Cryo-Shock Telestomp Stormweaver

This Stormweaver build focuses on optimising the Cold Damage and Freeze Capability across the build whilst using curses to aid against more difficult targets.

Using Frostbolt as the primary way to Freeze enemies, Cold Snap can be manually used to consume the freeze until Cast on Freeze becomes available which is used to automatically invoke Cold Snap for big damage in the early game or Ball Lightning for huge Shock Utility & Mobility during combat in the endgame. Comet is still taken but now as a manual cast where we aim to stack Cast Speed as much as possible to bring down the cast time.

Hypothermia is used to reduce enemies Cold Resistance whilst Frost Wall is used as an Offensive / Defensive tool depending on the situation. 

Frost Bomb is taken as a big damage tool when a target isn't moving or is locked in place. This I found to be quite strong in the early game.

Lightning Warp is taken to add the ability to Cull enemies, add Shock into the build and give the ability to maneuvre around the battlefield a bit easier.

Arctic Armour is taken in the early game as it adds an extra layer of defence in the form of having the ability to Freeze enemies that hit you as well as Knocking Back enemies through the added support gem Bludgeon helping combat swarms of enemies.

Blasphemy in conjunction with Enfeeble are added later down the line when you can get to 120+ Spirit on the build and have taken the Whispers of Doom Key Passive. This replaces Arctic Armour as our line of defence against melee attackers close to us by reducing their damage via an Aura.

At level 52 Eye of Winter becomes available which opens up further possibilities for Damage, Cold Exposure and Ailment Application.

NOTE: Since patch 0.1.0d Cast on Freeze along with other Cast On skills were brought down in power so Comet will not activate as often as before.You can work towards solving this through stacking more Frost Buildup and Meta Skill Energy Gain to bridge the gap. I have chosen to go with Ball Lightning instead after some testing because I found it to be extremely useful and more consistent post Cast on Freeze nerf.

I'l be live streaming most evenings (GMT) so this is a good time to come ask me questions directly!

Cast Frost Wall as required to block enemies from swarming you or underneath larger targets feet as this causes the wall segements to explode instantly for big damage.

Cast Frostbolt towards the enemies for near Perma-Freeze activating Cast on Freeze for big damage from the triggered Cold Snap or high utility output with Ball Lightning which can be used to teleport onto for big damage with Lightning Warp as well as placing Shocked Ground this occurs.

Cast Frost Bomb under large groups of enemies or larger targets for huge demolition style AOE damage. This is excellent for clearance and for big damage on bosses when they are stationary or crowd controlled.

Cast Hypothermia on Cold Resistant enemies whilst you work on building up enough Cold Penetration to bypass these resistances alltogether.

if in a safe spot, cast Comet at will for big Area of Effect Damage as well as reasonable Single Target Damage. It's recommended to block enemies off with Frost Wall before trying to go ahead and spam cast Comet to rain down frosty meteors of goodness on the enemies heads.

Cast Lightning Warp on enemies highlighted to be Culled. This creates Shocked Ground at their death location causing all enemies within to be Shocked. This can be used as a method to engage or to disengage

Once you hit level 52 and unlock Eye of Winter I find a good rotation is as follows:

• Cast Frostbolt to build up some Chilled Ground.
• Place down Frost Wall to block enemies or underneath larger enemies feet to quickly build up Freeze.
• Once enemies are frozen, place down Hypothermia + Frost Bomb and then spam Eye of Winter over any chilled ground on the floor to quickly deal large amounts of damage.

Additional:

• Eye of Winter can also be be used over the Chilled Ground effect to quickly build up freeze on enemies.

NOTE: Since patch 0.1.0d the Cast on Freeze energy build up was reduced making Comet much slower to activate. I'm still testing out whether this is the setup I ultimately want to use or whether I want to change it to something else so bare this in mind. This build was never 100% focused on the Cast on Freeze -> Comet tech, it was just a nice utility AOE clearance tool so it hasn't damaged the build that badly. The switch to Ball Lightning has less speed clerance capability at the moment but it has introduced a much more fluid playstyhle that integrates very nicely with Lightning Warp as well as enabling other Ailmentsto be used in the build.

Starter Skills

On a fresh character you'l want to start with the basic skill gems available such as Firebolt / Spark / Freezing Shards / Flame Wall until you can get your hands on Frostbolt which pairs very nicely with Cold Snap and Frost Bomb. Ice Nova is also a very nice addition to the build so be sure to get hold of this when you can as well.

Skill Gems

Frostbolt is useful when you pair it with Scattershot and Unleash giving a decent amount of early game damage. Later on Unleash will be removed in favour of other gems. Wildshards along with Cold Penetration should be equipped when available adding omni-directional damage and Cold Resistance Penetration to the build. Arcane Tempo is useful for raising your cast speed until this can be solved elsewhere. After you have enough Cast Speed you can swap this for Glaciation to raise the Freeze capability of the build. Deceleration can be used to reduce the projectiles speed, creating a moving wall of projectiles that you can stay behind. This can be furter slowed in the passive tree through the notable Turn the Clock Back.

Frost Bomb was very strong early on for killing groups of enemies and bosses. Spell Cascade and Second Wind can be added to further the damage output which I found to be super helpful. Later on Spell Cascade can be moved to Comet for more AOE potential and Frost Bomb will rely more on hitting hard for single targets.

Frost Wall is extremely useful because it can be used to block swarms of enemies, or you can plant it under the enemies feets for extra damage. It's especially useful against large hit box enemies where it instantly explodes under their feet for pretty significant damage and Freeze Build Up. Combined with Fortress to give the ability to block enemies within it and the utility of Font of Mana for Mana Sustainance, this is a must have in the build. You can take Icicle to reduce the crystals life if you want to use it as a more offensive option. Later on You can replace Fortress with Spell Echo to double up the offensive capability of this skill and if you aren't having mana issues, you can swap Font of Mana for Ingenuity for faster cooldowns.

Hypothermia Is the bread and butter curse in the early game to help deal with Cold Resistance mobs. The one thing to note here is that this can reduce enemies resistances below 0% allowing you to do extra damage. Cold penetration does NOT reduce below 0% in POE2 like it does in POE1 so this curse is useful even if you can penetrate all of an enemies resistances. Most of the support gems here are focused around increasing the area effect of the curse. The main ones are Magnified Effect and Persistence to achieve both a larger area and a longer duration. Later down the line you can get hold of Cursed Ground which turns the curse into a persistant ground effect with no activation delay and Ritualistic Curse for further area increase at no detriment if you have Cursed Ground already slotted. Heightened Curse can be useful in increasing the strength of the curse but I would avoid this if you're having Mana Sustain issues.

Cast on Freeze adds a layer of automation to the build focused mainly on group clearance. Everytime you freeze an enemy you will gain energy towards activating the skills slotted inside it, and later on you can achieve activating them very frequently with the right setup. I would recommend Cold Snap here to start with as you won't have access to Ball Lightning at this stage. Unleash and Inspiration are taken early to double up the offensive activation whilst mitigating the mana pressure this can put on the build. Later down the line there are support gems that can be used to improve the activation rate such as Impetus and Energy Retention. Once Ball Lightning becomes available you will want to replace Cold Snap as it's jsut extremely useful later on and Cold Snap seems to flatline damage wise in the end game. Ball Lightning allows us to be able to teleport to the projectiles with Lightning Warp as well as giving us the ability to apply Shocked Ground through this interaction much more easily. It also allows us to integrate Ailments into the build such as Electrocute which would be very useful in the higher endgame content.

Lightning Warp is a very useful utility skill that may seem out of place but what it allows is for us to integrate Culling into our build, including against bosses. It also gives us the ability to add Shock into our build once an enemy is culled which increases our damage against enemies whilst affected. In conjunction with Unleash for Multiple Casts, Soul Drain for extra Mana Sustain and Overcharge to increase the Potency of the Shock, this ability has incredibly utility value here. With the addition of Ball Lightning we are now able to activate Lightning Warp on demands towards the projeciles, using it as an offensive and a utility option for moving around the battlefield and apply Shocked Ground much more frequently. This ontop of the Culling tech means you can teleport around the map during combat to get in and out of combat situations as you see fit.

Eye of Winter becomes available at level 52 and is very strong. Cold Exposure is useful for near permanent cold exposure application on Critical Hits, Considered Casting is taken more raw damage whilst costing some cast speed (we can solve this elsewhere) and Pierce is taken to allow the projectiles to pierce enemies. One thing to note here is we have both Chilled Ground and Shocked Ground in the build, so it can inherit these effects and apply them to all surrounding enemies with ease.

Arctic Armour is a useful tool you can add earlier in your playthrough once you get the 100 spirit cap from the side objective. This is useful to help prevent melee attackers from spam attacking you by potentially freezing them when they hit you. This is further increased by the use of Glaciation. The use of Clarity gives us 30% more Mana Regeneration and Bludgeon can be useful to prevent Perma-stuns by Knocking Back enemies when it activates. This is later replaced with Blasphemy once you can get to a minimum of 120+ maximum spirit, but preferably 130+ maximum spirit.

Blasphemy combined with Enfeeble is a very powerful combination that allows us to entirely bypass Curse activation restrictions in favour of a Reduced Strength Curse that acts as an aura around us reducing enemies damage against us. This can later be used to have permanent activation tools such as Clarity for Mana Regeneration. This can be used without Clarity so that you only require 120+ Maximum Spirit to use this in conjunction with Cast on Freeze but the extra Mana Regeneration is highly recommended. For Blasphemy to be able to be taken in the build alongside Hypothermia the Key Passive Whispers of Doom is required as this allows us to have 2 Active Curses at once at the cost of Double Activation Delays. The great thing here is that Hypothermia later on will use the support gem Cursed Ground to turn it into a persistant ground effect and Blasphemy will be turned into a constant Aura so both of them bypass Activation Delays entirely, meaning is just a benefit to us with no downside.

Skill Info

The bread and butter of this build is to Freeze enemies using Frostbolt / Frost Wall / Arctic Armour / Eye of Winter as quick as possible to activate Cast on Freeze that will then activate either Cold Snap or Comet to clear waves of enemies.

Mobbing should be pretty straight forward and is definitely where this build excels more than bossing in the early part of the game. Frostbolt has such a high ability to Freeze with it's Chilled Ground effect that Cast on Freeze will activate fairly often. Both Cold Snap and Ball Lightning work here but since patch 0.1.0d it's now slower to activate skills so Energy Generation will be important to allowing consistent gameplay. Ball Lightning allows us to integrate Electrocute into the build as well as giving us Mobility options since you can teleport onto the projectiles using Lightning Warp, leaving behind extremely potent Shocked Grounds boosting our damage across the build in favour of doing big hits from Comet which now doesn't activate as consistently.

Frost Bomb is also useful for clearance and bossing if you can keep the enemies in place long enough to benefit from it. This is particularly strong in the early game before you can unlock many of the other skills or support gems so make good use of it!

Comet is still used in the build for its extremely devastating clearance ability as well as decent single target damage. Paired with Spell Cascade it grants it near screen wide devastation and adding Arcane Tempo as well as stacking Cast Speed across the build will help with being able to cast this more frequently.

Eye of Winter can also be used to apply freeze if fired over the Chilled Ground effect that is left behind by Frostbolt as well as being able to apply shock if fired over the Shocked Ground effect that Lightning Warp creates, so bare this in mind for easy ailment application.

Hypothermia is best used when the enemies are not moving much or locked in place to maximise its potential. When you Freeze an enemy is a good example of when to use this.

Mana Stacking

This starter build doesn't play entirely into the mana stacking tech as mentioned above as we don't take Mind Over Matter & Eldritch Battery by default.

It does however have Arcane Surge on by default from the ascendancies as well as Arcane Intensity in the passive tree. What these allow are the ability to scale your cast speed, mana regeneration and damage through stacking mana so it's important to try prioritise this where you can.

Later down the line when the above key passives are taken (if you choose to), it would also scale your defensive capabilities as well.

8th December / v0.1

• Initial planner setup with useful stats on items to strive for and a starter passive tree.

11th December / v0.2

• Updated Equipment Section.
• Updated Gem and Support Gem Section.
• Updated Passive Tree slightly + added Starter Information.
• Updated How It Plays Section.
• Updated How It Works Section.

12th December / v0.3

• Updated Overview Section.
• Updated links in the Equipment Section.
• Updated Skills Section.
• Updated How It Plays section
• Updated Passives Section.

13th December / v0.4

• Updated various sections to integrate Ball Lightning and Blasphemy with Enfeeble into the build.
• Moved Starter Skills & Skill Gems to How It Works section.
• Added draft endgame variant (To be updated in future)

14th December / v0.5

• Updated Build Overview, Equipment Overview and Skill Overview.