End Game is Close...? Need Tips on Character

Hi, I have a level 66 Elementalist and I have started finding map pieces. I was wondering if you guys could take a look at her and give me some tips? It's taken me about a week to get this far, and I really don't want to get to the end and find out I have to redo her. Here is a link to her skill tree.

Stats:
1.3k Hp
821 ES
1k Mana
Res: 70F-72C-76/80L

My main skills are Freezing Pulse, Cold Snap, Frost Bomb, and Stone Golem. My character page is unlocked if you need/want to look at her gear/gems.

Thanks in advance for the help and please let me know if you need more information.

I can't look at your tree because I'm on my phone right now, but you definitely want more life or ES and maxed elemental resistances.

You should probably have around 3k life for Kitava and you want to go to around 4-5k by the time you hit yellow maps. If you use ES instead, you should have around 50% more, and I haven't really played hybrid builds, but I'm guessing the value would be something in between.

Depending on whether you go for life or ES, you should really have it as a stat on every piece of gear other than your weapons, and you might even consider getting something with life or ES and resistances as wn offhand instead of prioritising damage.

Damage wise you should focus on a single skill, ideally in a 5-linked rare armour or a Tabula Rasa, and support it with gems that grant more damage or important utilities for your skill.

From the skills you have, the best alternative would be Freezing Pulse. If you do not have the unique jewel First Snow socketed in an appropriate slot in your skill tree, you should get Lesser (or Greater) Multiple Projectiles. Other than that, good supports are Spell Echo, Hypothermia, Controlled Destruction, and Faster Projectiles.

Along with the damage supports, it's important to increase the area in which you deal damage (adding projectiles if you don't get them from the jewel) and the range (Freezing Pulse will shoot further with higher projectile speed; also, its damage falls off over time, so faster projectiles mean stronger hits against further enemies).

For strong enemies you can use Frost Bomb and Cold Snap before starting to hit them with Freezing Pulse so that their resistance is lowered and they are chilled from Cold Snap. You can also pick up Frostbite and curse your enemies to lower their cold resistance further.

Ice Nova probably won't be very useful to you for now. Link Faster Casting to your Flame Dash for faster movement, and if you can get Cast when Damage Taken on level 1 and link it to Immortal Call on level 3 at most.

Thank you for the help! I will take a look at my skills and get them fixed. I do have First Snow socketed, but just the one I got from the story. Also, should I be doing something other than ES? Most of the gear for witch that I found had it on it, so I thought I was supposed to be using it.

Hi there,

I think you should specialize in either minions or spells bcos you will just have not enough passives to support both.

You have invested the most of your passive skill points to spell damage (cold)
therefore it´s obvious way to go.

"

Tuatara6 wrote:

Also, should I be doing something other than ES? Most of the gear for witch that I found had it on it, so I thought I was supposed to be using it.

Not really bcos ES requires very good items you just don´t have right now (or can´t afford to buy).

I would suggest to go life + MoM (Mind over matter) you have already taken.

MoM will mitigate 30% incoming damage till you have enough mana (unreserved for auras).

You should also invest much more to life. Discipline and Training and Devotion passives are nearby.

Are you familiar with trading? You can buy some starting gear with life and resistances pretty cheap or just farm for stuff.
The Blood Aqueduct in act 9 is easy to access and you can farm it safely or any area you like in act 10.
Once you will fix your gems, get more life while keeping resistances close to 75 you can try to farm tier 1 maps (after finishing the story ofc).

Hi Rakiii,

Thank you for the reply! I have not tried out trading yet. I wasn't sure what to be looking for and it sounded a bit complicated. As for the minion passives, I'll get them moved. I had been using Zombies as meat shields but their kinda useless in boss fights. I had also been trying to use Stone Golem's taunt but it doesn't seem to work on bosses either.

"

Rakiii wrote:

MoM will mitigate 30% incoming damage till you have enough mana (unreserved for auras).

Will my mana naturally scale or should I pick up a few more passives for this as well? Also, should I worry about more spell/cold damage or should I be fine? Sorry for all the questions, this is my first character on PoE and it seems to be a lot more narrow/focused than D3/ROS(I played on the 360).

"

Tuatara6 wrote:

As for the minion passives, I'll get them moved. I had been using Zombies as meat shields but their kinda useless in boss fights. I had also been trying to use Stone Golem's taunt but it doesn't seem to work on bosses either.

Try to use decoy totem + stone golem (linked with minion elemental resistances) and btw taunt works on bosses now.
They should distract enemies while you´re killing them.

"

Tuatara6 wrote:

Will my mana naturally scale or should I pick up a few more passives for this as well? Also, should I worry about more spell/cold damage or should I be fine? Sorry for all the questions, this is my first character on PoE and it seems to be a lot more narrow/focused than D3/ROS(I played on the 360).

You´re getting a bit mana each level and you have more than enough mana now.
You can even use one herald (herald of ice) + clarity now.

You will take Inspiration passive later but getting life should be your priority right now.

You should aim for 150% increased life from the tree.

You have easy access to Quick recovery, Devotion and all 5% life nodes nearby.

Characters go either critical route or no crit.
If you go no critical you should take Elemental overload.

Your passive tree is not optimal but that´s normal for new player.

f.e. you should connect Retribution with Discipline and training. You would drop 10 inteligence nodes then.

Thank you so much for the help! I will try and get my skill tree sorted out. This is what I have so far and I made it to 1.7k hp. I fought Lumeris and Solaris and it went pretty well. Now I just have to figure out gear, which hopefully won't be too hard. Again, thank you for the help. I sorta feel like I know what I'm doing now XD.

I realize it's been a little over a week, but I wasn't sure if I should start a new thread or not. I have reached endgame and have been messing around with my build. I was hoping you guys(or vets in general) could take a look at them and see what you think?

Here is the Witch version and here is the Scion version. I set these to level 80 in the builder. They should more or less be the same except the ascendancies.

As for items, I had a Taryns Shiver drop the other night and it seems pretty cool (sorry, I don't know how to link items but character is still visible).

Skills:
Stone Golem+Minion HP Support.
Cold Snap+Efficacy+Ele Proliferation+Increase AoE.
Frost Bomb+Efficacy+Increased AoE
Flame Dash +Casting Speed
Freezing Pulse+Echo+Faster Casting+Cold Pen
Frost Nova+Cast on Stun
Herald of Ice and Frostbite.

Also, if I have the extra golem from witch, can I summon the same golem twice?

Thank you in advance for taking a look at these!

Edit: Forgot Frost Nova

I can't check your skill tree because I'm on my phone (like last time).

Here are my thoughts on the skill setup:

Stone Golem: Consider Minion and Totem Elemental Resistance if you don't use the Elementalist's Liege of the Primordial Ascendency notable.

Stone Golem as a defensive choice is fine, but you will want it to survive.

Cold Snap: Cold Snap mainly applies chill as a ground effect. Spreading it to other enemies via Proliferation won't work well. If you want to use this as a damage skill, use Hypothermia Support instead to increase the damage over time and the chill effect. Also, Concentrated Effect would probably be better than Increased Area of Effect.

If you want it for its utility value, use Faster Casting instead, or link a low level version to Cast When Damage taken. Also switch Efficacy for increased Duration in that case.

Frost Bomb: Efficacy isn't really necessary for this. You should treat it as a utility skill to debuff enemies that are hard to kill. Use the same supports as the utility loadout for Cold Snap, and you can also link it to CwDT.

Freezing Pulse: I recommend Hypothermia, especially considering you have Cold Snap to guarantee chill, if your enemy has too high HP for you to chill it with damage (not likely though, since it would mean that you need over 300 hits to kill it, and in that case you would have other problems).

Controlled Destruction is probably also a good idea, but you can keep a higher crit rate for Freezes if you prefer it that way.

If you don't use The First Snow, getting Lesser or Greater Multiple Projectiles is important.

Faster Casting is usually not a great choice, because you can easily pick up cast speed on gear or the skill tree, and it has diminishing returns as a support gem.

Cold Penetration is similar, but less available. Still, one of the other supports I mentioned is likely better.

Ice Nova: Just drop this entirely. You don't want to be stunned in the first place, and it won't deal significant damage without support gems anyway.

You can summon the same golem twice, if you have an increased maximum, but each buff can only affect you once. I recommend the Lightning Golem in that case. It can share the Minion Life Support with the Stone Golem.

Thank you for your help again!

So for ascendancies as Witch I took Paragon of Calamity, Mastermind of Discord, and Elemental Liege. As Scion I took Elementalist, Inquisitor, and the ranger Dex node and skill point. Hypothermia looks great, but I'm having problems with having enough dex to level some of the greens. Is there a certain level I should be shooting for?

So for skills:

Stone Golem- Alright, so looks like for Scion I'll need the extra support. Also, I'll take a look at Lightning golem. I was originally using it but found the taunt on stone golem.

Cold Snap- This is honestly almost more of a main skill than Freezing pulse. I use it to clear waves and minions. I also use it on bosses so they take damage while I'm moving around. Also I was using proliferation because the initial hit seems to have a high freeze chance and with frenzy charges it can be handy to clear out minions fast(they still take dot while frozen). I will take a look at adding hypothermia to it, but I definitely want to add the support to freezing pulse. Also, does faster casting effect the cd or just the animation speed? Cause the animation is almost instant. I will also take a look at concentrated effect. I'm a little worried it'll make it too easy for mobs to walk out of it though.

Frost Bomb- Efficacy increases the duration of frost bomb, so the debuff lasts longer. At least that's what I understood from the wiki, but I may be using the wrong support for that. I also used the AoE because bosses like to move around a lot and its hard corralling them into its area.

Freezing Pulse- Hypothermia definitively looks promising. I've mainly been avoiding it because of the dex problem I mentioned earlier. Although, now that I say that I realize I have cold pen on so I have no idea why I didn't use it. I do have 1 First Snow set up for both builds. I was hoping to get two but I've been having problems finding somewhere to put the second one.

Ice Nova- This is actually a utility skill. Initially I had Proliferation attached to it as well, which basically guaranteed everything in the vicinity was frozen. Even then it appears to have a high freeze chance. That way when I get stunned or block a stun everything is immediately frozen and I can escape. It was especially helpful in Delve mines. I was having trouble getting double reds for immortal call so I was using this instead. Plus On Stun doesn't have level requirements.

Also I apologize, I should have explained my skill uses before hand so you knew what I was going for @_@.