Celtic Heroes

I want to love ice build but the sheer lack of damage given the slow speed makes it impossible. I know I'm exaggerating but I've come to a point where I feel a 1000 focus mage with 50 shards does less damage than a 500 focus mage with 40 bolt in a single shot.
Love is hard.

Its actually a popular build on my world. I'm sorry it's not working out for you but since you didn't clarify an amount of time and only said 'in a single shot'. I can assure you 1000 focus level50 shards will most certainly do more damage then 500 focus level 40 bolt. Instead of complaining about it why don't you just be a fire mage instead?

U didnt specify if ur shards is 50/40 or what. U seem to have some issues but by not stating ur setup makes it hard to determine what ur doing wrong. Ice mage is op and u seem to be the exception.

This should probably be moved to the mage forums.

Clearly not everyone likes ice builds but to think it's useless indicates there is something else wrong. For me the best part of being a mage is I can just respec and be a completely different play style. Today I killed allknowing with freeze. No I didn't need to but it's still fun!

I still prefer fire I will go back to it shortly. However I wanted to try a few bosses out with ice before I do.

I think he meant if you cast ice shards that is 1000 focus and 40/35 to a firebolt that is 40/35 500 focus and only cast those skills without any other damage skills, f ire would win. I have been fire all my life but I see how slow ice is and I say Fire Mage is best build. I saw the cooldown for ice shards and if I miss I can just imagine my frustration.

I think he meant if you cast ice shards that is 1000 focus and 40/35 to a firebolt that is 40/35 500 focus and only cast those skills without any other damage skills, f ire would win. I have been fire all my life but I see how slow ice is and I say Fire Mage is best build. I saw the cooldown for ice shards and if I miss I can just imagine my frustration.

He said in a single shot :p

A single shot is meaningless. Assassinate does tons of damage in one shot but it's CD is so long it has limited applications, the dps isn't op. Further you can only use it in limited situations making it so so to not good for many things.

Dps in the short term for locking and long term for bossing/leveling is far more important.

Fire and ice are roughly equal, the gear you have and the boss or mobs you are trying to kill make a far bigger difference. IMO ice used to have a small edge but now with fireball instant cast I think fire has a small edge.

If your shards at 40 are doing less damage than someone's fireball at half focus and 40 points then either you have terrible gear and they have pro gear, you have no ice magic ability, or you are trying it out on a mob with a high resistance to ice while being weak to fire.

I saw the cooldown for ice shards and if I miss I can just imagine my frustration.

The long CD high damage is more of a randomizer than a good or bad thing. You either hit or miss and do huge damage or none. Casting two fireballs means you will likely miss one but also likely hit one. So your chances of doing huge damage or zero damage are less and medium damage is more likely.

I believe if you had the best cooldown gear for ice it would be very superior since it would decrease your cd by more than fire would, kasha a ice Mage has been getting a lot of 210 full (event)kills recently and she has great cd gear like godly necro braces

Not using any cooldown gear with my ice build but even our top rogues and fire mages are hard pressed to kill anything over me and the other top ice Mage on Danu. 205/210 is an easy ice kill, we get those every time. 185/195 are weak to fire but I have killed those as ice build plenty of times as well. I get 9/10 Skain kills and every carrow dl kill. Even managed to out dps some pretty good rogues once for my first mordy kill

I have some very good gear and I utilize the hotbar fully. So it's definitely more than a "one is better than the other" scenario. Good gear helps and knowing how to play it and build it helps just as much.