[3.5] Occultist Cold DoT Caster (Cold Snap + Vortex) WIP

A lot of people are excited about changes to Cold Damage over Time skills like Vortex, Cold Snap and Arctic Breath and so am I. So I tried to whip up a PoB to see what late game potential of the build could be. I didn't use anything TOO crazy, only things hard to get would be Bow craft and Armor corruption, and mb Watcher's Eye would be a bit expensive everything else is quite easy, but none of this things are required, they just let the build shine more.

PoB link - https://pastebin.com/69n0mit9

Build is focusing entirely on Cold DoT and not damage from hits. Also, keep in mind that we will have a Bonechill support and both Cold Snap and Vortex had their damage increased quite substantially, so the numbers will be much higher.

Sixth link for either Cold Snap or Vortex will be either new Bonechill support or Controlled Destruction (depends which skill will do more damage and will the Bonechill support be even worth it)

So a bit of explanation:
1. Mapping skill is Cold Snap, you usually can easily sustain it just by frenzy charges from the Cold Snap itself.
2. On bosses you also need to drop Cold Snap, Vortex(which is instant), and also Orb of Storms and Frost Bomb. (a bit much, but Cold Snap and Vortex do stack and both last a bit, so you have free time to drop the debuffing skills)
3. Build uses EO and EE, last of which is procced by Orb of Storms. So no added cold damage to spells on equipment or jewels.
4. For defenses build uses Chill and Freeze from Ascendancy and the skills themselves, Temporal Chains from Orb of Storms, slow from Aspect of Spider and of course awesome Occultist fast recharge mechanic from Wicked Ward notable. We also get Stun, Freeze and Chill immunity from ascendancy.
5. New crafting system allows 1 additional curse craft (was in one of the videos), so we don't need to spend passives on it.
6. Build also uses mostly rares, so getting resists is not a problem.

A couple of problems I'd like a bit of help:
1. Pathing. I look at passive tree and get a feeling that it is not optimal, but I can't put my finger on it.

Any advises or suggestions are welcome.

I've been planning pretty much the same build. Starting CI and swapping to LL eventually.

This is the tree I came up with. https://pastebin.com/cddwCV8G
Less damage but more ES regen and some QoL like increased duration etc.

Hi! I wrote a guide about my low-life cold snapper last league. Whether you follow the guide or not, I have a feeling that this build of yours will be very similar to mine once it's finished.

edit: OR you could plan a level 100 character in PoB, and craft perfect mods for every gear slot, including a literally perfect Watcher's Eye... My first recommendation would be to check the damage and ES numbers with more realistic gear.

Gave it a whirl as well.. Probably needs some work but just putting it out there. https://pastebin.com/kGfxWAmr

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Cyas wrote:

I've been planning pretty much the same build. Starting CI and swapping to LL eventually.

This is the tree I came up with. https://pastebin.com/cddwCV8G
Less damage but more ES regen and some QoL like increased duration etc.

Don't really see the point of extra regen. While mapping you will get enough regen just from Vile Bastion and on a dangerous boss it won't save you 99 times out of 100.

I thought about Increased Duration, but don't really see the point either, area damage of the same spells doesn't stack and we don't have too many things to do, other then dodge and renew everything. Cold Snap and Frost Bomb have 5s base duration, Orb of Storms has 6s. Only one which is kinda low is Vortex with 3s, but it is instant cast, which makes up for it.

And not getting EO and EE while you go just past them - you are losing so much free damage.

"

cha_siu_bao wrote:

Hi! I wrote a guide about my low-life cold snapper last league. Whether you follow the guide or not, I have a feeling that this build of yours will be very similar to mine once it's finished.

edit: OR you could plan a level 100 character in PoB, and craft perfect mods for every gear slot, including a literally perfect Watcher's Eye... My first recommendation would be to check the damage and ES numbers with more realistic gear.

Like I said, I'm not doing a build guide, just wanted to see what full potential of the build can be. Of course I'm not expecting to hit 13k ES, I will be quite happy with 9-10k even. The same goes for damage.

Also, I've read your guide, its great, but I really, really love Wicked Ward + Soul Strike interaction, so had to come up with something myself. Also thought about LL, but with new crafting options I wanted to have as many rares in the build as possible, so I could use all the cool new toys and also I have a feeling that damage is not going to be a problem and CI offers more defense (chaos immunity + more ES on chest + mb some defensive crafted mods on the chest).

The gear you are using in your PoB configuration is absolutely unrealistic. ES and dps values are missleading because of that.

But other than that...looks like a fun build

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crushak wrote:

The gear you are using in your PoB configuration is absolutely unrealistic. ES and dps values are missleading because of that.

But other than that...looks like a fun build

Thanks for your feedback, I already answered about why I use such gear in the post above.

So, I took a shot at your tree to try and fix some of the pathing issues:

We can take Nullification instead of two 6% ES nodes in the Foresight cluster. This change alone gives us 8% all resists, 3% ES and 25% evasion rating.

We can go through the intelligence nodes at the very top to bridge between the Heart of Ice cluster and Chaos Inoculation instead of staying near the Witch starting area and getting one intelligence and one dexterity node.
We can also do the same by bridging with two intelligence from the socket near Melding to the Foresight cluster instead of the two top nodes.

We can get Frost Walker pathing from Lord of the Dead, which allows you to drop all the starting Witch spell damage nodes (except the first one) to get Elemental Focus: this results in -6% spell damage but gives us one point.

The Celestial Judgment cluster is a fairly unimpressive 12% damage per node since we're getting out penetration from Elemental Equilibrium so we can use the points from that to get Trickery (2 nodes at +15% damage per node plus some bonus stats) and we get another point by getting another -6% spell damage.

We currently are at -12% damage, +10 dex, +10 int but with 2 free points.

We can use one of the two free nodes we have by getting to Unnatural Calm and Elemental Overload by pathing from Frost Walker instead of the two top nodes, giving us +22% damage and -10 int at the cost of a single point.

We therefore arrive at +10%, +10 dex damage with a free point.

I currently have to head out so I'll post where I'm at (and invest the last free point in the Witch starting area for 12% damage): https://pastebin.com/LwxyPB5N

The changes overall give us 8% resistances, 3% ES, 25% evasion rating, 10 dex and 22% damage.

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Maxpoggi wrote:

https://pastebin.com/LwxyPB5N
The changes overall give us 8% resistances, 3% ES, 25% evasion rating, 10 dex and 22% damage.

Thx mate, I agree with almost every change except trading 10 dex for 10 int - build needs dex (bow req, faster attacks, etc.) and every little bit helps, and 10 int is negligible in terms of ES/Mana. Also I have an idea about pathing in the top part of the tree - drop 4 nodes leading to Heart of Ice, drop 12% witch start spell damage node, and 10 int above Watcher's Eye slot to go to Whispers of Doom and we can go tri-curse for any 3 curses of the following list:
1. Despair (from Witchfire brew)
2. Temp chains
3. Enfeeble
4. Frostbite
5. Ele weakness

Although I'm not sure about curses, usually maps are not a problem and in the only places we would really like to make monsters weaker, like Shaper Guardians, Shaper/Elder/Uber Elder etc. - curses are almost useless.