[3.3] All Uniques Whispering Ice - 2ex Total (All Content, Shaper/Elder Deathless)




TL;DR https://pastebin.com/iS7fmbMV

My Character:
https://www.pathofexile.com/account/view-profile/skyscan/characters?characterName=FaithInTheIce

Note: Path of Building character import does not work correctly for Whispering Ice! See page 7 for details. Use pastebin above or manually enter yourself.
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2069241/page/7#p15215306

Why?


If you have all of uniques/gems you should be getting identical results. If you've never been able to do end-game content, this is your chance. All you need to do is get the exact uniques below, follow the tree and skill gems exactly and you'll be cruising through the whole game in no-time. There's very little variance in this build, everyone who makes this build should be able to do all content in poe.

3.3 Changes (buff)



-Swap out Purity of Fire for Vaal Impurity of Fire
-Remove duplicate vaal discpline (saves 1 gem slot) - i replaced gem slot with vaal grace
-Chilled ground optimized!! wohooo

>>Huge damage increases if you're able to corrupt %int on your belt or rings

3.2 Changes (buff)



-Drop Unwavering faith in favor of Harmony of Purpose

Showcase


Atziri Deathless @ Lv 70


T16 Rare Corrupted @ Lv 84



Took around 5 minutes to kill the boss. Without increased life it'll take less. Died a couple times to stupid mistakes. If you're not bad at the game (unlike me), then this should be easy deathless, as even with 35% boss damage he doesn't get close to 1 shotting.


All red-tier Elder Guardians and Elder in under 10 minutes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QprwW-x26WA
Level 86 at the time. Tier 11-13.


Shaper Deathless - No Flasks Needed

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSINKnzQids
Forgot to record until the last stage. Good showcase of damage. His 4 guardians in rare corrupted maps were harder, but not by much.


Gear





Tip: Whisper people without a buyout price to get high rolls for cheap


Equipment



These were the prices in 3.1 Abyss League. Prices will vary as the meta evolves.

Uniques:
The Whispering Ice (18% int) - 1c + 350 jewellers
The Vertex - 4c
Shavronne's Wrappings - 1ex
Shaper's Touch - 5c
Sin Trek - 1c
Astramentis - 20c
Perandus Signet - 12c
Perandus Signet - 12c
Cyclopean Coil - 1c
Kiara's Determination - 1c
Rumi's Concoction - 2c
Pure Talent - 10c
Watcher's Eye - 15c (freeze immune only)
Fertile Mind (2) - 1c each
Brute Force Solution - 1c

None Uniques:
2 Rare Jewels with 3 lines each - 1-5c
3 Flasks

Total Cost:
1ex 100c 350 jewellers

Buying jewels

Here's a poe.trade link: http://poe.trade/search/enayamotiharis

I'd recommend whispering the people without a b/o and offering 1c. They're not valued, and this would be the only build that uses them



Alternatively, if you have a lot of currency you can buy Emperor's Wit and Emperor's Mastery. But they're maybe 10% better than the 1c jewels above, and they're both multiple exalted. I have one, just because I liked to have all uniques. Definitely not required.

Izaro's Turmoil is another option. It provides the most amount of damage, but you give up around 300 energy shield. You can decide whether or not it's worth it as the build is already very tanky.


Izaro's Turmoil in comparison to this:




Unforseen costs: Gems. Purity gems are very cheap, so I wouldn't recommend leveling these yourself. Focus on the 5 support gems for icestorm.

What to spend more?

High rolls on all uniques - ???
20 Quality your weapon support gems - 1-2ex
Watcher's Eye Vitality leech - 2-3ex

Build Concept:


This build is centered around The Whispering Ice unique staff. It grants us a skill called icestorm, which functions similarly to fire storm. However, it has an important modifier. First, we get 1% spell damage per 10 int. But more importantly we get 1 to 3 cold damage per 10 int added to icestorm. The goal of the build is to achieve as much int as possible as int counts for both defense and offense. Consequently, whispering ice passive trees traverse oddly, because we want to get as much int as possible and only take nodes that have super-high value or also come with int. This is also why we use all uniques for gear, because Perandus Signet (rings) will scale int for each unique we're wearing.

There are a lot of synergies at play with this build. Guardian ascendency means that the huge mana pool we get from stacking so much int translates into even more energy shield. The new uniques that were released from 3.1 also pair excellently with this build. Cyclopean coil not only gives us a massive DPS increase from the %attributes, but it also makes the build immune to ignite and shock. This frees up our flasks for better utility.

Using all uniques would normally mean we'd lack in resistances. However, because Whispering Ice passive trees encourages traveling, we're able to take all of the good aura nodes. This in turn lets us use all 4 puritys to easily cap resistances despite the fact that our gear gives us almost no resistances. The elemental purity auras also have the side bonus of extra elemental defenses other builds usually do not get.

The affordability comes from the fact that most of these uniques are not expensive and none of the gear requires more than a 4-link. In fact, do not 5 or 6 link as it's a complete waste of currency. Despite the entire gear set not costing a lot, the results are impressive to say the least.

Summary:


Tooltip

Tooltip is not a good indication of real dps, but you can use it to track your progress. At level 90 you should be hitting around this tooltip with arcane surge(lv 10), elemental overload, and conc effect.

Offensive Stats: 30k+ per hit in PoB (few million dps icestorm? hard to calculate), 2.86 cast/s, -105% fire res

Defensive Stats: 10k ES, 81 all res, 8k EV / 4k Armour, Super Regen and Max Block 20% of the time, 1.6k ES regen/s (goes up to like 4k with Time of Need), 1% leech, Chilled Ground, 100% Immunity to freeze/shock/ignite

Pros:
-Can do all content
-Very very easy to build
-Excellent party play support
-Good damage, good defense
-Easy to level once you get to level 33

Con:
-Maps slowly
-Bad league starter
-Limited SSF viability

Additional Build Info:


==Ascendancy==
{Guardian}
Radiant Faith > Time of Need > Bastion of Hope > Harmony of Purpose

==Pantheons:==
Soul of the Brine King
Soul of Tokuhama (upgrade soul for more regen)

==Bandits:==
Kill all for 2 passive points

==Gem links:== (-- means link them, separate line or comma means no need for link)
Weapon: Scorching Ray--Cast While Channeling, Cold to Fire, Elemental Focus, Fire Penetration, Spell Cascade/Concentrated Effect
Clarity(lv 1)
Discpline
Vitality
Purity of Elements
Purity of Lightning
Purity of Ice
Vaal Impurity of Fire
Blood Magic(lv 14)-Aura 1-Aura 2
Cast When Damage Taken--Stone Golem--Immortal Call--Increased Duration
Flame Dash--Flammability--Arcane Surge--Increased Duration
Decoy Totem
Vaal Discpline

Note: Do not link Decoy Totem with Blood Magic.
Tip: Socket Discipline and Vitality into The Vertex, because they are the only auras that benefit from +1 gem level.

==Auras:==
https://poe.mikelat.com/#AmhM85/rDHb.Wfb/9b.iVd/tr.rL

==Flask Options:==
Jade Flask (+3000 Evasion) is hilariously good, because Shaper's Touch gloves give us 360% Evasion
Sulphur Flask is nice for the defensive and offensive benefits
Rumi's is good to proc Bastion of Hope for stun immunity
Kiara's Determination is a fail-safe, but by no means necessary for freeze/stun immunity
Quicksilver is nice for when you do bad layouts
Ruby/Sapphire/Topaz swap when necessary

The Wise Oak can be used for defenses, as your resistances will be 86/86/106. It will not, however, provide any damage increase.

==Passive Tree:==
Click Here

==Jewel Locations==
It's important you put these jewel in the correct sockets, otherwise your dex will be higher than strength and you won't get ignite immunity.

Spoiler

Brute Force Solution:

Fertile Mind 1:

Fertile Mind 2:

Overlap node from 2 Fertile Minds is interesting:



==Map Mods:==
Any map mod except elemental reflect and no mana regen.

Leveling Guide:


Spoiler

Hardcore: It's dangerous to level with an int passive tree. I would recommend going freezing pulse totems and respec at level 68.

==Leveling from 1 to 33==

Passive Tree (18 points)

I would recommend using freezing pulse or frost bolt. Then pick up the 2 jewel sockets and elemental overload for the threshold jewels.

These are the uniques I'd use early on


Don't forget that you can equip perandus signet at level 1, for increased experience gained. Don't worry about stats, because at level 20 we can equip astramentis.

At level 24 start using Purity of Elements and Discpline Auras.

==Leveling from 33 to 46==

Passive Tree (56 points)

At level 33 you can equip whispering ice. At this point you want to do normal lab and pick up Radiant Faith. Before running lab equip a Wall of Brambles for the physical damage reduction. I would keep this equip all the way until shavs.



In addition. We will be picking up the hybrid life/es wheels. You can use The Sorrow of the Divine as a great hybrid flask.


I would not recommend using Cast While Channeling while leveling. Instead, you can replace scorching ray with spell echo, and CWC with faster casting. Or you can pick up the dual totem node near the Templar aura nodes and use spell totems.

If you do decide to CwC early on these are awesome gloves to use.


You do not need to do cruel or merciless lab. You can wait until level 68+.

==Leveling from 46 to 68==

Passive Tree (88 points)

This is the most dangerous part of the level process, because almost all of our passives will be travel nodes. You will want to get the travel node right next to each aura cluster in the passive tree. So when level 68 comes, we can respec out of the life wheels and pick up all the aura nodes at once.

Before you reach level 68 you want to make sure you've gotten all of you resistance nodes and aura nodes in the passive tree. This is so your resistances stay capped and you can use all of the auras when you equip shavs. This is the time to respec out of nodes we won't be using (like the hybrid life nodes) and completing our resistances. And take Zealot's Oath.

Level to 68 in blood aqueducts (if you're behind in levels). Equip all of your uniques. Go kill Kitava now.




Alternative Version - Ice with no elemental conversion


These are a few advantages to using the Ice version
1. It's cheaper, because we don't need vitality watcher's eye to leech as we can use Atziri's Promise
2. It's more defensive, because we use blight, use grace, and do cold damage
These are a few disadvantages to using the Ice version.
1. It's damage is lower (around 10-15% less), because we don't get scorching ray and cold conversion benefit
2. It's more clunky to use, because we need to cast frost bomb and upkeep atziri's flask

Here's what we need to change:

-Use Atziri's Promise flask
-Drop Cold to Fire in favor of Hypothermia
-Drop Scorching Ray in favor of Blight
-Re-allocate passives for more int
-Use Frost Bomb for extra -20 cold res
-Use grace for a massive 30k EV boost
-Use level 4 enlighten to make room for grace

Auras: https://poe.mikelat.com/#AmhM85/rDHb.Wfb/tNrp.Zp/tr.75
Reworked PoB: https://pastebin.com/B9n4YDYD
Passive Tree: http://poeurl.com/bJAg

Alternative Version - Quad Totems



TLDR; https://pastebin.com/Uy3XUQ12
Full Shaper Run; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOexuAIkSSE

Changes:
-Hierophant instead of Guardian
-Get the following Hierophant Keystones; Pursuit of Faith, Ritual Awakening, Divine Guidance, Sanctuary of Thought
-Take out Ghost Reaver
-Take out 1 jewel socket near ghost reaver
-Take ancestral bond
-Take out scorching ray, cast while channeling from weapon
-Socket in faster casting, spell totem into weapon
-Take out decoy totem
-Socket in enduring cry
-Unallocate elemental overload

It's a much different play style. It's not nearly as tanky as the guardian version, so I didn't like it as much. But those of you who prefer totems, and like to do very risky map mods this is preferable.
Pros:
+Can do elemental reflect and other dangerous map mods safely
+Maps faster
Cons:
+Less defensive, easier to die if you play risky

I'm not sure how the damage compares, it is very dependent on the boss. The ice storm damage is lower, and the totems don't cast nearly as fast. But with 4 totems the total number of them is higher. I was doing bosses slower with totems though.

Note that you lose elemental overload and it's much harder to proc arcane surge because of reduced mana cost of skills.

FAQ:


Do I need to 6-link Whispering Ice?
No, icestorm will be supported by all gems socketed into the staff, regardless of their links.

My icestorm isn't casting when I use scorching ray!
You need to link cast while channeling and scorching ray together. It's the only link you need in the staff.

What's the DPS?
No clue. But WI builds with less than half the tooltip we get can do shaper comfortably.

How are you inflicting chilled ground if icestorm is using elemental focus?
Icestorm creates a chilled ground effect that is not affected by elemental focus support.

I can't afford shav's, Can I use something else??
Yes, you can use Solaris Lorica, but you'll lose 1.5k ES.


Why'd you get the 2 6% spell damages near scion?
Pure Talent Unique jewel gives +25 all stats if you're touching the scion starting area

Can I use Black Sun Crest?
No, you lose over 1.2k ES for 7% damage increase.

Why are you using a level 14 bloodmagic?
To reserve the maximum amount of life, which gains us more armour from guardian ascedency

Can I use a different ascendancy?
Scion - Guardian+Occultist. ~30% more damage, but drastically less defenses, would not recommend.

Can I leech with this build?
Yes, use a Watcher's eye with Discipline's Energy Shield on Hit, or Vitality's % life leech. Or drop Vitality and run Anger for % fire leech.


You can also use leech boot enchants. And if you drop avatar of fire (see Ice Version above) you can use atziri flask to leech.

Lastly you can get an Astramentis with corrupted (0.2% fire damage leeched as life), but you'll lose the +16 all stat modifier.

If I don't have vitality leech Watcher's Eye, do I need to run vitality?
No, run Grace or Anger. Shaper's Touch gloves gives us 360% increased evasion, Grace boosts our evasion to 30k. Anger gives us 7% more damage, but lets us use a Watcher's Eye fire leech jewel.

Auras: https://poe.mikelat.com/#5XWs95/tNrp.ei/tr.b_/rDHb.rL

Remember to use a lv 3 enlighten in The Vertex, it will get +1 so you don't have to obtain a lv 4 enlighten.

Why not use Atziri's Promise?
Avatar of Fire means we can only do fire damage. No chaos = no leech or damage increase

Can I self-cast?
No, icestorm has a slow cast speed (1s cast time) and costs a lot of mana. Cast while channeling skips cast speed entirely. You lose damage and you lose ES from needing more mana to manually cast. You also get a less multi with spell echo, whereas scorching ray and cast while channeling both give more multis to icestorm.

As stated in the post below, this build is still viable if you want to manually cast.

Can I use blight instead of scorching ray?
Yes, you will lose the -24% fire res scorching ray provides.

What do I want on my 2 rare jewels?
Energy shield and int. +10 int is better than tier 1 cold/fire damage to spells. Try cobalt jewels to get them cheap.

Why are you using a decoy totem?
Icestorm stacks in place, we don't want the target to move out of it. It's mostly for bosses, but you may also want to use it when running very dangerous mods on red maps.

Can I play this build on hardcore?
Yes, you won't have a problem.

Why are you using a ruby flask?
If you have a watcher's eye jewel that has "Take % of physical as X element", you want to have a flask that matches that extra element. Ruby is also good for atziri farming. For general mapping, use another sulfur flask with poison or curse immunity.

Question on decisions I made in passive tree or gem choice? Ask below and I'll do my best to answer in a timely manner.

You're welcome to ask me questions in game as well (as some of you are already doing).

Final Thoughts:


I've completed all content path of exile has to offer in 3.1 with this build. From Uber Atziri, Elder, Shaper, All Guardians, Pale Council (lol), 157/157 Atlas, etc. Didn't have any trouble with any of it, probably the smoothest leveling experience I've ever had in PoE.

There is a singular reason why you might die with this build. True reflect from Atziri Mirror and Racecourse (T12). Because icestorm is a duration spell you can't "turn it off" when that Racecourse boss puts on their true reflect aura. So be careful for how long you channel against those 2 bosses.

Decoy totem has been really useful throughout the entire game. It helps keeps bosses in place for icestorm to stack its damage. I've used it previously for other builds, but it gets the most mileage with icestorm.

A lot of people following this build have had concerns with obtaining leech. To me it has not felt necessary as Guardian's Time of Need and other great defenses tend to carry the build. However, as shown in the Elder/Guardian video Watcher's Eye leech lets us facetank everything. Keep in mind that jewel literally doubles the cost of the build. So if you can't afford it don't let that deter you from trying this build out.

Updates: (2019-01-22)


I haven't updated this guide since 3.3, but it is still viable in 3.5 to some extent. Not much has changed except for the passive tree. Thank you to those of you who are responding to others' questions.
Last edited by FoldedCorner on Jan 22, 2019, 6:26:43 PM
Last bumped on Jul 20, 2020, 11:59:37 PM
Ah the good old classic pure unique wearing whispering ice, it was my staple back in 2.6 and I dusted it off again this league to see how it would do and ended up with a few trees very similar to yours. I 100% prefer self cast over cwc and always end up with better dps that way due to frostbomb and different cast speed supports but I do understand that there is just a fundamental playstyle difference between the two and people have their preferences.

I took a look at your tree and there are a few more efficient pathing options with better int/es so I made those changes to get an extra 259 ES, 3587 to average damage and 231 Int for extra storm duration while keeping the tree at lvl 91 :)

https://pastebin.com/1vxZfyzs

I cut two aura nodes, path of the savant, void barrier and thiefs craft as those require you to path through too many bad nodes. I changed the jewels around adding in a brute force and fertile mind, they are easy to buy and better value. I picked up elementalist, Faith and steel and change the dex pathing nodes into Int ones

Good taste in gear choices, its all exactly what I chose too
Last edited by WaffleT on Jan 8, 2018, 4:27:30 AM
"
WaffleT wrote:
Ah the good old classic pure unique wearing whispering ice, it was my staple back in 2.6 and I dusted it off again this league to see how it would do and ended up with a few trees very similar to yours. I 100% prefer self cast over cwc and always end up with better dps that way due to frostbomb and different cast speed supports but I do understand that there is just a fundamental playstyle difference between the two and people have their preferences.

I took a look at your tree and there are a few more efficient pathing options with better int/es so I made those changes to get an extra 259 ES, 3587 to average damage and 231 Int for extra storm duration while keeping the tree at lvl 91 :)

https://pastebin.com/1vxZfyzs

I cut two aura nodes, path of the savant, void barrier and thiefs craft as those require you to path through too many bad nodes. I changed the jewels around adding in a brute force and fertile mind, they are easy to buy and better value. I picked up elementalist, Faith and steel and change the dex pathing nodes into Int ones

Good taste in gear choices, its all exactly what I chose too

Hmm, brute force solution does seem a better option. I saw it in a previous iteration from 2.6 as well. Thanks for the suggestion, I'll probably end up repathing to accommodate those passive tree changes.

I think self-cast means you have to give up too much compared to CWC, but obviously if you prefer the playstyle of self-cast..

After I saw the cheap prices of shavs and astramentis I couldn't resist giving it a go :) Very happy with the results.
Updated some of the info. Will post shaper, red-tier elder, and guardians when I get the chance.
Added a section for buying jewels with a poe.trade link. Corrected some spelling mistakes. Cleaned up guide visually a bit.

Will add videos, but I'm focusing on completing challenges at the moment. Shaper is still 60c+ to run, so the next video will be red-tier elder when I get him to spawn in the red maps.
Last edited by FoldedCorner on Jan 9, 2018, 12:02:01 PM
Did you kill the bandits or pick resistances or?
"
Jakestation wrote:
Did you kill the bandits or pick resistances or?

Thank you for mentioning this. I had forgotten to include that in the text guide. The Path of Building link shows the bandits, you'll want to kill all.
This seems like a great / fun build. Just what I'm looking for. My only question is, how slow is "slow" for mapping? I generally only do maps, while sometimes going into atziri / lab or a boss or two. Is it really bad or just slower than usual.
"
cacapipijet wrote:
This seems like a great / fun build. Just what I'm looking for. My only question is, how slow is "slow" for mapping? I generally only do maps, while sometimes going into atziri / lab or a boss or two. Is it really bad or just slower than usual.

Not my build or video, but here's Whispering Ice CWC Scorching Ray clear speed on a tier 15.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5knRURkizso

It's not terrible. And it's very good against abyss cracks. But if clear speed is everything to you then this isn't a build you'd like to play.

Because I'm referencing this guys video, here's a the berserker variant of this build. I didn't like it as much, because it's less damage, less effective life, and less defenses. But worth considering if you don't like energy shield. https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1931384
Last edited by FoldedCorner on Jan 9, 2018, 8:30:54 PM
It would be also great if you add info about leveling (especialy early on, before you can equip Whispering Ice). I leveled with sunder and dual gorebreakers --> dual brightbeaks till 33, then selfcast ice storm till 38, then it's pure pleasure) But I got all good leveling gear (Tabula, The Screaming Eagle, Gorebreaker, Brightbeak, good gloves and rings). Without these items leveling to 33 with this tree might become a nightmare. And regrets are for the weak)

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