[2.0] Help optimizing Ice-Shot Ranger or: Where do we go from here?

I did a bit of respec with my Lvl 82 Ranger this week and it works really good on Maps around the low 70s. But I of course want to do more. Now I am wondering where to go with skills and equipment to get her beyond. I think survivaqbility (last point in the list) is a big matter, but I also wonder whether my damage-output is up to the higher map-tiers.

Any comments on where I stand with my build are welcome asl well as suggestions how to improve it.


My Build as of now

SKILLTREE

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Skilltree lvl 82

I went for phys dmg, speed, crit and some resistancies. Most physical ranged builds out there use pretty much the same skilltree. Only difference might be my choice in Iron Reflexes which I did recently and explain below under Defense.
I have only 88% hit chance. Maybe I should grab some Accuracy?


PRIMARY ATTACK


Ice Shot Chain
Spoiler
I always liked the way that chain works. Shooting around corners, hitting enemy that are hard to target. I also looove the hit feedback from ice shot. Nothing more satisfying than to shattercrush a mob to flying pieces. Also for the advantage against aviaks and necromancers that have no corpses to attack with. Chain also goes well with my Bow. Chin Sol gives chain 100% more damage within dense mobs. So this is a must have for me:

Ice Shot - Chain - GMP - PPAD - Added Fire

Tooltip says 8800 dps - 11700 dps with charges up. So the max damage output when chaining two times should be around 35k (Plus 100% close range bonus and the HoA's overkill burning damage. Does anyone know if the shots AoE behind the target is included?)


SECONDARY ATTACKS


Poison Totem (well done)
Spoiler
When kiting stronger enemies or packs I rely on a poison arrow totem to get them away from me. Its cloud as well as direct hits are a really good clearing speed boost. Might also benefit from Chin Sols close dmg in some situations.

Ranged Attack Totem - Poison Arrow - PPAD - Faster Attacks
9400 dps

Frenzy single (the silent beast)
Spoiler
For single targets I utilize a Frenzy-Combo to keep up my charges during the fight.

Frenzy - PPAD - Faster Attacks - Slower Projectiles
24300 dps

Gameplaywise the attack feels like spitting in a fire but the numbers are dynamite. I might add a PCoC once I get a 5L bow.

Curse Rain (the meh! shot)
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A bit of a heartache. A Curse-on-Hit-Rain of arrows to at least get some Power Charges once in a while with Assasin's Mark. My Problem with it see below under "Charges".

Are there any better support gems I should take? What about increasing quality? Is it worth it on some?


CHARGES

Missing my Power
Spoiler
I used to get my charges from PCoc in both the Frenzy and Ice Shot and Ice Bite in Ice Shot, but it cost too much dps to have it there (more than I got with the charges in the end). Since I never will be able to afford a Victario's Acuity to just have charges popping up I tried some off-ways to trigger them: Herald of Ice and Thunder with CoH, which plainly did trigger like never. Now I bought that Blood Dance boots wich at least keep me supplied with frenzy charges all the time. But I miss my Power Charges. If anyone comes up with a good idea to get them, tell me! I think Assasins Mark is a stupid approach. When I need to curse hit one mob to one shot another I also could just two shot them. For rare and unique monsters AssMark does not Charge at all until they are dead. A trigger to PCoC would be so cool, but I cannot think of one (like my totem doing it for me or so).


AURAS

I simply use Hatred and Herald of Ash. They give good damage and I have a good enough mana leech to sustain my attacks with only XXX Mana left.
And of course an Ice Golem.

EQUIPMENT

I had some lucky drops. A Drillneck and a Chin Sol.
Spoiler



My unique gloves and boots are needed for getting and using frenzy charges.
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The rings are imho not great but on the upper side of good.
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That two-stone is almost on to neglegt mercyless-penalties.

The amulet is decent.
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I need that str/int boni but the rest seems meh.


I do have lots of room for improvement on headgear and belt though.
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With the headgear I obvously will go for defense in the future. With the belt I do not know what to do. Maybe increased health or defense? I'd like to keep the phys dmg improvement in that slot. Do I benefit enough of elemental dmg to have it in an item?


LINKS

As you see I do have only one 5L by now. I wonder wether the Chin Sol is worth to five-link it. I could gain a slot for PCoC my single-target-frenzy setup.

DEFENSE

Here it comes to dying.
Spoiler

I don't know how to get that ranger to survive reliably. I know it is not meant to stand like a marauder but even my other Wich can tank more. I can't see where my defense problems come from. I have nearly capped my ele resists (chaos -7% should be better). I was on a evasion ranger until last week with acrobatics and phase. But with the probably coming skillpoint reset when poison changes are made I went to try a Iron Reflexes build and spent some regrets on it. Also I figuered this way I can make the most of that Chin Sol i had dropped.

I have 7200 armour
2700 health.

This seems low to me. But when I look at my equipment I get the feeling a can't do too much about it. My chest brings 1619 evasion, which is hardly topped by any 5L evasion or evasion/armour chest I can afford (wich means spending not more than 1 or 2ex). I get some decent additions from headgear (XXX) and Drillneck (XXX). Boots and gloves cannot add much though.

Maybe someone could figure out if it would be wise to take the life/evasion-path from the rangers starting point instead of the dmg path? Would it affect my survivability enough to justify the loss in dmg?

I played around with a Molten Shell to be CWDT but it does not work to well clos to not at all. Are there other defense strategies I can regard?


That is pretty much my build. Sometimes very much fun to play, sometimes a pain in the ass. I'd be gratful for hints how to get rid of the latter part ;)
I came here to drink milk and kick ass...and I've just finished my milk.
I've replaced my HoA by HoI/CoH/AM. This way I get auto cursing that work quite similarly to HoT setup. It is imho more effective than your CoH setup, and you don't lose much damage by dropping HoA.

- Poison arrow totem: I would link slower proj instead of PPAD on the . The totem will fire faster and slower proj also boost the cloud damage. The dps for the main arrow is similar (because no penalty to attack speed). You can also consider just decoy totem to keep monster attention away from you. Once it's tanky (ie. leveled), it does wonders. You can add minion & totem res to it.
- Ice shot setup: Weapon Elemental Damage is better than Added Fire when at least 50% damage conversion is involved, but it also costs a bit more mana. At least you can level one on switch to test both later, if you don't have a leveled one already.
- Cwdt/IC is still useful. It prevents at least spike damage from multiple leapers, porcupines, etc. If you put one, don't level it past lvl 3-5, because of your low life.
- On accuracy: you may need a bit indeed. I fell more comfy at around 2.5k accuracy (I'm currently sitting at 3170 with ice golem).
- Skill tree: it lacks life quite seriously, which is visible in your very low 2700 hp score. You should have 4k life at this level. Also you shouldn't need Primal Spirit. If it's for stats, try to get them on gear (see below). And Avatar of the Hunt cluster is a trap! Refund it for life nodes.
- Gear:
¤ upgrade the belt for high life and res, and maybe high str roll. WED is cool, but only when other prerequisites are met.
¤ beside evesion, your helm is bad. get one with high life (80+), 2 or 3 res and % eva. You can also have int or str roll, depending of base, or also flat accuracy.
¤ amulet is meh indeed. It should have crit multi (it's the only slot where you can have some with your gear). For the needed stats, see above.
¤ rings: no life...

TL;DR: not enough life on gear, not enough %life on tree ;).
Ranger builds list: /917964
When two witches watch two watches, which witch watches which watch?
If the witches watching watches watch the same watch while you watch which witch watches which watch, they switch watches; then, the watch switching witches watch which watch you watch.
Watching witches watch watches is not for the faint of heart...
for rangers i like to roll double life coral rings (30+50 at least on each) with resistances or w/e you need. also i roll double life leather belt rather than rustic belt.

anyway, i also recently spec'd one of my rangers into ice shot and its turning out actually a lot better than i thought it would.

i roll two ice shot setups. i use windripper (tho physical bows are ideal for higher damage). chin sol is good but 1st off i would eliminate chain. you don't need chain especially with ice shot. ice shot actually has amazing AoE because of its cone blast behind the initial target. you don't need chain, or even pierce, but pierce would be preferred over chain because it doesn't low your damage.

since you're running chin sol, you might as well spec point blank. that way when you get the damage boost, you get a MASSIVE damage boost. i even run point blank in my setup. it works just fine.

my first ice shot is for curse on hit. its on a 6L (tho only 5L required) of ice shot, gmp, curse on hit, elemental weakness and frostbite. this is to get the most amount of lowered resistances we can possibly get. my 6th link is either WED or hypothermia. im trying to figure out which is best. WED gives much more damage but hypothermia does well and its added chance to freeze is really nice. tho freeze is based off damage so WED is probably the better setup, just haven't tested it enough.
i just spam this at a low mana cost in order to clear AoE and stack chill/freeze.

my second setup is single target ice shot. ice shot, hypothermia, added lightning damage, WED, slower projectiles, cold penetration.
its really tough to tell whats better because the tooltip dps doesn't factor hypothermia or penetration. so its hard to tell if cold pen is better than slower projectiles, or added cold dmg. slower projectiles is better than added cold dmg tho, because the quality on slower projectile is added projectile damage, which is ALL damage incorporated in your arrow, while added cold dmg only adds cold dmg which is limited.
the penetration stacks even on top of the curses (penetration goes before lowered resistances) and resistances can go negative so the pen i believe will ultimately give you the best damage boost, especially against bosses where curses are only i think its 60% effective. its hard to tell though.

i run wrath and herald of ice linked with inc AoE

since i don't have a physical damage bow, its actually a lot more beneficial for me to run ice shot at 1/20 (level one, 20% quality). i hardly gain any dps from the base damage boost since most of my damage is boosted beyond my base, from supports and such. so saving on the mana cost is a lot better for me.
if you do run a high level ice shot and have mana problems, your best bet is to socket a rallying cry. it gives you a flat amount of mana regen, which is boosted by your % mana regen, giving you even more regen than clarity almost always. its a great buff for those who need mana regen in times of spamming.

here is my tree for lvl 87


i also use the surgebinders gloves and roll 8 frenzy charges for an added 56% elemental damage boost when i have full charges. on top of 32% MORE damage for all sources.

i know our builds are different, but this is to give you a bit of perspective on how an ice shot build CAN look (not necessarily should). but with full frenzy charges im running 50k+ SHEET dps. this does not factor in my MORE bonuses from hypothermia or point blank, as well as not factoring in my double curse and penetration support gem.
i freeze things constantly, including bosses. im not the most defensive, only sitting at 4k hp, but i don't feel very threatened because everything is frozen or straight up dead. even my curse on hit ice shot is almost 14k damage (again not factoring in curses or point blank bonus dmg when things are close).

an ice shot ranger can gain so many MORE bonuses to their damage now its incredible. hypothermia, point blank, frenzy charges, slower projectiles, and even chin sol if you use it. its incredible and especially useful for ice shot since all that added damage will equal a lot of freezing for decent durations.
Wow, thanks for your detailed replies. I get a feeling on what to look for. Also some things I did not know at all (Crit Multi on amulets for instance).

@ xMustard: One question to that Avatar of the Hunt thing: Is it a node to avoid because it only adds physical dmg? When is this applied, before or after the 40% phys to cold conversion of ice shot?

@ Panini_aux_olives: Another question for HoI/CoH/AM - I tried that but it just did not trigger as well. Maybe my gem-lvl was too low? Which combination/lvl do you use? I Thought that it might not work when too many mobs die due to the shot's AoE-dmg or something like that.

I still keep off Point Blank due to my low health. I thought that when I can't go near an enemy now and then I wont loose too much damage. Maybe I add that once I am satisfied with the builds tankyness.
I came here to drink milk and kick ass...and I've just finished my milk.
Gem level doesn't matter, but you have to kill frozen mobs for HoI explosion to happen. It is the explosion that will curse in its aoe the nearby ennemies.
Ranger builds list: /917964
When two witches watch two watches, which witch watches which watch?
If the witches watching watches watch the same watch while you watch which witch watches which watch, they switch watches; then, the watch switching witches watch which watch you watch.
Watching witches watch watches is not for the faint of heart...
anytime you're looking at the passive tree you need to calculate the effective gain. you can do this by taking the sum of whatever is added, and divide it by the passives spent to get them. this will give you an idea what passive nodes are not worth picking up.

For applying curses, have you considered split arrow? I run Split Arrow + Chain + COH + <curse of choice> myself and find it effective for cursing entire packs efficiently. Split arrow itself fires off extremely quickly thanks to the high attack speed you probably already have, and you can curse bosses with it since you are attacking to apply the curse instead of waiting for a HOI explosion.

Also, have you considered running Hypothermia instead of Added Fire as your 5th Ice Shot link? I feel it performs well with chain, since after the first hit everything is chilled so all of the chain bounces are doing ~40% more damage.

For what it's worth, I run with the Avatar of the Hunt cluster (and Celerity to boot) and enjoy it very much. The more move speed the better!

Here is my tree at level 86, going for high physical damage, mana regen and crit. I run a leveled ice shot in a lioneye's glare; I actually need all the mana nodes to sustain ice shot (or frenzy, my single target), and accuracy is of no concern at the moment.

https://www.pathofexile.com/fullscreen-passive-skill-tree/AAAAAwIBAF4FLQguCIkNjRmKGY4ajyF2Iuoj9iSdJP0uUzBxMHwx-jKUN9Q51DpCOrM-z0MxRA1KfUt4TP9Nkk4qUUdW-loaW69daF5FYlplTW5pb_JxoXTtdct293rvfXV_An8rhs6Hdo19jX6Nv49PkAqS85UFlwaa8ZuNoJ-m4KfUqKKq-K_rsTC1CLe2vTa95r6nwTPBScHYwzPDOsSiyNzI8Mqp02_TftQj1fjWitnG2sHcFd2o35jjn-dU6mLtP-2D7g7vevba-uv7CfzF_h3-uv7I_94=

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