Like the first Capstone dungeon (Cathedral of Light), I managed to hit the gear check breakpoints for my build (at level 70). My new chest piece was a huge help due to its aspect (where the crowd control effect has a 46% chance of affecting other enemies). I really should put that on my amulet because the 1.5x pushes this to 75%. What this effectively does is it passes on the crowd control effects from my freeze (which helps with the entire Ice Shards chain hitting mobs; easier to see in the video clearing the first sections of the dungeon). So in decent mob density situations, you have this continuous chain reaction of shards going off (with elite and champions, I also empty my Ice Shards on them). Unlike my first run through of this part at level 65, I had no issues with the animus holders (I also utilize the pillars to avoid their charge attack) as I was able to keep them frozen most of the time while DPS’ing them down (previously, I didn’t have enough damage and so they would still be a 50% health when they unfroze).
I did a full clear (even though I had enough animus to open the boss chamber) since it was fun being able to nuke these mobs (unfortunately, nothing good dropped).
As for the boss fight with Elias, I failed the first attempt when I fat-fingered Frost Nova a few seconds too early since just before that last health pot marker on his health bar, he spawns the last group of adds. My play itself was really messy since I was taking unnecessary damage (I guess what the Twitch crowd would call “boomer reflexes”). But I had more than enough armor, health, and damage (and fat fingering Frost Nova that allowed the adds which were Balrog’s, to crowd me; I failed to also dodge out of there to wait for my Frost Nova to come off cooldown; the way that last part was supposed to go is the adds are Frost Nova’d and then I fire off Ice Shards to set of the chain reaction that takes them out, and then that last section of Elias would’ve been easy since it is staggering and DPS’ing him). YouTube’s auto thumbnail captured that moment perfectly (below).
I cleared him on the following attempt using a different build with Deep Freeze replacing my Firewall (but forgot to record it since I stopped recording to take care of something) and that was even faster since I used an amulet with the aspect that also adds ice spikes to Deep Freeze that hit for 1.5K damage. So when the adds spawn (and each fight, their spawn rotation is RNG; I got the swarm of Spawns at the last part instead of Balrogs), I pop Deep Freeze on them, and if they all haven’t been wiped out after coming out of Deep Freeze, Ice Shard (or Frost Nova first if they are no longer frozen). Elias also takes damage during this sequence.
So now the WT4 grind with Ancestral gear begins (plus I want to be able to ditch my basic auto attack and replace it with either Teleport or Deep Freeze). Just like when I entered WT3, I plan on giving this part a go and see where my character is at when it hits level 80.
UPDATE: the following is the build I’ve been preferring to play (RNG determines how effective your build is because I had a hard time getting the legendary aspect that has “Blizzard periodically spawns exploding ice spikes” since this also add extra AoE damage; I finally got an amulet with it that also has 23% movement speed on it – the ice spikes themselves do 1.3K damage but also helps with chilling/freezing mobs and aids in the entire chain reaction) while the movement speed increase is self-explanatory. This made a world of difference when it comes to clearing though mobs quickly (my entire Fallen Temple run was completed in 12.5 minutes) and just feeling overall more satisfying.
I still use Fire Bolt in my second enchantment slot (first is still Ice Shards) for the critical strike damage increase with the Devouring Blaze mastery skill passive (along with the Burning Instinct Paragon board). I’m still using Frost Bolt because I still don’t have enough CDR and resource reduction (I need this for boss fights).
The basic game play loop is Ice Armor and Frost Nova into a mob, then Blizzard and one tap of Ice Shard to add to the chain reaction (if elite/champion, just unload Ice Shards until out of resource). Two key aspects that are also required; Ice Shards pierce multiple times (but at reduced damage per) and chance for crowd control effects to pass on to nearby unaffected enemies (the higher the percent chance along with a high percentage of lucky hit chance, allows all of chill/freeze/vulnerability effects plus Ice Shards (per shard) proc chance to create this chain reaction (as the video shows) with its own shards and the ice spikes from Blizzard. Spikes will also occasionally shoot off Ice Armor (and works better if you use the aspect that allows Ice Armor to leave ice spikes behind; I had to sacrifice using that one for the time being).
I was able to move onto WT4 Helltides with this (where it wasn’t a constant struggle) as previously (when I first unlocked WT4, I was doing them on WT3, and then turning in the cinders on WT4). So I now need to find Ancestral replacements along with desirable properties to really bring the synergies together. But it’s finally fun playing my sorc (outside of Nightmare dungeons which is mostly unfun given how a lot of the modifiers are annoying/chain CC-fests where not even 3 sources of Unstoppable are enough). Thus I’m probably just going to do mostly T3 Nightmares to level up my glyphs, and stop doing them until they make them more rewarding from a drops perspective.
