Building my Thaum - Confused - do I need to use chill/chill stacks at all?

dragosani84 · November 2013

I'm a bit confused. I'm working on building my Taum properly but every single guide shows feats and or powers that take advantage of chill stacks. Do all Thaum's need chill at all? I was just going to kind of build mine around Arcane but don't know if I'm even doing it right now. Is chill necessary for a Thaum CW? Here's kinda what I'm working on.

Something like this. Not sure, this may be a bit of a hybrid. http://nwcalc.com/cw?b=p9r:4yhvw:b8hv,13n10n0:60000:buu0v:bu000&h=0

Any ideas, suggestions or comments where I totally screwed up? (I'm sure I messed up somewhere lol hehe) Thanks in advance you'll.

vorphied · November 2013

Don't want to get too in-depth right now, but quick notes:

- You have 4 power points unspent in your build.

- Thaum with no Chilling Cloud/Frozen Transfer? That's one of the best feats in the tree in Dungeon play (not as important if you literally almost never PvE, I suppose)

- There's not much point to having 3 ranks in Storm Pillar. You don't have the Feat that makes it situationally useful; without that, there's little reason to choose it over the other At-Wills.

- Shard of the Endless Avalanche is a shame to miss out on.

Personally I don't slot my powers and feats to achieve maximum Chill at all times, but since I run CoI in Tab and use Chilling Cloud for Frozen Transfer, feat selections that provide extra damage from Chill can be helpful.

angrymanagement · November 2013

Regarding just the chill question, I don't bother using any chill other than Chilling Cloud. I use COI specifically for the debuff. Next patch it will probably go on tab which causes it to build chill stacks on targets.

Also, a Thaum build without Chilling Cloud seems a shame to me. The feated damage bonus you get from its third strike are basically a free give me.

Edit:
Couldn't get to the feat build website from work the other day.
This is a PVE build. Not exactly what I am running now, but what I will be going back to.

http://nwcalc.com/cw?b=p9r:4yh3g:8fef,1x400ni:60000:bu0z1:b5000&h=1

Might consider moving points from Controlling Action, Fight On, & Learned Spellcaster to Wizard's Wrath & Focused Wizardry.

Might also want to drop Nightmare Wizardry for Elemental Empowerment & Critical Power for Bitter Cold.

Grab 1 point in Storm Pillar for AP generation out of combat & 1 point in Maelstrom of Chaos for Valindra in MC.

As far as the power layouts I generally use:

Storm Spell / EOS for class abilities

PVE Layout (general AOE):
Magic Missile/Chilling Cloud At Wills
Arcane Singularity & Oppressive Force or Ice Knife Dailies
Entangling Force on Tab (for AP till next patch)
COI, Steal Time, Shard of the Endless Avalanche

PVP Layout (general single target nuke setup):
Magic Missile/Ray of Frost At Wills
Ice Storm & Ice Knife or Oppressive Force Dailies
Icy Rays on Tab
COI, ROE, Chill Strike Encounters

Entangling Force's quicker cast time makes it very usefull as well over COI/Chill Strike....and it is our best CC.
I personally don't like Repel, but it is very usefull in PVP.

dragosani84 · November 2013

vorphied wrote: »

Don't want to get too in-depth right now, but quick notes:

- You have 4 power points unspent in your build.

- Thaum with no Chilling Cloud/Frozen Transfer? That's one of the best feats in the tree in Dungeon play (not as important if you literally almost never PvE, I suppose)

- There's not much point to having 3 ranks in Storm Pillar. You don't have the Feat that makes it situationally useful; without that, there's little reason to choose it over the other At-Wills.

- Shard of the Endless Avalanche is a shame to miss out on.

Personally I don't slot my powers and feats to achieve maximum Chill at all times, but since I run CoI in Tab and use Chilling Cloud for Frozen Transfer, feat selections that provide extra damage from Chill can be helpful.

Thanks all of you for all the great tips. Yeah, I've done a lot more research on Thaum and I've messed up a lot. Thank goodness I'm using Test Server to do this lol. I"ve learned a lot more and will be changing a lot of that. Storm pillar I'm definitely dropping except for one. I know shard's very good but I really suck at it. I'm going to practice more. Shouldn't I take advantage of Icy Terrain? Here's kinda close to what I'm currently messing with. It's from a build I saw online but I am going to be playing with it a lot to tweak it and I'm going to try out all of your suggestions and see which works best for me. Here's my build atm. It's a work in progress lol.

http://nwcalc.com/cw?b=p9b:4vxh8:8fec,13h0cn0:6u000:bz00v:b0000&h=0

I may get rid of Chilling Presence and go for EOTS. I think the rest looks bout right. Now on my feats I'm not 100% sure. I plan on using Chilling Cloud over MM but want to have both. I need to test this and thought Icy Terrain would go very well with it. Basically my power set up would be:
COI - On Mastery
Steal Time
Icy Terrain
Sudden Storm
Chilling Cloud - Primary and I guess Ray of Frost Secondary

On my feats I have no idea what to get rid of so I can get Frozen Power Transfer? Maybe Critical power? Also I don't know if getting rid of Fight On would be worth getting worth getting Wizards Wrath and Focused Wizardry (I'm not too big on that one because it only helps against a single target which I know would be great for bosses but I doubt I'd use a whole lot of aoe on bosses other than COI)

Any suggestions to make what I have much better? Thanks for everything I really appreciate the help. Been having a very hard time with this lol.

jack69ass · November 2013

IMHO, remove destructive wizardry and take frozen power transfer.. I'd go pure freeze build, and use shard instead of sudden storm.. provides a bit of control, and good damage if feated

I'd go with this: http://nwcalc.com/cw?b=p5r:4yqls:8fef,19n0i50:6u000:bu0zv:60000&h=0

drscone · November 2013

jack69ass wrote: »

IMHO, remove destructive wizardry and take frozen power transfer.. I'd go pure freeze build, and use shard instead of sudden storm.. provides a bit of control, and good damage if feated

I'd go with this: http://nwcalc.com/cw?b=p5r:4yqls:8fef,19n0i50:6u000:bu0zv:60000&h=0

Or use Sudden Storm AND Shard

It absolutely shreds mobs, and SS is a very handy single target spell too, if you're in range. You don't need 3 points in MM and CC.

vorphied · November 2013

drscone wrote: »

Or use Sudden Storm AND Shard It absolutely shreds mobs, and SS is a very handy single target spell too, if you're in range. You don't need 3 points in MM and CC.

Yes, I recommend using both spells as well

I do like Icy Terrain and used it up until Shard became able to crit. Icy Terrain does have great utility for helping to maintain Chill and for continually freezing enemies over an area, and its lack of a target cap makes it very appealing in certain situations, but Shard does such significant damage along with inflicting Prone that it's worth prioritizing even with its small, slightly messy knockback.

If I were running a very undergeared CW against more difficult content, I might consider putting Icy Terrain back in since its control benefit isn't dependent on the CW being uber. However, when your CW does a lot of damage, it almost always makes better sense to use Shard and simply kill everything that much faster.

uurbs · November 2013

vorphied wrote: »

[...]
I do like Icy Terrain and used it up until Shard became able to crit. Icy Terrain does have great utility for helping to maintain Chill and for continually freezing enemies over an area, and its lack of a target cap makes it very appealing in certain situations, but Shard does such significant damage along with inflicting Prone that it's worth prioritizing even with its small, slightly messy knockback.

If I were running a very undergeared CW against more difficult content, I might consider putting Icy Terrain back in since its control benefit isn't dependent on the CW being uber. However, when your CW does a lot of damage, it almost always makes better sense to use Shard and simply kill everything that much faster.

*sign* /10chars

pers3phone · November 2013

You need Transcended Master 100% for shard bonus damage. Frozen Power Tr. as well. These are most important for Thaum.

hidahayabusa · November 2013

vorphied wrote: »

Yes, I recommend using both spells as well

I do like Icy Terrain and used it up until Shard became able to crit...

If I were running a very undergeared CW against more difficult content, I might consider putting Icy Terrain back in since its control benefit isn't dependent on the CW being uber. However, when your CW does a lot of damage, it almost always makes better sense to use Shard and simply kill everything that much faster.

Agreed. However, I ran as Oppressor with Icy Terrain on Tab and PvP gear, which means that you can constantly keep it up (CD reduction+typical Recovery). The damage and CC were amazing and it kept things where they should for your melees to kill them.

If you want to run as Thaumaturge, then you will be needing to follow Pers3phone's advice, though

kozi001 · November 2013

I am currently thinking on skipping chill&Storm Pillar and go for arcane&MM as Thaum. Keep Chilling Cloud for bonus.

That means:

no Blighting Power -> Arcane Mastery 3/3

drop Storm Pillar (not always has 2 mobs before me anyway)

no Destructive Wizardy -> Snap Freeze 3/3

Keep Frozen Power Transfer and switch to MM/Chilling Cloud for the bonus

Its less chill and slowing but might be more damage.

pers3phone · November 2013

To be honest I've tried like 4 builds now (more on test), 3 thaum, 1 rene. Each build had relatively the same damage (taken from CN runs which might not be the best way to benchmark, but I prefer "real-life" conditions). Thaum seems to pull in front a bit when there are good groups able to deal with big mob pulls.

So all these small tweaks have done no sizeable difference for me in the end. Basically if you manage to launch your big shard crits in large debuffed packs you gonna pull huge numbers.

I am wondering though why Sudden Storm seem to scale so badly compared to shard. They both don't benefit from ArP. I wonder what's the mystery. Basically shard and SS crit for around 12-16K in solo gameplay. Shard however crits up to 90K (as thaum) and SS just 21K in group conditions.

tokse2 · November 2013

vorphied wrote: »

Yes, I recommend using both spells as well

I do like Icy Terrain and used it up until Shard became able to crit. Icy Terrain does have great utility for helping to maintain Chill and for continually freezing enemies over an area, and its lack of a target cap makes it very appealing in certain situations, but Shard does such significant damage along with inflicting Prone that it's worth prioritizing even with its small, slightly messy knockback.

If I were running a very undergeared CW against more difficult content, I might consider putting Icy Terrain back in since its control benefit isn't dependent on the CW being uber. However, when your CW does a lot of damage, it almost always makes better sense to use Shard and simply kill everything that much faster.

For max crowd control I use both Icy Terrain AND Shard. CoI in mastery slot + IT + ST + SotEA. And Chilling Cloud as the at will off course. Sudden Storm don't do much for crowd control so I drop that.

ikeepit3hunna · November 2013

dragosani84 wrote: »

I'm a bit confused. I'm working on building my Taum properly but every single guide shows feats and or powers that take advantage of chill stacks. Do all Thaum's need chill at all? I was just going to kind of build mine around Arcane but don't know if I'm even doing it right now. Is chill necessary for a Thaum CW? Here's kinda what I'm working on.

Something like this. Not sure, this may be a bit of a hybrid. http://nwcalc.com/cw?b=p9r:4yhvw:b8hv,13n10n0:60000:buu0v:bu000&h=0

Any ideas, suggestions or comments where I totally screwed up? (I'm sure I messed up somewhere lol hehe) Thanks in advance you'll.

Only use ray of frost for at will. U can't kite with anything else. (Jump ray of frost)

Building my Thaum - Confused - do I need to use chill/chill stacks at all?

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