[3.12] THE SHARD STORM, Cold Snap / Ice Spear Occultist Build (Algor Mortis)

I'm not dead and neither is this build! I didn't play this build much last patch so I never really got around to updating the guide, but I should be playing it more in Heist so I'll try and update it soon.

In general this build has only gotten buffed, as some of the Heist replicas have really beneficial alternate stats for the build (such as the Archmage support that adds both Cold and Lightning damage to spells), and the new Unique amulet The Ephemeral Bond that has everything this build wants (mana regen, crit multiplier, and added lightning damage per power charge). Not sure if it's better than Choir of the Storm, but I think both will be strong options about on par with each other. I haven't tested or crunched any numbers yet, but it's also possible that the Pinpoint support will end up just being better for Ice Spear than Greater Multiple Projectiles, but that remains to be seen. Lightning Rune is also an interesting new skill, but one of the advantages of this build is the hit-and-run playstyle and so I'm not sold on it's usefulness

I didn't really dive into it much in the 3.11 short update but Thunderus Salvos being moved to the Skill Tree was a great help, as it now frees up the amulet enchantment for Crusader in order to take advantage of Transfiguration of Mind, or just Heartseeker for more crit multiplier.

So the good news is that we're mostly unscathed. Archmage support was nerfed at high gem levels, but not massively so that's fine. Fevered Mind was also nerfed, but I never used it in the build (even though I possibly should) so that's fine too. The good news is that Choir of the Storm was seriously buffed, as the internal cooldown for triggering it has gone from 0.5 to 0.2, which is quite relevent due to the rapid-fire and high crit nature of Ice Spear. Additionally some of the Notables added to the skill tree in 3.11 will be quite good, so overall the effectiveness of the build should actually improve a bunch. Going forward the biggest hurdle will be Algor Mortis becoming harder to get and most likely more expensive, but with it being an off meta unique it shouldn't be that expensive.

Right now the PoB is out of date, but once I'm able too I'll figure out the new tree and paste the link here. There shouldn't be too many changes, but now that Thunderous Salvos is on the tree rather than blight oil exclusive I will try to work that in, as well as testing out the new increased mana cost and spell damage nodes.

With the Occultist Ascendancy passive Forbidden Power, we gain a power charge for every 200 mana spent. When socketed with the Winter’s Bounty threshold jewel, Cold Snap’s cooldown can be bypassed by spending a power charge. Therefore all we need to do is make Cold Snap cost 200 or more mana, which Archmage Support helps us accomplish.

Due to how this build evolved, we’re no longer using the support on Cold Snap directly, but the principle is the same. By casting Archmage supported Ice Spears, and the always expensive Arcane Cloak, we can maintain a steady supply of power charges to fuel Cold Snap with.

With Algor Mortis thrown into the mix, Cold snap should be used to create chilling ground under our enemies, before pelting them with a barrage of lightning charged Ice Spears for large chunks of damage.

+ Get to use unloved off-meta skills

+ Use a neat new Unique, Algor Mortis

+ High single target ranged DPS

+ Fast AoE trash clear with Cold Snap

+ Relatively safe due to Arcane cloak, a high freeze and chill chance, and the free Sap that comes from our chilling areas

+ Due to the Frigid Wake Occultist Ascendancy node, we're immune to chills and freezes

+ Normally chaos damage isn't a problem due to The Ivory Tower and all of our mana

+ It's quite intereactive, which is a plus for me after playing a lot of "one button builds"

+ With how the spells look, gameplay is quite clear and easy to see, unlike other builds which can become particle effect bonanzas and thus end up hiding important info

- Enemies getting close to you is real bad, gimps our DPS by quite a bit

- Ice Spear takes some getting used to, and because of the travel time you really need to lead your targets well if you want to hit most of the projectiles

- Can’t do Ele reflect maps (but then again what normal elemental build can?)

- Need to pay attention to mana, since it doubles as both damage and survivability

- Not the cheapest of builds, probably not a league starter

- Due to chaos damage being taken from our mana pool, if you’re not careful high spikes of damage will wipe out your mana pool and leave you vulnerable with no mana to cast skills.

- If mtx skill effects are the sort of things you need, there basically arn't any for this build, so you're stuck with the default appearances (Ice Spear and Cold Snap each only have a single one, and lets be honest they're kinda sub-par compared to effects other skills have)

Just the one video for now, I'm working on some more.

Tier 14 Map clear + fight with Crusader
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRHlGFJyDWY&t=20s

Here’s the Path of Building link. I may update this and tweak it as I fiddle with it. Also be aware that the empty gem slot in the center is only empty on PoB and is actually holding

https://pastebin.com/pE04hUff

In terms of luxury items, Militant Faith is a nice historic jewel to have if you can find a good one. If you are looking to get one, "#### new faithful converted by High Templar Dominus" is the desired version because of Inner Conviction, but in all honesty the possible passives are the real reason to get it. For those who haven't used a Militant Faith jewel before, all the passives in a large radius around the jewel slot gain an added property of +5 or +10 Devotion, which then effects how much benefit you get off the Implicit modifiers on the jewel. There are a variety of possible modifiers, and while some are useless to us or downright detrimental, most all of them are wonderful bonuses. The ones to look for are Regenerate 0.6 Mana per Second per 10 Devotion, 4% increased Elemental Damage per 10 Devotion, +2% to all Elemental Resistances per 10 Devotion, 3% increased Effect of non-Damaging Ailments on Enemies per 10 Devotion, and 4% increased Area Damage per 10 Devotion.

(A side note on the other versions of this- As you can see I have the High Templar Avarius version, which grants the passive Power of Purpose; a skill that converts 80% of maximum mana to twice that much armor. The key word there is converts. When I got this I misunderstood how it would work, thinking it would just give a nice large passive bonus to our armor due to all of our mana stacking. But no, instead it straight up removes 80% of our mana to grant the armor bonus, so it's just detrimental to the build.

Ice Spear - Archmage - Unleash - Lesser/Greater Multiple Projectiles - Increased Critical Damage - Pierce

Our main bread and butter damage spell. Due to the unleash support and how mana hungry this is, it’s sometimes advantageous to have a bit of a breather between casts. In an ideal world we would put a Mana Leech gem on here, but doing so really hurts our setup. As silly as it since Ice Spear already pierces, the Pierce gem lets the first stage projectile pass through enemies if they're too close, which is insanely useful.


Cold Snap - Bonechill - Efficacy - Empower

With Algor Mortis as part of the build, Cold Snap should be mostly used to buff the damage of Ice Spear or to slow enemies down, but when clearing trash it's often faster to just spam Cold Snap. As a note, I'm not absolutely sure that Empower is the right choice for the fourth slot, but it's what I'm using for now.


Arcane Cloak - Second Wind - Frostblink

Because both of the active skills here are instant cast, neither get a second charge from the support gem, but the cooldown reduction is nice. Be advised when using Arcane Cloak to make sure you have as close to full mana as possible, and be ready to mana flask afterwards so you don't empty your mana pool completely.


Discipline - Blood Magic - Enlighten

This setup is used as a boost to our Energy Shield while not taking up any of our precious precious mana. With the Enlighten support gem attached to it at lvl 2, the gem neatly reserves 65% of our life, placing us at just the right percentage of life to count as "Low on Life" and benefit from the Pain Attunment keystone. And the best part is that since we're using The Ivory Tower, we actually overall gain survievability rather then just trading that reserved health for ES!


Ice Nova (lvl 11) - Cast When Damage Taken (lvl 6) - Elemental Proliferation - Vaal Ice Nova

This gem link setup is probably not necessary, but I’ve liked using it. Being a lower level, only the regular Ice Nova triggers off damage, which acts as a nice AoE freeze to stop enemies who are right on top of you. The Vaal Ice Nova is here just as an extra AoE clearing tool, and can rack up some mean damage numbers if fired off in a large cluster of enemies.


Clarity

This is here just because we’re massive mana hogs, so every last bit of regen is needed. The reservation amount is quite low tho, so there's no reason not to just use it as normal.


Stone Golem - Meat Shield

Another survivability measure. The regen granted by the golem is nice, and so is the AoE taunt.

Part of the backbone of this build; Winter's Bounty is one of the key reasons that this works at all. The good news is that it's a cheap jewel to get!



Algor Mortis is important, as it both buffs our damage and reduces enemy damage output.



This is basically 100% mandatory. Lavianga's Spirit recovers a lot of mana, and when it's active spells don't cost mana, so it lets us spam Ice Spear and still regain our mana pool. Unfortunately the passive disables the bonuses from Archmage support, but that's okay because the ability to free cast as much as we want while refilling mana makes up for it. As good as this is however, it can be even better. The Heist exclusive Replica Lavianga's Spirit actually increases the mana cost of spells as well as buffing cast speed while active, so it synergies wonderfully with this build. Get the replica if you can, otherwise the normal version will be just fine.



The Sorrow of the Divine is an extremely useful health and energy shield potion. Enough said.



Choir of the Storm is a nice DPS boost, due to Ice Spear gaining a ridonculous 600% increased Critical Strike Chance in the second form. It's not required, but it is highly recommended.



Now I'm not using this one, because I felt with my current gear I needed something in this slot to make me more survivable, but The Tempest's Binding and The Tempest's Libation are good choices for a helmet (if you don't mind being followed around by a ghost of the Blue Man Group). If you do end up using one of them, place the Cold Snap 4-link into it for the Ice Bite and Innervate bonuses.


Crown of the Inward Eye is a good way to gain access to Transfiguration of Mind if you don't want to spend a blight enchantment on it, so it gets a shout out here. I'd still recommend just anointing your amulet with Crusader in order to get Transfiguration of Mind and free up your head for something else, but the option is there for you if you'd prefer.



The Ivory Tower is a useful choice because it let us use Discipline without reserving mana, but I suppose the build could function without it.
(Edit: I am now considering this mandatory if you plan to go far into the endgame. It just offers so much protection and allows us to use Pain attunement effectively. It's also stylish as hell and as we all know you can't fight monsters if you ain't cute)



This isn't 100% necessary either, but the global +2 to Level of all Cold Spell Skill Gems on Taryn's Shiver is nice considering how many we use. It's also a cheap weapon compared to some of the other alternatives.



Speaking of alternatives, Shimmeron is a strong choice of weapon, especially now that I've altered the gem setup so that we don't need another 4-link. If you can offset the damage dealt by having Power Charges and constantly critting, this makes for a strong DPS boost and a nearly (if not over) 100% crit rate for Ice Spear in the second form.


This is here as a potential option if you want to be a bit spicy and mix things up. The passives on Tulfal means that you'll never be on full power charges, but in a combat scenario we cycle through charges so fast it won't terribly matter. I will advise that you run this with an amulet besides Choir of the Storm, because the inability to stay at max charges means that you'll be unable to maintain the absurdly high crit chance you would otherwise be at. Although with that in mind the potential 45% cold damage increase from 3 frenzy charges is kinda lackluster...
You know what forget I said anything- don't run this. Unless maybe you want to run it with Shimmeron in your other hand? That might make it worth it. I'll have to run some tests.



Void Battery is another strong choice for DPS due to our usage of Power Charges, but the build can be strong enough on its own so it's not required if you can't get one.


If you've got the currency for it Call of the Brotherhood is a nice choice for a ring, but is quite pricey (hence why I don't own one to link right now)

While on the subject of rings, Lori's Lantern is a nice ring for leveling, and can be nice when combined with Discipline/Blood Magic. At higher levels well forged rare rings are likely to be better, but until then it's an okay choice if you find one.



And now for the Items that seem like they'd be good but aren't recommended with how the build works right now.


First up is Indigon. When I originally brewed up this build and started messing around with it I tried using it as an additional source of mana scaling that would compliment the Archmage support gem. While it could work in theory, in practice it leads to gigantic mana problems and a kind of feast or famine playstyle that ends up being dangerous if you can't cast spells when you really really need to Frostblink away.



Since we're all about Power Charges and mana, The Aylardex looks good at first glance. Gaining mana regen and a pseudo Mind Over Matter effect based on the number of Power Charges are both great things, but the reduced crit chance is just devastating to the build's damage, so this is a no go.



In a similar vein, Marylene's Fallacy is a nice amulet that has appealing bonuses, but once again the crit chance reduction is a real downside. However unlike The Aylardex, the loss of crit chance here is made up for in terms of DPS by the multiplier increase, and ends up being about neutral in terms of damage. However being net neutral isn't really a benefit, and so I'd recommend Choir of the Storm or a well crafted rare amulet instead.


This one is just here because it's a fun ring but not terribly useful. Mark of the Shaper can be fun to run if you've got it and have an excess of elemental resists so you can waste a slot, but overall not recommended beyond "hehe volatile anomaly go brrrrrr"

Bandit Choice


Enchantments


Cluster Jewel Notables

For each of these gems I’ll list the options of the base and alternate quality effects in order vaguely from best to worst and then explain my reasoning

Archmage support


Cold Snap


Ice Spear


Arcane Cloak


Clarity


Frostblink

Lvls 1-30 (40 points)

Lvls 31-60 (80 points)

Lvls 61-100 (121 points)

Ascendancy Passives