I will explore the inner workings of Frostblink of Wintry Blast CoC Occultist build, which is my favorite of many new emerging cold CoC builds in Path of Exile 3.23. It offers superb mobility, as it teleports the character just like the regular Frostblink does. However, due to the lack of cooldown, you can hook it up to a well-established Cast on Critical Strike and Cyclone gem combo.

The additional upside of this alternate Frostblink is more damage per chill effect on the enemy, which should be capped at 30%. The chill is removed on hit with this spell, so to apply it once again, you will use the basic Frostblink, as it is one of the very few instant cold spells that will not disrupt the channeling.

How It Works

The greatest benefit of using a mobility spell is the main damage source, as Bronze body armor, with its unmatched local increases to gem level for ascendency, we’ve selected occultist due to the obvious synergy with cold damage and critical strikes from forbidden power stacking maximum power charges normally yields tons of crit chance.

However, in this situation, it also provides a larger area of effect and area damage. The unique items that have to be used are also heavily tied to charges of all kinds, especially Ralakesh's Impatience boots, which treat you as if you’re fully charged. You’re dealing damage with your Frostblink cast on Cyclone that has 100% Critical Strike Chance with a high crit multiplier. You will benefit from Inner Conviction and Pain Attunement. Void Beacon and Frigid Wake are excellent additions.

Enemies will take magnified cold damage. The build has a high spell suppression chance, spell block chance, Elemental damage recoup, and a sizable hybrid life pool. It cannot withstand big physical damage hits unless you’re willing to tweak the build to make it tankier at the cost of damage. Clear speed resembles that of a Flicker Strike, but you can also use a regular Frostblink to close the gaps. It’s really fast. Single-target damage is also more than enough, tens of millions of DPS.

Gear And Jewels

The build uses many cheap Uniques with rares to cap resistances. You will harness the power of charges with Ralakesh's Impatience, Willclash, Malachai’s Loop, and Graven's Secret. With this combination, the character is treated as though it had all its basic charges.

You will also benefit from the absorption charges, which result in a lot of life, life recoup, and spell block chance. Other unique POE Items to implement are Badge of the Brotherhood amulet and Bronze live body armor for more damage. Willclash is an enormous bonus to spell block chance. When combined with other items, characters are treated as if they had all 10 or more power charges, and they do not lose these charges when blocking.

The damage and defense stats are also generous. Malachai’s Loop increases spell damage and grants 2 extra maximum power charges. The extra 5 levels to the Frostblink spell socketed in Bronze live will result in much more damage. Corrupt it for an extra 2 gem levels AOE gems if you can afford it, double corrupted if you like to gamble.

It could potentially increase the level of Frostblink by up to 8. Ralakesh's Impatience boots cause you to be treated as on maximum power, frenzy, and endurance charges. Conjuring these in any other way would be too inefficient and difficult. You can still benefit from Inner Conviction Keystone or absorption charges. The build is not very tanky, so using the Graven's Secret belt is quite a good idea. It grants you an extra maximum power charge and tons of life recoup from the elemental damage you take.

Use Badge of the Brotherhood to benefit from an additional 7 or more frenzy charges. These make you deal more damage and increase the cooldown recovery rate for Frostblink.

You may struggle with capping your Elemental resistances if you put Polaric Devastation on, but if that’s not an issue, consider it for extra damage, crit chance, and to cover enemies in Frost. They will take increased cold damage, and their crit chance gets reduced by 50%. A good Precursor's Emblem with +1 to max power charges is immensely powerful in this build.

Keystone of inner faith is available in the Dominus variant of Militant Faith and deals with more damage per power charge. The devotion mod shall increase your damage, grant you some Elemental resistances, Mana regeneration, or reduce the Mana cost of your skills. Shaper of Storms, Shaper of Winter, Mastermind of Discord, and Heart of Destruction are suitable keystones if you need more damage.

Shaper of Winter is particularly good to upgrade your chill and freeze for improved durability. Look for Bastion of Elements or Nine Lives, Elemental Penetration, and extra Critical Strike chance can be found as Hatred or Zealotry mods on a Watcher’s Eye. Grace offers more evasion and blind on hit. The abundance of unique items leaves you with very few rare items that will be mainly used to fix the missing resistances and attributes.

Flasks

You can craft the prefix to never miss with Cyclone on your weapon. Reduce the mana cost of skills and gain Spell Suppression, Chaos Resistance, and Blocking. You need some sort of melee weapon to use with Cyclone. We recommend a claw with its instant life and mana on hit, but most weapons will do.

Craft a prefix to make your hits unavoidable and seek modifiers for Critical Strike chance and global crit multiplier with spell damage. Acquire some maximum life, resistances, and spell suppression on the gloves. Other mods are of lesser importance.

Cold Exposure and Unnerve can be gained as eldritch implicit modifiers. Rare rings are where the bulk of your resistances and attributes reside. For prefixes, get maximum life and reduce the Mana cost of your skills. You’ll probably still need a bit more resistances and attributes, so try to gain them on your rare Jewels.

If that’s already covered, go for suitable Critical Strike modifiers. You can use 1 or 2 of the cold themed Large Cluster Jewels. To proliferate freeze, you need to look for Elemental resistances, Elemental damage, cold penetration, and Blast Freeze. Medium Cluster Jewel here you may find additional Critical Strike Chance with crit damage or AOE for better clear speed. We recommend one vast power for around 30% increased area of effect.

Bottled Faith increases your Critical Strike Chance and damage as long as its consecrated ground affects you and your foes. Your block chance is high but not capped. Use room’s concoction flask for more spell and attack block chance. For magic flasks, you can pick up diamond, quartz, jade, and life flasks. Their suffixes shall increase your crit chance, evasion rating, and reduce the mana cost of skills. Life flask shall stop bleeding.

Skill Gems

Frostblink of Wintry Blast is more suited for a trigger build, as it has no cooldown but cast time instead. Although it cannot be chilled, it deals more damage to chilled enemies and removes the chilling effect at the same time. Cyclone is used to trigger Frostblink. You can easily move and attack at a high rate. Link these 2 with cast on Critical Strike, Empower, Inspiration, and Power Charge on Critical Support gems.

A regular Frostblink is the mobility spell, which is also used to chill and freeze. Link it with Bonechill and Unbound Ailments for a more powerful chill effect, which translates into more damage. Zealotry guarantees you to have more spell damage and more Critical Strike Chance. Hits against tough enemies will create consecrated ground.

Use Grace for more evasion, which is excellent with Ghost Dance. You can swap it for determination if you prefer to take less physical damage from hits. Instead, Hatred simply grants more cold damage. If you feel like your damage is enough, use Tempest Shield or Arctic AR armor instead of it, maybe even both if you can fit them in. Link 3 skills with Enlightened to reserve less mana.

Numerous incoming hit damage is taken as dot instead of petrified blood on. It can provide you with a high life regeneration. Affects the bottom half of your life pool. Link it with Arrogance and Enlightened support gems to be just below half of your life pool permanently.

You will take less physical and Elemental damage by Immortal Call in a few moments. Frost Shield drains your energy shield to form a protective stationary sphere inside of which you take less damage and have an increased Critical Strike chance. Link both with cast when damage is taken to save your character from dangerous situations.

Enemy marked with Assassin’s Mark takes increased damage from critical strikes and is more likely to be hit with such strikes. Link it with Mark on Hit to apply it automatically against rare enemies. Activate VRF for a brief but potent bonus to your spell damage. Use Shield Charge to move around faster if there are no enemies nearby. Frostbite lowers cold resistance.

Bandits And Pantheon

Manually kill all the bandits. It’s probably the best option. Alternatively, help Alira. This would get you extra Elemental resistances, Global Critical Strike multiplier, and 5 mana a second. It is a good option for starters.

For a major god, pick Arakaali. We don’t expect to cap chaos resistance anyway, and too much damage over time may be dangerous. As we went heavily into hit damage mitigation with block chance, petrified blood, and recoup. Minor God is less important. Abberath seems like the best pick. It reduces ignite duration for you.

Passive Tree

The passive skill tree follows the outermost ring on the top. It’s the most efficient way to allocate all the maximum power charges and grab 2 large jewel sockets for cluster Jewels. The rest of the points are spent on maximum life, Critical Strike nodes, cold damage, reservation efficiency, and spell suppression.

For keystones, get Pain Attunement, Ghost Dance, and something to turn into Inner Conviction. Allocate 50 extra life and 15% increased life if there are no life mods on your body armor.

As life masteries, reservation efficiency as a mastery life reservation efficiency is reservation mastery crit multiplier against unique enemies and extra gem level to Critical Strike gems. As critical masteries, increased damage per charge as charge mastery, and maybe lucky spell suppression if you have any points left and low suppression chance.