[2.5] 2600+ Int Whispering Ice Guardian. Wonderous Wizard of Wisdom

Can someone tell me what he does when dark forest boss transforms into wolf?

As far as i see he is immune to dmg in wolf form, you cant leech so you cant stay still, you gotta run?

Any input would be welcome, as i feel stupid to be able to clear corrupted overgrown ruin and all t16 and shaper and then go die from freaking rigwald...

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nel0angel0 wrote:

Can someone tell me what he does when dark forest boss transforms into wolf?

As far as i see he is immune to dmg in wolf form, you cant leech so you cant stay still, you gotta run?

Any input would be welcome, as i feel stupid to be able to clear corrupted overgrown ruin and all t16 and shaper and then go die from freaking rigwald...

Yes I think he is immune to damage when in wolf form.

Make sure you have antibleed with you for this boss. His attack in wolf form hurts alot, especially the bleed portion, kite him around, use his mob spwans to fill flasks in need be. I have a antibleed quicksilver for this occasion.

A longer immortal call might help? Not sure as I haven't got the sockets for ic setup.

Could you post a lvl 100 tree (once new patch is out, so you don't have to do double work if anything changes). The highest tree I see is a lvl 95 from your character profile atm.

So i'm looking at this build and wondering if it would be worth the loss of 2 points traveling to get "Enemies can have 1 additional Curse" from Whispers of Doom.

I can get a Gentle Touch gloves with "Curse Enemies with a level 12 Elemental Weakness on hit", which would be a nice damage boost.


Actually, what would happen if I didn't have the +1 curse? Would they get hit by Temp Chains, or Elemental Weakness?

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akkristor wrote:

So i'm looking at this build and wondering if it would be worth the loss of 2 points traveling to get "Enemies can have 1 additional Curse" from Whispers of Doom.

I can get a Gentle Touch gloves with "Curse Enemies with a level 12 Elemental Weakness on hit", which would be a nice damage boost.


Actually, what would happen if I didn't have the +1 curse? Would they get hit by Temp Chains, or Elemental Weakness?

Without +1 curse they get hit by the elemental weakness curse and not the temp chains curse. This is better as weakness is better then a level 1 temp chains.

I do not think its worth spending the extra points to also be hitting them with the level 1 temp chains the gloves originally have

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WaffleT wrote:

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akkristor wrote:

So i'm looking at this build and wondering if it would be worth the loss of 2 points traveling to get "Enemies can have 1 additional Curse" from Whispers of Doom.

I can get a Gentle Touch gloves with "Curse Enemies with a level 12 Elemental Weakness on hit", which would be a nice damage boost.


Actually, what would happen if I didn't have the +1 curse? Would they get hit by Temp Chains, or Elemental Weakness?

Without +1 curse they get hit by the elemental weakness curse and not the temp chains curse. This is better as weakness is better then a level 1 temp chains.

I do not think its worth spending the extra points to also be hitting them with the level 1 temp chains the gloves originally have

This is exactly the result I was hoping for. I was afraid the Temporal Chains would override the Elemental Weakness, but instead i get the Weakness.

Had it been Temp over Weakness, it may have been worthwhile to get the additional curse passive, but now the point is mute.

Hey WaffleT, excellent guide. Thank you so much for posting!!

I, like so many here, am considering doing this over the tri-curse version. I'm sorry if this stuff has already been answered, but I got about 5 pages in and didn't see mention of it, so here goes:

Is Pyre worth using at all? I think the tri-curse build only really uses it to do double-up the damage it gets from the fire golem, and the fire nodes in the skill tree (Snowforged cluster giving 76% more damage vs 43% without it, for example) but are there any other benefits that I'm missing? If that's it, it doesn't really seem worth it to me - what do you think?

Next one is if the Solaris Lorica would be an ok enough replacement for Shavs. I'm planning on doing this for my Breach league starter, but will definitely take it level 90 plus so though it'll take me probably a few weeks, I can get one eventually but let's just say I won't hold my breath. :P

What are your thoughts on Celestial Judgement? Seems like an amazing node for us.

No fortify? I'll probably just use leap slam - faster attacks - fortify instead of the movement setup you recommended unless there's something I'm missing and fortify doesn't really help that much?

Does Herald of Ice notably increase your damage output? I was quite impressed that even the 7 aura setup you linked with no enlighten looked very good for me.

Why did you opt to get Ballistic Mastery and Primal Spirit? Wouldn't something like the 30 Int from travel plus another jewel slot be better (the one by Ghost Reaver)

Is there any way to run blasphemy with temp chains in this build? I'd like to keep the curse on hit with Enfeeble but that would mean specing into +1 curse or trying to get in through gear... again, worth it? Could temp chains blasphemy with no curse on hit would be an option? Maybe I could not run Purity of Elements and tweak my gear and tree a bit to make up for it (that would probably mean 1 less Purandus, which is ok because those are expensive and will probably take me forever to get anyway! :P)

I'm also totally with you on not being into conditionals. I plan on not even taking Elemental Overload as I feel that time spent not casting your main DPS skill is time (and gem slots) wasted. That's the main reason I'm not doing another Elementalist, Pendulum of Destruction also kind of bugged me out.

PS - LOVE that you color-coded the gem selections, little things like that probably seem tedious and ultimately not so helpful but I really appreciated it! And sorry for the text wall!

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Hey WaffleT, excellent guide. Thank you so much for posting!!

Is Pyre worth using at all? I think the tri-curse build only really uses it to do double-up the damage it gets from the fire golem, and the fire nodes in the skill tree (Snowforged cluster giving 76% more damage vs 43% without it, for example) but are there any other benefits that I'm missing? If that's it, it doesn't really seem worth it to me - what do you think?

Going fire requires a certain amount of investment before it pays off. Because this build is focused on using unique items the Pyre ring will never be able to outperform a perangus signit ring so its not worth getting the fire stuff

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Next one is if the Solaris Lorica would be an ok enough replacement for Shavs. I'm planning on doing this for my Breach league starter, but will definitely take it level 90 plus so though it'll take me probably a few weeks, I can get one eventually but let's just say I won't hold my breath. :P

Other people have done this and I can see it working if you swap the helmet into vertex and gloves into voidbringers to get base ES until you can afford shavs. It seems kinda rough to me and I wouldn't do it as a first build but Its been done

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What are your thoughts on Celestial Judgement? Seems like an amazing node for us.

The node itself is "ok" but you need to spend 3 points on really really crappy nodes to get to it. Everything else this build gets gives more damage then these nodes while also giving defences so getting it would be a bad choice.

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No fortify? I'll probably just use leap slam - faster attacks - fortify instead of the movement setup you recommended unless there's something I'm missing and fortify doesn't really help that much?

Fortify is ok but needing to leap slam into an enemy when you could just be killing them is risky. Even with faster attacks that time spent airborn will be putting you at risk for not that much benefit. Also takes up gem slots which could be used for more useful things

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Does Herald of Ice notably increase your damage output? I was quite impressed that even the 7 aura setup you linked with no enlighten looked very good for me.

Herald of ice's damage isn't that great. It does give some damage though and as a guardian you need to be reserving as much of your mana as possible since reserved mana gets turned into ES. Herald of ice is there for the situations where you don't have enough room for the whole setup yet but still want to reserve as much of your mana pool as possible.

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Why did you opt to get Ballistic Mastery and Primal Spirit? Wouldn't something like the 30 Int from travel plus another jewel slot be better (the one by Ghost Reaver)

Its 4 points for
- 50 Int (Dex becomes Int from fertile mind jewel)
- 15% increased mana
- 20% mana regen
- Flask charges gained

%increased mana is really good because the build has absurd flat mana levels (from Int) but not that much %increased mana.
Mana becomes flat ES through the guardian. This is one of the few places that you can get %increased mana and Int at the same time. The mana regen and flask charges gained are also useful especially early on when mana regen is more of an issue

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Is there any way to run blasphemy with temp chains in this build? I'd like to keep the curse on hit with Enfeeble but that would mean specing into +1 curse or trying to get in through gear... again, worth it? Could temp chains blasphemy with no curse on hit would be an option? Maybe I could not run Purity of Elements and tweak my gear and tree a bit to make up for it (that would probably mean 1 less Purandus, which is ok because those are expensive and will probably take me forever to get anyway! :P)

You could try this but I don't recommend it. I like running curse immune maps with no disadvantage and since map bosses now get 60% less effectiveness from curses the other defenses of this build are more reliable then curses

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I'm also totally with you on not being into conditionals. I plan on not even taking Elemental Overload as I feel that time spent not casting your main DPS skill is time (and gem slots) wasted. That's the main reason I'm not doing another Elementalist, Pendulum of Destruction also kind of bugged me out.

Yeah I didn't take overload for ages but once I started guardian farming I felt like I could afford spending the point on it. Its pretty optional most of the time

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PS - LOVE that you color-coded the gem selections, little things like that probably seem tedious and ultimately not so helpful but I really appreciated it! And sorry for the text wall!

Thanks I appreciate it. I usually only quote the relevant parts but since you had several questions that I hadn't addressed in a while I thought I'd go step by step so hopefully I haven't exacerbated the wall of text problem

Thanks for taking the time to address each of my questions. I had a few others but I held back as it was already super long...

That clears things up. No Pyre then for me, just straight int! I didn't realize increased mana % was so helpful. That explains why you took the jewel slot up by CI for me now too. How about taking Path of Savant and Foresight with the Solaris on and specing out of that once I get the Shav's, does that seem reasonable? Or maybe just the 3 node cluster around Arcane Focus? I'm not gonna kid myself, it's gonna take a good while for me to get a Shav's, but I'm ok with that, as for it to be a bit harder league starter because I only like to level 3 or so characters a league.

I guess what I was trying to ask in regards to Herald of Ice is if it gives less DPS than Haste? Haste is obviously going to be better for clear speed given similar DPS with the increase in your movement speed and cast speed that also helps movement spell-skill, but as the gear/gem'd out version also has 7 auras, the Guardian benefits are the same, so I thought that would be something worth putting off until the end.

And ok, you convinced me! No blasphemy. It's a hard thing for my brain to accept, but with all the defense, as well as the cold effects from the icestorm, it just isn't the best way to spend gems. I didn't know about the 60% less effectiveness of bosses, too, that's a big selling point.

Getting really excited for this build and new league now!

Ah, here's a quick one: how important is Increased effect of Auras? I had the thought to only take the first of three in the Influence cluster and remove one from the Sovereignty cluster. That would free up 3 points for more Int, or am I missing something and that is critical to the build somehow?