[3.20] Ice Dancing Queen - Icestorm/Cyclone/CI - Viable For Everything

Think occulist ascendancy gives stun immunity. so thats safe i guess

right. maybe for freeze immunity we use the inquisitor ascendancy while standing on consecrated ground?

Whispering Ice as a start can be a bit of a slog if you are used to zoom zooming through the acts. Because all our scaling is based on INT, and int doesn't really help you in other ways before you go full ES, and full WI, leveling is (to me at least) the most painful part of the build.

You can certainly do it, and I've done it several times, but be aware that it's slow and sometimes a bit painful if you are used to builds that start off stronger. You may just want to power through till Blood aqueducts with whatever build follows a close enough pathing, then make heavy use of regrets. It's worth it though since the late game versatility and power of a well geared WI simply cannot be beat if you stick with it long enough.

While several other builds do certain things better than Whispering Ice, it's the only build I've ever found that can do everything in the game REALLY well.

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faraddox wrote:

Any chances that WI with brand will be unplayable (don't want to play cwc or start another char if it will)? How hard is es and int stacking gear to obtain at league start? Depending on answers i'll chose between vd and wi :)

I'm sure that brands will be playable. Maybe not optimal, but playable for sure.

I would certainly level as something else, then regret into the build. The WI tree is almost completely about getting high INT values, and that really only helps you once you go ES, and Whispering Ice. Since you want to go brands, I would focus on that until you make the transitions.

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faraddox wrote:

How hard is WI league starting?

SSF this time will be very hard. Could only farm 2 cards so far in A6 even with keeping level 50 for more than 7 levels. (lol HC)

Crafting wise, stuff should be easier to get, especially jewels early with exalt slams.

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Breken wrote:

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faraddox wrote:

Any chances that WI with brand will be unplayable (don't want to play cwc or start another char if it will)? How hard is es and int stacking gear to obtain at league start? Depending on answers i'll chose between vd and wi :)

I'm sure that brands will be playable. Maybe not optimal, but playable for sure.

I would certainly level as something else, then regret into the build. The WI tree is almost completely about getting high INT values, and that really only helps you once you go ES, and Whispering Ice. Since you want to go brands, I would focus on that until you make the transitions.

Yeah, i know about int stacking, i already played WI in metamorph (stopped cause 1fps at old gpu). But i had almost all gear before i created char for WI. So i don't know how to league start with it and what int values are required to start mapping at least :) For example, if i got full deck for whispering ice in act6 (farmed/bought), can i spend almost all points for int and start using it?

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mdpoe wrote:

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faraddox wrote:

How hard is WI league starting?

SSF this time will be very hard. Could only farm 2 cards so far in A6 even with keeping level 50 for more than 7 levels. (lol HC)

Crafting wise, stuff should be easier to get, especially jewels early with exalt slams.

Nah, i'm slave of trade league :D Going to ssf only sometimes when league is already dead.

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faraddox wrote:

Yeah, i know about int stacking, i already played WI in metamorph (stopped cause 1fps at old gpu). But i had almost all gear before i created char for WI. So i don't know how to league start with it and what int values are required to start mapping at least :) For example, if i got full deck for whispering ice in act6 (farmed/bought), can i spend almost all points for int and start using it?

In my experience, once you get Cast While channeling, the staff, and 4-5 staff slots you are good to go. I have had some survivability issues in the past since I didn't really get any life on the tree/gear, and my ES wasn't up to snuff until later. There were a couple leagues where I just tossed my body at the story bosses to get to blood Aquaducts to farm a bit. The damage however was there early, and I don't think that would really be any different with brands, and would probably be a bit better.

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Breken wrote:

Forgive me if this is a stupid question, as I haven't played brands yet. But don't you still have to stop and recast the brands for .8 seconds every 3 seconds? With 6 brands, you couldn't even get them all out before the duration expired (at least not without decent cast speed investment) I mean, it's very doable, but one of the most awesome things about the CwC cyclone era is the fact that you don't have to stop in order to kill stuff.

Worth testing for sure, I'm sure there is something there, but it's not certainly not cut and dry.

You will link spell echo to your brand and get 70% more cast speed and throw 2 brands at a time. You'll also get some duration from the tree and should probably consider the 90% skill effect duration nodes all near scion since not only will the brand last longer but the ice storms as well.

The math for those storms is for whenever the normal storm duration would expire you would be getting 90% more damage because the storm is persisting 90% longer.

Edit: It's possible this is just too many storms for anyone's GPU to handle or calculations for the server to handle.

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RagozFenrir wrote:

Edit: It's possible this is just too many storms for anyone's GPU to handle or calculations for the server to handle.

Icestorm isnt that bad server-wise. Stuff like literaly 1000s of poison stacks are worse!

Its only the ice/chill effect of icestorm that makes performance so bad, fire storm is way better in that regard.