[2.4] Ice Spear Theory Build

Regarding the jewel slot, I actually originally had both opened, certainly the slot near the north power charge makes more sense. Sorry about that.

Thinking about it, swapping the curse setup to
Curse on Hit + Herald of Thunder + Projectile Weakness + Assasin's mark
makes far more sense. With our capped crit chance, we'll constantly be shocking enemies, which would be a massive DPS boost, and we'd free up mana to use discipline, and maybe even Haste in an essence worm.

Edit: Forgot Herald of thunder can't cause shock. Back to the drawing board.

did you plan on making this build hc or sc?

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1713798

what about two of those rings?

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Witcher123456 wrote:

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1713798

what about two of those rings?

Snakepit mighty be a good option here, go to LMP instead of GMP, lose one projectile total. The only thing I don't like about snakepit is its lack of 'general' stats, so the rest of the gear will really have to be top notch to make up for it. Though it would certainly be something I would be interested in late game to try out.

I'm likely going to be running this in softcore, though I don't see any problems with this build in hardcore either. With capped crit, the survivability from freezing everything should be extremely high. I'll be going softcore simply because I want to try pushing and testing its limits, which is always dangerous.

I was also curious about an Ice Spear build. This looks like a good start. Just curious, I know the Doom Cast wheel is 3 more points if you take the full wheel. Is that something you would take if you reached high levels or would you concentrate somehwere else on the tree?

How about Bitterdream? Would make for a great leveling unique at the very least. Also, do you plan to pick the Pierce cluster?

I didn't pick up the doomcast wheel as with the current build we're at exact crit chance cap. So it's really just for the multiplier. Though 45% for 5 points isn't bad, and the extra crit chance could allow us to swap GMP for controlled destruction on single target fights while maintaining crit cap. Though it's pretty specific case.

Bitterdream would be an amazing leveling unique, absolutely. Getting a bitterdream would be godlike for leveling this build, but wouldn't be a late game item.

Pierce would also be great, but I couldn't really find the points to sacrifice. Ice spear does maintain it's second stage through pierce / forks, so pierce could add a lot of clear speed, but it's an extra 7/8 points away. If the freezing offers enough survivability alone, and I can really sacrifice some health / ES nodes it's worth considering, but you're really stretching for that pierce, and we don't have any other pierce synergies in this build.

Edit: adjusted first paragraph to take into account single target support swap potential.

Nice build. Had an off the wall question. I'm trying to decide between this or Templar, but Ice Spear build for sure. I'm a huge fan of totems. What if I modified this very slightly and took Ancestral Bond? Do you think most of this would still work or am I missing some calcs?

Thanks.

I'm not sure I'd recommend templar for this build. Primarily because you're so far away from that crit, you're waiting a long time before the damage starts kicking in, and you'll have a really mean mid game. You'll also be further off maxing crit chance, and lacking a power charge.

Also totem placement would be a real pain, as ice spear needs to be in second stage to do its job, so you would need some way to keep the mobs away from your totems, which would likely end up hurting clear speed.

Lastly, your power generation would be dependent on killing mobs, which might make some bosses a bit more annoying, where with occultist, we're generating on critical hits, so we can still generate our power charges without killing.

Added pickup of doomcast wheel. I'm not sure where I'd put this in priority, would come down to feel on when we can sacrifice the extra survivability, I wouldn't consider this wheel core. Though the additional 45% multi, and crit chance would give us buffer over cap, allowing use of controlled destruction in place of GMP on single target, and help a tiny bit with generating our power charges to start with.

Great suggestion on this, though again, these would be late game points, the're off the beaten path from the core, and are just QoL / even more damage. Though they would be before Arcane potency in the templar tree. Far more benefit from the same 5 points.