The Cryomancer in Dungeonborne offers a unique playstyle, moving away from direct damage spells to focus on controlling the battlefield and surviving encounters. This class excels in raids when you understand how to leverage its crowd control abilities and defensive skills. This guide will teach you the optimal strategies for playing the Cryomancer, including a build designed to unlock its full potential.
Undead Racial Synergies
Cryomancers are exclusively available to Undead characters, granting them specific racial bonuses that are integral to the class:
- Undead are incompatible with Priest healing due to their inherent unholy nature.
- Instead of mana, Undead Cryomancers utilize soul energy, harvested from defeated enemies, to power their spells. Consuming souls replenishes their resource bar and can even provide healing at higher levels.
Cryomancer Skill Breakdown
Cryomancers possess two core skills that define their gameplay:
- Ice Storm: Summons a blizzard in a designated area, inflicting damage with each tick and slowing enemies within its radius until they are frozen solid.
- Ice Barrier: Encases the Cryomancer in a protective layer of ice, granting temporary invulnerability and health regeneration. While active, the Cryomancer cannot move or attack.
Key Cryomancer Passives
The Cryomancer’s passive abilities significantly enhance their crowd control and survivability, particularly augmenting the Ice Storm skill:
- Frostbite: Enhances Ice Storm by adding initial damage upon casting and significantly reducing enemy movement speed within the storm area.
- Winter’s Wrath: Expands the area of effect (AoE) of Ice Storm, increasing its crowd control potential.
- Shattering Ice: Upgrades Ice Barrier to explode upon expiration, dealing damage and freezing nearby enemies, providing an offensive follow-up to defense.
- Soul Freeze: Grants a small amount of soul energy each time Ice Storm successfully freezes an enemy, improving resource sustain.
- Permafrost: Extends the duration of the freeze effect by 2 seconds, maximizing crowd control effectiveness.
Optimal Weapon Choices for Cryomancers
Cryomancers can equip various Staff weapons, with the Fire and Lightning Staff being available options. The Lightning Staff stands out as the superior choice due to its ease of use in landing attacks. Swords are also usable as melee weapons, offering a viable alternative when resource management becomes a concern.
Mastering Cryomancer in PvE and PvP Scenarios
The Cryomancer class is built around controlling the flow of combat. While effective in Player versus Environment (PvE) content, Cryomancers become exceptionally formidable in Player versus Player (PvP) engagements when played strategically.
In PvE, Ice Storm is particularly effective against bosses due to their larger hitboxes, making them easier targets for the blizzard’s area of effect. Freezing bosses with Ice Storm provides opportunities for melee attacks or strategic repositioning.
Cryomancers shine in team-based play, especially in PvP. Ice Barrier can effectively draw enemy attention, providing crucial distractions for teammates to capitalize on. It also serves as an invaluable emergency tool, allowing for health regeneration and strategic retreats during intense fights.
When initiating combat, deploying Ice Storm in confined spaces is highly advantageous. The advancing nature of the spell restricts enemy movement, creating opportunities for close-quarters combat with a sword or ranged attacks with a Lightning Staff, effectively controlling the engagement zone.
