Need some pro tips from the Master Casters

I was dedicated melee as well through 3 leagues. Playing frost caster now as a Shadow, just got into my 70's a couple days ago.

I used Glacial Cascade to level with and still use it to clear large density packs, with Ice Spear for pesky ranged mobs and bosses. Usually for a boss fight I swap out LMP for Added Cold (Ice Spear > Echo > Cold Pen > Added Cold/LMP) and can Perma-freeze anything this side of Dominus.

- Might be able to get Dom too using shock stacks and Ice Spear crit but don't have the room for it currently.

Regarding Leech, Elreon can craft 1% cold/fire/lightning leech on weapons, plus the cold leech from this belt, and a luck roll from a Vaal'd amulet might at least give you a bit of leech without using the gem.

Not sure if you'd need to spec into the Ghost Reaver passive to get it to work post-CI as I haven't taken the plunge yet. With the new life per level adjustment I've been able to putter along as a hybrid. Currently 2800 life/4000 ES or so atm. I'm using evasion/ES gear currently which really comes in handy, as most mobs that have chaos damage are ranged.

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TheGrixxitt wrote:
I was dedicated melee as well through 3 leagues. Playing frost caster now as a Shadow, just got into my 70's a couple days ago.



Thanks for the tips. For you sir, I have a specific question though (And anyone else with similair experience)...

Is it more "fun"? I know fun i subjective here, but I want to start a caster because I love the options that PoE gives the player.

HOWEVER, I must add, I do lean towards melee.

I'm an avid ARPG player, and with Titan Quest, Sacred, Sacred 2, Diablo 1-3, pretty much evry semi-popular ARPG you can think of, I've preferred melee characters. It's not for lack of success with casters though... I mean, I've tried them all and stuck with them till end game gear in pretty much every of those titles.
I mean, I just feel like killing things via melee is more impact-full and visceral of an experience.

So with that in mind, purely from a fun and feel perspective, how does casting compare to melee?
Last edited by BillyMancer on Sep 11, 2014, 9:50:04 AM
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BillyMancer wrote:
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TheGrixxitt wrote:
I was dedicated melee as well through 3 leagues. Playing frost caster now as a Shadow, just got into my 70's a couple days ago.



Thanks for the tips. For you sir, I have a specific question though (And anyone else with similair experience)...

Is it more "fun"? I know fun i subjective here, but I want to start a caster because I love the options that PoE gives the player.

HOWEVER, I must add, I do lean towards melee.

I'm an avid ARPG player, and with Titan Quest, Sacred, Sacred 2, Diablo 1-3, pretty much evry semi-popular ARPG you can think of, I've preferred melee characters. It's not for lack of success with casters though... I mean, I've tried them all and stuck with them till end game gear in pretty much every of those titles.
I mean, I just feel like killing things via melee is more impact-full and visceral of an experience.

So with that in mind, purely from a fun and feel perspective, how does casting compare to melee?


Its all in the skills and how you use them IMO.

After being a melee for so long, blasting stuff from max range almost feels like cheating. Glacial Cascade relies on you positioning large groups of enemies into your AE and letting loose, which is fun as hell.

Getting into a large pack of mobs and hearing the loud -Crack! as they freeze and shatter is about as visceral as you can get IMO.

Endgame as an ice caster is the exact same IMO, since as a melee my end goal was to either perma-disable them through stun or freeze (Glacial Hammer) or have such a high attack speed with say Doublestrike + Life gain on hit that I was pretty much invulnerable.

ZiggyD has a pretty cool Glacial Cascade video which made me want to make this character to begin with - Here
(I didn't follow his build but the gameplay is what got me intrigued)


In a couple weeks or so I should have the ability to perma-freeze most bosses even on non-crits using Arctic Breath, just waiting on about 10 skill points, a 6S/5L evasion/ES chest, and my gems to get to max level.

As someone who usually invests in RT/not a huge fan of huge crits, this makes me kind of giddy


As a disclaimer I'm only 71 so I may not have as much endgame experience as some, but I'm liking the journey thus far





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Neode995 wrote:
Crit Icespear with 100% pierce. 1h/shield with max block. I think you would enjoy a build like that. I'll leave you with that tho, experiment!


Umm... can you link an Ice Spear build with [Crit, Pierce nodes, max shield block] and enough life/mana to survive? Really curious about this.

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