Hi Reddit, its me, your #1 Wintertide Brand salesman.

Goal of this build was to attempt a Wintertide Brand character with one of the new ascendancies, of which Bog Shaman seemed like the best choice. The other objective was to explore and showcase alternative defensive options for Witch characters in general, since this class does not have natural/easy access to common defensive options like Evasion, Armor, or spell suppression like other classes.

TLDR for Build: Wintertide Brand is a solid skill, with decent clear and single target DPS. Can be an all-rounder that does all content including all Uber boss content. Damage does fall off/cap out as does most cold dot builds. Bog Shaman is probably the best DoT class but it comes with many downsides that are annoying to mitigate early on.

Defensive Setup:

- [7k~ Energy Shield] foundation of effective hit pool

- [Trial of the Faith/ES regen] notable that grants 5% ES & 5% Life regen over 1 when stunned. Add Zealot’s Oath and this reads 10% of ES regenerated over 1 second. Add immutable force to remove the feeling of being stunned. Add some other sources of regen and on average we have around 15-18% of ES regenerated per second assuming being hit. (having ES grants innate 50% to avoid stun but we have no hit avoidance so all hits are above at stun threshold if hit)

- [Block] Capped block with Glancing Blows, combined with “Recover 5% of ES on Block” from shield for instant recovery for smaller hits

- [ES gain on hit/kill] CWDT setup linked to both Firestorm of Pelting and Ball Lightning which hit frequently add to ES recovery. Soul thief grants 2% of ES recovered on kill

- [Curse immunity] effectively immune to all curses from total “-150% effect of curses on you”

- [Bleed & CB immune] crafted on boots + jewel implicit

- [Ailment immune] stormshroud

- [Chaos immune + Phys taken as] CI build, 16% phys taken as Chaos damage

- [80%~ max resistances] if poisoned (everything that can poison will poison us), ascendancy grants +5 to all max resistances

- [Malediction] nearby enemies deal 10% reduced damage

- [Frigid Wake] nearby chilled enemies deal 10% reduced damage with hits, also freezes enemies sometimes

- [Endurance Charges] can generate temporary endurance charges with unique flask if needed. CWDT immortal call may consume charges but buy more time for recovery

- [Soul of Lunaris] the pantheon does something

https://pobb.in/-qmLAFXyr4C9