Crit Creeping Frost Totem Hierophant

October 15, 2019  |  SPELL TOTEM  |  


Build made by Tatiantel2 If you have any questions/suggestions - feel free to ask in chat on Twitch (streaming every day): https://www.twitch.tv/tatiantel2

------ HOW CREEPING FROST WORKS ------ In order to scale Creeping Frost damage we can use all the normal sources of Spells scaling like: Cast Speed, Elemental Damage, Spell Damage, Elemental Penetration. But the biggest source of damage is Greater Volley Support. When Totems shoot projectiles of Creeping Frost at enemy, projectiles land right next to the enemy and create explosion on impact. The spread of projectiles and the radius of explosions make it so that all the projectiles overlap and hit the target. This results in big damage multiplier - instead of 1 hit per cast it is 5 hits per cast. I thoroughly tested that overlapping, and results are: with Greater Multiple Projectile Support we would have to always replace totems right next to the target in order for all the projectiles to overlap. With Greater Volley no matter what is the distance, all the projectiles overlap, which makes Greater Volley Support amazing for scaling the damage of Creeping Frost. In addition to that having a source of at least +1 Pierce to projectiles makes it so that Creeping Frost hit the enemy 1 additional time. It is because one of the projectiles before exploding, first hits the enemy, then pierces, then creates the explosion that also hits. Having more than +1 Pierce is redundant as Totems AI always target the closest enemy to totem, which makes it impossible to pierce extra monsters. So Greater Volley and +1 Pierce give x6 hit per cast. It is worth mentionning that we can get extra projectiles with extra investment - Rain of Splinters unique jewel, and Divergent quality on Creeping Frost. This will scale the damage even further, but in this build I didn't use them in order for the build to be more starter-friendly and ssf-friendly. Since the 3.20 patch Rain of Splinters became a corrupt-only jewel - in order to get it, we need to keep using Vaal Orbs on all Crimson Jewels we find (rarity and ilvl don't matter), then there's going to be a chance for it to become one of the special corrupt-only jewels, one of which is Rain of Splinters.

------ CUSTOM MODIFIERS in "CONFIGURATION" ------ The "500% more DPS" mod is used in order to see proper Full DPS. Without this modifier PoB will show DPS with only 1 projectile hit. Because we get consistent shotgunning with ALL the projectiles from Creeping Frost, and +1 Pierce gives another hit, it is 6 hit total per 1 cast. This results in 500% more hits (because PoB already shows 1 hit).

------ PLAYSTYLE ------ Mapping. Place totems in the middle of the pack of monsters. When encoutering bigger pack of monsters - place Decoy Totems in the middle of a pack. Decoys have much bigger AoE for their Taunt (and it lasts longer), so monsters will group around Decoys, and you and your Creeping Frost totems will not get hit. Against packs of monsters with Rares (or when you need more damage) cast Frostbite and Elemental Weakness after you placed all the totems.

Bossing. The "rotation" of skills is as follows:

  1. Place Decoy Totem if not on cooldown (to not get hit and lock Boss in place)
  2. Place Creeping Frost Totems
  3. Cast Frostbite
  4. Cast Elemental Weakness
  5. Cast Zealotry (temporary Blessing Aura)

------ LEVELING ------ In "Tree" section at the bottom you can select different trees for different Levels to see which passives to take at each stage. In "Skills" section you can see which skills to use at each Level.

As shown is Skills section we level with Holy Flame Totem and Flame Wall, this combination of skills can clear early acts pretty easily. Adding Wave of Conviction Mines as early as possible (level 16) is recommended. Make sure that your highest elemental damage dealt with WoC is fire, so that you apply Fire Exposure. If it's not fire, you can add Added Fire Damage Support to WoC + Blastchain Mine. We use Wave of Conviction Mines until we get Gloves with "Inflict Cold Exposure on Hit, applying -11% to Cold Resistance" implicit mod (explained in "------ EXPOSURE DEBUFF ------").

Switching to Creeping Frost Totems - at Level 54, because first we need to get Greater Volley Support (at level 38) and get some extra damage nodes on tree with Crit Chance (Annihilation) to be able to proc Elemental Overload reliably. Poacher's Aim unique jewel quest reward, which used to give +1 pierce got REMOVED in 3.20 patch. That change made leveling slightly worse since we don't get this +20% more damage from jewel in Act 5 anymore. Now we can only get +1 pierce in Act 9, when Syndicate missions with Jun start to appear. We can unveil +1 pierce on Gloves or Helmet. In order to get this unveil faster, we can farm Jun missions in Foothills Act 9 - just keep refreshing zone at a waypoint (Ctrl+Click Foothills waypoint) until you see that Jun mission appeared in quest log, kill all the Syndicate members until you drop Gloves or Helmet with veiled prefix - it has pretty high chance to be +1 Pierce.

Once we get Eldritch Battery from tree, we start using Discipline aura in order to help with Energy Shield sustain initially. Once we get enough ES from gear, we remove Discipline.

Switching to crit instead of Elemental Overload - at Level 67, after we get 3rd Ascendancy with perma Power Charges, and spec into crit on tree. Switching the tree from Level 65 to 67 requires 13 refund points, which we should have at this point from quest rewards.

------ EXPOSURE DEBUFF ------ Exposure is a debuff that lowers enemy's Elemental Resistance. The best way to apply exposure with this build is to get implicit on gloves "Inflict Cold Exposure on Hit, applying -11% to Cold Resistance". You can get it by spamming Eldritch Ichors on Gloves until you randomly get this mod. Lowest tier Ichors give 11% Exposure, Grand Ichors give 13% - the difference is not too big, so it's not worth investing in higher tier Ichors (unless there's nothing else to uprade anymore). With this implicit mod Totems will automatically always apply Exposure.

But BEFORE you can get your hands on such Gloves (hehe), there are 2 ways to apply Exposure:

  1. Throw and detonate Wave of Conviction Mines - recommended option (shown in Leveling Gems section);
  2. Cast Hydrosphere. Option 1 is far better, because it applies 15% Exposure (vs 10% from Hydrosphere), plus you get Frenzy and Power Charge generation, and there's "2% chance to deal double damage" to enemies around Mines (from High-Impact Mine Support).

------ FRENZY CHARGE GENERATION ------ In order to get permanent Frenzy Charges, we can craft few mods on our gear (you can see these mods in "Items" section):

  1. On Body Armour with spamming Lesser Eldritch Embers we get implicit "Gain a Frenzy Charge every 15 seconds";
  2. On Skill Tree in Charge Mastery (Disciple of the Forbidden notable), we take 100% increased Charge Duration. This way once we enter a map 3 Frenzy Charges will be generated over 45 seconds, and they will keep refreshing automatically.

Build made by Tatiantel2 If you have any questions/suggestions - feel free to ask in chat on Twitch (streaming every day): https://www.twitch.tv/tatiantel2



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