Build of the Week Season 3 Episode 8: Perma-freeze Ice Spear Witch

nice
<mors>they stole my build!</mors>

Chris playing with drop hack confirmed :P

Freeze with elemental prolif is really strong.

On rampage I have a witch that uses ice spear + power charge on crit + lmp + spell echo for far enemies and freezing pulse + lmp + elemental prolif + faster casting+ spelltotem (soul mantle) for close mobs. With 5 or 6l items i would put in some cold to fire gems that may reduce the freeze duration but adds fire damage and would give the option to burn enemies.

On beyond i have a templar with the simple combination of glacial cascade+ elemental prolif and cold to fire. It is only level 57 yet, but it is already quit effectiv and i am still lacking a bit of equipment. But I intent to make this templar also to a totem master with 2- 3 totems that cast the glacial cascade

"

JohnNamikaze wrote:

I took a slightly different route with a build like this. I am using Power charges (got 7) to get even more crit with Ice Spear, and using LMP instead. Also, using Glacial Cascade for close to mid range since Ice Spear shines more from long range to offscreen. I can still permafreeze a lot of things, but of course it can still be improved. With lvl 19 Cold pen + Heart of Ice notable, I am tempted to add temporal chains and see how it goes.

Assuming you're freezing, temporal chains is one of the best curses since it makes freeze expire 40% slower if you meet 300ms freeze threshhold from damage; which essentially is a fake 1.4 multiplier to damage done for freeze calculation.

BONUS - Since it is 40% at every level, can be run with lvl 1 cwdt for some auto cursing.

"

Dmillz wrote:

Build here for those interested!: http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1080647

"

icemltr wrote:

A few fails in this build, 6L and no cold pen except on swap... srsly?

Things I want perma frozen are not trash mobs with no curse immunity/cold resistance, they are devourers exiles and beyonders that pop out of nowhere and all too often hexproof.

Ele prolif and GMP is sorta redundant, and never liked prolif freeze anyway since shatter = unfreeze.

Guess I better upgrade my stuff before everyone starts jacking prices up.

You don't need cold pen for most of the game. Faster Casting should be swapped out for it in a 6L IMO but in a 5L it's fine. If you check out the videos k19 made in the build thread you can kill most bosses with GMP and no pen very quickly without them ever being unfrozen. When you run into something a little hard you just swap GMP in for cold pen and you're good to go.

As for perma frozen, once again check out the videos by k19. He can perma-freeze almost every boss in the game.

You can make almost anything work with the right gear and high level, just saying from a mechanics perspective what cold pen does cannot be done by anything else, I dont want to skip a map because of hexproof/+coldres.

I also don't find it fun to switch out stuff midgame because something spawned that my setup cant handle.

Dear Chris Wilson,

Please encourage Gamespot to host these BOTW videos on Youtube. Their in-page player sucks; Youtube's does not.

Thank you for your time.

~Pants

"

k19 wrote:

A: Life-based requires so many more nodes - you won't be able to get as much EHP and will have less damage. Also if you have 10k+ hp, you can leech so much more per second that single reflect does nothing with 2% leech. life based with 4k hp + Mom, you will destroy your anus.

this guy is so right, except i have 3k life at level 84 with cloak of defiance which means i can do 73 maps then it gets uncomfortable for my freezing pulser/ prolif ice spear build. it's really easy to say "go es" but the playtime you have to invest for good es gear is substantial.

i kind of hoped he showed a way to use cloak of defiance and taryn's shiver based builds to kill uber atziri but that's probably far out of reach. every good staff with >80% spell damage and some cast speed is better than taryn's shiver but even then a good wand+shield beats every 2h caster weapon which isn't mirror worthy.

despite of this rant, doing a freezer is really fun and you're welcome i every party.

"

icemltr wrote:

"

JohnNamikaze wrote:

I took a slightly different route with a build like this. I am using Power charges (got 7) to get even more crit with Ice Spear, and using LMP instead. Also, using Glacial Cascade for close to mid range since Ice Spear shines more from long range to offscreen. I can still permafreeze a lot of things, but of course it can still be improved. With lvl 19 Cold pen + Heart of Ice notable, I am tempted to add temporal chains and see how it goes.

Assuming you're freezing, temporal chains is one of the best curses since it makes freeze expire 40% slower if you meet 300ms freeze threshhold from damage; which essentially is a fake 1.4 multiplier to damage done for freeze calculation.

BONUS - Since it is 40% at every level, can be run with lvl 1 cwdt for some auto cursing.

you don't get cwdt to go off when all of the things on the screen are unable to attack you.

temporal chains doesn't reduce the threshhold for enemy freezes, it just makes the ones that do occur last longer.

and this is just a crappier version of romira's perma cold snap, but i suppose builds don't have to be what an endgame player would consider 'good' to actually be a botw, just interesting or demonstrating an exploitable game mechanic.

"

xenogfan43 wrote:

you don't get cwdt to go off when all of the things on the screen are unable to attack you.

temporal chains doesn't reduce the threshhold for enemy freezes, it just makes the ones that do occur last longer.

and this is just a crappier version of romira's perma cold snap, but i suppose builds don't have to be what an endgame player would consider 'good' to actually be a botw, just interesting or demonstrating an exploitable game mechanic.

"

icemltr wrote:

Assuming you're freezing, temporal chains is one of the best curses since it makes freeze expire 40% slower if you meet 300ms freeze threshhold from damage

Didn't say it reduced anything, said that if you can freeze from damage - meet 300ms threshhold - then it kicks in.

cwdt goes off for me when things leap from offscreen, rise from underground, drop from the sky, or shoot at me from different directions but maybe just gotta l2p.

And item-centric builds are interesting but usually narrower in scope and jack up price of said item so it gets even harder to try for fun.