[0.4] Freeze & Self-Chill IceNova Stormweaver (Perfect League Starter and Endgame Racer)

Foreword Note: If there is more intreset, I will add image- and video-material of my gameplay to show you how insanely fast and strong this build is


INTRODUCTION
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Hello fellow Exiles!
This is my build guide about my favorite archetype in this game:
--- the ice sorceress ---

The core skills are Ice Nova paired with Frost Wall and Snap. Our ascendencie class will be the Stormweaver. The gameplay is to freeze and shatter everything in our presence! Oh, and did i mentioned, that there is nothing more satisfying than the sound of monster shattering ^__^

Quick explanation about me: I'm a PoE hardcore fan since 8 years and I'm really enjoying PoE2 with its better mechanics and artstyle. I already made multiple build guides for myself for PoE1 and PoE2 with great success, but this is the first time sharing one of mine, because I want you to experience the beauty of the ice sorceress (and because I don't mind any price increases of the endgame items of this build :D )

This guide is addressed to any new player as well as any PoE Veteran. I'll dive deep into the philosophy and any mechanics of this build. If you still have any questions, you can write a comment and I will try my best to answer you.


OVERVIEW
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PROS:

+ Great League Starter (good early damage and survivability without any big gear dependencies)
+ Absurd endgame DPS without any expensive gear (Killing Tier16 MapBoss < 5 sec)
+ One of the fastest endgame mapper because of self-chill mechanic
+ Really smooth gameplay (casting & killing while walking and meaningfull combos for bosses)
+ Shattering monsters is so damn satisfying ^_^

CONS:

- Kinda squishy (-> missing secondary defensive layer -> prepare to be oneshotted sometimes)
- Screen clutter in boss fights (makes it hard to dodge boss mechanics)
- Getting regularly Ignited and Shocked because of self-chill mechanic



BUILD PILOSOPHY & MECHANICS
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The core philosophy of this build is: If the enemy cannot hit me, I cannot die
High enough cold damage can chill or freeze the enemy, resulting in drastically slowing or "stunning" the monster, so you can walk away (or even right through) the dangerous monster packs. And if the damage is high enough, they die instantly, so nothing to worry about!

So this build prioritizes high damage per hit with increases to freeze buildup, so every white or blue monster gets frozen in first contact. Not frozen but chilled enemies get additionally slowed by temporal chain curse, so they are mostly too slow to hit us. Pairing these mechanics with a big energy shield pool plus the keystone Chaos Inoculation and we can only die by getting stunned/frozen or by a high-damaging boss ability.


But how do we achieve high damage numbers for our sorceress?
By combining multiple multiplicative damage sources! These sources are:
• base damage of the skill (high skill level + empowering through infusion)
• "Gain as extra damage" sources (from wand and "Verglas" support")
• "increased damage" sources (from mods like "increased spell damage")
• "MORE damage" sources (IMPORTANT: Each MORE damage-source is its own factor)
• Critical hit chance and damage
• lowering the cold resistance of the enemy (exposure + elemental weakness curse)
• increase the damage taken by the enemy (applying shock twice through stormweaver)

Applying shock and generating every infusion consistently can be achieved by the Stormweaver ascendancy class. Every cold spell has an inherent high base critical strike chance (between 11% - 13%), so reaching the threshold of 31.5% critical hit chance on spells (without support gems) is relatively easy. And our passive tree has very efficient ways to scale crits and every other mentioned damage source, so its easy to get absurd damage numbers with very little investment.





SELF-CHILL
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Self-chill is one of the strongest endgame mechanics in this game!
But why, you may ask:

Through the unique body armour Sierran Inheritance chill effect on yourself is reversed! This means instead of 50% LESS action speed, we get 50% MORE action speed! This results in:
• 50% MORE Movement Speed
• 50% MORE cast speed
• 50% MORE attack speed
Self-chill plus an Acceleration Shrine and you are zooming through any map!


But how do you consistently chill yourself?
For that we need 3 things:
1. a method of constantly applying damage to yourself
2. ensuring the damage always chills you
3. having some kind of sustain to counteract the constant damage

The build achieves this through following interactions:
1. The unique helmet Scold's Bridle always damage you for using skills. The damage amount is relative to the paid mana cost. So lowering your mana costs and getting a low roll of the self-damaging mod can reduce the incoming damage.
2. the Sierran Inheritance body armour makes that every damage type can chill you (like your physical damage from "Scold's Bridle"). But for a chill to apply your Ailment threshold has to be low enough. The ailment threshold is per default your max health. With the Chaos Inoculation keystone passive your max health becomes 1, as well as your ailment threshold. If you don't acquire any "gain additional ailment threshhold equal to % energy shield", every hit will always chill you!
3. getting damage on your energy shield prevents it from recharging and leaves you very vulnerable, if you don't want to stop fighting every couple of seconds. To recover your energy shield we use the unique belt Shavronne's Satchel. With this item our life flask can recover energy shield and with a instant recovery Ultimate life flask we can recover around 550 energy shield per flask consume instantly. (Important: Because we are always fulllife with Chaos Inoculation, only instant recovery on life flask will work with this belt)


SKILL INTERACTION & SETUP
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Skill Overview:
• Ice Nova <Weaponset I>
• Snap <Weaponset I>
• Frost Wall <Weaponset I>
• Frost Bomb <Weaponset II>
• Elemental Weakness <Weaponset II>
• Blasphemy + Temporal Chains <Weaponset I & II>
• Mana Remnants <Weaponset I & II>
• Siphon Elements <Weaponset I & II>
• Sigil of Power [from Chimingstaff] <Weaponset II>
• Firestorm (for endgame min-max) <Weaponset I> OR <Weaponset II>
• Spellslinger + Comet [from Dueling Wand] (for endgame min-max) <Weaponset I>

Weaponset I is our damage setup and Weaponset II is our support setup. In the passive tree we will allocate for Weaponset II every achievable increases to curse magnitude, exposure effect and skill/ curse duration for bigger elemental resistance reduction of the enemy and longer duration, so we have more time before casting our support skills again.

Firestorm can also be in Weaponset II, if we don't go for a Chimingstaff (and therefore not for Sigil of Power) but for the Unique Focus Effigy of Cruelty for Weaponset II. The purpose is to stack the debuff "Critical Weakness" on the boss with the rapid-hitting Fire Storm, so in a couple of seconds it's max stack resulting in +10% base critical hit chance.

For normal clearing we just use Ice Nova and then Snap for every survived frozen monster. Snap provides infusions to empower our next Ice Nova spells. This is enough to clear every normal monster pack. For magic monsters you sometimes need to cast Frost Wall into the pack, to get some extra damage through shattering the spawned Icicle of the Frostwall!

For rare or unique monster like bosses, we use our whole arsenal! The optimal skill rotation is:
-> Sigil of Power
-> Elemental Weakness
-> Frost Bomb
-> Frost Wall
-> Ice Nova
-> Frost Wall
-> either Ice Nova or Snap (if frozen)
-> repeat the last 2 steps or restart rotation if the effects of the first spells wear off

For Endgame bosses, you wanna make sure that you have at least 1 infusion of every type and at best 3 cold infusions before fighting the boss. With casting Frost Bomb before entering the map boss arena and with the Stormweaver ascendancy node "Refracted Infusion" you can stack every infusion type beforehand.
In the fight you cast a fully-infused Firestorm either at the beginning or if the boss is frozen, so it doesn't move out of the storm. And you swap one Ice Nova with your activation of Spellslinger Comet for a devastating blow (does most of the time 2/3 of the boss health as damage!!!) (Note: check, that you have enough mana for 3 comets before activating spellslinger or otherwise only 1 comet will hit the boss but all spellslinger charges are gone)




PASSIVE SKILL TREE
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Act 1 - Act 2 (prioritize damage and area for fast clear)
https://maxroll.gg/poe2/passive-tree/7dod90u0

Act 3 - Act 4 (going for crit / unlocking stormweaver ascendency)
https://maxroll.gg/poe2/passive-tree/u7odu0ui

Interlude - Early Mapping (shifting to more ES / shock magnitude / using weaponswape passives)
https://maxroll.gg/poe2/passive-tree/niodp0uc

Endgame (Switching to Chaos Inoculation / Enabling Self-Chill)
https://maxroll.gg/poe2/passive-tree/jwpb800t


GEAR
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For gearing we try to get as much "+level to spell skills" as possible, because this is the best damage increase you can get.
Especially for starting the campaign try to acquire a +(1 - 2) level of all (cold) spell skills on wands / staffs / focus as fast as possible to have a smooth sailing! Try to visit the vendor after every level-up (then the vendor inventory is reset) and pick up every wand / staff / focus, you can find and identify it or craft it with Transmutation or Augmentation Orbs.

This build needs only 115 Spirit, therefore 15 Spirit extra on gear (20 Spirit, if you dont have 20% Quality on your Blasphemy Gem). A perfect solar amulet base can give you that amount right away!

If we go for self-chill, we cannot equip Sandstorm Visage for "Critical Weakness" debuff stacking. To fix this I would recommend switching the Chmingstaff in Weaponset II to a the Effigy of Cruelty setup. We will stack "Critical Weakness" now with every Firestorm critical hit. This is overall a better and more flexible damage increase, because Sigil of Power forces you to stand in the Circle, which is not always feasible because of boss abilities. And +10% base critical hit chance results in always critical hitting with every spell in our arsenal.