Lightning Bolt vs. Ice Shard

[kalimon]

Hi,

I am an Oracle. Level 50, and so far I have only put points in to the Storm Mastery and Squall / Obscured Visibility, as I am more of a Spirit Oracle. However, Spirit lacks any 'spells' as such, and I was wondering what is the better option for an early Act IV Epic Oracle:

Lightning Bolt
OR
Ice Shard

Thanks!

[Zaptue]

Lightning bolt is better, hands down in my opinion. That's particulary true for act IV Epic and beyond-- that's about where ice shards start to do far less than you'd like them to do .

[kalimon]

hehehe thanks man! much appreciated

[Violos]

Basically you start out with Ice Shards and switch to Lightning / Briar once you got enough -cooldown.

You can also switch to pets and back at any time, except act 4 normal where they are rather hard to play.

[Fozzie]

I think LB and IS work quite well back to back. Kiting and slowing monsters into tight groups before electrocuting them is a tactic I use very often with Storm toons. So even though Shards might show a dip in killing power towards the later stages of the game, they can still be useful. And they offer DoT (nothing spectacular, but still...), which fits well with LB's stun.

[kalimon]

ok, i must admit I'm more of a spirit man than a storm man, although i was annoyed/ecstatic when i saw that 'Ravages of Time' didn't work without the Fanpatch (and previously i had 8 points there). so a casual 8 points for LB and synergy and haha i decided to make a new toon, focusing on poison damage, its crazy it killed the cyclops in 7 secs at lvl 10 with no Epic or Legendary items and minimal farming

anyway, refocusing. i just picked up finger bone of boreas (mighty lucky, if i may say so). I don't have a harrowing staff so i think i might use it, should i put a couple of points into Storm Nimbus and Heart of Frost?

[Zaptue]

Spirit is my favorite casting mastery too, but it really rocks with the fan patch. If I were you, I'd install the fanpatch ASAP .

[JerryM]

Definitely install the fanpatch. The deathchill tree will never be the same again