[3.0] Tri-Curse Frozen Storm Burst Occultist

PLEASE NOTE that this was originally a Theory Craft build and I'm still currently leveling it up. There are some good suggestions and notes about life and mana in the comments. I'm not at a point in my build that I want to address these things in the main article, so please view the comments and when I'm ready, I will update this build guide. It may take a while bc I have a full time job and a life.

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EDIT: This started as a theorycraft build for 3.0. I am currently in progress of leveling it up and I will be updating this build as I go along.

I am really intrigued by the new Storm Burst skill being released in 3.0. The following is a theory craft build for this new skill focusing on its AOE capabilities. Please feel free to leave suggestions in the comments as this is my first theory-craft build!

The build focuses on maximizing lightning damage and using Call of the Brotherhood ring to convert a large portion of that damage to cold. Additionally, Herald of Ice is used to add extra cold damage.

The build is primarily life-based due to the coming ES nerfs.

EDIT:
One thing I've noticed while leveling is that this build doesn't handle Elemental Reflect ... at all. With that in mind, a couple options:
Take the Ash, Frost and Storm notable on the passive tree
Buy Sibyl's Lament

Gem Links (EDITED)

6L (Chest): Storm Burst > Greater Multiple Projectiles > Cast While Channeling > Shock Nova OR Ball Lightning > Added Lightning Damage > Increased Critical Strike Chance

EDIT:
Shock Nova and Ball Lightning will work equally well. What you choose will be based on your play style. If you are more melee range, you might prefer Shock Nova. If you're at the edge of the screen, Ball Lightning would be better.

4L (Helm): Orb of Storms > Curse on Hit > Assassin's Mark > Elemental Weakness

4L: Herald of Ice > Blasphemy > Temporal Chains OR Enfeeble > Wrath OR Clarity OR Discipline

4L: Cast When Damage Taken > Increased Duration > Immortal Call > Lightning Golem

3L (Dagger): Whirling Blades > Fortify > Faster Attacks

3L (Shield): Vaal Stormcall > Vaal Clarity OR Vaal Haste > Increased Duration


Skill Tree & Ascendancy (EDITED)

Skill Trees
31 Points
50 Points
100 Points
123 Points

Alternate 123 Points
This moves a few points around in order to take the Ash, Frost and Storm notable to mitigate some reflected damage.

Ascendancy
I decided to go with Occultist because there's some nice extra Chaos damage to be gotten from Profane Bloom & Malediction since we're running Tri-Curse. Also, Malediction gives us the 3rd curse without needing an extra item.

Profane Bloom > Malediction > Void Beacon > Forbidden Power

I considered also going with Vile Bastion over Void Beacon & Forbidden Power, but I decided that since the build is mainly life-based it wouldn't be as useful.

EDIT:
As I was leveling, I decided to change the order of the Ascendancy points. I spent the first two points to grab Forbidden Power because the power charge is nice. Then for the second two points, I respeced out of Forbidden Power and took Profane Bloom and Malediction (following the order listed above).


Uniques (EDITED)

Required
Call of the Brotherhood ring is required for this build to convert a large portion of the lightning damage to cold to get the nice freeze effects.

Not Required
These are unique items that I think would synergize well with Storm Blast and each other to create an even more powerful build.

Divinarius
I highly recommend Divinarius, but good ones are expensive, so not necessary.

Doedre's Scorn
Good for our curse on hit setup.

Choir of the Storm OR Voice of the Storm
EDIT:
These items were modified in 3.0 to remove the uncapped lightning resist which gave you more critical strike chance. Since this was the main reason I liked them, I will probably go with something else. Though, I don't know what yet.

Doryani's Invitation (Lightning Damage)
Extra damage, some resist and life leech.

Valako's Sign
Extra damage, more shock and life leech.

Sibyl's Lament
Suggested if you're having issues with reflected damage. Also see the passive skills section for another reflect mitigation option.


Rares

Rare items would focus mainly on gaining more life and elemental resistances. Other attributes that would be useful would be maximum mana, crit strike chance and spell damage.


Bandits

The bandit rewards have been reworked in 3.0:
"
Helping Oak grants: 1% of Life Regenerated per second, 2% additional Physical Damage Reduction, 20% increased Physical Damage.
Helping Alira grants: 5 Mana Regenerated per second, +20% to Global Critical Strike Multiplier, +15% to all Elemental Resistances.
Helping Kraityn grants: 6% increased Attack and Cast Speed, 3% chance to Dodge Attacks, 6% increased Movement Speed.
Eramir grants 2 Passive Skill Points if you decide to kill all three.


With this in mind, I would go with either Kraityn or Eramir. Since we're taking Elemental Overload, the crit multiplier from Alira does nothing and we can make up the resists elsewhere. The cast speed and movement speed from Kraityn probably aren't critical, but will be useful.


Shock/Chill Changes

"
Prior to this, the effect of Chill and Shocks from a hit was fixed at 30% reduced speed and 50% increased damage taken, while the duration of the effects were based on how much Cold or Lightning damage was dealt relative to the target's life. If you hit an enemy for 50% of their life using Lightning Damage, you'd apply a maximum-duration Shock effect, scaling down to no duration if you didn't meet a minimum threshold. This has now been reversed, so the effect is based on the damage relative to life, but duration is always fixed. This means that if you hit an enemy for 50% of their life, they'll take 50% increased damage for a fixed time, and smaller hits will provide a smaller damage bonus.

With the release of The Fall of Oriath, we're going to be changing the threshold so that you only need to deal 10% of a target's life to gain a maximum effect shock. This will make it much easier to apply Shock effects to very high health bosses, ...


These changes shouldn't affect the build very much. Since it's designed to be a high damage build, it shouldn't be difficult to reach maximum shock/chill effect. The ailment affects are for added damage (shock) and for defense (chill/freeze).

One thing I might consider is taking the Breath of Rime passive which will increase chill/freeze duration. Since we're converting lightning to cold damage, we want to maximize lighting damage to get the most cold damage out of the conversion. But since we're subsequently doing cold damage, we will apply chill/freeze and it would be beneficial to maximize that duration.


Power Charge Changes

"
In Wave 4 of the Beta, we reduced the Increased Critical Chance granted by Power Charges bonus and gave them More Spell Damage ... This change was intended to reduce the high impact for low cost that Power Charges have on critical chance, while making them more valuable for the majority of Intelligence Spellcaster builds in another way. For now, we're just going to reduce the effect granted by Power Charges from 50% increased Critical Chance to 40% increased Critical Chance ...


Again, this change won't cause many problems for the build. We're taking a lot of crit chance passive nodes in addition to extra power charges. Even if the crit chance was removed from power charges altogether, it would be balanced by extra spell damage. So while we wouldn't crit as much, we'd have a higher base damage.
Last edited by SorayaVogel on Aug 8, 2017, 4:53:12 PM
Last bumped on Sep 11, 2017, 2:09:01 PM
I hadn't landed on a class/ascendency yet, but this is very close to the kind of build I wanted to try. Unsure how negatively the current shock/shill changes affect it, but I am hoping they get some good changes by Friday.
I don't think shock/chill will be affected very much. Bleed/Poison/Ignite are being re-worked as status ailments to avoid "double-dipping" effects. However, shock and chill are already status ailments. That being said, the only changes to shock/chill would be the blanket status ailment changes, which afaik shouldn't have any noticeable negative affects.
I updated the build to account for some new information about power charges and shock/chill effects. I also updated the skill trees to use the 3.0 beta version.
The links for the Skilltrees seem not to work as intended "502 Bad Gateway"
Seems poeplanner.com is down. Anyway, I updated the links to point to the official POE site now that it's been updated with the 3.0 tree.
Of all the ideas around storm burst I checked over the last few days, this is the one i think has the most potential for a lot of fun. Did you already have the time to test it live?
been following this for a bit now atm lvl 44.
but was wondering why you went with shock nova?
im using ball lightning instead atm and its great!

reason i didnt go with shock nova is because im most of the time at range and the shock nova isnt reaching.
And the ball lightning nicely combines with the gmp dealing alot more dmg :)


but besides that enjoying this! so thanks for atleast theory crafting it :)
Last edited by todumbtodie on Aug 5, 2017, 1:30:01 PM
Forgive me for a noob question, I am probably missing something, but why taking Energy Shield nodes at bigining if thats a life based build? Wouldn't spell damage nodes be better for example?
@Nefczi I thought the same so I went with spell damage aswell

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