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Updated June 13, 2023, by Charles Burgar: We've spent the last week battling the forces of Hell and acquiring some of the best gear Diablo 4 has to offer D2R ladder items. After playing our Ice Shards character to level 83 and upgrading our gear, we've found an incredible endgame variant that destroys Nightmare Dungeons, Helltide, and even World Bosses.

We've updated this guide with an updated D4Builds tree, gear recommendations, an in-depth Paragon Board section, and reformatted sections of this guide to cover both our leveling and endgame variants of Ice Shards.

This build focuses on making Ice Shards as powerful as possible, inflicting as much chill and vulnerability as possible to ramp up our damage. We'll be using Ice Shard's chain augment to have it ricochet while you have Barrier, something we easily acquire through Ice Armor and cooldown skill usage.

You'll have access to four defensive skills, generate Barrier constantly, and clear hordes of monsters with little issue. The best part is nearly every core Legendary for this build can be crafted, making this fantastic for leveling.

Ice Shards is also a great build for endgame content with some investment. We use Frost Nova to inflict vulnerability on targets buy d2r items, allowing you to scale vulnerability damage sources to multiply your damage output against tankier Elites and bosses.