(Updated!) [1.2] EE Ball Lightning/Ice Spear Build with AA/MoM (Cloak of Defiance)

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cadderly19 wrote:

I was wondering if anyone has suggestions for my take on this build. I am using 4L ice spear-faster casting-pcoc-LMP, 4L reduced mana-AA-clarity-discipline, 4L Ball lightning-inc aoe-knockback-slower projectile, and 4L raise Zombie - minion health - minion resistance - minion speed. I have CoD, trying to get it 6S5L, and when I do, should I go with cold pen on ice spear or Inc critical damage?
Also, was considering swapping out the minions for cwdt - immortal call- enduring cry and one more. I like the zombies mostly, but the are dead at the beginning of boss fights. What else should I link with cwdt?
That still leaves gem slots on my wand and shield that I can put things into if anyone has suggestions for that.
I am Lvl 74 if it matters

Sorry for the late reply.

I would personally go with Cold Pen as it will make high Cold Resistance mobs more bearable. If you've built well into Crit then Inc Crit Damage isn't bad, but Cold Resist mobs could still give you some trouble.

Minions are not that incredibly useful unless you've specced for a minion build. I would drop them. A fourth link for CWDT is up to you... some suggestions would be: Molten Shell (extra armour and procs EE when it explodes) or Enfeeble/Temporal Chains/Frostbite/Some other curse.

As for the 3Ls... either more CWDTs, a curse, or anything support wise. Are you running AA? If not, I'd recommend seeing if you can do that.

ArizonaIceTea here.
Fun Build.

Went for more crit/+ mana% and mana regen
less life but with lvl 22 AA+huge regen+MoM, decently tanky.

4L Ice spear: ice spear, gmp, pcoc, spell echo to get power charges. Ice spear already 95% perm freeze map
4L FP (need 5L) ~ FP, lmp, cold pen, spell echo
3L Totem- totem-gmp-ball lightning

4L tooltip dps with 5 power charges
Around ~13k FP
Around 8k~ Ice spear

Around 60%crit with power charges

To Do:
Respec last bandits, went skill point, should have gotten power charge
Need to craft some resistance on gear, not maxing out yet.
Buy/Craft/Find better shield with higher crit
Need more lvls xD
need empower+AA in shield, whenever i get empower.
Need 5L cloak, will probably 5L FP for more dps. Can test other gems later. Ice spear already freezes nicely.


Want to do:
use dorani's catylast somehow. Use the +20 elemental proliferation with ice spear maybe? But i would loose alot of crit.
gear:

Right now I'm playing CI Ice Spear without any life leech and it's working great. Ez mode up to 75 maps. We'll see how it goes once I get some higher level maps.

Just wanted to drop bye, read all your new posts, and I myself give a small update:
'Using Elemental Weakness curse now instead of Frostbite (if needed). It only has -(-5%) cold res over frostbite (and you don't need freeze with crit). Additionally it reduces Res for ALL Elements: Ball Lightning, I am also using Vaal Flameblast atm(!), since I haven't all the slots for other gems yet -> VF is working incredibly great with the build: Ele-dmg, crit, elemental weakness, one aoe-noteable, and last but not least EE + BL's decent radius! By the way it doesn't have a channeling and you can spell echo it! Yet the downside is about 2 additional gem-slots required... Just trying it, cause I read another BL guide where somebody uses a Vaal Skill to complement his build.

Since we're building a Crit-build I considered Assasin's Mark with all the Critchance/Damage, however (assuming Penetraion gems*) I calculated that it would only be good against Monsters that have less than 50% resistances (otherwise Elemental Weakness is better). Besides A.M. was slightly better with up to 86% cc IS (did that seperately); if it has already more %cc (like 94%), the cc% from the curse becomes less effective and you only get that 40%cd multiplier. Above all IS has a huge range where you can't or want to curse already; and if they are closer Elemental Weakness becomes better again(..).
(if you want the calculation, I have stored it in a file)
- Does somebody have a link to a list of monsters and their resistances/values?

To my mind - I wanted to emphasize - Spell Echo (on IS) is so really great supporting BL's damage by triggering EE every 2 BL-strikes, getting you at least 400 ms casts (on IS).
- Does somebody have less than 200ms? I'm kidding, but on the other hand I haven't checked if it is not possible, theoretically you would increase all the BL strikes with -50% resistance!
- Just playing with thoughts: Perhaps a crit%/castspeed% build? No: BL's damage would decrease beceause that spell itself doesn't profit from castspeed, unless double the amounts of -50% res on BL would make up for it (IS casts<200ms). You would also need to sacrifice life/mana nodes, on the flipside you freeze / shock even more.

/*My calculation has only a small weakness/todo: didn't consider no-penetraion on BL yet, but it would only increase A.M.'s-tolerance by a little bit.

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arizonaicetea wrote:

Went for more crit/+ mana% and mana regen
less life but with lvl 22 AA+huge regen+MoM, decently tanky.

Thanks for sharing your experience, would you post your passive-build-variation? Are you using both Auras? Small suggestion on boots: Enfeeble instead of Frost Bite, if you want that safety.

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_Elminister_ wrote:

Right now I'm playing CI Ice Spear without any life leech and it's working great.

So no BL/MoM. Am I reading correct, without BL/EE? If yes little bit offtopic ;)

Dropped out of EE, going full crit/freeze build, relying on curses.

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asdf54321 wrote:

Dropped out of EE, going full crit/freeze build, relying on curses.

Any reason why you dropped EE? How do you like curses?

I'm level 78 now, but I still can't 6S my Cloak of Defiance. I'm up over 300 Jewellers. :( I'm still using 4L Ice Spear (IS, Cold Pen, LMP, Spell Echo) in the mean time and my tooltip DPS is about 2.5k with 2.8 casts per second. However, that doesn't take into account the Cold Pen gem or EE, so it's actually quite a bit more than that. I'm also only running 3L Ball Lightning (BL, IAE, Slower Projectiles) still because all my Jewellers/Fusings are for the Cloak right now. Ball Lightning DPS is about 800. I really want to try Spell Totem again now that I've got the Spell Totem gem leveled up.

I can clear maps pretty well solo. I've been running Zana dailies and 70+ maps regularly. The main mod that I can't really do is no regen. I managed to do a half regen pretty easily though, just had to go slow. Definitely having fun with it though.

Finally! Someone actually traded me mine for a 6S and I 5Led it within about 15 fusings. :)

Put in Added Cold Damage with Ice Spear so I'm running IS->Cold Pen->Added Cold Damage->LMP->Spell Echo. Tooltip DPS is at about 2600-2700, but I haven't leveled the Added Cold Damage yet and it doesn't take into account the Cold Pen or EE -50% resists. Didn't have much time to test it tonight, but messed around briefly and it's great.

I really wonder about the spell totem. It's really cool, the -50% damage and cast speed and limited strategy are forgotten when you see how often it casts with LMP. However my Totem dies so fast, and if I cast it at a defensive position it shoots very late. So I have to constantly resummon it - where i came to a point considering if self casting might not be better in the end. By the way, a 3L may already be enough (Totem-BL-LMP). "Shock-Duration" (1 point 30% reduced treshhold of shock) is a very important with Spell Totem I suggest, due to the reduced damage...

Vs Bosses with fast ae attacks, it doesn't even shoot.
What's your experiences so far?

Another thing: I know Immortal Call is very strong, but due to our range, what about just running around with 3 ECs 12% physical reduction stacking with armor is also quite nice? I don't have so much experience about getting IC or not here, just my thoughts. I personally still need 2 extra slots to get EC in a lvl 1 CWDT. I can imagine IC being alot better once I can link increased duration...

I read that somebody went even mroe mana to support a buffed level arctic armour. Inner Focus gives the same + 2 levels but without more mana cost (plus increasing all the other buffs; unfortunatelly +21% effect is not enough for +1% max CR with Purity of Ice or +1% block with Tempest Shield)

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rusher21 wrote:

I really wonder about the spell totem. It's really cool, the -50% damage and cast speed and limited strategy are forgotten when you see how often it casts with LMP. However my Totem dies so fast, and if I cast it at a defensive position it shoots very late. So I have to constantly resummon it - where i came to a point considering if self casting might not be better in the end. By the way, a 3L may already be enough (Totem-BL-LMP). "Shock-Duration" (1 point 30% reduced treshhold of shock) is a very important with Spell Totem I suggest, due to the reduced damage...
What's your experiences so far?

I haven't actually gotten to give Spell Totem a try yet. I've been bouncing back and forth between this character and my minion witch. ;) What level Spell Totem gem were you using? My problem with it at lower levels was that it died too much, but I was hoping that leveling the gem up (which increases the health) might help with that.

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Another thing: I know Immortal Call is very strong, but due to our range, what about just running around with 3 ECs 12% physical reduction stacking with armor is also quite nice? I don't have so much experience about getting IC or not here, just my thoughts. I personally still need 2 extra slots to get EC in a lvl 1 CWDT. I can imagine IC being alot better once I can link increased duration...

The nice thing about IC is that it helps to stop burst damage. Something that rapid fires physical damage at you will trigger IC on the first hit or 2 and then you're immune to the rest of it. We've got a ton of mitigation for most hits between CoD and AA, so it's really just burst damage that we need to worry about.

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I read that somebody went even mroe mana to support a buffed level arctic armour. Inner Focus gives the same + 2 levels but without more mana cost (plus increasing all the other buffs; unfortunatelly +21% effect is not enough for +1% max CR with Purity of Ice or +1% block with Tempest Shield)

I just found a nice shield with +2 to cold gems and was considering running a buffed Arctic Armour in that, but I also found one with a ton of spell damage and resists and will probably actually run that instead (especially since it has room to craft cast speed on it still). I'd love to be able to run a higher level Arctic Armour for the extra resists though. The mana cost doesn't seem to be an issue so far (my mana regen with CoD is up to about 330ish now, current level AA only drains about 210ish while moving).

I am definitely very tanky with the Cloak of Defiance now (and I only have about 3300 health). I need a new wand that I can craft the 1% cold leech on still, but I have some awesome flasks right now.

Here are the 2 shields I just found last night and am considering:

My Spell Totem is 17 atm, but those 3 levels won't do that much won't they?
The main issue is vs bosses with area damage, in which case it doesn't even shoot once. Workaround: remove spell totem for that fight, but I'm not a fan of that.

Apart from that, I can really see its effectiveness for this build: you can fully spam Ice Spear without interrupting it with other slow casts that aren't powered up with Spell Echo. So Great if you want pure Ice damage.

Just personally I really like the Sorceress Style: It reminds me of Frozen Orb + Fireball Dual Sorc in D2 which I really enjoyed: Cast 1 FO + 3 Fireball - rotation. Which is why I decided for EE and found this thread :)