Fire/Ice mage, what equipment to aim for?

[Sign 1]

Background, why ask now?

 

I`ve kept the full ice/fire sets from before downloading the community patch +addendum, using a random mix of what rolled the best stats. It looks surprisingly good since I got very lucky.

Prior in vanilla, slapping on smithing arts was enough. (esp. since my highest level toon was below 30 and only found one star of artamark.) 

 

So, the level 15 set gear will last a while. But weapons? Not so much...

 

And then I got lucky with a life per hit blade. Together with spamming ice shards, my toon is currently near immortal. I`d probably straight up die without it, though, because I`m using the mirror shield. Anyway, my playstyle on the ork map changed drastically. I enjoy adapting to each map and trying builds, but as a newbie, are there any specific stats I might want to pay special attention to when in the level 30-60 range?

My old strategies won`t do now, after all.

 

(Current build for the curious

level 20
sword/shield HE 

Skills
lore+focus fire/storm (My game is in German...)
armor lore
unchosen (shield lore, constitution, concentration, combat discipline)

Fully upgraded -- fire ball, ice shards (literal translations)

Spam whenever -- ice shards. Captains/yellow -- fireball. Meteor to spam on bosses. Firewall was great in the past, but is useless when relying on+hp/hit. )

[Sign 1]

I've chosen concentration for the sixth slot, since it starts out with +10 from gear.

I stopped using weapons altogether and went into pure casting. That left ancient magic over defenses. Combat discipline at level 25 to integrate Raging nimbus into Glacial Thorns, but that is overkill almost always. (But lets me spend almost all on int).

Incendiary shower is the default bosskiller. I had no idea how much damage the first dragon from the main quest might do, so I ran around like a headless chicken and left it to melt in nimbus. Still a lame fight since the HE is impossible to chase down, but at least it took longer than 20-30 seconds.

I was curious if the sword would even do damage now. Apparently, it *will* one shot the average small mob, but the hit chance is atrocious. I'll need to pick a defensive skill next for my sanity, so that's just going to be too bad I guess. Spells hit just fine. Do spells even have hit chance?

 

Edited November 22, 2020 by Sign