With FoA bringing all sorts of new cold focused gear I had high hopes of advancing a fun yet suboptimal mastery to play, my battlemage, as a cold-focused melee/caster hybrid built around this item: Mythical Deathshriek
Current Build:
Right now I’m going for huge cadence bonks interspersed with cold-focused casting. With Star Pact, this bad boy handles every damage conversion necessary - Aether, Fire, Lightning - and converts them all to Cold at 100%. Given this, I went heavily into Ele Cadence and TS, adding some additional phys > cold to convert WPS and Deadly Momentum. Fighting Spirit + Field Command/Squad Tactics combine with robust IEE and Star Pact points plus all the regular Arcanist staples. RR is handled through rumor and Ultos as is the case with Battlemages, but the wep also delivers a sizable 40 type 3 RR which is not too shabby. I took some defense in the form of Hyrian, Giants Blood, and Chariot to stay face to face with things.
As you can see, gear is still suboptimal but when fully buffed up with procs and such I’m dropping cadence chunks in the 500-750k range with tasty TSS and CT dunks around 300-400k. The resulting frostburn procs are also 400-550k/tic. I’ve yet to really test it thoroughly in SR or with Celestials as I only hit 100 a scant few hours ago but roguelikes are a breeze and super fun with this playstyle.
What comes next is where I’d love some thoughts - or maybe others are playing with this already? My plan currently is to go 4 pc Zakull’s and use the onslaught stacs to drop even nastier TSS/CT bombs, but also toying with the idea of keeping awakened eastern as the sheer # of skill points are hard to pass up, or some combo of the two + trozans pieces.
In truth this whole setup is likely better for an evoker given the skill bonuses and native onslaught stacs, but that would also forego the cadence bombs and the ease of soldier’s self buffs (there are already enough buttons to use without constant rallying cry/battlecry spam). I also find squad and fighting spirit to be fanastic, flexible damage modifiers and deadly momentum creates a ton of synergy.
Oh - and with zakull’s illusion on I look like a floating, badass arthas and its awesome.