Today I want to share with you a special build in Path Of Exile 3.21, Winter orb Occultist. Because Winter Orb is one of my favorite abilities in the game. It’s a channel that autofires and has a decent range, especially if it’s synergized with Occultist, and at some point you’ll have plenty of damage and AoE.

You can basically do everything in the map in one go, and I really like that style of play. But if you want to try it, I’d first warn you that this build can get pretty expensive. It’s very popular, and people really like Winter Orb. If you have extra POE Currency, it still has a lot of room for improvement.

AoE Scaling & PoB

For Winter Orb, it’s AoE and its area of effect that really matters. As you can see here, my AoE radius is 28. You need to get it to around 28-29 if you can. The more AoE you have, the more powerful Winter Orb’s abilities become.

So amplifying AoE, we get some extra buff from Forbidden Power’s advantage, increasing AoE per Power Charge, so we need to stack more Power Charges as well. We get some skill points from Passive Tree.

We got some Jewels from Medium Cluster Jewels with Vast power and Towering threat. We need 2 Vast power nodes, and we can get 50% max health, and Towering threat has very high health support. Then we get another part of AoE from our Flask. Dying Sun is a good Flask for this build. Since we also have two extra projectiles, this is a lot of damage.

You can get more AoE with Forbidden Flame and Forbidden Flesh Jewels. Currently, I have Mastermind of Discord, which gives us 25% negative resistance and some mana regen, and both Jewels are cheap. The two Jewels only use one Divine Orb in total, so it’s pretty cheap compared to that Heart of Destruction upgrade.

Since we get AoE when we don’t have Convergence, and we get Convergence when we hit a unique enemy, this increases elemental damage by 30%.

Also, in PoB, we have some notes here, basically extra info on leveling, with the caveat that Pantheon is actually important. If you’re going through a period of Low Life like me, I’m in Low Life in this build by overusing Petrified Blood, then basically using Pain Attunement to increase spell damage by 30%.

To avoid these map mods, some upgrades for our rings are very expensive, especially the +1 Power Charge Rings are very expensive, while other parts of the build that require upgrades need to budget around 20-25 Divine Orbs.

Also Read: POE 3.21: What Are Skill Gems And Links? - Beginner’s Guide

How To Deal With Low Life?

So, as I mentioned, I fell into Low Life with Petrified Blood. You can actually skip this stage if you want, as it will leave you with some problems that you will need to address.

One of the biggest problems when you’re low on health is taking damage over time. We are vulnerable to damage over time, so something we can do is get Pantheon’s Soul of Arakaali. Lots of time damage and Soul of Abberath reduces igniting and burning the ground, which is always annoying.

Something I would probably do is make your Chaos Resistance a bit higher, do a Chaos Resistance roll somewhere, maybe use a Chaos Resistance Ring as a base, maybe have Resistances on your belt or gloves.

So it’s a problem that needs to be addressed, the damage that’s done to us over time. You’ll also need some extra Mana Reservation, since Herald of Ice is reserved in our lives, and because of Arrogance Support, it’s exactly 50% health reserved.

Our Low Life and the rest of Auras work on these manas, so what I do is basically double Enlighten. One here with all the big Auras, one here with Petrified Blood, and then two smaller Mana Reservation Clusters that get a 25% effect increase, so we’re getting a 7% Mana Reservation.

Finally, make another Mana Reservation roll on one of your Jewels. Of course, that wheel is here for Mana Reservation. And also talked about damage over time. Getting a Corrupted Blood Immunity Jewel is important. Because you can have Corrupted Blood Immunity on your Flask, but you’ll die really fast, so you don’t really have much reaction time. Look for Crit Multi, Life, Stats, Mana Reservation, all those good stats if you can.

Gear Selection

Then talking about gear, Body Armors are important. Critical Strike, Additional Curse, double Curse on Hit Rings, and Craft for Channelling Skills will reduce Mana cost. Our two Rings are Curse on Hit. If you don’t have Curse on Hit Rings, you can run Curse with Arcanist Brand, but that’s more for single targets.

Then we also have Frenzy Charges for our Body Armours, as we have Badge of the Brotherhood. We have a total of 10 Power Charges and 10 Frenzy Charges. We take advantage of Power Charges from Critical and Ascendancy and many other places to get Power Charges and Frenzy Charges to buff our Body Armours.

The helmet Blizzard Crown is also pretty good, with Double Influence and +1 Power Charges. Dual Void Battery and Dying Sun are important, then Flask. Having these Flasks is actually limiting my Crit Chance. I have almost 100% Crit Chance. Crit Multi comes from increased critical damage support, which is actually better than the added Cold Damage at level 5 Awakened.

The above is all the information I know about Winter Orb Occultist, you can also try it. I think it’s a really good build. It works both as a boss and I can use this build to kill Uber Elder and get Watchstones I need.

If you are very good at dodging skills, even facing Uber Elder, you will have no problem at all. And this build is not bulky for Ubers right now, but the damage still needs to continue to improve. Hope this guide will help you.