Wintertide Brand Trickster Passive Skill Tree and Gem Links

Out Of Date

March 5th, 2023, 15:26

Path of Building

Path of Building for the Low-Life (recommended) version of this build is available here.

Included is the recommended set of mid-game gear, a full skill tree, and all the gem links needed to get the build to tick.

We use the Path of Building Community Fork for all of our builds, which is highly recommended. If you are encountering errors importing the build, please ensure you are using the Community Fork.

Passive Skill Trees

Final Tree / Low-Life

This is our recommended Passive Skill Tree. finished with cluster jewels.

You can pick and choose from this tree to your preference, and many skill nodes are optional or malleable depending on your gear. As general priorities, however, you will want to:

Focus on notables that increase your Wintertide Brand‘s effectiveness immediately
Your Brand Mastery can be altered to suit your level of gear and preference of playstyle. More brands attached will offer much better boss damage, for example.
Spell damage and shield notables are also very important, such as Arcane Swiftness and Prodigal Perfection.

This build uses cluster Jewels. In our example Path of Building we opted to use 1 Large Cluster, 3 Medium Clusters, and 3 Small Clusters.

For Large Clusters (small passives Cold Damage), look for:

Deep Chill — big boost for our brand and vortex
Prismatic Heart — allows you to itemize more damage on your gear via Resistances and adds a nice chunk of damage
Disorienting Display — nice damage and blind adds a defensive layer to clear
Vengeful Commander — moderate damage boost
Cold Blooded Killer — strictly worse than Deep Chill, but still decent enough damage

For Medium Clusters, we opted for two clusters with Brand Damage small passives and one with Cold Damage over Time Multiplier. Keep an eye out for:

Brand Loyalty — excellent damage and clear boost
Remarkable — nice to have one of these to help quickly stack your brands on a boss
Holy Conquest — nice to have one of these for the unique passive, large clear boost
Deep Chill — just as great as on large clusters
Vile Reinvigoration — great utility and defense for clear
Exposure Therapy — very strong damage

For Small Clusters, our preference is Energy Shield small passives with:

Energy from Naught — huge Energy Shield boost, still powerful post-nerf
Brush with Death — great damage and defense
Vile Reinvigoration — great utility and defense for clear (if you do not have it on a medium cluster already)

For small passives you can either stack 3x Energy from Naught, pick one of the other two passives, or use one of each.

Life Based / League Start

This is our recommended Level 94 Passive Skill Tree.

Gems

Hatred 3-Link

Enlighten Support must be at least Level 2 in order for Hatred Hatred to be able to be activated using Arrogance Support and trigger the necessary conditions for Low Life. Additional levels of Enlighten do not add any advantage beyond slightly less Life reserved. Arrogance Support can also reduce Hatred Hatred enough by itself if you can make it Level 22 through +levels affix and a Level 21 gem, making it a 2-Link.