[2.0] Crit EvaScade Shadow/Witch | GC / Spell Acro / Double Curse / VP / AA | wip

hi all!

what is this about?

this is not guide to make an uber killer with a couple of ex, it's just the build that i'm playing with in warbands and i thought to share my take on the game.

this is basically a crit glacial cascade build. nothing fancy.
i found out levelling that some of the things that i used pre 2.0 didn't worked anymore, but also that i could use some of the new stuff.

gameplay

use shock nova to shock enemies and to double curse, then gc all the way.

the curses are ass mark and warlord's mark.
warlord's it's a beast: it give life leech, mana leech and some good end charge that i can later use with immortal call.

mana leech means that i don't need mana regen, so i don't need to have that on my tree and my jewelery, but it means also that i don't need to use clarity.

the buff i use are: arctic armor, herald of thunder and herald of ice (to which i linked ice bite for the extra frenzy charges).

when my crit chance with gc will be more high i'll switch the cursing action to hot instead of shock nova for the auto cursing benefits, but for now i can't because my hot sometimes decide to not proc and leaves me with zero mana :(

i use as defense acro/spell acro, aa, vp and a 3 link cwdt setup (cwdt, immortal call, inc duration)


skill

Main link: Glacial Cascade, Spell Echo, Faster Casting, IncAoe/conc effect, hypothermia, (not sure for the sixth link)
Curse: Shock Nova, CoH, Assassin's Mark, Warlord's Mark
Movement: Lightning Warp, Less Duration
Buff: HoI, Ice Bite | HoT | Arctic Armor | Flame Golem
Cwdt setup: cwdt, Immortal Call, incDuration

still working on this to decide what i could add



Bandits

Normal: oak
Cruel: skill point
Merciless: alira


Gear

since this is pretty much a "grab gc at level 28 and play with it for the rest of the game" build, there is no required uniques to play this build, but there are some sweet uniques to use for us.


carcass jack would be, without any doubts, bis for the build.


probably bis for every crit build so that applies to us as well.


good if you wanna spec the additional curse notable on late game (or if you don't wanna spec that at all)
except for the additional curse they don't offer much, so i don't reccomend to use those (unless you are lucky and drop one of those while leveling).


divinarius is a nice stepping stone for the build, but a good rare dagger will add much more damage, brcause you can potentially get:
-up to 80% implicit global crit chance
-crit multi (this is huge)
-the new flat ele damage mod for spells

to achieve a reasonable crit chance you must dual wield.


i feel that these new boots are pretty nice for the build.
crit chance and added damage for spells are good and not being affected by chilled ground is a nice bonus.

the rest of the gear is pretty much life+res that you can get for a couple of chaos.
if you don't have the uniques listed above put some life+res gear there as well.

jewelery is very important. here you can get a lot of dps in form of crit, crit multi, cast speed and spell damage.


My gear progression

Gear i used when i started mapping



Gear i used when i switched from dagger+shield to dual wielding daggers




video

aqueduct run just to demostrate how the build works
71 map spider forset clearing


as i have stated in the first paragraph, this is not intended to be a crazy opieop build, it's just a way to build around gc that i wanted to share.

question and criticism are well accepted :)
Last edited by tufferugli on Jul 20, 2015, 4:53:15 AM
I've always loveed GC, my pre 2.0 was Three Dragons Helmet with Pyre GC, reached lvl88 and was a blast to play with!
After the 2.0 changes, GC has been hit, the 6%-->5% crit nerf kinda made me go back on going for a GC build in 2.0.

Your build looks really solid, esp with the double curse, but my only comment is on the Faster Casting slot, I can't help but feel it's slightly an over kill with spell echo, you can try Conc. Effect + Inc. AoE instead or even Inc.Crit Dmg (not that fun with reflect).
Conc. Effect for me feels too good with GC, but then you have to use Inc.AoE to compensate.
How's Hypothermia feeling? is it worth the slot?(I'm saying this because the % chance to Freeze is negligible in a crit build)
Yo brother Cold pen ?!
is there a reason why the tree isn't loading for me? @_@
"
dpchaos wrote:
I've always loveed GC, my pre 2.0 was Three Dragons Helmet with Pyre GC, reached lvl88 and was a blast to play with!
After the 2.0 changes, GC has been hit, the 6%-->5% crit nerf kinda made me go back on going for a GC build in 2.0.

Your build looks really solid, esp with the double curse, but my only comment is on the Faster Casting slot, I can't help but feel it's slightly an over kill with spell echo, you can try Conc. Effect + Inc. AoE instead or even Inc.Crit Dmg (not that fun with reflect).
Conc. Effect for me feels too good with GC, but then you have to use Inc.AoE to compensate.
How's Hypothermia feeling? is it worth the slot?(I'm saying this because the % chance to Freeze is negligible in a crit build)

the crit nerf is huge... gc needs much more investment in crit now to be consistent :(

the way i found for it to be less clunky is to manually curse, but i hope to be able to stop doing that :D

about hypothermia i'm not sure...
honestly it felt good until you made me think if the slot was worth :D
the more multiplier of hypo was what made me incorporate it in the main link, but i've tried to swap it with added lightning and i can't see much difference... :/

it's strange... 36% more damage should be huge...
or maybe i'm silly and the game doesn't count frozen as chilled?

without faster casting i feel too slow, but that's me... swapping it for conc give much more dps :)

"
666callme wrote:
Yo brother Cold pen ?!

instead of hypo?
it scale just with the cold portion of the skill, so i don't know... i've to try it :)

"
is there a reason why the tree isn't loading for me? @_@

thank you for telling me that, should be fixed now :)
ice bite with herald of ice is genius, thanks
Rampage Rank 7 lv 100 BONJWA_TOP_DAWG
Talisman SC Rank 7 Lv 100 LaBonjwa_Neymar
You don't need both Doedre's Damning and Whispers of Doom for dual curse. That gives you a total of 3 curses per enemy.
update:
-expanded the gear section
-added my current gear
-added a video of a 71 map clearing

"
Mainoffender wrote:
ice bite with herald of ice is genius, thanks

thanks, but not an orginal idea by me. i think that this combo was developed by flicker strikers in order to mantain their frenzy charges.
they add also culling strike in top of ice bite, but it raises further the mana reservation of hoi and i can't afford to run it.

i should add that the frenzy charges aren't up 100% of the time, but they are a good dps boost for a very little invesiment, so i'm happy about it :)

"
axedpdp wrote:
You don't need both Doedre's Damning and Whispers of Doom for dual curse. That gives you a total of 3 curses per enemy.

i found doedre's damning levelling so i don't have whispers yet on my tree
I just reached lvl70 with Glacial Cascade witch, one thing I'm doing differently though is using Pyre Ring and Three Dragons Helmet for shocking, and my Herald of Ice is linked to Innervate instead of Ice Bite.
Using a 4L: GC + Inc.AoE + Spell Echo + Fire Penetration. (no access to a 5L) but for the 5th I'd probably put Added Chaos.
My tooltip dps is definitely lower than using a 5L, but due to shocking, I deal more dmg to rares or some uniques, plus the occasion 20% cast speed and move speed from Innervate is also great.

Thanks for the double curse heads-up, that really revived my GC witch! Cheers!

Edit: My crappy current gear with low lvld gems:
Spoiler

Last edited by dpchaos on Jul 20, 2015, 7:50:16 AM
Im in Hardcore and im running your build on a witch right now lvl 30, though because im hardcore i felt like switching the start instead of spelldamage into the energy shield tree. i'll give further feedback for hc

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