MAGES

[►► H A R K A ❚❚]

Hi, I need some help from people that play mage classes. Back in IT I played Elementalist but now Volcanic Orb has 5 sec recharge time and I kinda don't like it. I went for Ice shard build and it's pretty nice, but I'm worried late game it wont be so strong. So here are my questions:

1- Is Ice Shard or Squall/ Lightning Bolt better?
2- If Ice Shard is good and for late game, then what talents should I pick except the casual tree?
3- Which second mastery is best for Ice shard build? I've heard Dream is nice if you go Squall/ Lightning bolt.

Thanks for the help mates.

[Somebody]

For an Ice Shard build, I recommend to play a Druid (Storm/Nature).

Briar Ward protects you from enemies while you spam your Ice Shards. Ice Shard is an extremely powerful spell, because it has no cooldown and can pierce through enemies, which basically makes it an AoE left-click replacement that is even better than Ternion from the Spirit mastery. Tranquility of Water from the Nature tree can help you a bit with the energy cost of Ice Shard.

[►► H A R K A ❚❚]

^ Thanks mate for the tip. I am playing with a friend of mine who is tanking and I decided to go full DPS. Is Ice Shards still nice in higher difficulties? Someone said Squall with -%Recharge is really really nice late game combined with Dream.

[Mr. X]

Druid is the typical ice shard build, actually it is a renown dedicated build... so no doubts on the build viability
Squall should be very nice for every build delivering lightning/cold damage... debuffs are quite useful expecially in higher difficulties.

you speak about DPS in higher difficulties: at a certain point you will have to choose between DPS and survivabilty unless you already have the final end game gear... and even so this trade off will remain for a certain extent.
Given also the resistence reductions in epic/legendary you will mostly go for survivability: who cares if you deliver 10k damage if you die after 2 hits? So don't worry about that, if you like shards just go for it and keep and searching for the best gear you can find

[AH-1 Cobra]

Ice shard isn't viable in Legendary difficulty. I dunno what game you all are playing, but I tested a druid build about a month ago, with access to BiS gear, and it does absolutely atrocious damage. It doesn't hold a candle to a well geared ternion attack build, or a petmancer. Like not even close.

The problem with Ice Shards, is you pretty much cap the skill's damage in normal mode. And you don't get nearly enough +% elemental damage from gear or extra damage from stats to make it do enough damage in Legendary. Squeezing every bit of damage you can possibly get out of the skill using gear and otherwise, you're tickling mobs to death in act 4 legendary using ice shards.

The developers don't seem interested in fixing the scaling on some of the flat damage skills, and it would be nice if someone made a mod to do it. Different damage #s for each difficulty, the same way pets get an HP buff when they go to the next difficulty.

[VNG]

I'm totally agree with crimsonedge11, ice shards are shredding everything to pieces only until epic hades, after this point damage is too low and it's totally not enough to kill bosses on legendary, not even to stand more than one second to spam shards. I've tortured myself with ice shards druid up until legendary Typhon, which I've been able to kill only after respec to lightning+wolves+plague.

[►► H A R K A ❚❚]

Point is, I'm playing with a friend who decided to tank through the game and I am going full DPS. If you say that Ice Shard is nice until Legendary, then going Squall + Lightning bolt + Dream for buffing the lightning dmg is better idea? I tried the full lightning build and I kinda hate that I need to wait those 5 sec to move to the next mobs. -%Recharge items seems a solution to that problem, but I don't think there are that good items in lower difficulty. Is it worth refunding IS points for lightning spells, or should I try the Druid?

[VNG]

Dream is a great combo for any 1st mastery, if playing the game solo. But since you have a tank buddy, I'd suggest picking Nature with Storm. Nature's heart of oak(which gives not only
health boost, but the speed boost too, and, comparing with Dream's temporal flux, not only for you, but for your buddy too)+plague (and heal, if the situation needs it). Storm's gonna be your main dps, squall+plague, then lightning+thunderball. All the downtime of spells can be filled with normal staff attack. I personally prefer lightning damage over cold beacause there's no decent artifact with cold damage boost, while lightning's Icon of Zeus's bonus and proc are cool.

[76561198121297094]

I'm just a newb but so far druid with ice shard is my favorite. Storm nimbus enhances ice bolt damage. So far that is helping in epic.

On normal level, I started with hunter and chose storm for second class when I couldn't hardly damage the Cyclops with my bow. Ice shard was great but took too much energy. So, around level 25 I decided to start over with storm / nature. Main reason I chose nature was for the energy / intelligence.

Druid is low on hit points so I put a fair amount of attribute points into hit points and some into energy. I've read that it's not good to do that but I think the hit points is important or else you will die too easy.

I'm currently towards the end of act two on epic and just blasting through everything with ice shard. Need to buy lots of energy potions though. Manticore was really tough when I had negative poison resistance but came back later with 50% and was able to run around and kill him before too long.

I recently obtained a necklace that gives +2 to all storm skill so that is giving me a boost.

Normal was easy, almost too easy through act 3. Got a lot tougher in act 4 and hades had a couple nasty fights. Hades himself wasn't too bad though but lots of running around in a circle and shooting ice shards and drinking potions.

Based on comments here, I expect that at some point ice shard might not do enough damage but in the mean time I am going to keep using it. It's fun. After finishing on normal with druid, I played an assassin through act 3 then went back to druid on epic and druid is way more fun.

[Midare-Saki]

i find that melee gets both survivability and damage (cloth and leather) xD when im running around with a staff i get like nothing xD

[Restless]

Summoner (Earth/Nature) has no problems on Legendary. Despite being called a Summoner, I actually use zero pets with my build. Some -Recharge% on your gear will help, but you also have Refresh and Stone Form. Spells used are Volcanic Orb, Eruption, and Plague. Survivability comes from Stone Form and Heat Shield. Heart of the Oak as well as +HP attribute points give me over 16,000 HP, easily cleared all of Legendary.

[►► H A R K A ❚❚]

*BUMP*
Thanks for all the replies. I am currently 25 lvl and nuking big groups of mobs with Ice Shard, but the single-target dmg is really low. I have alot of skillpoints and was wondering after maxing Ice Shards, what should I go for maxing: Lightning Bolt, Squall, Static Charge or Thunderball?

[Celerity, Executor of Impunity]

Click near you, the Ice Shards will form a tight cone. That's your single target. If it doesn't work get closer. If bosses are living longer than 2 seconds at this level something is wrong.

[Somebody]

I just played a Druid until level 27 (act 3) a moment ago, with 1 point in Ice Shard, 1 point in Velocity and 8 points in Torrent. That was enough to get the act 2 Telkine down in a few seconds. The damage output, especially on that level, should be more than enough.