Cold Snap

The point is that it can Freeze and since it's a hard AOE disable (when it works) for balance reasons it can't be more realiable and the damage can't be top tier.

For more damage you could just use Arctic Breath and that will Chill no matter what.

With a lesser chance to freeze I doubt you'd cast this over Arctic Breath or other better dps skills.

If you wanted more Freeze chance instead, then the damage should go down and the duration should go up (to not be useless due to lower damage) to keep it balanced.

Still, freezing isn't just adding more damage. It's complete facerolling so it's hard to balance.

This is similar to Bear Trap's situation: once the status for this kind of skills becomes irrelevant (failed chance, major bosses, immune to effect, etc) the damage you're left with is bound to be subpar.

I mentioned Arctic Breath because it seems GGG picked that as the big cold damage skill now, then I went on about Freeze chance because I agree that Coldsnap needs a damage boost but reduced duration wouldn't be enough IMO.

For the same reasons you stated it was ok back then, but we keep getting more and more skills so mantaining actual variety becomes harder.

Even if you freeze a mob for just a split second it's still going to matter if you are spamming that skill, so are just getting increased damage. Big spell damage boosts are also really common on gear.

Lowering the chance on the other hand would have more impact and as you said there are ways to make it better (Elemental Proliferation is indeed awesome) but it's additional stuff.

Removing the cooldown is not that difficult (crits, Romira, Trap) and improving the chance (again, crits and Romira's) is possible but that requires investment.

This way you'd end up with specific setups to enjoy the increased damage instead of THE cold damage spell to pick up, IMO.

For what it's worth, Cold Snap is at the core of my Cast on Crit bow ranger build and it's proven to be staggeringly effective even up into the mid-80s.

I'm routinely able to 1- or 2-shot packs in level 72 maps with 6 players around, if they're tight enough for the Cold Snaps to overlap significantly. With the right curse(s), I'm reliably able to spam it with Barrage (and a Concentrated Effect support) to permanently freezelock almost all rares, many exiles, and more than a few map bosses.

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SinisterDexter wrote:

For what it's worth, Cold Snap is at the core of my Cast on Crit bow ranger build and it's proven to be staggeringly effective even up into the mid-80s.

I'm routinely able to 1- or 2-shot packs in level 72 maps with 6 players around, if they're tight enough for the Cold Snaps to overlap significantly. With the right curse(s), I'm reliably able to spam it with Barrage (and a Concentrated Effect support) to permanently freezelock almost all rares, many exiles, and more than a few map bosses.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MH3VCuZgwwk

With the great buff to damage this patch I too would suggest lowering the freeze duration increase, maybe to 15-20%.

Reduced chance to freeze magical monsters?

I really like the skill, but I can't be bothered to hassle with charges, so the skill appears useless compared to all the other cold skills, with it's low area of effect, low damage per second and relatively low chance to freeze compared to skills that have a chance to freeze ten times per second.

The dmg isn't bad at all. i dunno why people keep saying that.

It has a small aoe on top of it.

It's just a hard nuke + instant freeze skill basically.

You can use this skill very well in cast on crit builds, as it does still a ton of dmg + aoe's a little + has a high chance to freeze everything.

It applies instantly towards the target and has no traffel time like freezing pulse / ice spear / arctic breath. The moment it casts on the target it does instant dmg, no matter the distance ( freezing pulse issue ) it does hit targets next towards it like ( arctic breath ) and it freezes effectively like ( ice spear even better ).

Like others have mentioned this with elemental prolification makes it freeze the entire screen on top of it if you prefer to use it like that.

The skill is pretty darn powerful, and has its own set of rules.

The skill is fine.

Is it practical to hard-cast this as a main skill if you don't have Romira's Banquet? The low crit chance is kind of annoying for sustaining charges. Honestly, any spell with a long cooldown now makes me think 'turn back hard casters, this is a skill reserved for the CoC master race'.

If you just want to freeze everything, the skill is competing with Freeze Mine, which is not as game-breaking as it used to be, but still potentially quite cheesy. The main advantage Cold Snap has is that it's an instant hit anywhere on the screen, no setup required.