Rating
+33

[2.2] Icy Strike - Cold N6 (55+ Solo)

by last updated May 6, 2015 ( Patch 2.2 )
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Skills

  • Evasive Fire Focus
  • Preparation Focused Mind
  • Companion Wolf Companion
  • Strafe Icy Trail
  • Smoke Screen Displacement
  • Rain of Vengeance Flying Strike
  • Night Stalker
  • Cull the Weak
  • Awareness
  • Archery

Items

More Details

  • Legendary Gems

    • Gogok of Swiftness
    • Bane of the Trapped
    • Taeguk

CDR on every slot but amulet, you should have ~54% without and ~61% with Gogok, which lets you do a clean Strafe - Evasive Fire - Strafe - Evasive Fire - Strafe - RoV cycle (2 generator casts). Ancient Parthan Defenders can be good sometimes, however they don't seem to work as well as with Barbarians or Wizards in the past. I'm still exploring the possibilites of a tanky DH, but it seems either bugged or unreliable at the very least and I couldn't find a reason for that yet, so I recommend to just go full glass cannon once you aim to push into the high 50's and 60's. Put your strongest weapon in your mainhand (left slot), since RoV and CR will only use this one for their damage calculations. You can even reroll the damage range on your offhand to another stat (hatred regen / bonus to elites) if you want to.

Paragon Priorities

Core

Movement Speed
Primary Stat
Vitality
Maximum Resource

Offense

Cooldown Reduction
Attack Speed
Critical Hit Chance
Critical Hit Damage

Defense

Resist All
Life
Armor
Life Regeneration

Utility

Resource Cost Reduction
Area Damage
Life on Hit
Gold Find

Core: Movement speed cap, rest to Dexterity

Offense: CDR is the most important stat. After that, 4.6% IAS for the Strafe breakpoint, then the crits.

Defense: Allres, Life, Armor

Utility: RCR, AD, LoH

Build Guide

Work still in progress, but you can find most useful information in the Advanced Natalya guide for 2.2, created by Bonerfleximus.

While there don't seem to be many DHs around that actually play cold and just decided to follow the fire RoV meta, I was experimenting with it a little and found that it might actually be about equally as strong, maybe even stronger at the high end. It's really interesting because back on the PTR, everyone was running cold, however after the bugfix no one played it anymore and fire was the new way to go. Cold feels a lot more smooth to play and does not depend on RNG as much as other DH builds in the past or the fire variation of Natalya, since you can clear good and bad rifts alike and should not have too much trouble with almost any rift guardian.

I was trying out different item and skill combinations and found this one to work the best for now, however it is still a work in progress, and I already have some ideas that I want to try out next time. I used about 25 keys on tier 58, 6 of which were kind of close tries at ~1-2 min overtime, so the build is working pretty well and consistently (keep in mind I have no practice with Natalya solo rifts yet). If we consider that the current R1 on nonseason has cleared 62 solo, I think cold has pretty much the same potential (let's assume +1 tier for the remaining time, Stonesinger, Unburieds, a fourth pylon, respectively, and maybe another +1-2 for less skipping, better gameplay and the lack of dps with my current items and paragon, we're at 62+ as well). Also, I had about ~0.5% too little CDR, which had me waiting ~50-100ms to cast my RoV again everytime I perfectly executed a full cycle.

I was trying out different item and skill combinations and found this one to work the best for now, however it is still a work in progress, and I already have some ideas that I want to try out next time. I used about 25 keys on tier 58, 6 of which were kind of close tries at ~1-2 min overtime, so the build is working pretty well and consistently.

I was running with ~54% CDR without and ~61% with Gogok, which ensures almost infinite discipline via Focused Mind and almost perma wolf uptime, as well as a clean 2 generator cycle with Strafe - Evasive Fire - Strafe - Evasive Fire - Strafe - RoV. I'm not yet decided on Gogok though, ~54% CDR is pretty much exactly what you get with perfect rolls on everything but amulet, which would require you to get a double tick on Strafe only once and still keep a clean 2 generator cycle, or making use of even more double ticks would enable you to drop even more CDR in favor of better dps while only slightly decreasing your RoV frequency. The Ancient Parthan Defenders are a nice bonus but they really don't do much at tier ~60 anymore, even with 30m toughness and 10 frozen enemies. Not sure if they are bugged or anything, but I got oneshot very often even in perfect scnenarios, and I feel going for a glass cannon setup will ultimately be the way to go. This would also let you reach the 2.14 breakpoint without a Gogok (15 dual wield, 9.6 paragon, 3 enchantress, 7 Steady Strikers = 34.6% IAS). I was missing a full 10% RCR on my weapon and if needed you could also reroll the damage range to hatred regen as well, which could be enough to self-sustain the hatred without a templar or regen skill. For lower tiers you can get really tanky with Taeguk + Ancient Parthan Defenders and maybe even Perfectionist if you want to. If you have a Hellfire, I recommend Single Out or Ambush. RG fights become very long in the high 50's, however for ultimate rift fishing Single Out is not needed (Stonesinger).

There are a couple of differences to the fire RoV:

  • Icy Trail actually contributes a little to your dps in AoE situations.
  • You can more aggressively move through the rift and pull more monsters if you time your Smoke Screen and Flying Strike correctly.
  • You won't knockback enemies out of your screen or your RoV AoE, which makes it a lot easier to control them. Also, you will not lose out on big chunks of your RoV damage.
  • Bad monster types can more easily be dealt with. Even in Anarch / Assassins / Ghost maps I was consistently getting decent results as long as I didn't get completely screwed over by hordes of nasty elites. The biggest pain are Lacunis because you cannot stun them mid-air, and at some point they will jump at you during Smoke Screen downtime.
  • You can more easily stack up the monsters in the AoE of your casts, since they will close in and finally get stuck in the freeze, while with Stampede you will scatter them everywhere if you don't have an obstacle nearby.
  • Ess of Johan procs from your follower are free instakills on almost anything. I've tried to use one myself for a bit but the proc coefficients seem too low unless you have a godlike roll.
  • You can permafreeze elites for ~6-7 seconds and then move on, pull more, and go back once the diminishing returns have refreshed, thus you have to kite offscreen a lot less even on dangerous packs.

I will explore more of cold RoV once I have some more time to play, and I definitely intend to push cold to tier 62 by the end of the season.