I’m leaving the text below just for history’s sake, but Spellblade was way more satisfying to play for me and, thus, I’ve abandoned this for now. I MAY revisit it, but my next mage build after the Spellblade is going to be fire.
Hi, I’m Trilkin. You might know me from such illustrious places as (???) and (?!?). I’m pretty famous. Anyway, this game caught my interest because I like action RPGs and I’m a loser that likes to theorycraft and make my own builds for games I’ve never played before. This is going to be a diary about my experiences with the Best Frost Sorcerer of Eterra (?), “MaybeThisOneWontDie.”
What?
As stated, this is going to go through my experiences leveling up my frost mage. This includes my build, my mentality behind my choices, and what kind of trouble I run into along the way. To make it extra interesting, I’m going to run as solo self-found hardcore. Why? Because I want to see my name on the ladder TBQH. I’m very vain. Since sorcerers seem to be RELATIVELY popular on the ladder, I’m going to assume there’s something to them.
Why?
Lightning seems to be, by far, the most popular build for sorcerer and that’s kinda boring. I’ve also seen some fire builds because everyone like meteors. Glacier? I mean, I’ve seen one build. It’s just not appealing, I suppose. Since I’m a contrarian dick, I’m going to do this anyway. Frost mages in Diablo-likes tend to be the safest of the builds, and by a cursory glance at the trees, the same applies here. Can it hold up in damage, though? We’ll see.
How?
I made a build template on Google Sheets that shows my point allocations in order. This will change abruptly, suddenly, and in the middle of my play, so do not use this as a guide. It will initially be unfinished and I will fill it out as I go. I’ll try to make it prettier so it’s easier to follow.
Touching on my passive choices briefly, I go for a combination of survivability and damage, erring toward damage. Since I’m not sure if the current behavior of Glacier is intentional (read below,) I do not spec crit. I’ve also only made my build skeleton to get me to the top of Sorcerer, leaving me 47 points to fill out based on my needs.
As far as my skill spread, I will be using the following:
Elemental Nova (clearing trash)
There’s not a lot to say about Nova. It’s a solid ability and we get it more or less right at the start. It will be our workhorse for map clearing throughout the entirety of the game.
An interesting note is that the lesser novas from Spreading Frost cascade out. If one procs it, everything around it will. In some limited situations this does more damage to elite mobs than Glacier. Whether this is intentional or not is unknown, but it’s a neat ‘feature.’
Glacier (bosses and ‘dangerous’ mobs)
Glacier is our bicc boi and boss killer. It does pretty immense amounts of damage over its three hits and it only gets thiccer as you invest. It also devours mana, but its high mana cost is actually a bonus as a Sorcerer. As such, we actually don’t want an abundance of mana efficiency in this build.
POTENTIALLY UNINTENTIONAL: We’ll be taking Static Collapse to center all 3 explosions in the same place. According to the tooltip, it makes crits do no additional damage. In observation this is actually entirely false against elite+ monsters (at the very least.) It’s unknown if Morditas’ Bane ends up overwriting the removal of the crit multiplier or if it’s intended to instead lower the chance to crit. As of right now, I am speccing with the mind that this is unintended, and thus, I will not be taking extra crit in my build. If this ends up being intended behavior, however, I will change my build accordingly.
Flame Ward (protection)
A big, fat ward that will keep us alive and slowly refresh itself for the duration with how we spec it. It will also increase the amount of damage we do (significantly) while it’s up. This is the main reason why we’re probably going to want CDR for this build.
Teleport (mobility)
Teleport is always good. It’s especially good here because of its synergy with Elemental Nova. I’m going to experiment with speccing into the Nova nodes to see just how much raw AOE I can do with it. I’m sure it’ll be a laugh.
Focus (regeneration)
This build is miserable without a good form of mana regeneration and, at least initially, we’re going to need Focus. Since Focus is purely to replenish our mana as quickly as possible, I will be maxing those nodes first. I am on the fence whether to take the armor/resistance nodes or the health regeneration nodes right now, though, and will do some experimenting as I go.
With?
My gearing plan is up in the air and is currently just ‘common sense.’ If I had to make a list of what I’m looking for in gear and crafting (in no particular order:)
Ice/Spell/Elemental Damage, Cooldown Reduction, Mana Regeneration, Protections, Freeze and Chill Chance, Health, Ward, POTENTIALLY Crit Chance and Multiplier
We don’t want much mana cost reduction or efficiency in order to take advantage of Sorcerer’s mastery as well as the tree passives. I’m not familiar enough with item types yet to be able to give a proper shopping list or crafting guide, but I’ll try to fill this in as I go.
"2300 A.D.: Protodome" - Starting Out
There’s nothing here yet! It will be in my next edit. I’m currently up to the Ruins of Welryn. I will fill this out when I get to the End of Time.
Changelog
7/9/2020: Initial post!