Titan Quest Anniversary Edition

Titan Quest Anniversary Edition

32 ratings
IceSharding your way
By Spank me daddy
GUIDE to Storm's IceShard skill
RMB to Pwn
   
Award
Favorite
Favorited
Unfavorite
What's this about
This build use Ice Shard of the Storm Mastery, one of the best spaming skill in the game after Ternion
What's to expect about this build:
  • Cast Squall and hold RMB to Pwn.
  • Gatling gun level killing power.
  • Shine with great item, still strong with normal item.
  • Breeze through normal and early epic.
  • Kill them before they kill you later on
  • Super mana hog.
  • Kinda squishy depends on your item and second mastery.
Ice Shard 101
Skill Overview
http://titanquest.wikia.com/wiki/Ice_Shard
  • Fire up to 5~6 Shards of awesomeness
  • Hold RMB and pwn.
  • DO NOT carry on hit modifier like life leech, reduce hp ...
  • BURN THROUGH ♥♥♥♥ TON OF MANA.
What increase Ice Shard Power
  • Your resist: no point having all below stuff if bosses 1 hit you!
  • +% Casting Speed item: the skill power increase with CS, try to reach the cap of 300%.
  • +% Cold damage/ +% Elemental damage: Early on this will give you quite a boost.
  • +% INT: Later on try to replace +%Cold damage with this, every 50INT give +10% Elemental Damage
The Build
THE SKILLS
  • Ice Shard: Your main DPS/RMB (MAX everything in this tree)
  • Storm Nimbus/ Heart of Frost: MAX HOF and leave it (remember to turn it on)
  • Squall/ Obscured Visibility: Your main defensive/debuff ability, it's gonna save you from horde of archer and increase your DPS (try to MAX everything before Epic, Squall 1st)
    Note: Squall AOE is a bit bigger than it looks
  • Storm Surge: 1 point wonder for the 1.5s stuns.
  • Wisp/ Eye of the Storm:: MAX EoTS, boost your damage heavily WHENEVER IT CAST (you're at the mercy of AI)
  • Energy Shield: Not really worth your points and you have to recast it everytime.
  • Spell Breaker/ Spell Shock: Disable enemy's charging/ stuns skills in Epic/ Legendary, better to kill them first before they do it though (OPTIONAL)
HOW TO SKILLS
  • PRE Level 20[www.titancalc.com]: just bump storm tree, ignore secondary mastery.
    2 Mastery / 1 Skill per level.
    Rush and Max Torrent ASAP, 1 point in other skill.
  • After Level 20: Time to put skills into secondary masteries, don't really need to rush this
    1 Storm / 1 Mastery / 1 Secondary Mastery Skill
    Max Squall before Act 4 / Epic for safety reason
A MAXED STORM TREE[www.titancalc.com] <<<<

HOW TO STATS
  • HEALTH: put every bonus points from quest into this, around 20, help with the squishiness (OPTIONAL).
  • ENERGY: PLS NO.
  • STR: NONE, UNLESS you're a thane with 2 Persephone's Caress then 440.
  • DEX: you need maximum 173 dex, check with your masteries bonus, increase 3 INT : 1 DEX will do.
  • INT: The rest goes here, every 50 point increase your damage by 10% (from damage formula, every int counts).
Secondary Mastery
You only need to increase secondary mastery after level 20
WARFARE
  • Only for Dual Wielding the best axe in the game for icesharder, other skill are mostly useless.
  • It's worth the STR
DO NOT go this route if you dont have the axes yet
  • Persephone's Caress
    7% Chance for one of the following:
    8 second(s) of Mind Control
    2 ~ 3 second(s) of Stun
    +100% Cold Damage
    +100% Frostburn Damage
    70% Cold Resistance
    +110 Health
    +36 Dexterity
    +50.0 Health Regeneration per second
    +4% Absorption of Spell Energy
WARFARE SKILL RECOMEND[www.titancalc.com] <<<< LINK
More in Battle Standard if you have points to spare
NATURE
  • Plague and Heart of Oak complement this build greatly, wolves are optional.
  • Fix Squishiness problem
  • Tedious to cast Plague and Squall everytime
NATURE SKILL RECOMEND[www.titancalc.com] <<<< LINK
Wolves if you have points to spare, but they're not gonna do much unless you heavily invest in them
SPIRIT
  • Squishiest of them all
  • Doen't boost Iceshard damage
  • Able to Respec to Ternion if you find this build lacking
  • Strong, Durable Lichie King that spam -% Health skill, great boss killer (CAN'T HOLD AGGRO)
SPIRIT SKILL RECOMEND[www.titancalc.com] <<<<LINK
Death chill tree: doesn't do anything for your damage, just to save you you from charging melee (MAX THIS LAST)
Dark Covenant tree: Give you a bit ohmm when killing bosses, really risky though (SKIP if you dont like)
DREAM
  • Trance of Awesomeness that boost your Regen and Damage reduction
  • Boost survivability a bit
  • More crowd control (For the charger)
  • Trance of Wrath (OPTIONAL)
DREAM SKILL RECOMEND[www.titancalc.com]
Trance of Convalesence: Boost regen and DR heavily
Trance of Wrath: you could go this route for the Resist reduction, but it put you in melee range
Lucid Dream: Boost to total speed and defensive stat is nice.
Summon Nightmare: No one is gonna target this litte guy, we get this just for Hypno Gaze
Distort Reality: Great CC skill.
OTHER MASTERIES
Not much synergy, just dont
ITEMS
Suggestion on what you'd need:
  • +% Casting Speed (CS): increase your DPS
  • -% Energy Cost EC: Reduce Energy usage, stop the blue addiction.
  • +% Cold/ ELE Damage: Early on> %INT.
  • +% INT: Later on > %Cold.
  • + Skill item: Straightly increase damage per cast.
  • Resist item: no need for explaination.
  • + Projectiles Speed: nice to have, optional
Early game
  • 2 Cartouche Rings: Farm A2 Telkine - Give 18% ELE, 50% CS, 10% EC, best in slot early on
  • Green Staff +%Cold: Before you max Torrent/ have Cartouche, Shards spaming doesn't worth it, for normal attack.
  • Green Spellbound Amulet: 15% ELE -15% EC
  • Scepter of the Liche King + Chill of Tartarus 20% Cold bonus: -25% EC; Farm Abyssal Liche before A3 Telkine or A4 in some Tomb (unless you're lucky, not worth the time to farm)
  • Charm of the Magi Armlet: 50% CS, farm those satyr mages.
  • Green Armor + Golden Fleece for ez -21%EC, or any good armor you found.
  • Green ... of the Pegasus Legs + Hermes's Sandal: that give 19%ELE 15% Run speed 19% ELE Resist
  • Touch of the Fool Artifact: +30%CS -15% EC.
Later on
Suggest only
  • Heads: any good one you find, if it's green, socket with +1/2 Skill Shard of Erebus or 30% INT Cunning of Odysseus
  • Staff:
    • Dual Wield Persephone's Caress: THANE only, +200% Cold Damage 100HP/s, it's WORTH every STR spends.
    • Scepter of the Liche King + Chill of Tartarus 20% Cold bonus: -25% EC; Farm Abyssal Liche before A3 Telkine or A4 in some Tomb, Normal version for easier time.
    • Fingerbone of Boreas: BIS if you can reach 300% CS.
    • Geras' Walking Stick: Great Resist for bossing, -20% Run Speed make it annoying for normal uses
    • Staff of the Cosmos: Inferior to Boreas in damage but give +100% CS -30%EC.
  • Rings:
    • Cartouche if you still need the %CS and %EC
    • whatever good Epic / Leg you found
    • Green rings give huge % INT / socket with resist or 5% INT Code of Hammurabi
  • Armlet: good Green one or an Elementalist's Wrap
  • Amulet: a green Occult's that give 100% CS 10% ELE if you need, or what ever you like
  • Armor, Artifact, Leg: Idk about this, haven't found any thing great yet
CONSULT TQ DB FOR STATS
TQ-DB[www.tq-db.net]
11 Comments
gnoll 26 Sep, 2022 @ 3:52am 
Kinda funny reading through a whole guide just to realize that the OP is an idiot who can't make legend-grade builds xD
S p i r i t 16 Jul, 2019 @ 7:10am 
Thanks for this guide! Super useful!
Inocybe 17 Jun, 2019 @ 6:26am 
Nice guide ! I am playing an Ice shards build like this one (with nature as secondary mastery for plague and heart of oak) and i just finished epic difficulty easily (Maybe I died 2 times in total in act 4/5/atlantis). I think nature is the natural (lel) choice to complement an ice shards build, as you get plague (-50% elemental resistance), a high chance of -50 % spell cost, elemental resistance and a huge boost in health. I also find that the energy shield is on of the most important skill for farming epic typhon given that typhon main range attack is electricity-based. Typhon drop very nice legendary staff and clothing (the battlemage set is great, with lots of %resist, defensive ability, nice armor and casting speed).
Helion139 22 Apr, 2019 @ 2:04am 
You should update the guide and rune mastery to legendary class it has lots of synergies and can also dualwield like warfare
Somebody 5 Aug, 2017 @ 9:47pm 
For the legs I suggest Demonskin Walkers. It has great resists (40% elem, 60% poison, 60% pierce, 30% bleeding), +1 to all skills, +30 intelligence, +20% elemental damage and +20% movement.
Anoran 6 Jul, 2017 @ 6:07am 
Nice guide, but i dont like full Ice Shards build, every mage build that makes you stand in place to do damage isnt that great imo. But its still viable ofc.
Check out my guide for dream, especially "other masteries" part where i added mini guide on Prophet.
Spank me daddy  [author] 28 Oct, 2016 @ 7:42pm 
yep, this build is super squishy unless you have good armor later on
havent been able to bring her to legend yet because of hades 1 shot ..., just minor problem with draconian death lancer only
Algahzor 28 Oct, 2016 @ 10:03am 
Interesting build. I have played it myself back in the day, but the oriental Act remains bloody hard if you focus too much on one element, for 2 reasons: Resistance and Draconian Heroes that cast reflection (god I hate them)
asv-cw 23 Oct, 2016 @ 11:43am 
Does this build stay viable in act 4 Epic and Legendary?
Spank me daddy  [author] 23 Sep, 2016 @ 8:06pm 
actually, Dream regen and Lucid Dream tree would make it superior to Spirit, but Nightmare is just not on the same level with Liche King at all.
Gonna Update