after years of being just ‘leveling’ skill its time Olexra’s Flash Freeze to freeze ! and take her Vengeance !!!
jokes aside this char was on my ‘play meee’ list for so long i was just curious how OFF -55 reduced freeze duration from set will actually play a role in game and guess what you can actually freeze nemesis with this set and mi mace makes it stronger. last night in wolfoverclocked twitch we made some discussion about OFF and mageslayer set with jinsaotomex4 and i decided to play this awesome char finally. also i really wanted to use ‘mageslayer’ set outside of cold foi, because this is probably one of my fav set in game.
finally i managed to make really fun and strong cold&frostburn mageslayer caster to enjoy.
i must say building frostburn centric char is not easy as other dot builds, itemization is quite meh, there is not even 1 ring with fburn duration in game, leviathan constellation is omega garbage compare to spear of heavens, ultos and torch, building purple constellation is just plain waste and goes on.
its quite special char to build up, you have to find&theorycraft different items and put them together in shape. simply because , you cant just spam TSS its super inefficient playstyle, OFF dmg scalement is so bad so you have to combine all these skills and items together, while maintaining solid oa da crit cold&fburn dmg, armor sustain and other pieces together.
pburst - dryad up , dryad is perma in this build.
GRIMTOOLS main campaign spec
* only difference you may wanna do is changing relic to iskandra balance for more dmg, but i love eternity for main campaign nemesis farming due to - 1 cd reset makes things a lot faster.*
you will also see i change relic to show difference of them in videos.
like i always say, nothing set in stone for devotions just swap points here or there. whatever you are missing or you like, this is all around solid combination i use.
you can swap green boots to something with high chaos res and change augments here or there, no big deal.
i crafted 1 ring with %10 slow res to feel comfortable for cc res, rest is %3-4 armor crafts.
Offensive & Defensive Side of build
ill skip offensive side of build, its already heavy dmg oriented and not lacking any sort of dmg issues… %2400-2700 cold&fburn dmg spikes, +100 crit on TSS, procs, off smooth aoe clear, veil of shadows auto dmg and most importantly over -140 cold RR makes this char already strong on dmg side.
- good/high da , 2937 da
- good/high armor for caster , 2393 armor, 2621 with wayward soul
- 20 phys res , which is decent
- giants blood on arcane will, 3 sec mirror, blade barrier
- overcap all important res by 30, elemental by 50, 88 aether res
- decent hp pool for spellbreaker
- maiven seal of ancestry, potential room for prismatic diamond
- 3 different heal spells with so low cd, giants blood + wayward soul + dryad
- %30 chance to fumble, %34 dodge , %43 deflect
- all around good cc resist
- pburst heal , veil of shadow oa and slow debuffs, OFF freeze and nullification, kymon augment to reduce enemy dmg
Gear
like i said this is pretty much unique concept which you will need most items that i posted or you can completely change and customize build.
if you dont wanna use green boots, swap them with epic or legendary boots with chaos and phys res and swap augments etc.
you can find mace in SoT any mace will work, even shopkeeper sells this.
both rings i highly value in this build and they are craftable.
for offhand i tested other options but iskandra is unbeatable…
i also tested dw variants and all of them underperformed compare to offhand variant which was already obvious. if you want you can dw winter veil mace, 2nd mi mace , chillstrife, asterkan dagger, trozan scepter, crescent moon axe.
i like to use eternity relic for main campaign due to speed it provides but obvious choice for crucible and dmg is iskandra balance relic.
Playstyle
- open with shadow strike -> spread ‘rumor’ proc with nightfall
- spam OFF -> aeo control dmg freeze and cold res -> dryad
- ring of steel -> freeze and fumble -> elemental storm
- drop big boom TSS -> blizzard
- blade spirit -> to spread ultos
dont forget to null yourself or pesky enemies, mirror if needed, blade barrier if needed, try to bind pet attack to something its really usefull sometimes, blink augment to kite.
Pros and Cons
its insanely satisfying char to play ill say that… esp for those who love spellbreakers.
ill talk about ‘cons’ part a bit,
- its requires many buttons to play, not for everyone also hard to pilot most of the time. this part is huge pros to me anyway
- it moves in main campaign so fast that you may dont like speed of build
- time to time requires kiting, which is not dps loss due to your fburn dmg, you can actually 2 spell cycle most enemies in game and hide behind your mirror&barrier
- like all arcanist requires good timing for mirror null and blade barrier
- will probably have hard time vs kuba after sr 80. but build can easily conquer sr 75 as id say from my game experience.
- your RR procs are bind to shadow strike and ring of steel, sometimes they dont proc at first time means you lose some quite chunk of dps.
- you are kinda melee caster, but beefy one with tons of layer of defences circuit breakers and heal spells… no need to worry this but cons is cons.
Videos
i mixd mq and fabius videos in 1 and valbury crucible 150-160 run in 1 video.
i used same gear as gtools link i posted, swapped relic time to time and you can see on video.
- nothing special build in action, prolly trying different augmnts and things around.
[u]MQ + Fabio[/u]
- iskandra relic for fabio, eternity for mq… even vs fabio 150-180 k fburn ticks are common.
- again 2 different relic showcase, smooth and fast playstyle for both crucible and rogues… main campaign spec used in video, general time for crucible with 4 buffs is 6.50 to 8 mins i guess. i didnt try banner for this spec.
- only 1 mirror used in video and which was super unnecessary imo but better safe than sorry, this will show you that you dont need time dilation mirror abuse in this spellbreaker.
- i didnt change items component or spec to show main campaign setup for crucible.
- nothing special going on, some good old spellbreaker in action.
- first and only run i did.
Crucible spec and important things
* you may want to swap dryad for ghoul, 2 rings craft with %10-12 slow and more spirit to match offhand req.*
considering crucible buffs and banners, you may wanna go more offensive route and cut down timer. this char general crucible time is around 6.20 to 7.25 depends on spawns mutators and missplays… my personal record out of 7 runs is 6.32 with 3 buffs and banner, other players prolly can go lower.
- kuba is your only enemy for this char, its not as bad as other cold variants i played but still be carefull vs this guy cause you cant kill him fast.
- i started crucible video with bad TSS to show you cant hit certain spots, we cheezd aleks so long in that column spots now its time to get cheezd
you cant TSS under columns so be carefull. - with buffs and banners, you can 1 or 2 tap enemies with your combo… dont waste so much time on 1 enemy your fburn dmg is omega high for crucible.
- try to gather as much enemies as you can your aeo is not so big thats why you maximize your dmg efficiency.
- i am kinda bored about crucible and sr so much and kinda rusty for them, and having hard to time to understand new waves, here is guide for crucible piloting you may wanna check : PILOTING SPECs in CRUCIBLE
NAKED CRUCIBLE SPEC & RUN
like my all other builds its not surprising that this spellbreaker will also conquer crucible naked. some small adjustments needed to make this happen, and most importantly it will take time to get used to playstyle of build and enter that ‘comfort zone’.
this is my first run, that i recorded for myself to further improve build, thats why music on the background sorry for that. also with this way you can see my mistakes and missplays on first run and imrpove further. build capable of finishing naked crucible 7-8 out of 10 times, pretty good rate imo.
just 1 close call VS 2 reapers + fabio , you can super ez handle 2 reapers OR 1 reaper + 1 iron maiden/fabio but 2 reapers + 1 of this guy is way to much and fabio shadowstriked me nearly to death.
other than that, kuba is super dangerous and needs kiting as classic for cold builds…
grava kaisan iron maiden and all other stuff is w/e for this build, you wont have any problems or super minor problems as you can see.
Shattered Realm, no pots, no abuse, no shrine , no double mirror, no cheeze, 75-76-77
first of all, i so much hate this place and not enjoy to play it. as you see in the video there are items on ground because ‘silly me’ i made 1 to 78 sr run with this guy.
i died 4 times till i got sr 78, you can pretty much go till sr 90-100 and gonna hit the wall VS kuba, ill tell you that. you can constantly push sr 75 tp 85 with this guy without abusing stuff and deathless.
all you need is 12 pts into mirror, eternity relic and 1 da augment change on joolary, leathery hide on helm for more stun res, and maybe more pts into nullification. i dont remember my gtools atm %100 but i made things as hard as possible for showcase.
- 1 of them is completely my missplay in sr 25-30 or something, my dog was constantly poking at me
- 2nd one , i died in log arena with some weird boss combo. it was super avoidable death but i guess i didnt mirror or pot dont remember.
- 3rd one, as you gonna see in the video happened in sr 75 vs grava, i was super 'hyperomegazoink’ing SR till that moment i didnt check bosses and as classic grava balls 1 shottd me from offscreen :o NICE BOSS DESIGN btw…
- 4th one, dont remember but i died to stupid stuff around 40-50, probably by missplay cause i was nearly dying to boredom. still counts ‘deaths is death’
- no shrines, no pots, no abuse, no cheeze
- one of worst arena you can get
- pretty bad mutators
- mirror at 4 pts, pretty much using main campaign gtools
- iskandra relic used, eternity is alot better
- no boss pulling cheeze
- first playthrough in sr
Some dangerous stuff in SR
- grava and his null balls, can 1 shot you . play safe
- kuba is meh as usual for cold builds. play safe
- benny can fill whole arena with bombs. care
- valdaran can alley hoop you to trash places. care
- again moosy can fill whole areana with crystals. use pots
WTF is that sr 77 Reaper video part
- i wanted to show you whats gonna happen when you pull bosses 1 by 1 with this build. there is no competition challange or something that can be so dangerous for this build if you cheeze sr also its not worth it.
- like use 6 7 pots, pull bosses 1 by 1, maybe some shrines? and with ideal gtools ima post this char destroys this place to oblivion with ZERO issues.
Conclusion
this is part 1 of my cold&fburn caster journey, ill try to post other builds i played. i am sure some nightblade arcanist fans will enjoy this char since they are not common anymore.
all around extremely good, concept char to play, strong in every parts of game.
hope you guys&girls enjoy aswell… i am sure players like ‘weyu’ ‘wolfoverclocked’ will love this 
