Ice Elemental Sorc

With the new buff to Ice Elementals, do you think it is possible to create a summoner build based on these, and also use Blade Spirits as tanks as well? Do Ice Elementals scale from everything minion, spell dmg %, cold pierce and energy factor now? If so, that seems like a lot of scalability for them.

What other element would you use? Fire for Firedance?

I will be starting one this afternoon so I just wanted to see if anyone had any feedback

Thanks

Wanted to try one too. I think fire is the choice fpr the 2nd element because of Fire Dance.

This doesn’t answer your question on elementals, but people gave me very good advice regarding fire/cold builds in this thread: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=46993

proletariat wrote:This doesn’t answer your question on elementals, but people gave me very good advice regarding fire/cold builds in this thread: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=46993

Thank you for the help! I recently started my sorc yesterday and got to 100. I switched to these skills:

Max - Ice Elemental
Max - Frigid Sphere (+life % for elementals)
Max - Shatter the Flesh (+phy dmg for elementals)
Max - Firedance
Max - Familiars
Max - Blade Spirits
Max - Witch Blood

It's a lot of skills currently so some aren't fully maxed, however it seems to be doing well right now. Hoping it can take hell on and the challenges.

Hey Circa! Just slapping up some of the questions from last night in case anybody out there has further responses. Hope this helps.

1. For minions, is it worth investing into Living Flame?
Does flat life from Living flame scale with %minion life? This got answered "no" last night, which if true means that living flame would be useless for minions (small +life/regen compared to minions huge life pools). You'd get better regen stacking Energy Factor (1% regen per 100 EF).

2. For minions, is it worth investing into Snow Queen?
How does %max life from Snow Queen interact with %minion life? If this is multiplicative, then awesome, but I imagine it's additive. If it's additive, then 30% max life is negligible for minions when you get can %300 minion life from gear. Also, since minions have no significant TCD boosts, the 25k defense from Snow Queen would be pretty pointless endgame.

3. Does Witchblood reward skill apply for ice elementals?
I would think it does, but the tooltip only shows physical damage which shouldn't scale with spell damage anyways.

And also, here's the patch note update for ice elementals as a quick reference for anyone.

ICE ELEMENTALS:
- Minion cap is now 5 and requires Base Level 8
- Life increased by 100%, attack rating increased by 33%
- Increased attack speed and hit recovery
- Now have 3% Chance to Cast Level 6/20/40 Glacial Nova on attack, up from 1% Chance to Cast Level 6
- Now have a 20% Chance to Cast Level 10/30/60 Ice Lance on attack
- Now inherit your cold spell damage, cold pierce, energy and energy factor
- Now regenerate life based on your energy factor (1% regen per second per 100 EF)
- Aura no longer gives minion damage and cold resistance
- Aura now increases your total defense by 20%
- Aura now adds 25% of your minion damage as bonus cold spell damage (up to 100% extra)

I am playing Fire/Cold Sorc with Ice Elementals and i am just going through Nightmare A3 for now. 85 lvl while writing this post. Ice Elementals are average useful, they mostly tank but dont deal much dmg, however i dont have yet any decent %life minion and %dmg items.

Drop quality looks very poor on TSW. In single player it was better i think.

I will update you guys when i will reach Hell and do some ubers, we will see how this Sorc will work.