Overview
Ice shard pure caster build (pets optional)
Introduction
Elsa, the Ice Queen Cometh
Mastery: Druid (Nature / Storm)
Build: Ice Shard pure caster, optionally with pets
This is a build for a ‘pure’ caster. Pure casters are those that use their spells to do the bulk of their damage for them instead of staff attacks or pets. The Storm skill Ice Shard is specifically the focus of this build and Nature is used to provide survivability and support.
Nature pets are an optional choice for the build.
Pros:
- Powerful anti-group attacks
- Anti-resistance debuffs in Squall and Plague for legendary difficulty
- Good health pool and damage avoidance from Nature mastery
Cons:
- Ice Shard is a very stationary attack, you don’t hit and run, you stand still and spam
- Very mana consuming (but lessened by Nature skill)
- Not as good for single targets or far off targets
- Can be a little gear dependent
Required Skills
The following skills are either core to the build or too good to skip.
Ice Shard
Your primary RMB attack. Stand inside your Briar Ward and spam until everything dies. The base skill is not a priority. It will just increase the base damage of the skill. Instead you want to max out it’s Torrent synergy skill ASAP as it will increase the number of Ice Shard’s projectiles turning it into a frontal conal anti-group attack. Next max Velocity to give your shards pierce and increase the cold damage and projectile speed. The base skill can be increased when you feel you need to buff the skill’s damage.
Storm Nimbus
An aura that buffs your damage with cold and lightning damage. It also applies a smaller buff to your pets. Drop a point into it to unlock the skill and max the Heart of Frost synergy skill to buff your frost damage.
Squall
Generates a wind storm that does slight damage and applies useful debuffs. Max the base skill to increase the storm’s radius and impair ranged attacks inside it. It’s Obscured Visibility synergy skill applies an additional debuff, reducing damage and resistances by a percent. As your primary damage source is cold based, enemies with large cold resistances will be difficult to fight and the debuff will be big help.
Summon Wisp
Wisp is a one point wonder. It has god tier dodge and avoid projectiles chance. This makes it pretty much unkillable except for AOEs. Wisp’s primary role in the build is not to do damage itself but to instead buff you with it’s synergy skill Eye of the Storm. Maxxed out, Eye of the Storm will give you a good boost to your cold and lightning resistance as well as a big bonus to your elemental damage. Even with only a single point in the base skill your wisp will survive fine in 99% of fights.
Storm Surge
One point wonder for the chance to stun enemies after getting hit. No need to put any additional points into it.
Heart of Oak
Excellent passive that buffs your health and gives you a speed bonus on first point. Max the base skill to give you a large health pool to help mitigate incoming damage. Max it’s Tranquility of Water synergy skill as it will help mitigate Ice Shard’s mana costs.
Briar Ward
Your primary defence buff. Activating Briar Ward surrounds your character with a briar thicket. Each part of the thicket will eat melee and ranged attacks until it runs out of health. AOEs can bypass the thicket through so pay attention. Max the base skill to increase the thicket’s health so you are protected longer. Drop a single point into Stinging Nettle, the retaliation damage is negligible but you need a point in it to unlock Sanctuary. Sanctuary will boost your health regen, grant you damage absorption and reduce your energy costs while you are in the centre area of the thicket. You should still get the buff I believe even if the thicket is damaged if you are in the centre.
Refresh
Briar Ward has a fairly long two minute cooldown. Refresh will allow you to greatly reduce it’s cooldown. Combined with a bit of charge reduction, you should hopefully be able to keep Briar Ward up 100% of the time.
Optional Skills
Spell Breaker
Optional skill for countering magical enemies. Drains energy and negate enemies buffs. Spell shock with do damage based off energy drained and disrupt skills.
Lightning Bolt
Diversifies your damage a bit with some lightning damage. Has a short cooldown so can’t be spammed. Has a very good range and it’s synergy skill Chain Lightning causes the bolt to arc from the target to hit other close by enemies. Lightning Bolt can be put into your LMB.
Static Charge
Another synergy skill of the Storm Nimbus aura, Static Charge buffs your lighting damage. Only use if you find yourself using Lighting Bolt a lot.
Energy Shield
Short term buff that will give you damage absorption for cold and lighting damage. It’s Reflection synergy skill will give you a chance to have damage reflected. You’ll need to refresh the buff a regular intervals and getting maxxed resist for cold / lightning isn’t too difficult even in legendary so probably on the low end of the priority list.
Call of the Wild
You can’t really free up accessory slots to buff pet damage so if you invest in wolves they won’t be a huge damage dealer. Rather, they will mostly be providing support, distracting enemies and chasing down ranged enemies. If you do decide to use wolves, the base skill must be maxxed and buffed to 18/16 with skill + items to get a third wolf. One point in each synergy skill. Don’t really need to worry about keeping them alive much. Just resummon dead ones after they die.
Regrowth
Basic healing spell. Can be used to heal pets if you have them, while healing pots are on cooldown or just as a way to top off your health. I used the base skill just to heal bits of damage I took and used pots whenever I took real damage.
Plague
Cast on a target and it spreads to other nearby enemies. Does some poison damage and health reduction. It’s Fatigue synergy skill reduces damage and speed. It’s Susceptibility synergy skill will reduce physical, poison and elemental resistance. Unlike Squall it does so by a flat number. Alternative debuff for dealing with resistances in legendary.
Sylvan Nymph
Multiple wolves would be a better alternative imo. Only if you really want to go with a more pet focus.
Final Skill Trees
This is my final skill allocation. I summon aura and pets and use wolves as support and wisp for damage buff. I have a lot of cooldown reduction combined with Refresh to keep up Briar Ward constantly and spam Ice Shard with RMB. I drop Squall on top of ranged to scew up their accuracy, against melee I drop it on top of the Briar Ward. Lightning Bolt used on LMB for extra range, stun and alternative damage type. Plague used on enemies which are hard to keep under Squall. Regrowth is just there to top me up between battles with pots used when I take any real damage.
Alternative #1 — Pure Caster (with and without heal)
An alternative is to drop the points in wolves and use the free points to max out Lightning Bolt for alternative damage and Spell Breaker for anti-magic and skill disruption. Heals can also be dropped in favour of maxxing out the base Spell Breaker skill.
With Regrowth:
Without Regrowth:
Alternative #2 — Pure Caster (Atlantis)
If you have Atlantis you can max out the mastery points to level 40 instead of 32 for additional stats if you wish. The level 40 skills aren’t particularly useful. Maybe Earthbind can be okay as CC but I have no experience with it and Briar Ward does its job well anyways.
Stats
Health: With Heart of Oak, you’ll get more benefit for every point you drop in health than other builds. A big health pool can give you some leeway if you get caught outside of Briar Ward.
Mana: There’s no real reason to put points into mana. You’ll be drinking pots a lot but you can mass buy these from vendors without worries.
Strength: N/A
Intellect: Your primary stat. Dump most of your points here.
Dexterity: You need enough to equip your gear at a min. You won’t need to worry about Offensive Ability and you can use Briar Ward and your large health pool to stay alive. If you want to use legendary Stonebinder’s Cuff’s then you need 435.
Equipment
There’s a ton of bonuses you should be looking out for on equipment. There’s so many that you won’t be able to get max everything you really need
- You’ll spend most of your time standing still spamming Ice Shard: more casting speed will let you spam it faster – the cap is 300%
- Cooldown reduction % and Refresh will let you keep Briar Ward up constantly – cap is 80%
- You can’t do damage if you’re dead: like everybody else you need to buff you primary resistances – cap is 80%
- You can’t just boost your damage with a new weapon upgrade: +skill items can let you reach the ultimate level of your spells – cap is +4 over max skill level
- Nature helps a lot with Energy consumption otherwise energy cost reduction would be good.
- The rest of the usual stuff like Defensive Ability, Health, Mana, etc.
Leveling
Option 1 — Ice Shard Rush
The first option is to get Ice Shard up and running as a viable skill as fast as possible. This is the route I took. It’s pretty draining mana wise through so it’s best to have some twink gear if you are doing this. The Oracle set is a fairly common set in act 1 for ~level 9 and will last you at least to Act 3. It will basically allow you to spam Ice Shards without worrying about your mana pool letting you grind quickly and effortlessly early on.
At level 2, unlock Storm Mastery. Pickup Ice Shard. Afterwords, dump all points into Mastery Points except for one to unlock Velocity. The goal is to each mastery level 24 to unlock Torrent. Once you get a few points into Torrent you’ll finally start to be able to use Ice Shard to mow down packs swiftly.
At this point you can unlock Nature Mastery and grab Heart of Oak. Split points between Velocity, Heart and Nature mastery points. Eventually you’ll want some points in Tranquility of Water to help with mana when you replace your Oracle set. Level up Nature to get Briar Ward and Refresh and unlock Squall or Plague.
Option 2 — Wolves
An alternative approach is go start with Nature and go heavy with wolves in the beginning. Wolves make short work of the early game and you can pay to reset the skills later if you no longer want them.
At level 2, unlock Nature Mastery. Drop one point into Wolves and Regrowth. Dump every point afterwords into wolves so they can clear everything with ease for you. Once they are maxxed, level up Nature mastery until you can get Heart of Oak. Drop a few points there.
Next unlock Storm Mastery, pick up Ice Shard and start working your way up the tree. By this point you’ll hopefully have the gear and mana reserves to use Ice Shard without issues and can drop the points out of wolves and max out your Ice Shard tree.
From this point follow the later stage of option 1 to finalize the build.
Q&A
If you have any queries about the build leave a comment and I will respond when I have time.