Cryomancer

Cryomancer
https://sites.google.com/site/treeoftricks/ (not available yet) preview pastebin


Cryomancers use ice magic to achieve offense, defense, and crowd control. They contribute to groups with a blizzard of potent control spells. They can't do as much damage as Pyromancers, but still pack enough to put foes on ice, especially when paired with Psychokino for the Ice Wall/Psychic Pressure combination. Their control spells work well in combination with high rank damage dealing classes. Circle 1 is sufficient for the Psychokino combination (you may rely on +skill items such as Audra and a monster gem), but circle 3 is where the class really gets rolling. Multi-target attacks facilitate killing dense avalanches of mobs, although single target killing speed is chilled due to long cooldowns. Specialized Cryomancers can act as pullers fighting on the front lines in groups, or as support for another puller.

Circle 1 Cryomancers max out Ice Pike and Ice Wall, and put 4 or 5 points in Ice Bolt. Ice Blast is weak and often skipped, but you can take one point if you want to, since the difference between level 4 and level 5 Ice Bolt is small.

Circle 2 Cryomancers should advance to circle 3. You might come up with a niche build that doesn't have room for circle 3, but you'll be making big sacrifices.

Circle 3 Cryomancers max out Snow Rolling and Frost Pillar. Gust gets one and only one point. Ice Bolt gets between 1 and 5 points, with 3 being a good balance against PvE monsters. It's used for freezing enemies as a form of crowd control, since Ice Bolt's damage doesn't scale well, and more points allow you to cast level 1 Ice Bolt more quickly. Ice Pike is the primary attack spell. It's frequently maxed out, but Subzero Shield users may not have enough points to go around. Ice Wall needs a minimum of 7 or 8 points, but more is better. The big choice is whether to raise Subzero Shield or spend the remaining points putting the icing on Ice Wall and Ice Pike. Subzero Shield is mainly popular with PvP players, and if you choose to invest in it, you should raise it high.

Cryomancers focus their stat points on Intelligence and Constitution. Intelligence is the choice for PvE damage dealing, and Constitution provides survivability against strong enemies and PvP opponents. Cryomancers get up close to use Snow Rolling, Ice Pike, and Gust, so they should take more Constitution than long-range Wizards. PvP players will need large amounts of HP. Cryomancers may choose to get a little Spirit, especially for a jump start at low levels when their high SP costs can eat up the SP pool quickly, but Alchemist potions provide enough at high levels.

Attributes:
Rod Mastery: Ice: Adds 3 Ice property damage (not a separate line) per level while using a rod. Maximum 3 levels. Rods are the weapons of choice once you get access to offhand daggers with elemental damage. You might also use the Ice Rod (which increases all Cryomancer skill levels by 1) with a shield before that, but a new Cryomancer will probably use a staff in the beginning.
Cryomancer: Freeze Specialty: Enemies you freeze will receive 10% more damage from Lightning property attacks. Maximum 5 levels for 50% damage. Although you might not have lightning attacks, this is a cheap and powerful attribute worth raising early on, especially if you group with a Krivis.
Shield Mastery: Enchant: Increases magic defense and ice resistance by 25% of your shield's defense stat per level. Maximum 5 levels. Shields can be a bit helpful when you want to focus on defense, but most of the time you'll be using an offhand dagger with elemental damage instead.



Skills


Circle 1
Ice Bolt: Fire a blast of magical ice at an enemy. Ice Bolt hits twice (although the second hit is somewhat weaker) and hits other enemies in a small area of effect. It has a chance to freeze the target, which can be increased with an attribute to about 70%. Bosses can't be frozen. You can move while charging the spell.

If Ice Bolt's level is increased, the casting time remains the same and you can cast lower ranks by releasing the spell early, so Cryomancers who want to freeze things quickly may put a few more points into the skill and cast the level 1 version. Level 3, which allows casting level 1 in 1/3 of a second, is sufficient against PvE enemies. PvPers may choose to experiment before deciding on a level since their playstyles determine the amount of speed needed. The increase in base damage provided by extra levels in Ice Bolt becomes unimportant at high levels, so don't invest more points than you need for casting speed.

Attributes:
Ice Bolt: Enhance: Increases Ice Bolt's damage by 1% per level. Maximum 100 levels.
Ice Bolt: Chance of Freeze: Increases the chance of freezing the target by 10% per level. Maximum 5 levels.

Damage: 121 plus 31 per additional skill level, Ice type
SP cost: 23 plus 3 per additional skill level
Freeze duration: 5 seconds
Casting time: 1 second
Cooldown: 15 seconds, 3 overheat charges

Ice Pike: Unleash a torrent of icicles bursting from the ground to damage enemies in the area of effect. Ice Pike is a Cryomancer's main attack, dealing substantial damage and hitting enemies once for each section of the pike they touch (typically dealing 4 hits to a boss or 2-3 to a smaller enemy), and covering a line long enough to impale a group of mobs. Ice Pike has a high chance to freeze each target hit. Bosses can't be frozen. Distance yourself so that the enemy will be in the center of the pike for maximum damage. Ice Pike is instant and has a larger area of effect, so it can be more effective at freezing things than Ice Bolt. Max out this skill if you have enough points (which you probably will if you aren't taking Subzero Shield).

Attributes:
Ice Pike: Enhance: Increases Ice Pike's damage by 1% per level. Maximum 100 levels.

Damage: 158 plus 53 per additional skill level, Ice type
SP cost: 28 plus 4 per additional skill level
Freeze duration: 5 seconds
Casting time: Nearly instant
Cooldown: 20 seconds, 2 overheat charges

Ice Wall: Summon a wall of ice to damage enemies or create a blockade. Ice walls consist of multiple segments, each of which has its own HP, blocks the area it's placed on, damages and freezes enemies who touch it, and fires deadly shards of ice when struck with a melee c-key attack or an ability that triggers it, such as Psychokino's Psychic Pressure or Monk's Energy Blast. Three shards are fired from each hit in a cone pattern, and each deals your autoattack damage (updated in real time if you change equipment or stats, and your stats are used when someone else hits the wall). Shards will fly in the direction you are facing, even if the shards were fired by another player, so you can direct your party's fire without requiring them to face the right direction. You can customize the wall's shape by continuing to cast it while selecting tiles, or you can instantly release a wall in a straight line in front of yourself.

You must have an appropriate weapon to use the melee c attack, such as a staff or an offhand dagger. Rods can't melee on their own. Summoned minions won't trigger shards when they attack the wall.

Higher skill levels allow you to place more segments and increase the HP and contact damage of each segment. A level 1 Ice Wall segment breaks after 4 hits and only fires shards from the first 3. Each additional level adds 2 extra hits. Skill level 1 gives you 2 segments, and each additional level adds 1 more.

A Psychokino can deal enormous amounts of damage with the Psychic Pressure/Ice Wall combination, so this is a very popular boss-killing build. You can also trap a Pyromancer's Fireball with an Ice Wall and cast Psychic Pressure on it to spray fire sparks as well as ice shards (Fireballs normally move when hit, but they can't move when held by walls).

Normal enemies will tend to avoid touching a wall while walking along it, but large bosses skewered by walls can take damage from each section. Run bosses up and down an Ice Wall while firing shards at them for high damage. Use custom wall shapes to create wide walls or prisons to trap enemies. You can surround yourself with a wall and fire shards from it, trap an enemy inside a prison and fire shards into it, or use Psychokino's Swap to move an enemy inside. You can also trap other players and block off passages, even in cities.

Ice Walls placed under stationary objects can lift them even if they normally can't be moved. For example, when the quest to talk to Goddess Saule is bugged and players can't enter the barrier, Cryomancers can use Ice Walls to give bugged players enough time to talk to Saule after teleporting.

Attributes:
Ice Wall: Cryorite: (Requires level 3 Ice Wall to unlock) Adds a 1% chance per level for cryorite to drop when an Ice Wall segment disappears. Maximum 5 levels. Cryorite is useless.

Damage: 102 plus 35 per additional skill level, Ice type
SP cost: 39 plus 5 per additional skill level
Freeze duration: 5 seconds
Wall duration: 15 seconds
Casting time: Nearly instant
Cooldown: 65 seconds, no overheat

Ice Blast: Detonate a frozen enemy to damage it and nearby frozen enemies. This instant attack deals an unimpressive amount of damage and unfreezes the enemies. It's a weak skill which many Cryomancers skip entirely. Some take it for the finger snapping animation or to aggro enemies by using it on them when they're not frozen, which has no effect other than aggroing them.

Attributes:
Ice Blast: Enhance: Increases Ice Blast damage by 1% per level. Maximum 100 levels.

Damage: 149 plus 46 per additional skill level, Ice type
SP cost: 23 plus 3 per additional skill level
Casting time: Nearly instant
Cooldown: 20 seconds, 3 overheat charges

Circle 2
Subzero Shield: Surround yourself with an icy barrier which has a chance to reduce the damage of enemy attacks, deal damage to the attacker, and freeze them. It even works against ranged attacks, including magic. Subzero Shield's damage benefits from your magic attack and items that add elemental damage.

Attributes:
Subzero Shield: Duration: Increases the freeze duration by 0.5 seconds per level. Maximum 5 levels.
Subzero Shield: Counterattack Enhance: If you're wearing a shield, Subzero Shield's damage is increased based on your shield's defense. Counterattack damage increases by 50% per attribute level. Maximum 4 levels.

Damage: Depends on the incoming hits and your stats. For example, with no attributes enabled, Loftlems in the Great Cathedral took 109 damage while doing normal attacks, 240 while casting Ice Pike, and 370 when an Arde Dagger was equipped.
SP cost: 27 plus 4 per additional skill level
Duration: 18 seconds plus 3 per additional skill level
Freeze duration: 3 seconds (Up to 5.5 with the attribute)
Freeze chance: 15% plus 5% per additional skill level
Casting time: Nearly instant
Cooldown: 45 seconds, no overheat

Gust: Blast enemies with freezing air. Gust is an instant attack which deals damage to frozen enemies (but unfreezes them) and pushes non-frozen enemies backwards a short distance. Its attribute for collision damage is the real meat of the spell: It turns Gust into a general-purpose 2-3 hit damage dealer. Each hit deals full damage (unlike the closed beta version). Gust covers a slightly smaller area than Ice Pike, and deals much less damage, but works similarly as a close range AoE attack, and can be used to hit enemies after freezing them with Ice Pike. Putting one skill point in Gust is mandatory, but it's weaker and scales more slowly than other offensive Cryomancer abilities, so you'll never have a reason to put more than one point into it.

You can use Gust to push enemies into your Ice Wall or kite them. In closed beta, gust pushed all kinds of objects back, including barriers meant to be obstacles in quests. This was nerfed after it lead to hilarious exploitation.

Attributes:
Gust: Collision Damage: Gust damages unfrozen enemies, dealing 2 hits, while frozen enemies receive 3 hits.

Damage: 130 plus 40 per additional skill level, Ice type
SP cost: 30 plus 5 per additional skill level
Casting time: Nearly instant
Cooldown: 20 seconds, 2 overheat charges

Circle 3
Snow Rolling: Build an enormous snowball and ride on top of it to roll over enemies and trap them inside the snowball. This silly-looking skill is as fun to use as it seems, but the damage is no joke, and it can pick up a large number of enemies. It deals damage to trapped enemies through a large number of hits over the course of the rolling. Due to its long duration, the single target DPS is mediocre, but it's an SP-efficient way to damage bosses (who are immune to being picked up) while waiting for other cooldowns. The snowball's real purpose is AoE, and it can easily mop up a swarm of adds while damaging a boss, or clear out a room full of mobs. Trapped enemies can be damaged by party members while they're inside the snowball, and you can pick up a Pyromancer's Fireball to further damage them. Close-range damage spells such as Necromancer's Flesh Hoop also hit them. You can use the snowball to drag enemies around, pull them into a party member's AoE magic circle, position them in a Sorcerer's Temple Shooter's line of fire, or even drag them away from would-be kill stealers. Surely you wouldn't use such power to steal kills yourself.

Use the keyboard's movement keys to control the snowball even if you're in mouse mode. The snowball can get stuck on terrain, and it can be used to pull yourself to the ground if you're stuck in midair. This is a melee ability, so expect to take a lot of hits in the process of picking up enemies. Some enemies can use skills while trapped, and the snowball will break apart immediately if they explode or use a knockback ability. If the snowball ends, enemies will be dropped to the ground or sprayed in all directions if there's too many to fit in one place. In groups, consider using a Frost Pillar to regroup sprayed enemies, using Snow Rolling when the mobs are likely to die before it ends, or using it to gather mobs which were spread out to begin with.

Attributes:
Snow Rolling: Enhance: Increases Snow Rolling's damage by 1% per level. Maximum 100 levels.

Damage: 222 plus 59 per additional skill level, Ice type
Duration: 4 seconds plus 1 second per additional skill level
AoE attack ratio: 6 plus 1 per additional skill level
SP cost: 32 plus 7 per additional skill level
Cooldown: 68 seconds, no overheat

Frost Pillar: Create an icy tree which sucks in enemies and has a chance to freeze them. The tree periodically pulls enemies towards itself in quick pulses. The pull is quick and powerful, and covers most of the screen, but enemies can run away between pulses. In earlier versions of the game it was difficult for enemies to escape, but now the tree is weaker, so even slow enemies can get free and attack you while the tree is active. The chance to freeze is small, so enemies are unlikely to be frozen right away, but they'll tend to freeze over the course of a level 5 Frost Pillar's duration. Frost Pillar does no damage. The casting time is nearly instant, so you can use it while under fire, and the tree is placed with a targeting circle like that of Lethargy and Sleep. All Cryomancer 3's should max out this skill.

The large range of the pull makes this spell very effective for grouping enemies up in dungeons. A Cryomancer can serve as a group's primary puller by using Frost Pillar and Snow Rolling strategicaly, although their long cooldowns can be troublesome. Frost Pillar can also be used to support another puller, such as a Peltasta with Swashbuckling: The tree provides sustained control, damage prevention, and a way to catch stragglers, so it's very popular with groups. You can place it on AoE magic circles to suck monsters into the kill zone or use it to pull attackers off of vulnerable allies.

This skill works against PvP opponents and can't be prevented by Bloodletting.

Damage: None
Duration: 6 seconds plus 1 second per additional skill level
SP cost: 35 plus 6 per additional skill level
Cooldown: 49 seconds, no overheat


Mechanics

Freezing is a status effect which prevents the target from taking action and does not break on damage, but is broken by certain skills like Ice Blast and Gust. It can be prevented by dispeller scrolls and some player skills in PvP. Freeze durations are shorter in the PvP arena because Cryomancers were shattering everyone.


Tips

The Ice Rod and the staff Audra increase Cryomancer skill levels. They're quite powerful and can be swapped to before casting certain spells, such as Ice Wall, to go beyond your usual skill limits.

Ice Walls can hold items in place or displace things that normally can't be moved. For example, when the quest to talk to Goddess Saule is bugged and players can't enter the barrier, Cryomancers can use Ice Walls to give bugged players enough time to talk to Saule after teleporting.


Trivia

The term "cryomancer" was formed by combining the prefix cryo- (indicating cold, freezing, or frost, a Latinized form of the Greek kryos) with the suffix -mancer. The suffix is a form of -mancy, which means "divination" and is derived from the Old French -mancie, from Latin -mantia, from Greek -manteia, from mantis, the Greek word for a seer, prophet, or soothsayer. Although -mancy refers to divination, the practice of predicting the future or gaining hidden knowledge through occult or supernatural means, it has become common for games and popular culture to use -mancy for all manner of spellcasting. Although the Cryomancer Master encourages his students to be disciplined and rational, they will not stop attacking you if you point out that they should only use their powers for divination.

Cryomancers and Pyromancers are tsundere for each other.

Cryomancers like puns.