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

More stuff from the Essence league. I'll be posting the Inquisitor version of the build soon. No, it's not more powerful than the Elementalist. It has some nifty Ascendancy features focusing on consecrated ground which works really well with Sulphur flasks and makes replacing Auxium with a Crystal belt very easy. But the Witch has easier time with the top bosses. And the near-immunity to reflect is really addictive. I actually lost a T16 map on the Templar because I didn't think to reroll EW+reflect-maxres after getting used to ignoring those mods on the Witch.

New video: Deathless Shaper Kill (Essence league)

New video: Uber Lab Farm Run (Essence league)

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soujiro707 wrote:

I really enjoy this build.. Only issues for me is it drops my FPS to almost nothing when i'm spamming icestorm.. especially on a busy map.
On a build that's reliant on always leaping to your next leech target for survival having 5 fps is kind of a deal breaker. Not sure if it's just me having this problem.

Some PoE skills require a good video card. Icestorm is one of them, sadly.

This build is good, its starts to deliver at 1500+ int and 9500+ ES, you simply facetank everything ... all guardians, shaper everything. You dont even need to bring poi or pof for anything untill there are crazy stacked dmg mods on maps (and ofc if you have good movement skills). The content is not hard, the hard part is to reach out to the gear you need to bring the build to its stand-out point.

thanks for the reply.
im really not sure what i am missing at this point. imho my gear should be good enough to kill the guardians without big troubles (on maps without crazy dmgmods), but somehow im not able to kill t16 bosses without dying.
with 62% chance to hit i even have problems to keep fortify up (at least i think thats the reason, no idea what other reason it can be). i read almost all of the 90+ pages, watched your videos and it looks like i am the only one with that problem. no idea what im doing wrong. vs minotaur i usually die during the 2-3 leaps it takes to refresh fortify. i bought a lv3 enlightn but it doesnt feel any different. sometimes even worse, because with only 200 mana i cant "precast" 3-4 icestorms before i leap on him. then i simply die after the first hits, because i cant leech fast enough.

every map up to t15 is a joke (sometimes overgrown ruin or dark forest with 3dmg mods really hurts). of course its the endgame and you have to invest some exalts, so i guess i have to farm 15+ exalts to afford the crazy high ES, 45+ int, double res gear.

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vpetrovgb wrote:

The content is not hard, the hard part is to reach out to the gear you need to bring the build to its stand-out point.

yep. the gear u need is incredible expensive for a "normal" guy, who doesnt play 4h+ every day, IF u want to farm the guardians and shaper without a lot of trouble.

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CheefKaigen wrote:

thanks for the reply.
im really not sure what i am missing at this point. imho my gear should be good enough to kill the guardians without big troubles (on maps without crazy dmgmods), but somehow im not able to kill t16 bosses without dying.
with 62% chance to hit i even have problems to keep fortify up (at least i think thats the reason, no idea what other reason it can be). i read almost all of the 90+ pages, watched your videos and it looks like i am the only one with that problem. no idea what im doing wrong. vs minotaur i usually die during the 2-3 leaps it takes to refresh fortify. i bought a lv3 enlightn but it doesnt feel any different. sometimes even worse, because with only 200 mana i cant "precast" 3-4 icestorms before i leap on him. then i simply die after the first hits, because i cant leech fast enough.

Wait, what? 200 mana? With Enlighten lv 3 and the gear in your profile?? I don't see how you'd have so little mana. None of the tree nodes seem to be missing, and your gear has decent Int. What is your Int?

Also, don't stop casting Icestorm for too long to get Fortify. Leap between casts. If you don't get Fortify, cast Icestorm and then leap again.

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yep. the gear u need is incredible expensive for a "normal" guy, who doesnt play 4h+ every day, IF u want to farm the guardians and shaper without a lot of trouble.

It's a matter of perspective. My gear in the Essence league (Lord_Seru in my profile) cost me definitely less than 10 ex, somewhere around 6-8 ex total. And I started there 2 weeks after it opened, so I missed the early days where you can often grab amazing items for almost nothing. I still never even got a 15% Black Sun Crest (fucking flippers grab those within 10 sec of them being posted and flip for 1 ex+) but 14% is perfectly fine. If a budget of 8-10 ex to farm the Shaper is too much for your idea of "normal" then I guess Shaper is not designed for "normal guys", is he?

And how much you play every day is completely irrelevant unless you are participating in some kinda race to kill the Shaper first.

sorry, if it sounded harsh, angry etc. wasnt my intention. like i said, 10-15 ex seems fine for farming endgame. im really appreciate your help! :)

your right, i try to leap every 3-4 icestorm casts, but its not enough to keep fortify up on single target bosses (doesnt matter in t15 maps anyways). which made me wonder, because in all of your videos u have no problems, every leap hits.

my int is 1315 without black sun and 1379 with a 12% one. no idea how to reach 1500+ int. right now, i dont think ~100 int (if i buy a 14%+ one) is worth 2k ES. or is it? my ES would go down to 7,8k. i often get one shot from minotaur, thats why i am afraid to lose the 2k ES. you think i should switch to a 14%+ black sun crest?
good crystal belts (ES/50+ int/one resist) are really expensive (2ex+), thus i have to get my resist from gloves/boots/chest and used 4 skillpoints for the two 8allres/10% ES nodes in the templar and shadow area.
i 6linked the chest "on accident" and i need a high lightning res roll. wasnt able to get a upgrade in the 3ex range. i think the boots and gloves are fine, even if the int rolls arent that high. i cant afford to pay 5ex+ for ~10int and 30ES upgrades. looking for a 750+/50int/resist chest, but they are really hard to find for a reasonable price.

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CheefKaigen wrote:

sorry, if it sounded harsh, angry etc. wasnt my intention. like i said, 10-15 ex seems fine for farming endgame. im really appreciate your help! :)

your right, i try to leap every 3-4 icestorm casts, but its not enough to keep fortify up on single target bosses (doesnt matter in t15 maps anyways). which made me wonder, because in all of your videos u have no problems, every leap hits.

my int is 1315 without black sun and 1379 with a 12% one. no idea how to reach 1500+ int. right now, i dont think ~100 int (if i buy a 14%+ one) is worth 2k ES. or is it? my ES would go down to 7,8k. i often get one shot from minotaur, thats why i am afraid to lose the 2k ES. you think i should switch to a 14%+ black sun crest?
good crystal belts (ES/50+ int/one resist) are really expensive (2ex+), thus i have to get my resist from gloves/boots/chest and used 4 skillpoints for the two 8allres/10% ES nodes in the templar and shadow area.
i 6linked the chest "on accident" and i need a high lightning res roll. wasnt able to get a upgrade in the 3ex range. i think the boots and gloves are fine, even if the int rolls arent that high. i cant afford to pay 5ex+ for ~10int and 30ES upgrades. looking for a 750+/50int/resist chest, but they are really hard to find for a reasonable price.

Against a single target I miss about 1 in 3 leap slams, pretty consistent with the 62% tooltip chance to hit. Re-leaping 1-2 sec after you miss one (after the next Icestorm) works fine.

1315 Int at lv 93?! Wow, that's really, really low. THAT would be your issue. 1300 Int is definitely not enough for T16, let alone the Shaper. I don't see anything major missing in your profile, but I guess the small things accumulate. You are overestimating the importance of raw ES. You need Int much more than ES. Int gives ES too, plus DPS.

Try this: 14% Black Sun instead of your helmet, refund Nullification and Faith and Steel and grab the jewel socket on the right (down from Ghost Reaver). Buy a few deafening essences of spite (they cost 4c) and roll an ilvl 84+ crystal belt until you get a resist mod and a ES mod, that shouldn't take more than a few tries even with average luck. On even the ones 1 step below deafening if your budget it low, those are dirt cheap.

See how much ES and Icestorm tooltip you get after these changes.

Btw, on Minotaur, you can get 1-shot if you are not facetanking him. His most powerful attack (his version of Teleport Slam that's animated as an 'underground roll') is only used against ranged attackers. I never have to deal with it because I facetank him. He sometimes does it at the very start when I'm running towards him, but then it's easy to dodge by simply running to his initial spot.

i know, that int is the most important stat. the massive drop of ES (without a 750+ ES chest) just didnt seem like the right thing to do for the little int i get, if my problem is getting one shot ("one shot" in the sense of meleehit+rockcrap from above, not the avoidable undergroundthingy). but yes my low int is a problem, which i wasnt able to fix. 5-10 more int on gloves/boots just dont fix this issue. without a crystal belt or completely insane gear (and auxium) i shouldn even bother with guardians/shaper? or do you think the "non essence version" is shaperviable with 10-15ex worth of gear?

should i replace my izaro jewels with int/2dmg modes ones? would lose ~100dps per jewel, again i thought the gain from int would be too small :X

thanks again!

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CheefKaigen wrote:

i know, that int is the most important stat. the massive drop of ES (without a 750+ ES chest) just didnt seem like the right thing to do for the little int i get, if my problem is getting one shot ("one shot" in the sense of meleehit+rockcrap from above, not the avoidable undergroundthingy). but yes my low int is a problem, which i wasnt able to fix. 5-10 more int on gloves/boots just dont fix this issue. without a crystal belt or completely insane gear (and auxium) i shouldn even bother with guardians/shaper? or do you think the "non essence version" is shaperviable with 10-15ex worth of gear?

thanks again!

Your chest is indeed too low ES to be comfortable in T16, but it's 6L (having both the Orb and BL proc curses is a nice QoL improvement). I don't think the raw amount of ES is your problem. In the videos above you rarely see me drop low on ES. If I had your chest armor, I'd have died to Hydra there once or twice but still won even if I had 7k ES. And Hydra is the one T16 fight where you can be safer if you run around and dodge all her attacks (it just takes longer and I faceroll her because I can).

Your issue is Int. It affects everything: your DPS=leech, your Icestorm duration, your mana pool, your ES too. You are dying not to 1-shots but to the lack of leech caused by the lack of Icestorm coverage. Conversely, I am not dying because I leech ES faster than I take damage and my Icestorm coverage lets me leap more often to get even safer with Forify while the Icestorms keep leeching.

Try the changes I suggested above. Roll yourself a crystal belt (then craft another resist mod on it). With 1500 Int your experience in T16 will be very different.

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CheefKaigen wrote:

wasnt able to get a upgrade in the 3ex range. i think the boots and gloves are fine, even if the int rolls arent that high. i cant afford to pay 5ex+ for ~10int and 30ES upgrades. looking for a 750+/50int/resist chest, but they are really hard to find for a reasonable price.

Crystal belt will remove the need for res mods on the chest. Also, you are forgetting that you can sell your chest pretty well after you get a new one and recover most of the price of the upgrade.

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Kelvynn wrote:

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CheefKaigen wrote:

i know, that int is the most important stat. the massive drop of ES (without a 750+ ES chest) just didnt seem like the right thing to do for the little int i get, if my problem is getting one shot ("one shot" in the sense of meleehit+rockcrap from above, not the avoidable undergroundthingy). but yes my low int is a problem, which i wasnt able to fix. 5-10 more int on gloves/boots just dont fix this issue. without a crystal belt or completely insane gear (and auxium) i shouldn even bother with guardians/shaper? or do you think the "non essence version" is shaperviable with 10-15ex worth of gear?

thanks again!

Your chest is indeed too low ES to be comfortable in T16, but it's 6L (having both the Orb and BL proc curses is a nice QoL improvement). I don't think the raw amount of ES is your problem. In the videos above you rarely see me drop low on ES. If I had your chest armor, I'd have died to Hydra there once or twice but still won even if I had 7k ES. And Hydra is the one T16 fight where you can be safer if you run around and dodge all her attacks (it just takes longer and I faceroll her because I can).

Your issue is Int. It affects everything: your DPS=leech, your Icestorm duration, your mana pool, your ES too. You are dying not to 1-shots but to the lack of leech caused by the lack of Icestorm coverage. Conversely, I am not dying because I leech ES faster than I take damage and my Icestorm coverage lets me leap more often to get even safer with Forify while the Icestorms keep leeching.

Try the changes I suggested above. Roll yourself a crystal belt (then craft another resist mod on it). With 1500 Int your experience in T16 will be very different.

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CheefKaigen wrote:

wasnt able to get a upgrade in the 3ex range. i think the boots and gloves are fine, even if the int rolls arent that high. i cant afford to pay 5ex+ for ~10int and 30ES upgrades. looking for a 750+/50int/resist chest, but they are really hard to find for a reasonable price.

Crystal belt will remove the need for res mods on the chest. Also, you are forgetting that you can sell your chest pretty well after you get a new one and recover most of the price of the upgrade.

So are we dropping Auxium now?