Rating
+2

Cold Natalya's

by last updated May 2, 2015 ( Patch 2.2 )
Seasonal
Hybrid
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Skills

  • Evasive Fire Focus
  • Strafe Icy Trail
  • Smoke Screen Healing Vapors
  • Preparation Backup Plan
  • Vengeance Side Cannons
  • Rain of Vengeance Flying Strike
  • Awareness
  • Cull the Weak
  • Steady Aim
  • Perfectionist

Items

More Details

  • Legendary Gems

    • Esoteric Alteration
    • Taeguk
    • Iceblink

Natalya's Cold:


Natalya's 6 piece (not including the ring) is required.

The 2nd weapon can either be a calamity or a K'mar Tenclip. Also, a good rain of vengeance damage % roll on the slayer would be nice.

Crashing rain is your main damage source.

Focus and Restraint (like almost every other build) is required for boosting your crashing rain damage.

For shoulders and bracers, you can put whatever you want here. You can put aughilds shoulder/bracer for the 2-piece bonus. If you opt for a different shoulder, like Pauldrons of the Skeleton King, you can use whatever bracer you want. However, you have to take into consideration the legendary affixes of the bracers. Ffor example: you don't have any knockback so Strongarms won't do anything. Hatred isn't really an issue because you'll constantly be using Evasive Fire, so the bonus from reaper's wraps won't do much.

Krelms is a good choice, because knockbacks mess me up. I don't know why but when I'm strafing and I get hit with a knockback, it doesnt register immediately, but after a second my character "teleports" to the position I would've been if I got knocked back.

And of course, Hellfire as per usual. In addition to the 4 passives I've picked above, other passive you can use are: Ambush or Single Out, for more damage; Tactical Advantage or Hot Pursuit, for more mobility; Archery for more crit chance, or Blood vengeance, if you want to keep your discipline high.


You want diamonds in your chest, pants, and helm. If you don't think you need the extra resistance, you can opt for emeralds in your chest and pants for more dex/damage. The cooldown reduction in your help helps you keep your rain of vengeance up constantly. And of course, emeralds in your weapons


As per usual, crit chance, crit damage, sockets. Another important stat is cooldown reduction: get it wherever you can. Where you can afford it, try to get some toughness stats (vit, res, armor, life). Also don't worry about strafe damage%: that's not where your damage is coming from. Rain of vengeance damage% is useful though.


The gems are totally up to you. I'm a very scared HC player, so I opted for the Esoteric. If you want more damage, you can put on Bane of the Trapped, or Zei's.

Paragon Priorities

Core

Movement Speed
Primary Stat
Vitality
Maximum Resource

Offense

Cooldown Reduction
Critical Hit Chance
Critical Hit Damage
Attack Speed

Defense

Resist All
Armor
Life
Life Regeneration

Utility

Resource Cost Reduction
Life on Hit
Area Damage
Gold Find

Core: as per usual.


Offense: CDR is really important. It will allow you to cast rain of vengeance more often.


Defense: as per usual.


Utility: I like RCR because you will be constantly strafing. Life on Hit helps to keep you alive.

Build Guide

As I mentioned above, I'm a very scared HC player.

I tried the Fire Natalya's build (stampede/rocket storm), but I didn't like how much damage my character was taking. I did however, like the idea of incorporating rain of vengeance into my arsenal and I liked the mechanics of the new Natalya's set. So I decided to tinker with the build.


First thing I want to clarify: A lot of people seem to be under the assumption that strafe itself cools down your rain of vengeance really quickly. It's not the skill that makes your rain of vengeance cool down quickly. No matter how many mobs are around you or how many mobs you are hitting with strafe, the rate at which it cools down your rain of vengeance is at a steady rate. I believe its the same as how your taeguk stacks. This seems to apply to the channeling spell, Rapid Fire as well. The thing that make strafe so good for this build is it's synergy with your generator. There seems to be no animation to begin strafing (or a very short one). Strafe also seems to ignore whatever animation your character is supposed to have after using a generator and immediately starts hitting with strafe. Therefore while you're strafing you throw in an evasive fire, and as soon as your evasive fire is fired, strafe begins again. So in that split second, you get two procs to cool down rain of vengeance. The frequency at which you can cast evasive fire seems to be limited by the animation that would've played if you didnt cast strafe though, so you can't just cast evasive fire like crazy during strafe. Although this could also be because strafe has a certain amount of time it wants to stay active after you stop holding down the button as well. So whether you're hitting one mob or a group of mobs, rain of vengeance will cooldown at the same rate as long as your hitting with both your strafe and your evasive fire.


In any case, you have to get used to the speed at which you can cast evasive fire while strafing. This will cool down your rain of vengeance very quickly allowing you to call down the beast from crashing rain more frequently. You move back and forth to stay away from the mobs, and call down rain of vengeance on the mobs from afar. By no means, do you have to run into a group of mobs to proc the cooldown effect of natalya's. You use smoke screen to heal/dodge.


With this cold build, you can pretty much keep a group of mobs frozen indefinitely. You can't perma-freeze a rift guardian though. However the rain of vengeance does help to cancel some attacks of the rift guardian because it will periodically freeze them. You have to watch the rift guardian and when they are about to attack you cast smoke screen to hide. When you run low on discipline you use preparation to regenerate discipline and continue. The side-cannons help with reflect packs, or particularly nasty packs that have shields. It also help keep you alive during the rift guardian fight as well.


This build keeps danger to a minimum, albeit you do have to be fairly attentive as with any other natalya's build.


Because I play HC, I have opted for a more defensive build. I feel that this build can go far if you aren't scared of giving up some defense for more offense. For now, I will be sticking to this defensive build until I find some better stuff. Maybe then I will change some things around to make this hit much much harder. If you are a softcore player, don't even bother with the defensive aspects of this build (eg. perfectionist, esoteric alteration, etc). You can probably get some real damage out of this if you opt for more offensive play style. The perma freeze should help keep you alive anyways. You can even put in wolf companion instead of preparation.


At the moment, I'm doing mid-40's comfortably.