[3.1] CHILL POET BERSERKER - Non Crit, Shatter, 8K+ Life, EZ Playstyle, Shaper and Guardians down,

Leveling at lvl 77 in T6

T14 Palace Run

T15 Basilica Run

Phoenix Guardian - Please note, this is my first time EVER fighting any guardian, so the play is sloppy.

Random Lich Fight

A quick word on how this works.



Poet's pen casts a spell whenever you attack. It doesn't say "attack with this weapon", so you can attack with default attack if u want, as long as you attack it will cast a spell. If you are wearing TWO of them (which we are), then it will cast a spell from both of the wands at the same time.

There is however a 250 ms cooldown put on the SPELLS (not the item itself). This is important distinction. Say if you could somehow make this wand a 10 link and put 10 different spells in it, it will fire off all of them spells as fast as you could attack. The 250ms cooldown only applies once you cycle back to the first spell. What this means is that a single spell can only ever be cast 4 times every second (this can be changed by cooldown reduction on boots and the belt, but we're not doing that for this build).

To put it simply, if you only have one spell in each wand, you need to have 4 attacks per second maximum, anything more is wasted attack speed and in fact will lose your some damage.

However, if you have 2 spells in each wand, then you can attack up to 8 times a second, and if you really want to push the limits (probably not feasible) you can put 3 spells in each wand and attack 16 times per second.

But anyway, out build has 2 spells in each wand (DIFFERENT SPELLS). Remember, the pen puts a cooldown on the spell, globally, so you can't put two of the same spells in two different wands. We try to keep our attack speed to 8 times per second or less. It should be less. With my current setup, unless I take a Savage Hit, my attack speed hovers around 7.9aps. That is is prefect.

You need to consider your latency. Your max attack speed should be 8 minus whatever your latency is. It's a lot better to have lower attack speed then to have it too close to 8 or over 8 aps. This is because you might attack while your spells are still on global cooldown, wasting an attack or two without casting anything, which can result in a DPS loss, as your spells might come off coldown right after you attack, then the time between that attack and next attack is wasted. It also feels funky and off.

I recommend something between 7.5 and 7.9 aps.

Level 98: https://pastebin.com/m9epTACw and Official Website Tree

CORE BUILD, Level 91: https://pastebin.com/NWjyfpqY and Official Website Tree

Bandits: Kill All

Leveling Gem Setup:

Before lvl 12:
Use Frostbolt + Volley

After lvl 12:
Get two Poet's Pens. 1st PP Frostbolt + Volley + Firestorm, 2nd PP Ice Nova + Volley + Magma Orb

Barrage + Onslaught to trigger your PPs

After lvl 18:
Switch to Frenzy. Frenzy + Faster attacks + onslaught + Life Gain On hit.

Now you can also use Controlled Destruction. 1st PP Frostbolt + Volley + Controlled Destruction. 2nd PP Ice Nova + Volley + Firestorm/Magma Orb.

After level 28:
Now you can use your real spells: 1st PP Frostbolt + Glacial Cascade + Controlled Destruction, 2nd PP Ice Nova + Vortex + Controlled Destruction.

Start Running Hatred as soon as you start using Glacial Cascade.

At this point you also need to grab a jewel socket, straight left from the Witch starting area, and put Frozen Trail treshold jewel in it so that you can comfortably remove Volley from your support and still have 3 projectiles on the Frostbolt.

After level 31:
Now you can use Blood Magic. Before you do that, you should complete normal lab and ascend to Berserker and get Pain Reaver for the life leech.

Frenzy + Faster Attack + Blood Magic + whatever. Good options are Culling, Knockback, Blind.

At this level you also unlock Blasphemy Support.

Alongside Hatred, also run Blasphemy + Frostbite or Temp Chains. Eventually you will run Frostbite + AoE + Blasphemy, but for leveling temp chains is also very nice.

At level 38, add Increased AoE support to your Blasphemy setup. After this, you wont be changing much to your gem setup.

Leveling Skill Tree:

Generally speaking, your first priority is to rush Elemental Overload, then to Templar Start, then grab Frenzy charges and grab life as you need it.

Around lvl 30, your skill tree should look like this: CLICK

Now you rush to the Templar area and grab the other socket that can support Frozen Trail jewel.

Around lvl 40, it should look like this: CLICK


Around lvl 70, something like this: CLICK

Lvel 91, completed build needs to look like this: CLICK

Poet's Pen 1: Frostbolt + Glacial Cascade + Controlled Destruction
Poet's Pen 2: Ice Nova + Vortex + Controlled Destruction

Gloves (Frenzy needs to be in the gloves):
Frenzy + Faster Attacks + Blood Magic + Knockback/Culling/Whatever

These gloves need to be crafted with Insanity Essence to have "16% MORE ATTACK SPEED", please note that it says MORE and not increased.

Helmet:
Force 3 Links with Vorici, Blasphemy + Increased AoE + Frostbit. In the 4th socket run Hatred.

Bloots:
Literally doesn't matter for the build. But there are some nice options. At least while leveling you should be running Lighting Golem. You should always run Flame dash to get you over impassible terrain as well. Frost bomb is highly encouraged too. Good basic setup would be Blood Magic + Flame Dash + Frost Bomb + Lighting Golem.

Chest:
Nothing. This should be Kaom's Heart.

HOWEVER, if you do want to run some other chest, you will have to alter your setup a bit, as you'll have more options at your disposal. If you're running 6-link chest, then Frenzy + Blood Magic + Faster Attacks + GMP + Curse On Hit + Frostbite is the way to go. This will free you to run another aura such as determination or haste or whatever you want. Could even go all fancy and run dual curse. Temp Chains would do wonders for this build's defense since we already chill everything all the time.

Recommended Gear:

Helmet:
I highly suggest Devoto's . Since we are lacking a good movement skill, we have to depend on our movement speed. Devoto's gives us nice DPS and movement.

2nd best option is Starkonja's, you don't get the movement and not as much attack speed, but you get a whole lot of HP. It's a close 2nd choice.

3rd option is some GG rare helmet I guess.

The helmet should be enchanted with 40% Physical to Cold for Glacial Cascade enchant. This is also not necessary, as you can achieve the same effect with Winter Spirit node by the ranger, will cost you 3 skill points.

Chest:
Kaom's Chest is probably the best. But not necessary. If you are running 6Link chest, it allows you to put Curse On Hit on your frenzy, so you don't have to run Blasphemy + Frostbite + Increased AoE. This would allow you to run Haste or Determination or whatever else you want. Alternatively you could spec into double curse then still run Blasphemy and have Frostbite + Elemental Weakness/Temp Chains.

Boots:
Any rare boots with lots of rez and good movement speed and life.

Gloves
Fingerless Silk Gloves are best in slot. They also need to be crafted with Insanity Essence to give you 16% MORE attack speed to your slotted skills (which needs to be frenzy).


Amulet:
BIS Item is
Other than that, I don't really recommend anything else, unless you want to MF with Bisco's.

I suppose until you can get your hands on this amulet, use any rare amulet that gives you a lot of Cold and Spell damage.

Rings:
Any rare rings with life, resists and as much %Cold damage as possible. Obviously the best in slot is Opal Rings, but you can make do with whatever until you find some GG opals.

Belt:
Just a good rare Stygian Vise belt with decent life and resists. For Abyss jewel try to get life and attack speed.

Jewels
We need to use good old jewels and not the new abyss jewels. This is where you need to get as much attack speed as you can, alongside life. If you can get some Spell dmg/Cold dmg/Dmg on top of that, it's perfect, if not, no biggie, attack speed and life% are the main stats. Also it's good to get resits on these jewels as well.

These are my jewels

We will also be running 3 unique jewels, two Treshold jewels for Frostbolt, and one Watcher's Eye that gives Cold penetration while running Hatred


Flasks
You should run Atziri's falsk or The Wise Oak. I prefer The Wise Oak, as it has more uses per full charge, and provides just a tiny bit more DPS. However Atziri's flask is also great.

I ended up making all my resists even, more like by accident than design, so The Wise Oak is nice. Other flask I highly recommend is Silver flask of Warding. Best one would be Chemists so you can get two uses out of it, or Ample (not as good as Chemists). You also need to carry staunching flask and heat flask. These are my everyday flasks. I don't recommend you do a lot of changes to this setup. Quicksilver is also almost mandatory, it's really slow to play without it since we are lacking a good movement skill.

For bandits, we kill all.

Ascendancy Berserker.

Normal: Pain Reaver
Cruel: Crave The Slaughter
Merciless: Aspcet ofCarnage
Uber: Cloaked in Savagery

When Ice Nova and Vortex are cast on top of Frostbolt, they deal 40% MORE damage. This also means you can cast both votex and ice nova remotely at the other side of the screen. Since we are spamming a lot of spells, this is usually the case, it's hassle free.

Votex also stays on the ground for 3 second, and anything that stands in it or moves through it is chilled. You can use Arctic Breath, but chilled ground doesn't last as long, doesn't do as much dmg and has it has cancerous issues and exploding on random things, plus id doesn't scale with AoE nodes.

Glacial Cascade is simply too amazing especially for single target. GC FB+IceNova are bread and butter, for the last skill you can mess around, but I doubt you'll like anything better than Vortex.

These skills also have high base damage and low damage effectiveness, which is good for us since we can't support them with Abyss jewels or other supports and auras that add flat damge, so we can just concentrate on % increased dmg.