Pros & Cons:

Pros:

+ NO gear requirements (except 2 threshold jewels), so cheap and SSF viable
+ Transitions nicely from levelling to mapping without any problems and big investments
+ Easy to cap resists
+ Easy to reach 7k-8k EHP with 40% MoM
+ Able to clear maps up to T15 comfortly
+ Very safe because we freeze all minions except bosses instantly
+ Can go Magic Find
+ Can run all map mods
+ Can reach 1.5 million Shaper DPS (300k DPS per totem) - this is specific damage gear, 80-100k DPS is enough for mapping
+ Possible to kill guardians and shaper with some investments

Cons:

- No leech
- Totems

 

Skill Tree

Ascendancy

Pursuit of Faith - Ritual of Awakening - Conviction of Power - Divine Guidance

Don't be scared of labs. You can do every lab as soon as you reach the required level. If you have a 6link and Freezing Pulse lvl18, you should be fine to solo Uberlab (on SC).

Bandits

Alira, since both CritMulti and ManaRegen are very good for us and resists are never bad.

Pantheon

Major: Brine King, if no Kaom's Roots, else probably Solaris

Minor: Gruthkul

Skill Tree

 

Gem Links

Mandatory Links:

Get those as soon as you start mapping. Don't complain about your damage if you don't use a Curse, Frost Bomb and Arcane Surge.

Main skill: Spell Totem - Freezing Pulse - Faster Casting - Controlled Destruction - Hypothermia - Cold Penetration

- If you want your projectiles to travel farther, you can use Faster Projectiles, it also means the damage doesn't fall off that fast.

 

Frostbomb + Arcane Surge + Phase Run + Increased Duration

(pay attention that your Arcane Surge is low level so that it procs with one cast, for this combination it's level 4)

 

Cast When Damage Taken + Immortal Call + Enfeeble + (Increased Duration)

(Cast When Damage Taken should be lvl1, Immortal Call lvl3, Enfeeble lvl5)

 

Shield Charge + Faster Attacks + Fortify

(if you use wands: Flame Dash/Faster Casting/Arcane Surge or Lightning Warp/Faster Casting/Less Duration/Swift Affliction)

 

Projectile Weakness + Flame Dash + (Faster Casting)

(We need 155 Dex for level 20 on Projectile Weakness which is hard to get for us. But it's totally fine to leave the gem at a lower level, since we only lose a little bit of DPS against bosses)

 

Summon Lightning Golem

 

Optional:

Decoy Totem for Bosses

Vaal Haste / Vaal Grace + (Increased Duration)

 

Gear

Weapon:

Start out with a regular dagger or sceptre with:
- Spell Damage, Elemental Damage
- Critchance for Spells
- Critmulti
- Added Damage to Spells

Shields:

- +Life
- Critchance for Spells
- +Mana
- +Resists
- Spell Damage (expensive to get with the other stats)

Body:

A Tabula should be one of your first investments. Getting a unique or rare 6link armor is not a high priority since we can easily reach 7k EHP without it. So you might consider getting a +1 Tabula to boost your damage.

The standard option would just be a regular body with Life, Mana and Resists.

If you wanna invest to make your character perform even better for mapping, you should probably get a shaper chest. Look for:
"+1 to Active Skill Gems" gives us around 10% more damage
"Spells have +#% increased Critical Strike Chance" gives us around 8% more damage with a Controlled Destruction setup. Divine it to get a Roll close to 1, aRoll over 1 is only available on ilvl84 chests and its probably hard and expensive to find a good one.
"Socketed Gemsare support by level x Item Rarity" is actually really nice for MF.

Helmet/Boots/Gloves:

Look for:
- 30% movement speed (on boots)
- +Life
- +Mana
- +Resists
- +Dex (we need a little bit of Dex somewhere)

Helmet enchant: All are viable. Freezepulse Damage gives slightly more DPS than castspeed. But get a castspeed one if it's cheap. I personally favor the Projectile Speed since we sacrifice less DPS than with a Faster Projectiles gem.
If you can't find good pre-rolled helmets with enchants and you don't wanna roll your own, taking a Starkonja's is a fine choice, we need the dexterity and critchance and attack speed is still useful for shield charge.

Boots enchant: Often underestimated. And you can even farm the enchant yourself. The "10% Elemental Penetration if you have not killed recently" works well for us because the totem kills don't count for us. It gives us roughly 7% more damage which is almost as good as the Helmet Enchants. "2% of Life and Mana regenerated if you have been hit recently" is a nice defensive option.

Belts:

Look for:
- +Life
- +Flask effect duration (very nice to get on a belt)
- +Resists

Jewels:

You probably want to get your hand on a Karui Ward as soon as you can, the projectile speed is amazing for us, especially in the beginning when we don't get it somewhere else. The other stats are all very useful, especially dex+strength for the gem and gear requirements.
Flasks

Stats on rings/amulet:
- Life
- Mana
- Critmulti, Spell Damage (only amulet)
- Resists
- Mana Regen
- Castspeed
- Increased Cold Damage
- Crit Chance
- +Dex 

Flasks:

• SEETHING DIVINE LIFE FLASK OF STAUNCHING
• EXPERIENCE DIAMOND FLASK OF WARDING
• CHEMIST SILVER FLASK OF GROUNDING
• EXPERIMENTER'S QUICKSILVER FLASK OF ADRENALINE
• CHEMIST BASALT FLASK OF HEAT

Flasks are very powerful and often underestimated by new players. Make sure you get these flasks soon and when you start doing maps craft new flask with 20% quality and needed affixes. (Bleed, Freeze and Curse immunity are important, as is more movement speed)

While leveling you wanna use a mana flask instead of Basalt. As well as in No-Regen maps.

 

Leveling

level start

- Start out with Freezing Pulse + Arcane Surge (+ Added Lightning)
- Get Clarity and Flame Dash at level 10. (we drop Clarity when we get a Clear Mind jewel)
- With level 12 you can use Firestorm. Change your links to Faster Casting and Controlled Destruction after beating Maligaro. Craft a +1 fire wand or sceptre (ruby ring + magic wand/sceptre 3-linked BBB + orb of alteration). Don't stop levelling your Freezing Pulse gem. Link Arcane Surge to Flame Dash if possible.
- You can take any Herald gem to boost your damage a bit. Drop them later when you spec into Mind over Matter.

Reach level 28/29

- With level 28 you can use Flameblast (after killing Gravicius), right when we spec into Ancestral Bond for Dual Totems (don't take Ancestral Bond before you have Flameblast). You should also find a BBBR 4-link soon to link: Flameblast, Spell Totem, Faster Casting, Controlled Destruction.

Reach level 43 (remove AoE nodes last)

- Around level 43 we should finish the quest in act5 which gives us a Freezing Pulse threshold jewel. Invest your first chaos/alchemy to buy a second jewel and place them in the fresh acquired slots on our skilltree. Replace Flameblast with Freezing Pulse. Remove AoE nodes.
- In Act 4 we can buy Cast When Damage Taken and Immortal Call and link them. We also get a Lightning Golem.

Reach level 55 (remove Elemental Overload last)

- We started picking up some crit nodes and got a Diamond Flask from the Silver Locket Quest in act 7, so we can drop Elemental Overload now.
- If you did the Fallen from Grace quest in Act 6, you can buy all gems now from Lilly. You might wanna have a look at the "Gem links" section and see if you can add more useful gems or start levelling support gems. But don't try to get that exact setup right now. It's usually not worth to invest jeweller's or chromatics in levelling items (if you are in desperate need of gemlinks use essences on 4-links you find).

Reach maps (or slightly after)

- Try to get your hands on a Tabula. This should be your first big investment. You can buy single gear pieces for 1c if you are not resist capped or just have really awful gear in some slot.
- If you have found or bought decent gear pieces, color and link them. You should try to complete your gem links now and get decently rolled flasks.
- Try to get your Freezing Pulse gem up to 20% quality (or buy a 20/20 if it's not leaguestart).

 

Expectations