Play a frostmaiden this season, almost fully decked out with full of skillers and torch. Wearing full mavina set. Silkweave equipped. Bow even socketed with tir rune. Insight level 17 on merc. And guess what, in p1 cow I still have to pot mana from time to time.
It’s time mana cost of this skill, and for other non-physical bow skills should be reduced further. Physical damage portion is too little to matter when equipping ring with % mana leech.
P.S. I max pierce in case someone will jump in and comment that only killing 1 enemy per cast is not enough to regen mana
If you can get a Crescent Moon amulet, your mana troubles will be over. I only have to pot when facing skeletons, or others that aren’t affected by mana steal. And this with an A5 merc, so no Insight.
I have, but I’m wearing cat’s eye tho. Imo the physical damage portion is little, thus the mana leech is negligible. And by using crescent moon, you lose a breakpoint or 2 on attack speed.
Good design should face no mana problem with insight merc. Dev since the age of LoD is so incompetent on these QoL aspects.
I’m also running Faith, so I easily maxed out attack speed. It’s a drawback of Mav’s bow - GMB is slower than the MB.
As far as physical damage goes, your bow matches mine.
How about Phoenix on the weapon swap 
If I’m not wrong, you need both faith and highlords/cat’s eye to bring ias breakpoint to 7. Even with matri bow, you still need 20ias from amulet to bring to 8fps breakpoint
Nah, 4 HRs for the sustain?
With my 3/20 gloves, I make the 7 breakpoint.
[2.5 Freezing Arrow - Diablo II Character Planner (maxroll.gg)](https:// maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/ut010636#5)
Care to tell me how you can reach 7 frame without using faith? Also, why do you even use faith instead of infinity on freezing arrow build?
I mentioned Faith in one of the earlier posts. I use it for the speed and increased damage, especially for my Frenzy merc. I really don’t see a reason to run an A2 merc with Infinity on this build.
Here’s my current build @ L93: D2planner - Maxroll.gg - Diablo 2 Resurrected Resource Website. Your build looks nice; never have found a Nightwing’s and won’t get a Sunder charm (SP only). I’m also short on GC skills. I could have made Ice when I made Faith, but I also use it with my MS/GA Amazon w/A1 merc.
Lol, elemental builds = infinity. Why should it be any other way? Faith is only for physical melee/ranged builds. And even in that scenario, I highly doubt if it is better than might merc + reaper’s toll
Well, my merc does a crapload of damage and is not nearly as fragile as the A2 merc. I find it much easier to get A5 to engage as well. I do use Infinity with my sorc and lightning javazon builds, though.
I’ve tried the Might/RT combo on a few builds, mostly those that need help with PIs, like my Windy Druid. But on my Frenzy barb I switched to an A5 with Grief/Lawbringer; again, not nearly as fragile and will actually fight.
I don’t consider something less than 20% of your own damage “crapload damage”, especially when freezing arrow can do massive aoe damage.
Infinity almost x2 your damage, while faith only around 10-15% more, not even sure why you use faith in the first place. All the more so in patch 2.5 when sunder charm is a thing, no need merc to kill the unkillable anymore.
What more, you don’t even use ice, which is the one and only weapon for freezing arrow because of the -20% cold res. I just don’t understand the logic here at all. You build an elemental build just like a physical build. That’s so weird and inefficent. But if you like uniqueness, so be it.
If Sunder charms ever come to SP, then I might make Ice and change up this build. I appreciate the conversation; this was my first character I ever built and don’t play it much. I do like trying new things, not opposed to using someone else’s builds/advice. I’m not a speed-runner, will never make Enigma, and have no interest in online play.
One question, though: in your OP you mentioned M’avina’s set, but your build link has none of its gear. Did we get off track here?
No, the link I post is the BiS setup, not mine.
I thought we were talking about ladder play tho. No wonder you make such build
If you use the D2RMM mod, you can enable sunder charm to drop. But it works like before the fix, meaning that there’s no 1/5 penalty to infinity and such. And no terror zone in SP tho
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That’s a definite possibility. I think for now I will wait and see if Blizzard makes any announcements about adding SC/TZ to single-player.
I have done numerous players 8 cow runs with 8-10 different Frostmaiden builds even with bows that pretty much have zero mana leech capability. All of them were using infinity instead of insight.
Do you have any points into energy? What is your mana pool at?
What is your final freezing arrow damage?
[mavina maiden - Diablo II Character Planner (maxroll.gg)](https:// maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/1f0106d5)
It’s something like this, plus an insight merc
Zero point into energy, max vit
Well if you have infinity, you need less hit to kill the same amount of monster, thus mana regen from silkweave will be similar if not better than insight.
I guess the difference here is CTA and infinity, one allows more mana, thus more mana regen, while the other kill faster with fewer hits, thus saving mana.
Hes using Mavina’s set as well as insight merc.
Feels like it won’t be enough damage.
I think frost maidens need a lot of faceted gear and a HR bow to make it work.
Probably dont need a lot of vitality either.
The 2.4 wisdom RW is cheap and should be really nice on Frostmaiden, high ml + MAEK, and it allows 100% pierce with 1! hard skill point. And cnbf.
And if you give up mavinas you can use an cheap upped lycanders with even more ml.
I know full set is tempting, but except tals they are outperformed by even cheap unique / runeword alternatives.
It will take a bit longer without infinity but it’s certainly very much doable. M’avina has decent cold damage and inherent mana leech. I wouldn’t sell it short.
With silkweaves and points into energy, the mana sustain should be fine.