Spellbreaker Build: A ring to freeze them all

[Bardamu]

I found a really nice Spellbreaker-Build which works with Colddamge mostly:

You go for cunning and phys. equally (mostly to wear specific items, store some points). If you have energy-problems, you should upgrade your armor to solve this problem.

32 points in Nightblade, 10 in arcanist, that gives you a lot of points for the skills. When max-level raises later this year you may go for execution or whatever.

The skills:
Arcanist:
Mirror of Eroectes is very good for starting the fight, cause you can run around and bring the mobs together a little bit. One point should be ok. Just 1 point in Olexras Flash freeze, just for cc, but very important for survivability.

Nightblade:
concentrate on dualblade (max), Ring of steel with ring of frost (max, this is The Ring), Shadow strike for bosses, (you dont need to max this, cause damage is crazy enough, you can have it on 12/16 if you max everything else mentioned).
Veil of shadow (1 point) with night chill (max).
Pneumatic burst for the small heals (1 point).
Merciless repertoire (max, but later) and maybe Bladebarrier (1 p.) as a third oh_shi_t-button

Why this? Cause Ring of frost hits ALL targets near you and is the best aoe in the game i suppose (it crits with about 2k on level 30). It freezes the mobs too, so its a wunderful opener.

Playstyle:
Rush in with shadow strike in the middle of mobs, use Mirror, let the mobs come closer, use Ring of frost. If there are more then 1 or 2 mobs left (normally not), use flash freeze and ring of frost again.

Here are the sources your damage comes from:
Weapon damage (cold) with Shadow strike (+pierce) if ready (LMB)
Ring of frost (cold AND pierce 75/25) (massive AOE)
Flash Freeze (cold) little bit (maxed out quite good AOE with a wider range)
Nights chill (cold) automatic by aura (AOE)
Chill aura (from item) little bit (AOE)
You need a cold stone for this chill aura. You can have one in one of your weapons and the other weapon with life leech if you want. Two coldstones are very nice too, but a little bit more risky.

There may be some points free for things you want of the nightblade-tree but nothing absolutely necessary. It depends on the amount of points you spend for Shadow Strike. I would recommend about 6.

Gear:
Weapons with frostdamage are mandatory and all items with %frostdamage (200% are easy to reach) and frostdamage (piercing is ok too).
Rest as you like ...


Have fun while freezing everything!

[Newb]

Note that the Flash Freeze does the damage on the tooltip once per second, not just once, and the area and duration get bigger, so it actaully improves a lot with higher ranks.

[Bardamu]

I would say that the damage is very small compared to ring of frost. Normally all mobs die with the first ring of frost. And points are rare, so there may be things better to invest in.

But i see that i have two rings with +2 in flash freeze. So i will test it with around max points in it and report. But i'm quite sure it won't compare.

[Newb]

You may want to put 1 point into the Tempest and 1 point into its transmuter. It doesn't deal great damage but it can knock down and benefits from the Flash Freezes' fire resistance reduction.

[Bardamu]

I agree to tempest, but that makes it too complicated for an old and lazy gamer like me.
I already have too much buttons for this build. But if you are quick enough that may come in handy. This build isn't so easy to play. A range arcanist is easier to play but doesn't deal so much damage to so many mobs in such a short amout of time. Rush in, kill everything with one blow, go on! That is what i like on this build.

[Bardamu]

Well, FLash Freeze maxed out (16/12 at the moment) works quite well. Ticks with abot 300-500/sec. Not bad ...

[Newb]

Yeah, the damage on it us a lot higher than many people think, not to mention the age-long freeze. If you time it right you can Ring of Steel freeze, Flash Freeze, and Ring of Steel again when the Flash Freeze wears off.
Edit: Have you tried getting Blade Barrier all the way up? It gives a moderately long period of 100% damage reflection, great heals, and lasts a fairly long time. Also, Pneumatic Burst gives a base amount of cold damage on all attacks, increasing as its rank increases, which might help a lot on the Ring of Steel, as the Ring deals % of attack damage.
If you don't find getting another ability, Lethal Gambit + the upgrade deal good cold damage and have a chance to freeze as well.

[Morgan Bernhardt]

Looks better then wut I'm using. Thanks from this lazy Spellbreaker wanna-be