Gaming

This Critical Strike Build Is Breaking Path of Exile 2 – Here’s Why

Yogesh

This guide outlines three versions of the Critical Strike (CoC) Ice Shot build, offering valuable insights on adapting the build for different needs like survivability, clear speed, and damage output in Path of Exile 2.

We’ve summarized the strategies, gear, and skill trees mentioned in the post, providing a complete breakdown to help you improve your gameplay.

Main Build Improvements

The core build in Path of Exile focuses on maximizing damage output and maintaining high critical hit chances.

Ice Shot remains the primary skill, dealing significant damage thanks to new gear updates and skill tree optimizations.

Key Features

  1. High Critical Strike Chance and Damage:
    • The build has a 39% critical strike chance with a 458% critical damage multiplier. This greatly increases Ice Shot’s damage, especially against bosses where the crit chance is almost maxed out.
  2. Important Gear Upgrades:
    • Hand of Wisdom and Action Gloves: These gloves are crucial, providing increased attack speed per dexterity and added lightning damage per intelligence. This boost is converted to flat cold damage using Call of the Brotherhood, greatly increasing Ice Shot’s damage.
    • Warden B or Duel String Bow: These bows offer big gains in crit chance and crit damage. Warden B also improves clear speed due to its chaining abilities.
  3. Skill Tree Changes:
    • Adjustments have been made to optimize damage and attack speed. Less effective nodes like Moment of Truth have been replaced with better choices such as Kite Runner and extra Jewel slots for increased crit and projectile speed bonuses.

Version One: Increased Damage

This variant focuses solely on maximizing DPS (damage per second) for Ice Shot, making it very effective against bosses and tough enemies.

Gear and Skill Tree

  • Gloves: Hand of Wisdom and Action
  • Bow: Warden B or Duel String Bow, depending on your budget or preference
  • Jewel Slot Changes: Adding Jewels that boost crit chance with attack and overall damage from quivers

Playstyle and Optimization

  • Use gear that greatly increases attack speed and damage
  • Make sure your skill tree includes nodes that boost projectile speed, crit chance, and crit damage
  • This setup aims for over 999,000 DPS, resulting in significant in-map damage

Version Two: Better Survivability

Recognizing the challenges of high-damage encounters, this variant adds energy shield mechanics to greatly improve survivability.

Key Additions

  • Energy Shield Nodes: Notably, the Spectral Ward node, which boosts energy shield based on your body armor’s evasion rating
  • Grim Feast Buff: Increasing your energy shield through corpse consumption, allowing it to overflow and boost your effective hit points (EHP)

Gear and Skill Tree Changes

  • Choose body armor with high evasion ratings to get the most from Spectral Ward
  • Consider using gear like the Atziri’s Disfavour chest piece, which can add lots of flat energy shield

Playstyle and Strategy

  • Combine this version’s defenses with the standard offensive capabilities to handle high-density encounters effectively
  • Use Grim Feast to maintain a strong energy shield, ensuring consistent survivability even in intense combat

Version Three: Speed and Efficiency

Designed for players who want to clear maps and high-density areas quickly, this variant includes Herald of Thunder and optimization for breach encounters.

Herald Mechanics

  • Use Herald of Thunder to deal lightning damage and help shock enemies, triggering additional effects and damage boosts
  • Modify Herald of Ice to work well with Herald of Thunder, adding elements like increased area, shock chance, and electrocution

Gear and Tree Adjustments

  • Replace Call of the Brotherhood to allow some lightning damage for shocking
  • Use Hand of Wisdom and Action Gloves to ensure enough lightning damage for effective shocking
  • Adjust the skill tree to focus on nodes that improve shock effectiveness and lightning damage, like Essence of the Storm

Playstyle

  • Approach breaches and densely populated maps to take down enemies quickly
  • The changes allow you to maintain high damage output while benefiting from increased clear speed and effectiveness against large groups of monsters

Summary

Our detailed guide on the Critical Strike Ice Shot build in Path of Exile 2 shows the flexibility and adaptability needed to tackle various gameplay challenges.

Whether you need higher damage output, better survivability, or faster map-clearing abilities, this build is all set to break your Path of Exile gameplay experience to suit your specific needs.

By following the detailed strategies and using the provided Max Roll planner, you can easily improve your gaming experience, ensuring you’re well-prepared for whatever the game throws at you.

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