Killing Frost

Avalanche needs only 167% Strength for a permanent full strip, or 137% with Corrosive Projection.

Arcane Sculptor triggers off Snow Globe and locks you to 175% Efficiency for 12 seconds, which is what lets Blind Rage run at 45% arsenal Efficiency and still clear the strip threshold without shards.

Biting Frost adds 200% crit chance and 3x crit multiplier versus frozen enemies, which on Breach Surge's 100% base crit gives roughly an 11.5x damage multiplier on a spark, or far more on a headshot.

1.

Cast Breach Surge to stun and prime line-of-sight enemies for sparks.

2.

Cast Avalanche (4) to freeze, strip, and set up Biting Frost, and to gain the Icy Avalanche overguard.

3.

Cast Snow Globe to push enemies away and block fire; it is invulnerable for four seconds.

Break your own globes with 1.

4.

Shoot frozen enemies to kill and generate red-crit sparks.

5.

Optional: viral-prime and shove enemies into walls with Snow Globe for a true-damage one-shot.

Duration is unimportant; Avalanche and Breach Surge have long base timers and Snow Globe ignores Duration.

Efficiency is solved by Arcane Sculptor.

Range spreads Avalanche and Breach Surge; Augur Reach also feeds the gate.

Strength only needs to clear the strip threshold.

Blind Rage is the Strength, covered by Arcane Sculptor.

Overextended, Augur Reach set the Range.

Archon Flow is the energy pool with a bonus large orb on cold-ability kills.

Equilibrium converts orbs.

Corrosive Projection drops the strip threshold to 137%.

The three augments are all flexible.

Biting Frost drops if you use a self-sufficient crit weapon like Phenmor or Laetum.

Freeze Force is optional raw damage.

Archon Flow swaps freely with Primed Flow.

Rolling Guard or Catalyzing Shields for more gate safety.

Natural Talent if you skip cast-speed shards.

Pick one.

- Breach Surge is the default: the spark engine that Biting Frost multiplies.

- Nourish for viral and energy (see the dedicated variant).

- Ensnare to pull frozen enemies together.

- An energy option (Spellbind with Spellbound Harvest, Spectrorage with Spectrosiphon) if Avalanche's cost is a problem.

Arcane Truculence for free area viral on overguard gain, Arcane Sculptor for the Efficiency lock.

Arcane Arachne (2.5x sparks, bypasses the cap) or Arcane Ice Storm (Strength and Duration) as swaps.

Any.

Madurai for cast speed on Avalanche.

Vazarin for backup i-frames.

Breach Surge wants a weapon that lands one huge hit near the 5-million spark cap: Xoris, Coda Pathocyst, Exodia Contagion, slam Magistar, Daikyu.

Biting Frost wants decent crit stats, and the strip makes even weak weapons work against armour.

Shield gating plus Avalanche's freeze plus the Icy Avalanche overguard.

It fails to Eximus that ignore the freeze (Breach Surge no longer works on them through overguard), and to toxin.

Arcane Sculptor's lock plus Equilibrium plus Archon Flow's cold-kill orbs.

Eximus and Thrax resist the freeze and Breach Surge.

Strong single-hit weapons hit the spark cap and stop benefiting from the multiplier, so the spark nuke is more a low-investment weapon booster than a scaling tool.

Bosses.

A Precision Intensify plus Arcane Ice Storm build that full-strips from 40% Strength.

A Health Conversion plus Arcane Battery armour-and-energy variant.

A Nourish variant.

Strong: reliable one-cast full strip, strong crowd control and overguard, turns weak weapons into armour-killers.

Weak: does not touch Eximus abilities, spark scaling caps out, boss-blind.

Players who want a defensive frame that also removes armour for the whole squad and makes a mediocre weapon viable.