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

Now let's look at the game-wide power nerf in 3.15. From many sources on reddit, twitch and Chris himself, we hear that pretty much all existing meta builds will lose 40-60% damage (Chris saying 40% on average but the streamers saying more like 60% for the most powerful ones). How much does Icestorm lose?

The mechanics are still the same. The curses work the same way. Even Bonechill apparently wasn't nerfed in the part that was used by us.

Awakened Hextouch lv 5 lost the +1 curse mod. But that's a very high end change, and you can anoint Whispers of Doom on the boots, or get it on the tree for 3 points. Either way it's not a big deal for this build, nothing compared to the LESS damage on the support gems in 3.15. The nerf is all about the support gems.

In 3.14:

Icestorm - CwC - Ins - CE - EF - CD, and we had 12% Arcane Surge too

The base damage of Icestorm was multiplied by pre-nerf mods:
1.10 * 1.35 * 1.55 * 1.50 * 1.45 * 1.12 = 5.61

In 3.15:

The base damage of Icestorm was buffed from 2-4 to 3-5 per 10 Int, that's a 33% buff (4 / 3 = 1.33)

CwC lost its damage mod completely, and other supports were hit. However, Arcane Surge was significantly buffed in its usefulness for this build.

Buffed Icestorm - Ins - AS - CE - CD
1.33 * 1.22 * 1.40 * 1.40 * 1.40 = 4.45

And if we can afford the mana cost of EF or CP instead of Ins, it's
1.33 * 1.35 * 1.40 * 1.40 * 1.40 = 4.93

Nerf in 3.15:

With Inspiration: 5.61 / 4.45 = 1.26, we lose 26% damage

With EF or CP(avg): 5.61 / 4.93 = 1.14, we lose 14% damage

So, depending on being able to afford replacing Inspiration or not, this build
loses 14-26% of its power.

Compare that to the 40-60% power hits to most meta builds... We actually gain a whole lot of power relative to the meta.

THIS IS A BUFF?!

"

Kelvynn wrote:

THIS IS A BUFF?!

That's the spirit! :D

I'm updating the leveling tree and checking if we can sustain Icestorm while leveling. Looking at lv 45-ish, when I typically do the 2nd lab and become Ascendant Occultist.

Using the recommended leveling gear:
The Whispering Ice
Icetomb
Doedre's Scorn
Doedre's Tenure
Shavronne's Pace
Perandus Blazon
and a cheap rare amulet with 50 Int and an average mana mod. No rings as they are typically used just to get fire/lightning resists at that point.

I took Dreamer and Deep Thoughts to deal with the mana issues.

Auras: Discipline, Flesh & Stone, Clarity of the appropriate levels.

PoB shows that I'll have about 1100 mana pool, just over 200 unreserved mana, and 65 mana regen per second.

At this point CwC triggers Icestorm every 0.42s, or 2.4 casts per second. The cost of Cyclone + Icestorm must not exceed the mana regen.

PoB has been updated with most of the 3.15 changes. However, Arcane Surge is still wrong. If I turn it on, the mana regen shoots up by almost 100, as if it still gave max% mana regen. But it doesn't do that anymore. It now gives about 45% inc mana regen rate at those levels. So I'm going to just calculate the real mana regen as 65 * 1.45 = 94 mana/sec. That's not very accurate either because it's not a multiplicative mod. But that should give us an approximate number.

That means that we can sustain 94 / 2.4 = 39 mana cost for channelling Icestorm. That's just fine for a 5S staff. Using Cwc, Inspiration, AS, CE results in 33 mana cost for Icestorm + 2 for Cyclone = 35 total.

That means basic leveling is going to be just fine!

With Praxis you can even use a 6S staff. But you aren't going to use that ring for much longer, you'll need Int/resist rings for mapping, so I would just level with 5S.

Or use 6S but don't Cyclone all the time while leveling because it's slow without The Stampede. You'll have plenty of mana to burn through when you have something to kill. And mana flasks.

Anyway, mana should be fine.

We can see that in this kindly way.

But the problem is. Grinding is the same. With lower dmg more death less effektiv. Grinding the 36 challenges was this league a pain for me. Dont think it will be easyier next league.
The crafting options are week.

How about cluster jewels. I saw that a lot of people wrote they are nerved to. Is that build not touched from this?

I think most peoples will play mine or totem builds, as they get a dmg nerv but the playstyle is the same as bevor.

So perhaps int stacking will be easyier as the builds who used that wont get played.

I looked the icecrash build and i think it will be like totems really strong. And you dont need defensive as your totems or traps or mines do the dmg.

The only two reason i try the build this league again is: It has the best community and kelvyn is heavy supporting it in leagues he play.
its the most fun i ever had playing a build.

so see you perhaps tomorrow but after the launch desaster last league rather saturday. And then there are perhaps some experience with new league.

"

ichbinwerichbi wrote:

We can see that in this kindly way.

But the problem is. Grinding is the same. With lower dmg more death less effektiv. Grinding the 36 challenges was this league a pain for me. Dont think it will be easyier next league.
The crafting options are week.

How about cluster jewels. I saw that a lot of people wrote they are nerved to. Is that build not touched from this?

I think most peoples will play mine or totem builds, as they get a dmg nerv but the playstyle is the same as bevor.

So perhaps int stacking will be easyier as the builds who used that wont get played.

I looked the icecrash build and i think it will be like totems really strong. And you dont need defensive as your totems or traps or mines do the dmg.

The only two reason i try the build this league again is: It has the best community and kelvyn is heavy supporting it in leagues he play.
its the most fun i ever had playing a build.

so see you perhaps tomorrow but after the launch desaster last league rather saturday. And then there are perhaps some experience with new league.

The game is harder for all builds. Everybody lost power, and monsters gained power. That was the intent of GGG. If the game getting harder is a problem then nothing you can do about it.

But it got a LOT harder for the meta builds and only a little harder for this build. That's the big point here.

Note: the game getting harder does not mean that getting 36 challenges will be harder. Most of the challenges have nothing to do with how hard the game is. They are about finding random things or coming up with special tricks.

None of the cluster jewels used by this build were changed in 3.15.

Cluster jewels info is fine. thanks

last league there where a lot challenges where you need dmg and tankiness.

But if you play and dont leave like last league i am optimistik, that we can do things.

I read some nice info. Rampage seems untouched. and with the axt we can get rampage in a easy way and it do things for us without using mana :-)

"

ichbinwerichbi wrote:

I read some nice info. Rampage seems untouched. and with the axt we can get rampage in a easy way and it do things for us without using mana :-)

Without using mana? I don't see anything about Rampage negating the mana costs in any way.

Movement speed bonus doesn't work with The Stampede.

200% increased damage (on a max 1000+ streak) is nice though, if there is a situation where you can get that many trash mobs in a row. Streaks shorter than ~200 are not really worth the trouble for this build. It's just Increased damage (additive) while we use a lot of multiplicative (MORE) damage mods. It's only good with really long streaks.

We've been using Synvicta to trigger Rampage in the leagues where it made sense mechanically for quite a while, starting from Delve.

Build pre-updated for 3.15

- added Clarity, Dreamer, Deep Thoughts to sustain mana
- Sovereignty will most likely be needed too, especially for Aspect
- moved Arcane Surge to the staff
- Enlighten (optional) may be useful
- adjusted some gem levels
- added the Whispers of Doom option for the 3rd curse

We'll see the rest of the details in the actual league.

Thx for the good work updating the guide :-)

And what i mean is, that rampage is a nice bonus as it gives not only mana also some def as it is a lot of minions generating in stacks under 1000. And i feel ANY dmg bonus without mana costs is welcome.

Stampede we will see. With the flask getting worse i fear they will be much more expensive as in previous leagues.

Note on leveling: Icicle Mine starts falling off in Act 4 as we don't scale it past the cold damage cluster.

However, there is a new cold skill: Eye of Winter (aka D2 Frozen Orb). It becomes available in Act 3 (kill Gravicius) and it looks like decent damage. Our tree should work fine for it.

If I don't have the staff by lv 33, I'm going to try leveling with Eye of Winter until I get the staff.