Ice Shards - Leveling Build

Great early game build once you've unlocked the Ice Shards Enchantment at level 15 and obtained the Aspect of Piercing Cold.
Ice Shards become more powerful than Chain Lightning.

The strategy involves pulling enemies to an Elite, using Blizzard-Frost Nova, and spamming Ice Shards to hit multiple targets, supported by the First Bolt Enchantment for increased critical damage and mana regeneration.

For levels 1-15, it is advised to use Chain Lightning before transitioning to "Ice Shards."

1. Open by Freezing enemies with Frost Nova, we’ll apply vulnerability which gives a 20% damage bonus while also activating our Ice Shards Enchantment.
2. Attempt to use Ice Shards on Frozen enemies or with a barrier so it is always Ricochetting.
3. We use Blizzard to passively apply Chill, for an extra source of Freeze - attempt to always throw them on Elites, it also reduces the cost of our Core Skill.
4. Your entire loop should be to rush to an Elite, pull as much as possible, Blizzard + Frost Nova, preferably the Elite, then spam Ice Shards.
5. After a certain point you'll swap out Blizzard for an Ultimate. Inferno we'd use to initiate on Elites, which also groups & Deep Freeze would be utilised for defence and to refresh CDs.

I’ll begin this by explaining that Ice Shards from 1-15, is probably its roughest time & would recommend using **Chain Lightning for the first 15 levels, then transitioning into **Ice Shards.

The reason for this is Ice Shards doesn’t do much by itself, but once you’ve unlocked Enchantments at level 15, for the Ice Shards Enchantment and then went to Dead Man’s Dredge in Fractured Peaks for the Aspect of Piercing Cold, which is really easy to obtain, Ice Shards in my opinion just surpasses what Chain Lightning can do.

The execution is really easy as well, as the skills just do so much, as a general rule, you just want to go fast, pull everything to an Elite, Blizzard-Frost Nova the elite, then spam Ice Shards so it ricochets off the elite, hitting everything else, while your Frost Shards Enchantment is also hitting everything else- just pure glorious, Area of Effect.

This build can also make use of Fire Bolt Enchantment to make use of both Devouring Blaze and Fiery Surge, for a 21% Increase in Critical Damage and Mana Regeneration. Fireball is great early as it will just pop packs of mobs, but later you'll want to make the switch.

Early Game Recommendations

• Using Chain Lightning pre LvL 15 makes for an easier time.
• It's not a terrible idea to use Shimmering Frost Nova for the Mana, instead of the Mystical for Vulnerability. In this case, we'd use Destructive Ice Shards.
• Take Glinting Frost Bolt instead of Fire Bolt early for a reliable generator is recommended, then swap it at level 30 when you have your 2nd Enchantment, at this point, we shouldn't need the generation from our Basic.
• The Aspect of Piercing Cold is a mandatory pick-up and can be obtained relatively easily. You should be grabbing this as early as level 15. Region: Dead Man's Dredge in Fractured Peaks.

Mana Mangement

There are 3 Aspects I think are worth looking at, these would be placed in on your Rings, two are obtainable from dungeons, the first one is Prodigy’s Aspect, and the 2nd is Incendiary Aspect but we'd have to switch an Enchantment slot to use "Fire bolt" instead of Fireball.

The first is self-explanatory, giving us mana when we use a Cooldown- this is worth it for us as everything besides our core has a cooldown, thus they all become generators. The 2nd is more of a passive generator, taking advantage of our Fire Bolt Enchantment to passively generate mana.

Keep in mind that due to the Enchantment choice Fire Bolt, we can also take advantage of the passive Fiery Surge early game for additional mana generation if we kill a burning enemy, so place points into this passive and sacrifice something for it (Devastation, Elemental Dominance, Glass Cannon) for it, being able to actually deal damage is better than a damage increase.

The 3rd option is from the Aspect Frozen Memories this increases our Avalanche's lucky hit by 1, giving us another free cast of Ice Shards when it Procs, running these instead of damaging Aspects when levelling and farming is a must. We can replace the Incendiary Aspect with Frozen Memories

Ultimate

Instead of Blizzard, we can also opt into using Inferno or Deep Freeze, both are great choices and will help us immensely more than Blizzard would.

Inferno is great for grouping and has a massive damage component attached to it to boot, impressive and my recommended choice.

Deep Freeze is a defensive choice, it's got reasonable damage and Freezes at the end of its duration, ontop of decreasing the rest of our Cooldowns by 50%. A good choice if you're looking for a bit more durability.

Keystones

Avalanche is our main Keystone, although it’s Lucky Hit, it’s basically a huge damage increase on top of massive help in resource management.

There’s an argument for Shatter and it does work in certain build setups late game but the resource cost increase for a better clear isn't worth it early, and even in some cases late.

Staff vs Wand

So this area can be a bit of a mixed bag and depends roughly on how well you're doing resource-wise. Basically, if Resource is an issue, using an off-hand with "Lucky Hit to Restore Primary Resource" is a must, but the Staff can be a huge damage increase.

I'd argue for most parts of the game it is actually best to utilise a Wand with an Off-hand as the off-hand has some pretty impressive cooldown reduction and resource management modifiers, these are incredibly beneficial early and help us immensely with our resource management.

I wouldn't recommend a Staff (2 handed weapons) for anything other than pushing higher Nightmare Dungeons but even then, as Nightmare Dungeons have been made significantly easier, a wand remains the best option for this build.

Enchantments

• Ice Shards
• Fireball

Ice Shards Enchantment is a massive DPS increase and it synergises incredibly well with Frost Nova.

In the early game we use Fireball, Fireball is preferable when you don't have the passives to take advantage of Fire Bolt. Also in party play, all allied party members within a dungeon gain the effect of Fireball synergising well in team play.

Later on, it's useful to note that switching to the Fire Bolt enchantment is done to take advantage of certain item modifiers, paragon board stats and skill tree passives.

There’s also Frost Bolt as it applies Chill which staggers bosses, you can switch to this during bosses, this is why we take both Fire Bolt and Frost Bolt.