Freezing Shards Pounce Bloodmage

Mapping: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pI8MIrRKcyU

Bossing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuhTrxYwZYY

Build (still experimenting, gear is mid at best): https://pobb.in/D0Z-Ox7KMDF3

They buffed staves this league so I thought it's finally time for our boy freezing shards. I've been leveling freezing shards from the start and was getting more and more unsatisfied with it. It just seemed like there is no reason to ever play it over Spark. The play style is exactly the same, spam the main skill with CoC/CoA and offhand curse for bosses.

The problem with freezing shards is that while it is insane vs packs with mana tempest, it almost feels like a melee skill vs single target because of the wide spread. Often with abyss rares, they have ground effects/packs which force you to run away first to dodge. After clearing the trash mobs from a distance, you can't get to melee range to shotgun the rare because they throw nonstop ground effects.

So I thought why not Pounce in the offhand? After playing a bit it turns out Pounce is secretly busted for casters too. First and most importantly it just feels good. Having a movement skill makes for a much more dynamic style of play. Secondly the numbers on it are a little overtuned to say the least. Why does it have 100% increased effect of marks? Freezing mark freezes bosses at 70% threshold, and gives 50+% more freeze buildup. With pounce, freezing mark gives 100% more freeze buildup. So just pouncing on a boss with freezing mark effectively triples your freeze build up. That's pretty insane and in this build worth losing Sigil of Power and some weapon set 2 curse nodes for. Finally Pounce actually needs zero support from your tree. You can keep all your weapon set 2 curse setup and manually switch to your chiming staff when needed. Who casts sigil in maps anyway?

TLDR: Pounce is great, try and see if your caster build can use it for mapping.