My build vialbility

I'm pretty curious to know why you include star of wraeclast as a potential amulet in your build. Was under the impression that we don't know how to make it yet.

Have you considered running another cold spell for clearing instead of ice nova? Ice nova is "melee" even with all the AOE increase nodes, and AOE nodes don't do anything for ice spear. If you don't mind the "melee" range, freezing pulse has a faster cast speed and higher damage than freezing pulse, and would allow you to ignore AOE nodes and instead have more life and defenses. Would have to run LMP though, which decreases single target damage.

While it is true that southbuond gives 12-16% inc hp, because you're running all those other uniques, you have a pretty low base hp pool, meaning that the bonus hp front southbound won't be very good.

I tidied up your tree a bit. I gave you an acceptable amount of max life, and a bit more damage and crit I think. Taryn's is an alright staff to start with, but eventually you should move to a staff with implicit crit on it as well as crit mods rolled or crafted on (catarina can craft up to 69% spell crit chance, and vagan can do up to 27% multi).

I took out the AOE nodes because they don't help Ice Spear, and I'd recommend you swap Ice Nova with Freezing Pulse. In fact, to be honest, I'd advise you swap Ice Spear with Freezing Pulse too... FP's base damage is 3x that of Ice Spear and it auto-pierces. I played FP in talisman league, and it works just fine as both an AoE and a single-target especially if you run it in a 6-link. For gems, I'd find a way to fit Faster Projectiles in there, projectile speed is pretty important for FP.

If you're set on using Ice Spear, then I'd drop almost all of the crit from the tree and just get some power charges and mods on gear and then as much crit multi and base damage as you can. Crit Strikes gem is also godly with Ice Spear since IS has such high increased crit by default. If you run Crit Strikes gem and a Diamond flask, that's probably all the crit you need on Ice Spear, seriously, that's 90% effective crit chance just with those two things.

Anyway, that's my advice! One last advice, just run the build and see how far you get! Once you cap out, you'll know what to focus on next time, if you're lacking on damage or life or crit or whatever.

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LightningStars wrote:

I'm pretty curious to know why you include star of wraeclast as a potential amulet in your build. Was under the impression that we don't know how to make it yet.

Have you considered running another cold spell for clearing instead of ice nova? Ice nova is "melee" even with all the AOE increase nodes, and AOE nodes don't do anything for ice spear. If you don't mind the "melee" range, freezing pulse has a faster cast speed and higher damage than freezing pulse, and would allow you to ignore AOE nodes and instead have more life and defenses. Would have to run LMP though, which decreases single target damage.

While it is true that southbuond gives 12-16% inc hp, because you're running all those other uniques, you have a pretty low base hp pool, meaning that the bonus hp front southbound won't be very good.

This is a build idea for next league so it's pretty much like two months before I reach around lvl 70-80 in new league and be able to think of using it to full potential. I guess that's more than enough for someone to figure the recipe out but it's also me being optimistic about it :D

The whole point of Ice Nova is to LW into a pack with Warlords Mark and Temporal Chains on Blasphemy, cast IN and either see mobs dead, and proceed to the next pack or see mobs frozen/chilled + temp chained (aka rendered harmless) and finish them off.

I'll take FP advice into consideration in case my build proves to be utter shizzle but it's just that I don't like other cold spells. Checkes FP, Arctic Breath, Glacial Cascade and even Cold Snap - it's just not what I was looking for.

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Deadpeng wrote:

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Norcaine90 wrote:

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Deadpeng wrote:

Glasscannon?

I would not even consider this build glasscannon. Not only is defense completely neglected in this build, the damage is not that outstanding either. You are not exploiting any kind of mechanism to boost your base spell damage.

I may be mistaken but how is 115% increased cold damage and 126% increased elemental damage from the tree alone bad?. I mean, like I said I may be mistaken but with these numbers I don't see the need to boost spell damage since afaik 1% cold/elementa damage = 1% spell damage. 240% increased damage is really THAT low for a damage/control oriented build?.
Let's not forget that there's damage from items like Taryn and such (50% cold dmg 60% spell dmg 20% vs frozen).

You need to realize that the GGG design team has been rather biased towards spellcasters in this game in the past. Spellcasters used to be completely unplayable late game. Only until recently with the introduction of game breaking concepts-poison, vaal molten shell spam, scold bridle as well as coc discharge.

The reason goes like this, skill based builds scale off purely based on how expensive a weapon is while spell based builds have more or less the fixed damage unless there is some mechanism that can be exploited such as 'double dipping'. As a result, spellcasters surely do better at the start of leagues but lose out quickly once good weapons are crafted. You claim 400% increased spell+elemental damage is a lot, a 10K base damage ice spear merely becomes 50K base damage (assuming you have awesome cast speed) 50K base damage is still much less than what skill based glasscannon builds can achieve.

In the current state of the game, the only way to make spellcaster strong is to exploit some of the mechanisms. Take for example scold's bridle, 100% increased damage from just a helmet alone, that saves you about 5 skill points? Finally the damage taken triggers CWDT, secondary spell triggers, that is effectively double damage. If not, you need to have really expensive gears like level 4 empower to make spellcasters work.

The reason why I am so confident is because I have seen people use the build before, from then on I vendor every Taryn Shiver I find.

Check this build out https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1631000 - skill tree similar to what PaperRat proposed, some difference in items but afaik it's more defensive with less cold/spell/ele damage on it (and I can drop some damage for more survi, no biggie), and it works even end game (I don't mind not being able to do Core/Atziri).

In my build I just use IS for single target purposes and based on what I saw on the forementioned build, I don't see why would it NOT work if I make some changes. Like swapping amulet for Winterheart (chill immunity and hp) and Ice Tomb swapped with Carcass Jack (aoe, resistances and hp).

I get what you mean, I really do. It's just that I don't want a roflstomp right-click-to-win build like there's plenty of them on the forums. I want a build that's gonna have at least a little bit of challenge and be diveresed, not all around 1 skill. I just want to have fun while playing, it's not gonna be a uber farming tool or anything like it. Just for fun.

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ThatsSoGoodman wrote:

I tidied up your tree a bit. I gave you an acceptable amount of max life, and a bit more damage and crit I think. Taryn's is an alright staff to start with, but eventually you should move to a staff with implicit crit on it as well as crit mods rolled or crafted on (catarina can craft up to 69% spell crit chance, and vagan can do up to 27% multi).

I took out the AOE nodes because they don't help Ice Spear, and I'd recommend you swap Ice Nova with Freezing Pulse. In fact, to be honest, I'd advise you swap Ice Spear with Freezing Pulse too... FP's base damage is 3x that of Ice Spear and it auto-pierces. I played FP in talisman league, and it works just fine as both an AoE and a single-target especially if you run it in a 6-link. For gems, I'd find a way to fit Faster Projectiles in there, projectile speed is pretty important for FP.

If you're set on using Ice Spear, then I'd drop almost all of the crit from the tree and just get some power charges and mods on gear and then as much crit multi and base damage as you can. Crit Strikes gem is also godly with Ice Spear since IS has such high increased crit by default. If you run Crit Strikes gem and a Diamond flask, that's probably all the crit you need on Ice Spear, seriously, that's 90% effective crit chance just with those two things.

Anyway, that's my advice! One last advice, just run the build and see how far you get! Once you cap out, you'll know what to focus on next time, if you're lacking on damage or life or crit or whatever.

I've pointed out AoE nodes and FP issue earlier this post so I hope you won't mind me not writing this down again (let's keep these forums tidy - it's already a wall-o-text).

Yours and PaperRat skill tree suggestions are splendid, I see a lot of place on improvement. I didn't think of Diamnod Flask, thanks for pointing that out!. PCharges are nice, I may develop the idea.

Thank you once again everyone for feedback, it's enlightening and I can already see I'm gonna go further than I expecet at the beginning. If anyone else feels like adding something, feel free to do so!.

First post edit happened.