The Duke, a Torment Ice Spear Templar

Hi.

This is my first build guide, so be gentle. I theorycrafted this with Torment in mind, so no good leveling items, basically self found with a few of my guildies.

What makes the build special:

You only need a +2lvl wand/szepter and a 3l on it. All other items/skills and links are optional.

The premise of the build:

Spoiler


- Ice spear as a spell noone of my guild had used before.
- A crafting recipe (+1 to levels) at hand, as well as easy to find items (+level wands and szepters).
- High life pool.
- flexibility regarding support gems and support skills.
- flexibility regarding items and being cheap!



The tree and leveling:

Spoiler


http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgUABAcEswVCCaoNzRBYES0WbxjXGjgabBynHM4dFCSqJNgnLytQLJwwlzWSNuk5ijpYOuE8LT0PQYdBlkPIRKtFnUbXTLNM_03jTwRTUlOlVa5VxlcpV5RboF7AXypo8nGFfA58S3yDffV-x4IQgpuD24VtiFqLjIx2jmSPppBVlnSaO5rgna6ePKBCogCmV6cIp1Wus69sr5uxQrb6tz64k8AawGbAmsT2xq7N-tD11YHVpti92t3fsOFz42rkIuWL6-Tr7uw47TzwH_JF96b52_nd-ej60v4K_lT-jw==

This is at lvl 91. This is the char right now. I will filled out the scion life wheel last, then I got some new items with more mana regen, so I opted to take cast speed and spell damage. The critical strike chance is good enough, because Ice Spear has a very high crit chance built in on the second phase.

This was the tree at around lvl 30:

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgUATwRDyFugp1V8Dmjy-d2LjPAfogAEs8Bm4XOaO4Kb7TzVpuw4Jy-QVRo4wBpxhVcpRtfaubFC5CIabDbpJKoWb-Nq

This was the tree around lvl 55:

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgUATwRDyFugp1V8Dmjy-d2LjPAfogAEs8Bm4XOaO4Kb7TzVpuw4Jy-QVRo4wBpxhVcpRtfaubFC5CIabDbpJKoWb-Nqna7li_nbfsenCNrduJPN-nyDES0snBBYr5sFQkGW0PWus0yzBAeD21XGOljr5F8qr2xM_zwtxPZ99Q==


And this is around lvl 75:

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgUATwRDyFugp1V8Dmjy-d2LjPAfogAEs8Bm4XOaO4Kb7TzVpuw4Jy-QVRo4wBpxhVcpRtfaubFC5CIabDbpJKoWb-Nqna7li_nbfsenCNrduJPN-nyDES0snBBYr5sFQkGW0PWus0yzBAeD21XGOljr5F8qr2xM_zwtxPZ99T0PHM4rUA3N_lR8S5Z0xq63PohaoEJewP4K2L01kkGH-ejr7tWBhW0k2JrgRZ1TUg==

The most important thing for me, and that is easy to da with templars, is finding a balance between damage, life and mitigation, and Mana regen/ mana pool. I hate having to flask all the time, I am willing to sacrifice a little bit of damage and clearspeed for more mana regen. I was lucky with my leveling gear, I always had a decent amount of regen. But as we are using a 3l for our main skill, the casting cost is never really high, so mana isn't an issue.
We are getting life regen early on which is a QoL-improvement.
Damage is pretty easy. With fire trap and ice spear, you get the early Ele-nodes, and then the cold-damage wheel to the left. That's eanough till merciless with a +1 wand/scepter.

The Bandits

Bandits are pretty straight forward for me: I help Oak in normal for life, then kill the rest of them in cruel and merc. If you want to go 5L/6L you might want to use pcoc, then the power charge would be fine in merc? I guess. But for me skillpoints are always more versatile, and I'm a one-click-guy, so I don't use too many gimmicks on my chars.



My items:

Spoiler










I leveled with Lochtonial Caress (http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Lochtonial_Caress
) and kept it till this week way into level 91. The cast speed is very nice, And I just didn't find anything better. Then Maligaro's came along, and I switched, and I gained 1k damage from it. Very good. I tried voidbringer (http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Voidbringer), but that is less damage and way more mana cost, which I cannot support.
The last thing I found was the shield, I did buy a similar but less good one at lvl 87, but due to me being able to craft another ring I was able to switch the shields for more life and more damage and way more mana regen.
That in turn let me switch from Vitality to Determination, which is a bit better survivability I guess. I have a ton of life regen (almost 290/sek) anyways, so the aura wasn't necessary, I was just able to run it. Also, the life leech helps a lot. Again, it makes potting less frequent, which I like.

I guess, all in all, this gear is at around 5ex if I had to buy it. I found most of it myself. You can make do with a lot less if needed, which was very important for me.



The skills I use:

Spoiler


Weapon: Ice Spear - lesser multiple projectiles - faster casting

This is my main skill!!!!! In a 3l! And it is sufficient. The tooltip is 9.2k damage. I tried spell echo, and it increases the tooltip, but: It makes less freezing with less freeze-time. And I don't like the loss of mobility because of the longer animation. Only time I use Spell Echo: When I go into half-regen maps.

Shield: vaal ice nova - cold penetration - increased area of effect

That's a nice bonus when you open lockboxes, or if you get into a troubling situation. A panicbutton of sorts. Vaal Spark would work, too.

Helmet: faster casting - elemental weakness - Clarity - reduced mana

Ele weakness is better than frostbite because of parties. And it still gives more damage. The aura is there because I needed space. And the reduced mana helps casting the curse of course.

Chest: Fire Trap - increased burning damage - fire penetration - elemental proliferation

This is a bit of crowd control and a nice way to open strongboxes. It helps against huge packs and totems in the background. And no, it would not be enough as a primary skill with this tree. But it does a lot of damage.

Shoes: cast when damage taken - Enduring Cry - Immortal Call - increased duration

Standard setup. If you use a szepter, you can always use reckoning and the other reactionary gems, too.

Gloves: Determination - Herald of Ice - reduced Mana / Herald of Thunder

The other auras. The heralds are standard for caster with crit, and as I said, determination should be better than vitality. If you have mana issues, switch.




Summary:

I was very surprised to see this working in maps up to level 77 (I haven't been higher, yet.) I freeze, for example, "The Harbinger" (lvl 73 Map Boss) and I freeze lvl 76 beyond mobs. I freeze most of the exiles, esp. Magnus and Igna Phoenix. And all of that using basic gems and a 3-link you can find starting at around level 50. You can use selffound gear for this, and you don't need fancy uniques for it, the gloves are completely optional if you have some cast speed on your other gear. Using the trap for leveling until you can go 2-link with the Ice Spear and LMP, that was the way to go for me.
Don't use cold to fire or other stuff like it. Burn prolif is nice, but freezing makes the build viable. With this gear I have capped resists and 5.5k life, and I do 9.2k damage on the LMP Ice Spear (with 41% crit chance on the first phase and 83% on the second). I have decent clearspeed, nothing spectacular, but really ok. If necessary you can take out LMP for bosses after you cleared the blue pack.

I have never had a build having this much *umph* behind it. You one-shot almost everything due to the very high damage per hit. It feels great. You probably can't do Atziri with it, but who cares, I'm a casual ;-).

This build is VERY beginner friendly, and VERY viable for any new league if the skill tree stays as it is.

Possible improvements (with more exalteds to spare):

Spoiler


- A +3 level Staff. It has to be decent I guess, because you loose a lot of crit chance. Maybe Taryn's Shiver.
- Atziri's szepter (Doryani's catalyst) should also do a lot more damage. Esp. if you use a 5l chest for the Ice Spear and the traps in the szepter (This was my long term plan going into standard, until I found the wand/shield)
- Doryani's Invitation belt.




Last edited by t_golgari on May 11, 2015, 11:23:38 AM
- updated some items.
Postet a level 91 update and finished the texts. This is the final version of it, enjoy.
I really like the build

You do have some pretty nice gear but refreshing to not see the main skill in a 6 or 5 link.
I need a signature to look legit
What bandits should I be helping/killing?
Bandits?
Hi I like the idea of your build, could you post a new link for the build with the new skill tree? (or using poe builder will prevent your tree from being wiped every patch)

Thanks

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