Frostbolt + Mirror of Refraction
The entire build revolves around two things: Atziri's Rule and Frostbolt.
Atziri's Rule grants Mirror of Refraction, which periodically creates mirrors around us.
Whenever a Frostbolt hits one of these mirrors, it shatters and copies the projectile in multiple directions. These new projectiles can hit other mirrors and get copied again.
We're using Breachlord's Amalgam on Frostbolt to make the projectiles return to us and pierce enemies along the way.
With enough mirrors appearing, the projectiles can keep circulating and multiplying.
Why Widowhail + Drillneck?
This combination is responsible for a huge part of our damage scaling.
Drillneck grants increased hit damage and critical strike chance based on how many times our projectiles have pierced.
Since our Frostbolts continuously pierce things during the loop, they eventually reach 100% critical strike chance while building up significantly more damage.
Widowhail increases the bonuses gained from Drillneck, making the combination even stronger.
This is also why we're using Supercritical despite its critical strike chance penalty. Once the loop has built up enough pierces, that downside becomes much less important.
Cooldown Recovery & Projectile Speed
These are two of the most important stats to balance.
Mirror of Refraction benefits from cooldown recovery rate, allowing mirrors to appear more frequently.
My setup has approximately 0.47 seconds between mirrors outside maps, dropping to around 0.4 seconds while mapping with additional bonuses active.
We're stacking cooldown recovery through our passive tree, jewels, support gems, helmet socket, and Chronomancy boots.
However, projectile speed is equally important.
Too little projectile speed makes mapping uncomfortable, while too much can cause Frostbolts to miss the mirrors and break the loop.
Don't blindly stack projectile speed. Try to find a balance where the build feels comfortable without constantly restarting.
Rarity Stacking
Ritualist is particularly useful because we get an additional ring slot and bonuses from rings and amulets.
My setup uses:
- Andvarius: A big source of item rarity, with the downside of reduced elemental resistances.
- Rare Gold Ring + Kalandra's Touch: Duplicates our rarity, resistances, and cooldown recovery modifiers.
- Rare Amulet: Spirit, rarity, and +1 to all skills to improve our Mirror of Refraction interval.
- Morior Invictus: Helps with Spirit, elemental resistances, and chaos resistance.
- Mageblood: Allows us to use Legacy of Gold for additional rarity, alongside movement speed and resistance bonuses.
- Rare Helmet: Energy Shield, rarity, resistances, and additional cooldown recovery.
With everything put together, we're sitting at 464% item rarity on the showcased setup.
Culling Strike
I wanted this build to work as a proper rarity culler, not just another damage-focused Frostbolt build.
For this, we're using Horror's Flight together with Raven-Touched and Legacy of Deathblow, which grants Culling Strike.
Horror's Flight also generates Fear Incarnate stacks when we cull enemies, increasing our culling threshold further.
We're taking Cull the Hordes through Megalomaniac for another 40% increased Culling Strike Threshold against Rare and Unique enemies.
The threshold gets significantly higher as Fear Incarnate stacks build up, allowing us to finish monsters much earlier than usual.
For dedicated party culling, we can also use Myris Uxor for another 100% increased threshold.
Defensive Setup
Since we're sacrificing defenses to stack rarity, we need to make the most of what we have.
Our main defensive layers include:
- Around 4,000 Energy Shield in my current setup.
- Capped elemental and chaos resistances.
- Mind over Matter for an additional buffer using our mana.
- Ward from Remnants of Kalguur.
- Ghost Dance for Energy Shield recovery.
- Endurance Charges for additional defenses.
- Cast on Critical triggering Refutation, providing a powerful blocking layer.
Refutation is particularly useful because we're constantly dealing critical strikes once the loop gets going.
We're also using Grim Pillars, Detonate Living, Glacier, and Powered by Verisium for additional damage and utility.
Passive Tree & Jewels
Our main priorities are:
- Cooldown Recovery Rate
- Critical Damage Bonus
- Projectile Speed, balanced around our mirror interval
- Enough defenses to stay alive
We're using Split Personality to gain access to the Sorceress starting area, giving us more ways to reach important cooldown recovery and defensive nodes.
Other jewels provide cooldown recovery, critical damage bonus, projectile speed, and additional culling threshold.
My character is level 95 in the video, so there's still room for a few extra passive points and improvements.