TbXie's Wintertide Brand Occultist Passive Skill Tree & Gem Links (PoE Necropolis)

Passive Skill Tree, PoB, and Gem Links

You can find an optimized Path of Building here. Every build I release will use the community fork of Path of Building. You can find PoB’s Fork, by LocalIdentity, here.

If you are not comfortable with Path of Building, PoePlanner’s website offers you a non-PoB alternative to import the code from the above link. it is highly recommended you install Path of Building to follow builds most optimally.

Gear Page

Gem Links

Wintertide Brand – Main Link (6-Link)

Wintertide Brand’s base damage scales fairly hard with gem levels! Try to pick up a 21/20 as soon as possible. For the Awakened Gems, they’re fairly big upgrades and should be purchased as soon as you can afford them! Should you also want to go for Awakened Swift Affliction, you’ll need to find some extra Dexterity somewhere.

1. Wintertide Brand
2. Awakened Controlled Destruction Support
3. Awakened Elemental Focus Support
4. Hypothermia Support
5. Swift Affliction Support
6. Inspiration Support

Chilling – Buffing with Vortex – In Rime Gaze

Even though Vortex can no longer be instantly cast, I still like having it on left mouse button. You can then proc it by pressing shift. Since you’re running Elemental Focus for maximum DPS output on your Wintertide, you want a Vortex on every boss so it gets chilled and you get the bonuses from Hypothermia. On top of that, because of Bonechill, you get a ridiculous multiplier to your Cold Damage over Time if enemies are Chilled. Lastly, Arcane Surge gets maintained by Vortex! Keeping this up and around is incredibly important.

1. Vortex
2. ###item:Arcane-Surge-Support
3. Bonechill Support
4. Flame Dash

Trigger Wand Setup

As you want to get all of these buffs automatically cast, you need to socket them in your Trigger Wand. These effectively add a ton of Damage through lowering resistances. Disclaimer : If you don’t have exposure on Gloves, swap a curse for Frost Bomb & Use manually curse the last one. Additionally, before high enough levels & an Enlighten Support level 4, the Frostbite most likely will have to be lower level due to its mana cost when used by a trigger wand. Make sure you can proc it since you do need to pay its mana cost.

1. Enfeeble
2. Elemental Weakness
3. Frostbite

Auras

Because your Helmet makes you reserve more Mana, it’s hard to fit in a lot of them. You pick up Discipline and Malevolence as your two Auras. On bosses or tough opponents, you get to press Vaal Righteous Fire for an extra influx of damage on demand.

1. Discipline
2. Malevolence
3. Determination
4. Enlighten Support (3 or 4)

Utility

You’ll use Vaal Cold Snap. Pop this whenever you want to generate some Frenzy Charges for some on demand extra DPS.
Socket a Tempest Shield wherever you have room to cap out Spell Block. Lastly, a Clarity is recommended for mana problems.

1. Clarity
2. Tempest Shield
3. Summon Chaos Golem

1. Vaal Cold Snap
2. Increased Area of Effect Support

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