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Diablo 4 Sorcerer BuildIce Shards - Shard Blaster
Ice Shards is pretty fun Cold Damage core skill. You essentially cosplay as a wild west cowboy and slang shards at enemies. These shards can pierce enemies and ricochet off them. Unfortunately, Ice Shards isn't the strongest skill Sorcerer has. It is in dire need of a skill specific unique that gives it a huge boost in damage and Area of Effect.
If you are an ice shard's enjoyer, I hope you like the guide. It should perform about as well as the skill can. This is not a top meta build, and it's spot on the tier list reflects that accordingly.
Primary Enchantments • Firebolt - Apply Burning for the Devouring Blaze Passive and for Damage Reduction to Burning enemies
• Teleport - For movement and to stack up enlightenment fast when you evade
Alternate Ice Blade Enchantment can be used over Teleport, Especially when bossing, or if you have a conjuration mastery Amulet • You would then drop Lightning spear off the bar for teleport
• Armor % temper on pants over warmth if you need it (low paragon struggles)
Resource Concerns • LITH with LUM should generate around 16 resource per second as you evade around and cast while standing still • Lum will essentially count as a 15 mana per second roll, you should be fine
strengths
Visually Appealing- Fun
- You are a cowboy
weaknesses
Ice Shards is not the strongest skill- Area of Effect Damage
- Being a cowboy is hard work
Build Notes
1) We will be spamming Ice Shards, Lightning Spear, and Ice blades whenever we can
2) We utilize Ice armor defensively for a large barrier, and you can pretty much press it whenever it comes off cooldown in the endgame builds. It is typically an engage.
3) Teleport is used for mobility, and to dodge exploding pools
4) Flame shield is used to immune frame boss/shade attacks and exploding pools. You can also use it as an engage if Ice armor is down.
Ice Shards is built like a standard sorcerer build with 1 spender (Ice Shards) and 5 cooldown skills. You blast away with Ice shards, and use cooldowns as frequently as possible to keep yourself alive with barriers, and to aid in damage. Some examples of this damage are the Invoked Familiar node providing 10%[x] Cold Damage, and the Conjuration mastery passive that grants damage for each active conjuration out.
In all my Ice Shard builds, I opt for the Greater Ice Shard node to enable Ice Shards to always ricochet off enemies. I find other ways to apply vulnerable, as we ignore the Destructive Ice Shard node that is normally taken to apply vulnerable.
Ice Shards does not have a key unique item that enables it to really shine, but the piercing cold aspect did get a nice buff going into Vessel of Hatred. It now pierces way more enemies and the damage loss after each pierce is much less severe.
This build scales mainly through the use of generic damage glyphs, aspects, and legendary nodes. The icefall legendary node also helps to provide between 25%-50%[x] damage to vulnerable targets with frost skills. Since we apply burning with Firebolt Enchantment, Devouring Blaze ranks are a priority.
I opt to take the Enlightenment passive over Avalanche, because I find Avalanche to be unreliable and requires an aspect to actually be good. You can achieve similar damage with Enlightenment when all bonuses are up, and you also get some attack speed and mana regeneration.
Azurewrath/Frostburn version does not use greater ice shards because frostburns freeze • We take destructive to apply vulnerable
In-Depth Explanation
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