Description

Uses Freezing Pulse and Ice Spear with high crit - very effective for maps!

Suggested Leagues: Default

Passive Skills

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• Level 1-30
• Level 31-50
• Level 51-70
• Level 70+

Gems

Ice Spear (single-target attack and how we'll handle elemental reflect mobs)

Ice Spear
Life Leech
Increased Critical Damage
Cold Penetration

Freezing Pulse (AoE attack, make sure you get a quality Freezing Pulse gem. Added Chaos Damage is optional)

Freezing Pulse
Faster Casting
Faster Projectiles
Lesser Multiple Projectiles
Mana Leech
Added Chaos Damage

Frostbite Curse - this should go without saying.

Frostbite

Skeleton Totem - provides a meat shield for us. If you don't need a meat shield, experiment with higher DPS options like Spark.

Summon Skeletons
Spell Totem

Auras - link these with a Reduced Mana Gem.

Clarity
Discipline
Grace

Whirling Blades (only if you use a dagger) - Optional, but good for traveling quickly and escaping danger.

Whirling Blades

Flasks

Flask Set 1

Life Flask
Life Flask
Granite Flask
Granite Flask
Quicksilver Flask

Bandits

Help Oak in Normal Difficulty - Rewards +40 to Maximum Life
Kill all the bandits in Cruel Difficulty - Rewards 1 Passive Skill Point
Kill all the bandits in Merciless Difficulty - Rewards 1 Passive Skill Point

Gear

Weapon

A good wand with spell damage, cast speed, crit, and/or +levels to cold gems is the easiest to find, and in many cases, the most effective weapon for this build. Daggers are another option as they roll implicit critical strike chance mods. Daggers also allow you to use Whirling Blades, which is great for traveling quickly and getting yourself out of trouble. It's all a matter of preference.

Armor

Try to get as much life, energy shield and resistances as possible. Damage mods are always secondary, although jewelry is a great place to look for big damage boosts.

Flasks

Your first Life Flask should give you instant healing. This will give you a panic button in case you are taking too much damage. The second Life Flask should give you life over time, preferably with a "% increased life recovered" modifier.

Your Granite Flask should have the "% increased armour during flask effect" modifier, as this will make your defenses nearly impenetrable throughout its duration.

Your Quicksilver Flask should have the "increased movement speed during flask effect" modifier.

Your Mana Flask can have whatever mods suit your preference. All five flasks should have the modifier "recharges 1 charge when you deal a critical strike". This build has a very high critical strike rate, so with this modifier, you'll have nearly infinite flask charges.

Guide

This build is based on one posted by aimlessgun from the official Path of Exile forums. Most parts of this guide are taken straight from him.

Videos

Introduction to the Build
Introduction to Maps
More Maps

Leveling

Leveling with this build is pretty straightforward. Until later, all you'll need to do is spam Freezing Pulse and this will absolutely obliterate anything in your path, especially if you have a high quality Freezing Pulse gem. As your survivability begins to wane in late Cruel and early Merciless, start using a Skeleton Totem to soak up some hits. Once you hit Cruel difficulty, start using Ice Spear (with the help of Frostbite) on rares and bosses.

General Gameplay

First off, this build is not designed to 'tank' anything for sustained periods, and defensively relies a lot on the player. The idea is to use movement and freezing so you take very few hits, while your high DPS quickly clears out threats. You'll have to be alert for when bad situations might happen and be prepared for them (for example, seeing a big pack of elite flicker strikers on the edge of your screen and quickly quicksilvering out of range to drop a totem before they all flicker onto you).

Freezing Pulse does more damage the closer you are. This means you have to figure out how close you can afford to get to enemies without dying. This is a learning process, and sometimes you will make bad decisions. But remember, if something is very tough, you have the option to hide behind minions, Ice Spear, and freezelock things down from infinite range. It will be slower, but it's faster than dying.

Positioning is also important in that you want to hit as many things with Freezing Pulse as possible. Move around so that your pulse goes through the maximum number of enemies. This not only increases your DPS, it keeps you alive by freezing/chilling more monsters.

For most boss enemies in maps, I recommend Ice Spear freezelocking them unless you are confident they won't kill you if you use Freezing Pulse. Once you get Freezing Pulse in a 5link, it will do more potential single target DPS at close range than Ice Spear at long range, but often it isn't worth the risk.

Large packs of ranged monsters are dangerous to this build as well, capable of exploding you while you go in for Freezing Pulse. Approach them by spiraling in, moving sideways a little while moving towards them. Then, after each cast, sidestep a little bit. If done properly most of their projectiles will miss.

Map Mods

Dangerous Map Mods:
Suicide: Blood Magic, Elemental Reflect. Just reroll.
Borderline Reroll: Chaos Damage per second. Advise putting Ice spear in your 5l or 6l and fighting at ultra long range for the whole map.
Just be Careful: Vulnerability. Elemental Weakness + Extra Dmg as element.
Annoying but not dangerous: Enfeeble, Cold Resist

Dangerous Enemies:
Tier1: Flickerstrikers, Poison Alchemists
Tier2: Chargers (Rhoas, Elite Blackguard) Tentacle Miscreations
Tier3: Poison Arrowers, tripleshot chaos snakes, fire alchemists

As soon as you enter a map, immediately identify the enemy types and be ready to deal with them. For example if you see poison arrow archers, be watchful for the poison cloud, if you see flickers, keep your minions up to distribute the flicker strikes, etc.

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