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Hollow Palm Ice Crash Raider Build Guide - Path of Exile 3.24

28.03.2024 - 17:53:24
Game Guides , Path of Exile , POE build guides

Are you looking for a unique build that is fun to play in Path of Exile? If so, the Hollow Palm Ice Crash Raider is something that you might want to try. It boasts incredible damage scaling and has some pretty interesting mechanics.

Read further to learn how you can create a Hollow Palm Ice Crash Raider!

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Mechanics

The Hollow Palm Ice Crash Raider uses several unique items to make the build work. Chief among them is the unique small cluster jewel called One With Nothing, which gives you access to the Hollow Palm Technique keystone. Here's the keystone's description:

You count as Dual-Wielding while you are Unencumbered
40% more Attack Speed with Melee Skills while you are Unencumbered
Adds 14 to 20 Attack Physical Damage to Melee Skills per 10 Dexterity while you are Unencumbered

Unencumbered, in this context, is a status where you gain certain bonuses only if you don't have a main-hand/off-hand weapon and gloves equipped. The 40% attack speed bonus granted by Hollow Palm Technique is a "more" modifier, meaning its numerical value is calculated multiplicatively. This translates to insane attack speed when hitting with the build's main skill.

Another important thing to note is that the damage of this build heavily relies on stacking attributes, particularly dexterity. Since the Raider ascendancy class in Path of Exile is a DEX character, this should not be a problem. However, you may need to get strength and intelligence elsewhere so that you can equip your gear and gems.

The Hollow Palm Raider is a build that utilizes Ice Crash as the main skill. This skill gem converts all of your physical damage to cold damage. Furthermore, Ice Crash is one of the only skills that have great scaling, especially when unencumbered (unarmed).

In Patch 3.23, Ice Crash got numerous buffs that make this build even better than before. So, what has changed? Well, GGG has removed the 20% increased damage when you max out the quality of the said skill gem. However, this has been replaced with the following:

Base Radius 1.1 Meters
Base Secondary Radius is 2.1 Meters
Base Tertiary Radius is 3.1 Meters
Gain 15% of Physical Damage as Extra Cold Damage

That last line is pretty insane because that cold damage is added on top of the skill's base damage. This used to be available only as a helmet enchantment in the previous leagues, but now, it is part of the base gem itself, which is great!

When you use Ice Crash, it prompts your character to slam the ground three times. Now, this aspect has been improved in that the radius of the slam gets bigger with each subsequent wave. This means that you hit more targets without even trying!

Additionally, by putting a "Frostbite on Hit" effect on one of your rings, you will have a chance of freezing enemies with Ice Crash even when you're not doing critical strikes. And, since the said skill affects a large area, you'll keep nearby enemies frozen thanks to your insane attack speed.

Aside from the massive changes made to the Ice Crash skill gem itself, we have updated the guide to include a weapon called The Dancing Dervish. This thing actually works with the Hollow Palm Technique. Don't worry, this will be discussed in greater detail later on in the build guide.

Transfigured Gems

Patch 3.23 introduced Transfigured Gems to Path of Exile. These gems are made to consolidate helmet enchants, threshold jewels, and alt-quality gems.

Having said that, there is only one Transfigured version of Ice Crash in the Affliction League and that is the Ice Crash of Cadence.

Unlike the base version of the skill gem, Ice Crash of Cadence only prompts your character to slam the ground once. However, this translates to huge amounts of damage without having to stay in one place for a couple of seconds because you only slam the ground once.

Now, if you're wondering which version of the Ice Crash skill gem you should use for this build, you should still go for the regular version. Why is that? Well, the three waves of ice deal considerably more damage when taking everything into account.

While that one huge slam provided by the Ice Crash of Cadence may have higher damage numbers on paper, in actuality, the base version still beats it by a mile.

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Playstyle

This build has a very straightforward playstyle. Dash into mobs, spam Ice Crash until they're dead, then dash into another group of enemies, rinse and repeat. When dealing with tougher enemies, drop a totem to get its buffs and just use Ice Crash.

In most cases, you can drop an Ancestral Warchief totem to gain a boost in attack damage. But, you can also utilize a setup where you can place both Ancestral Protector and Ancestral Warchief at once.

Since you do not have an off-hand weapon and pair of gloves, gem variety is too restrictive on this build. You can replace one or two gems, but that is going to be too tight. It is up to you what gems you want to use apart from your main Ice Crash setup.

Ice Crash

Ascendancy

Because of the downsides of the Hollow Palm Technique, the Raider is the perfect ascendancy class for this build. That's primarily due to its access to some powerful buffs, including onslaught and phasing. Its smaller nodes provide you with sizable increases in evasion rating, further improving your survivability.

For your first notable ascendancy passive, you should get Rapid Assault. This essentially gives you permanent Onslaught - a buff that improves attack speed and movement speed by 20%. Since Ice Crash feels clunky early on, getting Rapid Assault is a huge quality-of-life improvement.

The next ascendancy passive you should get for this build is Way of the Poacher. By taking this node, you have a chance of gaining a Frenzy Charge - providing you with a 4% increase in attack speed and damage per charge. On top of that, Way of the Poacher raises your maximum frenzy charges by one, so you can have up to four charges.

Although you can go for pure offense by taking Avatar of Chase for your third ascendancy, it is best that you opt for a more defensive notable passive. For this reason, you will take Quartz Infusion.

Quartz Infusion grants a huge boost to your spell suppression chance. Besides that, you have permanent phasing so that you can go through enemies unobstructed.

For your last ascendancy passive, you have two choices. If you're going for pure damage, put a point in Avatar of the Slaughter. This grants you the following bonuses:

10% increased evasion rating per frenzy charge
4% increased movement speed per frenzy charge
4% increased attack speed per frenzy charge
10% increased attack damage per frenzy charge

However, if you like to beef up your character, especially considering that you're three equipment shy of a typical build in PoE, then choose Avatar of the Veil. This helps you achieve ailment immunity more easily by giving you a 50% chance to avoid elemental ailments while phasing.

That's not all! Avatar of the Veil causes nearby enemies to take more elemental damage due to fire, cold, and lightning exposure. These reduce your foes' elemental resistances by 20%.

Alternatively, if you like Onslaught so much, you can take Avatar of the Chase instead. This increases the effect of Onslaught by 100%. Plus, you have a 10% more chance to evade attacks - pretty useful when completing fully-juiced maps.

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Hollow Palm Ice Crash Raider Ascendancy Passives

Pantheon

You have two options when it comes to the major gods. The ideal choice is to take Soul of the Brine King for that stun and freeze immunity. If you can get immunity to these status effects via gear and flasks, you can choose Soul of Lunaris for additional physical damage reduction, as well as increased movement speed for each nearby enemy, up to 8%.

For minor gods, pick Soul of Ryslatha to enhance the effectiveness of your life flasks. Once you have better equipment, transition to Soul of Shakari for improved defenses against chaos damage and poison. This is useful if you like to farm harvests.

Gear

The Hollow Palm Ice Crash Raider requires several unique items for it to work. They are:

Helmet

One of the core pieces of gear for this build is the unique helmet, Fractal Thoughts. With this helmet, you gain 1% increased elemental damage per 10 dexterity.

What's more, you gain 15% increased dexterity if your strength is higher than intelligence. This effect is easily achievable because of the other items you will equip on this build.

In addition, Fractal Thoughts makes your character a bit tankier as it gives two HP per 10 intelligence. It may not be much but it is still a welcome bonus nonetheless.

Now, if you cannot get your hands on Fractal Thoughts for some reason, a good substitute would be the Starkonja's Head unique silken hood. It provides a lot of good stats that can benefit the build, including dexterity, attack speed, and maximum life. This thing can save you when you're on low life. That's because your global evasion rating is increased by a whopping 150% when your HP is below 50%. However, the damage you deal at this time is reduced by half, so keep that in mind.

Body Armor

For the body armor, you have a couple of options to choose from. The most cost-effective piece of gear for this slot is the Briskwrap. This unique sun leather armor helps you unlock the build's true potential as it grants 1% increased damage per 15 dexterity. Since getting 1,000+ dexterity is very doable on this build, you can imagine how much damage you can inflict on your enemies!

When you have enough currency, you can replace the Briskwrap with a self-crafted rare body armor, preferably an armor-evasion base like the Triumphant Lamellar or General's Brigandine.

If you are interested in crafting this particular body armor, here are the steps:

Get an ilvl 86+ General's Brigandine or Triumphant Lamellar
Increase its quality to 30% by using Perfect Fossils
Next, spam the armor with any essence of your choosing, so long as it guarantees a suffix modifier. We recommend Essence of Envy (Chaos Resistance) or Essence of Sorrow (DEX), but you are free to use any essence you want
Use essences until you are satisfied with the suffix modifiers
Go to your Crafting Bench and put "Suffixes Cannot Be Changed." Then, use a Veiled Chaos Orb to get a veiled prefix
Before you unveil, go to your Crafting Bench again and put "% Chance to Block Attack Damage." Doing this prevents this mod from appearing during the unveiling process
Go to Jun and unveil. You are looking for the mod, "(9-10)% Increased Maximum Life", "(9-10)% Increased Maximum Mana"
Head to your Crafting Bench one last time and put "6% of Physical Damage from Hits Taken as Fire/Lightning Damage"
If you still have an open prefix, use an Exalted Orb to fill it up
Then, spam the armor with Grand Eldritch Ichors until you get "1% Less Damage Taken per 210 Dexterity and Grand Eldritch Embers for "+1 to all Maximum Resistances"

When you follow all of the crafting steps above, you should end up with something like this:

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Self-crafted Armor

Because the rare body armor is an endgame gear, you may want to use "Grand" eldritch currencies to achieve the best rolls. You can elevate these rolls by utilizing an Orb of Dominance as well.

Boots

Garukhan's Flight is considered the best-in-slot for the Hollow Palm Ice Crash Raider. This unique pair of boots makes you immune to burning ground, shocked ground, and chilled ground. Because you no longer get damaged by burning ground when you equip this, you're free to choose another minor god if you're farming Searing Exarch altars.

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Belt

Early on, you want to equip the Cyclopean Coil - a unique leather belt that has the following mods:

(5-15)% increased attributes
+(60-80) to maximum life
Cannot be Frozen if Dexterity is Higher than Intelligence
Cannot be Ignited if Strength is Higher than Dexterity
Cannot be Shocked if Intelligence is Higher than Strength
1% increased damage per 5 of your lowest attribute

The only mods from the above pool that you have to concern yourself with are the first three. Pay close attention to the "% increased attributes" mod. Make sure to purchase one with the full 15% for maximum effect.

Since Cyclopean Coil is quite cheap, use a Vaal Orb to corrupt it. If you get a bad roll, just buy a new one and try again. Here are some of the mods that you should be looking for (in order of importance):

% Increased strength/% increased dexterity
% Increased dexterity/% increased intelligence
Hatred has % increased aura effect
% Increased strength/% increased intelligence
% Increased attack speed during any flask effect
% Increased maximum life/% increased area of effect
% Increased area of effect

Aside from the Cyclopean Coil, you can use a self-crafted Stygian Vise. The beauty of using Stygian Vise is that you can roll certain mods to fill in the gaps. If you want more HP, for example, you can spam Essences of Greed to ensure that you get a high life roll. You can insert an abyss jewel too, which you can use to gain more HP, attributes, resistances, chance to avoid being stunned, etc.

However, the biggest reason why you want to have a self-crafted Stygian Vise is that you want to get as much DEX as possible. To craft this belt, acquire a Hunter- or Elder-influenced Stygian Vise with an item level of 82+.

Then, get as many Essences of Sorrow to guarantee dexterity on the said belt. Spam it until you get the "% increased attributes" mod. If you're lucky, you can even roll it with "% increased maximum life" as well.

After you get the desired mods, finish the craft by going to your Crafting Bench and adding the "28% Increased elemental damage with attack skills" prefix.

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Self-crafted Belt

Rings

Your rings are a great source of additional elemental resistances. While you can get HP and elemental/chaos resistances on these accessories, one of your rings should have the mod, "Curse enemies with Frostbite on Hit." Why is this so important, you ask?

You see, this build has the Precise Technique keystone passive allocated. It gives you 40% more attack damage if your accuracy rating is higher than your maximum HP. This comes at a cost, though, as you will never be able to deal critical strikes. For this reason, you normally cannot freeze enemies since you can only do so with critical hits. That's where Frostbite comes in.

Frostbite is a curse in Path of Exile that allows you to freeze affected foes even though you're not dealing critical strikes. On top of that, cursed enemies have their cold resistances decreased by 17%, causing them to take more damage.

To get this mod, you need to acquire either a Redeemer-influenced Two-Stone Ring or Amethyst Ring. These rings are good bases to craft on since they provide you with elemental or chaos resistances, respectively.

If you want to force dexterity, spam Essences of Sorrow until you get the Frostbite on hit mod. This method requires a lot of essences, though. Thankfully, there's another way to obtain the mod that doesn't involve a ton of currency.

"Curse Enemies with Frostbite on Hit" has a "Caster" tag. This means that you have a pretty good chance of acquiring it by going to your Harvest Bench and selecting the "Reforge Caster" option. Do this until you get the desired outcome. Just make sure that you have an open prefix so that you can put "Non-channeling Skills Have -7 to Total Mana Cost" from your Crafting Bench.

Amulet

Another unique item that you can add to your build is the Astramentis. This unique onyx amulet provides a huge boost to your total attributes. Not only that but it also improves your tankiness by reducing the physical damage you take from attack hits.

If you're not afraid to splurge, purchase a synthesized rare amulet that has the implicit, "% Increased Dexterity." This crafting base can be pretty expensive, so only go this route if you have the currency.

From here, you want to guarantee dexterity on the amulet, which is why you're going to spam Essences of Sorrow until you get a Tier 1 or Tier 2 "+ to all attributes" mod. Leave one prefix open so that you can put "% Increased Area of Effect/% Increased Area Damage" on it via the Crafting Bench.

Don't forget to utilize Blessed Orbs until you achieve the max values for the implicit. To finish this crafting project, anoint the amulet with Discipline and Training by using two Silver Oils and one Black Oil.

Cluster Jewels

This build is made possible by equipping the One With Nothing small cluster jewel. Aside from that, you should get a large cluster jewel with a "12% Increased Cold Damage" base. This is needed so that you can roll Cold to the Core, Blanketed Snow, and Disorienting Display.

Cold to the Core gives an insane boost to your damage. This grants 1% increased cold damage per 25 DEX, INT, and STR. Since you're essentially a DEX stacker, you'll gain great benefit from this notable passive.

Blanketed Snow makes your damage penetrate 10% cold resistance against chilled enemies. Ice Crash deals cold damage. Therefore, you'll always chill enemies when you hit them.

Disorienting Display is a notable passive that increases your elemental damage by 25%. It also gives you a 10% chance to blind nearby enemies when you use Ice Crash, which is another defensive layer on top of what you already have.

Now, the easiest way to craft the large cluster jewel is to use the "Reforge Cold" option from the Harvest Bench (or Horticrafting Station). Both Cold to the Core and Blanketed Snow are a bit rare to obtain, but this is the most cost-effective way of getting all of them.

The last cluster jewel for this build has Enduring Composure on it. This increases your armor by 30%. But more importantly, you gain one Endurance Charge every second if you've been hit recently. Endurance Charges are needed to maximize the effect of Immortal Call. Don't worry, this will be discussed later in the guide.

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One With Nothing Jewel

Jewels

The Hollow Palm Ice Crash Raider uses a bunch of unique jewels. In fact, most of your jewel slots will be taken up by these things. That said, what unique jewels should you incorporate into your build?

The first thing you want to add is Brutal Restraint. What makes this jewel great for the Hollow Palm Ice Crash Raider is that it adds bonuses to the small and notable passive nodes in its radius. Place it in the jewel slot right beside the Savagery notable passive. Here are the bonuses that you should be looking for:

5% Increased Dexterity (Best)
Alchemist's Genius
10% Increased Flask Charges Gained
5% Increased Movement Speed
Chance to Gain Onslaught on Kill
20% Chance to Avoid Being Stunned

To help you search for a Brutal Restraint that contains these specific mods, you can use the nifty Timeless Jewel Calculator. Just input the right parameters and it will generate a list of results. Clicking on any of the results will open a tab to the trade website, which leads you to the people who are selling Brutal Restraints with the exact mods you are looking for. When you're still starting out, you don't have to worry about getting all of the bonuses mentioned above. Just purchase the cheapest one you can find and use that until you have enough currency to acquire a better one.

Watcher's Eye is the next unique jewel that you should aim for. Hatred is always going to be a part of the build. You have the option of adding one more major aura, so get a Watcher's Eye that has at least one Hatred mod and another mod that is based on the aura you are using. Here are some of our recommendations:

Damage Penetrates % Cold Resistance While Affected by Hatred (Best)
Increased Cold Damage While Affected by Hatred
% of Physical Damage from Hits Taken as Fire/Cold/LightningDamage While Affected by Purity of Elements
+% to Chaos Resistance While Affected by Purity of Elements
+ to Armour While Affected by Determination
% Additional Physical Damage Reduction WHile Affected by Determination
You Take % Reduced Extra Damage from Critical Strikes While Affected by Determination
+% Chance to Suppress Spell Damage While Affected by Grace
+% Chance to Evade Attack Hits While Affected by Grace
% Increased Movement Speed While Affected by Grace

Unnatural Instinct is an interesting jewel because the allocated small passive nodes in its radius grant nothing. Instead, you obtain all of the bonuses of the small passive skills that are unallocated in its radius. This is best placed just slightly above the Sentinel notable passive on the skill tree. This spot is great because you gain elemental resistances, chance to block attack damage while dual-wielding, increased strength, and increased physical damage.

When you're in the endgame and you want to min-max the build, you can purchase a Forbidden Flame and Forbidden Flesh to get another ascendancy passive. Look for those that you have not allocated in your current setup. Take note that these jewels must have the same ascendancy passive. Otherwise, they won't work.

Another reason why you want to include the Forbidden Jewels set into your build is that you can get ascendancy notable passives from other Ranger classes. You can find the best ones below:

Gathering Winds: Increases your action speed due to Tailwind
Master Distiller: Grants 20% elemental penetration when using a Bismuth Flask
Nature's Boon: The effects of magic utility flasks are amplified by 30%
Nature's Adrenaline: Gain three flask charges every few seconds, making flask uptime almost permanent when mapping

Attribute-stacking builds like the Hollow Palm Ice Crash Raider can gain huge benefits from using Split Personality, especially if you get one with "+5 Dexterity" and "+40 Evasion Rating." This is a unique crimson jewel that increases in power for every skill point that is allocated between the slot where the jewel is socketed into and your class' starting location on the passive tree. That is why the Split Personality is best inserted in a large cluster jewel at the bottom right of the tree so that you gain a ton of dexterity in the process.

Introduced in Patch 3.23, That Which Was Taken is also a great addition to the build. This contains modifiers that you normally would find on the different ascendancy classes in the game. Here are some of the juicy mods you can look for:

2% of Attack Damage Leeched as Life and Mana if You've Killed Recently
(20-30)% Chance to Create a Consecrated Ground When You Hit a Rare or Unique Enemy, Lasting 8 Seconds
(8-12)% of Overkill Damage Leeched as Life
% Chance to Gain an Endurance Charge When You Are Hit
Exposure You Inflict Applies an Extra -% to the Affected Resistance
Damage Penetrates % of Enemy Elemental Resistances
Cursed Enemies You or Your Minions Kill Have a 12% Chance to Explode, Dealing a Quarter of Their Maximum Life as Chaos Damage
% Increased Area of Effect if You've Killed Recently
% Chance to Freeze, Shock, and Ignite

Weapon (Optional)

Did you know that there is actually a weapon you can equip even if you are using Hollow Palm Technique? Yup, that's right! That weapon is The Dancing Dervish!

The Dancing Dervish is a unique Reaver Sword that triggers a level 15 "Manifest Dancing Dervishes" whenever you are on Rampage. This basically means that so long as you are killing monsters, you will always summon the dancing dervishes.

What's interesting here is that when they are present, you will be treated as "unarmed," thus activating the Hollow Palm Technique.

In addition, the dancing dervishes are minions, meaning, you can improve their effects by slotting in some minion support gems.

The Dancing Dervish works nicely with the Hollow Palm Ice Crash Raider, but its major downside is that you have to always kill stuff to maintain the "Unarmed" status. That's because when Rampage is gone (after several seconds), the dancing dervishes will disappear as well.

This weapon provides the following stats:

(130-160)% Increased Physical Damage
(25-30)% Increased Attack Speed
5% Increased Movement Speed

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Flasks

Jade Flask
Stibnite Flask
Quicksilver Flask
Amethyst Flask
Taste of Hate

Although this build has a ton of evasion rating, you will still get hit with devastating attacks from time to time. Because of this, you want to include a Life Flask that has the suffix that grants immunity to bleeding and Corrupted Blood. For the prefixes, roll a "Seething" or "Bubbling" mod for instant life recovery.

For magic utility flasks, use a Quicksilver Flask for increased movement speed, a Jade Flask for increased evasion rating, and a Stibnite Flask for a % increase in evasion. You can substitute the Stibnite Flask for an Amethyst Flask if you're low on chaos resistance. Granite Flasks give flat armor. If you prefer armor over evasion, equip a Granite Flask rather than a Stibnite Flask.

You have the option of using some unique flasks as well. The Wise Oak raises your elemental resistances by 35%. But more importantly, this flask increases your elemental penetration based on your highest uncapped elemental resistance. To maximize its unique effect, you have to make sure that your cold resistance is higher than lightning or fire.

Taste of Hate is another unique flask that offers a good mix of offense and defense. It raises your cold resistance by 50%, reduces the cold damage you take from foes by 20%, and you gain up to 15% of physical damage as extra cold damage during flask effect.

If your build is still squishy and you want to beef it up, then the Lion's Roar can help you with that. This unique Granite Flask provides 1,500 flat armor, up to 10% more melee physical damage, and you knock enemies back with every attack.

Gems

The Hollow Palm Ice Crash Raider is one of the only popular builds in Path of Exile that has a rather restrictive gem setup. Because you cannot equip a main weapon, off-hand, or gloves, you are three pieces of gear short from a regular build.

Despite its shortcomings, this build still works really well. You just have to deal with the lack of gem variety since you are starved for slots.

Body Armor

Ice Crash
Multistrike Support
Awakened Elemental Damage with Attacks
Awakened Melee Physical Damage
Awakened Elemental Focus
Awakened Cold Penetration

As you can see, there are four red gems, one green gem, and one blue gem used in the build. The Briskwrap is an evasion-based gear, meaning you'll have a hard time rolling the correct colored sockets. Fortunately, there is a trick that will help you get the desired socket colors, though you'll need plenty of Jeweller's Orbs for this one.

This can only work if the said unique armor does not have six links yet. So, what you'll do first is go to your Crafting Bench and choose the option to add "At Least Three Red Sockets."

Next, selecting "Four Sockets" adds another socket to the armor with a random color. The trick here is to alternate between "Three Sockets" and "Four Sockets" until you get the colored socket that you want. The process for getting the next colored socket is the same, albeit you change it to "Four Sockets" and "Five Sockets instead of Three Sockets/Four Sockets. Do this until you have the right socket colors.

Anyway, the normal version of the gems mentioned above is fine. But when you have enough currency, opt for their "Awakened" versions because they offer higher stats and better bonuses. For instance, the Awakened Elemental Damage with Attacks support gemensures that the damage you inflict upon your foes is not reflected back to you. This allows you to run maps with the "reflect elemental damage" mod without fear.

Awakened Elemental Focus gives you "+1 to Level of Supported Elemental Skill Gems" at max level. Awakened Melee Physical Damage gives you a small chance of intimidating your enemies, making them take more physical damage in the process.

Awakened Cold Penetration is a nice addition to the build because it not only provides you with 39% cold penetration, but you have a chance of inflicting cold exposure as well. In other words, you deal huge amounts of damage with Ice Crash because you're dealing cold damage!

If you want to have a bit more survivability, you can swap Awakened Elemental Focus with Fortify Support. This support gem allows your Ice Crash Hits to give you a Fortification stack, which reduces the physical damage you take.