set-up.
(ice storm duration and base dps scale of int thresholds)

you can probably do WI + perandus belt SSF quite easily. And the other unique's only become important if you have perandus signets equipped. So normal int rolls on gear will do.

And hope you get lucky with transfer jewels :D, there is a card for the dex -> int one though, but not for the str -> int one as far as i know.

Peace,

-Boem-

No links required!!

Guess I'd better load up blood rage and righteous fire and do some farming! That's what I did for the celestial justar farming. Suicide frequently to avoid the drop penalty from being over levelled. It worked before anyway... Then if I don't get a single card after a few days I'll probaly try the flameblaster instead. Nice to have options =)