[3.28 - Work in progress] Vaal Cold Snap Lifestacker (Chaos bloodline)

Having a pseudo 6link skill at endgame levels of damage in the campain is obviously broken. While the lifestacking setup stops using this to focus on Vaal cold snap's damage, equipping this item ensures a damage floor that is enough to clear t16 maps and endgame bosses.
This frees much room for life and resistance on gear, as well as alleviate socket pressure in the first days of a league.

Rathpith globe grants 5% increased spell damage per 100 maximum life, or 10% for the more expensive foulborn variant.
With 15000 life, this shield grants us 1500% increased damage, making any other increased damage scaling mostly irrelevent. Because this damage comes from our main defensive layer, this allows the build to be well rounderd from scaling a single stat: Maximum Life.

This build guide advises using foulborn rathpith globe late only because of its cost, it is entirely superior to the regular version for Vaal cold snap.

With the elementalist's ascendancy Liege of the primordial and the passive cluster Golem commander, our golems are almost always alive and grant 80% increased buff effects. The total effects of this ascendancy are the following:
- 54% increased damage
- 36% increased area of effect
- regenerate 198 life per second
- +28% to damage over time multiplier
- +30% to chaos resistance
- 18% increased cast speed
- 32 mana regenerated per second
- Culling strike (from a Coin of skill)
Note that having a single golem gem supported by culling strike will grant the support effect to every gem socketed in the same item.
While the minmaxed setup of this build forgoes golems to opt in Heart of destruction instead, golem buffs are an easy scaling option that will be used for most of the game.

In PoE, most spell gems gain about 13% more base spell damage from every level from 20 to 30. After the soft cap of 30, this increased is slowed to 6% more per level up to 40, where the gem stops scaling.
Because Vaal cold snap is a damage over time effect not tied to a hit, adding gem levels is the only way to increase the base damage of the skill.
For reference, a level 20 Vaal cold snap deals 2454 damage per second, while a level 30 skill deals 8404 damage per second, or a 242% more damage multiplier!

Increases to damage being already dealt with, the build needs a way to scale damage over time multiplier. Having 5 of our item grant cold resistance, and a sapphire flask, the build should end up at around 400% overcapped resistance, for a total of +100% damage over time multiplier.
This is mostly done by crafting +15% to cold and chaos resistance on items that already grant 40% or more cold resistance.

Righteous fire comes at the cost of taking 90% maximum life as fire damage per second, making it usually difficult to sustain.
Because of our high natural regeneration to counteract Rathpith globe, and our high (87% to 90%) maximum fire resistance, as well as the damage reduction from endurance charges, we can easily sustain the debuff for a massive damage boost.

Still, this debuff is not to be underestimated, and it is advisable to not turn it on in maps with Players have -10% to maximum resistances or Players have 60% less recovery rate of life and energy shield.

Interestingly, because we scale life and damage over time, the skill itself deals a non negligible amount of damage (almost 1 million dps) in the minmaxed setup. While negligible compared to the damage output of vaal cold snap, it helps soul gathering at map start and when a refill is needed.

We gain +1 to maximum curse from a Sublime vision jewel for malevolence.
We apply these two curses with arcanist brand, applying -70% to cold resistance.
Furthermore, our glove mod applies exposure on hit for 11%, boosted by 25% by the elementalist's Mastermind of Discord ascendancy, and by 12% by Tulborn.
In total, our exposure applies -48% to cold resistance.
We also apply 25% increased cold damage taken from Bonechill support, and up to 10% increased damage taken from the Glacial cage passive.
Note that in the rare cases where the enemy is blinded, The dark seer's malediction also inflicts 10% increased damage taken, but this is unreliable.

We scale life to synergize with Foulborn Rathpith globe, granting 10% increased damage per 100 maximum life.
Petrified blood looks like it halves our HP pool, but since 40% of the damage is taken over time and easily mitigated through regeneration, it is only a 9% EHP drop. Being on lowlife enables:
- Pain attunement and Brink of death for damage and regeneration.
- Half the amount sacrified by Rathpith globe, since our current life is capped to 55% of our maximum health pool.
- Reservation space for Tempest shield.

Flat life is gained from base levels, and from The apostate, converting all the energy shield from our armor pieces to life instead.
Increased life is mostly gained from the passive tree. Blood magic and all Life Masteries are used to gain 21% more life.

With mechanics such as Consecrated ground, Brink of death and Warrior's blood, Stone golem and a regeneration crafted flask, we regenerate around 15% life per second, scaling well with our high health pool.
In the endgame, we can scale this amount using life regeneration rate modifiers, such as on a Watcher's eye with malevolence.

This is primarely done to offset Rathpith globe's 10% current life sacrifice on every cast, and to sustain righteous fire, but is of course also a major defensive layer.

After reaching 6 corrupted items, our ascendancy Everlasting sacrifice grants us 5% maximum resistances. With our flasks giving us an additional 5% (9% with mageblood), and a little help from gear implicits, we reach 90% maximum elemental resistances.

Note that only the minmaxed setup proposed by this guide reaches 90% resistances, using mageblood. Without mageblood, it is possible to allocate Nomadic teachings from the tree.

Because we spam the craft "+15% to cold and chaos resistance" to scale the DoT multi cold mastery, this build has a heafty amount of natural chaos resistance. Rounded up with 17% from chaos golem, and (with heavy investment) double foulborn Red dream and Progenesis, coupled with our high health pool, this build is very resilient against chaos damage.

With 3 baseline and 2 from the tree, and an additionnal 2 from ring implicits at high investment, this build reaches up to 28% physical and elemental damage reduction.
We generate endurance charges using Enduring composure.

This gem is usually weak combined with Cast when damage taken, because when it triggers your character is already almost dead. Due to our very high health pool (damage is counted before petrified blood), this is not the case for this build. And because of our investment in consistent endurance charges, Immortal call grants us a staggering:
- 34% less elemental damage taken
- 84% less physical damage taken
With around 50% uptime, biased in our favour by the way it triggers on damage spikes.

With the three clusters on the tree Wall of steel, Aggressive bastion and As the mountain, and maybe a few Valako tattoos or jewel mods, we reach 80% attack block.
Rathpith globe's innate 15%, Tempest shield's 27% and 16% from the block mastery, we only need a little help from cluster jewels to reach 75% spell block too.

Early game setups use Purity of elements for the quality of life and free damage from the cold mastery.
Later on, this build is still effectively immune to all elemental ailments:
- Freeze and chill : Frigid wake from forbidden jewels grants freeze and chill immunity.
- Shock : Tempest shield makes us completely immune to shock.
- Ignite : Our 90% fore resistance, elemental damage reduction and great regeneration allows us to shrug off any ignites curently in the game.
- Brittle : Our pantheon choice Solaris grants us immunity to critical strikes if we've been crit recently. Sicne our other defences are solid, a single crit won't kill us, and then we're immune.
- Sap : Doesn't matter, we deal enough damage.
- Scorch : We scale resistances, a little less changes almost nothing. Even if fire and lightning resistances drop below 90%, our other elemental mitigation mechanics are strong enough to keep us alive the few seconds this lasts.

Non elemental ailments are not mitigated as well however. Fortunately, both bleed and poison have a pantheon to take care of them. While poison is generally shrugged off by our high chaos res and regen, Bleed may ocasionally be a problem. Switching to the Soul of ralakesh pantheon even for general mapping is a viable option.

Stun is mitigated using Unweavering stance.