[3.7] Champion Ice Spear Totem (Lazy Build For Delve 1000+)

Also I wanted to mention for OP to maybe add to the guide, or anyone else new looking at this build or starting it, here's a few things:

-Get a Malachai's Awakening, pretty much mandatory imo, huge damage boost. If none cheap are available you can buy the prophecy and run the map yourself to make one.
-Before you get Pandemonious use Marylene's Fallacy amulet. It is a huge DPS boost (ice spear crit chance is so high, the 40% less doesn't matter). Make sure you get the best Crit Multi roll you can get

-Don't use Inc Crit Dmg! Controlled Destruction is simply better and gives 10% More dps.

-Make sure you have a 19% or 20% Self-Flagellation jewel! This can help as much as 30% of your damage.

-Until you are comfortable with your damage, get some gloves with corruption "Elemental Weakness on Hit", this will help boost early damage. Get "Enfeeble on hit" gloves once your damage is fine.

-Don't forget to overcap resistance as you need 90% uncapped for when you get cursed to keep 75%

-Here is a search for Jewels
-Here is a search for Sceptres

-You need Pierce somewhere. If you use the helm I recommend you can't get it there, so you have to get it somewhere else. I use Poacher's Aim jewel from an Act 5 reward. Note that Ice Spear stage 2 *does* pierce, but stage 1 does not. It helps a lot for stage 1 to pierce once.
-Get Knockback on a jewel, it will help keep mobs away from totems to encourage stage 2 spear
-On that note, don't forget your Ice Spear has 2 stages and you need to keep mobs *away* from your totems to get full damage. If mobs are on top of your totems, you're doing half damage.

For those with Atziri's Reflection:
-Zealotry is the same dps boost as Hatred but also gives Consecrated ground for slight dps boost (and occasional heal)
-Also Assassin's Mark (shaper) gives more damage than Frostbite (delve)

Skill gems:
Main 6 link to start:
Ice Spear
Multiple Totems
GMP
Controlled Destruction
Cold Penetration
Faster Casting

Once you get Pandemonious, switch Cold Penetration for Hypothermia
If you feel you have enough damage, switch out Faster Casting or Controlled Destruction for Increased Item Rarity
If you get a nice +2 to +4 chest, switch Faster Casting or Controlled Destruction for Empower 4.

I've been trying out the following:

CWDT-IC-Ice Golem
CWDT-Phase Run-Frostbite
Leap Slam-FA-Culling Strike
Cold Snap-BoneChill-IncAOE-Inc Duration
Flame Dash-Faster Casting

I wanted to add arcane surge to flame dash but forgot it won't proc due to BM.

Thoughts??

You should have a curse on your gloves, either Ele Weak on Hit or Enfeeble, so using cwdt-frostbite wouldn't do anything since there's a 1-curse limit (by default).

Otherwise that's pretty much what I'm using (added in cwdt-cold snap per last comment):

lvl 20s: CWDT-Ice Golem-Cold Snap
lvl 1s: CWDT-IC-Phase Run
manual cast: Leap Slam-FA
manual cast: Cold snap-bonechill-IncAoe-IncDur
manual cast: Phase run-IncDur

(and Portal, one blue slot for swapping Rarity with a DPS gem)

I'm wondering if cwdt-phase run is worth it though since it removes frenzy charges.. seems to do that a lot.

You're still using self-flagellation. Does it work together with atziri's reflection?
And I'm not really convinced by the usage of cd. Doesn't the reduced crit do more harm than the increased spell damage helps?

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littlelionman321 wrote:

You're still using self-flagellation. Does it work together with atziri's reflection?
And I'm not really convinced by the usage of cd. Doesn't the reduced crit do more harm than the increased spell damage helps?

-Yes, because we are still cursed. We are just "unaffected by curses". So we get the "being cursed" effect, but aren't affected by the curse itself.

-You can use Path of Building to look at the dps numbers, but basically it's the same story as using the "40% less critical strikes" amulet. Ice Spear stage 2 has an inherent 600% increased critical strike chance.
What this means is it basically crits 50% of the time by default, so the crit chance is super high! So you can essentially lose some of that crit to gain damage.

In my case, enabling CD increases my total DPS by 42.6%. The next closest gem would be Inc Crit Damage at 32%.

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vegeto079 wrote:

-Here is a search for Jewels
-Here is a search for Sceptres

holy shit ive been using the search completely wrong lol

is there a guide or something about this?

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feuerbach wrote:

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vegeto079 wrote:

-Here is a search for Jewels
-Here is a search for Sceptres

holy shit ive been using the search completely wrong lol

is there a guide or something about this?

I googled and found this if you want to watch a video

But essentially the gist of what I do is this:
-Open your character in PoB, empty a Jewel slot
-Create a custom jewel
-While creating the custom jewel, add a custom modifier to it, for example "10% increased global critical strike chance".
-Check how much DPS increase it says it will be if you put it in the empty jewel slot. For me it's 0.3%. Put 0.3 as the weight for that mod.
-Go to a website like poeaffix and find all mods that could apply to the item that you want
-Repeat this using 10 as all numbers (Adds 10 to 10 damage, 10% inc whatever) for a baseline

Using this method will give you a fairly "true dps increase" of equipping an item with very varied mods, as each actual mod is weighted correctly to how much dps it would actually give you.

Once that's all done I sort by the highest available sums of weights, then create a "minimum weight" nearby that amount. For example in the search I put 300, it's arbitrary, just found a decent amount of sceptres at that amount. But you can get 150 sceptres that will give you half the damage :)

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vegeto079 wrote:

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feuerbach wrote:

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vegeto079 wrote:

-Here is a search for Jewels
-Here is a search for Sceptres

holy shit ive been using the search completely wrong lol

is there a guide or something about this?

I googled and found this if you want to watch a video

But essentially the gist of what I do is this:
-Open your character in PoB, empty a Jewel slot
-Create a custom jewel
-While creating the custom jewel, add a custom modifier to it, for example "10% increased global critical strike chance".
-Check how much DPS increase it says it will be if you put it in the empty jewel slot. For me it's 0.3%. Put 0.3 as the weight for that mod.
-Go to a website like poeaffix and find all mods that could apply to the item that you want
-Repeat this using 10 as all numbers (Adds 10 to 10 damage, 10% inc whatever) for a baseline

Using this method will give you a fairly "true dps increase" of equipping an item with very varied mods, as each actual mod is weighted correctly to how much dps it would actually give you.

Once that's all done I sort by the highest available sums of weights, then create a "minimum weight" nearby that amount. For example in the search I put 300, it's arbitrary, just found a decent amount of sceptres at that amount. But you can get 150 sceptres that will give you half the damage :)

fantastic! and much easier than i thought at first!
thanks so much for that, this will help a lot for future gearing/trafing :)

and a quick question regarding the build: could Winds of Change be a good choice? proj.dmg + proj.speed + knockback + life seems like good stats for the build (just need a lucky corruption of course)

So while busy leveling, I thought I wanted to try totem Soulrend. I replaced the 4 link Ice Spear with Soulrend -> GMP -> Swift Affliction -> void Manipulation. (just took some gems I thought would work).

I was very surprised how well the totems was clearing using Soul Rend. I did not try it very long. Maybe from level 55 - 60 or so. Soulrend is about level13 now.

Not sure if it is just me , but sometimes it feel the ice spear don't hit the enemies due to world detail etc. but with the Soulrend there was no escape.

Single target was a bit meh with Soulrend but then again I invested nothing. Just replaced the Ice Spear with Soulrend and the support skills.

Thoughts or is it basically a waste of time since the enemies are still lower content and the soulrend damage will soon be meh ?

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feuerbach wrote:

and a quick question regarding the build: could Winds of Change be a good choice? proj.dmg + proj.speed + knockback + life seems like good stats for the build (just need a lucky corruption of course)

Yes I was thinking of that too, and being able to drop the knockback jewel.

I have my corruption on a Rampage glove and I love the extra mobs rampage kills, I feel it helps kill huge packs at times that totems are having issues targeting the entire pack.

If you can't find a rampage glove or none are available, winds of change is probably a good second to me. Even if I could get a correctly-corrupted Command of the Pit (for free Arcane Surge) I think I'd keep Rampage.

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blaar75 wrote:

Thoughts or is it basically a waste of time since the enemies are still lower content and the soulrend damage will soon be meh ?

I'll try theorycrafting something later with it, but I'm completely unfamiliar with it. I would think the basic structure of the build would be different since you don't get the free ~50% crit chance from ice spear, and then it'd probably just be a different build entirely. But worth looking into, sure.