Grinding Gear Games, the developer and publisher of Path of Exile,launched the new Harvest expansionon June 19. The new update included changes and re-balances to skills and passive tree. They also introduced new war cries, with one of them being Infernal Cry, which causes enemies to explode and deals fire damage. In thisInfernal Cold Assassinbuild we will use a Cold to Fire conversion build to utilize maximum damage, as well as go over gear, flasks and more, to get you ready for endgame!
Infernal Cold Assassin - Path of Exile Endgame Build
The latest update for Path of Exile added a new skill which we will utilize in this full Cold to Fire conversion build. Throw in the additional seal for Unleash, for maximum damage, alongside the increase of elusive effect, you will reach the maximum spell dodge chance of 75% and capped attack damage avoidance of 95%.
Converting all damage into fire is one of the easiest ways to build up damage inPath of Exile: Harvest. You can make this build as an Elementalist, an Occultist, an Inquisitor, a Trickster, or an Assassin. But we are choosing the Assassin to take advantage of its 100% critical strike chance with Ice Spear, as it’s an easy way to scale explosions from Infernal Cry, in addition to the buffed up Elusive.
With some investment, Winter Orb is quite decent on its own for general clear speed for a few reasons: It doesn’t require a target, it keeps casting while you move, and its hits overlap. Then we cast Ice Spear linked with the Unleash support gem, it casts three times, dealing a mass of spears. Combined with the explosions from our Warcry, and over burn from Herald of Ash, it’s unstoppable. Sound like your kind of build? Continue on to see how we’ll achieve it.
Infernal Cold Assassin Pros & Cons
Build Concept & Function
To clearly explain how this build works, I will break down its core concepts which includes how Winter Orb, Ice Spear and Infernal Cry all work.
How does Winter Orb work?
Winter Orb is a channeling skill, with 10 stages you’re able to achieve. With a cast time of 0.15 sec, you can press and hold right click for only 1.5 second to reach maximum stages. The orb stays above your head, shooting projectiles towards enemies on its own, without you having to aim. It continue shooting projectiles (at a slower rate) after you stop channeling, and start moving. This has a huge advantage for those who want a faster playstyle, it allows you to move between monsters packs quickly, so you keep all your temporary buffs and power charges up all the time.
Increasing the duration of Winter Orb makes it last longer, and loses stages at a slower rate. But that’s not necessary to make it work for you, as you may re-gain stages very quickly after you move or cast another spell.
With two “Beltimber Blade” swords, you have an additional 4 projectiles fired by Winter Orb, that’s equal to the “Greater Multiple Projectiles” support gem, minus the negative damage multiplier.
Projectiles from Winter Orb can hit the same target, allowing a kind of shotgun effect, short range but powerful damage. With “Combustion Support”, it debuffs enemies, making them take more fire damage. Adding “Infused Channeling” you gain a global damage buff. That’s why Winter Orb is good to set up enemies for massive Ice Spear hits.
How does Ice Spear work withUnleash?
Here comes the heavy hitter, as Ice Spear hits with 30 projectiles, or 40 projectiles with one cast, it makes it ideal for single target damage. Projectile counts are as follows:
you’re able to calculate your maximum single target damage by taking the “Average Hit” damage from Path of Building, and multiply it by the number of projectiles that hits the target. While noting that initial projectiles does full damage, and repeated projectiles do 10% less damage at skill level 21.
Total hit damage = (Average hit * number of initial projectiles) + (Average hit * number of initial projectiles * unleash seals * 0.9)
So without Dying Sun, and if your average hit damage is 200k, it goes as follows:
Total hit damage = (200k * 6) + (200k * 6 * 4 * 0.9) ~= 5.5 million damage
With Dying Sun, total damage can reach more than 7 million hit damage (on paper). In reality it’s like 60-70% of that (due to some projectiles shooting too far to the side, missing the target if the boss hit box is not very large).
Note that aiming your cursor further away from your character while casting Ice Spear, will make projectiles shoot in a narrow degree, allowing a better chance for them all landing the same target. While aiming with a cursor closer to your character allows projectiles to spread more in widely, and hit more targets in larger packs. So be mindful of such mechanic.
Ice Spear phases
Projectiles from Ice Spear have two phases, or forms. It is as follows:
This behavior encourages a ranged playstyle, and keeping a safe distance, while dealing massive damage. Unleash needs some time (about 2.36 sec) to recharge the whole 4 seals, so you will not be spamming it non-stop. Instead, you will channel Winter Orb in the meantime, to keep as close as possible to the 10 stages. Remember to only use fully loaded Ice Spear against Unique and Rare monsters.
The huge critical chance guarantee from Ice Spear causes it to always do critical hits, which always ignite, shock (if you have Yoke of Suffering), and give you an Elusive buff. In addition to being immune to reflect damage.
How does Infernal Cry work?
Every 8 seconds you may use Infernal Cry to cover enemies in ash, causing them to take more fire damage depending on total power of enemies within range. With Normal enemies providing 1 Power, Magic enemies providing 2, Rare enemies providing 10, Unique enemies providing 20. At maximum 35 power, you get enemies to take 20% more fire damage. Working with the “Deep Breaths” node anointed by Cassia, you may get 20% more power, gaining a maximum buff with even a smaller number of monsters nearby.
In addition to fire damage taken, enemies killed during Infernal Cry’s duration will explode, dealing 8% of their maximum health as fire damage, which is pretty awesome. Explosion damage scales with % damage, % fire damage, % elemental damage, and % area damage, and leaves no corpses behind. These explosions can chain upon themselves, allowing multiple explosions to hit the same target in some scenarios. It also can benefit from critical strike chance, and critical strike multiplier, which we have decent values for.
Additional mechanics that Infernal Cry provides but we don’t utilize is the “Exert”, and “Combust” attacks, since we don’t actively attack, and only cast spells.
Cooldown for Infernal Cry can be brought down to 5 seconds, with “Second Wind” support, and anointing “Deep Breaths”. You will also have two uses during the cooldown time. This makes it available to use wherever you like, whether you use it against bosses, or large groups of enemies.
How to Cast Infernal Cry Faster
Here are some recommendations of how to increase cast speed for Infernal Cry:
If we could achieve a total of 147% warcry speed from adding some modifiers from the list, calculations will go as follows:
1 / 0.8 = 1.25 casts per second (base)
1.25 * ( 1 + 1.47 ) = 3.09 casts per second (modified)
1 / 3.09 = Modified cast time of 0.32 seconds
The 0.32 cast speed has a faster cast time than Ice Spear, so Infernal Cry can be ideal for clearing maps with Winter Orb, and not having to cast Ice spear against every Normal or Magic pack.
You should also use Infernal Cry against bosses, for the “increased fire damage taken” debuff.
Skill Tree Progression / Path of Building / Ascendancy / Bandits
Path of Building:
Copy and import this link in offline tool “Path of Building” to see the entire character build:
Link of 3.11 build: https://pastebin.com/pBud65Nc
First Lab (40 points)
You start from the Shadow area, going through elemental damage small nodes, reaching for “Trickery”, go right to “Assassination”, and “Coldhearted Calculation”. Now spend two points for “Lethal Assault” , four more points to “Blood Drinker”, and stop there for now.
From “Coldhearted Calculation” take four intelligence points towards “Snowforged” wheel, and take it.Three more points for “Deep Wisdom”, then “heart and soul”.
Before going for the First Lab, ensure to go back to “Blood Drinker” and go south to grab “Acrobatic” and “Phase Acrobatic” key nodes.
Second Lab (70 points)
We travel a lot on the passive tree here, and go to all the interesting nodes from Witch to Templar areas.
Keep going west, grab “Arcanist Dominion” , and both “Frost Walker” and “Fire Walker” on top of it. Then, continue towards “Retribution”, “Discipline and Training”, then “Light of Divinity” and “Holy Dominion”. Find the shortest route to the “Arcane Potency” wheel, and take it, it’s good to get this early to help your critical strikes scale better.
Before going to the second lab, get some extra life from “Written in Blood” wheel in north east of tree (just above where we started in the shadow area), and “Blood Siphon”
Third Lab (95 points)
During some point in this phase we will grab “Avatar of Fire” and convert all our damage into fire damage. This transition needs to be smooth, with the right equipment ready, all active and support skill gems aligned in the right way. You can get it early as time you start hitting Maps, or you can keep mapping for a few levels with cold damage until you are ready. So this is flexible in terms of choice.
Now we will continue from where we finished in the Second Lab phase, get to “Doom Cast” through “Critical Strike Multiplier” nodes, since they are more valuable than critical strike chance.
Get to the “No Witnesses” wheel for a precious extra 45% elusive effectiveness, which translate to 14% increased speed, 7% attack dodge chance, and very a important 7% spell dodge chance. At this point, and without any gear at all, you will have 65% attack dodge chance, and 55% spell dodge chance when elusive procs. This is a huge defense on its own, that stacks with other dodge chance and evasion chance you get from gear.
We get more life from “devotion” and adjacent nodes, “Purity of Flesh” , and “Quick Recovery”. The “Melding” wheel can be a very attractive life source, and it also gives some energy shields as an extra layer of defense. You can decided to take it now or later.
At this point we should start to get the important critical strike nodes, such as “Throatseeker”, and maybe “Annihilation”. Otherwise, skip “Annihilation” and go straight for “Thunderous Salvos” for that extra seal for Unleash, it would add a whole lot of additional projectiles.
Again, don’t forget switching to “Avatar of Fire” at some point.
Final Lab (Level 90 with 113 points)
Here we will only go for straightforward final touches to our build. On top of the Witch area, east from “Thunderous Salvos” , take “Cruel Preparation” and take all fire nodes up to “Heart of Flame”. Spend three more points to get “Spell damage per Power Charge” and “Instability”, then grab any other remaining life nodes you have left.
Now your build is good to go against any endgame content. However, there’s a small final push we can do if we have the points to perfect this build.
Endgame (Level 95 with 118 points)
If you can get your hands on a “Transcendent Flesh - Crimson Jewel” , you can can put it in the Templar area of the tree for a massive 49% critical strike multiplier. It grants almost 10% more to damage multiplier, so here’s how you can maximize it’s benefits:
If you manage to pull all this off, you can have yourself a great source of damage. Now you will need to get some extra Strength from your gear to compensate for lost Strength.
For the last 4 points, you can either spend it to get “Divine judgment” for massive damage, or spend it on some quality defenses such as “Survivalist” and jewel sockets. Hypnotic Jewels generally provides all you need, damage, attributes, and life, if you get good ones. We now have access to 3 of them for merely 2 points each.
Ascendancy
Skill Gems and Links
Here are some advisable skill gem and links:
Alternative Curse Method and Better Gems Setup:
As you can see, we will be a bit tight on gem sockets. So now we need to create a way to apply curses to hit automatically to save some sockets. We can either get:
With any of these alternatives, you’re able to free up three gem sockets, which can be used to improve other skills:
Or use two separate “Cast When…” damage taken setup, to proc wave of conviction more often, while having maximum protection from Steelskin:
Early Leveling Gear
Below you will find some recommendations for weapons, armor and accessories needed for early leveling.
Accessories:
End-GameGear
Below you will find some recommendations for weapons, armor and accessories that will be required for endgame content.
Accessories
Uber Lab Enchant
A great source to improve your character is getting enchantments on each of your three slots:
For Helmet:
It’s very unlikely (almost impossible) to get the right helmet enchantment alongside the right corruption on Frostferno. However, you might stay with normal Frostferno for a long while until you get your corrupted one. In that case look for one of these enchantment:
Offensive:
Defensive:
For Boots:
This one is important to help you gain more damage or overall better defense. So pick up one of these options:
ensure to get bleed immunity, and ignite immunity from Flasks suffixes. Because all our evasion and dodge doesn’t help against damage over time and ground effects.
Soul of Lunaris: provides great evasion, dodge, and physical damage reduction.
You have two options:
Soul of Garukhan: So you get movement speed and more evade chance.
Soul of Shakari: So you get almost poison immunity, as dodge chance doesn’t help against DoTs.
Hardcore/SSF (Solo Self Found) Viable or not
Solo Self Found (SSF) is doable, because you can target farm all of the required uniques. However, it would be extremely time consuming and very frustrating. Also, another disadvantage would be you’d be less efficient until you get all required items.
On the other hand, Hardcore is not impossible with luck based defenses (dodge/evasion). You will get unlucky once, your damage avoidance will fail, and if the enemy gets lucky with a critical hit, that will be the end of you.
For the Rich Guys
If you don’t have a budget, and willing to spend whatever is takes to take this build to new heights, you will find these items below a great assistance:
If you found this build useful and want to check out more of ourPath of Exilecontent, be sure to read/watch ourPath of Exile: Harvest Expansion Overviewto find out more about the latest update. Or if you are interested in our guides, check ourIce Crash WarZerkerbuild.
