The objectively Strongest Whispering Ice character – Icestorm Inquisitor

Hi, I'd like to share the build of my current character, which is lvl 95 at the moment and clearing endgame content very comfortably despite being « offmeta ». I know there's a lot of talk of meta being enforced by the difficulty of this league, but I truly think you can make plenty of weird builds work if you have a strong understanding of the game's scaling mechanics.

Let's take Whispering Ice for instance. You don't need 3k intelligence to make it work. As long as you have a nice amount of base damage (at least 1k intelligence), you could also get a strong multiplier on top to scale it, instead of overcomitting to a single stat.

Strength works REALLY well for that purpose (and it makes for a nice pun for the name of the build). Offense wise, you still get a bunch of %increased damage through Iron Will, and the crit chance from Inquisitor acts as a massive damage multiplier with the already high base damage of Icestorm. Defense wise, strength grants a bunch of flat life, which is then converted to flat ES with Ivory Tower, acting as a multiplier with the massive %ES bonus from Intelligence.

Ivory Tower is a fantastic item, it basically carries the entire build. On top of converting life into ES, it has a bunch of intelligence, it enables Pain Attunement for some more extra damage, and the mana pool issue for chaos damage already solves itself since we already get a bunch of mana through intelligence stacking.

Thanks to Syndicate's strength/intelligence crafting, gear being life-based and WI not requiring links, it's actually really cheap to get started with. It was my league starter, and it was a smooth leveling experience. WI not requiring any links also helps a ton. There are a couple of good upgrades that can be kind of expensive early in the league (large cluster with split personnalities mostly), but the character still works well enough without those.

There's an other upside to building around WI this way : since we're not over comitting ressources to Icestorm's base damage, we're getting good generic caster stats instead. Which means, we can actually use our second 6L for damage. I chose Frostblink for the fast clearing potential. It also doubles up as an Arcane Surge & Bonechill enabler, and I get massive freezes and chills even though I have Elemental Focus on my main skill.

Overall, it's surely the best caster I've ever played. It will never scale to the level of a top-of-the-meta aura stacker for sure, but it's infinitely cheaper, it's a very well rounded build even on a tight budget that can clear the entire game (maybe not the latest ubers, haven't tried yet).

 

Here's the PoB of the character : https://pobb.in/MAU2yBzg-brh

You can also see this character on poe.ninja, spotting the single Inquisitor with Whispering Ice won't be too hard.

 

DPS is bothersome to calculate, a rough estimation would be that each icy bolt has around 70% chance to hit a target of average size within the Icestorm area. Which makes Icestorm DPS around 18 times the average hit damage in ideal conditions.

I don't know the layout of the Minotaur map very well so the video is a bit awkward, but I wanted to make a quick showcase to show the character in action. If you have any question about the character, feel free to ask !

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Update:

I have been asked several times how well the build performs against end game content in this thread. Today, I did The Feared with my character, it was my first time and I was able to complete it deathless. Really happy with how the character performs for that fight.

I also did a few attempts at Simulacrum: while I was able to complete wave 30 every time, I could not do it deathless. Chaos damage is manageable, but the "Monsters can not be slowed below base speed" mod is a huge blow to the build's survavibility, and the character is bound to die once or twice when the monster density gets too high in the last waves.

I got a lucky loot and was able to do several upgrades, here's my current character: https://pobb.in/dMkzx43QSZqR

Stun avoidance enchant on boots is actually fantastic, I completely forgot about it in my initial post and I can't recommand it enough.

I had many people messaging me both on reddit or IG, experimenting with WI Inquisitor as well and telling me how much they like it. I'm really glad to see other players enjoying this build! The feedback has been very positive so far :)