[2.2] Very effective FREEZE LA Crit Build

Im not really interested in doing super in depth builds and guides again, but i do want to share my latest adoption of an ice shot substitute build that performs incredibly well.

the build is based around windripper in order to have the highest amount of crit chance with the lowest amount of investment. however with a regular crit harbinger you would actually get an even higher DPS rating (by far) than what i demonstrate, with slightly altered support gems and auras.

Focused around lightning arrow and three dragons to freeze everything and the many "MORE" multipsliers we can add, as well as dual curse and as many frenzy charges we can have.


Passive tree:



Gear:



You can see my links in the gear, but i'll explain my choices. My damage is all lightning arrow. it is supported to give the most amount of lightning damage (which is used to freeze) as well as crit, to keep those freezes going.
increased critical strike chance and power charge on critical are important. this ensures i have power charges up 100% of the time including vs single target (not relying on on-kill charge generation like assassin's mark) and the highest possible crit chance to chain those freeze locks as much and as long as possible.

against single target or anything that will take more than two hits to kill i curse them first. this significantly raises my damage output. ***note that with conductivity curse, even with three dragons helm you will maintain that % chance to shock.
also specifically against single target bosses and such i will swap GMP for Hypothermia for another MORE damage modifier. this works wonders on bosses that are quite tough, alone, and/or any boss that has a room transition to their fight.

the other sockets are pretty self explanatory but the increased aoe linked to herald of ice is important. its better than conc effect because you get some overlap in the aoe, so its often times double its damage. i prefer herald of ice over thunder. thunder doesn't add much more DPS to your attacks, actually, and the ice AOE/overlap just pushes the total DPS up a notch.







This build performed great before the 2.0 changes, and since then has just been boosted greatly in offensive power, which in turn boosts defense by allowing you to freeze lock almost everything.
I breezed through Izaro actually, to my surprise. I actually went to complete my 2nd lab run on what i thought was cruel. through it i was thinking "oh man im actually taking some damage, this is going to be much more difficult on merciless than i thought", only to find out i did actually run it on merciless. It was easily the safest build i've ran lab with thus far.

I will probably look to upload an updated video here and there to give people a sense of how it plays and what the freeze lock looks like on a regular basis. The below video is decent but its quite old, and when DPS was basically half what it is now.

Very nice build. Finally someone taking advantage of the more multipliers. Freeze is king.

Elemental penetration multipliers I am getting are 3.4x if boss is at 75% res, and 1.9x on normal mob with 0%, if my math is correct. And an extra 0.5x for shock.

If you want more damage you could tweak your tree to get an extra 12% AS, 12% ele, 12% inc. cold damage, using same # of points.

Maybe something like this:

ooo ya that looks great. thanks for the fresh eyes on my tree! im all about optimization and that indeed clears up some unnecessary points and only missing out on 5% freeze chance, which isn't exactly a big deal considering the freeze is triggered by crits anyway.

before i did try a frenzy stacking discharge build with this character and stacked upwards of 40% freeze chance on my cold damage, but that doesn't even compare to what this ice shot build can do. freeze is king, and this freezes everything.

right now cold damage is in such a great spot especially for rangers. with hypothermia (super amazing gem) and slower projectiles being a thing, you could seriously ramp up the damage even more by spec'ing point blank...which i had tried and its great for my single target set up but its completely unnecessary and i prefer the safety of distance, all around.


edit: just doing some math, i would actually gain damage if i unspec'd out of the cold dmg ring, and two of the shadow elemental dmg (22% total) and spec'd into arcing blows, since i do so much lightning damage.
this will lower my cold damage which will affect my freeze duration and such, but if i need more freeze i can just swap curses, frostbite rather than conductivity. not sure what i'll do....may just keep the cold dmg since

Actually I just realized you can get an even extra 10% cold damage going for Fangs of Frost instead of Flash Freeze like this:



What's your per hit Lightning vs. Cold? If it is that big a difference then I guess Arcing Blows will be better. You could also add Static Electricity jewels to your tree if you want more lightning.

BTW: you try Southbound vs. Surgebinders?

ok so my lightning to cold damage is pretty once sided. with full frenzy charges it looks like this.

for my AoE attack,
Cold: 858-1621
Lightning: 365-4426

single target attack,
Cold: 1592-3005
Lightning: 964-13650


Actually i think im going to switch some things up. since i do so much lightning damage, but freeze is king, im going to swap out alpha's howl for three dragons. im going to change my skill tree to something like this and run static electricity.


and instead of running herald of ice im going to socket hypothermia PLUS ice bite to my herald of thunder. this will give it some massive damage as well as massive freeze chance and duration on anything that comes near me.

i am also going to swap out my single target ice shot for burning arrow, for added shock chance from the fire damage, and the single target DPS goes up immensely in fact.

i've tested this out a bit without respec'ing anything yet, and the damage is incredible. once i get static electricity and after a couple levels add in even more dex, i'll have some extreme fricking lightning damage, meaning extreme freeze. this build is BADASS.

ok so i've respec'd now...WOW the damage rivals my herald of ash burning build, per hit, and that was with a 460 dps harbinger or something like that.

so my AoE setup rings in this damage now
TOTAL: 1074-6841 (19,564.4 dps)

phys: 44-180
fire: 155-343
cold: 490-1063
light: 385-5255


my single target is as such..
TOTAL: 2917-24082 (66,736.6 dps)

phys: 82-336
fire: 607-1803
cold: 893-1557
light: 1335-20386

My herald of lightning does 95-4592 damage per hit on its own, and freezes things constantly with its high freeze chance and good power.
keep in mind AGAIN these damage counts do not factor in the lowered resistances, the more damage from hypothermia (including on herald of thunder), or shock, OR critical strikes.

I honestly never figured you could get such high damage from windripper. im going to have to hit a reflect mob with my aoe setup soon just so i can see if i end up nuking myself now or not.

EDIT: on my aoe set up im going to swap out WED for a utility gem, like PCoC or innervate, or another alternative im not sure of right yet, because i in fact am coming too close for comfort to nuking myself on reflect (between 1/2 to 2/3 of hp gone per hit on reflect mobs)

Very nice. That's some retarded damage. I wonder if you could get more power as a Witch, I'll try and theorycraft when I'm not feeling too lazy.

Post vid when you can.

im sure you could. but from what i can muster up you definitely won't be able to get the type of hp regen i have (about 500 per second) or even max amount of frenzy charges since there just isn't enough room to go down to duelist tree.
something i cooked up just real fast ends up adding another 99% to lightning dmg though.

so far the only downside is that the damage varies extremely. one cast could only be 3k dmg while the other 24k (base). thats a crazy difference.

35k tooltip ice shot/lmp with golem and charges up
it gains 100% more in close range (nearly always)
5,6k life and 40/30 dodge

oh sweet, good job. tho IMO if you're rolling chin sol you might as well spec point blank.

i actually had point blank spec'd for a bit just to test it out, but i definitely prefer the safety of distance. i also really don't need extra damage from my practice.

i am currently looking to get a belly of the beast tho. i shouldn't have sold the one i had, but probably just get a 5L one to replace my carcass (only 6L chest currently). i'll probably just drop lightning pen off my 6L single target set up, but the boost in HP will be much appreciated, since that will also boost my regen per second significantly as well.