[3.6] The Whispering (ice) Shadow - Hand Casting Icestorm

Weapon = Whispering Ice
Amulet = Astramentis
Gloves = Shaper's Touch
Belt = Cyclopean Coil
Jewel 1 = Pure Talent
Jewels 2 and 3 = Fertile Mind

Potential upgrades (%int corrupted belt; lots of Watcher's Eyes options; replace astramentis with an amulet with both ES and even more stats)

Chest = Shaper chest (hybrid ES and Evasion with %int and flat int)

Boots = Int, ES, Movespeed, res

Helm = Int, ES, double res (eventually want to aim for a fossil crafted helm with -cold res)

Ring 1 = Int, ES, double res

Ring 2 = Int, ES, Evasion, res, all attributes

Jewels 4 and 5 = Int, spell damage, cast speed, res (lots of options to choose from here)

Potential upgrades (better boots, ideally synthesized %int implcit; higher Evasion/ES chest, but keeping the %int)

Jade Flask of Reflexes (increased evasion)
Stibnite
Quicksilver
Quartz
Wise Oak (mainly picked because this was the first time I tried to balance my resists because I was super close and was able to do it in about 8 Blessed Orbs and some crafting supplies)

Suffixes: Freeze/chill removal, Bleed removal, Curse Removal.

Note: You don't need ignite or shock removal thanks to Cyclopean Coil (just keep strength higher than dexterity, which can be made easier by slightly changing routing in the tree).

Note: I am tempted, and you may want to, swap Wise Oak with a Basalt Flask. This will reduce your damage but will protect better against physical spells, which are often the scariest. Also, this gives you an extra flask to craft a suffix on, freeing up your Quicksilver to be a quicksilver of Adrenaline. Lastly, if you do use a Basalt Flask, aim for the Chemist's prefix with at least a roll of 23% reduced charges used or higher, this grants you two full uses of the flask.

Since the staves are so cheap and only need a 6 socket, why not have a weapon swap for single target. I have been too lazy to do so at this point, and haven't needed to yet (damage is insane).

Single target (in no particular order) = Cold Pen + Increased Duration + Conc Effect + Controlled Destruction + Intensify + Ele Focus

Clearing = Unleash + Intensify + Ele Focus + Controlled Destruction + Increased Duration + Energy Leech (these can be altered based on preference)

Other options for clearing: Spell Cascade (so much ice with Spell Cascade + Unleash), Arcane Surge (for less regen maps or if you are struggling with mana), Faster Casting (making clear speed faster, note we already have 127% increased cast speed without the support, so this will likely cause too much of a diminishing return to be worth it), Onslaught support

Discipline, Clarity, and both Grace and Vaal Grace

CWDT + Immortal Call + Frost Bomb + Enfeeble (defense and auto frost bomb for exposure debuff)

Vortex + Bonechill + Curse on Hit + Frostbite (damage from curse and more damage taken from Vortex's chill via Bonechill)

Winter Orb + Infused Channeling + Arcane Surge + Flame Dash (Winter Orb only used on bosses to generate charges while channeling, also to give us the Infused Channeling buff which grants more cold damage. Flame Dash for movement. Both skills can grant Arcane Surge, but note that only the initial mana cost of Winter Orb counts towards arcane surge due to how channeled skills work)

You could potentially add Increased Duration to the above setup to increase how long both the infused channeling buff lasts and the arcane surge buff. This could go in a 5 link chest

Other options: Phase Run, Decoy Totem, Vaal RF, Portal

I saw some people doing this too. It seemed counter intuitive to use one support which wants you to cast frequently (Intensify) and one support which wants you to cast infrequently (Unleash). The reason is that Unleash is amazing for clearing (more casts = more shards = more coverage). And Intensify is just a gift from God (we all know his true name). Intensify is Increased AoE and Conc Effect all in one gem (more coverage while clearing and more dmg and concentrated area for single target.

Hybrid likely gives you a higher effective HP pool. However, being immune to Chaos damage is super nice. Additionally, trying to get good hybrid gear with high ES, Evasion, Life, Int, and resists... good luck. Low life requires a Shavs which would really hurt both the Evasion and ES we get from our chest via the Escape Artist ascendancy.

Harness the void is best in a conversion build. First note that we can't use both Cold to Fire and Avatar of Fire (AoF) because AoF prevents us from getting the extra chaos damage from Harness the Void. Pyre is one option, but it is not worth losing the ES and int from a ring.

So this leaves us with only converting half of our cold damage into fire. While the math does push Harness the Void slightly higher, further calculations reveal that if we don't split our damage, we end up doing more via a Cold Penetration gem and/or from the Frost Bomb's exposure debuff.

Lastly, the quality of life from Swift Killer is super super nice. This also lets us add a 1 or 2 link Winter Orb setup to generate charges before a boss.

Vaal Discipline is not worth it in my opinion both because Ghost Reaver reduces our recharges significantly and also because the instant ES heal when hit (based off of Evasion) is basically a full heal. Vaal Grace helps us bump our Spell Dodge up even more (it also grants us attack dodge, but that is less of a concern due to all our evasion).

So far I haven't had any issues dying with or without Vaal Grace up, so the damage boost of Vaal RF could be nice, but my damage is also ridiculous. Perhaps for bosses I will swap to a Vaal RF. Note that Vaal RF uses a gem slot (but we do have some to spare), whereas we are already using Grace in our build.

This option uses The Perfect Form chest piece.

Quick note: Aim for a high evasion roll but a low % increased dexterity roll (as this can screw up your Cyclopean Coil stat balance, we want strength higher than dexterity).

TLDR: Slightly more evasion, slightly less ES, we lose %int from shaper chest, and we gain free Arctic Armor/Armour (granting both some phys/fire less damage taken and makes us deal about 15% more damage via Bonechill support).

Let's rip the band-aid off and see what we lose. The initial choice I settled on was a %int shaper chest piece with hybrid evasion/ES. You will likely lose some ES here because the rare chests can obtain higher evasion values on the chest which grants ES via the Escape Artist ascendancy. Also, losing the %int will reduce your ES. It will also lower your damage. However, we may make up for all of this.

The chest gives a global % increased evasion based on uncapped cold resistance (the number in parentheses on your character sheet). With all the int we are seeking in gear, it will be hard to have tons of resists, so likely this chest will give us 100% increased evasion. But we already get about 700% increased evasion from the tree and from all the int via Shaper's Touch.

All is not lost. There are two even better benefits of the chest up next. The first being Phase Acro, which grants 30% spell dodge, bringing us up to 65%! This is pretty crazy, we are nearly at the cap which basically no builds obtain, specifically for spell dodge.

The other part is a free Arctic Armor/Armour (AA). But not only does this grant us 13% less physical damage taken and 12% less fire damage taken while stationary (and we love to face tank with all our evasion, dodge, and ES recovered when hit). But, we can replace our Vortex + Bonechill setup with an even stronger one.

Linking Bonechill support to AA does not impact the mana reservation, and when we are hit, AA applies a 30% slow, which means Bonechill makes those enemies take 30% more cold damage (with Vortex it was only about 14% more, since it slows by 10% and Bonechill increases the slow by 44% at level 20).

Queen of the Forest is a great mid-game option.

I say mid-game (meaning approximately yellow maps), because you need enough evasion (45k) to get the full 50% movement speed buff. It is also an easy source of resistances, which you may struggle with since +int and +resists are both suffixes on gear. Furthermore, this chest is a perfect way to speed up your farming to find or buy upgrades.