POE 3.24 Vaal Ice Shot - League Starter Zoomer Guide

* Brand Recall is supposed to be Call To Arms. I will fix this when pob updates with the new gems. *Leveling gear priority: Prismweave -> Karui Ward -> Ondar's Clasp -> Hyrri's bite Vendor regex: IMPORTANT NOTES -Flasks are very important! Especially the bismuth flask; we use it to cap our resistances so make it a priority to have the enchant "Reused at the end of this Flask's effect" alongside the prefix "+ to maximum charges" -This sound ridiculous but is actually big brain, with our flask duration and flask effect scaling, we get 48% to all resistances for 15.4 seconds and the flask can be used 4 times in a row before it runs out (over 1 minute of uptime without killing monsters) -Precise Technique is a keystone we use for lvling, it gives 40% more dmg as long as our accuracy is higher than our life pool, check your character offensive stats in game to see your accuracy rating. -We take the 15% Increased life if you have no life modifier on your body armour, this not only includes maximum life but also life regen. -There is a small window in your progression where sniper's mark doesn't have enough mana to be cast after you make your transition to crit, use lifetap temporarily to fix this issue. PLAYSTYLE Kill stuff fast and zoom with high movement speed, when a tankier monster show up, blast them up by pressing focus and casting tornado via arcanist brand to quadruple your dps. If the monster is very tanky, obliterate them by also using Vaal ice shot to quadruple your damage again (16x dmg while everything is up) *focus is a skill granted by having focus modifiers on your gear, these modifiers can be benchcrafted after you unveil them from betrayal encounters. DEFENCES: This build is not as squishy as it looks. If you die every map, there is something wrong going on. Make sure your resistances are capped while the bismuth flask is up (overcap by 15% is good too). Make sure you are at 100% chance to suppress spell damage. Get as close to 95% chance to evade as possible. (with Wind Dancer you get 10% more chance to evade attacks if you've been hit by an attack recently, you can toggle this on in config -> when in combat -> have you been hit by an attack recently). Ways to get more chance to evade include: Grace levels & Grace effect, Blind & Blind effect, Chance to evade on a Watcher's eye, Evasion rating. Chance to evade is an absurdly strong defensive layer that is not reflected properly by the default pob settings. If you want to see how much of an impact it has on your build, go into Config -> Enemy Stats -> Enemy Damage Type -> Melee. Then look at your Effective Hit Pool on the left. Mind you that your Effective hit pool doesn't take your leech into account, which is also a massive part of your survivability. This build is way tanker than it seems. Chaos resistance also plays a big part of the build survivabilty, since we rely on avoidance and recovery over mitigation, we are particularly vulnerable to big chaos hits or nasty chaos damage over time effect such as poison and caustic ground. Aim for AT LEAST 50% chaos resistance. This is easily achieved through amethyst rings and the essence modifier that gives 50% (60% with catalysts) to chaos resistance during flask effect. Since the bismuth flask is always up anyway, this modifier is also always in effect. FAQ: Q: Why no mirage archer / return projectile / other support? A: These are good supports but they either don't work with the Vaal component of Vaal Ice shot or they have an anti synergy with Tornado. Q: Why not level with Rain of Arrow and rush Precise Technique like your other guide? A: You can. The levelling from 1-38 will be a bit faster, but once you have Vaal ice shot and tornado going, all the bosses will get obliterated instantly it's very satisfying and I recommend it. Q: Can I supplement the single target with ballistae? A: Not really, if you use Artillery ballistae, you won't benefit from tornado + focus as much. If you use ice shot barrage ballistae, you will exceed the maximum of 20 hits on tornado, which will end up reducing your single target from vaal ice shot.