Originally Posted by
drgrimmy
I think it's a good build, with most mages using a very similar build with minor differences as described above. A couple other points I have noticed:
The aoe upgrade of frost is not very useful. If you charge frost without this upgrade one of two things will happen:
1) When at a distance from a mob the main target will be frozen and mobs next to the target will be slowed. The main target takes impact damage and dot. The slowed mobs also take dot but not the impact damage.
2) If right next to a mob, the whole mob will be frozen. Again the main target will take impact damage and dot. The other frozen mobs will again also take dot.
So what does the aoe upgrade do? When it activates 20% of the all affected mobs take impact damage but importantly less so than the main target. Furthermore, the size of the aoe is relatively small. I am not really sure this upgrade is really that useful as the proc is low at 20% and the added damage is low. The best parts of frost in my opinion (high single target damage and aoe crowd control) are the same whether or not you get this still upgrade.
Electrical Dischage... you may ask if I don't like the aoe upgrade of frost why would I like this seemingly useless upgrade. I too thought this upgrade was worthless until I tried it. It probably is pretty useless for elite runs, but it works great for tomb runs. For tomb runs switch to a fire, frost, light and time build and turn into a real mob killer. Against enemies with low health, lightening almost always kills them so the proc of this upgrade happens pretty often. Just make sure you charge it when fighting mobs to make sure it procs more often (I think 40% instead of 25%). When it does proc, it had a very large aoe and does massive damage pretty much killing a whole mob instantly. You won't believe it until you try it, because I know I didn't. I recommend you try it with the current free respec weekend!