- Out Of Date
Due to the latest balancing changes, we do not recommend playing this build anymore, as it does not meet the high standards we apply to our guides in terms of fun and performance. We are leaving it up as a reference and it might be revived in a later patch.
Current Build Issues – Questionables. Read this before playing.
Since we have received an Ice Nova of Frostbolts, the build got completely saved & will blast like never before. The guideh as been updated to reflect those changes.
Disclaimer
This build is not the be-all end-all of Cyclone Cast on Crit guides. It was tailored to be accessible for people who generally have no access to Cast On Critical Strike Support builds and therefore lays its focus on early game & midgame and has no intention of offering a 300 Divine Orb solution to endgame Uber content. On top of that, this guide assumes you have a character that has progressed through its first maps and is around level 80. We have plenty of Elementalist Guides which use a similar tree, making you able to play this character from level 70-80 onwards. A good example would be my own Wave of Conviction Elementalist
Introduction
Because of Cast On Critical Strike Support‘s popularity and power it has been changed in ways that made it gated behind a ton of currency to fix all of its problems. Generally, said builds just have too many boxes to check on a budget, leading to impossible demands for non-nolife players to meet. These demands are more often than not the necessity for the presence of accuracy, attack critical strike chance and scaling damage & defenses like any normal build. The final nail in the coffin for said builds was the point where GGG decided it would be a good idea to make triggered spells, be it by CoC, Spellslinger or other trigger mechanics, cost mana. Therefore, one of the only big upsides of triggering got removed.
Two upsides however remained. You could get an obscene trigger rate still whilst using a mobile skill like we are with Cyclone and more importantly, Cyclone Cast on Critical Strike is widely regarded as thé most fun playstyle this game has to offer. Spinning through a map whilst machinegunning spells all around is just a lot of fun.
We have presented you here with a build guide that is going to give you a decent fraction of Cast on Crit’s topend power at only a minuscule fraction of its usual entry cost. Enjoy it while it lasts.
Build Summary
Pros and Cons
Pros
+ Incredibly Rewarding to Play
+ Fun & Streamlined Gear Progression
+ Fast
+ Great clear & single target
Cons
– The very latest of upgrades are big but also expensive
– You’re still in the fray while killing things, as is melee life
– Ill-adivsed to use Cast on Crit while going through campaign
Map Modifiers to be Avoided
I honestly only avoided No Leech & Elemental Reflect maps. Additionally, if you’re looking to not die, maps with Minus Max, Critical Modifiers or multiple damage mods will always be dangerous.
Playstyle, Mechanics & Strengths
Mechanics
Cast on Critical Strike is a support gem which make an attack “trigger” a linked spell. We are triggering the CoC support by using Cyclone and are using it to trigger Ice Nova’s which are then cast on Frostbolts through the Cospri's Malice unique.
First and foremost, we need to talk about the enabler: Brittle. Because brittle exists, we came up with a way to scale damage & critical strike chance through the same means. By picking the Elementalist Ascendancy, we have access to Shaper of Storms which makes your Ice Nova’s, Frostbolts & even Cyclones inflict Shock on enemies. Since you’re inflicting shock, enemies take more damage. Now, both Shock & Brittle get applied more powerfully if you stack the “Effect of non-damaging Ailments” stat on gear or the passive tree. We are doing this until we have enough brittle effect to cap our critical strike chance. In the meantime, you’re scaling the shockeffect alongside it, amplifying your damage by quite a bit. This means the build is unplayable without a source of Brittle though, which is found on the Eldricht Implicit of your boots. Therefore, I’m suggesting only to swap into the build at around level 80, when people have access to those Lesser Ichors.
Next up, scaling defensive layers on builds like these is hard. We are countering this by combining the unique chestpiece Doppelgänger Guise with Elementalist’s Bastion of Elements. This gives you 40% Physical & Chaos Damage Reduction and an additional 50-60% HP against Elemental Damage meaning you’ve got both of your mitigations covered, somewhat. Because Flasks are not too powerful when ran without any other scaling, the endgame version abuses the only Flask that can carry your survivability, the Progenesis. This is however only a very lategame upgrade which you will never have to make and is only to be done when wanting to fight the hardest content in the game.
Cooldown Reduction & Trigger Rate
Whilst you could try to explain the CDR interactions of Cast on Critical Strike for hours upon hours, I’ll present you the key factors to understand. The first jump in power CoC builds get is at 14% CDR. The reason why it is this number has to do with Cooldown, Server Latency, Server Ticks, Attack Speed, etc. This is why at the start you want crafted CDR on your belt (9%) and implicit CDR on boots (5%) so you can reach the first jump in power. In order for this to work, you need to be 100% accuracy capped & 100% crit chance capped.
The next jump in power, which is covered in later stages of the PoB is 52%. This is obtained through 5% on Boots, 16% on a Belt and 31% on a level 8 Awakened Cast On Critical Strike Support. This means that as long as you can’t afford a Level 5 awakened CoC gem, there’s no point in pushing any more Cooldown Reduction. The last 3 levels of the gem are obtained through the crit mastery which gives all critical gems +3 levels. This is about 50% more DPS so grabbing one is pretty vital ASAP.
Videos
Passive Skill Tree, PoB, and Gem Links
You can find an optimized Path of Building here. Every build I release will use the community fork of Path of Building, which is maintained and updated in a much more regular fashion than the original one. You can find PoB’s Fork, by LocalIdentity, here.
If you are not comfortable with Path of Building, PoePlanner’s wesbite offers you a non-PoB alternative to import the pastebin into..
More information about the Passive Skill Tree, as well as all the Gem Links can be found on our dedicated page.
Ascendancy, Bandits, and Pantheons
Our Ascendancy, Bandit, and Pantheon Power page goes into detail about all the choices you need to make in these regards.
Gear Summary / TL;DR
A lot of this is explained more in depth in the Gear Page, however we will provide you with a basic idea of what gear you’re looking for in this short summary.
| Item Slot | Item Name |
| Head | Heatshiver with Ice Nova Enchant |
| Amulet | Rare Amulet with Increased Effect of N-D Ailments, Life, Attributes & +1 to Cold Skills |
| Chest | Doppelgänger Guise |
| Gloves | Maligaro's Virtuosity |
| Boots | Rare Boots with Brittle & Cooldown Recovery Rate implicits, Life, Movement Speed, Resistances & Effect of Non-Damaging Ailments |
| Belt | Life, Resistances ant 16% increased Cooldown Recovery Rate |
| Rings | Rare Rings with Chaos Res, Resistances, Life, Accuracy and – Cost of Channeling Skills |
| Weapon | 2x Cospri’s Malice |
Questions & Support
If you enjoy my content to such an extent that you’d like to support me and my work, or you have a specific question you request my private time for, you can buy me a coffee over at Patreon. At no point should you feel pressured to contribute, but if you do, your support means more to me than you will ever imagine.
Even though we try to make our guides as complete as possible, obvioulsy it’s possible you still have questions. We have an entire mod-team readily available to support you & your questions on Discord. You can find us on the ARPG Vault Discord. Make sure to open a Guide Help thread so things stay clear in the main channels.
Leveling
Even though we are very adamant about trying to give you a leveling experience that lies as close to your endgame playstyle as possible, we will recommend you to use the standard leveling setups until level 80. For more information about leveling, we refer you to the following guides:
- Our step-by-step leveling walkthrough, which allows even more experienced players to save time and speed through the leveling process.
- Our guide to Unique Items for leveling, which helps you gear up your characters for the leveling process.
Our beginner guide to Path of Exile, which answers many of the questions new players might have and will set you on the right path.
