PoE Witch Vortex Cold Snap Occultist Endgame Cheap Start

Defence & Utility

The build utilizes Chaos Inoculation which makes you 100% immune to all sources of chaos damage including poison. However, you'll have 1 HP and therefor need to cover yourself with Energy Shield alone. This is not suggested for early levels and this guide will cover the transition and workarounds to get yourself to CI.

Besides this the build slows enemies down and utilizes a massive eHP pool to be as tanky as possible. For higher budget builds you can also throw in Temporal Chains allowing for even more slow effects on enemies.

Ascendancy Nodes

As this build is a CI build and an Occultist is it important to always start with Vile Bastion.

When this node picked up you're able to reach comfortable energy shield numbers for your CI switch explained in the lvling trees below.

The other 2 ascendancy nodes you're gonna want to take are pure damage increasers in the form of: Void Beacon then Frigid Wake!

Lastly you'll pick up Forbidden Power for some extra damage.

Gearing & Stat Priorities

Low Budget

Before we talk about items it is VERY important to repeat what was stated in the gem section:
The craft "Trigger socketed spell when you use a skill" puts the ability on a 4 second CD and will be cast in the order of the links. This is used to provide cold resistance exposure (-25% cold res) debuff on enemies via Frost Bomb whilst the Storm Brand & Orb of Storms are consistently hitting enemies with Lightning damage making sure the enemies have lower Cold resistances via Elemental Equilibrium this makes it very important that you do NOT, EVER, get any sort of FLAT added cold damage on your tree or gear (%increased is fine, just not # added cold) as that will ruin this setup. 

The build can use the Fenumus unique set items or simply use rare items in all slots. It has a tonne of possibilities allowing you to approach the build in an extremely cheap manner.

I would strongly suggest to use the Aegis Aurora shield due to the defensive layers it applies vs the harder end-game bosses such as deeper delve lvl Aul as well as Shaper & Uber Elder.

Besides this it is important to note that the build doesn't need more than ~300-350k Shaper DPS to handle Uber Elder smoothly which makes the weapon the only real important piece which will allow for Elemental Equilibrium to be used which significantly increases your damage output. With that "threshold" reached you only need to focus on getting as tanky as your budget allows which can be anything from a couple of chaos to hundreds of exalted orbs. There really is no direct roof to what you can do with this build!

Higher Budget Examples

The use of Solstice Vigil allows you to use a Blasphemy + Temporal Chains setup!

Other styles of higher budget would include the bestiary Spider craft allowing that to be used which will require mana reservation tricks from the tree and/or specific items crafted or unique or even higher lvl Enlighten to allow for that approach, this not only increases the defensive layers a bit but also increases your damage dealt significantly.

Recommended Unique Items

Incandescent Heart, Saintly Chainmail, Solstice Vigil, Onyx Amulet, Aegis Aurora, Champion Kite Shield

Recommended LvLing Uniques

Tabula Rasa, Simple Robe, Wanderlust, Wool Shoes, Lifesprig, Driftwood Wand, Goldrim, Leather Cap, Heartbreaker, Royal Skean

Leveling Tips

• Freezing Pulse till you reach lvl 12 at which point you'll get yourself a Storm Brand and later in Act 2, pick up Brand Recall. This will carry you all the way to lvl 70 and beyond if you wish till you're ready to transition to CI / Vortex.

• Items such as Goldrim, Lifesprig, Wanderlust helps a lot to speed up the leveling process.

• If you get a Tabula Rasa early on you're gucci all the way!