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CW Icy Aoe build. Great for Leveling
sent8
Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users Posts: 70
Frost build is a great build for leveling and especially great for leveling from mid 40-60. You can mix and match what you have pre-40 to eventually come to this build. Leveling around 50-60 can be a pain, but with this build you should be able to breeze through content.
At Wills:
1) Chilling Cloud or MM doesn't matter. My suggestion MM will give u better single target damage which will be helpful with this AOE build. Early on it's MM obviously.
2) Ray of frost (Amazing ability, fast cast speed and extra CC)
Encounter Power:
1)Conduit of Ice
2)Icy Terrain.
3)Steal Time
4)Chill strike/Icy Rays (with my feat build Icy Rays has some great damage)
Now it's up to you which ability you put in your spell mastery, and depends entirely on your play style. I messed around with a lot of them, but I like Conduit of Ice most for this build.
Dailies:
1) Ice Knife
2) Arcane Singularity (Replaced Ice Storm here, AS will pull all targets together letting you CoI and other AOE abilities hit all targets) Great ability.
Passives:
1) Evocation
2) Eye of the Storm/Storm Spell (as long as damage is ticking, Storm spell has a chance to proc) Decision is yours.
I used this build for most of my leveling, and it really started to excel at 50-60. It's very efficient at cc'ing and clearing large groups of mobs. It has decent single target damage and cooldowns are relatively low. Here are my feats.
Feats: (Because I went Human I got the 3 additional feat points. I tried to figure this w/o being human so If I gave any extra feat Points lemme know.
Controlling action 5/5: We have lots of CC and movement impairing abilities in this build, so the majority of your damage will increase your AP. More Dailies to throw out is always a good thing.
Fight On 5/5: 10% Reduction in CD for all encounter spells. Less CD means more chances to use and ability and more damage output= Profit.
Blighting Power 3/3: 9% increased damage to targets effected by chill.
Wizards Wrath 3/3: The majority of our abilities are Aoe so why not.
Focused Wizardry 3/3: This with Wizard's wraith gives our AOE abilities a 15% increase in damage. Add that with our Evocation 15% increase gives our Aoe abilities a 30% increase in damage.
Think any class other than human will have one point left over (correct me if I am wrong). So I usually put what ever is left over into Toughess for more HP.
Now to our fun Feats the tree I chose was: Thaumaturge
Why you may ask. Damage, damage and more damage.
Tempest of magic 5/5: Gain 10% damage when foe has 30% or less HP left. I chose this mainly to help against more difficult mobs, especially boss types.
Malevolent Surge 5/5: Since you especially excel at clearing out large groups of mobs, this spell gives you a good 30% increase in damage. Let's you clear out the smaller mobs first, giving you bonus damage when focusing more difficult mobs.
Snap Freeze 5/5: Gives 20% bonus damage to Cold encounter abilities against targets not effected by chill. I may be wrong in my speculation here but whenever a target becomes frozen they lose their chill effect. That's usually when I followed up with a Chill strike or Icy Rays. Gives a large burst of damage and lengthens the CC. Also allows for Chill Strike or Icy Rays as an opening strike to hit harder.
Elemental Empowerment 5/5 5/5: Cold encounters do 30% of your weapon damage as a DoT effect and Arcane encounter spells give a 10% reduction to defense. This is a win-win for this build.
Transcended Master 5/5: Icy Rays get a bonus 20% damage if used on the same target twice. Makes Icy Rays a much better single target abillity, giving us more burst.
Assailing Force 1/1: Conduit of Ice reduces mitigation of effected targets by 15%. Awesome! This gives us even more damage against groups and also great benefits against single targets.
Leftover points can go anywhere after this. Bitter cold is a nice one that has good synergy with this build. This build with a few tweaks makes a great pvp build.
Play style:
You can get up close in personal with this build. Key is getting all the mobs together. Throw down Icy Terrain get your Conduit of Ice on a mob that generally has the most HP. Then pop your Steal time and start tossing out damage and ray of frost to increase those chill stacks.
FOR ANYONE READING THIS NOW. THIS IS STILL A GOOD LEVELING BUILD, BUT DUE TO MANY BUGS WITH FEATS REFER TO THE CW BUG LIST TO HELP IN CHOOSING ALTERNATE FEATS. UNTIL SOME OF THESE BUGS ARE IRONED OUT I WILL BE WAITING TO UPDATE THIS FOR END-GAME.
At Wills:
1) Chilling Cloud or MM doesn't matter. My suggestion MM will give u better single target damage which will be helpful with this AOE build. Early on it's MM obviously.
2) Ray of frost (Amazing ability, fast cast speed and extra CC)
Encounter Power:
1)Conduit of Ice
2)Icy Terrain.
3)Steal Time
4)Chill strike/Icy Rays (with my feat build Icy Rays has some great damage)
Now it's up to you which ability you put in your spell mastery, and depends entirely on your play style. I messed around with a lot of them, but I like Conduit of Ice most for this build.
Dailies:
1) Ice Knife
2) Arcane Singularity (Replaced Ice Storm here, AS will pull all targets together letting you CoI and other AOE abilities hit all targets) Great ability.
Passives:
1) Evocation
2) Eye of the Storm/Storm Spell (as long as damage is ticking, Storm spell has a chance to proc) Decision is yours.
I used this build for most of my leveling, and it really started to excel at 50-60. It's very efficient at cc'ing and clearing large groups of mobs. It has decent single target damage and cooldowns are relatively low. Here are my feats.
Feats: (Because I went Human I got the 3 additional feat points. I tried to figure this w/o being human so If I gave any extra feat Points lemme know.
Controlling action 5/5: We have lots of CC and movement impairing abilities in this build, so the majority of your damage will increase your AP. More Dailies to throw out is always a good thing.
Fight On 5/5: 10% Reduction in CD for all encounter spells. Less CD means more chances to use and ability and more damage output= Profit.
Blighting Power 3/3: 9% increased damage to targets effected by chill.
Wizards Wrath 3/3: The majority of our abilities are Aoe so why not.
Focused Wizardry 3/3: This with Wizard's wraith gives our AOE abilities a 15% increase in damage. Add that with our Evocation 15% increase gives our Aoe abilities a 30% increase in damage.
Think any class other than human will have one point left over (correct me if I am wrong). So I usually put what ever is left over into Toughess for more HP.
Now to our fun Feats the tree I chose was: Thaumaturge
Why you may ask. Damage, damage and more damage.
Tempest of magic 5/5: Gain 10% damage when foe has 30% or less HP left. I chose this mainly to help against more difficult mobs, especially boss types.
Malevolent Surge 5/5: Since you especially excel at clearing out large groups of mobs, this spell gives you a good 30% increase in damage. Let's you clear out the smaller mobs first, giving you bonus damage when focusing more difficult mobs.
Snap Freeze 5/5: Gives 20% bonus damage to Cold encounter abilities against targets not effected by chill. I may be wrong in my speculation here but whenever a target becomes frozen they lose their chill effect. That's usually when I followed up with a Chill strike or Icy Rays. Gives a large burst of damage and lengthens the CC. Also allows for Chill Strike or Icy Rays as an opening strike to hit harder.
Elemental Empowerment 5/5 5/5: Cold encounters do 30% of your weapon damage as a DoT effect and Arcane encounter spells give a 10% reduction to defense. This is a win-win for this build.
Transcended Master 5/5: Icy Rays get a bonus 20% damage if used on the same target twice. Makes Icy Rays a much better single target abillity, giving us more burst.
Assailing Force 1/1: Conduit of Ice reduces mitigation of effected targets by 15%. Awesome! This gives us even more damage against groups and also great benefits against single targets.
Leftover points can go anywhere after this. Bitter cold is a nice one that has good synergy with this build. This build with a few tweaks makes a great pvp build.
Play style:
You can get up close in personal with this build. Key is getting all the mobs together. Throw down Icy Terrain get your Conduit of Ice on a mob that generally has the most HP. Then pop your Steal time and start tossing out damage and ray of frost to increase those chill stacks.
FOR ANYONE READING THIS NOW. THIS IS STILL A GOOD LEVELING BUILD, BUT DUE TO MANY BUGS WITH FEATS REFER TO THE CW BUG LIST TO HELP IN CHOOSING ALTERNATE FEATS. UNTIL SOME OF THESE BUGS ARE IRONED OUT I WILL BE WAITING TO UPDATE THIS FOR END-GAME.
Post edited by sent8 on
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Comments
What kind of experience have you had with it outside solo leveling? How have dungeon runs gone? Do you think you offer more to a group than a DPS-specced CW?
I really want to go ice because i love locking stuff down, but magic missile just seems to ubber for single target and single target.
I guess if we ignore the boss and take adds maybe?
I also hate being close to stuff so I guess that is personal preference.
And again prolly just my low level not able to use all abilities.
The majority of my lvl 60 time has been spent PvPing because it doesn't take too much time. I do a similar Feat build (made some small changes) for imo one of the best PvP specs out there ofc different abilities slotted. I haven't run any end-game dungeons yet due to this week being my Finals week. Up to now all my dungeon runs have been top damage, least damage taken etc. I can keep most to if not all Adds frozen while still keeping great damage on the boss'. This build has great damage output for as much Aoe/CC that it has. It also allows for a much more creative play styie compared to many of the pure single target damage builds. Because this puts out a great deal of damage, my Dailies were up right after another.
My last final is Thurs and I plan to do some serious dungeon farming so I'll update you on how it works in end-game dungeons. Especially compared to more single target "Pure Dps" build.
By all means stick with MM, I use it myself. I threw chilling cloud in just for those who wanted the additional chill/aoe. MM is great for throwing out extra damage on Boss' while the adds are freezing. If you get creative you can keeps adds frozen near the boss, getting all of that juicy AOE damage on him.
When you get around lvl 40 and especially at 50-60, this build really shines. Although I can understand your hesitance to get close, with this build mobs should be dead b4 they unfreeze, as long as you keep your abilities going when they are off cooldown. I found myself pulling multiple groups of mobs, just to see how many I could take.
-Kymos
1) Evocation
2) Chilling Presence/Storm fury (as long as damage is ticking, Stormfury has a chance to proc) Decision is yours."
Stormfury??? Don't you mean "Storm Spell"?
... and, instead of Tempest Magic, that's bugged if you have a Tiefling, you could go Frozen Power Transfer.
20% cold dmg on targets w/o chill only seem to work for At-Wills.
The 20% more ice ray dmg also doesn't work at all.
Also something about the % aoe dmg feats/passives not affecting alot of skills.
Can you prove this? I know that my PvP set passive for spell mastery isn't working through math, but I haven't taken the time to test all these others out yet. If you have proof i'd like to see it, and it needs to be brought to the Devs attention.
P.S NVM just found the thread on the bugs.
Yes, I meant Storm Spell thank you. Fixed it.
The first one you fixed, not the last. lol
btw why not chilling presence, since it is a frost build, so to speak?
Update: Okay, I got Eye of the Storm and tried it out, and it is freaking awesome!
@david Fixed again lol
@Kboogle1 here is the link to bug page http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?211571-My-compilation-of-CW-bugs
The original post covers a few but if you read through there is mention of a few others. This post also highlights inconsistencies with a few of the passive, one of which is Evocation. Something this build would rely upon heavily in end-game.
Join Essence of Aggression: PVP-ing Hard Since Beta!
At Will:
1. MM
2. ROF
Encounter:
All listed in original build, Shield Instead of Steal Time. It's also AOE, which is awesome when surrounded by enemies along with Icy Terrain.
Daily
Ice Storm (for now)
Arcane Singularity
Feat Tree: Same
Passives:
Evocation
Arcane Mastery (for now)
Spell Mastery:
Chill strike. Sick-amazing damage. Love this.
The damage output on this build is sick. Mobs die in one blast most of the time, and the harder ones are just eaten away with damage.
Join Essence of Aggression: PVP-ing Hard Since Beta!
@kaitaru My primary focus is always Power/Recovery because they provide the most consistent damage, having passives to provide the occasional crits helped while leveling to 60. After 3k stats the increase they provide is very minute to your crit/recovery/power (if any at all in terms of recover/crit). At 60 with end-game gear you can potentially have crit/power/recovery all at around 3k.
1. What companion should I get at lvl 16?
2. Right now I am not sure how to use conduit of ice. I typically cast entangling force on the big monster and with tabbed chill strike, I try to blow up the smaller mobs. Then ray of frost to refreeze the big mob and magic missile him down. What can I do to make this better? Arcane singularity isnt up every fight...matter of fact, it takes a while before it is available.
Thanks for the help.
1. What companion should I get at lvl 16?
2. Right now I am not sure how to use conduit of ice. I typically cast entangling force on the big monster and with tabbed chill strike, I try to blow up the smaller mobs. Then ray of frost to refreeze the big mob and magic missile him down. What can I do to make this better? Arcane singularity isnt up every fight...matter of fact, it takes a while before it is available.
Thanks for the help.
I normally lead with Chill strike, cast conduit of ice as they run towards me, and then drop entangling force once the big guy gets to me. They normally run in a pack so the conduit will normally finish off the smaller mobs while they try and reach me. Spam your at-will while he's floating and when he drops chill strike should be off cooldown for some more cc.
You're totally right, I misunderstood the nature of the Bug list. I think I am just dealing with feeling very squishy and thought it may have been a bug, good to know about Evocation and CoI though.
Try running with Shield slotted as an alternative. It'll boost your survivability and when you use it to push enemies back it builds a lot of AP for your dailies.