This is a character focused on cold and frostburn damage. It has plenty of health regeneration from gear and devotion, and proper resistances. I have played this character for almost two years and I really appreciate him.
I am writing this in 1.0.0.6, but the next patch should drastically improve the frostburn damage sources like Night’s Chill, Nightfall, Elemental Awakening, Tsunami and Blizzard. For now, it deals around 25k DoTs to a single target (edit: 35k in 1.0.0.7).
For trash mobs, we have all the procs. I like when the screen is filled with colors.
Star Pact, Elemental Awakening and Nightfall provide plenty of flat frostburn damage. Although the damage value of Star Pact and Elemental Awakening is low, do not forget that we deal 7.2x the amount written thanks to Scourge Strike and its double 360% weapon damage. When the level cap is raised in the expansion, I will probably max out Elemental Balance for its crit bonus.
Shadow Dance and Circle of Slaughter prevent on average 60% of all melee attacks, thanks to dodge and fumble chances.
Ring of Frost and Olexra’s Flash Freeze provide on demand freeze. I think I only invested one point in OFF.
Love the concept and that you are trying to make cold damage work which is hard without pierce involved. How is scorge relic treating you? I’ve been wanting to try it for ages now, with frostdread cuirass like yourself because it looks batass and just fits
Thank you! I was a bit bored to see how all cold builds on the forum were based on the Deathmarked set, so I thought it would be nice to share my approach.
Scourge Strike works well as a LMB skill, because we have low attack speed anyway so we might as well use a nuke on cooldown instead of an auto-attack replacer.
Just going to drop this here, if someone wants a pure cold build then loxmere’s daggers with good rolls would be BiS. Good luck getting it though he has dropped only one fury weapon for me in about 30 encounters.
As for the build itself,
Happy to see someone else trying to make a pure cold spellbreaker w/o DM set, i’ve been unsuccessful so far in my attempts (mostly because loxmere is an asshole). As for Olexra’s Chill i always thought of building around it cause it looks so awesome. I mean really fucking awesome. But i never would’ve considered it for DW
Scourge simply doesn’t sit right with me. I wanted to build around it but gave up on it. Wouldn’t you say Nemesis fits in better? It gives total speed, which i honestly think you could use more. Anyways that’s just my take on things but using Scourge Strike as an LMB is a good catch and makes for a unique build
And thanks for showing Frostdread Cuirass has flat cold damage. I didn’t even notice it.
You could use other items in Amulet, Belt and Medal imo.
But i like the concept. Cold build is something that lies at the bottom of my list. Even if i had found loxmere’s daggers i would’ve had more chances of making my first Blademaster before making an actual cold build. It’s one of the damage types that i hate the most. But seeing your build i am now tempted to make one.
Kudos to you mate, great build. Points for innovation
Thank you Chthon! I’m going to reply point by point if that’s good:
I agree Scourge is not ideal, but there is no relic giving a solid cold proc so I took this one by default. Nemesis is good, but I honestly dislike the granted skill. A cold warrior does not go well with a lion tamer, thematically. I’d rather have a cold/pierce “on attack” proc for this relic.
Scourge could be interesting when coupled with an overcapped Lethal Assault, thanks to its large %weapon damage.
That is true. Blade Breaker Sash, Spellbreaker Waistguard, and Phantom-Thread Girdle all have solid OA and +1 to all Nightblade/Arcanist skills. That being said, I focused on health regeneration and high resistances. For more damage, these three belts are definitely better yes.
I like the amulet for its meteor proc, although something like Night’s Embrace would be very solid too.
The medal has a pretty bad proc, it does not deal any damage but it covers a large area which helps you to proc continuously the rings/scepters/gloves “on attack” abilities. Also +3 to Nightfall is nice in my opinion.
I had tried something alike back when I played a lot, and concluded that having both nightfall and OFF is overkill, esp. with procs. In the end I got rid of Nightfall, using only OFF as a trash cleaner. I also haven’t made a point ignoring pierce and elemental, so I had no spare points to reach Star Pact. My devotion setup had Leviathan instead of Amatok.
I’m short on skill points. You could take 12 points from Circle of Slaughter and put them in Elemental Balance if you want, but the 50% chance to fumble is very handy against melee nemesis.
Why not pierce and cold? Eh honestly I don’t know, it’s a different build completely. I like my cold damage. Plus everyone goes pierce+cold+Deathmarked so this adds a bit of variety.
Unfortunately the problem with all cold damage is trying to fight cold heroes is completely terrible, and fighting Moose is a horrible experience even when you can manage to get him in a tight corridor so he can’t waste you with his ice spawns in his second form.
Beronath is great since you can use it proc say Elemental Storm or Acid Spray, which are kind of unreliable assigning them to your WPS, in fact thats pretty much the main reason I went with it, plus with decent attack speed it’s really easy to get it up to max.
This goes to show that hopefully the new Mastery will support more cold damage builds, there’s just not enough love for people who enjoy playing cold-based stuff.
I’d kill for Olexras to be a LMB/Spam skill or something… i’m really crossing my fingers that whatever they’re cooking up uses a lot of cold based abilities or spells
I was thinking about a similar buil but i cant remember if cold will slow enemies too or if only do some damage. In that case a cold/frostburn damage build will be perfect for crowd control.
I was a bit bored to see how all cold builds on the forum were based on the Deathmarked set, so I thought it would be nice to share my approach.
