Do Not Hesitate Between PoE Ascendancy Classes For Ice Crash

In Path of Exile, if you want to build an ice crash dual wieldling for testing something new and you hesitate between some ascendancy class for your ice crash. What should you do? So, you’ve come to the right place.

In fact, there are kind of a lot of options. It depends a little bit on how you plan to convert and whether you want to play with 1H or 2H weapons. I played a dual-wield Ice Crash Champion to level 88 as my Abyss league starter and it was pretty smooth on mediocre gear, kind of a hipster build at the time but very legit since the rework to Worthy Foe (which added taunted enemies cannot evade).

You can go dual wield Gladiator instead but I would only do it if you plan to stick with 90% conversion so that you can still do physical damage and get bleed explosions. You do get more block this way of course, and you get attack speed from your minor ascendancy nodes, so combined with the bleed explosions I would expect that Gladiator is a little better for map clear (especially if you don’t go RT).

If you’re going to use 2H weapons, clusters like Twin Terrors become irrelevant and so it starts to make more sense to stick to the left side of the tree, where you have better nodes available. Do not skimp on your wallet, keeping an eye on poe trade currency can save you a lot of time.

You can still start from Duelist if you want to go Slayer, and the nice thing about that is you’re doing really large hits so your overleech stacks will have huge duration. The main downside of Slayer now is that cull is a 4-pointer so you can’t get AOE + 20% cull + overleech + stun/bleed immunity all at the same time any more, so you would have to choose between taking AOE + stun immunity OR taking 20% cull + phys reflect immunity.

It’s still a pretty good ascendancy, just more niche; if you’re building a lab farmer I would definitely go for the cull, if you want an all-rounder or mapper I would go for AOE + stun immunity.

You can also explore Ascendant as an option, there are really interesting build possibilities there since the rework. Here are just a couple ideas:

– Inquisitor/Elementalist with Brain Rattler for 50/50 cold/lightning conversion, 16% across the board elemental penetration, reflect immunity, 10% base shocks, plus some utility from an extra golem and consecrated ground.

– Assassin/Inquisitor using Hegemony’s Era and Pure Talent. This tree is quite the puzzle to optimize and I’m not sure how well it works in practice, but the basic concept here is to get value from Pure Talent without feeling like the nodes to path to all those starts are wasted.

– MoM synergizes decently with the nodes around Templar and Scion start, Marauder life is always good, and Duelist start is totally feasible as well, especially if you go Assassin/Slayer and move away from regen in favor of leech. My main concern is whether it has enough damage and attack speed.

I originally theorycrafted it before the ascendancy rework as Assassin/Pathfinder converting with Hrimsorrow; after the rework I feel like you have many more options after grabbing the shadow start. Slayer, Elementalist, Juggernaut, even Champion or Raider seem okay. This is on my list of builds to try out in the future, but I’m afraid it might be too janky.