No issues. I am primarily sticking around the forums cause i have too many builds posted here.
You can do both, if someone is being a pain in the ass then just cast icehill can freeze
I am used to Kite and Kill play-style. Still i did chain-freeze some enemies to death
Just be careful with Icechill, getting the timing right practice
Rhowan’s Crown is there for flat bonuses and elemental resistance. The devotion skill isn’t needed as we already have manticore
You already knew the answer
Spare devotion points can go anywhere
Don’t sweat it
I tried Pistol + Off-hand combo. It seems weaker. You loose the flat cold damage from Lox’s dagger which isn’t worth it at all
Like i said Lethal Assault is good but one can live w/o it
Plus the main thing is your effective DPS drops if you bring in ABB to the mix. To put it simply i am a spam caster who needs to hit an LMB every 3 sec to keep up a buff. The tediousness aside it does slow me down a little bit
I know the freeze can’t be chained as it apparently could before (never got around to try it) but wouldn’t dual Shards of Asterkarn give -70% and the aura they give -20% and Night’s Embrace another -50% for a total of -90% all the time and 140% with the NE skill, if I remember correctly I think someone noted that the lvl 5 resistance for heroes adds 155% freeze resistance… Wouldn’t this practically be the same? Or did I miss something?
Edit: it’s just 15% left I mean, shouldn’t give them much time to react anyways…
Umm, freezing wasn’t the core of the build. It was added cause i had spare slots, my ABB Pistol Breaker doesn’t use freeze.
I hate building around exploits like that tbh
Feel free to try it but it’s not worth the effort imho
Well, maybe it was the wrong place to post it actually, it was just that when I read the complains I thought this build and similar were what they had in mind and since you seem good at making builds I was just wondering if the combination is still broken?
I liked the build cause it’s dualwielding and cold based, didn’t even know it could permafreeze stuff before (haven’t reached more than lvl 45 yet :p)
But was thinking, if it is still broken, shouldn’t it be nerfed some other way still?
Edit: it seems I missunderstood the stats, the stacking and so on, and this is not possible so no worries
I thought the shard gave -35% and that it stacked with itself, but I think I misunderstood something… Also the aura is indeed 20% but as far as I could understand it that’s really all you get. Add on that nights embrace and you get 70 which leaves 75 or something.
Dualwield would lower freeze time on you by 70% though (if it stacks)
The build comes 1 point shy of getting the 6th blade from level 26 PB, which is a 20% increase in total DPS. You sure you can’t work +1 PB somewhere in this ?
An assassin’s Loxmere dagger would be obvious but I haven’t checked to see if it’s in the affix table.
Or you could use a Nemesis relic. I’m pretty sure the 6th blade trumps the proc from Iskandra’s damage wise.
Recently when i was updating the thread (a few days ago) i noticed i wasn’t at 6 projectiles so i am testing it out with Nemesis
While there’s a DPS increase and i personally prefer the Nemesis setup what I am really interested in is the pet itself.
I need to determine how useful it is (Seems decent)
Also there’s the issue with the completion bonus and hence why I didn’t update the relic itself when i updated the guide.
Also,
There’s another gear issue which is the rings themselves I might do quick update to new patch and then roll back for you guys soon cause my friend has the Sigils of Executioner and those require me to test them
Sigils will be ideal since PB has Pierce damage component which can be converted to cold, and the proc is pretty sweet
The rings also seem to be better than Band of Eternal Haunt’s Cold RR
I would roll back after that though (Probably) since my GD time will be cut even less since I started Xenoverse 2 (Picked Frieza’s Race since it has Golden Form unlike Saiyan race where I don’t have access to God or Blue form)
You guys can follow the current guide but do expect an update from me within the week or so cause the changes require extensive testing
So sorry for the delay
EDIT:
The other guides would take precedence over this one since they don’t require as much testing. Updates coming to-
I’m interested in making a cold casting spellbreaker and my build choices are this and the Winter’s King variant. If I were to make only 1 SB, which of the two is the stronger build? I will be using Soulrend and the legendary Alkamos set on both builds (as soon as I regain the will to farm SoT again for the missing Touch of Anguish…)
Phantasmal Blades:
Higher DPS (esp. with the use of the 2H Soulrend and pierce to cold on Alkamos)
Crazy energy cost per cast
Winter’s King:
Saves at least 29 skill points without the PB skill tree. More points on the passives and other skills
Reasonable energy costs
I’m currently leaning on the PB variant but I’m interested in hearing the theorycrafters’ thoughts on this.
Sorry Adam I can’t answer this yet
I updated to the latest patch but neither me nor my friends have Alkamos’ Scythe (nor the World Eater)
I am currently testing with the new rings
I’ll update the build when I am finished with it
And would be able to provide you with an answer
EDIT:
Follow the current setup for now cause I am doing SoT runs for the scythe for further testing
Since I asked for a comparison, I figured I’ll answer this one myself. I played PB from 50 to 75. At this point, I made a backup of the character and played both PB and Winter King (WK) to 85. Its a small sample size of 10 levels but I was able to get a solid feel for both builds.
Sorry Chthon but WK is way superior in almost every aspect. Its a shame too as I wanted a signature PB build. PB and Forcewave are the only mastery-based main skills that I don’t have an exclusive build for.
The saved points from WK allows me to reinvest in other skills such as maxed SS. With Soulrend’s and Star Pact’s cooldown reduction, I can spam this skill every 2s. This dramatically ups my single target DPS. Not to mention I can also max Lethal Assault for more DPS.
WK’s pure cold flat damage boosts its damage way higher than PB’s 4 damage split. PB’s lack of conversion on its different damage doesn’t help its case at all. The transmuter dropping PB’s listed damage by 50% doesn’t help either. I only feel a minimal difference with Alkamos’ 30% pierce to cold conversion.
The innate 100% pierce-through of Winter King also makes it superior for trash mobs vs PB’s 50-70% pierce-through with Heartseeker. The only issue for Winter King is slopes but I’m SS through crowds most of the time so its not too much of an issue for me.
Why be sorry? I knew WK Might was superior in previous patches but i wanted to test out with new items which is why said I can’t comment yet.
One is a cold skill (WK Might) and the other is a Vitality/Chaos skill (PB) with minor cold support.
I am literally forcing the Cold here (it doesn’t have Item support) and still can achieve tankiness and performance enough to farm end-game.
As for Sober’s build i know he’ll disagree but i still think dropping Lethal Assault would add to QoL of play
Soooo… You compare the performance of a PB build using Soulrend which has little synergy with it, to the performance of a hybrid WK/SS spam build when Soulrend is basically the best SS weapon in the game, and SS spam builds are top tier outside of crucible.
Also in spite of Soulrend having high adcth, you’re not gonna quite heal 5k hp/s from WK like you can with PB.
I don’t doubt that the WK setup is working better, but I don’t think it is primarily due to WK’s own merits. The build is getting carried by Shadow Strike, but you know some people might want to play a SB build that doesn’t rely on SS for once.
EDIT: Words, also this may seem weird due to even Ch’thons own admission that he is forcing the cold scaling, but this actually feels like one of the less gear dependent PB setups. No conversion to worry about so slots aren’t taken away from +skill gear, and arcanist is a godsend for energy cost and cast speed bonuses. Aether PB doesn’t work at all without specific items and all variants of PB Witch Hunter have to me felt worse until they got several of their leg drops. Maybe that’s just my impression though.
Ah well in admission i did point out that the one is cold based skill and the other (PB) isn’t and yet we’re getting kick-ass results out of it
So this build is good and considering we don’t have cold based casting abilities in the game besides WK Might i love it, and it looks cool
And yeah there’s also the lack of gear dependency, we don’t need Soulrend to make this build OP or any gear for that matter, only stuff with plus skills cause Cold PB doesn’t have actual gear support
WK Might is cool as well even w/o SS, Sober’s build is pretty awesome imo.
And to anyone still following this guide-
Sorry some IRL stuff came up and i couldn’t update this, i am still testing after getting Soulrend to drop (doesn’t suit this build a lot btw)
