Frost maiden / ice bowazon guide?

I did a quick search of forum posts and couldn’t find one. Anyone know if there’s one I missed?

I looked on the maxroll website and I’d say their guide was lacking… i also tried the set-up bowa used on YouTube, but i still haven’t found a

Circlet with 3os and a useful other mod… wa wa

This is all coming from me just randomly playing my frostmaiden and trying to fix the mana sustainment issues. I swapped my Hustle pre-buff for CTA & Spirit, and my Enigma for fort and it worked, but now I’m wondering if there’s even better set-ups?

Next i think I’ll try a cold socketed arkain’s valor or Chains of Honor with an act 5

Frenzy merc with a low armor Hustle (Infinity merc’s

Conviction doesn’t really add that much -en resistance compared to

Lower Resist), Last Wish or Plague and Lawbringer (i wanna leach from the undead!).

I used maxroll's sunder build and bowa's build as my starting references for the one I made two ladders ago. For mana sustain, I run silkweaves, valk wing, and a nice mana leech ring

I after some trial and error, I ended up with an Ice bow, but investing heavily into

Strafe synergies and any remaining points into

Strafe. With your nice mana leech ring,

Strafe can quickly refill your mana

I was also running hit power 2/20 gloves, which gives you this incredible safety net, where you quickly knock back any scary super fast monsters with

Strafe that try to surround you

Something to try, I found it a lot of fun

For a budget version the M'avina set works too if you find it.

I think i settled on the best set-up for me:

Mist in a matriarcal bow, Hustle on swap, nightwings with cold facet, arkaine’s valor with a cold facet, nosferatu’s coil, dual leach rings, 3/20 gloves and silkweaves.

Does plenty of physical damage for leeching, 100%

Pierce from Mist frees up the

Belt for nosteratu’s coil - which is sweet, ias, mana/kill, slows target?! Wow.

And arkaine’s valor, wow im not usually into the aesthetics, but that’s some nice looking armor!

Pack is full of skillers and bottom is all res/lifers

For attributes its enough strength to wear everything, enough vitality to get to 1100 life, enough into mana to get to 500, and all else in dex.

Skills i maxed out the cold

Arrows, the 1 point wonders (less

Pierce, haha), maxed the

Valkyrie, then maxed out

Guided Arrow and the rest into

Strafe.

Merc is act 2 might, with Infinity, efort and eandys

So with this step-up i can do Chaos p7 at decent speed, and my speed at p7 cows is limited to my ability to sift through the loot, and now im not constantly chugging mana pots so it’s ticks all my boxes!

It’s a bit slower in other places, but for me the frostmaiden is just fun to kill cows with

FA with max synergy.

Strafe as back up but primary is FA with a good

Pierce level.

No meat survives only H2O and then..nothing.

I play mine with an Ice

Matriarchal Bow, CoH, Nightwing with 15ias/15res jewel, 20 ias 2 bow gloves and Highlord's which leaves me at 8 fpa. And don't miss out on a Ravenfrost, it's ideal for this build. I tried to sustain mana on my own at first, but life became much easier once I embraced Insight on Emilio and ditched Infinity. Damage per shot is less, but I spam FA without a care in the world. Resists are so high with CoH and tri-res

Boots that I carry a

Cold Rupture without concern.

Strafe with

Guided Arrow synergy to clean up mobs that are far apart. No valk, no

Decoy. Just blasts of Ice all over and remaining skill points into

Penetrate (along with 1 pt in

Pierce and Crit Strike).

i'm on a similar vein as Maldoror above.

No need for Infinity with a Sunder.
Ice spams Frost Novas like no tomorrow, both with

Strafe and with FA (this is why

Pierce is important, for the increase CTC.)

With the 3-in-1 Insight + Cure +

Prayer Merc combo it's hard to go to another.

Btw this is only the second Zon build I've made since D2R's release and it's shockingly fun. Lots of gear buildouts and extremely high damage output.

Some of the good guides are unavailable after diabloii.net went down (RIP), but here is one for a fun magezon build: https://forums.d2jsp.org/topic.php?t=84784848&v=1

20-1-20 hard pts in cold

Arrows, 6 pts to open dodges and crit/

Pierce, 20 immolation, 20 explosive, the rest is optional. Freeze what isn't cold-immune, burn what is.

For additional versatility, you can just swap to Phoenix bow where it feels better - it's slower, but burns them nicely, and solves all mana problems at once. My bowa keeps one stashed, it helps me regularly.

Gear is simple: Enigma, decent nightwing, mara, proper bow glova, ravenfrost. The rest can be carrion ring (leech, poison res, extra

Twister controls), or good rare ring, or just soj. Nosfer is good

Belt for the cause, but i prefer arach.

Boots are optional - some 3res if res are poor, travs for mf, or silkweaves for mana, or even aldur boot.

99% except Champs / Uniques / Super Uniques freeze for X amount of secs.

With cold sunder no need to spend any points in the Fire line.

Take a look at this guide

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/d2r/t ... ide/164154

8 frames attack speed,

Freezing Arrow lvl 45, 93% piercing and no lacking mana.

I think the secret for this build is spending points on energy, so you can build your items for more attack speed, damage and resistances.

Although I ended up with full Mavina set, and the fact I'm not playing on high players count still didn't meet many if any problems. However my build is dual one fire/cold, and on top of that I don't even use Infinity.

On the other hand I had in mind to mainly to make a Frost one and Fire part to be just a support but ended pretty much on equal terms (even tho I'm usually spamming cold much more/often). The only problem I had and experienced is somewhat 'short' mana pool with pretty high spendings which leads to drinking mana pots most of the time but hey I'm used to it at this point... Later on I tried switching Act 5 Merc for Act 2 with Insight and I'm reeeeeally torn apart between those two -- the advantages and penalties to both are negating themselves (they both work and both don't work at the same time in different aspects).

I also experimented with having both Sunder charms and having only one (and also while lvling up with none), leveling up was a bit odd and from time to time slow but it's still fine-ish. Didn't notice significant difference between having both Sunders and having only one, it is multi build after all and IMHO not worth tanking multi res for purpose of having everything broken.

Last but not least, I had unimaginatively juicy huge amount of fun with it. Definitely didn't even cross my mind that kind of build could mash with me so well but it did and I'm glad I played with it. Ofc there is always room for improvements (in gear department) but with what I played I was extremely satisfied. I also personally think that is one of those builds where you can easily drop a lot of gear and it can still remain awesome!

Have fun mixing and building

This build is COLD.

And for those who arn't receptive to the idea of freezing up packs hearing them break into icy chunks...what are ya waiting for?

Of course the BIS items would take more than some effort to accumulate.

But M'avina's Battle Hymn is made for the FA zon. With decent MF to boot from a complete set.

For P1-P3..completely viable. If you solo in P1 this is a Walk in the icepark. *cough*

Just remember to have a

Teleport amulet or

Naj's Puzzler on swop.

I did a lot of work with it, did on two different seasons of d2r ladder.
Ice in a mat bow + faceted nightwings + armor with 3 facets and 15 ias jewel(can put 15 ias and res). 3/20 gloves, or 2/20 with res. highlords,

Razortail. Dual leech + leech rings.

Silkweave

Boots.
This is big damage making you able to do cows in p8, but not java speed. I found I liked better to

Teleport with Enigma and farm areas like swampty pit and wsk levels 2+3 where there is density but lower health pools, also not much cold immunes.
Mana comes from physical mana leech, so %steal and actual damage matters a lot. That's why I put a lot of points in

Critical Strike.
Might+infinty merc. Might is very helpful for leeching.