Aims

I made a rudimentary PoB comparison for Carrion Golem elementalist between:

• CIP + Triad Grip + 6L
• Bitterdream + Triad Grip + 6L

The goal was to make an apples-to-apples comparison in a scenario that might matter at league start. This is not meant to be a min-maxed PoB - just answer the question if Bitterdream is worth it as an intermediate or even end game weapon.

PoBs

Cold Iron Point:

https://pastebin.com/yZ7gjAAc

Bitterdream:

https://pastebin.com/J11hDk8T

Interpretation

The gist of it is that the Golems themselves deal more damage in a 6L with CIP but when you take into account that you get a 6L summon skeletons instead of a 4L, the Bitterdream PoB wins out. This is even without taking into account chill effect, as I am not sure how to realistically set that. EDIT according to PoB the chill effect line from Bonechill Support does not apply to the skills used by the minions. Simply being chilled activates Hypothermia Support though which pushes the Bitterdream PoB quite a bit ahead of the CIP PoB.

Caveats

Obviously there are other carrion golem setups (phys, lightning) that can be competitive and potentially even better but I wanted an apples-to-apples comparison that is reasonable for a league start scenario. The calculations obviously also change when you get an anima stone because of the extra golems. This is also not taking into account the changed minion damage scaling for the next patch.
I am also not counting the damage per frenzy charge for ice bite support bc PoB does not take that into account and I would have to make a modifier separately for carrion golems and skeletons and I don't know how to do that. Given the wording of Ice Bite support, it should work for minions though.

##In conclusion If you can get a cheap Bitterdream, a triad grip and a 6L body armour at league start and want to play cold conversion carrion golems, you can actually get a decent DPS increase out of it. It basically becomes a viable alternative to Cold Iron Point at league start. This is nice because CIP is likely to be expensive again at league start due to Seismic Trap likely being meta again.

Questions?

It's possible that I messed up in this attempt at an apples-to-apples comparison so if you find some obvious flaws, please let me know.