Build:Ice Fang Battlemage

**Ice Fang Battlemage** is a Character Build in *Outward*, created by Charge\_Shot294.

## Full Build Details

So, this build has a lot going on, but I will try to break down the important decision points as best I can:

**Kazite spellblade:** Taken as a breakthrough for the upgraded Ice infusion, elemental discharge, and the bonus stats. An optional trade out for this is cabal hermit, who does more frost damage with spells but about the same melee with the breakthrough and an ice varnish over the spellblade infuse. He doesn't really contribute anything besides the passive, whereas elemental discharge is absolutely spammable with speedster breakthrough, and your spell damage will be very close if you just pop a cool potion after using your infuse. Overall, hermit does more spell damage, spellblade does more melee damage, but with a varnish on the former and a cool potion on the latter, they are nearly identical and spellblade pulls ahead from the bonus stats and Elemental discharge.

**Seeedster:** Probe is necessary on this build, but the breakthrough is not. It is taken for the cooldown and protection bonus, as well as unerring read to make you extremely hard to kill and creates some very interesting action economy with alertness you can abuse. This can be traded with Hex Mage for lockwell's revelation, but similar to Hermit it really only provides the damage bonus. Combine this with the tedium of keeping up with the very tired status and some of the combos unerring read opens up for you, and I feel like it just is not worth it.

**Philosopher:** This is taken for Ice sigil, simple as that. Leyline connection is actually very useful, considering that this build can spam spells like no other, but the ice sigil is the main reason for taking this tree. I actually went back and forth between this and the Rogue engineer, which has some very strong arguments. Between feather dodge allowing you to take Zhorns hunting backpack or the wolf backpack for stamina costs or extra protection, the inclusion of serpents parry, and the lack of Ice Sigil combos cluttering up the hotbar opening up backstab and dagger slash to stack hamper from the Shiver, it may actually be the more optimal build path. However, the extra frost damage we accrue via gear and buffs, combined with the ability to spam spells with the speedster gives this build an extremely potent long-range game as well as close range. Futhermore, with daredevil making opportunist stab's cooldown so short, we don't really need any other dagger skills to get serious melee burst and knockdown potential. Both builds are viable, they just have slightly different guiding principles, and we will look at both below.

**Now lets look at our primary stats:** We want to take at least 4 points in mana, which may seem like a lot for a build that uses melee, but the addition of kazite spellblade breakthrough, the Blue Chamber faction rewards, and the stamina cost reduction on gear still makes you incredibly healthy. So assuming we have all aformentioned buffs, plus peacemaker elixir, and all relevant minor passives from each trainer, our stats should be as follows:

**Health:** 180

**Stamina:** 140

**Mana:** 155

Now our relevant passives from gear and abilities are as follows:

'*Damage bonus:* 76% frost (with cool boon)

-30% Physical

**Protections and resistances:** 8 Protection

45% Physical

39% Impact

20% Frost

Note we also get a nice 35% mana reduction for a 3% increased stamina cost and 8% movement penalty

Now lets take a look at the things that matter, the damage and combos (assuming frost imbue is applied):

Dagger base damage: 99 Frost

Brand Base Damage: 70.4 Frost

14 Physical

Now here is the important reason for taking Unerring read and using brand: On the third probe hit, confusion is applied. Normally you would have to use the fourth hit to get pain for opportunist stab, but brand applies pain and chill in three hits, allowing you to use opportunist stab at max capacity on hit three. Afterwards, if you use unerring read, it will shave away one alertness, placing you back into the 3rd hit of probe for the confusion proc. Just use Probe two more times (which they will probably be staggered for) to reapply confusion and pain, then you have the availability of sweep kick to knock them over before opportunist stabbing again (which should be up very quickly with the daredevil cooldown). You can use this burst as a finisher after chipping away with spells, or an opener before running back to a previously placed ice sigil to finish safely from range (Recommended for taking full advantage of spell spam from stacking probe).

The damage for each skill is as follows (Assuming chill is applied from brand):

Opportunist stab: 742.5

Probe: 42.2

Frost Push: 190.2

Frost Burst: 223.75

Elemental Discharge: 134.25

Something to keep in mind at this point: if you open with your melee combo, you should have max stacks of alertness before retreating to your sigil, which reduces the cooldown of frost push, frost burst, and elemental discharge to 9 seconds, 6 seconds, and 12 seconds respectively.

Now lets take a look at the other rogue engineer skills in case you take that breakthrough over philosopher:

Backstab: 495

Serpents Parry: 247.5

From this analysis we can see that rogue engineer does have the potential for higher consistent melee damage over philosopher, but it lacks AOE or ranged options besides ED. It's just a preference for your playstyle, so try both!