Mana Battery Frostsparker - mahjerion/Craft-to-Exile-Dissonance GitHub Wiki
Updated for 2.16.3
Table of Contents
Primer
Author: Mahj
This build revolves around the Mana Battery talent, which converts a percentage of damage taken into damage against Mana. Innately, Storm and Ocean have synergies with Mana - Ocean can apply Cold Essence stacks which give us Mana Regen, and both trees have spells that scale off of Mana. However, access to Storm's spell, Battery Fusillade, is only available at level 40, earliest, which makes this unfeasible for a starter build. As such, this build relies on Chilling Field and Lightning Totems for AOE damage, and Lightning Spear for single target damage. The Static effect applied by Lightning Totems synergizes well with Lightning Spear and can carry you from level 1-50!
From Level 1-10 (Pre-Static)
Put one point into Lightning Spear and for now put points into Storm Mastery until you reach Storm Mastery level 5 save the rest of your points. From level 6-10, place points into Ocean Mastery. Levels 1-5 shouldn't be too difficult, you can reach level 15-20 with ease just by following the Prelude (Overworld Chapter) in the quest book (Hotkey: P).
Primary Damage Source
- Early: Lightning Totem + Chilling Field, and Lightning Spear
- Late: (Early) + Battery Fusillade + Storm Spells
Defensive Mechanism
- Mana Battery (reduces damage by expending mana)
- Health or Magic Shield
Stats
You want the following core stats:
- Intelligence
- Wisdom
- More Intelligence
I usually do a 2:1 or 3:1 ratio. You may need to adjust for equipment stat requirements.
Masteries
- Primary: Storm
- Secondary: Ocean
Put a single point into Lightning Spear to begin with. Put your points into Storm Mastery until it hits 5. From 6-10 put your points into Ocean Mastery until it hits 5. From this point on, continue putting points into Storm Mastery. While levelling your Masteries, save your extra points and unlock Lightning Totem at level 5 and Chilling Field at level 10. Only put a single point into Chilling Field for now. At level 15 you will be able to put points into Totem Static, Static (effect), and Lightning Spear's Galvanic Arc synergy. This is when the build starts to take off. Make sure to max out Galvanic Arc before Lightning Spear! Slow enemies with Chilling Field, apply Static using Lightning Totem, and finish off stragglers with Lightning Spear + Galvanic Arc.
You will want to max out Recharge as soon as possible to help with sustain. Have a few points in Quick Charge to help with cooldowns. You can also grab Electric Prowess (Lightning Spear Synergy) to help with sustain.
Eventually unlock Power Surge at level 35. We don't want Critical Surge because we're using the Power Overwhelming Talent Tree node.
Once you reach level 40, you will be able to put points into the Stray Currents Synergy. It is recommended you max this out before maxing out Power Surge. From this point on, you can slowly max out the spells to improve your overall damage!
Level 30 Storm + Ocean Trees
Level 60 Storm + Ocean Trees
Talent Tree
- Starting on the top side of the tree is a no-brainer since we're going Mana Battery early.
- Start by grabbing the Spell Damage clusters, Power Overwhelming, and Magical Life near the start on the left side, then slowly move towards Mana Battery, grabbing Mana nodes along the way.
- We take Magical Life because chances are we'll be wearing cloth armor which provides Magic Shield. This will make gearing a little easier and beef up our Health pool at the same time.
- Don't skimp out on Health nodes, as Mana Battery doesn't prevent all damage from going through.
- Eventually, you will want to get Spell Lifesteal to upkeep your health pool.
- Other possible nodes: Arcane Devotion + Harmony if you're going Magic Shield.
Level 40 Talent Tree
Level 80 Talent Tree
Equipment
- Early on, you'll want to find equipment with lots of Health or Magic Shield. Survivability is key in the early stages since you shouldn't have too much trouble with Chilling Field + Lightning Totem doing damage.
- Eventually you'll want equipment with lots of Mana and Spell Damage. You can also find Lightning Spell Damage and Frost Spell Damage.
- If you can find good item bases, Radiance [Ita + Mos + Rah] and Static [Cen, Ano, Goh] are decent Runewords.
- Later on, good uniques to keep an eye out for are: Stone of Jordan Ring (provides a large boost to Mana, Spell Damage, and + All Skills), Lidless Wall Torch (provides CDR, and + All Skills). You could also try to find the Tal Rasha's Wrappings set which would synergize well with this build, while also providing some Magic Find.
What To Do After
To be honest, these spells are pretty powerful end-game already. And this build provides plenty of defenses for mapping. You could opt to go for Magic Shield at this point to have more eHP, and/or start building towards crit.