[3.9] WINDS OF WINTER: Endgame Low Life Freezing Pulse Occultist | All Content | Magic Find | $$$$

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tackle70 wrote:

For Occultist in 3.8, non-Delve, I'd set it up like this (pretend there's an Eternal Mana Flask in there, other than that I think it's correct):

https://pastebin.com/WL0vmh0R

Yes to Militant Faith. Inner Conviction keystone is super OP at 9+ power charges. I run it as in the guide, up near the CI keystone.

I only run Presence of Chayula in Delve; Maps are just not dangerous and for bosses like Uber Elder where I take off Bisco's Collar, I still prefer The Pandemonius.

In Delve, I sacrifice defensive nodes, like Utmost Intellect, to be able to take Dark Arts, because the extra cast speed is really important when you have to react quickly to enemies that can 1-shot you. There's also no point, IMO, in taking Arcane Vision in Delve - your light source is flares/mine cart, so no point wasting a passive on something that doesn't work anyway.

And in case it's not obvious: I would NOT run Righteous Fire in maps. It's not feasible, don't bother. That's a Delve only thing, and even then only when you have very specific GG gear pieces that enable it to work (+ES recovery watcher's eye, %ES regen precursor's emblems, 10+ charges)

Cheers for the very nice response! and sorry for all these questions....

I switched from the cookie-cutter summoner build and this so far has been really fun!

There are just a few more things to ask you, if you don't mind:)

1) Is the reason you can fit 2 curses all the lvl 4 enlightens?
In your delve version, i see you have projectile weakness + frostbite, but in the version you linked me, i only see projectile weakness although we pick malediction, is that right?

2) I'm struggling a bit staying alive, chimera absolutely shreds me during "hiding phase", should i switch to CWDT/immortal call?.
I got about 6.5k ES, with ring w/power charges active i'm around 7.3k, i switched from jade amulet to chayula to go from 5.3k es to 6.5k, plus took a few more ES nodes on the tree, I might just suck :-P

Should I replace the energy leech gem for more dps? like controlled destruction? (it's the bosses i struggle with, shaper guardians/etc, they stay alive too long;P)

My damage according to pob is only 750k vs shaper (1mil if i put destruct instead of energy leech) and i'm not entirely sure why :/ I got dual void, 21 freezing pulse, hatred lvl 20 and most of all the things you have, though i only got room for 1 curse at the moment lvl 11, cuz lacking dexterity.

Is it on purpose we only pickup 1 militant faith node and not both in radius that give 3% more spell power per pcharge?

3) Lastly, i realize this is a cardinal sin to ask, but would you just glance at my character tree/gear and see if i messed something up badly and that's why my dmg is subpar?

My character is public, but i also have a POB link: https://pastebin.com/V3pufbfN

Again thanks so much for a nice build! Love the shatters everywhere! :-)

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oestergreen wrote:

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tackle70 wrote:

For Occultist in 3.8, non-Delve, I'd set it up like this (pretend there's an Eternal Mana Flask in there, other than that I think it's correct):

https://pastebin.com/WL0vmh0R

Yes to Militant Faith. Inner Conviction keystone is super OP at 9+ power charges. I run it as in the guide, up near the CI keystone.

I only run Presence of Chayula in Delve; Maps are just not dangerous and for bosses like Uber Elder where I take off Bisco's Collar, I still prefer The Pandemonius.

In Delve, I sacrifice defensive nodes, like Utmost Intellect, to be able to take Dark Arts, because the extra cast speed is really important when you have to react quickly to enemies that can 1-shot you. There's also no point, IMO, in taking Arcane Vision in Delve - your light source is flares/mine cart, so no point wasting a passive on something that doesn't work anyway.

And in case it's not obvious: I would NOT run Righteous Fire in maps. It's not feasible, don't bother. That's a Delve only thing, and even then only when you have very specific GG gear pieces that enable it to work (+ES recovery watcher's eye, %ES regen precursor's emblems, 10+ charges)

Cheers for the very nice response! and sorry for all these questions....

I switched from the cookie-cutter summoner build and this so far has been really fun!

There are just a few more things to ask you, if you don't mind:)

1) Is the reason you can fit 2 curses all the lvl 4 enlightens?
In your delve version, i see you have projectile weakness + frostbite, but in the version you linked me, i only see projectile weakness although we pick malediction, is that right?

2) I'm struggling a bit staying alive, chimera absolutely shreds me during "hiding phase", should i switch to CWDT/immortal call?.
I got about 6.5k ES, with ring w/power charges active i'm around 7.3k, i switched from jade amulet to chayula to go from 5.3k es to 6.5k, plus took a few more ES nodes on the tree, I might just suck :-P

Should I replace the energy leech gem for more dps? like controlled destruction? (it's the bosses i struggle with, shaper guardians/etc, they stay alive too long;P)

My damage according to pob is only 750k vs shaper (1mil if i put destruct instead of energy leech) and i'm not entirely sure why :/ I got dual void, 21 freezing pulse, hatred lvl 20 and most of all the things you have, though i only got room for 1 curse at the moment lvl 11, cuz lacking dexterity.

Is it on purpose we only pickup 1 militant faith node and not both in radius that give 3% more spell power per pcharge?

3) Lastly, i realize this is a cardinal sin to ask, but would you just glance at my character tree/gear and see if i messed something up badly and that's why my dmg is subpar?

My character is public, but i also have a POB link: https://pastebin.com/V3pufbfN

Again thanks so much for a nice build! Love the shatters everywhere! :-)

Yes, to fit 2 curses (for Delve), you need two level 4 Enlighten jewels, as well as all the mana reduction nodes on the tree (hence the Intuitive Leap). I would not bother with fitting 2 curses for maps, because curses really suck against bosses like Guardians/Uber Elder.

I find the Uber Elder fight *much* easier when taking Frigid Wake instead of Malediction. Extra DPS and not affected by any of the chill/freeze in the fight. But it's a lot worse for Delve where 2 curses and 16% more damage is insane. Up to you which you'd rather focus on.

It doesn't look like you have much % Life Regeneration; I don't know if Zealot's Oath is worth it or not on your setup.

The big thing I see missing in your gear is a Watcher's Eye jewel with a "Gain % of mana as extra maximum energy shield while affected by clarity" mod. That's worth +1000 ES and absolutely should be purchased if you are serious about the build. I agree that the build feels squishy below around 7k ES, and I'd expect this to go a long way to solving that problem. The Pandemonius might feel better then, as well - try it and see.

Then the first gear piece to really save up for (if you want to play the build more) would be a Watcher's Eye with both the ES/clarity mod and +crit/hatred. One listed 50ex right now in Blight and I'd pay 50ex for that combo in a heartbeat. It's a straight 15-20% power boost for the build... 15-20% more DPS and ES.

Controlled Destruction is fine if you think it feels better than Energy Leach. Works well with a Diamond Flask.

Taking the Inner Conviction Keystone twice won't do anything. It doesn't stack (unfortunately).

As for why your build is weaker than mine offensively:
- My Freezing Pulse is level 28 (+2/+1 Shavs with lvl 4 Empower). Yours is 21.
- I have 12 Power Charges, you have 9
- I have a +crit chance/hatred Watcher's Eye
- My POB is running Pandemonius

If you take your POB and manually set it to 12 power charges, level 28 Freezing Pulse, and Pandemonius instead of Chayula, you'll see that you're at just under 3.8M shaper DPS. You have the build set up correctly.

That's pretty much it as far as the difference between your DPS and mine. The build should feel OK around 1M shaper DPS, you probably are just missing a watcher's eye for it to feel good. I used to farm red maps / elder / u-elder before having all this crazy gear, and I've been farming Uber Elder this league with my IIQ gem in (~2.5M DPS) and it feels like my DPS is still way more than enough for the fights to feel good. 1M might feel a little on the low side for boss fights but should be perfectly doable.

Chimera and Hydra are both kind of hard bosses for this build. I find both much more rippy than Uber Elder itself. Hydra you have to manually dodge most of the damage. Chimera you have to pop your quicksilver and start running through the clouds as fast as you can. It might help you to roll an "of adrenaline" suffix on your quicksilver flask for a bit of extra move speed. Also, you might already know this but it took me forever to learn - you cannot flame dash through Chimera's clouds. You have to actually run through them. Flame Dashing to/through them usually won't make him appear. I often wind up popping Vaal Discipline during that phase of the fight (though only get one use per fight).

If you don't feel like your current setup is performing as well as you'd like, you can try changing your passive tree as follows:
https://pastebin.com/EjjTCT2r

That's my attempt at min-maxing your current passive tree with your current gear. Most of your rare jewels aren't quite good enough to be worth 3+ passive points, so I swapped them out. Main downside to this is that it's fairly different from an optimally min-maxed Delve tree, which it looks like is what you were going for, so I'm not necessarily recommending the change, just providing it as food for thought - it's a little more DPS, a little more ES, and a little faster cast speed.

Also, POB is showing that you should be close to 8k ES with power charges up and Chayula. At 1M shaper DPS, you shouldn't feel squishy at 8K ES in maps. I played this build a long time around that power level and it always felt pretty good to me for red maps (though Chimera/Hydra have always been rippy guardian fights for me).


TL;DR - your build looks mostly solid for your gear level. Maybe tighten up your passive tree a little depending on your goals. Get a Watcher's Eye with ES/Clarity mod ASAP.

--edit-- Hard to know if the prices are real or not, but as of this writing there are a couple of 6L Shavs with a +2 Projectile Gems corruption listed for 15ex in Blight. IF those prices are real, that's a solid upgrade at a reasonable price as well.

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tackle70 wrote:

Spoiler

Yes, to fit 2 curses (for Delve), you need two level 4 Enlighten jewels, as well as all the mana reduction nodes on the tree (hence the Intuitive Leap). I would not bother with fitting 2 curses for maps, because curses really suck against bosses like Guardians/Uber Elder.

I find the Uber Elder fight *much* easier when taking Frigid Wake instead of Malediction. Extra DPS and not affected by any of the chill/freeze in the fight. But it's a lot worse for Delve where 2 curses and 16% more damage is insane. Up to you which you'd rather focus on.

It doesn't look like you have much % Life Regeneration; I don't know if Zealot's Oath is worth it or not on your setup.

The big thing I see missing in your gear is a Watcher's Eye jewel with a "Gain % of mana as extra maximum energy shield while affected by clarity" mod. That's worth +1000 ES and absolutely should be purchased if you are serious about the build. I agree that the build feels squishy below around 7k ES, and I'd expect this to go a long way to solving that problem. The Pandemonius might feel better then, as well - try it and see.

Then the first gear piece to really save up for (if you want to play the build more) would be a Watcher's Eye with both the ES/clarity mod and +crit/hatred. One listed 50ex right now in Blight and I'd pay 50ex for that combo in a heartbeat. It's a straight 15-20% power boost for the build... 15-20% more DPS and ES.

Controlled Destruction is fine if you think it feels better than Energy Leach. Works well with a Diamond Flask.

Taking the Inner Conviction Keystone twice won't do anything. It doesn't stack (unfortunately).

As for why your build is weaker than mine offensively:
- My Freezing Pulse is level 28 (+2/+1 Shavs with lvl 4 Empower). Yours is 21.
- I have 12 Power Charges, you have 9
- I have a +crit chance/hatred Watcher's Eye
- My POB is running Pandemonius

If you take your POB and manually set it to 12 power charges, level 28 Freezing Pulse, and Pandemonius instead of Chayula, you'll see that you're at just under 3.8M shaper DPS. You have the build set up correctly.

That's pretty much it as far as the difference between your DPS and mine. The build should feel OK around 1M shaper DPS, you probably are just missing a watcher's eye for it to feel good. I used to farm red maps / elder / u-elder before having all this crazy gear, and I've been farming Uber Elder this league with my IIQ gem in (~2.5M DPS) and it feels like my DPS is still way more than enough for the fights to feel good. 1M might feel a little on the low side for boss fights but should be perfectly doable.

Chimera and Hydra are both kind of hard bosses for this build. I find both much more rippy than Uber Elder itself. Hydra you have to manually dodge most of the damage. Chimera you have to pop your quicksilver and start running through the clouds as fast as you can. It might help you to roll an "of adrenaline" suffix on your quicksilver flask for a bit of extra move speed. Also, you might already know this but it took me forever to learn - you cannot flame dash through Chimera's clouds. You have to actually run through them. Flame Dashing to/through them usually won't make him appear. I often wind up popping Vaal Discipline during that phase of the fight (though only get one use per fight).

If you don't feel like your current setup is performing as well as you'd like, you can try changing your passive tree as follows:
https://pastebin.com/EjjTCT2r

That's my attempt at min-maxing your current passive tree with your current gear. Most of your rare jewels aren't quite good enough to be worth 3+ passive points, so I swapped them out. Main downside to this is that it's fairly different from an optimally min-maxed Delve tree, which it looks like is what you were going for, so I'm not necessarily recommending the change, just providing it as food for thought - it's a little more DPS, a little more ES, and a little faster cast speed.

Also, POB is showing that you should be close to 8k ES with power charges up and Chayula. At 1M shaper DPS, you shouldn't feel squishy at 8K ES in maps. I played this build a long time around that power level and it always felt pretty good to me for red maps (though Chimera/Hydra have always been rippy guardian fights for me).


TL;DR - your build looks mostly solid for your gear level. Maybe tighten up your passive tree a little depending on your goals. Get a Watcher's Eye with ES/Clarity mod ASAP.

--edit-- Hard to know if the prices are real or not, but as of this writing there are a couple of 6L Shavs with a +2 Projectile Gems corruption listed for 15ex in Blight. IF those prices are real, that's a solid upgrade at a reasonable price as well.[/span]

Omg, you've no idea how much that helped me!!!

The tip for flame dashing @chimera... I was doing exactly that and just dying repeatedly, wondering why the hell he wasn't appearing and just shredding me.

Also for frigid wake! really good call, I'm definitely more wanting to farm uber elder and shaper, than doing deep delves, so I'm gonna respec to frigid wake right away!

I'll definitely try afford a watchers eye with ES/clarity mod as my next upgrade, ty for this!

I've also adopted your skill-tree, it looks more solid for surviving and the cast speed is a welcome bonus, I just have to figure a possible tweak because the timeless jewel affects the influence node and aura node and one of the +15 int nodes at utmost intellect (it turned them, so they don't grant me anything) :-)

edit: perhaps dropping utmost intellect and re-take down to foresight for some es gain, ill test :-)

I was real lucky managing to get 2 of these rings now for a low price, with 6% each, making my ES go up to naerly 8.5k during max power charges :-)

Thank you for this awesome build. I recently starting following it and I have a blast with it.

What do you think of Skyforth? You will get valuable mana reduction, another way to generate power charges and more ES through increased mana.



Tip for leveling for others: get as soon as possible freezing pulse with First Snow gems (x2) and you shred things like crazy.

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FurCannon wrote:

Thank you for this awesome build. I recently starting following it and I have a blast with it.

What do you think of Skyforth? You will get valuable mana reduction, another way to generate power charges and more ES through increased mana.

Tip for leveling for others: get as soon as possible freezing pulse with First Snow gems (x2) and you shred things like crazy.

I think Skyforth opens up a lot of interesting options for how to build your tree and gear in the early endgame. If you don't rely on life regeneration, it's an excellent mid-tier piece of gear to help out transitioning to the endgame before you invest into more top tier items. It should at least make it so you can save some money not investing immediately into level 4 enlighten gems!

I didn't include it in the guide for the same reason I didn't include Tabula Rasa in the guide; I think it's not a great gear piece to build around when the character is min/maxed to completion. Tabula is a great early-mid game option, and Skyforth is a great mid-late game option particularly if you're having problems getting enough mana reservation reduction.

Thank you for the feedback.

I have came across interesting amulet for the build:



Which made me wonder how it would impact the build. You have the 60% increased damage if you have frozen an enemy recently. If you would take the cold/freeze nodes: Breath of Rime, Heart of Ice and Fingers of Frost you can actually benefit a lot from it. You should of course sacrifice the leg that goes to Resourcefulness (you still get the power charge node). Skill tree would look more or less like this:

www.poeurl.com/cBVb

From PoE Wiki:

"

Currently there are only a few selected enemies in the game that are immune to the freeze status ailment. These are:

Rigwald, the Wolven King

While not immune to freeze, other selected monsters have a minimum action speed that they are set to if they would otherwise be frozen[4]:

The Shaper
Guardian of the Chimera
Guardian of the Minotaur
Guardian of the Hydra
Guardian of the Phoenix
Vision of Justice, The Goddess
Argus
Abaxoth, the End of All That Is
Haast, Unrelenting Frost
Atziri, Queen of the Vaal
Vessel of the Vaal
Atziri's Devoted (Atziri minions in healing phase)
Atziri Trio (A'alai, Y'ara'az, Q'ura)
Vaal Temple Trio (K'aj A'alai, K'aj Y'ara'az, K'aj Q'ura)
Tormented Temptress

I am all excited about this amulet :) Could you advise if this would work? What would be the downside of this approach?

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FurCannon wrote:

Thank you for the feedback.

I have came across interesting amulet for the build:

Which made me wonder how it would impact the build. You have the 60% increased damage if you have frozen an enemy recently. If you would take the cold/freeze nodes: Breath of Rime, Heart of Ice and Fingers of Frost you can actually benefit a lot from it. You should of course sacrifice the leg that goes to Resourcefulness (you still get the power charge node). Skill tree would look more or less like this:

www.poeurl.com/cBVb

From PoE Wiki:

"

Currently there are only a few selected enemies in the game that are immune to the freeze status ailment. These are:

Rigwald, the Wolven King

While not immune to freeze, other selected monsters have a minimum action speed that they are set to if they would otherwise be frozen[4]:

The Shaper
Guardian of the Chimera
Guardian of the Minotaur
Guardian of the Hydra
Guardian of the Phoenix
Vision of Justice, The Goddess
Argus
Abaxoth, the End of All That Is
Haast, Unrelenting Frost
Atziri, Queen of the Vaal
Vessel of the Vaal
Atziri's Devoted (Atziri minions in healing phase)
Atziri Trio (A'alai, Y'ara'az, Q'ura)
Vaal Temple Trio (K'aj A'alai, K'aj Y'ara'az, K'aj Q'ura)
Tormented Temptress

I am all excited about this amulet :) Could you advise if this would work? What would be the downside of this approach?

I have not tried a variant where you invest in min/maxing freeze effect. I think you have to just build it and see what it feels like, but I've not done so because my instinct is that it will just be a lower DPS version of the same thing.

I think they need to make some kind of item that allows you to freeze "cannot be frozen" enemies/bosses for it to be ideal.

I want to try this build so badly because I've been a big fan of Freezing Pulse on a Witch since 2011 Closed Beta, but damn is the cost high. Guess it's time to grind and save up. My Freezing Pulse is only going up to 57k atm hahaha, so bad compared to this.

Hello, i have a question about Militant Faith. Its just around 30% spell damage or I didnt get smthg? I cant understand why this is OP OP

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evantas1a wrote:

Hello, i have a question about Militant Faith. Its just around 30% spell damage or I didnt get smthg? I cant understand why this is OP OP

It's OP OP because it's a "more" spell damage multiplier, rather than an additive "increased" spell damage modifier.

So if you have 10 power charges, taking it means you get to multiply your damage by 1.3. That's absolutely insane. An extra gem link is worth about 40% more damage, or a 1.4 multiplier, so this Keystone is almost as good as a 7th gem link if you have 10-12 power charges.