Cold Snap

As frost witch/summoner this was my goto opener. Does a great job slowing down mobs for my zombies to kill and freezing enemies swarming me for an easy escape. The damage and AoE splash felt balanced and made this spell my favorite for killing trash mobs and quickly locking down a threat before finishing it with Ice Spear.

My love of this spell ultimately killed my witch though, as I was killing off a pack of trash mobs my zombies were fighting at the top left corner of my screen when an elemental reflect boss walked down from off-screen.

Great utility spell with moderate damage, excellent range, and nice AoE splash earn this a definate spot on the hotbar.

I agree with was was said before, it's a nice way to "disable" ranged attackers or to open with.

However, after getting Firestorm and adding both cold and lightning damage supports, I really feel this spell does too little damage.

I exected the AoE to increase over the levels, as well as the damage / freeze chance. As this does not happen, after the primary difficulty level this skill becomes underpowered rather quickly.

There are other spells that do cold damage or freeze and especially with added cold or fire to cold supports, there is no need of these effects anymore. The damage is just too low, it really is an utility spell.

if this skill didnt already have a bad rap i think itll be even worse after the 10% kick its gonna get in 0.9.6.

Apparently this skill is supposed to be used as support and control, but how? I've been using it the entire game, and it's underpowered compared to other skills, but still, it's best used as a damage/attack gem. The freeze/chill is much too short to use it as a support gem, temporal chains works much better for that. Stopping, using Cold Snap, then running will only gain you minimal distance, and you lose mana.

Cold Snap is great as an attack skill, would be better served if you would revise it to scale on higher levels.

I found it of great great use while leveling. As a summoner/fire sorc, I linked to "add damage skill" plus "increase critical chance".

I was able to freeze and chill "at will" for safety purposes (I'm hardcore). But once I reach high level and merciless and mostly Maelström of Chaos, I find this skill useles. Dunno if it works if you invest in chill passives. In my summoner build it doesn't work at high level, but was great while leveling.

I haven't touched PoE since 094 or thereabout, but after getting a fresh HC Witch to Ruthless in 097 it seems like not much has changed when it comes to Cold Snap -- it still works great as a primary attack skill in the main game.

It doesn't seem like this spell excels as croud control. Perhaps you could further decrease it's offensive stats and make it instant cast?

Edit: another idea -- make it work a little like firestorm, but when mobs are in affected area, they have a chance to become chilled frozen every 0.1 sec. No damage at all. Maybe also mobs in affected should receive higher damage from other abilities?

A freezing area that enemies can walk into sounds a lot better to me, too.

That way it's clearly more of a support than damage skill,

Like some instant small damage on cast, but a bigger area, and it has some chilling fog left that repeatedly chills and freezees.
Maybe having the freeze chance increase every second that an enemy is there, so holding them there can guarantee a freeze.