This Freezing Pulse Hierophant Build can reach 1.5 million Shaper DPS (300k DPS per totem) and very safe because we freeze all minions except bosses instantly, the most important is no gear requirements (except 2 threshold jewels), so cheap and SSF viable.

Quick Jump

Pros & Cons

Gameplay style

You run around (or shield charge) and place totems preemptively. You don't wanna shield charge directly into a large pack of mobs before freezing them. When we need more DPS we can cast Frostbomb (linked to Arcane Surge) and Projectile Weakness for a huge damage increase.

MoM (Mind over Matter)

With the Mind of Matter keystone and the Divine Guidance ascendancy, 40% of our Damage is taken from mana before life. This means we optimally want to have a Life/Mana ratio of about 60/40.

There are many powerful mana nodes on the tree and we should look to have a lot +Mana on our gear in additon to +Life. I am currently on about 4200 Life, 2800 Mana (which is a 60/40 ratio) with just a tabula. That's 7k EHP.

You don't wanna run auras with MoM and we don't really need to. That also allows us to equip a Clear Mind jewel.

With MoM having flat mana and mana regen on gear is very important.

Skill Tree

Ascendancy

Pursuit of Faith - Ritual of Awakening - Conviction of Power - Divine Guidance

Don't be scared of labs. You can do every lab as soon as you reach the required level. If you have a 6link and Freezing Pulse lvl18, you should be fine to solo Uberlab (on SC).

Bandits

Alira, since both CritMulti and ManaRegen are very good for us and resists are never bad.

Pantheon

The Pantheon List

• Major: Brine King, if no Kaom's Roots, else probably Solaris
• Minor: Gruthkul

Path of Building Link: https://pastebin.com/GGR6TK0K

Gems Setup

Mandatory Links

Get those as soon as you start mapping. Don't complain about your damage if you don't use a Curse, Frost Bomb and Arcane Surge.

Main skill: Spell Totem - Freezing Pulse - Faster Casting - Controlled Destruction - Hypothermia - Cold Penetration

- Before you pickup a +1 Totem Shield, it might be worth to run Multiple Totems Support.

- If you want your projectiles to travel farther, you can use Faster Projectiles, it also means the damage doesn't fall off that fast.

- If you want reliable crits and your double totems can one shot most mobs, you might wanna run Increased Critical Strikes instead of Controlled Destruction. It's overall less damage though.

Flame Dash + Faster Casting + Arcane Surge (+ Portal)

(pay attention that your Arcane Surge is low level so that it procs with one cast, for this combination it's level 7)

Frostbomb + Phase Run + Increased Duration

(pay attention that your Arcane Surge is low level so that it procs with one cast, for this combination it's level 4)

Cast When Damage Taken + Immortal Call + Enfeeble + (Increased Duration)

(Cast When Damage Taken should be lvl1, Immortal Call lvl3, Enfeeble lvl5)

Projectile Weakness + Vaal Haste / Vaal Grace + Increased Duration

(We need 155 Dex for level 20 on Projectile Weakness which is hard to get for us. But it's totally fine to leave the gem at a lower level, since we only lose a little bit of DPS against bosses)

Shield Charge + Faster Attacks + Fortify

(if you use dagger/sceptre)

Alternatively use Vigilant Strike (with jewel) - this should be your endgame setup:

Vigilant Strike + Ancestral Call (+ Faster Attacks)

Optional:

Decoy Totem + Multiple Totems for Bosses

Summon Lightning Golem

Gear Setup

Weapon

Optimally you want a dagger or sceptre to apply fortify with Shield Charge or Vigilant Strike. Especially early on it's totally fine to use a wand though.

Start out with a regular dagger or sceptre with

• Spell Damage, Elemental Damage
• Critchance for Spells
• Critmulti
• Added Damage to Spells

Endgame crafting: The shaper mod "Gain Elemental Damage as extra chaos damage" (max 20%) is a very strong multiplier. Since Betrayal multimodding became pretty strong, so just isolate the mod and then multimod.

Body Armour

A Tabula should be one of your first investments. Getting a unique or rare 6link armor is not a high priority since we can easily reach 7k EHP without it. So you might consider getting a +1 Tabula to boost your damage.

The standard option would just be a regular body with Life, Mana and Resists. Often you can these rather cheap (especially corrupted with the right colors) or craft on a white 6-link yourself.

Endgame: Loreweave is the best endgame chest IMO. The big selling point is getting 78% max resists (divine until you get this). You also get some life, mana, critchance and eledamage.

Helmet/Boots/Gloves

Look for

• 30% movement speed (on boots)
• +Life
• +Mana
• +Resists
• +Dex (we need a little bit of Dex somewhere)

Endgame: You want to craft your helmet with Pristine+Frigid Fossil to get the "Nearby Enemies have -10% Cold Resistance" mod. You could also get Life Regeneration as a nice extra. Make sure you use a ES (hybrid) base so you can also roll or craft +Mana.

Shield

• +Life
• Critchance for Spells
• +Mana
• +Resists
• Spell Damage (expensive to get with the other stats)

Endgame: Shaper Shields can get a +1 Totem Mod (we don't know yet at which ilvl or how rare the mod it). This mod is of course insanely powerful for us. With how powerful multimodding is, it's probably the easiest to isolate the mod (togther with life, spelldmg or spellcrit) and multimod the rest.

Belts

Look for

• +Life
• +Flask effect duration (very nice to get on a belt)
• +Resists

Optimally we are looking for a Stygian Belt, so we can equip an Abyss jewel.

Rings/Amulet

Stats on rings/amulet

• Life
• Mana
• Critmulti, Spell Damage (only amulet)
• Resists
• Mana Regen
• Castspeed
• Increased Cold Damage
• Crit Chance
• +Dex (we need a little bit of Dex somewhere)

Jewels

Of course 2 Threshold jewels and a Clear Mind.

Endgame: Use Vigilant Strike with the Jewel to apply fortify. You can place the Vigilant Strike jewel in the most left slot

Flasks

Move the mouse on the bold poe flask to see more information

Seething Divine Life Flask of Staunching, Experimenter's Diamond Flask of Warding, Chemist's Silver Flask of Grounding, Experimenter's Quicksilver Flask of Adrenaline, Chemist's Basalt Flask of Heat

Flasks are very powerful and often underestimated by new players. Make sure you get these flasks soon and when you start doing maps craft new flask with 20% quality and needed affixes. (Bleed, Freeze and Curse immunity are important, as is more movement speed)

While leveling you wanna use a mana flask instead of Basalt. As well as in No-Regen maps.

Enchant

Helmet enchant

All are viable. Freezepulse Damage gives slightly more DPS than castspeed. But get a castspeed one if it's cheap. I personally favor the Projectile Speed since we sacrifice less DPS than with a Faster Projectiles gem.

If you can't find good pre-rolled helmets with enchants and you don't wanna roll your own, taking a Starkonja's is a fine choice, we need the dexterity and critchance and attack speed is still useful for shield charge.

Boots enchant

Often underestimated. And you can even farm the enchant yourself. The "10% Elemental Penetration if you have not killed recently" works well for us because the totem kills don't count for us. It gives us roughly 7% more damage which is almost as good as the Helmet Enchants. "2% of Life and Mana regenerated if you have been hit recently" is a nice defensive option.

Leveling and skilltrees

Note: If you are ever in need of dexterity, just pick one of the +30 dex nodes which are available to us.

- Start out with Freezing Pulse + Arcane Surge + Onslaught (just one of those supports is fine of course). We need a BBG wand (also pickup one BBR wand for later). If you can get your hand on an Explosive Trap (Templar doesn't get it, you could mule it), that would be helpful in Act1 Boss Fights. You should keep Arcane Surge at level 1 for now, we want it to proc as often as possible.

- At lvl4 switch to Frostbomb + Arcane Surge + Onslaught and enjoy the speedy levelling with Frostbomb. You will still need Freezing Pulse (or Explosive Trap) for bosses.

- Get Clarity and Flame Dash at level 10. (we drop Clarity when we get a Clear Mind jewel). Also get Added Lightning as a support against bosses.

- With level 12 we start using Arc Totems. Until you get Ancestral Bond you should still use Frostbomb as well. Craft a +1 Lightning BBR Wand (topaz ring + magic wand/sceptre 3-linked BBR + Alteration Orb). Links: Arc + Spell Totem + Added Lightning

- You can take any Herald gem to boost your damage a bit. Drop them later when you spec into Mind over Matter.

- Replace Added Lightning with Controlled Destruction once you get it

Skill tree around level 20

- When you get Ancestral Bond, you get 2 Totems, but can no longer use Frost Bomb. Link Flame Dash to Faster Casting and Arcane Surge.

- You can start looking for BBBR 4link. The 4th link will be Faster Casting.

Skill tree when you reach level 43

- Around level 43 we should finish the quest in act5 which gives us a Freezing Pulse threshold jewel. Invest your first chaos/alchemy to buy a second jewel and place them in the fresh acquired slots on our skilltree. Replace Arc with Freezing Pulse. (if you are SSF you should stay Arc Totem until you find a second jewel, the skilltree is pretty much the same, levelling another character to act5 is not worth the time).

- In Act 4 we can buy Cast When Damage Taken and Immortal Call and link them. We also get a Lightning Golem.

Skill tree when you reach around level 55

- We started picking up some crit nodes and got a Diamond Flask from the Silver Locket Quest in act 7.

- If you did the Fallen from Grace quest in Act 6, you can buy all gems now from Lilly. You might wanna have a look at the "Gem links" section and see if you can add more useful gems or start levelling support gems. But don't try to get that exact setup right now. It's usually not worth to invest jeweller's or chromatics in levelling items (if you are in desperate need of gemlinks use essences on 4-links you find).

Skill tree when you reach maps (or slightly after)

- Try to get your hands on a Tabula. This should be your first big investment. You can buy single gear pieces for 1c if you are not resist capped or just have really awful gear in some slot.

- If you have found or bought decent gear pieces, color and link them. You should try to complete your gem links now and get decently rolled flasks.

- Try to get your Freezing Pulse gem up to 20% quality (or buy a 20/20 if it's not leaguestart).

Skill tree at level 90

Most common mistakes

• Not using Projectile Weakness and/or Frostbomb with Arcane Surge, which gives you a huge damage boost against strong enemies.
• Not using a Diamond and Silver Flask.
• Not taking mana nodes on the tree or getting mana on gear.
• Trying to get too much offensive stats/gear.