Rate my Cryomancer Themed Build

ArchMikem

With multiple tips from @ESO_Nightingale and Co, combined with Subclassing giving me the passives and Impale from Assassination, this is my most current iteration of my Argonian Cryomancer Magden, utilizing as many Frost Damage and Themed abilities as possible.

My parse on a Trial level dummy came out to be 55.2k.

Navaac223

It has potential but it looks like you use only light armor. If you want to be competitive, you need medium armor (even for magicka builds). You could easily do that with order's wrath, though (ok you might have to slot 2 light pieces to get frostbite on both bars)

I also find it weird that you have fully upgraded gear but not the right traits, but I guess you don't have all of them researched yet. You should try to get bloodthirsty on all your jewelry and divines on the armor pieces.

One easy change to your build would be using the thief mundus instead of the shadow. The crit damage cap is so easily reached in this game that taking this mundus never makes sense in pve

ArchMikem

Navaac223 wrote: »

It has potential but it looks like you use only light armor. If you want to be competitive, you need medium armor (even for magicka builds). You could easily do that with order's wrath, though (ok you might have to slot 2 light pieces to get frostbite on both bars)

I also find it weird that you have fully upgraded gear but not the right traits, but I guess you don't have all of them researched yet. You should try to get bloodthirsty on all your jewelry and divines on the armor pieces.

One easy change to your build would be using the thief mundus instead of the shadow. The crit damage cap is so easily reached in this game that taking this mundus never makes sense in pve

I have one medium piece for the Undaunted bonus. My gear is Infused on the heavy body slots, Divines on the rest.

How exactly is the Crit Dmg cap reached outside of....

Your mention of that made me look this: https://eso-hub.com/en/guides/critical-damage up. Im just now learning how the number really works. If everyone starts with a base of 50%, why doesn't the game show that to you?? Since my build shows 52%, im really at 102% and close to the cap. Why does the UI hide these from you?

ESO_Nightingale

I wouldn't be using frostbite right now. Its bugged and you're not getting the +4% damage done to chilled enemies. I'd definitely be using primarily medium armor too.

i have some frost themed builds on my document if you want to go through them: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1r8EetS24FhPRjPbgTgE_ffbd3fplDexqYflxssxSHug/edit?usp=sharing

ArchMikem

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

I wouldn't be using frostbite right now. Its bugged and you're not getting the +4% damage done to chilled enemies. I'd definitely be using primarily medium armor too.

i have some frost themed builds on my document if you want to go through them: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1r8EetS24FhPRjPbgTgE_ffbd3fplDexqYflxssxSHug/edit?usp=sharing

I assume ZOS knows about the bug? I kinda shiehorned myself into Frostbite with all the material i invested into making it gold. At the same time im not one to farm Trials.

I also don't understand the gear weight advice, wouldn't I lose all my recovery without Light pieces? Even with an Argonian its difficult to sustain.

YandereGirlfriend

ArchMikem wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

I wouldn't be using frostbite right now. Its bugged and you're not getting the +4% damage done to chilled enemies. I'd definitely be using primarily medium armor too.

i have some frost themed builds on my document if you want to go through them: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1r8EetS24FhPRjPbgTgE_ffbd3fplDexqYflxssxSHug/edit?usp=sharing

I assume ZOS knows about the bug? I kinda shiehorned myself into Frostbite with all the material i invested into making it gold. At the same time im not one to farm Trials.

I also don't understand the gear weight advice, wouldn't I lose all my recovery without Light pieces? Even with an Argonian its difficult to sustain.

It also depends upon what content that you're doing.

Medium is the go-to for Trials and such where full pen from supports is assumed. But if you're doing vDungeons then that is literally the one place in the whole game where having some additional Light pieces makes sense.

ArchMikem

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

ArchMikem wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

I wouldn't be using frostbite right now. Its bugged and you're not getting the +4% damage done to chilled enemies. I'd definitely be using primarily medium armor too.

i have some frost themed builds on my document if you want to go through them: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1r8EetS24FhPRjPbgTgE_ffbd3fplDexqYflxssxSHug/edit?usp=sharing

I assume ZOS knows about the bug? I kinda shiehorned myself into Frostbite with all the material i invested into making it gold. At the same time im not one to farm Trials.

I also don't understand the gear weight advice, wouldn't I lose all my recovery without Light pieces? Even with an Argonian its difficult to sustain.

It also depends upon what content that you're doing.

Medium is the go-to for Trials and such where full pen from supports is assumed. But if you're doing vDungeons then that is literally the one place in the whole game where having some additional Light pieces makes sense.

I do everything but Trials, very much a loner.

YandereGirlfriend

Which lines did you subclass? Winter's, Assassination, and what else?

ArchMikem wrote: »

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

ArchMikem wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

I wouldn't be using frostbite right now. Its bugged and you're not getting the +4% damage done to chilled enemies. I'd definitely be using primarily medium armor too.

i have some frost themed builds on my document if you want to go through them: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1r8EetS24FhPRjPbgTgE_ffbd3fplDexqYflxssxSHug/edit?usp=sharing

I assume ZOS knows about the bug? I kinda shiehorned myself into Frostbite with all the material i invested into making it gold. At the same time im not one to farm Trials.

I also don't understand the gear weight advice, wouldn't I lose all my recovery without Light pieces? Even with an Argonian its difficult to sustain.

It also depends upon what content that you're doing.

Medium is the go-to for Trials and such where full pen from supports is assumed. But if you're doing vDungeons then that is literally the one place in the whole game where having some additional Light pieces makes sense.

I do everything but Trials, very much a loner.

Yeah, so the thing to keep in mind is that normal and Overland content needs 9100 Pen and Veteran content needs 18200 and that Major and Minor Breach can account for about 9000 of that.

If you have 6x Light pieces then you also have: 6 * 939 = 5634 on top of that, so you don't need all that much more to reach full pen. Just slotting Grave Lord (which is very complementary to Frost builds in general) and the Grave Lord Sacrifice skill will get you another ~3k and get you there.

If you're truly solo though (so no tanks applying either Breach) then you'll definitely need to use at least Elemental Sus for Major Breach (assuming that you don't want to use a Stamina skill like Caltrops). And then you can use Wall of Elements with a Frost Staff + applying Chilled to targets for Minor Breach, and voila, you're there without a tank.

ESO_Nightingale

ArchMikem wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

I wouldn't be using frostbite right now. Its bugged and you're not getting the +4% damage done to chilled enemies. I'd definitely be using primarily medium armor too.

i have some frost themed builds on my document if you want to go through them: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1r8EetS24FhPRjPbgTgE_ffbd3fplDexqYflxssxSHug/edit?usp=sharing

I assume ZOS knows about the bug? I kinda shiehorned myself into Frostbite with all the material i invested into making it gold. At the same time im not one to farm Trials.

I also don't understand the gear weight advice, wouldn't I lose all my recovery without Light pieces? Even with an Argonian its difficult to sustain.

I would be mad if they didn't know about it considering all of the channels we've reported it through.

You want as few light pieces as you can sustain. This is part of why we use stuff like sub assault and relentless focus

Zodiarkslayer

Apart from the obvious things like getting the right traits (Blodthirsty and Divines), I'd like to add that most of your damage will be your skills and the rotation. @ArchMikem Could you please give some info on these? A rating of your build would be incomplete without that info.

However, let me comment on a few points.
Your stats look a bit odd, so I am assuming that you show non buffed stats in the pictures atop. My biggest concern is the low Weapon and Spell Damage. 3712 (assuming Maj Sorcery) is really low. You should break at least 5k when you are on a SOLO build. 6k is better.

Personally, I am unwilling to drop frostbite only because of that bugged 4% damage. The 8% and 2% damage increases to all frost damage are still huge on a full on frost damage build.
Obviously, if my damage sources would be poison, bleed, disease, physical, etc. and not just frost, than I would drop Frostbite as well.

ArchMikem wrote: »

I do everything but Trials, very much a loner.

My expierience with SOLO Frost builds is that the damage potential is quite good right now (piercing cold is still giving 15%), but the sustain and ultimately survivability is the problem that you'll have to build around.
My solution was to use as many frost abilities, bonuses to chill procs and bonuses to frost damage as a whole as possible. And then have a as simple as possible rotation with the purpose of keeping as many buffs up as possible.
That in turn meant that I would have to use the Ring of the Pale Order and Ghastly Eyeballs. And that meant sacrificing a couple of Magicka glyphs to increase my Health. That looks suboptimal at first glance, but it somehow works really well.
When I go into group content, I swap RotPO for Mora's Whispers.

ArchMikem

Zodiarkslayer wrote: »

Apart from the obvious things like getting the right traits (Bloodthirsty and Divines), I'd like to add that most of your damage will be your skills and the rotation. @ArchMikem Could you please give some info on these? A rating of your build would be incomplete without that info.

However, let me comment on a few points.
Your stats look a bit odd, so I am assuming that you show non buffed stats in the pictures atop. My biggest concern is the low Weapon and Spell Damage. 3712 (assuming Maj Sorcery) is really low. You should break at least 5k when you are on a SOLO build. 6k is better.

Funnily enough, that was fully buffed, minus the Master's Staff proc.

The whole Crit Damage revelation (10 years and I'm still learning things...) made me tweak my mundus, and other things. I'm not following the most optimal builds like Nightingale talks about, because I'm dying on the hill of prioritizing Theme over Performance, which means refusing the Animal Companions tree, or any other ability that doesn't fit. I'll try to better describe what my build is.



I changed the mundus to the Apprentice and made a second armor piece Medium, so now it's 5 Light, 2 Med. I also sacrificed a Recovery enchant with another damage one on a Ring. With that, plus Major Sorcery, and the 600 from the Master's Staff, I'm a hair's breadth under 5k now. I'm sure I could get there if I made the rest of my Order's Wrath pieces medium, probably. I'm also an Argonian, so no Spell Damage from racials.

My current skill bar is set up as;

Front Bar: Frost Reach - Inner Light - Chilling Explosion - Winter's Revenge - Impale [Ice Comet]
Back Bar: Channeled Acceleration - Inner Light - Elemental Susceptibility - Healing Soul - Arctic Blast [Northern Storm]

I Subclassed Assassination so the character could have an execute, and Scribed myself an on demand burst Heal with Lingering and Minor Resolve. Chilling Explosion is actually kinda good, I'm not sure why Nightingale says it's terrible.

ESO_Nightingale

ArchMikem wrote: »

Zodiarkslayer wrote: »

Apart from the obvious things like getting the right traits (Bloodthirsty and Divines), I'd like to add that most of your damage will be your skills and the rotation. @ArchMikem Could you please give some info on these? A rating of your build would be incomplete without that info.

However, let me comment on a few points.
Your stats look a bit odd, so I am assuming that you show non buffed stats in the pictures atop. My biggest concern is the low Weapon and Spell Damage. 3712 (assuming Maj Sorcery) is really low. You should break at least 5k when you are on a SOLO build. 6k is better.

Funnily enough, that was fully buffed, minus the Master's Staff proc.

The whole Crit Damage revelation (10 years and I'm still learning things...) made me tweak my mundus, and other things. I'm not following the most optimal builds like Nightingale talks about, because I'm dying on the hill of prioritizing Theme over Performance, which means refusing the Animal Companions tree, or any other ability that doesn't fit. I'll try to better describe what my build is.



I changed the mundus to the Apprentice and made a second armor piece Medium, so now it's 5 Light, 2 Med. I also sacrificed a Recovery enchant with another damage one on a Ring. With that, plus Major Sorcery, and the 600 from the Master's Staff, I'm a hair's breadth under 5k now. I'm sure I could get there if I made the rest of my Order's Wrath pieces medium, probably. I'm also an Argonian, so no Spell Damage from racials.

My current skill bar is set up as;

Front Bar: Frost Reach - Inner Light - Chilling Explosion - Winter's Revenge - Impale [Ice Comet]
Back Bar: Channeled Acceleration - Inner Light - Elemental Susceptibility - Healing Soul - Arctic Blast [Northern Storm]

I Subclassed Assassination so the character could have an execute, and Scribed myself an on demand burst Heal with Lingering and Minor Resolve. Chilling Explosion is actually kinda good, I'm not sure why Nightingale says it's terrible.

The issue with Chilling explosion is that it does horrible damage per second. It's burst is fine but it takes too many global cooldowns to deal it's damage.

ArchMikem

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

ArchMikem wrote: »

(stuff)

The issue with Chilling explosion is that it does horrible damage per second. It's burst is fine but it takes too many global cooldowns to deal it's damage.

Isn't the tooltip the same no matter the affix/damage type? What makes Frost worse than the others? Or is the DoT for every version of Elemental Explosion just bad.

madmufffin

ArchMikem wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

ArchMikem wrote: »

(stuff)

The issue with Chilling explosion is that it does horrible damage per second. It's burst is fine but it takes too many global cooldowns to deal it's damage.

Isn't the tooltip the same no matter the affix/damage type? What makes Frost worse than the others? Or is the DoT for every version of Elemental Explosion just bad.

The skill doesn't do much damage relative to the fact it has a multiple second cast time. You could cast two skills in the time that one fires so it's an opportunity cost issue more than a damage type issue.

madmufffin

ArchMikem wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

I wouldn't be using frostbite right now. Its bugged and you're not getting the +4% damage done to chilled enemies. I'd definitely be using primarily medium armor too.

i have some frost themed builds on my document if you want to go through them: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1r8EetS24FhPRjPbgTgE_ffbd3fplDexqYflxssxSHug/edit?usp=sharing

I assume ZOS knows about the bug? I kinda shiehorned myself into Frostbite with all the material i invested into making it gold. At the same time im not one to farm Trials.

I also don't understand the gear weight advice, wouldn't I lose all my recovery without Light pieces? Even with an Argonian its difficult to sustain.

I myself have posted a thread in this channel and know several others have. It's still an ok set, but not working as expected and thus not competitive in trials and other endgame content. For solo it should be fine with the general benefits and the effectiveness of light armor in solo content. As mentioned above, medium armor is far superior but maybe one day that'll change.

ESO_Nightingale

ArchMikem wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

ArchMikem wrote: »

(stuff)

The issue with Chilling explosion is that it does horrible damage per second. It's burst is fine but it takes too many global cooldowns to deal it's damage.

Isn't the tooltip the same no matter the affix/damage type? What makes Frost worse than the others? Or is the DoT for every version of Elemental Explosion just bad.

the skill in general is bad outside of using the status effect proc secondary script in Infinitive Archive with the massive damage boost power to status effects.

Zodiarkslayer

ArchMikem wrote: »

Front Bar: Frost Reach - Inner Light - Chilling Explosion - Winter's Revenge - Impale [Ice Comet]
Back Bar: Channeled Acceleration - Inner Light - Elemental Susceptibility - Healing Soul - Arctic Blast [Northern Storm]

I Subclassed Assassination so the character could have an execute, and Scribed myself an on demand burst Heal with Lingering and Minor Resolve. Chilling Explosion is actually kinda good, I'm not sure why Nightingale says it's terrible.

Mhmm. Well, that was pretty much my initial predicament. Do I make concessions in terms of damage or survivability? I'd rather do neither.

In your case it looks like you are not having Major Resolve up and therefore you are feeling squishy and want to use Healing Soul. I'd rather have a 30s armor skill than a 2nd burst heal. Then again, I am using Ring of the Pale Order for exactly that reason. Constant healing instead of OMG moments where I have to break contact to heal.

Anyway, what I do not understand is why you use these skills:
Inner Light (backbar): Camo Hunter is better, because of the Spell Damage and the minBerserk from flanking.
Chilling Explosion: See above. ^
Impale: Okay, it's an execute skill. But it's not frost damage. All of your specialisation on frost damage is just gone once you are in execute. Why? Besides: Merciless Resolve gives you the same access to Assassins passives, but also gives you Maj Prophecy now and can act as a burst heal.
Channeled Acceleration: If you want minForce, there are better options. Barbed Trap or Chilling Contingency, for example.
Inner Light (backbar): Has little effect on damage on the backbar. Blockade of Frost debuffs chilled enemies /w minBreach and does reasonable damage with the Maelstrom staff. Plus: Elemental Susceptibility does not proc you weapon damage enchant consistently to have 100% uptime. The Wall does.
Healing Soul: redundant IMO, this should be Ice fortress.
Arctic Blast (backbar): It is a backup burst heal and should therefore be on the frontbar, this should be Winter's Revenge here.

@ArchMikem Sorry to say, but this all results in a sub par build that could easily be better, if you changed just a few abilities.

tsaescishoeshiner

I'd consider using Ulfsild's Contingency for Minor Force instead of Acceleration. You can spec it for frost damage, frost DoT, and Minor Force.

You definitely need backbar Elemental Wall with the Maelstrom staff. Even though the frost version deals less damage, it procs your backbar enchant (which should be Weapon Power) and deals good damage.

I'm not sure that Impale is the best damage--not every character needs an execute. I think Grim Focus might be better both for the damage and the Major Prophecy and passives. You could also respec to Grave Lord to get the execute bonus (that increases your frost damage, too) and another frost AoE (if you don't mind tombstones). Glacial Colossus is really helpful in groups.

All versions of Elemental Explosion are bad for difficult content or DPS due to the 2-second cast time, the fact that you miss out on a light attack, can be interrupted or miss, and lack of good secondary damage/reasons to use the skill. It's one of the most fun skills for questing, though.

Niche idea: If you want to increase all your frost damage, you can switch to frontbar Dual Wield. It gives you several hundred more Weapon/Spell Damage, as well as better offensive damage (such as crit chance). You can use Traveling Knife with Frost Damage to throw shards of ice at people, and there's a morph that increases status effect chance by 100% on the target. (It also has Minor Force/Major Prophecy/Major Brutality, depending on what you need).

ArchMikem

tsaescishoeshiner wrote: »

I'd consider using Ulfsild's Contingency for Minor Force instead of Acceleration. You can spec it for frost damage, frost DoT, and Minor Force.

I actually should look into that, but i suspect the minor force buff from that ability lasts only a fraction of the time as channeled acceleration, meaning more cast times meaning more magicka used.

I'm not sure that Impale is the best damage--not every character needs an execute. I think Grim Focus might be better both for the damage and the Major Prophecy and passives. You could also respec to Grave Lord to get the execute bonus (that increases your frost damage, too) and another frost AoE (if you don't mind tombstones). Glacial Colossus is really helpful in groups.

Necro abilities are right out. Even if they do frost damage, they break the theme.

Niche idea: If you want to increase all your frost damage, you can switch to frontbar Dual Wield. It gives you several hundred more Weapon/Spell Damage, as well as better offensive damage (such as crit chance). You can use Traveling Knife with Frost Damage to throw shards of ice at people, and there's a morph that increases status effect chance by 100% on the target. (It also has Minor Force/Major Prophecy/Major Brutality, depending on what you need).

I've tried dual wielding on a Magcanist before and it's painful. How are you supposed to sustain using the wrong weapons?

ArchMikem

Front Bar
Reach - Inner Light - Chilling Explosion - Winter's Revenge - (Icy Blue) Noxious Breath - Ice Comet

Back Bar
Chilling Contingency - Inner Light - Arctic Blast - Ice Fortress - (Soothing Blue) Vigor - Northern Storm

I subclassed into Ardent Flame instead of Assassination because I realized there were blue skill styles for Fiery Breath, so I could theme it as Cold Fire, and then use Noxious Breath for the Major Breach debuff. The Warmth passive also increases all my damage over time attacks (which is basically all of them) by 6% when I use Breath. Changed Acceleration for Chilling Contingency with Minor Force, and decided to level up Vigor for an on demand self heal because that too has a blue skill style. Chilling Explosion is scribed with Off Balance, and Contingency is scribed with Minor Force, so I'm covering all my bases with debuffs.

I know someone here said Inner Light double bar'd is a waste of space, but I never liked my Max Magic jumping all over the place every time I bar swapped, so I wanted to try and keep my Magic the same amount on both bars. I also toyed with the idea of using the Snow Bear styled Feral Guardian Ultimate because that too would be on theme, and it would allow me to make use the of the Animal Companions passives, but I feel too dependent on the Mages Guild passives for having Meteor front bar'd.