Making an Icebolt storm based caster.

[N3Wi3]

I decided that after Conquerer, Harbinger, and Ranger, I wanted to make a caster class. My choice came onto an Icebolt Storm caster. It seems completely viable with enough +cold% damage and -recharge%. I have the gear for it from my Ranger farming on legendary, but my question is here is what would complement this spec of Storm the best?

I was thinking either Earth or Defense. Defense seems to give me more survivability vs ranged classes which I assume are going to be a problem in epic/legendary, but Earth gives me a nice pet for difficulty levels past normal and some nice concentrated AoE damage to complement the stun of Thunderball in addition to the spread damage of icebolt.

What would end up being a smarter choice for completing legendary on, Paladin or Elementalist?

[F4rmerbob]

I decided that after Conquerer, Harbinger, and Ranger, I wanted to make a caster class. My choice came onto an Icebolt Storm caster. It seems completely viable with enough +cold% damage and -recharge%. I have the gear for it from my Ranger farming on legendary, but my question is here is what would complement this spec of Storm the best?

I was thinking either Earth or Defense. Defense seems to give me more survivability vs ranged classes which I assume are going to be a problem in epic/legendary, but Earth gives me a nice pet for difficulty levels past normal and some nice concentrated AoE damage to complement the stun of Thunderball in addition to the spread damage of icebolt.

What would end up being a smarter choice for completing legendary on, Paladin or Elementalist?

Energy problems are HUGE with ice shards. Earth has no way to increase energy regen or reduce costs. That is surmountable, but you will use more pots.

See sig for paladin. I really should finish her =x. Inspiration has the most +energy regen of all skills except DC, but Inspiration lasts longer, has a shorter recast, and Defiance will make up for the lost damage from not being a pure caster in Legendary

Nature and Dream are also both viable with some energy regen/reduction and quite a bit of survivability.

[Munderbunny]

Early on, -energy cost items can help a little, but you'll really just be chugging potions non-stop. Honestly. The good news is, you can't drink yourself bankrupt, unless you absolutely refuse to pick up anything.

My GF did well burst-firing her ice shards, lol. Seriously, she had zero -cost items on (never listens to me) and so she would run around and burst fire on mobs. Run back a little, wait for the frost burn to pick off a few (the frost-burn damage on those ******* things is HUGE), and then cough out a few more shards. On big mobs or heroes, she'll just stand there and spew ice shards until she's out of mana, chug a potion, and just keep going. She can usually keep them going non-stop, though for a day or so, she could empty her mana before being able to drink another pot.

Anyway, point is, you don't NEED to keep them going non-stop, and you don't need to be afraid of drinking energy potions (unless you don't play with potion stacking, in which case, you'll be making a lot of town runs ).

But, playing Spirit, I have to say, if you can get even to -40% recharge, you can pretty much keep dark covenant going non stop (not that you'd want to). I don't know how it'd turn out for ice shards, but I can't run out of mana using ternion attack with almost 150% attack speed, so...

[N3Wi3]

I was thinking of this build:

http://www.titancalc.com/TitanCalc.a...-0-6-0-0-1-0-0

I don't expect to be using thunderball for anything other than the stun, so no reason to get static charge, but this seems like the way I'm going to go.

[F4rmerbob]

I was thinking of this build:

http://www.titancalc.com/TitanCalc.a...-0-6-0-0-1-0-0

I don't expect to be using thunderball for anything other than the stun, so no reason to get static charge, but this seems like the way I'm going to go.

Drop rally, the extra heal isn't necessary, and take defiance instead as it gives a huge defensive buff and MASSIVE damage in Legendary.

Also, you will want a point in batter and rend armor (you'll see as you play). I also suggest some other %attack slow. The true power of the paladin comes in the form of Concussive Blow. A few points in that, some +defense skills (if you are using the unofficial patch Sentinel's shields are easily available), and you are doing more than 10 second stuns with Thunderball (recast 10s).

EDIT: and you aren't equipping anything without Armor Handling. I was wondering how you saved so many points :P

[N3Wi3]

Well right now I'm going 1-1 str/int as I seem to get plenty of dex off the masteries alone. Does concussive blow work with batter? And I guess the +stun damage works with spells then if you are recommending it.

Also, what unofficial patch? I'm just using the regular old patch that I downloaded from fileshack.

I only started playing the game maybe 2 weeks ago, so I'm not entirely familiar with all of the mechanics yet, but I learn quick.

[F4rmerbob]

Fan bugfix patch for TQ 1.1

Sentinel's (+2 Defense mastery) shields aren't available without the patch as the link was broken.

[Serpan]

Energy problems are HUGE with ice shards. Earth has no way to increase energy regen or reduce costs. That is surmountable, but you will use more pots.

See sig for paladin. I really should finish her =x. Inspiration has the most +energy regen of all skills except DC, but Inspiration lasts longer, has a shorter recast, and Defiance will make up for the lost damage from not being a pure caster in Legendary

Nature and Dream are also both viable with some energy regen/reduction and quite a bit of survivability.

I was playing Ice shards for a while and tbh I was not having any issues with Mana Regen. I had ~15 Mana Regen and 12 Health Regen before I respeced for another build at lvl 30 (another plus is that Ice shards is fun to play, because it requires very active playing). With this regen abilities at that lvl... Mana regen is not an issue :P

[N3Wi3]

I'm definetly having mana regen issues atm, but I can't wear my next set of gear in the 32-37 range so that's probably why. Either way it's a fun build. Ranger was too boring to keep playing, and this is way more fun than a 1 shot destroy everything from range class.

[StrictlyFire]

I'm definetly having mana regen issues atm, but I can't wear my next set of gear in the 32-37 range so that's probably why. Either way it's a fun build. Ranger was too boring to keep playing, and this is way more fun than a 1 shot destroy everything from range class.

Remember you said that when your ice caster gets surrounded by ice sprites near the yeti caves... hehe