Introduction



Hello, exiles! I'd like to use this thread to present my level 92 character from the 1MSC league: despite AB not being a top tier skill in the meta, I was both impressed and a little surprised by what this build was capable of.



Post-2.0, Arctic Breath is much stronger than people give it credit for thanks to its ability to 'shotgun' with overlapping explosions -- I was able to use this build to clear chaosed 79 maps (the highest I found), kill Atziri on an accidental 3 link and full-clear the Hall of Grandmasters (with a couple deaths). I absolutely destroyed every player I faced in PvP for my leo dailies, and at one point was top of the 1v1 PvP ladder (not like the competition was too intense).



Before we get into anything else, let's go through some pros and cons.



Pros

- Great AoE damage and good clear speed

- Potentially great single target damage

- Always chills / sometimes freezes

- Easy 5L mana sustain



Cons

- Squishy (from HC perspective)

- 6L mana sustain requires good jewelry

- Sometimes bad single target damage



Bad Map Mods

- Reflect

- Half/No Regen (Manageable with removal of supports from HoI + using a mana flask)



Skill Summary



Arctic breath launches a freezing skull that travels along the ground, leaving frozen ground on its wake. It explodes on impact with a base radius of 12 and leaves more frozen ground equal to its radius. The projectile itself is capable of hitting only one mob, but the explosions can overlap to splash multiple mobs in a pack or shotgun a tough rare or boss against a wall or frost wall. Arctic breath will not explode if it pierces or chains, so for our purposes we want neither. Because it leaves frozen ground, hypothermia will ALWAYS do bonus damage -- with the exception of enraged Atziri trio bosses, Atziri and Haast who can't be chilled.



Because we are not piercing or chaining, Arctic breath benefits from both projectile and area damage. This does a couple things for us. First, it makes great jewels easy to find! Second, it makes us get the full benefits of both acceleration and massive shrines -- which in a Flashback league means double the fun!



A note on Single Target

You probably noticed that the single target damage of this build is both a pro and a con!



Optimal single target with Arctic Breath is much the same as EA. You need to get your target up against a wall (or a frost wall) and hit them with multiple explosions at once. So your single target can be either your (not great) tooltip or five times that tooltip, depending on your positioning and your use of skills. Some map bosses can be buffeted back against a wall with multiple frost walls, so if you can push something (besides Malformation Piety...) into a corner then by all means do that! Map bosses that move around are sort of immune to this, but you can get some short moments of extreme dps on bosses like the Oba's squid so these are still very killable.



Now that we've discussed the skill and concept, let's get to the build itself.



Tree

Spoiler

Level 92: http://poeurl.com/zC4psUN



Before 92, leave out jewel sockets, mana nodes (unless you have a 6 link), a bit of life or whatever you feel is best. After 92, pick up another jewel socket or Frost Walker into Elemental Dominion.



I leveled initially as firestorm/flame totem (yawn) but transitioned to Arctic Breath as soon as I hit 38 and could link Arctic Breath + GMP + Echo in a 3 link +1 quartz sceptre. I initially specced the Templar spell damage start for speed to get into maps on day 1 but respecced to the regen/mana regen start once things started to get difficult and I wanted to wean myself off mana potions.



Bandits: Oak (Life), Alira (Cast Speed) or Kill (Skill Point),





Links:

Spoiler

Arctic Breath - Greater Multiple Projectiles - Spell Echo - Cold Penetration - Hypothermia - (Added Cold Damage)



These are your main damage links. Added Cold is roughly 25% more damage, so a 6L is nice but not necessary. For PvP/Hall of Grandmasters you can swap Added Cold for Reduced Block Chance, so a 6L is almost mandatory for full clearing these if you don't want to lose 39% damage from Hypothermia.



Herald of Ice - Ice Bite - Cold Penetration - Hypothermia



This is our main damage 'aura'. A supported Herald of Ice really helps pack clearing by adding to the number of explosions we cause. Replacing one link with culling strike or two links with curse on hit and poacher's mark will ensure more reliable frenzy charges, but in practice if you clear fast enough you will usually have 4 charges up and I prefer the higher damage setup.



Cast When Damage Taken (low) - Immortal Call (low) - Increased Duration (20/20) - Frost Wall (20/20)



Even a short duration CWDT IC will save you from certain insane spikes of phys damage, like porcupine goliaths that you didn't shatter or certain archers who don't quite fire all at once. You can combo this with self-cast enduring cry to get longer immortal calls (2-3 seconds) for more substantial phys immunity.



Clarity - Arctic Armour - Flame Golem



These can go anywhere, really. Replace Flame Golem with Enduring Cry if you want, he's kind of useless but he draws attention sometimes and gives an OK DPS boost without much work to keep him up.



Faster Casting - Frostbite - Flame Dash



Because I use wands, I'm restricted to Flame Dash as a movement skill. If you use daggers you can use Whirling Blades which is almost the same but can't cross ledges and doesn't have a charge/cooldown system. Quality on Faster Casting and Flame Dash are helpful in getting out of trouble and avoiding being stunned out of your cast. Frostbite might as well go here as it's your main damage curse when you need it and faster curses are always nice.



Vaal Ice Nova - Spell Echo - Hypothermia - Cold Penetration



This skill is completely optional. I found it fun to clear boxes and shrines in the flashback league with one single explosion, but in high level maps it was generally dangerous to get close enough to use and also ran the risk of instantly ripping to a pop-up reflect mob from Beyond or a Beyond boss + Vaal Ice Nova lag. Still.... EXPLOSIONS!







Damage and Defense

Spoiler



Arctic Breath with 4 Frenzy:

Spoiler

22.9k x 1.39 (Hypothermia) = 31.8k dps per projectile = up to 159k GMP shotgun not counting Cold Penetration.

22.9k x 1.39 (Hypothermia) = 31.8k dps per projectile = up to 159k GMP shotgun not counting Cold Penetration.



Herald of Ice with 4 Frenzy:

Spoiler

2k tooltip = 2.8k average damage with Hypothermia 2k tooltip = 2.8k average damage with Hypothermia

Defense:

Spoiler



Arctic Breath with 4 Frenzy:Herald of Ice with 4 Frenzy:Defense:



Gear

Spoiler

























This gear is admittedly very good but wasn't particularly hard to get. No item in this build cost more than 3ex with the exception of the Carcass which I 6 linked myself with Vorici over a week or so of saving and buying fusings, and the mana regen jewelry was all 20c or less -- mana falling out of the meta because it's so expensive has ironically made mana gear really cheap. This gear is admittedly very good but wasn't particularly hard to get. No item in this build cost more than 3ex with the exception of the Carcass which I 6 linked myself with Vorici over a week or so of saving and buying fusings, and the mana regen jewelry was all 20c or less -- mana falling out of the meta because it's so expensive has ironically made mana gear really cheap.



Videos:

Spoiler

77 Volcano: https://youtu.be/Ib9SYQDTk2A



Oba's coming when I get the chance to edit



Hardcore Suggestions:

Spoiler If you're going to play in Hardcore you should already pretty much know what to do with yourself, but here's a couple ideas:



Swap Carcass for Lightning Coil. Your endgame links are 2B4G so these are easy enough to rolll.



Drop some DPS for ES nodes and grab a spirit shield and other hybrid gear. With the amount of INT you get, you can get very decent ES scaling without too much investment and probably add another 2-3k HP onto the build without much work, especially if you drop HoI supports for Discipline or some such.



All of these things mean less EXPLOSIONS though, so I really recommend this build for Standard leagues!





Well, I hope you've enjoyed the read! Post your questions in the thread below and I'll get to them when I can. Hello, exiles! I'd like to use this thread to present my level 92 character from the 1MSC league: despite AB not being a top tier skill in the meta, I was both impressed and a little surprised by what this build was capable of.Post-2.0, Arctic Breath is much stronger than people give it credit for thanks to its ability to 'shotgun' with overlapping explosions -- I was able to use this build to clear chaosed 79 maps (the highest I found), kill Atziri on an accidental 3 link and full-clear the Hall of Grandmasters (with a couple deaths). I absolutely destroyed every player I faced in PvP for my leo dailies, and at one point was top of the 1v1 PvP ladder (not like the competition was too intense).Before we get into anything else, let's go through some pros and cons.- Great AoE damage and good clear speed- Potentially great single target damage- Always chills / sometimes freezes- Easy 5L mana sustain- Squishy (from HC perspective)- 6L mana sustain requires good jewelry- Sometimes bad single target damage- Reflect- Half/No Regen (Manageable with removal of supports from HoI + using a mana flask)Arctic breath launches a freezing skull that travels along the ground, leaving frozen ground on its wake. It explodes on impact with a base radius of 12 and leaves more frozen ground equal to its radius. The projectile itself is capable of hitting only one mob, but the explosions can overlap to splash multiple mobs in a pack or shotgun a tough rare or boss against a wall or frost wall. Arctic breath will not explode if it pierces or chains, so for our purposes we want neither. Because it leaves frozen ground, hypothermia will ALWAYS do bonus damage -- with the exception of enraged Atziri trio bosses, Atziri and Haast who can't be chilled.Because we are not piercing or chaining, Arctic breath benefits from both projectile and area damage. This does a couple things for us. First, it makes great jewels easy to find! Second, it makes us get the full benefits of both acceleration and massive shrines -- which in a Flashback league means double the fun!You probably noticed that the single target damage of this build is both a pro and a con!Optimal single target with Arctic Breath is much the same as EA. You need to get your target up against a wall (or a frost wall) and hit them with multiple explosions at once. So your single target can be either your (not great) tooltip or five times that tooltip, depending on your positioning and your use of skills. Some map bosses can be buffeted back against a wall with multiple frost walls, so if you can push something (besides Malformation Piety...) into a corner then by all means do that! Map bosses that move around are sort of immune to this, but you can get some short moments of extreme dps on bosses like the Oba's squid so these are still very killable.Now that we've discussed the skill and concept, let's get to the build itself.Well, I hope you've enjoyed the read! Post your questions in the thread below and I'll get to them when I can. Last edited by Imprecision on Nov 7, 2015, 7:35:51 PM