:Vara's Ice Witch Guide:

[vara]

:ICE WITCH:

Ice Witches are a mainly debuffing class, but recently have been able to output a pretty high amount of damage thanks to the Awakening system.
The stats Ice Witches focus on are:
• INT
• Ice%
• Vit
• Crit

They focus on two specific game mechanics: Freeze and Frostbite.
Freeze is when an enemy becomes encased in a layer of ice. You can see this by a visible chuck of blue stuff on the enemy. Enemies who are frozen take 20% more damage.
Frostbite is when an enemy gets hit by an ice skill, but not a freezing one. This is seen by a blue haze applied to the target. Frostbite lowers the target's movement and attack speed by 30%.

lv93 Skeleton Build;


lv93 Personal Build;

With the Ice Witch awakening, more focus is now spent on the entire ice tree. However, even if you max the necessary skills, you still have a buttload leftover! (I got Firewall for the SA, but spend them wherever you like.)

Ice Witch now revolves around one key skill:

Glacial Field.
Nearby area is frozen to create a Frozen Area.
Enemies in the Frozen Area will receive continuous damage and become Frozen.
Your movement speed increases in the Area.
ATK per hit: 300%
Freeze rate per hit: 30%
Freeze Duration: 2 sec

• Glacial Field combined with the revamped Class Mastery, Ice Barrier becomes godlike.
• Thanks to [Awakened Passive] Frost Chaos, as long as you are standing within Glacial Field,
Frost Chaos becomes a CTC skill, meaning you get up to 3 charges of it!
• Thanks to [Awakened Passive] Frostbite Mastery and [Awakened Passive] Shatter, using Shatter while Glacial Field is active will score extra damage!

Sorceress Tree

• All skills in this tree are preference. I picked Toxic Spray (11) for ease of use, and Wheeling Staff (6) for the pushing ability. However you may get Dark Nova if you prefer that skill. Glacial Spike still does no damage so it isn't worth.
• Dash is a necessity for movement. You need not worry about the MP consumption.
• Mana Flow is your best friend, and your party's! Spam that off cooldown.

Elementalist Tree

• Icy Shards, Ice Cold Field, Frozen Spikes, Chilling Mist are all your DPS skills. MAX them. No questions about it.
• Icy Gust doesn't do that much damage, if you like it, there's no harm in putting points in it.
• Shatter is now high damage and no risk---you no longer lose the Freeze status if you have [Awakened Passive] Shatter learned.
• Frozen Fury actually does good damage! And it's an iframe! Why wouldn't you max it.
• Glacial Freeze is trash. Ignore it completely.
• Elemental Shield is preference if you like/need the Super Armor.
• Phoenix Strike is necessary at level 1. It provides a necessary elemental resist debuff.
• Any other fire skills are preference. I have Firewall for the SA + decent damage. You can use your leftover points however you want.

Ice Witch Tree

• self explanatory?

Awakening

• [Awakened Passive] Shatter - Shatter no longer removes the frozen/frostbitten debuffs!! go wild!! also there's a 30% chance you can actually freeze things! (granted you land Shatter---meaning they have to be debuffed in the first place)
• [Awakened Passive] Frost Chaos - Whenever you're in Glacial Field's area of effect, Frost Chaos is a CTC skill! You get 3 charges of the skill to weave into your rotation.
• [Awakened Passive] Frostbite Mastery - Frozen targets now gain a multiplier damage (noted by grey + numbers) whenever you use a frostbite-applying skill on them (basically ice any skill that doesn't freeze). This multiplier is a hard 25%, so if your frostbite skill does 1000 damage, you do an additional 250 damage if the target is frozen!
• [Awakened Passive] Icy Shards - Icy Shards becomes a CTC skill, you can cast it up to 3 times! Very good to reduce the CD of Ice Barrier as well as stack bubbles for Ice Cyclone. Frozen Fury also gets a slight extension in cast time.
• Ice Cyclone - Whenever you land a frostbite attack, you gain one Ice Crystal. Every 10 Ice Crystals allows you to cast Ice Cyclone. The maximum number of Ice Crystals is 50, meaning you can cast Ice Cyclone 5 times in a row if you have it maxed out.
• Glacial Field - explained above already!

THIS IS JUST A ROUGH GUIDE, I WILL FIX IT IN THE FUTURE, LEAVE ANY QUESTIONS BELOW AND ILL ADD THEM THX

[vara]

Gear:
Int. ALL THE INT. AND ALL THE ICE%. then vit. yeah. also crit is good.

Gems:
Int & Vit if you are low on HP
Int & Crit if you have enough HP
Base it on your own experiences.
Always Lake (Ice%) for weapons and rings. Always.
If using 80 or lower gems, aim for 3rd vit or 3rd int.

Skill Plates:
Frozen Spikes + Damage
Ice Cold Field + Damage
Chilling Mist + Damage

(Optional):
Frozen Fury + Damage
Frost Chaos + Damage
Icy Shards + Damage
Shatter + Damage

Techs (if chosen to be used):
Necklace: Icy Shards
Earrings: Chilling Mist Currently the Ice% Epic tech is better than Int, but once we get Uniques, Int will be better.
Rings: Frozen Spikes, Ice Cold Field
Plate: Frozen Spikes or Ice Cold Field, it feels like ICF is better now, but I don't have the data to back that claim up.

If you don't use techs, then any accessory with high int or ice%. Same goes for jades.

Enhancement Plates/Talismans:
Wise
Mystical
Health
Fierce
Sturdy
Windswept
Life-giving
*Offensive (if accessible & stacking FD)
*Focus (if stacking FD)
*Ultimate (if stacking FD)
*Limit (if accessible)

OTHER GEAR STUFF PUT HERE

[vara]

Some nerdy stuff I took from Ceru cause I'm Lazy:

(source)
COMBOS
Initiation #1. With Glacial Field off CD: [Frost Chaos -> Icy Gust -> Glacial Field -> ICFexi -> Phoenix Strike -> Frost Chaos] = time frame of 4s (if sequence starts after boss spawn), full debuff 100% chance to apply freeze -> dps spam.
Initiation #2. While Glacial Field is on CD: [Frost Chaos -> Phoenix Strike] -> dps spam.

Always try to keep Ice Barrier off CD by spamming all your ice skills. Ice Cyclone is the best skill to do this with.

MATH VALUES
Icy Gust:
*Initiator
*Can be used to acquire +5 bubbles, depending on whether you've whiffed this skill prior to the boss spawn or not.
*Activates the EXI window, which is used to cancel the casting animation of Glacial Field

Blizzard
*12 hits total
*Coefficient increased from 1.0 (each tick dealt 10% of total board) to 1.20
*Max Damage: 8169% x 1.5 (1.20 Coef x 1.25 - Frozen Mastery) = 12253%
*Worth considering for <10s Burst Windows because it's a Nuke, drawback is CT

Frost Chaos
*Increase the probability to FRZ
*Refresh the CD of Ice Barrier EX
* CTC-3: Will nearly refresh the entire CD of Ice Barrier EX due to the insane hit count (if all 3 are used)

Glacial Field:
*Is a DoT/Field Effect skill
*Increases your MS
*40s CD, 36s CD with Mana Flow
*Deals full board per hit, Max board = 9300% over the span of 20s, so 4650% in 10s
*31 hits total
*Will achieve 5-hits before the first Frost Chaos spear registers a hit (depends on whether you've started this sequence before the boss has spawned, otherwise Frost will register its 1st hit immediately, since Glacial Field would have been used beforehand)

Ice Cyclone
*DoT skill
*Lasts for 12s
*150% per hit
*Has a proximity tracker
*0 CD, only cost Ice Crystals
*39 hits, which lowers the CD on Ice Barrier EX by 39s.
*Max board % = 5850% per cyclone or 7312.5% w/ Frozen Mastery (x 1.25)
*Murders stationary bosses/Dragons due to the fact that there's no summon limit for this skill.
*With Action Speed, this skill is a monster

Lv15 Chilling Mist:
*14.4K% every 29s
Lv19 ICF:
*11.6K% every 10s
Lv17 Frozen Spikes:
*9.5K% every 9s.

Ice Barrier EX's stackable CD effect


Most of probably realized this, but I'll just make the thread for it.
Apparently, the CD reduction effect on Ice Barrier EX is stackable. Which means, the faster you recover the CD of the skill and re-cast it (while the previous barrier is still on), the quicker you're able to subtract -30% CD on some of your other active Ice skills. So the purpose of having CTC on Frost Chaos and the high hit-count on Ice Cyclone was apparently for that purpose.


Main uses:
*Blizzard: 150 (-30% from Barrier 1) -> 105 (-30% from Barrier 2) -> 73.5
*Chilling Mist: 45s -> 31.5s ->22.05s
*Frozen Spikes: 13s -> 9s ->6s

Due to the nature of both Frost Chaos and Ice Cyclone, you'll only get high hit-counts on large/stationary bosses, but both of these skills have a total board # over 8k%.

I did not factor in the -10% CD from Mana Flow or the -20% CD Plate for Blizzard.

Source

[vara]

reserevededed just in case!

[Aquamarine]

Nice guide yo.

[Aquamarine]

ICF -> Gust -> ICFExi every 10s is looking rlly strong rn, that's 4238% x2 (8476%) every 10s. On a frozen target it's 1.5x (1.2*1.25) stronger. It's pretty amazing in IDN too.

[vara]

yep, with the buffs to the ice tree icf is doing pretty big damage. i just dunno which of the 3 would be the strongest now, since two of them are on a per-hit basis.

[vara]

thx for the message, i cant reply cause apparently u have messages blocked or some crap.

just checked a gearsim, unique int > unique ice% gdi

[CraZyZeuS]

Solid skill build

Thanks

[Lumpialex]

How's everyone's DPS breakdown? I'm still not sure if I'm playing this class right.

This was in TKN. I'm not sure if it was the best place to use chart this from since all the bosses are somewhat mobile, but this is also the place that I got my DPS to be the highest out of all the runs I've done.

[iCerulean]

That's actually extremely solid, especially for TKN. The higher your damage range and that of your party, the more the Top 5 on that list will stand out, relative to the lower 4 (depending on boss size/mobility). Chilling Mist, ICF + INS and Blizzard are all nukes. Additional Damage, includes the +25% from Frostbite Mastery, so if you're maintaining your Ice layer, that will be one of your highest damage contributions.

[miki]

ty vara this helps me (:

[vara]

this was after two bosses in iDN4man HC as a 3man group with a ruina and an LK...
not to be taken as a tier-chart or anything as i have no idea any of the idn mechs or dps timings!!!



edit////





First bar of first boss in 8man.

[miki]

Why is ur frozen spike so strong?

[vara]

its the strongest skill in the tree U:
especially on larger targets where you get every hit.

[vara]

Here is a solo TKN.

[iCerulean]

Ya, figured it would turn out this way, easier to use Frozen Spikes off cd, without risking yourself getting hit compared to ICF (I count both ICF and INS contributions together since +1 affects both). You have to be really aggressive with using ICF+INS off cd, in order for it to surpass spikes, which requires a lot of effort.

[vara]

it was my first time soloing and i don't really know any of the new mechs that well either, almost died a few times at smithy. but yeah i wasnt seeing any good oppurtunities to use ICF. i mainly just used it to cancel out of GF, then threw one in when it looked safe.

[Eyedentity]

Thanks for the guide.
I'm trying to decide between maxing Firewall or Hotrod (with access to level 1 Firewall). I like the idea of fast casting Firewall but its range looks small. I also like the idea of being mobile with Hotrod. I heard that Hotrod doesn't have a damage cap or hit limit or something? Also, Hotrod looks like it has a lower damage as well as a much longer cd, but but does it only do 2600% damage at max? Which one does better damage?

Is Glacial Spike worth using now? I know it can't freeze anymore, but does it still do a lot of damage? I think Glacial Spike can also help decrease Ice Barrier cd? Trying to decide between leveling this or Toxic Spray or even Void Blast. Or should I go for a mix with lv6 TS and the rest in GS?

[vara]

spike sucks. it decreases barrier cd sure but it does like no damage and you can reduce barrier cd with literally any other ice skill. honestly those skills is all preference, level up which one you like using more.



i'm not sure on the math, but hot rod does 2600% for board hits, and i dont know how many hits is required for it to deal 2600%. but if you want it for mobility (idk why you would, we have dash now) feel free to get it? damage-wise you are most likely not going to be using any fire skills aside from phoenix to begin with.

[Eyedentity]

Thanks. I guess I'll just stick with toxic spray. But how does Hotrod compare with Firewall even if they're not used?
I'm thinking of this build https://dnskillsim.herokuapp.com/na/...-0-00--00-0--0

[Coookiie]

What's your DPS rotation? I think I might've missed it.

[vara]

[Frost Chaos -> Icy Gust -> Glacial Field -> ICFexi -> Phoenix Strike -> Frost Chaos]
The first Frost Chaos will apply an ice layer, as a precaution in case Glacial Field glitches.
then i go into an off-cd spam of
Frozen Spikes > Chilling Mist > ICF/exi, in that priority order.
Throw in a Frost Chaos+Phoenix whenever necessary.
Throw in Ice Cyclone/Icy Shards whenever there's a chance, or if I need Ice Barrier EX to be off CD.
Always have Frozen Fury avaiable for stomps in case of emergency (as it is a long i-frame)

[Coookiie]

Okay thanks so much

[Fabulous]

Bump. We're still around to answer questions. Ask away~

Also, even though it's already explained, remember to cancel the extra-long animation of Glacial Field with Ice Cold Field INS. I've seen some players that still cast it the long way!