Is the ice build really worth it?

Bigevilpeter

I might be doing it wrong, but i went winterborn 5x, IA 4x and Iceheart 2x and a malestrom Ice staff.

Im an altemer magplar and my damage is so low.

Is there anway this build actually works or is it normal for it to be bad like this

Eweroun

could be interesting to give a bit more info on your build...

even thou sets do play a role, there's so much more things that count towards a good dps

Bigevilpeter

Well on my offhand the precise malestrom staff, i have:
Vampires bane
Mages guild spell damage skill
elemental blockade
ritual of retribution
blazing spears

On my main hand a sharpened IA ice staff:
puncturing sweeps
channeled focus
elemental ring
Jesus beam
magelight

Eweroun

Bigevilpeter wrote: »

Well on my offhand the precise malestrom staff, i have:
Vampires bane
Mages guild spell damage skill
elemental blockade
ritual of retribution
blazing spears

On my main hand a sharpened IA ice staff:
puncturing sweeps
channeled focus
elemental ring
Jesus beam
magelight

what about you character numbers? what's your %crit? spell damage? mundus stone?...enchants one jewelry, weapons, gear? using divines pieces?

I could already see a problem with proccing your monster set if %crit is to low (let's say under 65% or something like that)


About bars:
Why do you put channeled focus on mainbar?
I think it wouldn't be bad to respect the traditional well proven bar setup of mag templar DPS
(Ele ring is a waste in my opinion.... )

main bar would be betters with sweeps, bane, beam, trap, IL, ult: ice comet (fits well in ice build ^^)
off: blockade, spears,ritual,flex spot (channeled focus or ele ring),IL

Bigevilpeter

Eweroun wrote: »

Bigevilpeter wrote: »

Well on my offhand the precise malestrom staff, i have:
Vampires bane
Mages guild spell damage skill
elemental blockade
ritual of retribution
blazing spears

On my main hand a sharpened IA ice staff:
puncturing sweeps
channeled focus
elemental ring
Jesus beam
magelight

what about you character numbers? what's your %crit? spell damage? mundus stone?...enchants one jewelry, weapons, gear? using divines pieces?

I could already see a problem with proccing your monster set if %crit is to low (let's say under 65% or something like that)


About bars:
Why do you put channeled focus on mainbar?
I think it wouldn't be bad to respect the traditional well proven bar setup of mag templar DPS
(Ele ring is a waste in my opinion.... )

main bar would be betters with sweeps, bane, beam, trap, IL, ult: ice comet (fits well in ice build ^^)
off: blockade, spears,ritual,flex spot (channeled focus or ele ring),IL

Stats:
SD: 2105 unbuffed
crit chance: 61% main hand and 68% offhand (missing 3 divines pieces)
jewlery enchants all spells damage
max magika with buff food 38k

mundus: thief

As for channeled focus i keep on main bar cause it needs to be recast a lot since i move around, the elemental ring dot is really good for procing winterborn.

i keep vampire's bane on offhand to keep the crit chance up on my offhand.

i do have ice comet on main hand and destro staff ulti on offhand

lardvader

Remember that a chunk of you dmg comes from IA inside dungeons - flat out stats might seem underwhelming but isn't that bad.

I still need to upgrade a few pcs on my mDK but flat out with Aether and Burning Spellweave I have aprox the same stats.

On the other hand I've never considered ice builds since ppl have never recommended them, but if you find a nice gear and skill combo I'm all ears.

Tyrion87

Eweroun wrote: »

Bigevilpeter wrote: »

Well on my offhand the precise malestrom staff, i have:
Vampires bane
Mages guild spell damage skill
elemental blockade
ritual of retribution
blazing spears

On my main hand a sharpened IA ice staff:
puncturing sweeps
channeled focus
elemental ring
Jesus beam
magelight

main bar would be betters with sweeps, bane, beam, trap, IL, ult: ice comet (fits well in ice build ^^)
off: blockade, spears,ritual,flex spot (channeled focus or ele ring),IL

Well, with this setup of skills he won't get many winterborn procs. This set procs only with cold damage (and it's only 8%) so I would recommend using force pulse for its cold aspect (for DPS) or destructive touch (for CC), just to proc winterborn more often. Elemental ring and elemental storm are also a good option here.

But generally frost builds, based on winterborn and iceheart, are not 'insane' in terms of DPS. But they are really fun and different. You can use it successfully in dungeons or even normal trials, but definitely not in harder content

Eweroun

Bigevilpeter wrote: »

Eweroun wrote: »

Bigevilpeter wrote: »

Well on my offhand the precise malestrom staff, i have:
Vampires bane
Mages guild spell damage skill
elemental blockade
ritual of retribution
blazing spears

On my main hand a sharpened IA ice staff:
puncturing sweeps
channeled focus
elemental ring
Jesus beam
magelight

what about you character numbers? what's your %crit? spell damage? mundus stone?...enchants one jewelry, weapons, gear? using divines pieces?

I could already see a problem with proccing your monster set if %crit is to low (let's say under 65% or something like that)


About bars:
Why do you put channeled focus on mainbar?
I think it wouldn't be bad to respect the traditional well proven bar setup of mag templar DPS
(Ele ring is a waste in my opinion.... )

main bar would be betters with sweeps, bane, beam, trap, IL, ult: ice comet (fits well in ice build ^^)
off: blockade, spears,ritual,flex spot (channeled focus or ele ring),IL

Stats:
SD: 2105 unbuffed
crit chance: 61% main hand and 68% offhand (missing 3 divines pieces)
jewlery enchants all spells damage
max magika with buff food 38k

mundus: thief

As for channeled focus i keep on main bar cause it needs to be recast a lot since i move around, the elemental ring dot is really good for procing winterborn.

i keep vampire's bane on offhand to keep the crit chance up on my offhand.

i do have ice comet on main hand and destro staff ulti on offhand

%crit is a bit low on main bar... that's were all the damage comes from and where your monster set has to procc on...

moving around:
I don't understand you if you say you move around a lot; your winterborn proc is static, no? If u move around alot the proc is lost => dps loss
So I do suggest switching it to backbar with vampires bane. Vampires bane gives major prophecy if I'm right (at work at the moment) which increases your spellcrit rating) and is a dot => dps gain

gear
not having all in divines is a dps loss... simple as that cause it'll increase your %crit and the procc chance of your monster set.

general conclusion
build may be good, not endgame in my opinion, but you should drop the 'moving around'-part. that's a dps loss:

single target: stay close to boss to benefit from winterborn and iceheart procc as much as poss for dps
groups: put down your rune (extra defense) and dots, let all the adds come to you (not follow you) and use sweeps. The procc of Iceheart is more interesting than the winterborne one (you can try proccing this ons with ele blockade, ice comet). Winterborn has a very low procrate, while iceheart can be hold up forever, providing a shield and damage.

the trap is in my opinion a better choice then ele ring (winterborn proccrate is just to low to count on it and wasting a skillslot to a skill proccing it)

(*try getting two aether sharpend sword for the damage increase of dual wield skill line)


hope you can do something with this.. the idea is cool not to follow the meta

runagate

Despite the undaunted set being doing ice damage it's obvious it's not going to contribute a lot to DPS:
(1 items) Adds 688 Spell Critical
(2 items) When you deal Critical Damage, you have a 20% chance to gain a damage shield that absorbs 8600 damage for 6 seconds. While the damage shield holds, you deal 770 Cold Damage to all enemies within 5 meters of you every 1 second. This effect can occur once every 6 seconds.

The benefit of it I would imagine is that the cooldown could conceivable allow a 100% up time but not on a templar using mostly templar abilities.

Winterborn set
(2 items) Adds 967 Max Magicka
(3 items) Adds 129 Magicka Recovery
(4 items) Adds 129 Spell Damage
(5 items) When you deal damage with a Cold Damage ability, you have an 8% chance to summon an ice pillar that deals 7967 Cold Damage to all enemies in a 3 meter radius. The ice pillar persists for 2 seconds and reduces the Movment Speed of all enemies within the radius by 60%.

I'm currently experimenting with an altmer NB with Ysgramor and Elegance and 120 CP put into light/heavy attack damage boost.

Ysgramor set
(2 items) Adds 1064 Max Health
(3 items) Adds 967 Max Magicka
(4 items) Adds 129 Spell Damage
(5 items) Adds 400 Spell Damage to your Cold Damage abilities

Clearly it's not helping make a weird ice damage build semi-viable that the awful Health bonus is on that set instead of something relevant. NB's self-buffs are a lot more straightforward and useful to an ice build than a templars are, for instance using Jabs to proc major savagery.

I would guess that 5x Ysgramor 5x Winterborn and 2x Iceheart would be a lot closer to being viable for what you're trying to do. I'd even jetticon the Iceheart and go 1x Kena 1x Maelstrom ice staff since you already have that available.

Bigevilpeter

runagate wrote: »

Despite the undaunted set being doing ice damage it's obvious it's not going to contribute a lot to DPS:
(1 items) Adds 688 Spell Critical
(2 items) When you deal Critical Damage, you have a 20% chance to gain a damage shield that absorbs 8600 damage for 6 seconds. While the damage shield holds, you deal 770 Cold Damage to all enemies within 5 meters of you every 1 second. This effect can occur once every 6 seconds.

The benefit of it I would imagine is that the cooldown could conceivable allow a 100% up time but not on a templar using mostly templar abilities.

Winterborn set
(2 items) Adds 967 Max Magicka
(3 items) Adds 129 Magicka Recovery
(4 items) Adds 129 Spell Damage
(5 items) When you deal damage with a Cold Damage ability, you have an 8% chance to summon an ice pillar that deals 7967 Cold Damage to all enemies in a 3 meter radius. The ice pillar persists for 2 seconds and reduces the Movment Speed of all enemies within the radius by 60%.

I'm currently experimenting with an altmer NB with Ysgramor and Elegance and 120 CP put into light/heavy attack damage boost.

Ysgramor set
(2 items) Adds 1064 Max Health
(3 items) Adds 967 Max Magicka
(4 items) Adds 129 Spell Damage
(5 items) Adds 400 Spell Damage to your Cold Damage abilities

Clearly it's not helping make a weird ice damage build semi-viable that the awful Health bonus is on that set instead of something relevant. NB's self-buffs are a lot more straightforward and useful to an ice build than a templars are, for instance using Jabs to proc major savagery.

I would guess that 5x Ysgramor 5x Winterborn and 2x Iceheart would be a lot closer to being viable for what you're trying to do. I'd even jetticon the Iceheart and go 1x Kena 1x Maelstrom ice staff since you already have that available.

The problem is no class can go fully ice damage, ysgramor only buffs ice damage so a lot of damage is lost on many of your skills.

Dymence

Bigevilpeter wrote: »

runagate wrote: »

Despite the undaunted set being doing ice damage it's obvious it's not going to contribute a lot to DPS:
(1 items) Adds 688 Spell Critical
(2 items) When you deal Critical Damage, you have a 20% chance to gain a damage shield that absorbs 8600 damage for 6 seconds. While the damage shield holds, you deal 770 Cold Damage to all enemies within 5 meters of you every 1 second. This effect can occur once every 6 seconds.

The benefit of it I would imagine is that the cooldown could conceivable allow a 100% up time but not on a templar using mostly templar abilities.

Winterborn set
(2 items) Adds 967 Max Magicka
(3 items) Adds 129 Magicka Recovery
(4 items) Adds 129 Spell Damage
(5 items) When you deal damage with a Cold Damage ability, you have an 8% chance to summon an ice pillar that deals 7967 Cold Damage to all enemies in a 3 meter radius. The ice pillar persists for 2 seconds and reduces the Movment Speed of all enemies within the radius by 60%.

I'm currently experimenting with an altmer NB with Ysgramor and Elegance and 120 CP put into light/heavy attack damage boost.

Ysgramor set
(2 items) Adds 1064 Max Health
(3 items) Adds 967 Max Magicka
(4 items) Adds 129 Spell Damage
(5 items) Adds 400 Spell Damage to your Cold Damage abilities

Clearly it's not helping make a weird ice damage build semi-viable that the awful Health bonus is on that set instead of something relevant. NB's self-buffs are a lot more straightforward and useful to an ice build than a templars are, for instance using Jabs to proc major savagery.

I would guess that 5x Ysgramor 5x Winterborn and 2x Iceheart would be a lot closer to being viable for what you're trying to do. I'd even jetticon the Iceheart and go 1x Kena 1x Maelstrom ice staff since you already have that available.

The problem is no class can go fully ice damage, ysgramor only buffs ice damage so a lot of damage is lost on many of your skills.

No one has cold damage skills, only destro staff does. This means Ysgramor is just a weaker Spider Cultist set (same 2/3/4 piece but 450 spell damage to destro abilities on 5 piece). Bad design. Unless you count ice comet in there.

The next thing is that destruction staff scales really poorly on spell damage anyways compared to class skills. Makes the whole thing even more underwhelming.

dsalter

5 Winterborn, 5 Curse of Braraha, 1 ice staff of maelstrom (pref charged or decisive) and one Kena and you'll have one of the more annoying slow focused frost builds out there. i use this to annoy zergs in PvP.

Preyfar

Ice builds aren't good. At all. In any way. They should be, but they're just not.

No class that gets a bonus to ice damage, and Sorcs are geared towards solely fire and lightning builds (especially so thanks to the introduction of the Ilambris set).

Ice's bonuses are really mixed, and can even potentially hurt or wipe your team (as it can prevent DKs from chaining adds, which is critical in some Trials and beneficial in some Dungeons). Ice is the only weapon type that can outright hinder a team, NOT help it, and that's a fairly serious issue in and of itself.

I've always wanted to make a really good frostmage build, but going Ice means you lose out on damage. There are cases where ice CAN be good (such as PVP) but it's the most neglected element in the game. Most of the ice-specific sets are pretty bad (Ice Furnace gives flame damage, and provides weapon damage, NOT spell damage).

Winterborn and Iceheart are the only truly decent ice set, but even even then they're flawed. Winterborn (on my Sorc) provides 7810 damage in a 3 meter radius. Ner'ieneth, a 2-piece set, does 9517 damage in a 4 meter radius. A 2 piece set does almost 20% more damage than a 5-piece set, and has a higher damage radius. It makes no sense to run Winterborn when you could run a 2 piece Ner'ieneth and a 3X Willpower/Aether. Iceheart is good, but the damage only exists so long as the shield is up, making it decent for defense, but terrible for offense (seriously, it should explode in burst of ice damage if the shield fails).

Ice SHOULD be viable, but it's just not. It's fun to run as a gimmick build, but just not decent enough on its own. ZOS hasn't done anything to really make Ice worth it, and as posted above, actually running ice can be an impediment to your team and could cause player deaths and wipe the team, especially in Trials.

Abeille

Ice builds are not for max dps, they are not for serious endgame, they are for fun. And for being annoying on PvP I guess.

I love my Cryomancer, I feel like immobilizing everything and going full "Let it Go" is totally my play style, but my Cryomancer just can't be compared to my other Magicka characters.

Maybe when we get the Warden back...

Tyrion87

Abeille wrote: »

Ice builds are not for max dps, they are not for serious endgame, they are for fun. And for being annoying on PvP I guess.

I love my Cryomancer, I feel like immobilizing everything and going full "Let it Go" is totally my play style, but my Cryomancer just can't be compared to my other Magicka characters.

Maybe when we get the Warden back...

AMEN!

Juhasow

If You want to go max DPS Ice mage isnt correct choice.

Preyfar

Abeille wrote: »

Ice builds are not for max dps, they are not for serious endgame, they are for fun. And for being annoying on PvP I guess.

They're definitely fun. As much as I may rail against them, I have fun playing as a frost mage/cryomancer. I just wish they were decent other than being for a gimmick build. Ice really needs to be able to hold its own.

purple-magicb16_ESO

ZoS listen up...

Minalan

Ice sets are underwhelming because of the lack of class magicka abilities with ice damage to synergize with it.

Sorc has lightning damage in wrath, streak, lightning form, and liquid lightning. So a 'netch' set that increases lightning damage works okay with it.

But the destro abilities are terrible, costly, and they don't do much damage except for the new ultimate

On top of that, the new ice sets are kind of bad. Iceheart? Ice furnace? Terrible.

Stoopid_Nwah

Don't get me wrong I've ran through vma with an ice build but it was a pain (I only wanted to see if I could). The damage just isn't there unfortunately, but in pvp it can absolutely work.

Ghost-Shot

Frost builds atm are really a pvp thing, you sacrifice damage for roots so for pve its pretty underwhelming, its a fun spec to play in pvp though that is very anti-meta. @Blobsky has a cool mag NB Winterborn build that would probably work just as well on a templar.

andreasranasen

I am doing 5x Winterborn, 2x Ice Heart, 3x Willpower, 2x Maelstrom Ice Staffs (haven't got the staffs yet). On a high elf Ice sorc. 42k max mag and 3k spell dmg.

Lashiing

ice is for pvp

stevepdodson_ESO888

Bigevilpeter wrote: »

I might be doing it wrong, but i went winterborn 5x, IA 4x and Iceheart 2x and a malestrom Ice staff.

Im an altemer magplar and my damage is so low.

Is there anway this build actually works or is it normal for it to be bad like this

i know you have been told the ice-builds are not end game and stuff...but for the fun of it you could try 5x Winterborn and 5 x Mother's sorrow (dual swords on one bar/ice staff on the other)

as Magplars get a lot of benefit from being high crit (from their passives...so lots of CP in Elfborn) this will help in terms of both direct damage and proccining the undaunted set more easily...when this procs it also has a chance of proccing your Winterborn...it works this way for me and i have a laugh a minute with this

just keep switching bars to lay down a Blockade and switch back for sweeps...the dot from blockade will also proc Winterborn