Cold Snap

I don't use this spell anymore.

Before it had the cooldown I rarely used it, as its damage was very low and there is a large delay after the spell hits during its cast time where you just kinda sit there unable to do anything, quite frustrating.

It was lackluster before, it is even worse now, I don't know why its still in the game. The only use of cold snap is from those damn ambushers spamming it like crazy. Evidently, they do not have a cooldown.

I agree with most of the posts here:

The spell is not very usefull at all.
Every ice skill does a lot more dmg and has a bigger chance to freeze because of castspeed. (using ice spells with my crit witch)

Imho this Skill needs a much higher freeze chance. I think it would be a bad idea to remove the cooldown and/or give more dmg, because this skill should be a crowd control/defensive spell...

I still think Cold Snap is a must have for pvp, that insta hit long range slow with chance to freeze is just way to good to pass up on any class.

1. It is difficult to generate power charges unless you heavily spec into wands (and are always keeping your accuracy at a decent level) or use Voll's and have lots of +crit strike chance.

2. Even if you can generate power charges in a reasonable manner, they are consumed rapidly by this spell, meaning you will have decently long spans of down-time between cold-snap spam and power-generation spam.

If Cold Snap could generate power charges on a kill (or some other condition), I'd say it would be perfect.

At least until there are more ways to generate power charges, nobody will build around this skill.

Unless I'm mistaken. Has anyone found a build that lets you use cold snap with a fair amount of regularity?

The spell just doesn't seem worth the hassle at the moment, but it is potentially very good.

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anubite wrote:

1. It is difficult to generate power charges unless you heavily spec into wands (and are always keeping your accuracy at a decent level) or use Voll's and have lots of +crit strike chance.

2. Even if you can generate power charges in a reasonable manner, they are consumed rapidly by this spell, meaning you will have decently long spans of down-time between cold-snap spam and power-generation spam.

If Cold Snap could generate power charges on a kill (or some other condition), I'd say it would be perfect.

At least until there are more ways to generate power charges, nobody will build around this skill.

Unless I'm mistaken. Has anyone found a build that lets you use cold snap with a fair amount of regularity?

The spell just doesn't seem worth the hassle at the moment, but it is potentially very good.

great contender for power charges, underpowered and redundant at the moment.

I also find its radius to be much too small to be fun.

"

anubite wrote:

Unless I'm mistaken. Has anyone found a build that lets you use cold snap with a fair amount of regularity?

The spell just doesn't seem worth the hassle at the moment, but it is potentially very good.

The spell is incredibly good with increased AOE and proliferation (especially quality proliferation which increases freeze duration)

On my tank spellcaster templar I used cold snap with elemental proliferation and iron will. I had a lot of increased effect of area spells (from both templar and witch parts of the tree). Iron will adds a nice bonus to damage (for longer freeze) and cast speed doesn't matter much (it is like 5% on high level anyway).

On any group of approaching monsters I would cast elemental weakness and cold snap. With how chances work in this game, I had 100% chance to freeze when I hit a group of monsters. If I freeze a white monsters with not much health, everything else freezes for full duration of 3 seconds (or untill I kill the frozen one mostly, but even then everything is chilled for a long time). I would mostly kill all white monsters with ice nova or fireballs before they unfreeze, blue monsters too if they are not too tough.

There is only 1 second window between cold snap cooldown and freeze duration. Without cooldown it would be very easy to freeze whole group of monsters forever.

Additionally elemental proliferation works on enemies that enter it's radius after the spell has been cast. If you freeze 1 enemy near you, you will also freeze rhoas that try to charge on you, flicker strikers that teleport to you and goatmen that jump on you (in mid air!)

Without increased AOE passives and iron will this skill is still very good. I can imagine ice crit witch or shadow with Voll's Protector that always gain power charges when everything is frozen to freeze again. Damage is good enough with critical strikes and/or some increased cold damage, you can support this with elemental proliferation and increased AOE which only need 3 sockets and can be put in a wand with +1 to cold gems.

Without elemental proliferation, it's not an amazing skill but it's still useful. Throwing cold snap on a rare (or player in pvp) once every few seconds for long chill without really losing DPS is good.

I agree that gaining power charges is difficult (I tried using this skill on wand witch but it wasn't worth it since I only speced for wands in offense) but I think we will see other ways of obtaining charges in future.

Edit: Actually, globbi's post made mine obsolete. ;)

agree with other posters, how the heck does this compare with other cold spells, it simply doesnt. If it didnt require line of sight it would be potentially useful in some situations. As it is ice-spear crushes the life out of it in comparison.