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

I'm looking for advice on what I should prioritize on upgrading. Crafting a crusader's vaal regalia seems like a priority. The helm and one of the rings need to be replaced for more int, and I need more intrinsic catalysts, but those will come in time. Using something other than astramentis sounds like a stat nightmare, though I could temporarily change a craft to str and dex. Current budget is about 12 ex.

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staticprevails wrote:

I'm looking for advice on what I should prioritize on upgrading. Crafting a crusader's vaal regalia seems like a priority. The helm and one of the rings need to be replaced for more int, and I need more intrinsic catalysts, but those will come in time. Using something other than astramentis sounds like a stat nightmare, though I could temporarily change a craft to str and dex. Current budget is about 12 ex.

You're at the point where improvements will either be small or cost multiple exalts.

The following are the small, cheap improvements:

1. Replace your rare jewel with something that has at least 24 int (unique or rare.)

2. 6% increased attrs on your chest.

3. T1 int on your helm, or if you have the funds, get a 10% incr attr hunter helm.

4. Spend a few divines and try to reroll your astramentis.

5. Your rings can be significantly improved at fairly low cost. See one of mine for example:

That ring is equivalent to a 6% incr intelligence ring with ~30 int on it (for my gear), which are very hard to find, especially with that much resistance.

Have fun! Buy intrinsic catalysts in bulk, by the way.

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gruumine wrote:

“ Meanwhile Kelvynn's variants gathered thousands of discussion pages and hundred of thousands of comments and views and hundreds or thousands of people playing his WI build variants since 2.0 and many of them still playing his build even today.”

Well he started from 0, it’s not like he gain the followers from day 1. Stop being a bully to this dude who is trying to innovate. Lol, I appreciate the fact that you help ppl but looks like sometime you just got the 10 year old mentality.
Who knows 5 leagues from now you move to his build too. :)


Be positive, Exile. :)




“ Go make a guide and boost your Whispering Ice build variant in Templar (Guardian) forums area if you want people to praise and congrats you for your achievement to create such a great build with such a low cost :). And there, in your own sub-class environment, you will be finally no 1.”

Knuck, ignore the negativity in this comment, you should actually do it! Looking forward to your build page! #respect

Thanks for your words, man. I really still don't get this guy acting out like that, seems like a needy 10 yr old with serious ego issues. At least I had a few chuckles, whatever.

As for the build, I'm so lazy to do a full writeup like that haha that's why I took inspiration from here and made something of my own which is working extraordinarily well. I'm really happy with how it's going, even think I'm going for 100 for the second time ever!

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Knuckledust13 wrote:

Thanks for your words, man. I really still don't get this guy acting out like that, seems like a needy 10 yr old with serious ego issues. At least I had a few chuckles, whatever.

When you will understand that is not OK to boost yourself and your achievements by throwing "spikes" at other hard work to achieve something maybe then you will start to have a chance at being good.

When you tried to boost your build variant and stats and EGO by throwing towards the guy above you on ladder with the "he spent multiple mirrors to get above me" affirmation you dis-considered yourself from start.

I'am sorry to spoil your confidence but i wished i could have those mirrors to spend on gear (well except the amulet i have mirrored yesterday night but that was days of gathering exalts)

Dishing away hard work and smart play of someone by "spending mirrors on gear to perform" suggestion against him tells me how your character really is.

You want to look non-conflictual but in reality your ego is worse than you let others believe

How do you guys who have nice shaper amulets go about crafting the amulet? Fossil crafting? Chaos spam? or is it too hard to get multiple desired mods and buying one off the market is the only option? Some advice would be appreciated.

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TooWet wrote:

How do you guys who have nice shaper amulets go about crafting the amulet? Fossil crafting? Chaos spam? or is it too hard to get multiple desired mods and buying one off the market is the only option? Some advice would be appreciated.

Get a Shaper base (ilv l83+), spam alterations until you hit damage per int prefix , make sure if there is other affix on it that is not a Shaper one, get a Crusader base (ilvl 83+), spam alterations until you hit T1 % increased intelligence and also make sure that if there is another affix on it is not a Crusader one.

Use Awakener's Orb on them (keep 2nd the one with better base) and you'll get a rare dual influence new amulet with those 2 mods and some other random ones which if you are lucky can be very good

And before using Awakener's orb, on the base you want to keep add 20% quality with Intrinsic catalysts, they say it can raise the chance of getting attributes related mods from those random generated.

You will loose the quality after item turns to rare but worth the cost if you'll hit in one of those random mods % attributes , or high + int).


If you don't like to gamble and see some "cheap" (usually 4-5 exalts for one with those 2 mods and other useful mods i consider cheap) ones on trade buy one that fits your pocket and your build.

Good bases are + int , + attributes, hybrid dex/int or str/int

The more I think about guardian, the less I like guardian version of the build. You can gain more ES at the low budget due to broken Radiant faith, but you have 0 armor because CI. Crown is good too, but this is not something cheap at league start. So no LL and no good 2 %inc combines with less flat int = less damage.
On the middle budget we have 1 less slot for resists (which is bad because we already starved on suffixes), ES from radiant faith traded for transfiguration of soul + LL. This is the moment where guardian is better until you remember about "please push chaos at least to 0" and having less suffixes for that. And you also will have problems with hunting for %int corrupt due to higher total res requirement.

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pda898 wrote:

The more I think about guardian, the less I like guardian version of the build. You can gain more ES at the low budget due to broken Radiant faith, but you have 0 armor because CI. Crown is good too, but this is not something cheap at league start. So no LL and no good 2 %inc combines with less flat int = less damage.
On the middle budget we have 1 less slot for resists (which is bad because we already starved on suffixes), ES from radiant faith traded for transfiguration of soul + LL. This is the moment where guardian is better until you remember about "please push chaos at least to 0" and having less suffixes for that. And you also will have problems with hunting for %int corrupt due to higher total res requirement.

I really don't think the chaos thing is such a big problem. I have -60% and Arakaali + Shakari help me deal with dots, which is the true problem. Direct damage is peanuts.

For me the appeal of guardian is: performing better at a MUCH lower investment, having lots of defense layers instead of just leech and more int stacking, also much more flexibility with auras going LL =)

I'm at 1.914 INT right now with 36k Icestorm tooltip in hideout. 12k ES, 11k unflasked armour, 77% allres, very high block.

It's just comfortable to play.

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Knuckledust13 wrote:

Thanks for your words, man. I really still don't get this guy acting out like that, seems like a needy 10 yr old with serious ego issues. At least I had a few chuckles, whatever.

As for the build, I'm so lazy to do a full writeup like that haha that's why I took inspiration from here and made something of my own which is working extraordinarily well. I'm really happy with how it's going, even think I'm going for 100 for the second time ever!

Can you share a video fighting video against high tier map with bad mods (ele reflect, no regain etc etc)
and also video against Sirus. I wanna see practical example of how good your defenses are. thx!

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Knuckledust13 wrote:

I really don't think the chaos thing is such a big problem. I have -60% and Arakaali + Shakari help me deal with dots, which is the true problem. Direct damage is peanuts.

For me the appeal of guardian is: performing better at a MUCH lower investment, having lots of defense layers instead of just leech and more int stacking, also much more flexibility with auras going LL =)

I'm at 1.914 INT right now with 36k Icestorm tooltip in hideout. 12k ES, 11k unflasked armour, 77% allres, very high block.

It's just comfortable to play.

I still want to see a facetanking video. When I build defensive layers I tend to think of worst case. IE, If I play on this build 100 hours, how many times will my defenses fail. If I'm reading this right, the Guardian version has 28 attack block always, with 10% spell block. 2 seconds out of 5, it hits max block. That is an effective block rate over time of 46.8 attack block, and 10 spell block. Decent, until that slam hits you when your block is only 18 or 28. So you can't DEPEND on it being up.

You run into the same situation with sustain. Every 5 seconds you quickly recover 3000 ES a sec on top of your natural ~1000 ES a second regen. This is around 1600 ES/second recovery. BUT again, it's streaky, if you take sustained damage at the wrong time it can easily outpace your regen.

You don't take the ES leech Maximum recovery nodes, so even with full leech stacks, you are adding only 1200 es/second to your recovery. So you only have a dependable 2200/sec recovery of ES, or 2800 Es/sec if you average in Time of Need.

The armor layer is harder to quantify due to the way armor works. My personal way of looking at armor is to pretend it's not a thing for bosses, but that it really helps map sustain.

I'm also ignoring ES on hit watcher's eye for these thoughts.

Let's look at the worst case situation. You eat a massive slam on a juiced map. Your time of need just completed, and Bastion of Hope wasn't up. The hit is for say 14000 damage. Your 10000 armor drops that to 13000, you die.

Let's say you have 15000 ES with the Int stacking build. The 14000 hit just "almost" kills you. If you had say 15000 ES (not an unreasonable number) You recover at 3000 Es/sec (3900 if you have a ES recovery eye) So you are back to full in 4 second.

The guardian version however DOES shine in mapping. The extra random block, armor and cyclical recovery boosts can't help but to REALLY even out the situations where you are taking lots of rapid hits over time. The other nice thing is that it's less dependent on leech, and that evens you out in situations where your leech target vanishes.

The scion version also utilizes enfeeble to further reduce one-shot potential. and is functionally immune to elemental statuses and stun.

I have no doubts that the Guardian version is very safe. 13-14k effective life is a real breakpoint in this game. As long as you have that, quick recovery and a few other tricks, you will rarely die.

Outside of deep delves, tanking shaper orbs, or Sirus's Beam, it's all kinda overkill at this point.

The Guardian version allows easier gearing (not needing as much flat ES on gear to reach decent ES values. This comes at the expense of more pressure on your suffixes to help mitigate Chaos damage. (Not convinced at all that running at -60% is workable)

Damage is likely similar for decently geared people on both versions as the guardian makes up the int difference with auras and pain attainment.

However, at the highest gear levels the Scion will have the highest potential
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TLDR: The guardian version is likely a safer mapper, while the Scion version is safer vs large slams and one-shots. The Scion will have a higher power ceiling at a much higher cost, while the Guardian should be able to be effectively maxed out much cheaper. Both should be more than viable end game at a reasonable budget.