pure ice-zon

[zeladonii]

pure ice-zon

hi
im making a pure 100% ice maiden
ill be playing untwinked so i wont have access to many high runewords

final skills will be:
20-cold arrow
20-ice arrow
20-freezing arrow
20-valk
rest-avoid, evade, dodge, pierce ect...

thinking of using an "edge" bow
not too sure on other gear though...

just looking for insight

thanks
zeladonii

 

[illestkhmai]

I'd drop ice arrow since in hell the freeze increase doesn't help very much, and it's more than enough by itself. You should pick up strafe/GA for cold immunes or hell will be extremely hard for you.

 

[zeladonii]

but ice arrow powers up freezing arrows, or is that not important?

 

[illestkhmai]

Ice arrow only increases the freeze length. Cold arrow is the one that synergizes the damage, so max cold arrow and freezing, but leave ice arrow alone. You'll need a backup skill to get rid of the many cold immunes.

 

[zeladonii]

ahhh thanks so much

 

[slayer37]

If you want longer freeze/chill duration, you're better off stacking cold charms. Cold prefix and suffix for the win.

 

[icharius]

Have fun finding charms with cold prefix and suffix. I've been searching for a while and haven't found many. Not easily traded for either, since they aren't in high demand except for us FA zons.

 

[zeladonii]

lol im sure your right, playing untwinked those will be hard to find indeed.
i think ill stick with my grand charm of frost (+1-2cold damage!)

 

[zarirazz]

don't forget eye of etlich, if you're lucky enough in the earlier levels.. they have that hidden freeze length.
in SP, you can use atma to find out. but in realms, you have to test it out yourself. 10 seconds freeze is a long duration even when nerfed in hell =)

 

[slayer37]

lol im sure your right, playing untwinked those will be hard to find indeed.
i think ill stick with my grand charm of frost (+1-2cold damage!)

Wow! 3 slots for 1.5 ave cold damage!

Back to reality... cold scs are common and should be easy to accummulate untwinked. You could stack these up (preferably with other useful secondary mods) to gain sufficient freeze/chill duration even in Hell.

I agree with Eye of Etlitch (spelling?).

 

[Eilo Rytyj]

Just to put things in perspective, 19 extra skill points in Ice Arrow adds 1.9 seconds of cold duration to Freezing Arrow. Just two cold damage charms will add 2 seconds of cold duration. It's much more efficient to just place 1 point into Ice Arrow as a prerequisite and leave it at that.

Eye of Etlich has a randomly generated 2-10 second cold duration. So there's a chance that it wont be as good as hoped for. It doesn't show it on the item though, the only way to test it is to unequip everything but the Amulet and hit something in Normal difficulty and see how long they are chilled for.

Even better though is Raven Frost unique ring. It adds 4 seconds cold duration, you'd do best to be using two of them since they absolutely rock on this build. The mana, the Dex and AR and Cold damage are all useful mods.

All charms will each add 1 second of duration, regardless of size. This goes for all cold damage mods on charms. So naturally, Small Charms would be best.

You should generally aim for around 20 seconds total added freeze duration with your items. It's reduced to 1/4th in Hell, so that's still 5 seconds of freezing time you'll have with each Freezing Arrow.



I suggest you put those extra points you would have put in Ice Arrow into Strafe instead. That way with a decent bow you should have two types of damage (Cold and Physical) at your disposal.

For the gear, it's usual Bowazon gear, but you should focus on getting +Bow skills on your gear, as well as having a fast enough attack. Just make sure you have some Mana Steal with your items as well, so you can keep shooting Freezing Arrows.

 

[jrsilva]

Hi, I am making one of these too, using Ice Bow (also Eye, Vamp Gaze and Raven - Nightwing seems to compromise my mana leech too much, although the stats are great), and my doubt concerns the A2 merc to go with (assuming an A1 Cold Rogue with Faith is not suitable for this build):

- Might Merc? I think the extra physical damage helps, if not for more for leech?
- Conviction or Infinity aura?

Thanks:smiley:

 

[crawlingdeadman]

Hi, I am making one of these too, using Ice Bow (also Eye, Vamp Gaze and Raven - Nightwing seems to compromise my mana leech too much, although the stats are great), and my doubt concerns the A2 merc to go with (assuming an A1 Cold Rogue with Faith is not suitable for this build):

- Might Merc? I think the extra physical damage helps, if not for more for leech?
- Conviction or Infinity aura?

Thanks:smiley:

if you did use an act one merc (btw why wouldnt an act1 work?), dont go with cold since you're supplying plenty of that use fire or light.

-might is alright, i mean nearly the only thing it'll help you with is cold imunes and leech from strafing. i'd even suggest using holy freeze to slow the monsters with the cannot be frozen mod. no merc is "wrong" really... except the act 1 and 3 cold mercs.
-infinity isnt an aura it's a runeword that supplies the conviction aura. personally i'd go for insight over infinity for reasons talked about in this thread (last couple posts)

 

[BlushNine]

I'd have to agree. It doesn't matter too much which version of the A2 mercenary you choose. Might aura will add very little to your overall damage next to the gross damage FA puts out. But as you have noted, it will help with leeching in a very slight way.

As for Infinity and Insight, the Conviction aura you get with Infinity won't break many cold immunes, atleast not the way it does so well with lightning immunes, but anything that is already vulnerable to cold will drop like flies when under this effect. But it won't do you much good to put out this much damage if you can't put out the Freezing Arrows in the first place, due to your mana being constantly empty. If you're having trouble keeping a steady supply of mana I would recommend Insight just as Deadman does, you will still kill plenty fast. If mana isn't a problem with your setup, go for the Infinity.

 

[zeladonii]

Just to put things in perspective, 19 extra skill points in Ice Arrow adds 1.9 seconds of cold duration to Freezing Arrow.

really!? i never crunched the numbers, but dang....

no merc is "wrong" really... except the act 1 and 3 cold mercs

this made me laugh xD

thanks ill be on the lookout for eyes of etlitchs
*runs to trade forums*

 

[thefranklin]

Re: pure ice-zon

I have a question regarding the ice arrow +freeze length.

Does the calculation multiply the freeze length before other cold sources are added or after?

 

[BlushNine]

Re: pure ice-zon

Before. Otherwise you would have some obscenely long freeze lengths. At +5% per level at 20 you're at +100% or double freeze length. If you had 20 small cold charms you would have incorrectly obtain (2+5)*2, or 14 seconds things would stand still. Doesn't sound like a long time? Sit in a chair with a clock and do nothing but watch the ticking for 14 seconds.

 

[accipite]

Re: pure ice-zon

which skill and gear will u use to kill boss, such as Baal?

 

[thefranklin]

Re: pure ice-zon

Well, for a 20 skill point investment you would hope that is the way it works? I would like to know if anyone has actually tried and/or tested it. All it would really do was make freezing in hell as long as freezing in nm would have been, that doesn't sound so bad does it?

In your example, it would be (2+20)/4*2 for 11 seconds in hell if the synergy was applied after adding up the freeze length. The divided by 4 from hell and the *2 from the synergy.

Or it is (2/4*2 + 20/4) for a total of 6 seconds if the synergy is added straight to the skill before adding up the freeze length.

 

[tallbacka]

Re: pure ice-zon

How does it work with gems? Sapphire gives +3 sec, will a bow with 2 sapphires give 6 secs or will the gems not stack since they are in the same weapon?