Today, we have the Icy Shadow version 2. I’ve been having so much fun with this build and I’ve made a few changes that really make this build stand out.
We’ll be going over skills, play style, the skill tree, gear, and the Paragon Board.
Skills
The skills we’ll be using are Shadowstep, Dash, Twisting Blades, Shadow Imbuement, Smoke Grenade and Puncture with Combo Points as our specialization.
Smoke Grenade got a buff recently, going from 15% to 20% damage to enemies affected by it. And with the use of some aspects, this becomes an absolutely insane utility skill. Not only does it allow us to daze, it will freeze and give us a 43% damage multi that we can have up most of the time.
This build is on the squishier side. We want to take advantage of our Crowd Control and our Mobility to avoid getting hit too much. We do take up some defensive aspect slots with some utility aspects. But trust me, it is worth it.
When you’re diving into a large pack of Elites, use Dash and instantly drop your Smoke Grenade to daze and freeze, giving you plenty of time to finish them off. This way you can easily get a lot of Diablo 4 Gold.
Use Shadow Step when you get Crowd Control. Use Shadow Imbuement whenever it’s up. And use Dash to engage, reposition, and move around the map quickly.
Skill Tree
Onto our skill tree, starting off with Puncture. Pick up Fundamental Puncture.
Max out Twisting Blades with Advanced Twisting Blades.
Siphoning Strikes did get a nerf recently, making it on a Lucky Hit, instead of always on Critical Strikes. So, our sustain has gone down tremendously because of that. But because of how much Crowd Control we have in this build, it does make up for it.
Pick up Shadow Step with Disciplined Shadow Step.
Then we should pick up Weapon Mastery and then Dash with Methodical Dash.
Pick up Smoke Grenade with Countering Smoke Grenade, giving us huge cooldown decreases and having that up more often for more dazes and freezes.
We should put one point into Exploit and then three points into Malice.
We should put one into Shadow Imbuement with Mixed Shadow Imbuement.
Then, we should put three points into Precision Imbuement, three points into Frigid Finesse.
Go ahead and max out Alchemist’s Fortune, Second Wind, Innervation, Impetus and Haste.
Finally, put one point into Adrenaline Rush and Close Quarters Combat.
Now, I do want to note that you can pick up Victimize here. It is fun to play with, but Close Quarters Combat just feels better with the Attack Speed and that 30% increased damage to Crowd Control because we’re always crowd controlling. It’s just nice to have that up.
Also Read: Diablo 4: Why Necromancer Is The Most Powerful Class In Season 1? - Reasons And Some Analysis
Armor
Onto gear, stat priority, and aspects, start off with our armor.
For our helmet, go for Life, Armor percent, Cooldown Reduction, and either ranks to Shadow Imbuement or Basic Skill Attack Speed.
For our aspect, we’re using Frostbitten, giving us up to 25% increased Critical Strike Damage to Frozen enemies. And on top of that, it synergizes with Smoke Grenade, allowing it to also instantly freeze our targets. If you want to be more tanky, you can definitely swap Frostbitten out for Aspect of Might for some more damage reduction.
For our chestplate, look for Life, Damage Reduction, Damage Reduction from Close, and Armor percent with the Aspect of Explosive Verve. This just amplifies our Smoke Grenade and with the Lucky Hit cooldown, we have this Crowd Control Damage stem up very often.
For our gloves, get rings to Twisting Blades, Critical Strike Chance, Attack Speed and Lucky Hit chance. You can also go for Critical Strike Damage with Imbued Skills. But we don’t get much Lucky Hit anywhere else and we’re going to be using Icy Alchemist for the aspect. This got buffed in Season 1, giving us 25% chill instead of 20%, so we freeze a lot faster and more often.
For our pants, we want Life, Damage Reduction, Damage Reduction from Close, and Armor percent with the Aspect of Disobedience.
For our boots, we’re using Penitent Greaves. This is how we apply chill in order for Icy Alchemist to work.
Weapons
For our weapons on our crossbow, we want Critical Strike Damage, Vulnerable Damage, Dexterity, and Core Skill Damage with, of course, Bladedancer’s Aspect. By the way, In Diablo 4, some Diablo 4 Items are very difficult to obtain. If you encounter such difficulties, you may wish to visit D4gold.com. There will be professional players to help you.
For our weapons on one hand, we have Condemnation. The extra 20% to 40% multi-on Combo Points just can’t be beat here. And on the other hand, I am currently using Asheara’s Khanjar. The amount of Attack Speed and Lucky Hit we get from this weapon allows us to proc Icy Alchemist more often. And with more Attack Speed, we get more activations out of the imbuement heart.
With the nerf took Critical Strike Damage on swords, giving up 14% Critical Strike Damage for 30% close and more Attack Speed makes daggers a little better in my opinion.
So, if you are not wanting to use Asheara’s Khanjar, go ahead and pick up a dagger with Critical Strike Damage, Vulnerable Damage, Dexterity, Core Skill Damage and the Edgemaster’s Aspect. You will hit a lot harder with this, but you also lose a lot of Attack Speed.
Jewelry
Lastly, I want to talk about jewelry.
For our amulet, we need to have cooldown reduction and damage reduction. For our third roll, we have some options. Frigid Finesse is the best for clear and Malice is a good all-rounder for both clear and boss damage. And for the last roll, you want either Dexterity percent, Armor percent, or Movement Speed, depending on what you feel you’re lacking.
For the aspect, we’re using Aspect of Expectant for that 15 to 30% increased damage when we’re alternating between Puncture and Twisting Blades.
As for our rings, we want Life, Critical Strike Damage, Crit Strike Chance and Vulnerable Damage.
For the aspects with one ring, we want Accelerating Aspect and the other with the Aspect of Umbral for energy sustain. I would also recommend getting a third ring with Energizing Aspect. It doesn’t have to be perfect by any means, but our energy sustain feels really bad when we’re fighting bosses without it.
Gems & Hearts
For our gems, we want Rubies in our armor and Emeralds in our weapons.
At the moment, having the extra life feels better than running Topaz and with Shadow Step up so often, Topaz doesn’t feel super needed right now. And with Emeralds in our weapon, we have the extra Critical Strike Damage against Vulnerable Damage.
For the socket colors for the new Malignant Hearts, we want a Vicious, a Brutal and your last socket can be any color.
We’ll be using Tempting Fate for the huge crit damage boost. We’ll be using Revenge for the damage suppressed. This helps our survivability a lot and makes Smoke Grenade look super cool when we cast it. Lastly, we’ll be using the Vile Apothecary. With up to a 15% chance to attack with all imbuements and our insane attack speed, we can get Icy Alchemist to proc pretty reliably without even having Shadow Imbuement up.
Paragon Board
Lastly, we have our Paragon Boards.
The glyphs that we’re using are Closer, Combat, Chip, Turf, Control, and Exploit.
The legendary nodes that we pick up are Tricks of the Trade, Cheap Shot and Deadly Ambush. This is the reason why we Aspect of Explosive Verve on our chestplate. So, our Smoke Grenade also counts as a trap skill, giving us the 20% from Smoke Grenade and on top of that giving us another 22 and a half percent increase to our Critical Strike Damage, allowing Smoke Grenade to just be an insane damage stem.
Other than that, we pick up some Rare and Magic nodes around the board, giving us even more Critical Strike Damage and Vulnerable Damage.
