I recently made a post/build-guide for a "Tri-Hex Flameblast Chaos Lich". I wanted to make another version of it with only Ele Damage and without an Original Sin. This makes it easier and cheaper to build. I think this is the most fun I've had with any build yet (besides all the lag). You can find the PoB and Gameplay at the end of the post.

Concept/Playstyle:

We're using three curses of which only one is self-cast to create a curse-zone. Ice Nova is used as our main skill to clear trash and trigger more skills and explosions. For that, we stack a lot of AoE. Every skill that is used benefits from it and we can create even bigger curse-zones. Not a single unique is necessary or build-enabling, you can also use rare items instead. They're just a huge QoL. Requirements such as attributes and spirit are easy achievable. Res-capping is also very easy. For single target, we no longer use Flameblast (I tried this at first with fire to cold conversion but damage-wise it didn't even come close to the chaos version). Instead, we use Cold Snap which requires the target to be frozen. To help with that, we use Freezing Mark, a second damage-CoC-setup with Glaciation and spend some points into freeze buildup. Ice Nova itself also has a huge freeze buildup multiplier (damage needs to be high enough to meet ailment threshold). Playstyle is very easy: for mapping, when you see a pack at distance, you activate the curse-zone and cast Ice Nova. If you're in the middle of mobs (lilke in Breach or Ritual), keep casting Ice Nova to freeze everything. You'll inflict curses with the CoC. At bosses, you cast Sigil of Power + Curse and everytime the target is frozen, you cast Cold Snap. Aim for ~50% crit chance on Ice Nova. We use Ambush, so our first hit is almost always a crit. One of our auras is Malice which inflicts Critical Weakness stacks. This helps to get Cold Snap crit-capped. We can inflict a maximum of 15 CW stacks (effectively more because Temporal Chains makes debuffs expire slower but not calculating with that) which means you need a total of 63,4% paper crit chance for Cold Snap to reach 100% (this includes the 100% increase coming from Inevitable Critical).

I'm being honest about this: this build is a great mapper but not the best at bossing as we are dependent on freeze. It really reaches its limits at Pinnacle endgame bosses/content (at least if want to run highest difficulty). As you can see in the breachstone video, a T4 breachstone is doable but Xesht would take really long to kill. The tankiness isn't the problem. This fight would've taken me 10-15 mins, that's the reason why I cut it out. If you're more of a mapper and don't care much about Pinnacles, this is for you. The more monsters, the better the clear. It's pretty much the opposite of the Flameblast version.

Gear - you're looking for the following stats:

• Wand: +all spells or cold spells > cold/spell dmg > crit chance > cast speed > extra cold dmg > mana
• Offhand (Omen Sceptre for Malice): Presence AoE > Mana > mana reg > int/str > Spirit (need at least 140 total Spirit on it)
• Weapon Set 2 (Chiming Staff for Sigil of Power): Int > +all spells > cast speed
• Helmet: high ES > res > mana (hybrid) > crit chance > Int
• Body Armour: high ES > res > Int (try to get one with implicit mana reg or ES recharge)
• Gloves: Nightscale with high rolled stats and 2 sockets
• Boots: MS > high ES > int > res
• Belt: charm slots > mana > res > mana flask recovery > reduced flask charges used > str (get a good base such as Fine/Utility/Linen)
• Amulet: +all spells > mana or % mana > spell dmg > ES or % ES > crit chance > crit bonus > cast speed > mana regen (get a good base) - filler stats: res/attributes/mana recoup/spirit
• Rings: mana > mana reg > cast speed > res > cold dmg > attributes (get a good base)
• Charms: Thawing (guard), Stone (guard), Dousing (duration)
• Mana Flask: incr. amount recovered + incr. charges
• Phylactery Jewel: 2% mana on kill > curse magnitudes > crit chance > spell/cold dmg (added as custom mod in PoB)
• Rare Jewels: crit chance > crit bonus > max ES/cold/spell/ele dmg > curse magnitudes
• Prism of Belief: see 'Unique Jewels'
• Megalomaniac: see 'Unique Jewels'

You can get up to +5 cold spells on wand but this can be quite expensive. If you use one with all spells, your curses also get the levels (this increases mana cost).

Use mana catalysts on jewellery.

Amulet Anoint: Mental Toughness, Deep Trance or Conservative Casting.

Try to get helmet/gloves/boots/body armour with an extra socket.

You don't need a Prism of Belief or Megalomaniac. You can also use rare jewels instead.

Unique Jewels (if you use):

Megalomaniac:

You have some options and flexibility here.

1. You can also search for your anointed node and anoint something else on your amulet.

2. If you find one that has one of the nodes we already skilled in the passive tree, you could respec those and put the points elsewhere. For example: you find one with Arcane Intensity and Echoing Pulse, you can reskill the Echoing Pulse cluster and get Incovated Efficiency instead.

The most important nodes (mana sustain) you're looking for are: Invocated Efficiency, Mental Toughness, Deep Trance, Conservative Casting, Aspiring Genius (this can get expensive quickly in combination with any other popular good node)

Other good nodes are: Arcane Intensity, Throatseeker, Heartbreaking, Hindered Capabilities, Cooked, Dynamism, Sudden Escalation, Eldritch Will, Potent Incantation, Lingering Whispers, Exposed to the Cosmos

Prism of Belief:

Get +levels for Ice Nova.

You can get a second one with Cold Snap and swap them quickly before doing a boss/citadel.

If you do (or play without a Prism at all), use Cold Mastery for Ice Nova and Inspiration for Comet-CoC.

As an alternative to Megalomaniac, you could consider using a From Nothing jewel (need passive points). Here's the best ones for this build (with 3+ nodes) - from best to solid:

1. Eldritch Battery: Ether Flow (Mana reg), Arcane Intensity (dmg per mana), Controlling Magic (Crit/red. crit against you), Dreamcatcher (Spell Dmg)
2. Necromantic Talisman: Glazed Flesh (ES/Mana recoup), Eldritch Will (%Mana+stun thresh.), Shredding Force (Crit/Bonus), Adverse Growth (Mana recoup)
3. Mind Over Matter: Stormcharged (Dmg/Crit), All Natural (Dmg/Res), Touch The Arcane (40% Arcane Surge Effect), 1x small Arcane Surge on crit, Dependable Ward (ES recharge)
4. Chaos Inoculation (saves some points): Invocated Efficiency (mana recovery), Abasement (stun thresh.), Heavy Frost, Thin Ice, Harsh Winter
5. Heartstopper (great for mapping): Mental Toughness (red. cost), Storm Swell (cold pen), First Apporach (huge bonuses for first hits, take the whole cluster)

Runes:

• Wand: Crit chance (or extra cold dmg if your crit chance overcapped)
• Offhand: Presence AoE (or Spirit if needed)
• Helmet: 2x AoE
• Body Armour: 3x %ES
• Gloves: 2x Curse Magnitudes
• Boots: 2x %ES or Mana

Ascendancy:

Rupture the Soul > Dominion over Flesh > Crystalline Phylactery > Price of Power

Do not take Eldritch Empowerment! This will shred your ES because of the triggered skills.

To get the damage bonus from Price of Power, we need power charges. We get these by using Sniper's Mark & Combat Frenzy to generate frenzy charges and convert them to power charges with Resonance. This helps is primarily a Ice Nova/clear damage boost. At bosses, when you cast Cold Snap, it's unlikely that you have a power charge as it will be consumed instantly (possible but would need timing).

Defences:

• Some ES
• Temporal Chains, Hinder, Chill & Freeze to make everything super slow
• Enfeeble recudes incoming damage
• CI - chaos damage, poison, bleed immune (also, fk chaos balls)
• Charms for ignite/stun/freeze immunity
• 76% ele res (you can overcap them if you want)
• Knockback

Requirements:

Attributes:

205 int (for gems), 54 str for sceptre (Lv 18), 61 dex (if you use a Lv 8 Combat Frenzy)

Spirit:

Min 240 to activate all auras, 250 to add Clarity. If you have more, you can add Mysticism and Warm Blooded and drop the Thawing Charm.

Mana:

To be able to constantly trigger all the skills, we need a lot of mana and mana recovery. As we are using CI, this makes room for mana on gear instead of life. This makes gearing a little more easy (and probably cheaper). We also can take Arcane Intensity. At my current setup I have about 2k mana which gives 60% increased spell damage with a single node. We need to make sure that we always have mana and be able to cast/crit because if not, we have no regen (Nightscale).

To sustain mana, we're using the following:

• Mental Toughness, Deep Trance, Conservative Casting or Invocated Efficiency for reduced cost/recovery (Anoint or Megalomaniac). You should have at least one of them.
• Inspiration for less cost
• Fluke to get mana back from triggering
• More mana = more regen
• Arcane Surge
• A lot of mana regen from tree, gear (rings, sceptre, gloves) and Clarity
• Mana on kill
• Triggered curses and Freezing Mark on lowest level
• Mana Flask with increased increased amount recovered (ignores downside of Nightscale)
• Mana Remnants (mainly for bosses)

Optional:

• You can get damage taken recouped as mana but this won't help much at bosses.
• You can respec some points and get Conservative Casting (for 5 points).
• You can use Alchemist's Boon instead of Mana Remnants. Only do that if you have a Fine Belt with reduced flask charges used and use a flask that grants you charges per second. This gives you 0.67 charges per second but also requires 133 dex. If you go with that, you can also use a higher level Sniper's Mark and Combat Frenzy. This can get a little tricky regarding attributes tho.
• You can drop Heightened Curse to lower the mana cost of your main curse.
• You can use a wand with +cold spells instead of all spells. This reduces the levels of Temporal Chains and Enfeeble.

CoC-Setup:

I ran CoC and CoF before. CoF was great for mapping but horrible at bosses that's why we use two CoC-setups.

The first CoC is just for utility and debuffs. We use two curses with Expanse, Sniper's Mark and Freezing Mark (at lowest level) in this. If you want more damage/clearspeed, you can swap curses and use Hypothermia as your main curse (replace Encumbrance with Energy Barrier). Marks don't count towards curse limit and only one can be applied per target. We run both marks because Sniper's Mark gets consumed quickly and is then put on cooldown so Freezing Mark can be applied.

Optionally, you can replace Freezing Mark for Spell Cascade. This may cause lags. Only do this, if your PC can handle it. My PS5 can't without dropping to 5 FPS.

The second CoC is for more damage, freeze buildup and cold exposure at single targets/bosses. If mana cost are too high, you can replace Glaciation or Fluke with Strip Away or use any low level dummy skill with high cast time (like Lv 11 Comet) to increase the maximum energy and thus lowering the trigger rate. Can also use a level 14 CoC to gain minium energy.

Additional Information/Tips:

• Try to avoid the following map mods to make your life easier: Burning Ground, Temporal Chains, Less curse effect, Less ES recovery, Monsters have increased ailment treshold (if there's a map boss), Monsters have increased stun buildup (at least if you self-cast Hypothermia)
• Don't use Raw Mana (node) or a Seed of Cataclysm (ring) because both will increase mana cost
• Don't use Biting Frost (support gem) as this will consume freeze and you can't build up freeze anymore (can't be used on Cold Snap)
• For bosses, you can replace Magnified Effect to increase Ice Nova hit damage and freeze faster (eg put Hourglass on Cold Snap and use Deliberation)
• If you're on console, Cold Snap aiming feels bad (this is mostly the case during maps with many monsters and you're trying to target a rare)
• As we are really tight on passive points, stuns can sometimes be problematic. To counter this, you can respec some points and spend them in 'stun threshold equal to X% of energy shield' (can also do this if you want more crit or damage nodes).

PoB:

https://pobb.in/LI1OCTEvtpPh

Gameplay:

T16 Crimson Shores w/ Breach/Deli + boss

T16 Deserted 34% Deli/Breach/Boss

T4 Breachstone (without Xesht)

Have you ever seen the true face of lag, exile? Wanne see peak console performance? This is when I play with Spell Cascade. Resolution was already lowered to 50%. This is why I usually play with Dynamic Resolution/Culling on.