[0.9.11] Ice Witch CI crit build

how much ES should i have before i put a point into CI?

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aimlessgun wrote:

It's attack speed so it doesn't matter for witches anyways. What Blood Rage does is give you Frenzy charges, which give you 5% cast speed per charge. With CI, you lose no HP to blood rage, so it's basically free 15% cast speed, since it refreshes itself.

Ah I see. Just for the Frenzy charge.

Is it worth leveling that gem, then?

Could anybody post their later-level gem combos for Freezing Pulse / Ice Spear? Level 31 and don't know if ill be able to compensate for the damage decrease if I grab greater/lesser projectile

Also, do people use Cold Snap instead? At this point im using a totem build (don't have a gem) but i've heard good things.

OP and all others posting their passive builds, this motivated me to start a CI/Cold witch. 480 some ES without CI yet and im just ROLLING in Cruel atm.

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Aksys wrote:

how much ES should i have before i put a point into CI?

I switched to CI when I had about 2000 ES including my aura. So far its working fine on merciless with about 3200 ES and my gear is quite crappy. (Edit: I am usually playing in a party with a melee templer and CI/crit Shadow. But I guess I wont do too bad solo).
I strongly recommend getting Blood Rage. It improves your casting speed greatly for little mana costs. Combined with my faster cast speed gem and the castspeed aura from the Shadow I am playing with my castspeed is just insane. I have to drink mana pots constantly but this isnt much of a problem since I got a pot that refills on crit strikes.

If I get better gear I might also be able to kick out 2 or 3 ES nodes and get some more dmg because it is quite low. Hope I can change that by taking all the crit chance passives in the next levels. But then there wont be any points left for increased crit dam, so I will have to accept only getting crit multiplier from supp gem.

The main problem with my build is the low mana. I only have 467 mana and with ES and manareg aura I only have 130 mana left for casting. I assume that will become an issue once I am able to link more gems to my freezing pulse.

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akira115 wrote:

Could anybody post their later-level gem combos for Freezing Pulse / Ice Spear? Level 31 and don't know if ill be able to compensate for the damage decrease if I grab greater/lesser projectile

Concerning freezing pulse I am aiming for Freezing Pulse+Cast Speed+Crit Chance+Crit Dmg+lesser multi projectiles. Mana costs will be insane though. Thats why I will be taking additional 40% manareg instead of 2 crit multipliers on the tree but I dont know yet if thats enough to make up for the manacosts ;)

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Torgen wrote:

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Aksys wrote:

how much ES should i have before i put a point into CI?

I switched to CI when I had about 2000 ES including my aura. So far its working fine on merciless with about 3200 ES and my gear is quite crappy. (Edit: I am usually playing in a party with a melee templer and CI/crit Shadow. But I guess I wont do too bad solo).
I strongly recommend getting Blood Rage. It improves your casting speed greatly for little mana costs. Combined with my faster cast speed gem and the castspeed aura from the Shadow I am playing with my castspeed is just insane. I have to drink mana pots constantly but this isnt much of a problem since I got a pot that refills on crit strikes.

If I get better gear I might also be able to kick out 2 or 3 ES nodes and get some more dmg because it is quite low. Hope I can change that by taking all the crit chance passives in the next levels. But then there wont be any points left for increased crit dam, so I will have to accept only getting crit multiplier from supp gem.

The main problem with my build is the low mana. I only have 467 mana and with ES and manareg aura I only have 130 mana left for casting. I assume that will become an issue once I am able to link more gems to my freezing pulse.

So you think ice crit don't work alone in the end game? this is important to me because i dont have friends on my lvl to play and i want to clean engame maps alone.

I'm in lvl 41 and i can clean easy maps lvl 45-46, my damage is to low but the crowd control is pretty awesome.

Mh at the moment I am really having trouble solo. My dps is too low, my crit chance is too low and my crit multiplier as well. Furthermore I run out of mana pots all the time.

Just thinking about switching from wands to daggers for more crit chance and thus more freezes. Did anyone try that yet?

Btw my gear is utter crap and I didnt think that finding anything good would be so insanely hard on high level. And dying all the time doesnt make it much easier to find stuff :P

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Torgen wrote:

Mh at the moment I am really having trouble solo. My dps is too low, my crit chance is too low and my crit multiplier as well. Furthermore I run out of mana pots all the time.

Just thinking about switching from wands to daggers for more crit chance and thus more freezes. Did anyone try that yet?

Btw my gear is utter crap and I didnt think that finding anything good would be so insanely hard on high level. And dying all the time doesnt make it much easier to find stuff :P

What is your level? tes in order to make the character works, in my experience, you need to stack a lot of crit chance and mana regeneration, and a few fast cast rate; i'm doing ruthless easy, but i dont know if in the engame will be viable build. (in your equipment)

Thanks for this build, i personally love it!

I was just wondering what gems and support gems people are using. Maybe someone can go out of their way to post their items please. Thanks in advance :)

What is the ups of taking so much spell crit chance/normal crit? I know im new, i thought the crit chance is maxed to 100% or something? why go past that?

Also did i do a good job picking up those passives for further leveling , up to max level?

Also nobody is picking up any increased cast speed pasives why? and what do you think of the mana gain per kill?
I might have more questions but thats all for now, reply pls?

darkwish, crit% applies to your base crit. So if a spell has 6% base crit, +50% crit means 50% of the base crit, or .5 x 6% = 3% more crit.

There aren't that many increased cast speed passives, but they're better than say a 5-6% dmg passive if that's what your choices are. If you're asking about the ones near the witch start, the crit ones are better for a crit build. The ones near the shadow start should always be taken over the ele dmg nodes though.

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akira115 wrote:

Could anybody post their later-level gem combos for Freezing Pulse / Ice Spear? Level 31 and don't know if ill be able to compensate for the damage decrease if I grab greater/lesser projectile

Also, do people use Cold Snap instead? At this point im using a totem build (don't have a gem) but i've heard good things.

The multi projectile gems massively increase your dps, not decrease it. With freezing pulse you should hit with every projectile. So lesser multi is 70% dmg on 3 projectiles, .7 x 3 = 2.1 dmg multiplier. Greater multi is 50% on 5, 2.5 dmg multiplier. These supports are giving you more than double damage, and are by far the highest DPS increasing supports you can get.

Right now I'm using Lesser Multi, Faster Cast, Added Cold, Increased Crit dmg. I'm thinking of change Lesser multi to Greater, and finding a way to stick Faster Projectiles in there somewhere.

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xXkoverasXx wrote:

So you think ice crit don't work alone in the end game? this is important to me because i dont have friends on my lvl to play and i want to clean engame maps alone.

I'm in lvl 41 and i can clean easy maps lvl 45-46, my damage is to low but the crowd control is pretty awesome.

Ice witch is one of the strongest builds in the game atm.