Ice Strike Invoker- t15+ atlas bosser and mapper.

Hi all. I have an ice strike build that I have been tweaking and testing since launch and I think there are a few things worth sharing about the build.

First I want to thank Mathil, Snoobae85, Skryah (via Ziz), and /u/wolfatthedoor. They were helpful for various support link ideas, spirit gem setups, and passive tree nodes that significantly helped reduce the time that I had to spend experimenting.

Showcase

• level 81 breach, 40 second boss kill: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpfg2UmN0pg
• t16 boss with +51% ele res, 6 sec kill: https://youtu.be/5KL10PJyHAU?t=120
• t17 map clear till breach and expedition: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlVhrMpJGfQ

This build features strong map clear with herald of ice and ice strike while maintaining a strong burst window on rares and bosses while they are frozen. If one were to level with this build in mind, you would need to save gold for a passive tree swap to crit nodes once you get a decent weapon in maps.

I chose Ice Strike because it is the best melee skill in terms of feel to play that I have ever done in a PoE game. There are mini dashes between strikes to help gap close and the third strike is very satisfying. I truly hope there are future skills for other weapons or druid forms that sure this kind of dash system. It is a less seizure inducing flicker strike.

Nothing in the gear is that special. I crafted my own chest and both rings. The only thing critical about the chest is making sure you hit the 120 spirit breakpoint if you want the exact same aura setup. The staff was 80ex at time of purchase and everything else was 40 or lower to buy the base or the entire item at the time of purchase except the amulet which was of course an additional 45 just for the anoint.

Tree, Gear: https://maxroll.gg/poe2/planner/cun00ll1

Anoint: Offense- Stormcharged. Defense - Natural Immunity. Cheap - Preemptive Strike

Charms: Keep freeze charm on as default, swap to bleed, poison, or stun if the explicit for that is on your waystone suffixes.

Ascendancy order: Blizzard, LmtG, aPmfH, Thunder. You can get unbound avatar if you want as your last node but I havent needed it on atlas bosses and it takes a long time to charge up on things that dont have mobs before you fight them.

Skills with supports in order of preference.

• Ice Strike - Martial Tempo, Primal Armament, Close Combat (swap with Bell's Conc Effect for bossing), Ice Bite, Inspiration. Ice Bite is going to be constantly going off and lasts for the exact amount of time a rare or boss is frozen which is where we want our most damage. If at any point mana is an issue before you have 5 supports put inspiration over Close Combat. If Mana is never a concern then swap inspiration for crescendo.
• Charged Staff - Perpetual Charge (QoL), Conduction, Ignition, Cull, Getting shocks and ignite consistently is a 60% damage boost which will out pace any other support for an ice based build on a lightning skill.
• Tempest Bell - Overabundance, immolate, rageforged, conc effect, overpower (OP could probably be swapped). With our rage generation we can actually afford 2 rageforged procs on a boss within the first 3 seconds before we even freeze the boss.
• Shattering Palm - rage, inevitable critical, momentum You can swap inevitable critical for blind. Should not matter either way.
• Herald of Ice - Magnified effect, shock siphon (probably does nothing), cold infusion
• Wind Dancer - clarity
• Ghost Dance - Precision, Fast Forward, Herbalism
• Grim Feast - Vitality, Cannabilism --- For non atlas bossing swap with max quality Cast on Crit or Cast on Freeze Snipers Mark, Fire Wall, Ball Lightning. You aren't killing enough mobs for the Grim Feast and its supports to matter.
• Combat Frenzy - Profusion

Note- If you are struggling with Sanctum swap Shattering Palm with Storm Wave- Longshot - along with a few Ice Strike supports. Then swap supports back to ice strike when you get to a boss with the passive tree pause technique.

Notes:

• The two most critical nodes in the skill tree are Thin Ice and Heavy Frost. This is what allows us to ignore the crit node in our ascendancy, along with exposure, and curses to deal with elemental resist. This is the cornerstone of the build and these two nodes should have probably have been the Invoker ascendancy nodes instead of the inquisitor node. I fully expect this to be changed before EA ends. It is that strong
• The second most critical thing about this build is rage. I have 1 medium red jewel and one large red jewel both with rage on melee hit. This allows all attacks to generate 6 rage on hit. This means we will be at max rage in 2.5 seconds on a boss, it also means charged staff's range portion can generate rage itself. The rage support on shattering palm is an opener for 9 rage. See here for placement: https://i.imgur.com/YdrQQjI.png. Before someone asks, a large jewel by resonance does not hit inner faith sadly.
• There are 2 more jewel spots. One is a blue jewel. You want 2% mana recovered on kill and then as a luxury you can get crit chance, %energy shield, and or quarterstaff damage. There is a green jewel whose only purpose is blind. You can get attack speed, ele damage, etc as additional mods. This allows all your attacks to blind
• Defensive layers. ....and Protect me From Harm, Wind Dancer, Ghost Dance, Grim Feast and some chaos res along with your constant freezing are going to be your main defenses. Hide out defense sheet
• Killer Instinct should be a 30% inc damage node 95% of the time while playing.
• When coming to a boss open your passive tree and you can swap your support gems while paused. This might get fixed in the future.

Gear Specific Notes:

• Weapon- Phys dps is very important but not the only thing you should consider when on the trade site. Crit Chance and Crit Damage bonus on your weapon is a more multiplier. As an example: No crit dam vs 27 crit dam on just weapon
• you need 1 source of flat fire on 1 of weapon, ring, or gloves. I have it on my gloves. This is so you can ignite
• Eva/Es on Helm and Chest is mandatory as they will be the largest source for you. You will probably want life and then + ele damage as a prefix on gloves and movement speed on boots so you only have 1 spare prefix for Eva/ES on those slots.
• Cap res and satisfy attribute requirements before looking to add damage affixes.
• Attack speed on gloves is probably the largest damage boost you will get on them from a single affix.
• If you can get a Sapphire Ring with % Cold damage, Cold Res, All Ele Res then a cold catalyst will apply to all of those affixes and the implicit.

Things tested:

• Hateforged - even if I can sustain the charges with 9 or 11 rage on hit I was still losing damage compared to just being able to stay at 30 rage.
• Rondel of Fragility- Probably one of the strongest amulets for DPS but I dont want to try to spend the currency to maintain res cap, have decent chaos res, etc. If you can, definitely look to see how much damage this adds
• HoWA- Becomes a different build at that point. I would use this build to farm up the currency to swap to that if it interests you.
• Cast on X - less defensive for mapping, mana hogs.
• CI - it can work. You ignore bleeding, poison, chaos damage. You need Eternal Youth. Need to Spec into Melding and Patient Barrier if you want to keep a decent ES pool and still have good evasion and armor. But you lose about 2.3k on your max hit taken that you could get with decent life rolls on gear along with whatever damage or evasion nodes you drop to get those.
• Falcon Technique - not as good as the Echoing cluster for the same amount of points.