Legacy of Phrecia! Bog Shaman Vaal Cold Snap

Notes on support gems! Cruelty has roughly the same damage as awakened swift affliction, with cruelty coming out slightly ahead. They both have cons though: Woke swift affliction reduces the duration so you have to cast more often Cruelty requires you to hit and only lasts for 4 seconds by default. With all the skill effect duration we have, it lasts almost 8 seconds. Which is the same amount of time that vaal cold snap lasts. So not as big of a deal. Unless you don't hit anything when you initally cast vaal cold snap. If that's the case, you can just hit something with regular cold snap and it will give you the buff. If you take the mastery for increased cruelty effect, it's better than swift affliction. It may also be worth ditching hypothermia so we can get both of these supports. At least early on. I don't think we'll need both to hit the DoT cap in the late game, and I'd rather have hypothermia over swift affliction. Early on we'll use bonechill on another cold DoT skill like creeping frost. The chill that's applied from creeping frost will still increase the damage the mobs take from other skills. ALL THE EXTRA SUPPORT GEMS ARE THERE TO SHOW YOU THE BEST ONES FOR THE BUILD. FEEL FREE TO MIX AND MATCH FOR DAMAGE, DURATION, AOE, ETC. Exposure: We only have exposure on hit from our gloves. That means that enemies we just charge through and don't hit, don't get exposure. Shield charge will apply exposure. Casting cold snap or vaal cold snap does an initial hit. That will also inflict exposure. Not super important, but something to keep in mind if you find your damage is lacking. Forbidden Flesh/Flame We have a few choices here. The best ones are: Heart of destruction. ~23.5% DPS increase We get 60% increased AOE when we haven't hit a rare or unique enemy. And a ton more damage if we have. This is probably my first pick. Frigid Wake. ~13% DPS increase This gives us a bit of everything. We become immune to freeze and chill, which is nice. We get some damage, though it's only slightly more than the 2 corrupted magic jewels we'd be replacing. And we get quite a lot of damage reduction. This is probably my other first pick. I'll decide between the two based on price. And based on what I'm farming. I don't need the AOE if i'm in toxic sewer or in most t17 areas. But if I'm doing dunes, i'll want the AOE. Profane Bloom. Explosions. 'Nuff said. Honorable mentions. These are maybe worth getting if they're significantly cheaper and you're on a budget: Void Beacon ~14.5% DPS increase. Stops enemies that regen a lot of life. Not really worth. 2 more corrupt magic jewels with life and cold DoT. ~12% DPS increase. More with a better adorned Mastermind of DIscord. ~17.5% DPS increase. Not really worth in my opinion. Since you have to hit to inflict exposure anyway. I'd only get them if they're really cheap and you're poor. Shaper of Storms. ~19% DPS increase. I'd swap some things around to get more non-damaging ailment effect if you go this route. A few changes can bring this around to a 22-25% DPS increase. Foulborn Rathpith: Make sure you get the damage over time rathpith. This is the main source of damage for this build. Defence gear: we just want high ES on as much as we can get, since we're converting the ES values on that gear into life with bog shaman. NOTE: global increases to ES don't apply to this. Or anything that isn't the ES value on that piece of gear. For instance, the foulborn utula's chestpiece does NOT work for this, since it's not on the actual stats on the chest, but rather in the affixes. You do NOT want life on your chestpiece since that'll hurt the life mastery we take Replica Dragonfang vs. Impresence. Replica dragonfang gives an insane damage boost from the skill levels. This is how we hit the DoT cap with just vaal cold snap. If you decide you don't want/need that much damage on vaal cold snap and you're fine with casting Cold Snap and Vaal cold snap on tanky enemies, then feel free to use impresence. Impresence will make you tankier. Also means you don't need an enlighten. You do need to swap your anoint to whispers of doom for the double curse though. I would also highly recommend getting an ele weakness AND frostbite impresence to make up for the damage loss. And maybe get some more curse effect nodes on the passive tree. You could also throw on a vitality aura and get life recovery rate Early Game: Since we have some free sockets, I'd highly recommend using multiple cold dot skills for single target. Vortex and creeping frost are similar in damage, with vortex being slightly higher. But vortex is cast on you and creeping frost can be thrown anywhere. You can also link greater multiple proj to creeping frost to create a bunch of chilled ground areas without reducing the dot damage. Pretty handy for early on. The chilled ground damage for that and cold snap stack, so you can do DoT damage with both of those and vaal cold snap at the same time. SInce life stacking early will be hard, I'll add some leveling and early mapping trees Wand: Foulborn Tulborn is just too goated. I crafted a GG rare wand and this bad boi is still better. Skill Duration: If it seems we don't need this much damage, we're pretty close to the skill duration nodes in the middle of the passive tree. We could easily swap some damage nodes out for those. Or we could swap out a damage link for increased duration. If we giga juice skill duration, we can easily get 15-20 seconds on vaal cold snap. The highest I think we can get, but we lose a lot of damage for, is around 25 seconds. Endurance charges are from the graft You can swap out steelskin for immortal call. But it will eat your endurance charges. I'd rather have the endurance charges.