[2.6] The Curse Whisperer - Tri-Curse CI Whispering Ice Elementalist - Viable for Everything

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Graiaule wrote:

A few observations (from memory sadly -- I should have written things down) on using this as a league starter build. I did that for Breach.

1. I levelled up slowly with the recommended Freezing Pulse. I should have invested in Spark/Fire Trap/Firestorm/Flameblast instead (and taken the spell damage nodes from the Witch start -- these are easy to respec later.)

2. My chaos orb income was too low to buy a Whispering Ice staff until I hit level 39 (paid 7 chaos on day two.) I had no idea that The Incantation divination card existed; I probably could have gotten four of these for way less than a staff would have cost.

3. A Clarity gem was very important.

4. Crafting with Essence of Spite will generally be way cheaper than buying chest, belt, and gloves. For boots, you're probably stuck with buying them as it's too hard to get Int and the 30% movement speed. I crafted my chest, belt, and gloves several times each.

5. Buy a crappy Astramentis as early as you can afford it; I picked mine up for ~40c on day 3. Then reroll its stats using Blessed and Divine Orbs.

6. Same thing with Izaro's Turmoil -- they were ~10c each on day 3.

What was your league starter experience? Next league I'll try CWC a lot earlier than level 75.

By leveling up 'slowly' with FP - do you mean reaching lv 39 in 3 hours instead of 2? :) Sorry, I'm not into racing, I'm sure there are faster ways to level. I picked FP because it's available immediately, and it is very safe because it freezes everything. The whole pre-WI leveling part of the guide is entirely optional.

Getting WI on day 1 or 2 is indeed a lottery. You might get lucky and find one yourself, or spend a few hours looking for the card or the prophecy while monitoring the market. It's a pretty common unique in general, but you never know how many people decide to go with this build. Usually not too many as most go with whatever 'flavor or the month' meta that ZiggyD or Mathil shows them. Finding the staff is the biggest possible delay you may encounter if you want to start with this build on day 1 or 2.

Clarity is very helpful for early leveling, until switching to WI. After that it's not important at all.

Crafting the belt with Spite is indeed a very good idea. Belts have very few possible mods, you can craft a decent belt easily with the cheaper ranks of Spite and then start working on a real endgame belt with the Deafening ones. However, crafting chest and gloves with Spite - I disagree completely. 58 Int (Deafening Spite) is a very small upgrade over the regular 55 Int mod. In my experience, decent gloves are much easier to just Chaos spam (or Alc/Scour, depending on which currency you have). With the chest the chance is much lower if you want a decent one (700+ ES) so crafting one yourself with Spite sounds like a bad idea. Usually it's easier to buy one even during the current CI meta.

Astra - yes. Grab the cheapest one. You can always divine it later. However, I have never been able to get even a low roll Astra on my first day or two. A rare amulet with lots of Int and some Str/All Stats will do just fine for starting in a league and farming currency for Astra and better gear.

At the start of a league Izaros are always more expensive than 3-mod rares with similar value. They get cheaper as the league progresses, but early on rares are your best friends.


I might actually go with the Elementalist again in 2.6, depending on the details of that league. I don't think adding another class to the family for just 1 league is worth the time/effort, and GGG is already dropping strong hints that they intend to nerf CI and VP. So it may be the last league to enjoy this build before the game changes radically in 3.0.

How is this as a day 1 league starter build? Would be pretty tough/expensive to get all the uniques in the first few days right?

Hey Kelvynn, which helmet enchant on Black Sun Crest do you feel is best?

Enfeeble or Temp Chains curse effect?

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Astrohawke wrote:

How is this as a day 1 league starter build? Would be pretty tough/expensive to get all the uniques in the first few days right?

Well, the only uniques you NEED would be pyre and the staff. Pyre will always be inexpensive. Staff is probably a few chaos early on, but drops to nothing rapidly. Obviously, with sockets this would go up. Astramentis is important, yes, but not immediately. You can get really far with just a good high Int neck (Lapis, with Int and All Stats preferably).

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Garnier wrote:

Hey Kelvynn, which helmet enchant on Black Sun Crest do you feel is best?

Enfeeble or Temp Chains curse effect?

Enfeeble, hands down. I don't dodge Uber Atziri's stormcalls anymore, can survive 1-2 red ones easily, and I think I even ate a yellow one once (although not on purpose).

Just popped in to thank you for this build. I'm not a super hardcore player (although I only play HC) and when I play I tend to stick to melee builds, I never got on with casters. But I'm having so much fun with this, a few scares early on (first time playing CI, not used to having no safety net) but now I'm built I destroy everything. So yeah, thanks very much for getting me excited about another playstyle! And keep up the good work ^^

So if I'm running Herald of ice, do I not have to worry about reflect? Would this make Templar just the best version of this build?

Forgive me if this is a dumb idea, I'm still pretty new :)

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Kurnis wrote:

So if I'm running Herald of ice, do I not have to worry about reflect? Would this make Templar just the best version of this build?

Forgive me if this is a dumb idea, I'm still pretty new :)

What does Herald of Ice have to do with reflect? Herald of Ice doesn't do anything to mitigate reflect. All it does is add cold damage to your Ice Storm.

Reading herald of ice, it literally says "damage cannot be reflected".

So while I probably misunderstand the mechanics (it probably just prevents reflection of damage caused by herald of ice) I did not misread the spell.

Edit: after reading it more closely, I'm assuming it means the explosion damage can't be reflected. Confused me because it's in the green text and the "damage cannot be reflected" is in blue. Anyways, nevermind.

Levels 1-36 were a breeze. Then things got a little difficult in dominus, dry lake, mines, kaoms dream. The blasphemy + warlords mark doesn't really give you any sort of meaningful leech if you're just fighting, say, dominus by himself, or voll when he doesn't have his adds. Plus, I started fighting a shitton of hexproof rares and blues, which did a pretty good job of owning me. I dunno, maybe I switched to pyre too soon because the freeze from the pulse might have been nice vs those enemies. I probably should have just used clarity for those situations as well and turn off the aura. Also, I was thinking I probably should have stayed away from Kaom's dream until 39 because of the shitton of naturally hexproof enemies like the totems. Those saplings man...

Anyways, 39 and onward though the build came alive and everything gets utterly owned. I'm still relatively new to this game so I was probably missing something in the early levels but I couldn't figure out what.