Level 80 Ice Gearmaster Build Guide in Dragon Nest

The topic of Ice elemental-based Gear Master was brought up a couple of times on duowan forum before, but no one really provided a video demonstration of it. Main reason was because ice conversion jades are extremely hard to find since majority of people used their coins during Saints Haven Defence to get dark and light conversion jades. Revertible from Freedom Dragon Nest guild shares his insights on the unorthodox Ice elemental Gear Master.

Since we really enjoy playing Gear Master ( been playing one ever since they first came out in Dragon Nest China) this topic really interested me and i wanted to test it for myself. And after a month of searching the marketplace for a ice conversion jade, we finally found one ( 20k gold, gone just like that… Q_Q…) and did a couple of tests. And overall we must say, ice gear master after the revamp is very op lol.

Here’s a simple demonstration of my average geared GM using ice jades ( ignoring that i’m lvl 80, my gear is pretty much untouched. Still using lvl 70 full Moon gear (most people can reach these kind of stats).

How Ice GM basically works is rather simple.

Ice pump tower debuffs the target by -%30 ice resist.

Chemical Grenade debuffs the target by -%15 ice resist.

Ice pump tower MM mode debuffs the target by -%30 ice resist.

All 3 of these stack ontop of each other without any restrictions.

This basically means that if done properly ( and trust me, it’s not very difficult to do), you can debuff the target by %75 ice resist ( and even more if we factor in 2 -%5 ice jades) and during that -%75 debuff, damage increase by a lot lol.

Overall, ice GM is quite powerful. Much much more powerful than stacking phy %. Only issue is finding ice conversion jades.

Just something i wanted to share for anyone who plays Gear Master. Ice GM is very powerful in 1-4 man content. Anything above is gonna depend on party composition. ( such as if the party is focused on light or dark parties). But still testing it out for now haha.

For those of you who are curious about the skill build for this type of GM i’ll leave it here and update it as new info is provided. Just take note that at this time most skills are capped so can’t be lvled past some points ( like cannon tower was max lvl 15 at 70 cap and still max lvl 15 till now).

1- Any idea if the Elestra -ice reduce stack with all your ice reduce or not ?

After an excessive amount of testing, recording and analysing, the conclusion i finally came to was that no ele’s -10 % ice resist skills does not stack with the %75. In fact, they over ride ice pump tower’s ( but not MM ice pump tower for some reason) -%30 ice resist temporarily so if an Elestra uses any ice resist skill ( with the main 3 being Freezing Sword EX, Frozen Spikes EX and Chilling Mist EX all of which reduce ice resist by -%10 ) , it will effectively make it so that instead of the target having -%75 ice resist reduced, they will have gain back %20 ice resist and the target will only then have -%55 ice resist lol…

So ironically, an Elestra that uses her ice tree to damage while an Ice Gear Master is in the party will:

a- Make ice layers last shorter ( since with the %75 ice resist reduction, it will effectivly make ice layers last about 8 seconds or so more. But if an an elestra uses -%10 ice resist skills, it will reduce that extended duration of ice layers to about 6 or so seconds.)

b- Reduce ice gear master ( which is most likely gonna be one of the main dps in a party) overall dps.

Other than those 3 main skills. All other skills that reduce ice resist ( adepts ethonal for example) or -%5 ice jades seem to stack ontop of GM’s ice resist debuffs. Haven’t been able to properly test how high the debuff can go though unfortunately. Although there is the changes to Ele’s happening next month so that may or may not directly affect ice GM depending on what the devs do lol .

But overall, ice GM is still very very powerful in 1-4 man parties. Much more stronger than phy % GM’s (While stacking phy %, my damage was not close to that of using ice conversion lol)..

But from what i’ve seen, they can do well in 6 man parties. But in 8 man parties, light and dark conversion jades for a GM still dominate (with the proper party composition ofcourse) over Ice GM’s.

So overall, only really go Ice GM if you are mostly gonna do 4 man parties ( or 6 if the party isn’t setup to be a dark/light party) or solo nests + dalies. That’s when you’ll have the most potential. Anything higher depends heavily on the party composition (always helps to carry more than one conversion jade).

2- What’s the shooting frequency of Ice Pump after the revamp? My test from pre-revamp era tells that the Pump shoot every 7 seconds. But since all towers last 15 seconds instead, could it be the Ice Pump only shoot twice in the duration? Or the frequency increased to every 5 seconds?

Went and quickly tested with a free reset scroll and from what i can tell from rewatching my recordings. The frequency it still at shoots once every 7 seconds (with a delay of 1 second at the start of it’s summoning before shooting).

Also went and tested how long the debuff lasts for each lvl (left click spam ftw + recording) for both ice pump tower and ice pump tower MM mode and from my analysis on the recordings.

Left Side = Ice pump tower Right Side = Ice Pump Tower MM mode

lvl 1 = Roughly 3 seconds. lvl 1 = Roughly 2 seconds.

lvl 2 = Roughly 4 seconds. lvl 2 = Roughly 3 seconds.

lvl 3 = Roughly 4 seconds. lvl 3 = Roughly 2-3 seconds.

lvl 4 = Roughly 5 seconds lvl 4 = Roughly 4 seconds

lvl 5 = Roughly 6 seconds lvl 5 = Roughly 5 seconds

lvl 6 = Roughly 7 seconds lvl 6 = Roughly 5 seconds

lvl 7 = Roughly 7 seconds lvl 7 = Roughly 5 seconds

lvl 8 = Roughly 7 seconds lvl 8 = Roughly 5 seconds

lvl 9 = Roughly 8 seconds lvl 9 = Roughly 5 seconds

Note, for the ice pump tower side, don't factor in the time from the first hit of the icicles. Start counting from the last hit so the realistic duration of the ice resist may be a bit more ( maybe like 0.5 second ).

Check out the video below for a short demo. Take note that in both cases the GM showed left click damage crit and non crit before applying the debuff and spamming left click again. The difference should be fairly obvious but feel free to give me your opinions on what your guys estimated time of the debuff is.

lvl 1 ice pump tower + lvl 1 ice pump tower MM mode

lvl 9 ice pump tower + lvl 9 ice pump tower MM mode

Small added note, in the Mist Nest solo my ice pump tower was only lvl 1 since after the GM had just gotten the ice jade a few hours previously and was testing it out in party play. With maxed ice pump, The GM can probably solo Mist Nest in even less time ( maybe 4-6 min or so faster.)

After doing the above tests and fixing up my build with the test’s results, went and tested the build above out in Guardian Nest and as you can see for a completely average geared Gear Master with stats that the GM believe most people can get, the damage potential was quite high.

Credits: Special thanks to LilyOfHope for making this guide and for Revertible who originally conceptualized the Ice Gearmaster Build.