What melee skill as a backup for a caster.

[redtan]

So I'm looking to make a maxed out Ice Shard guy, but it seems that after reading alot of the posts on here that IS is not really viable by itself in the higher difficulties. And due to the high rate of mana cost that it takes to spam IS, I want to have a melee back up skill for it. I figured to peg at the enemies while far away, and finish them off with melee hits when they undoubtedly reach me due to the IS not being that powerful.

So I was looking mainly at the warfare mastery figuring that it's the best melee skill. But I was unsure of which skills to choose to maximize damage and speed.

Also if there are any other masteries that deal good physical damage in melee form that would be great to know. I looked at the others, but they don't seem to have good melee skills.

Thanks.

[Creslyn]

Another idea might be either Hunting or Nature as a second mastery. Both have skills that give direct elemental and physical damage resistance debuffs to groups of enemies (Study Prey+Flush Out for Hunting, Plague+Susceptibility for Nature), to help keep the damage up, and the advantage of these over auras like Trance of Wrath (Dream) or Death Chill (Spirit) is that you don't need to be right next to the targets for it to work.

Hunting offers good spear damage with Art of the Hunt and Call of the Hunt, on top of Study Prey, as well as useful resistances/defense boosts from those skills, Woodlore (Defense Ability + Attack Speed) and Herbal Remedy (Poison resist + health regen). A high movement speed is useful for a caster as well. Unfortunately, you'll get no Intelligence boost from Hunting, meaning lower elemental damage and mana regen.

Nature offers higher durability with Heart of Oak (HP and elemental resistances), Refresh to cast your more powerful slower recharging skills more often, and pets to draw groups of enemies together for better targetting of your attack spells. It also has the advantage of topping out your Intelligence for higher elemental damage and faster mana regen.

Or if you're set on a melee class, Defense can't be overlooked. Excellent durability and a lot of secondary resists, good offensive and defensive skills, and Colossus when you really, really, really want to just stand there and hit something. Hard.