Cold Snap

"

mack1510 wrote:

I'm not sure if this is correct, but some bosses seem either immune to freeze/chill, or freeze/chill have Diminishing returns on the same enemy if used over and over.

I tried spamming cold-snap on Oak for example, and he never froze/chilled once.

I think that makes this spell very misplaced in the few instances i could see it being great (Locking down a boss in say perma-chill mode with the occasional freeze to allow your allies to kill him)

Freeze and chill duration are based on damage dealt relative to the target's max HP. Since Oak has probably the most HP in the game, he's affected very little by freeze and chill.

The further I progress in the game the more useless this skill seems to become. This costs twice the mana of freezing pulse, but it seems to not have much of a great chill or freeze success ratio in comparison. At the moment other cold elemental spells pretty much match it's freeze/damage rates. The damage output it just horrible from the start and it practically doesn't scale or change damage with levels gained. Not only that but the area of effect on this is really low also.

I presume this skill was implemented to allow users to freeze targets, while they dealt with other mobs. So why doesn't it succeed more often? Surely if it worked more frequently then a cool-down timer could be added?

So what needs to be done is 1 or 2 of the following-
reduce mana costs,
increase damage output/scale,
increase radius of attack effect,
greatly increase the chill and/or freeze percentages & add a cool down timer

As it stands this skill is fairly useless in game.

"

JJGuevara wrote:

The further I progress in the game the more useless this skill seems to become. This costs twice the mana of freezing pulse, but it seems to not have much of a great chill or freeze success ratio in comparison. At the moment other cold elemental spells pretty much match it's freeze/damage rates. The damage output it just horrible from the start and it practically doesn't scale or change damage with levels gained. Not only that but the area of effect on this is really low also.

I presume this skill was implemented to allow users to freeze targets, while they dealt with other mobs. So why doesn't it succeed more often? Surely if it worked more frequently then a cool-down timer could be added?

So what needs to be done is 1 or 2 of the following-
reduce mana costs,
increase damage output/scale,
increase radius of attack effect,
greatly increase the chill and/or freeze percentages & add a cool down timer

As it stands this skill is fairly useless in game.

I agree. Just a freeze chance bonus isn't enough. This skill needs a bigger chill and freeze duration multiplier.

"

Strill wrote:

"

JJGuevara wrote:

The further I progress in the game the more useless this skill seems to become. This costs twice the mana of freezing pulse, but it seems to not have much of a great chill or freeze success ratio in comparison. At the moment other cold elemental spells pretty much match it's freeze/damage rates. The damage output it just horrible from the start and it practically doesn't scale or change damage with levels gained. Not only that but the area of effect on this is really low also.

I presume this skill was implemented to allow users to freeze targets, while they dealt with other mobs. So why doesn't it succeed more often? Surely if it worked more frequently then a cool-down timer could be added?

So what needs to be done is 1 or 2 of the following-
reduce mana costs,
increase damage output/scale,
increase radius of attack effect,
greatly increase the chill and/or freeze percentages & add a cool down timer

As it stands this skill is fairly useless in game.

I agree. Just a freeze chance bonus isn't enough. This skill needs a bigger chill and freeze duration multiplier.

I found this skill to be quite okay, to support my Ice Spear. But the .11 change has made it completely useless.

There's no longer any point in keeping this in your skillset.

I thought GGG said they were opposed to cooldowns, so this change surprised me. It's a very bad game mechanic which should stay in MMO's.

Someone pointed out that player-cast Cold Snap isn't dodgeable, unlike the once the mobs cast, (they can be easily outrun, if you stay on the move). So I guess this might be the reason behind the change.

However, a better solution would be to implement delayed casting. Sort of like the Meteor skill in Diablo 2. Or the Lightning Nova here in PoE. (remember, you could stack several casts on top of each other, but always had to cast ahead of the mobs. It was not targetable on the mob itself.)

This would promote player skill instead of a boring wait for a dark semi-circle. You could also 'trap' monsters with proper use and high cast speed, placing your cold snaps in a triangle, ahead of the enemy group.

Not to mention a light-blue circle on the ground looks good before it detonates. :D

After new patch giving Cold Snap cooldown, i noticed then with trap support, i can have only 1 snap to throw not 3 as the support suposed to give, Is it intended , because of tis cooldown or bug ?

Feedback based on 18 Templar & 26 Ranger, only completed normal so far:

So far I am quite underwhelmed by this one. I love the general idea, I appreciate that targeting with this skill is a bit challenging in the midst of a fight, but the cooldown is just too long. Considering the mana cost, low damage and low-ish freeze amount, I'd expect to be able to use this skill more often - or to have it deal more damage / bring an increased chill chance.

the long cool down on coldsnap has now left it largely unusable as i cannot rely on it to be available when it is needed. this spell has left me with no caster builds i enjoy playing for lack of a "death from above" type spell without a cooldown.

I feel completely opposite about this spell as support: I was in merciless with total of 20% spell damage modifier and only added chaos damage support on this spell, and still froze normal enemies for whole seconds and chilled everyting except rares nicely. sure the damage isn't nice but the chill effect for non spell specialist is great.

of course it may look/be useful as an additional support skill... but to use it effectively on a caster char we'd need at least more sources of power charges (or maybe a slightly reduced timer, to keep the delay a bit (1second?) above the cold/freeze duration in best case/max gem quality?)

Add me to the list of people disappointed with this skill in its current state. Initial useage at low levels on my Shadow was great fun... until I started trying to make it a more significant part of my combat tactics. The cooldown kills this one. I can't find much of a reason to choose it over my Ice Spear gem when it has a long recycle time, does less damage, requires me to lead moving targets, and is comparatively mana-hungry. The cooldown is, IMHO, the main issue keeping me from trying to keep this in my skill rotation.

The higher level you push Ice Spear, the more apparent the gap in power and utility becomes -- at level 25 with Cold Snap and Ice Spear both maxed out for my level, I find Ice Spear to be just about as good for freeze/chill-based CC, in addition to doing enough damage to outright kill my targets in one or two shots (Act II Normal).

-Red Queen