Elemental Focus Vs Hypothermia/Cold Pen?

So, I am horrible at calculating damage when it comes to PoE and I've been trying to figure out which is the best for my current build and I'm falling short. If Elemental Focus was a Dex gem not an Int one, it would be way easier for me to just run tests, but it's not so I've gotta come crawling to the forums for help.

I think my biggest problem is figuring out the "Value" of Chill/Freeze, when compared to pure number damage.



Level 87 Whispering Ice Occultist:

Currently linking:
Life Leech
Cold-to-Fire
Fire Penetration
Concentrated Effect
Spell Echo

I use Hypothermia, but swap to Cold Penetration for Status Immune encounters. Elemental Focus would be a permanent replacement to both.


The Gem Stats (This is all based on my understanding, so, yell at me if it's wrong please):

Hypothermia (Level 21 from Staff effect):
40% increased damage to Chilled enemies
10% chance to Freeze Chilled enemies

Cold Penetration (Level 21 from Staff effect):
20% Quality: 10% Cold Damage (15% from conversion)
38% Cold Penetration (Roughly 19% damage boost as more damage is fire)


Elemental Focus (Level 21 from Staff effect):
20% Quality: 10% Elemental Damage (I assume this doesn't "Double dip" in conversion)
50% Elemental Damage (Ditto)
No Status Effects (Also lose Herald of Ice's shatter damage)



I already know it's a clear upgrade to Cold Penetration for non Status Maps, but, as it's a different colour I can't just use Hypothermia and EF without a lot of Chromatic hassle, which is what makes it awkward to figure out.

I can't really tell how much Chill is helping me as a defensive mechanic in higher tier maps, I think Freeze is mostly useful to me in preventing corpse based enemy actions.


My characters should all be public access, but please ask if you have any questions.

You could take pyre for full conversion and picking elemental focus as 6th, but if u want to destroy corpses you will have to you hypothermia instead ele focus (pyre lets you to destroy ignited corpses, same as cold).

Or avatar of fire, there wont be damage loss in conversion while using cold to fire. With avatar of fire you won't destroy corpses, but will save up ring slot. So only ele focus with it.

In both cases you won't have to use cold penetration and chilled ground will be there regardless of gear/links.

Pyre's completely out of the question with a WI build unfortunately, losing a Perandus Signet is a huge drop in INT.

I have been considering Avatar of Fire, it's a popular pick for WI builds (And I go right past it anyway), but I'm not sure of it myself.

Yeah, Chill is almost always applied (Except when they're immune, of course).

I was originally a crit build, but that was before Elemental Overload, so now I just run enough to have that proc'd almost all the time.


Originally I think I avoided AoF for the Cold damage, so I could still chill/freeze and because I was also running an Incinerate character at the same time and didn't want to be doing two fire-core characters at the same time.

Of course if I go to Elemental Focus then there's probably no reason to not go Avatar of Fire anymore, since I won't be Freezing anyway.


Edit:
That does remind me though; Gotta check if I have any Crit Multiplier nodes, since I don't need those since the shift. Only checked if my Chance+Multi was more efficient than Overload or not, didn't think to check if I had any "wasted" nodes left over.



Edit edit:

Okay update:

I found one node I could ditch without dropping my Crit chance too low, so I picked up Avatar of Fire, and swapped over to Elemental Focus. Holy wowzers that tooltip damage jump... I know Hypothermia's damage wasn't reflected at all on the tooltip, but, it was still a pleasingly large spike.

So now a new question: Considering I use Elemental Overload rather than Crit Multi, what is a good Crit Chance to have Icestorm at where I'd have statistically high up-time of the buff? Found a different path I can take, but, it may lose me too much Crit Chance.

Wow, Ok let's go step by step:

1) Why are you going Cold to Fire / Avatar of Fire? You don't really gain anything from that conversion, as you have so little increased fire damage. Cold to Fire gives you just 29% more damage, Hypothermia gives you 39% and Controlled Destruction 49%.

2) Icestorm creates chilling ground on hit, so it should always chill anyway, even if you have elemental focus (you have to check, i'm not 100% sure)

3) With your investment into critical, Elemental Overload is a DPS decrease. Your crit rate is much higher than the one EO needs to have to get a 100% uptime, and you are so close to strong crit multipliers that just a little more investment will give you way higher DPS.

4) As with Firestorm, increased duration will give you an impressive DPS boost, so you should grab it either from the tree or from the gem.

1) I think it has to do with how the conversion damage was calculated, all I really know is that it was the go-to decision for 90% of WI builds when I made the build, and is still a damage boost.

2) Yeah, I kept forgetting about the Chilling Ground effect chilling them as well, tested it myself and it definitely still chills.

3) I checked before picking up Elemental Overload, since I made the build before that Node existed, and it would've taken another... I think 4? levels in order to make Crit Multi more efficient than Elemental Overload.

4) I'm torn between going for the Effect Duration cluster and the Fire Damage+ Fire Pen cluster next. Don't think I can fit the Gem in though, at least I'm not sure what would be worth the trade-off.

Doing something because everyone does it without knowing why is a bad idea in this game, since it can change a lot from patch to patch. The point of going with a conversion is that it allows you to grab both damage increases and some elements work better with some uniques or abilities. You have neither, so dropping Avatar of Fire and swapping Cold to Fire for any of the other gems you were thinking of will give you a damage increase.

Also, on Fire/Ice storm, duration effectively counts as a more multiplier. So a 20/20 increased duration gem would give you 74% more damage. Nothing you have gets even close to that.

I don't pretend to understand most of the damage calculations in the game, I just take peoples word for it. I don't enjoy most parts of the theorycrafting process, so it's easier to just listen to people that know the game far better than I do.

And I do have a few nodes that are Fire or Fire+Cold already, I'll have to check when I'm properly awake if it's worth regretting those since they have other stats attached. Plus I have the Fire cluster which is an option for my next levels (The Cold version of which is too far away to use).


My only concern with Increased Duration is that it's conditional on the enemy being in the AoE for the entire duration, which isn't always feasible (And in some cases becomes less likely by bumping up the duration). I'm not actually sure how mobile the high-end bosses are, since I've not tried any of them, and I have no idea how similar they are to any lower-level counterparts they have.

Fair point about the theorycrafting.

About the fire damage thing, you have only 3 nodes that give a total of 51% increased fire damage, nice but not really relevant. Taking those points and the ones you want to use to get the penetration nodes and investing them in critical damage will give you much better results, as you are already over all the crit nodes in the witch area, including the staff ones (they are global)

Increased duration real dps improvement is tricky to calculate, since as you say the mobs move around, but keep in mind that you have the advantage of chilled ground, so it is much easier to keep enemies under it.

You are also much more free to move around, as the icestorm will keep doing damage while you do, and do remember that you always know where are the mobs going (they are going to you), so you can cast on yourself.

Overall, increased duration is already worth it in firestorm, and icestorm gets even more advantages.