Ice Shot Lightning Rod CI
Early Access – Day 53 – January 28, 2025
I levelled a Deadeye with crossbows until lvl 89, then I wanted to try some bow skills. Here is my experience with Ice Shot and Cast on Freeze Frost Wall + Herald of Ice for mapping and the combo Lightning Rod, Orb of Storms and Cast On Shock Ball Lightning for single target.
I followed aero‘s build. He has a couple of videos on this build (video 1, video 2). You can also check out his poe2 planner on Maxroll.
At first, I followed pretty much what he did with the Life + ES approach and the Thief’s Torment ring for mana sustain on single target. A little bit of leech or mana on kill is enough to never run out of mana mapping. But the single target combo use a crazy amount of mana and it’s all converted to lightning so leech is useless. So that’s pretty much the only way to sustain it.
I had a good time mapping but then I would die sometimes so I tried to respec to a CI variation. I love CI builds and I was sick of all the chaos damage, the keystone was pretty close so it was worth a try. However, I had to trop some DPS to make my way there on the tree which made my mapping less enjoyale. The Gear was also more expensive so I wouldn’t recommend my experience unless you’d rather being more tanky, slower and have a bigger budget.
I tried to play without the Thief’s Torment ring to get my 2 rings back but even after investing in mana regen, it wasn’t enough for single target.
I also bought the Hand of Wisdom and Action for a nice boost in DPS but scaling DPS higher is too expensive for me.
So, if you want to play this, follow the experts and not me.
| Bossing | ★★ |
| Defence | ★★★★ |
| Mapping | ★★★★ |
| Budget | ★★★ |
| Overall score | 13 |
What I liked
- Bow playstyle – it’s always enjoyable to be ranged and shoot arrows
- Herald of Ice – I wish I could have these shattering explosions in all my builds
- Fast – The Deadeye is pretty fast
What I disliked
- Single target combo with Thief’s Torment – Yes, the DPS is high but this combo require so much mana that you’re pigeonholed into this ring
- Frost Wall – It’s great to clear and help your defence by blocking the mobs but sometime you have some left over which you need to break yourself to progress in your map
- One-shots – low effective health pool on an evasion build, what can you expect, could be solved with more Life/ES. It was solved in my CI version but to the cost of DPS.
- Expensive to scale
Would I play it again?
Not sure, I like herald of ice but the frost wall and the single target combo are annoying
Path Of Building and stats
Sorry POB is not yet available
| Hard Core? | NO |
| Solo Self Found? | YES, but you would need to find the Thief’s Torment |
| League starter? | YES |
| Levelling skill |
Lightning Arrow + Lightning Rod until lvl 31 |
| Budget | 8 div as per Early Access – Day 53 – January 28, 2025 |
| Death count | 3 |
| Level | 90 |
| Played | 10 hours |
Please visit this Google Sheet to see the main information and POB data I kept track of. You can more easily compare with other builds.
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