Ice Strike vs Tempest Flurry

Which one is better for high end game? I'm currently struggling to pick one, TBH, I have better DPS with Ice strike, plus more control for mobs, as it freezes everything and shatters everything, plus electrocutes and shocks since I'm using both Ice and Thunder Heralds. I'm also combining this skill with Storm Wave.
The only benefit that I noticed from Tempest Flurry, is boss clearing, I drop the bell, and that thing turns them into dust faster than Ice Strike does.
I don't have any specific nodes assigned for Cold or Lighting BTW, pure Crit Chance, Crit Damage, and raw Melee Damage Nodes.

Any recommendations or tips on this?

BTW, here are highest damage I get from each one

Ice streak is amazeballs at clearning large packs and just generally destroying everything you run into.

Vs a boss/rare though, use ice strike till they freeze, drop da bomb (bell) and then use thunder (as you can't build freeze while they are frozen anyway).

Consider making thunder build stun or using another attack that builds stun as well if the enemy is going to survive long enough to unfreeze.

That is pretty much it though. Ice strike is just so good at CC, hits such a large group at once, and explodes everything that it's hard to beat.

I main Ice Strike on late endgame , it has great clearing when going full throttle : go for attack speed , skill speed , do not take double finishing move as it slows the rate of attack . Generate power charge from anything else than Monk power charge skills and use Charged Staff to make Ice Strike clear every pack at both close & long range , and it will clear any breach with ease through Herald of Ice . As for elite / bosses that's when you use this Power Charge generation and Charged Staff on a more suited skill : Flicker Strike / Bell combo .

I tried Tempest Flurry and the lightning version of Glacial Cascade several times , did not liked it at all because i need my main melee skill to clear trash mobs and trigger as much chill/freeze as possible for Herald of Ice to pop the whole screen .

Now i am going to respec in a CI variant of my build because there is an hilarious interaction with power charges generation i want to explore but my core skills will remain the same .

I just combined the speed of tempest flurry with the crowd control freeze of ice strike.

my staff does cold and lightning damage, and i have passives for freeze buildup and runes in the staff that also contribute to freeze, it's great!

Add Cast on Crit with Eye of Winter and you'd clear bosses with Ice Strike as fast as with Tempest. (On a side note, your Tempest is a level lower than IS, not a good comparison).

Personally I always figured that Tempest is more suited for an attribute stacker build, you won't notice the difference between 300k and 350k dps - but you sure do between 140k and 100k. That's why I stick with IS and with Cast on Crit, I have a normal build (136k sheet dps) and I don't have to swap gems anymore for bosses (which was a thing previously). It's a bit more Mana hungry though, which is why I specced into +60% mana leech.

Ice strike is superior. It freeze easily. It can blink to infront enemy, good for mob clearing.

Tempest has higher DPS for bell combo. Also attack while move for Gemling build. But it need electrocute build to add. Usually need storm wave skill for Aoe mob.

Invoker is the Best class for Ice. Other class have their own preferable element. Such as lightning (stormweaver), fire (infernalist), poison (archer).

Ice Strike for sure. If you're not running heralds+sunder my enemy, perhaps there could be an argument made for tempest strike+ storm wave, as those would both be lightning base and you could take the lightning pen/damage nodes and have them work for both skills.

As it is now though, if you're running sunder + heralds ice strike is the way to go.



Also ignore everyone talking about using either skill to hit the bell. You should never ever be doing this. Ball Lightning (or similar abilities) socketed into elemental invocation is probably the best bell hitting skill you can get, as it'll cast it multiple times once fully charged. A single cast from a fully charged invocation will instantly knock out a max level+quality bell and 1 hit pretty much every rare/non pinnacle boss.

I played Ice Strike to L95, it was truly amazing.. defensively a rock.. basically nothing got that Energy Shield to move, and it dashed through maps in a really nice way.. brilliant.. its deficiency is it isnt 'as' strong at single target, so on really tough bosses, you will need to do some mechanics, and you might go through quite a few cycles on pinnacle bosses (I did all 4 breach levels no problems though.. but its not a sure thing).

Now I have a L93 Tempest Flurry Gemling stat stacker.. I didnt like it for the longest time, on bosses, it just took 1 hit sometimes to 1 shot me, and I lost a few citadels as a result which felt really bad.... and it was quite depressing as my gear was pretty good.. but.. I changed from Allies to Fubguns build, added in Mind over Matter, now its working for me.. I can 1-button maps (dont even bother with charged staff) which is rly nice.. and higher dps on bosses.. still have to be more careful though, atleast dodge the first attack.. before you setup bell and what not and try to do damage.

So in the end TFlurry Gemling is superior with all the gear and at rly high levels.. but for the rest of it Ice Strike is a great build.. I followed Sarge2 the HC SSF guy.. one of the best experiences playing his build, there is a reason it works really well for HC also!

Tempest Flurry can become better if you're building so much attack speed that moving by using it is faster than moving normally. This is usually the case for HoWA+Pillar builds that are well put together. It's also really good against stationary targets.

Otherwise, I'd say Ice Strike is the better skill overall because it jumps to mobs.
Also, if you're scaling from a physical staff (which is the best once you reach a certain gear level), you get plenty of cold damage to go along with your lightning damage from HoWA, which is nice. Makes it easier to start shatter chains with HoI and keep bosses frozen.

Use the one that "feels" better to you.

Don't compare skills based on the sheet dps in game. That's extremely inaccurate. It's only useful for comparing different items with the same setup, and sometimes not even for that.