IW Build Help

[Zamurph]

Hello, was hoping I could get a detailed build for an IW, I was looking at Varas and couldn't see anywhere on there if it was for PvP or PvE or hybrid. I am looking for pretty much a strictly PvE build. Thanks in advance!

[Fabulous]

Both the skeletal and personal build are for PVE. A few other points:

• You must at least have all the skills in the skeletal build. Your gameplay should not be more than the skills listed there. Don't ever use a fire skill over an ice skill. IW is about spamming your ice skills as soon as they come off CD.
• Volcanic Vortex offers a protective shell that reduces damage by 70%. This is useful if your party wipes and Frozen Fury can't iframe the wipe (e.g. IDN phase 1 blue crystal explosion. The raid version will probably wipe you anyways, but you can tank the 4-man version.) I would take level 1 if you have the points.
• Elemental Shield is something I would include in the skeletal build. It's useful when your barrier gets buff wiped and you didn't restore the CD. This tends to happen when you're not familiar with boss rotations. You should be spamming Ice Barrier off CD to lower the CDs of your ice skills, but sometimes you do that and the boss buff wipes (e.g. Kodiak spacebar). Then you're left with maybe a 90s CD on Ice Barrier, so you need Elemental Shield as backup for a bit. It also helps if you're worried about dodging stomps. With Ice Barrier and Elemental Shield on, Kodiak's stomp in HC left me with half health.

[iZerf]

How much hp and damage do you believe an IW should have? I'm making an alt IW and I want to see how much would be needed for idn 4-man and eventually 8-man without going lgrades on armor/weps. Don't mind it for accs however if it's applicable.

[Fabulous]

iZerf I would follow the same guidelines that the community has put out for other DPS classes, which I think is 2m HP. The higher your MDMG, the easier life will be for you, since Ice Barrier is 195% of your MDMG (someone with 200k DMG will have 390k HP in their barrier). I believe the DMG requirements for IW aren't as strict as they are for the pure DPS classes. Your main contribution will be ice layering and CCing the Punisher in Dragon Phase 1. For both of these, it's more important that you stay alive, so don't sacrifice HP for a bit of extra DMG/CRIT (you might not reach max CRIT for IDN when you prioritize health gems). My own IW alt has 2.15m and 186k, with The Dejected and RDNL accessories.

As for 4-man, you can run it with way less, and the requirements shouldn't be too different from your other classes.