A unique life based whispering Ice build

Build concept
This is a cast while channeling whispering ice build using scorching ray to trigger the icestorms. The icestorms are fully converted to fire damage using avatar of fire and the cold to fire gem in order to use the reduced resistance of the scorching ray debuff and allowing us to scale fire damage. Additionally we use orb of storms and The wise oak unique flask to deal with high resistance mobs.


The build is pretty slow in terms of clear and movespeed, but it is a decent boss killer for not too mobile bosses including shaper.(see notes on specific bosses below)

Tree: https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAABAMCAAN1A-4EBwSzCPQQWBEtEzUUIBZvF6QYVho4HNwdFB2-Jy8o-ilPLJwy0TOHNZI6WDrYPAU8LT1fPydBh0VHRZ1JT0rITItMs1BHUlNTUlXGVkhZbV8EXypfP1-YZlRnm2h0aPJqQ20Zbqp7w3yDga-Cm4LHg1-DzIPbhTKFe4dliq-Mdo6-jxqPRpARkFWQ-pErksGXLZeVl_Sa4J2unjyiAKcIrj6vjbEFtQS18rc-uJO40LyqvOrAZsQVxPbGrs8y0B_UB9Wm2CTYvdo62mLcjd9t37DjauQi5FHr5Ovu7DjvDu9L73zv6_Af-ej60v4K?accountName=darthbane83&characterName=firelaser_bane

My bandit choice was helping eramir for passive points, although there can be an argument made for alira to get an easier time with resists and therefore jewel buying.

While lvling it is important to get 4 jewel sockets and all the resistance nodes by the time the resistance penalty from act 10 kicks in. I recommend to get the life/converted strength near marauder, fire damage near templar and duration nodes below scion as last nodes(the rest should be achievable ~lvl 70 and start of maps)

For the acsendency we first get liege of the primoridal to get flame and ice golem up and running and afterwards we can either aim for mastermind of discord or play it safe and get paragon of calamity first to deal with reflect rares. (The reflect minor god on the pantheon system is fairly useful here)

As major pantheon node we use brine king until we get kaom's roots and then change to lunaris and try to get the lucius upgrade(lair map) in order to deal with the chain map mod despite having 2 golems up at all time. For the minor node we can use whatever we feel comfortable with however "more chance to evade" is completely useless once we have unwavering stance from kaom's roots

Gearing:

Essentiell to make the general build work in the first place is obviously with a 2link scorching ray and cast while channeling aswell as a cold to fire gem.
For the 6 socket we also add elemental focus and controlled destruction. I use the last socket for concentrated effect, however you can also use immolate or increased area of effect for general clearing instead.
Additionally we can get the arcane surge buff effect from both flame dashing aswell as placing orb of storm to keep our mastermind of discord buff up for a 100% uptime. In order to get that buff on every cast arcane surge should be kept ~lvl 7 to proc on every cast of a level 20 flamedash/orb of storms.

The next important gear piece is Astramentis in order to get some int used to scale the icestorm. As budget solution a rare amulet with life and int can be used aswell at the beginning.


Additionally in order of importance:,,,,,,.

Black sun Crest and perandus signet rings are used simply for their increased intelligence gain, kaoms roots and heart for their high life rolls and stun immunity, doryani's invitation as a unique belt with resistance and fire leech. Important for doryani's invitation is also that both resistances have the same value.
The Wise oak is pretty useful since its easy to balance all resistances with this amount of unique items.
The Enchantment on the boots should be life and manaleech since it's quite troublesome to get reasonable amounts of leech from other sources.

As for the gloves we are looking for the exact amount of fire resistance to balance all 3 elemental resistances at the same value aswell as life, intelligence and mana. The gloves can not have any other resistances. The spell damage implicit glvoes can be useful aswell, but as luxury getting gloves like that with elemental weakness on hit corruption would be the ideal.

As you may have noticed by now we only have up to 35% cold/lightning and 38% fire resistance on gear and 53%cold/lightning and 50% fire resistance on the tree. Since this adds up to 88% resistance we need another 47% resistance on our jewels. This is solved using 4 jewels with an 9-10% to all emental resistances mods and ideally life and any viable fire/spell damage mod or intelligence. In the remaining 2 jewel sockets near Templar area we can use The brute Force unique jewels to convert the strength to intelligence.

It is worth noting that Kaom's heart is only really required to be safe in red tier maps and a rare chest with life/int can be used before, however while still in the upgrading phase of the build its important to always have fire resistance as highest resistance for the purpose of the wise oak flask.

As for movement of the character our only viable choice is unfortunately flame dash since we use skill duration nodes and a caster staff without any attack speed. With faster casting and arcane surge buff the flamedash itself is fairly fast but limited by the number of charges.

Notes on Bosses:

Lightning thorns is pretty dangerous this means shavronne(scriptorium and core map) and promenade map boss can be very dangerous and should be handled carefully or be skipped entirely.
Once racecourse boss has a reflect aura and with icestorm having a fairly long duration this can be dangerous. This can be circumvented by using Sybils lament to become completely immune to reflect(with ascendency and the elemental damage cluster near scion) or at least lowered the danger by using the pantheon reflect power.

Some bosses move around a lot and kill your decoy totem very quick, these are usually more dangerous but beatable with corresponding player skill.(this includes the (uber)atziri trio fight and certain exiles from the precinct map. I recommend not completing the precinct map.
As for guardians hydra is relatively easy, phoenix and minotaur are risky, but can be done deathless reliable by people used to the fight. Chimera is very dangerous due to lacking movement speed in the cloud phase and lacking burst damage against the add phases(especially snakes). I recommend to never run chimera and buy the fragments instead if there is interest in running shaper.
Shaper himself is fairly easy with the smash being the only real danger and having good damage against both adds and shaper himself especially during long laser/ball phases.
For uber atziri(and normal atziri at lower gear levels) the trio fight is the most dangerous especially the ranged enemy should be dealt with fast as its quite difficult to evade all her attacks. Double vaals is mostly an issue of bringing them down at the same time and atziri herself can be beaten fairly fast however the mirror clone prevents very early precasting unless using sybils lament again.

Notes on map mods:

For all hard bosses i strongly recommend to avoid the monster/boss fleet mod aswell as any ghosts since dodgeing with the low speed of the build becomes very hard if the boss gets any speed buffs and we lack the ability to simply facetank them. Additionally any increases aoe modifiers can be dangerous for phoenix and minotaur fights. On the plus side temporal chains and chilled ground mods can be completely ignored due to kaom's roots.

As a last note taking a purity of elements can be useful when dealing with elemental weakness maps and despite not necessarily needed apart from long boss fights without adds sybills lament greatly improves the safety in elemental reflect maps.
There is no mod nor a mod combination that is flat out impossible to run(including no leech, no regen, ele reflect maps).

Can you make a video for this life-based WI build :D? I really like this build from legacy league cause it easy to farming in high tier map :D

I feel like if i make a video it should contain the interesting content so something like a shaper and hydra and minotaur/phoenix. However i have never tried to record gameplay so i am not sure if my system can handle that and it would take some time to set everything up. If i have some time in the near future i will probably try to record some T15 gameplay(probably core map) since thats the highest tier i currently have and nciely showcases the strength of the build.

Hey, I have been looking for a while for a whispering ice build, and yours looks interesting. at what point is it necessary to have the same %resists?

Edit: bandits?

Thanks for the bandit reminder i added it to the post. My choice was helping eramir for passive points, you can make an argument for getting resists and manaregen from alira however i dont feel like more manaregen is necessary with arcane surge being a thing and the resists only means that there is one less jewel with resists required, which does make it easier to buy a jewel but resist jewels are cheap aswell. If you instead use something like a green/red dream/nightmare jewel it might be worth it.
I guess Alira qualifies as the luxury choice that allows to use more expensive gear.

"

at what point is it necessary to have the same %resists?

Its never actually necessary, but its fairly easy to achieve. I would recommend to focus on having fire resist as highest and the other 2 resists at the same values as soon as you get the wise oak and keep it that way until you start minmaxing the gear. Actually having the same resists would be the next step in the gear progression after getting kaom's heart. I do recommend checking the market for relevant gloves earlier though since ultimately you are looking for life+1resist gloves preferably with either int or a craftable suffix. This is niche enough to often only cost like 1-5c if you can find them.

Edit, nvm xd