Cold to Fire, Replica Cold Iron Point Chieftain [budget]

Picked up a Replica Cold Iron Point in the last league I played and seeing as there's not a single build on poe.ninja that uses it I wanted to give it a try. Enter cold to fire chieftain.

#Updated showcase (07.03.2022)

• Mapping example lvl89 (vaal ice nova)
  https://clips.twitch.tv/BlatantBlindingAppleHassanChop-Z8Ej1u52NPAmU3iO
• Level 89 PoB (after some investment)
  https://pastebin.com/4TVWwGdL

#Budget

• 2x Replica Cold Iron Point = [[10c]]
• 6 linked armor - I was using a tabula until yellow maps. Good budget options for this build could be Shroud of the Lightless or Skin of the Lords = [[15-20c]]
• (optional) Ashes of the stars is fun for reservation but absolutely not necessary [[~40c]]. You can replace this with a random rare +1 to cold skills amulet and switch hatred for herald of ice. Things are so cheap this league I found one with +1, int, life and cold damage for 1c
• (optional) Empower. Currently lvl 4 is very expensive (5.5x) but combines very well with skin of the lords (+2 all gems). Starting at level 2, each level of empower gives your main skill +1 level. So level 6 empower gives = +5 levels! This means that lvl 3 is totally acceptable as it still gives +4 levels and only costs [[25c]].

That's it! The rest of your gear is totally flexible. I'm mostly using random rares I've either harvest spammed or just picked up off the ground to get as much life and allres as I can.

#How does it work? The main components of this build so far are:

• 100% extremely cheap ice to fire conversion. 50% from avatar of fire keystone + 50% from the cold to fire support gem allows us to get +6 levels of any cold skill.
• very high gem level scaling to increase base damage. Currently using level 34 ice nova! A huge benefit of this is that you can run almost any cold gem that matches your playstyle. I'm using Vaal ice nova because it's honestly just fun but you could easily use almost anything else that does flat cold (cold DoT won't convert I think)
• relatively efficient tankiness from chieftain fire leech + Valako ascendency + enduring cry + juiced immortal call. Also very easy endurance charge generation from both Valako & Inexorable node

#A fork in the road At this point the build is still very early on and there's a lot of directions to choose. This community was super friendly and helpful with the last build I shared. Would love to hear what direction you would chose and/or if you have any suggestions of your own.

Offense

• scale ignite - pick up malevolence and some fire dmg over time cluster jewels
• scale strength + iron will - I'm already doing this a little bit and chieftain's Hinekora ascendency's 10% str helps a lot
• scale crit - would likely have to change path a bit to be further towards the witch tree but doable
• scale AoE - this will lower your per-hit damage but if you use Vaal Ice Nova this greatly increases your offscreen ability and your AoE overlap. This is an example of a very juiced build someone did during metamorph league: https://youtu.be/-O_4ON3mvr4?t=72

Defense

• drop a dagger for a shield and scale block - a +1 shield with high %increase spell damage, life and block will be expensive but won't chunk your damage too badly. There's a ton of block nodes by templar so you can easily cap your block with glancing blows or just go for high flat block
• %max res - two options here. Prismatic skin + soul of steel + res implicit on chest or shield OR scale max fire res with tree + implicits + purity of fire and run melding of the flesh
• unspec life and go full ES with Divine Shield, es on block and some ES leech. Not of a fan of this option though as Chieftain and the maurader tree already have good life & life recovery options.
• spell suppression - possible but expensive. Would likely need to annoint + have t1 suppression on helmet, gloves and boots. Once you get to higher budget you could craft a rare chest with suppression & whatever scaling option you chose (%str,crit etc) to make this a little easier.

Thanks for reading!