7th of October 2025
Ice Shards is a pretty simple build, despite the wacky skill bar. The seasonal powers have forced some unconventional things into the builds such as casting blizzard for mana regen, or casting a few basics every 5 seconds for a damage buff.
The core of the build is honestly just spamming Ice Shards at enemies and Teleport evading around. We slap on some damage aspects such as Piercing Cold to make our shards pierce. Frozen Memories to add more damage to our Avalanche Key Passive.
The 3 main things about this build that are specific to the season are as follows.
1) Mana Shield Seasonal Power - This power sets our max life to double digits, literally like 20 health. In return we get an insanely large mana pool that becomes our life force. As a result, if we can regen mana fast we can't die or run out of resource. Insert Wizard's Blizzard which gives us 500+ mana regen per second.
2) Advanced Techniques Seasonal Power - Per rank we have in Ice Shards (Also get's ranks from "Ranks to Core") our skill gains 20% damage and 10% mana cost. Damage goes through the roof. Mana cost does as well, but Frost builds have great mana cost reduction from the Avalanche Key Passive and Frozen Memories. Because Mana shield gives us such a large pool, we are pretty set.
3) Chaos Armor - Ideally you are looking for 2 of 3 Chaos armors to slot in your chest or pants. These are Crown of Lucion, Locran's Talisman, and Fist of Fate. Each provide around 80-90% damage and have their own perks and benefits described in a section below.
• Unfortunately Frost builds cannot scale their mana cost to 275, which enables this cheeky combo with Crown of Lucion and Banished Lord's Talisman to make every cast overpower. Even if overpower got nerfed, it's still 1.5x damage, and Banished Lords has ranks to Core on it which would scale our damage with advanced techniques. The Avalanche and Frozen Memories combo just lowers the mana cost too much.
If you love Ice Shards, and are tired of the recent Azurewrath usage to carry the skill... Now is your time to play it. This is probably the best the skill will ever be.
1-60 Leveling Guides
Frost Build, no crit chance to worry about, massive area size, easy on mana
Blizzard ❄️ Pure DoT
Burn Build, no crit chance to worry about, massive area size, easy on mana
Firewall 🔥 Pure Burn
Incinerate, annoying because you gotta stand still, but if you have the aspects it absolutely hoses
Incinerate 🔥 Need Aspects
Teleport Evade Guide
• In S10 you can get -4.0 sec per attack having Flickerstep Chaos Armor
• This allows you to perma TP even with very low cooldown reduction!
• There are breakpoints depending on which boots you use +TP skillranks
• Rule of thumb is you get around 4-5% cooldown on top per teleport rank
• This means you can multiply your TP Enchant CD times 0.82 with 5/5 TP
• For Flickersteps you want your Teleport Enchant to show max 3.4 sec
• For Legendary boots with 1.5 Implicit you want to reach 2.0 to be save
• If you only have the base point in Teleport, you want at least 2.7 or 1.7
Blizzards tooltip doesn't show cooldown reduction you get from ranks
Example:
• Tooltip says 2.3sec in town, you have 5 points in Teleport and you use Vex:
• Only added ranks count, therefore you have +7 in your Teleport skill, this means you get another 26% cooldown reduction on your enchantment:
• 2.3 multiplied by 0.74 (1-0.26) = 1.702
• This means even if you attack 5 times per second (every 200ms/12 Frames) you will have permanent Teleport
• Simply multiply your tooltips cooldown by the number shown below:
+1 Rank = 0.95 (5% CDR): TP Skillpoint
+2 Ranks = 0.90 (10% CDR): TP Skillpoints
+3 Ranks = 0.86 (14% CDR): TP Skillpoints/Vex
+4 Ranks = 0.82 (18% CDR): TP Skillpoints/Shako
+5 Ranks = 0.79 (21% CDR): TP Ranks on Chest
+6 Ranks = 0.76 (24% CDR): TP Ranks on Chest
+7 Ranks = 0.74 (26% CDR): TP Skillpoints+Vex
+8 Ranks = 0.72 (28% CDR): TP Skillpoints+Shako
+9 Ranks = 0.70 (30% CDR): TP Skillpoints+Shroud+Shako
+11 Ranks = 0.66 (34% CDR): TP Skillpoints+Shako+Vex
+12 Ranks = 0.65 (35% CDR): TP Skillpoints+Shako+Vex+Shroud
+15 Ranks = 0.62 (38% CDR): TP Skillpoints+Shako+Vex+TP Ranks Chest
+19 Ranks = 0.60 (40% CDR): (maximum)
Credit: Zaramos
Chaos Armor
Chaos Armor is a special seasonal drop, mainly from the new Infernal Horde boss Bartuc.
They can also be found from other world sources, such as boss kills or gambling obols, but at a much lower frequency.
Chaos armor drops a specific set of unique's in different slots than normal. They can drop as Helm, Chest, Gloves, Pants, Boots.
https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/article/24226702/rally-against-hell-in-season-of-infernal-chaos
This build has 2 slots for Chaos armor, chest and pants. If you get Chaos Flickersteps in chest or pants, you can slot something for Chaos Boots. Flickersteps are an alternative to your Orange Herald Boots. Here are your three options to use, in order of preference.
1) Crown of Lucion - 90% damage and a Cooldown role that lessens the intensity of Masterworking to get a 1 attack teleport evade
2) Locran's Talismen - 48% crit chance and 80% damage when the Mana Shield seasonal power is equipped.
3) Fist of Fate - 80% damage on average, attack speed, lucky hit chance, and crit chance. Damage is just very spiky.
Seasonal Powers
Mana Shield gives us 10,000-15,000 max mana and that becomes our Life and Mana source. If we don't take any form of damage for 2 seconds, we activate 5000% mana regen. We use flame shield to give us an opportunity for this to occur when we need it.
• You are basically unkillable with this as long as you had good mana regen (Why we have Wizard Blizzard for 500+ a second)
Advanced Techniques grants us increased core damage per rank we have in the skill, at the cost of costing way more mana to cast. Which is not a problem due to mana shield. Ranks to core/Ice Shards are EXTREMELY IMPORTANT
Power Siphon grants us 2x core damage, at the cost of reducing our max mana by 20 per cast for 6 seconds. This max mana reduction effect stacks, but the entire stack doesn't refresh upon cast. It's like a rolling amount. Again, because of mana shield... we are moisturized and unbothered.
Explosive Combinations - casting a basic increases all of our damage by 20% for 5 seconds, stacking up to 3 times for 60%
Every 5 seconds you will cast Frostbolt 3 times and then go about your business until it expires. In farm content you can probably just ignore doing this.
Managing Mana (Mana Shield = Life)
Mana Shield should give us 10,000+ Max Mana, which becomes our life pool. This is incredibly useful and makes you unkillable.
To regenerate this mana we hard cast Wizard's Blizzard off the skill bar, which grants us 1 mana regen per 20 max mana. At just 10,000 max mana, this is 500 mana per second. You are good my friend.
Enchantments
Teleport Enchant is for movement, and is vital to creating crackling energy through the static discharge passive. Again... we need crackling for the convulsions passive. Annoying, but "damage doesn't grow on trees" - Northwar
Mystical Frost Nova enchant is a flex spot, but it must be a Frost Enchantment. Enemies hit by Frost Nova are frozen and take 15% more damage for 4 seconds. 8 seconds for bosses.
Frost novas will get created by lucky hits from our conjuration skills, which are our ice blades and shock conjurations (lightning spear/shock familiars) created during unstable currents from our Teleport evades.
If you want more attack speed take Ice Blade Enchant, if you want more ice shards take ice shard enchant. Blizzard enchant is not viable because it only spawns for 6 seconds, every 15 seconds. Invoked Familiar enchant is viable, but Frost Nova Enchant is cooler and more damage.
Flame Shield Alternatives
You can run Invoked Familiar instead of Flame Shield, but for it to count as a fire skill for Tal Rasha, it needs to be the first thing you cast upon entering a new load zone. After that it gets locked to the last frost or shock.
You can then drop the least damage aspect you have for Tenuous Destruction, which is likely shredding blades (variant dependent)
Incense/Elixir (Capping Armor)
Advantage II Elixir for attack speed
Sages Whisper for Intelligence
Song of the Mountain for Armor
Soothing Spices for All Resistance and Armor
Elixir/Incense
Elixir - Advantage II for 15% attack speed
Incense 1 - Sages Whisper for 100 Intelligence. Use 60 All stats one if you need to hit paragon reqs
Incense 2 - Song of the Mountain for 300 armor
Incense 3 - Soothing Spices for all resistance, max all resistance, and some armor
Sorcerer
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