[Theorycrafting] Ice Spear witch help

Hi guys

I am trying to create an Ice Spear build [as if you haven't guessed already].

Well, to summarize what I want to accomplish, let's quote the classic

"

The Sorceress who wields this spell will find herself often treading over the shattered and frozen remains of her opponents.

What I want to accomplish
* High cold penetration, and damage
* Life-based, maybe MoM also, as it is buffed in 3.0
* High freeze chance; both as defense, or party support
* Not expensive and SSF viable
* Elementalist Ascendancy is supposed to spread freeze trough the map
* Durable enough to be viable in higher maps also

Skill tree. I have problems with balancing life/damage because all good nodes are far from start :/


Main setup:
Ice Spear+GMP(or Chain?)+Cold Penetration+Hypothermia+Spell Echo+Ice Bite[optional 6th link]
Utility:
Orb of Storms+CoH+[which curse?]+Power Charge On Hit
Auras, still not sure
Hatred+Blasphemy+Warlord's Mark+ maybe Enlighten [luxury]


Questions
* With MoM I can't have much mana reserved, what aura should I use?
* What's is the good way to spread curse apart from Herald+CoH? Is it worth to get 1 additional curse via Doedre's Damning or Whispers Of Doom?

Thoughts? Any ideas how to improve this build?

A few quick thoughts without going in too deep:

High damage and freeze chance can be both achieved by stacking Crit. Since you are using a spell with very high base crit it is perfect for Crit stacking. Crit is a no brainer for any Ice Spear build. Don't get Freeze Chance because that is not worth the investment, since you will want to get as close to 100% Crit Chance as possible anyway.

For auras I would probably use Herald of Ice and maybe Clarity, not much else for a life build. Blapshemy's range is not good enough when using Ice Spear. For curses I would get whispers of doom, just a very good node in general if you can capitalize on curses. Use Orb of Storms with a damage and a survivability curse. Something like Frostbite + Enfeeble or Temporal chains would do.

For the main skill I would use GMP for sure (Chain doesn't work when projectiles Pierce). Ditch Hypothermia and Ice Bite for Faster Casting, Increased Critical Strikes and/or Controlled Destruction. Hypothermia won't work on most bosses where you need damage the most. Ice Bite is bad in general.

For ascendancy I would either pick Elementalist or Inquisitor. Inquisitor will give you free Penetration (kinda) on Crits but make Frostbite and Cold Penetration useless, so you can use a second survivability curse and free a link in your main damage setup. Oh and while freeze proliferation sounds good in theory, frozen enemies you kill will not leave corpses to proliferate from and its use will thus be severely limited.

I can't tell you much about the MoM side of things, haven't played them in far too long. Don't really like the premise honestly but can be good I heard.

If you are going Crit you are going to want some Power Charge generation. A budget solution is to link another Ice Spear to Power Charge on Crit to build them up and sustain them. Can also use Orb of Storms but you'll lose out on a Curse that way. This can be aleviated by getting curse on hit gloves but that may not be realistic on S

A movement skill would not og amiss. Whirling Blades if you use daggers or Lightning Warp if you use wands.

Cheap and Ice Spear is very hard.

Problems your build needs to overcome:

1) Group clearing.
A GMP alone is not going to cut it, especially as the second form has no pierce.
You definitely want to use "Voidwalker" boots. As an elementalist you have inbuild prolif.
You have to test, if you also need "Hrimburn" gloves, for when Igniting Conflux is down.

2) Single target.
Unfortunately Ice Spears base damage is very low. (Fireball has 35% more flat damage).
As an offset you get a higher critical strike chance.
You have to make it count. Invest in critical strike multiplier a lot.
To cope with high health enemies, Fireball usually tries to make the splash overlap. You can't do that. You could try "Vaal Righteous Fire" and a very high amount of energy shield.

3) There is an enchantment for a helmet: "Chance to get power charges on crit.".
Definitely get that. With 7% base crit, this is huge.

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I definitely recommend you to look at "Frostbolt". It is somewhat similar of a skill.
It has a few upsides tough:
1) Higher Damage. Given an equal budget for equipment, making a Frostbolt build will always deal more damage. Period.
2) Inbuild Pierce all the way. You dont need Voidwalker boots. (They are kind of hard to get in SSF. And if you use the pierce gem, your IceSpear looses even more damage.)
3) It does not need GMP, as it has a threshold jewel. (Even if you play SSF and dont find that jewel, Frost bolt STILL has a higher damage - you can use GMP with it regardless)

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The good news:
Frostbolt and IceSpear have nearly equal skilltrees. Simply level it in offhand, this way you can swap out the gems anytime you want and see for yourself which one is better.