If you are looking for a Winter Orb build that has good enough single target damage for the end-game and have effective clear speed with low budget. Let's try it.

 

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About Build

How the Build Function

You level up the build generally by not using Winter Orb itself, you can read the leveling tips further down in this guide.

Winter Orb is a channeling ability that builds up stages up to 10 (12 with helmet enchant from uber lab), that then decays over a duration. The higher the stack is the more frequent your orb you've created over your head will shoot projectiles that then explodes on the ground in an AoE based damage area. This AoE damage shotguns, which means that each projectile can hit the same target, this is why we use weapons like Beltimber. This makes the build function very similarly to a Blade Vortex build where you charge up the ability, then you move through the map whilst your ability kills everything to then only stop briefly to recharge a few stages of your ability.

A lot of people have complained about the lack of single target Winter Orb has, so I've designed this build to sort that issue this way:

The Winter Orb is designed to be our generic clearing ability which also helps Ice Spear via Combustion as well as itself.

So for single target we are using an Unleash - Ice Spear combination that looks like this:

- Ice Spear, Unleash, Controlled Destruction, Cold to Fire, Elemental Focus, Added Cold

This allows Winter Orb to drop enemies fire resistance on enemies and you only use Ice Spear for harder enemies and/or bosses which completely destroys them!

The core design of this build is to simply destroy enemies with Herald of Ash using Winter Orb and then delete bosses in no time at all with the Unleash Ice Spear.

Build Enabling Items

The only truly enabling item would be the Beltimber as this makes you able to ignore using GMP support gem in your Winter Orb setup as well as scales your Ice Spear single target significantly. Before you can afford the item you simply want any weapons that would scale Elemental, Spell, Cold or Projectile damage.

Defence & Utilit

The build is designed to explode everything it comes near and on top of this it has well over 5000 eHP + Acrobatics & Phase Acrobatics which makes it a very suitable beginner friendly build.

The utility toolkit comes in the form of the following

Vaal Righteous Fire, this is used as an extra damage boost for bosses or tougher enemies such as the Immortal Syndicate members!

 

Skill Tree 

Ascendancy: You start with picking up Swift Killer, after this you want both Ghost Dance & Escape Artist. Weave the Arcane.

Bandits: Save Alira for the crit multi/res.

Pantheons

The Pantheon List

  • Major: Soul of Lunaris / Soul of the Brine King
  • Minor: Soul of Shakari

Passive Tree & PoB

Once the skill-tree is finished you should focus 100% on adding more jewels to it!

Path of Building Link for the guide: https://pastebin.com/4HnYpFxi

Low Budget Acrobatics / Phase Acrobatics version: https://pastebin.com/7by2U4k0

High Budget Magic Find Approach: https://pastebin.com/siN67EbF


 

 

 

 

 

Gems Setup

Ice Spear, Unleash, Controlled Destruction, Cold to Fire, Elemental Focus, Added Cold

Unleash is not shown in PoB but it will repeat the DPS displayed 3 times more with slightly less dmg (26%) making the single target DPS insane with the click of 1 button every 2-3 seconds. Do keep in mind that you need to stay a bit back so the projectiles reaches the second form as well as aiming the mouse as far away as possible to avoid spreading the projectiles. Also note that faster projectiles modifiers are bad as the second form won't happen as early which means you want 0% quality on your gem.

If you decide to use the higher budget items such as Yoke of Suffering, it is important to make sure Ice Spear can shock enemies, at which point Elemental Focus is replaced and Added Cold will take its place. If you then add another socket to the links it would be Slower Projectiles.

Winter Orb, Increased Duration, Combustion, Infused Channeling

Before you get yourself a Frostferno you're gonna want to change Infused Channeling or Duration for Cold to Fire. We are mainly clearing with this ability and making sure it applies Combustion on bosses for the insane single target damage provided by Ice Spear.

Auras : Hatred / Herald of Ash / Herald of Purity / Vaal Righteous Fire, Increased Duration

The Herald of Purity doesn't do much for us, but by having it linked in the Malachai's Artifice with Hatred being applied to these minions, they will then apply Cold damaged Elemental Equilibrium which significantly increases our fire damage dealt to enemies.

Vaal Righteous Fire is only used for increased damage vs bosses in general.

Mobility/Utility: Leap Slam, Faster Attacks, Fortify, Portal

CWDT: Cast When Damage Taken, Immortal Call, Wave of Conviction

Make sure to keep CWDT at a low lvl and Wave of Conviction with Avatar of Fire allows us to make enemies take even more fire damage from our Winter Orb & Ice Spear!

 

For New League Starter

If you don't have the endgame items (dual beltimber + frostferno) do this:

There are multiple ways to make this build extremely efficient before the uniques become available and later extremely cheap in a new league, examples below.

Use Herald of Ice (Ash if Avatar) + Hatred and Herald of Purity in the Malachai and use WO in a Tabula. This is IF you have Avatar of Fire. If not then I'd rather suggest for you to skip the Malachai's Artifice till you do.

Links:

- Winter Orb -> GMP -> Cold to Fire -> Infused Channeling -> Combustion -> Increased Duration (QoL)

Single Target can be done in 2 different ways depending on if you pick up Avatar of Fire or not.

With Avatar of Fire:

- Ice Spear, Unleash, Elemental Focus, Cold2Fire

Without Avatar of Fire:

- Lightning Spire Traps, Trap/Mine Damage, Elemental Focus, Lightning Penetration

Try to get Scepters with 40% elemental damage implicit (Opal or Void), with any spell damage on it, if no spell damage craft Spell Damage on the bench.

 

Gear

With the unique items suggested the body armour can literally be anything from the classic Tabula Rasa to an Atziri's Splendour or any rare hybrid Evasion/ES chest piece with good life as well as resistance rolls. My preferred choice to keep budget down is to use Shroud of the Lightless, you'll however deal less damage than a proper 6L.

High Budget Gearing

The build offers a lot of options, one style I really liked myself is to chance orb a Malchai's Artifice from an ELDER Unset ring, this allows us to utilize Mark of the Shaper for a very noticable damage increase.

Another option is to pick up Yoke of Suffering which allows our fire damage to shock enemies. Ice Spear is one of the very few abilities in the game that can somewhat reliably reach the 50% increased damage taken threshold which makes this item one of the biggest damage increasers. However, you must drop Elemental Focus support gem and change it to Slower Projectiles or Added Cold if you're using a Shroud of the Lightless.

Defensive Stats 

<>Life
<>Resistances
<>Strength

Offensive Stats

<>Cold Damage
<>Spell Damage

Jewels

<>Flat Life
<>Cold Damage
<>Spell Damage/Spell Damage whilst dual wielding

Leather Belt

<>1x Seething Life FLask of w/e Staunching
<>1x Dying Sun a cheaper option would be to make sure you have more fire res than any other resistances and use The Wise Oak
<>1x w/e prefix Diamond Flask of Warding
<>1x w/e prefix Silver Flask of Dousing
<>1x w/e prefix Quicksilver flask of Heat

For a more detailed selection of gear, please refer to the PoB Link. The gear selected in the PoB is not mandatory if it is not stated. It is recommended that the player check the affix of the gear and make a better choice

 

Leveling Tips

What skills to use

You start of by using Freezing Pulse which should be linked with Arcane Surge and either Added Cold or Added Lightning.
Once lvl 12, you should pick up Arc, now this gives you 2 different options:

1) Arc, Arcane Surge, Added Cold, Added Lightning

Self-cast, this means you want to pick up Elemental Overload and have the links look like this:

This can later in act 2 get the additions of Faster Casting, Controlled Destructions which would replace 1 of the added supports and Arcane Surge.

2) Arc, Trap, Multiple Traps, then either Added Cold or Added Lightning

At this point you can still spec Elemental Overload but will then require you to use something like Orb of Storms to proc as the traps won't proc it for you. This should carry you all the way to the point where you can switch to Winter Orb!

Leveling Auras

In Act 2, you'll be able to get Herald of Ice & Herald of Thunder. This won't change till you hit act 3 in which case you can switch your Herald of Ice for Wrath.

If you do so, make sure you get yourself a weapon or shield to have in your off-slot that is not active, to lvl up your Herald of Ice in. This is also a good opertunity to get 1 or more Winter Orb gems to lvl in your off-slot as well so you don't forget to add those. This is done to avoid having an under lvld gem when it's time to transition.

General Tips

This setup should have no problems carrying you all the way till you want to transition, so when is the best time to transition to Winter Orb?
You simply stop at Blood Aqueduct in Act 9, to farm 9 Humility Divination Cards this will then be handed in to Tasuni in Act 9 town for a Tabula Rasa. At which point you should have no problems playing with Winter Orb, I do strongly recommend making sure you have the Malachai's Artifice with a Lightning Golem, all of these links are visible in the skill-gem setup in this guide.