Hi

Here's my pob in 3.19. Still building it now. its not good.

UPDATED POB AS OF SEPTEMBER 30, 2022

If you look up my profile there are 2 past winter orb builds there. The characters are "SurlyPoison" and "SurlyZapper".

I'm just writing a ~~quick~~ long text post cuz im drunk and bored, and I've run Winter Orb enough to explain how to gear the character. I wrote a novel and reviewed it at least 10 times but forgive me if I've made mistakes. I'll review it again tomorrow and edit anything I think could be improved.

First I should mention I drew a lot of inspiration from BalorMage's Worb and it's been amazing. If you don't wanna read this novel of a post, watch his video. It's still relevant. Frankly, you might just stop here and watch his video and get the same info I'm about to write. I hate to say it, but the video is good.

Quick note - don't read this if you are a noob. My post is written using language for experienced players, and I am also assuming you have my PoB open while following along.

Lets start.

#0. PRICE

• DO NOT RUN WINTER ORB UNLESS YOU HAVE THE MONEY. WINTER ORB COSTS AT LEAST 40-80 DIVINES TO START, AND HONESTLY PROBABLY LEANS TOWARDS THE 110-150 DIVINE MARK TO FEEL GOOD, AND 200+ DIVINES TO MIN MAX, AND THESE PRICES ARE WITHOUT HEADHUNTER OR MAGEBLOOD.

#1. Occultist.

• I think it's the best. There are other ascendencies, but Occultist gives Power Charge, +1 curse, and Cold Damage (with freeze immunity). Worb isn't a tanky character, it's a mapping build, and doesn't boss.

#2. Brief Overview of Worb building.

• Winter Orb is a crit build. The tree heavily relies on jewel slots, clusters, power charges, crit wheels on the passive tree, and mana reservation for auras. That's basically it

• Other nodes on the passive tree are life/strength/dexterity/mana(kinda)/aoe/???. But your main goal is crit multi, and a lot of that comes from your jewels.

• To LEVEL winter orb, just level any witch build and use a ton of regret orbs to respec your tree. This isn't a league starter. Cold Dot Occultist is an easy respec.

#3 Clusters.

• These are important. Why? Leech. You need Life and ES leech.

• I get ES leech through clusters (the notable called Thaumophage), megalomaniacs (again, Thaumophage), or find a lucky notable in my Timeless Jewel (Glorious Vanity). I generally put Thaumophage on a megalomaniac. There's another variation of Worb where you path to the right side of the tree, and there's an ES leech wheel there. But this build is left side tree. You can Poe.ninja the other variant that paths on the right side.

• For LIFE leech, I ALWAYS CHOOSE DORIYANI'S LESSON ON A LARGE CLUSTER. PSA FOR TRADING CLUSTERS: Be careful you don't buy a fire/lightning large cluster (instead of cold) because they have similar notables. At the bottom of this post I linked an example of how you would search trade for these large clusters. This is a bare bones example and you should consider PoEDB to add more notables that might make buying cheaper.

#4 Timeless Jewel.

• Glorious Vanity, the "sacrificed in name of Doriyani's"... the one that gives that "15% of life as ES, and Elemental damage is split 50/50 between es/life" Keystone. This is huuuuge for defense. Why? You run Life/ES leech, so "double" leech, plus this build doesn't really have spell defense, so high life/es pool is good to avoid 1 shots.

• An important note here - there are now 3rd party tools to search for your timeless jewels. so you might be able to get ES leech on a notable from your Glorious Vanity and forego the requirement of getting ES leech elsewhere.

#5 Clusters again.

• Run at least 2 clusters.

• First, remember you want Life leech (Doriyani's Lesson) and ES leech (Thaumophage) somewhere.

• Then, you want "Blanketed Snow" and "Blast Freeze". Blast freeze is essentially a "freeze proliferation", Blanketed Snow reduces enemies cold resists.

• Prismatic Heart is also an AMAZING notable, since this build struggles to cap resists when min/maxing.

• Keep in mind you can find these notables on a Megalomaniac, so I strongly consider setting up a trade search dedicated to as many relevant notables as you can. You can also search other interesting notables like Wish for Death, or Enduring Composure. Moreover, you can also add crit notables from medium clusters to your search, as "filler" notables, if you're targeting 1 or 2 "important" notables. Be creative with your megalomaniac search. I listed a trade link example below.

• Edit: Medium clusters. Use a Crit medium (or two) to fill out your crit, and get a Vast Power notable on an AoE cluster. You probably want to consider running two of the Vast Powers. You want AoE to be around 27 or higher to increase overlap for boss damage. I believe this AoE number has been tested and 27 is the sweet spot.

#6 Power/Frenzy charges.

• To get your max power charges, you run 2 void batteries, occultist +1 power charge, and 3 power charge nodes on passive tree (I annoint the one +1 power charge on the right side of the tree, and path to the other 2). You then get a +1 power charge helmet. You can min/max with +1 power charge ring implicits.

• Badge of the Brotherhood Amulet gives "max frenzy charges is equal to max power charges".

TO GENERATE THOSE CHARGES,

• 1. Power Charge on Critical Strike gem in your Worb 6l, and

• 2. a Frenzy Charge on hit Redeemer body armour.

• If you look at my PoB, I crafted my body armour and its very simple...I awakener orbed a "T1 spell crit" Hunter chest and a "frenzy charge on hit" Redeemer chest. I chose Astral Plate base for extra resistances and Armour. I chose a 6 white socket this league cuz they removed Harvest colour craft. If you look at my PoB, my current chest is SHIT. So I'll craft another later. To finish the chest craft after the awakener orb, I want an open prefix so I can Lock Suffixes, reforge Caster for an extra curse (so total of 3 curses... the 3rd curse can be temp chains or Snipers mark or Assassins mark) then Lock suffix again, Aisling t4, then craft life. Aisling T4 isn't necessary if you don't wanna spend the money because you risk removing the extra curse when you use her craft.

#7 Maxing out Crit Chance.

• Initially, the build runs Critical Strike Chance gem in Worb 6l. This should be dropped later once you find crit chance elsewhere, or decide not to run 100% crit chance.

• Hunter Flat Spell Crit chest I mentioned in #6.

• Watchers Eye Hatred Flat Crit Strike Chance (try to lean towards 1.6+ crit chance, it ranges from 1.2-1.8).

• Additionally, I like to buy the Sirus Gloves that give me a 0.6-0.8 flat spell crit chance on implicit. That isn't necessary, but It's great QoL. You can also get the Elemental weakness on hit implicit. Curse on hit is huge QoL for mapping.

• Passive tree crit wheels. One wheel on top left by mana reservation wheel, one by witch start as you path towards the top.

• You "fill out" the extra missing crit with Medium Clusters Crit Chance. PoEDB the notables you want on your medium crit clusters, a lot of them are good so I can't tell you which ones you should get. Just choose notables to cater to your playstyle. You also "fill out" crit with Diamond Flask. You can also use Bottled Faith.

• Use PoB to help figuring out crit chance - you might consider NOT capping crit, and use assassins mark for bossing, and using Diamond and Bottled Faith with flask enchant "use when you hit unique enemy". I personaly like being crit capped at all times, but it's not necessary, and I'm pretty sure the most min/maxed worb builds don't actually cap crit either and use ass mark for bossing.

#8 Exposure.

• Past builds just used Hydrosphere. You still can, but it is sad now how Worb interacts with Hydrosphere after the nerf. Hydrosphere is useful still because it directs the projectiles of your Worb.

• You can also opt for incursion gloves (damage against chilled enemies) and eldritch implicit the cold exposure, or you can get the Corrosive Elements Cluster Jewel notable (through the large cluster or a megalomaniac). Or just use Hydrosphere.

#9 Other gear?

• HELMET - Blizzard crown. Best in Slot. Once you got the base, awakener orb +1 power charge and either -9 cold res, or mana reservation. Unfortunatly, you can't get ilvl 85 blizzard crowns this league, so you're left to alt spam the +1 power charge on the blizzard crown. Sorry. Lab Enchant a +2 Winter orb Stages for end game (pay a lab runner or buy a Blizzard Crown base with the enchant.) Blizzard crown out performs any other helmet. This is a HUGE dps boost.

• RINGS - +1 Power charge synth rings to min/max if you want, otherwise just a Vermillion or Amethyst with resistances/attributes/-3 while channeling craft/chaos res. Consider the -7 non channeling on your other ring if CWDT/Molten Shell isn't casting. i know this is the first time I'm mentioning the CWDT setup but i go over defenses below.

• BELT - Unfortunately, HH is Best In Slot. But, a good stygian with res/chaos res/armour/high life and es works. Get creative here, the belt slot without HH could be anything you want, really. The thing that sucks about not slotting HH is that you lose a TON of dexterity/strength which needs to be found elsewhere (dexterity in particular). HH is expensive this league so don't consider slotting this item until you have the other gear. I'd farm HH before crafting elevated gear. Except maybe for boots...? your choice cuz boots are huge for making you go fast.

• BOOTS - Elusive + onslaught + life to start. Ideally you get elevated tailwind, elevated onslaught, elusive, crafted life to min/max. Two Toned Base is ideal, or an armour base.

#10 Gems.

• 21/20 worb
• inspiration
• awakened gmp
• crit strikes/crit damage, or both (drop ice bite if both)
• power charge on crit
• ice bite. (can also run awakened added cold)

--

• CWDT (lvl 1)
• Molten Shell (lvl 10)
• Inc duration if you want

You can always up the levels of the guard gem setup if you have a high enough life pool, and mayb even get a Divergent CWDT.

• Determination
• Hatred
• Herald of Ice

Defiance banner if you do Enlighten. Make sure you grab the Determination reservation mastery by your Glorious Vanity.

• Curse gems if you dont have curse on hit rings/gloves. Can self cast or do a hextouch setup with stormbrand.

#11 DEFENSES.

• Defensive gems are determination, and Defiance banner if you have enlighten. Astral Plate for Armour, Granite flask for more armour. Molten shell for guard skill.

• Flasks are granite, diamond, quicksilver.

• Other two flasks? Life flask is my go to, then you can do w/e you feel.. quartz is probably best, but you can run bottled faith, amethyst, etc.

• On your flasks, try to get Curse reduction, armour %, stun avoidance (and get stun avoidance on boots). The reason for stun avoidance is because you don't really need Brine King (occultist gives freeze/chill immune) so you generally use another major pantheon. Consider maybe a poison immune/burn immune if you want.

• shock immune on your power charge wheel at top of tree.

• Eventually you can drop your life flask if you feel comfortable with your leech. I personally always run life flask, but its not required.

• Consider a cast on death portal. Yes, I put this in the defenses section lol

• This build is NOT gem pressured so be creative. I've run Frost Shield, Enduring Cry, and experimented with other gems like golems, but obviously those are extra button presses and up to you. BTW, you can run Enduring Composure small cluster instead of a crit multi jewel if you want some added defense. I did this on my MB variant.

#11 End game purchases.

• This build loves to use Unnatural Instinct. In my setup, I path to Ascendent area with the AoE, Life, etc. But Unnatural Instinct is at 19Div and rising, it might not be feasible. Instead, focus on Critical Strike Multiplier Jewels.

• You can choose a full 3 crit multi jewel, or a 2 crit multi + life jewel. These usually go for around 2-4 divines. The expensive jewels are 4 crit multi, or 3 crit multi + life, which usually go for 20div or more (based on past leagues).

• Other than that, end game gear includes Elevated Blizzard Crown, a solid Watchers Eye (double hatred + determ), and Mageblood if you want a well rounded build rather than a HH mapping style. Elevated chest is the last thing you should craft.

-----------TRADE LINKS-------------

Here is an example of an 8 passive cluster with Doryanis (life leech) and 2 other notables that are important. You might look at poedb, to search other notables you could fit into this idea.

Here's an example of how I search Megalomaniacs for Energy Shield Leech. Here you need to sift through options and decide what notables you want. If you're really curios... theres another notable that gives ES leech if you search PoEdb..... .. maybe add in Enduring composure to this list for defense? haha

here's a 2 multi + life jewel trade search. you can also turn off life, and change count to 3, in order to get a 3 multi jewel.

Medium Cluster Crit Search

AOe Medium Cluster Search