[3.25] Ice Dancing Queen - Icestorm/Cyclone/CI - Viable For Everything

How important is the +8% block on Steelwood Stance? With Enlighten lvl3 and Charisma annoint, we can ditch the mana efficiency mastery, which gives us 5 skill points to invest elsewhere. Couldn't find a way to do it without Charisma though. Does it make a big difference in survival, especially against bosses?

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Graiaule wrote:

@spaceace: the only roll that really matters on the staff is 18% increased intelligence (and ilvl > 50 to ensure you can roll 6S on it.)

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Thunder0258 wrote:

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Graiaule wrote:

@spaceace: the only roll that really matters on the staff is 18% increased intelligence (and ilvl > 50 to ensure you can roll 6S on it.)

ilvl >50 is not really important at late game when you have 6s recipe at bench craft (350jwls)

these are the 2 i currently have ;)


i also only play standard

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WinterHiko wrote:

How important is the +8% block on Steelwood Stance? With Enlighten lvl3 and Charisma annoint, we can ditch the mana efficiency mastery, which gives us 5 skill points to invest elsewhere. Couldn't find a way to do it without Charisma though. Does it make a big difference in survival, especially against bosses?

I came to a similar conclusion, that Steelwood Stance wasn't worth it and we could get more out of Charisma.

What would you spend your 5 extra skillpoints if you had them? Enlighten + Charisma + Mana Efficiency gets you enough room to add Hatred, which also unlocks a hatred Watcher's Eye for even more damage.

The problem is gem slots. To fit in Hatred, we need to ditch another gem. Is it worth to remove Immortal call? Bonechill on Vortex? We also need a slot that will not influence the reservation cost with linked support gems. I don't know. I tried fitting in Hatred without Enlighten, but never could make it work.

Plus, you need to give up a Watcher's Eye slot and we already have great modifiers. Giving up the +ES hurts a lot. I guess we could give up the phys damage mitigation, not sure about it. It's a sacrifice. Of course, a +dmg on Hatred/+ES on Discipline/+phys mitiation on Discipline would be huge, but that would cost dozens of Divines, if you could even find one with the three exact modifiers.

What we could do with the 5 skill points, however, is allocate Heart of Ice. We get 90% increased Cold damage and 6% penetration. When my PoB was at 300k single hit, it was an increased of 10% more damage. I lost 100-200 ES and a point of res from the lesser aura boost, though. If you're not lvl 100, it can also help with completing the clusters.

I made some calculations in PoB. For my build, which follows the example PoB closely, here are three scenarios :

1 - Mana efficiency nodes + Steelwood + Phys mitigation and Mana as ES Watcher's : Phys max hit 28424, ele max hits 77318, Average hit 357746, ES 11838.

2 - Mana efficiency nodes + Hatred instead of Aspect + Charisma + Mana as ES and cold damage Watcher's : Phys max hit 22628, ele max hit 76k, Average hit 406306, ES 11648. We need to ditch a gem slot to make room for Hatred.

3 - No mana efficiency nodes + Charisma + Heart of Ice + Phys mitigation and Mana as ES Watcher's : Phys max hit 25720, ele max hit 77k, Average hit 381678, ES 11783.

Steelwood to Charisma to fit in Hatred and change the phys mitigation to damage increases the damage by 10-12%, but reduced phys max hit by 10-12% and chance to block by 8%, plus you need to remove another gem.

Steelwood to Charisma to change Mana efficiency nodes to Heart of Ice increases the damage by 8-10%, but reduces phys max hit by the same amount and block chance by 8%.


So my verdict is... I'm more confused than when I started. I'm not experienced enough to know how much -8% block chance is going to feel at all. Can someone with more experience and knowledge chime in?

In my case, I got rid of Ball Lightning and Cast When Damage Taken, and instead have in my chest:

Vortex
Bonechill
Hextouch
Elemental Weakness
Frostbite

From what I've found, the times when it matters whether or not something is cursed 100% correspond to when it matters that they've got Bonechill on them anyway, bosses, beefy rares. So you inflict your curses with Vortex at the same time you apply Bonechill. That actually frees up three sockets for you, where you can stick in Hatred + Divergent vitality (+4% damage, QOL if you're running Zealot's Oath), and Portal if you want it.

For what it's worth, I follow the guide, and haven't died since level 92. So, I prefer not to give up defense for a small increase in DPS. In other words, I'd rather increase DPS by minmaxing gear...

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Thunder0258 wrote:

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Graiaule wrote:

@spaceace: the only roll that really matters on the staff is 18% increased intelligence (and ilvl > 50 to ensure you can roll 6S on it.)

ilvl >50 is not really important at late game when you have 6s recipe at bench craft (350jwls)

Huh. I didn't know bench crafting overrode ilvl limits. Well, shit. That means I can 4-socket/link levelling armor!

Huh. Was trying to roll a ilvl86 Sadist Garb by following the recommendation in this thread and ended up with this :

Prefix : 9% of physical taken as lightning
Suffix : 10% int
Suffix : +33 int

Is it worth building on this with "suffix can't be changed" or should I scour and continue rolling with alterations? How would I even continue building that piece? I'm really bad at crafting.

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WinterHiko wrote:

Huh. Was trying to roll a ilvl86 Sadist Garb by following the recommendation in this thread and ended up with this :

Prefix : 9% of physical taken as lightning
Suffix : 10% int
Suffix : +33 int

Is it worth building on this with "suffix can't be changed" or should I scour and continue rolling with alterations? How would I even continue building that piece? I'm really bad at crafting.

All of these affixes are good. If these are the only ones on the chest, then you can craft suffixes can't be changed and attempt a fossil craft to try to get a good ES/evade result.

Note that's going to cost you 2 divine PER ATTEMPT. The int isn't so high that it seems worth doing that, in my opinion.

The alternative is to craft 6% incr attributes, and exalt slam twice and cross your fingers. (You can't multicraft as that's a suffix so you'd lose the 6% incr attrs.)

Personally, I've been slamming deafening spites on my ilvl 79 6L sadist garb trying to get a good defense roll. No luck yet. (ilvl 79 is the sweet spot for defense tiers and a 50% chance to hit % int.)